In my last post, I described conversations with three teachers that revealed their different views about what teaching is.
The most persuasive was a teacher who focuses on retention—and thinks teachers are making a mistake when they change topics as soon as they see that students have comprehended the topic at hand.
As we spoke, I thought about what happens to me as I listen to NPR. Even when I find a story really interesting, I’m only able to remember it well if it is on a topic I already know well. Most of the time, the stories are on things I only know a bit about. If I try to retell them, the details are fuzzy; I mix up the key people and events and can’t convey much. It’s an odd feeling—I fully comprehended the story at the time, but I don’t realize how little of it I’ve retained until I try to tell a friend about it.
To really learn the story, I’d have to comprehend it, then study it—quiz myself, practice those details that make the story coherent, and quiz myself again. I’d also need to revisit the material periodically—hopefully adding to it, but at a minimum refreshing my memory. That’s the type of learning that would enable future learning, including deeper comprehension each time new details are added to the web of knowledge growing in my long-term memory.
The retention-focused teacher I spoke with was very intentional about her instructional time. She argued that if a topic was worthy of mentioning, it was worthy of fully teaching—teaching so students could confidently talk about their new knowledge. She saw the school year as far too short, and each class as a precious resource to be fiercely protected. She saw instruction aimed at coverage and even comprehension—anything less than retention—as a waste of time. And, she accepted that her approach meant that she taught fewer topics, and thus had to carefully decide which topics merited class time.
One great benefit of this careful weighing of topics was that she had gotten really thoughtful about embedding skill development in serious academic content. While some of her colleagues taught skills with “fun” content, she eschewed that as inefficient. For example, she taught grammar with sentences that refreshed students’ memories on key content they were learning in science and social studies—no grammar lessons with sentences about basketball or cartoons in her classes.
Reflecting on our conversation, my mind returned to Daniel Willingham’s article on familiarity vs. recollection. Along with that article, he has several useful tips for ensuring that students don’t mistake their familiarity for real learning. His tips focus on “jostling students away from a reliance on familiarity and partial access as indices of their knowledge, and encouraging (or requiring) them to test just how much knowledge they recall and understand.” He recommends, for example, that teachers “Make it clear to students that the standard of ‘knowing’ is the ‘ability to explain to others,’ not ‘understanding when explained by others.’”
This pretty well sums up what the retention-focused teacher I spoke with learned over many years of teaching. So it raises a question for another day: why didn’t she learn about the dangers of familiarity (or mere comprehension) and the necessity of recollection in her preparation program or in ongoing professional development?
Great post Lisa. I particularly agree that the distinction between understanding and retaining is a big one, easily ignored.
One question though. Isn’t there some value in the gradual, incremental, and partial accumulation of broad knowledge? Think of all the things kids (especially more advantaged kids) learn from listening to their parents talk about the world, even when their parents are not systematically instructing them, quizzing for retention etc. It seems like there is some role for deep knowledge of a topic and some role for knowledge that is more associative, vague, and partial.
For example when someone mentions Xenophon, I know vaguely that he is a Greek, I think maybe a historian or possible a writer, poet etc. somewhere in the Ancient period, though I couldn’t tell you whether he was before, during, or after the period of Socrates-Plato, nor what he was focused on. Yet when I encounter a reference to him in reading, I can infer far more about him than if I had never heard enough to get these vague associations. And if I get that next level of knowledge, I am more likely to remember it.
I can guarantee you no one (myself included) ever taught me about Xenophon in a way that focused on retention. And I suspect if he was never mentioned because “if a topic was worthy of mentioning, it was worthy of fully teaching” I would be worse off, not better off when it came to my developing knowledge. So do you think there is a role for topics worthy of mention, but not full teaching, in other words, worthy of exposure/coverage, but not assessed for retention?
To be clear, I think treating all topics this way would be extremely harmful. Some (the solar system, the water cycle, the American Revolution) etc. need to be remembered, hence fully taught. But my intuition is that the write approach is to create a BALANCE of topics for exposure vs. topics for retention in a knowledge-rich curriculum. What do you think?
Hi Silas,
I absolutely agree that a great deal of knowledge is learned incrementally and indirectly–often through brief mentions here and there. What impact these brief mentions have depends on whether you have something in long-term memory to make sense of them and then assimilate them. A brief mention on a topic I know nothing about is unlikely to help me. But a brief mention on a topic I know is often a quick, meaningful learning opportunity.
