It’s been a long time between drinks when it comes to Teacher Ollie’s Takeaways, but I thought I’d do one this week and perhaps try to keep it up over this year too (he says noncommittally!)

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Why teachers should focus on ‘Techniques’ not ‘Strategies’, via @Doug_Lemov

The following from my recent podcast with Doug.

A strategy is something that you aim to do. For example, your strategy may be to, ‘Unlock this text through classroom discussion’, but a strategy will live or die based upon the techniques that you utilise. Do the students talk to each other? Do they listen to each other? And whether or not this happens often depends on a set of moves, often mundane, that you repeat over and over and at increasing levels of complexity to build habits and routines in the classroom that move students towards your strategic outcomes. An analogy here (Doug loves his soccer analogies!) is that your strategy may be to receive a pass in one touch then forward it to your teammate, but you need to refine your technique for this in order to be able to execute your strategy. In short, ‘Your game strategy is predicated on your ability to execute techniques.’

People often give up on strategies because the techniques aren’t good enough!

The above is an excerpt from a summary of my recent podcast with Doug. This summary was shared with all ERRR patrons

A curriculum for behaviour management, via @Doug_Lemov

One of the issues with behaviour management is that it’s often really reactive. Doug Lemove and team are working to counter this through their new ‘Dean of Students Curriculum’. They’re looking for schools to pilot the program, well worth a look here!

Dean of Students Curriculum

TLAC Technique 1: Reject Self-report, via @Doug_Lemov

This is one of the most powerful Teach Like a Champion techniques discussed in my recent podcast discussion with Doug Lemov. Find a summary and details below!

Summary: Replace functionally rhetorical questions with more objective forms of impromptu assessment.

This basically means, don’t ask students, ‘Have you got that?’ but instead ask questions like, ‘Which of these two options is more correct?’ or ‘Write down a summary of what we just learnt in one sentence’, or other concrete checks for understanding.

It can be hard to break this habit of asking vague ‘got that?’ questions. But crucially, when you feel yourself wanting to ask a self-report question like, ‘Everybody got that?’ or ‘Does that make sense?’, you’re signalling to yourself that it’s a great time to reject such a self-report and ask a ‘check for understanding’ question instead. Replacing self-report with a check for understanding allows you to gain some objective information, you and your students will be better off.

In TLAC 3.0 this technique will be called, ‘Replace self-report’, with the idea being that, prior to lesson, you can think to yourself where you’re likely to ask a rhetorical, ‘Got it?’ or similar, and insert checks for understanding into these locations.

Another cool idea from Doug in the podcast: Misunderstandings are like snowballs. The longer they go on for the more they pick up, so it’s a good idea to catch them early. Replacing self-report is a good way of doing this.

The above is an excerpt from a summary of my recent podcast with Doug. This summary was shared with all ERRR patrons

How to teach critical thinking, via @DTWillingham

Whether or not Critical Thinking can be taught is a hotly debated topic. I was recently re-reading an article on how to teacher critical thinking, by Dan Willingham, and thought I’d share part of it here. This is a direct quote from here.

Although existing data favor the specific skills account,27 researchers would still say it’s uncertain whether a