We’re getting into a level of detail that’s tough in a blog, but let’s play out your example a bit–just thinking about it has clarified some things for me.
Xenophon was a student of Socrates; today, Socrates is a name adults are expected to know, but Xenophon is not. Imagine developing two-week unit on Socrates. You will have core learning objectives that are reinforced in multiple lessons; you’ll also have people, ideas, and events that do not get as much attention. This refines the notion of mentioning vs. fully teaching. In a unit on Socrates, Socrates would be fully taught, and Xenophon might just be mentioned.
Based on my conversation with the retention-focused teacher, I don’t think she meant that she rigidly never mentions related information. I should have been more careful in how I wrote that. What she conveyed was that she would not have merely done one or two days on Socrates. She would consider those couple of days wasted because it would not be enough time to have the students grapple with Socrates’s work and complex choices–or enough time for them to retain essential information about Socrates. But, within a two-week unit on Socrates, she may well briefly teach about several of Socrates’s students. Plato would likely merit a core learning objective built into the unit, while Xenophon might just be mentioned.
I guess this brings me to two versions of mentioning: a mention that is not immersed in and related to a larger unit of study (or a refresher of something students studied previously) vs. a mention that is directly related to a core learning objective in a unit and that is included because it adds some rich detail. We can shorten this to out-of-context mentions being a waste of time vs. in-context mentions being rich details. In-context mentions may not merit being part of the core learning objectives, but they do have a much higher chance of being retained than out-of-context mentions.
Ultimately, the retention-focused teacher’s point was pretty simple: be sure you devote enough time to your core learning objectives to have students retain them. If you don’t stay focused, you may have the fun of running through lots of interesting topics, but your students will not have had much of a chance to learn.
Silas expressed perfectly what I was trying to express on Lisa’s last blog posting.
Lisa, I agree that some items should get the full Dan Willingham well-crafted-direct-instruction-followed-by-distributed practice treatment. But I’d guess I can only teach a thousand or so bits of information to my seventh graders in a year with this level of thoroughness. On the other hand, I can spray a light coat of tens of thousands –maybe hundreds of thousands –of bits of knowledge on the kids incidentally over the course of the year. That stuff’s important too. The reason I’m a little riled up about this is that what you’re advocating smacks a lot of the blinkered “standards driven” instruction that’s swept over America in the wake of NCLB. Some of my colleagues drill the most frequently tested history standards religiously, but in so doing ruthlessly jettison anything “superfluous” (it won’t do to assert you can have it both ways). The result is a denatured history education –the core facts stripped of the “aura” of lightly taught but salient, interesting and mind-nourishing incidentals. Every history topic has this rich aura of associated knowledge that cannot and should not be separated from it. It cannot all be taught rigorously and measured with tests, and it would be a mistake to discount it for that reason.
Hi Ponderosa,
I agree that “Every history topic has this rich aura of associated knowledge that cannot and should not be separated from it.” Isn’t what you’re describing essentially the same as what I tried to clarify as in-context mentioning? Adding rich details in the context of a larger unit is very different from jumping from one topic to the next.
Best,
Lisa
Hi Lisa,
I’m all in favor of drilling down on one topic rather than flitting from topic to topic. However I want to argue that the value of such drilling down is not limited to the facts that get bolted down in the student’s brain so well that they can “be explained to others”, but that the vaguely-grasped notions that CANNOT be explained to others are very valuable too. This is not my original idea –I believe it it E.D. Hirsch’s. In several places he talks about vocab acquisition as a layering process –you hear a new word and it leaves a light “residue” in the brain. Subsequent exposures refine and deepen the impression. Thus it seems to me that it is a mistake to evaluate a unit’s success by the number of facts or concepts that a student can explain to others. It’s like saying a writer has produced nothing if he has produced no final drafts –even if he has dozens of first, second and third drafts on his desk. This kind of talk can be a cloak for those who are actually teaching nothing, so it’s a bit dangerous. But I do think there’s a lot of truth to this idea that much learning is underground –invisible, in gestation mode –before it rises to the surface as an articulate utterance.
Hi Ponderosa,
Thanks for this additional explanation. Vocabulary does grow incrementally over time, and thus concepts do too–adding layers, as you put it. Of all the rich details, some will be remembered well enough to explain, some will just be vague notions, some will be forgotten quickly, and some will never be absorbed at all. There is inherent value even in the rich details that are not remembered simply because they make the learning of the core content so much more interesting. And, it’s hard to predict which details may draw different students’ attention.
I think you and the teacher I spoke with who was so persuasive on retention would actually agree–I just did not have enough nuance in my summary of the conversation. The key point was simple and you captured it well: don’t flit from topic to topic.
I don’t think she would want to measure a unit’s success by the number of facts retained, but would you consider a unit a success if students could not articulate even one or two central concepts at the end?
I think there’s a large gray area here. One unit could have several ideas and facts that students need to master; another could have just one central idea illustrated by lots of details (that may or may not be retained). I think both types of units could have value.
Best,
Lisa
As a teacher I feel that we must use different strategies to deliver instruction in our classroom and this is why I believe learning theories are a useful tool. There are so many learning theories and models of learning available to teachers that address how students learn and these help with curriculum and instructional design. When designing lessons a teacher should have a theory or model that they follow, because they help in developing ideas on how to teach students and improve learning in the classroom. It is beneficial for students to understand the criteria for choosing power standards and how to meet these criteria so that they can see how they have performed on a task. The findings and insights in power standards have helped me in unwrapping and unpacking each one and has helped me as a culinary teacher with designing curriculum, instruction and assessment on the basis of what it is important to learn. Power Standards also enable me as a culinary teacher to make expectations clear to my culinary students, which ultimately improves their learning. For my culinary students, standards set clear performance expectations, helping them understand what they need to do in order to meet the standards and retain the information that is given to them. Students know what I should be teaching, what they should be learning and what they will be tested on. I believe that without standards, a teacher does not have goals to shoot for. Now that my culinary students know where they are going, they are more motivated to retain more information and do the work to get there. My classroom environment is full of empowered, self-regulated, highly motivated learners. Students cannot set meaningful goals or assess the quality of their own work unless they understand what success looks like.
Hello Chef Brian Covell,
I agree with your idea of differentiating instructions for students. “When students are diverse, the teacher can either teach in the middle and hope for the best or face the challenge of diversifying their instruction.” (Willis & Mann, 2000). I am a Grade Three Elementary school teacher and I have been differentiating instructions for my students. They are performing exceptionally well using this teaching method. However, I must mention that it is very tedious and time consuming to differentiate instruction so every child can be catered for. According to Tomlinson (2009) differentiated instruction is thinking about teaching and learning and making curriculum goals possible by attending to students needs according to their interests, readiness, and learning profiles. By using differentiated instruction both gifted and slow learners will benefit from learning experiences that cater for their individual pace and styles which will promote retention. Some strategies that educators can be used to differentiate instruction are learning stations, compacting, agendas, entry points, problem-based learning, and choice boards. The benefits of differentiated instruction include students take responsibility and ownership of their learning, they are provided with the opportunity to learn through peer teaching, and cooperative learning in social environments, and students become independent learners. By using differentiated instruction to teach students there is an increased chance for the retention and transfer of knowledge, skills, and concepts.
References
Laureate Education (Producer). (2006). Differentiating by student readiness [Video file].
Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate Education (Producer). (2009). Putting it all together [Video file]. Baltimore, MD:
Author.
Willis, S., & Mann, L. (2000). Differentiating instruction. Finding manageable ways to meet
individual needs.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/curriculum-update/winter2000/Differentiating-
instruction.aspx
Hello Lisa,
I agree with Chef B. Covell, who believes that use of different strategies for delivery of instruction is a necessity in our classroom if we are to address our diverse learners’ academic needs.
I teach for comprehension. My teaching style is a mix of demonstrator, facilitator and delegator. I believe that students learn best when they are actively engaged in a collaborative effort while being directed by their teachers, who model the objective prior to the lab activity.
Comprehension is key for retention and trumps familiarization.
Hello Daniel Garza,
I believe as teachers that we need to constantly provide positive reinforcement whenever possible, like making notes on papers what students did well in addition to how to improve. We are more likely to care about those who recognize our efforts. I find that by having students submit specific goals for themselves throughout the semester in terms of their learning and what responsibilities they will undertake, helps them stay on track.
hi knowledge should be the important subject of country to discuss about they ways the children understand the subject.the participation of the student to knowledge is should be the higher priority.knowledge is the basics of excellence and success awareness of knowledge should be main priority of their parents. just visit link http://knowledgeistheweapon.blogspot.in/
The problem with “drilling down” into a topic is where to stop. I bet we’ve all encountered the “the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know” phenomenon. Which is why all the above comments are in violent agreement. YES, a topic needs to be taught thoroughly enough to be remembered. YES, a great way to do that is by deciding in advance what those knowledge goals are. YES, that knowledge should be enhanced and broadened over time. Sometimes an introduction to a topic has to be qualitative and then expanded and deepened. Example–it’s probably not the best use of limited time resources to do a unit on bats in second grade, where they learn the names and habits of different species: that’s *too* deep. But a unit on Australia where they learn the names and habits of different animals common to that continent might be perfectly appropriate.
I also believe as teachers it is important to give positive reinforcement. When giving positive reinforcement it builds a student’s self-esteem. As well as giving feedback on how students did on their work and how they can improve to do better. It is also important for students to know what their goals are. This will provide them a clear understanding of what they need to do in order to achieve.
Very interesting blog on “Teaching for Retention.” I thoroughly agree with the teacher that is deliberate about the necessity for students to retain knowledge. As explained in the blog, she may teach few topics. However, retention of a topic is far superior than merely covering a topic.
Unfortunately as teachers we have a curriculum to follow. This curriculum needs to be finished by the end of the year. There are topics that need to be covered in order for my students to pass the NYS regents exam. This is unfortunate and leaves little wiggle room for us teachers. As a teacher we need to constantly access student knowledge of a particular topic so that we can have a read on how well students understand. We need to give student positive feedback to allow student success. We have learning standards to follow and we need to provide clear cut goals that we would like our students to achieve.
I also believe as teachers it is important to give positive reinforcement. When giving positive reinforcement it builds a student’s self-esteem.
Very interesting blog on “Teaching for Retention.” I thoroughly agree with the teacher that is deliberate about the necessity for students to retain knowledge.
I particularly agree that the distinction between understanding and retaining is a big one, easily ignored.
Nice,.
To be clear, I think treating all topics this way would be extremely harmful.Very interesting blog on “Teaching for Retention.
I also believe as teachers it is important to give positive reinforcement. When giving positive reinforcement it builds a student’s self-esteem.
Great post. I particularly agree that the distinction between understanding and retaining is a big one, easily ignored. All the best for your post.
I believe as teachers that we need to constantly provide positive reinforcement whenever possible, like making notes on papers what students did well in addition to how to improve.
Very interesting blog on “Teaching for Retention.” I thoroughly agree with the teacher that is deliberate about the necessity for students to retain knowledge.
Writing is a great way for students to explain, solidify, and gauge what they have learned.thanks a lot.
Writing is a great way for students to explain, solidify, and gauge what they have learned. Great article about distinction and understanding.
Exceptionally intriguing blog on “Educating for Retention.” I altogether concur with the educator that is ponder about the need for understudies to hold information.
Great post and intersting to read.
So clear and great post. Very interesting blog on “Teaching for Retention.” I thoroughly agree with the teacher that is deliberate about the necessity for students to retain knowledge.
I found this blog very interesting. At first glance this statement resonated in my mind, “If a topic was worthy of mentioning, it was worth of fully teaching”. My mind raced with questions such as what about the topics we are mandated to teach? Would it be wise to cut things out if they were prerequisites for other grades? I found this theory dangerous and unfair to students. Once I read more I was relieved to see the focus was on devotion of time to core learning objectives vs objectives that deserve a quick reference in essence this sounds like the creation of Power Standards which I am in favor of. As long as there has been collaboration with other colleagues and administrators so everyone is working for the same common goal this works.
“She argued that if a topic was worthy of mentioning, it was worthy of fully teaching. And, she accepted that her approach meant that she taught fewer topics, and thus had to carefully decide which topics merited class time.”
Dr. Patricia Wolfe shared that coverage is the greatest enemy of comprehension we have. When teachers cover information, skim over it or simply expose students to it does not create strong connections. In fact, it often causes wrong connections to be made and confusion and misconceptions and misunderstandings.
The retention-focused teacher believes the school year is too short and tries to use her class time wisely. This is a great example of careful planning. “She saw instruction aimed at coverage and even comprehension—anything less than retention—as a waste of time.” While it may seem she is trying to cover information, she focuses on teaching for retention.
I am a Special Education teacher and often times give my students extra time to comprehend concepts. Culturally relevant instructions are always useful for my diverse group of students. Taking from this retention-focused-teacher’s example, I plan to more carefully reflect on my practice and think of strategies to keep or eliminate to help me make better use of the time I have with my students.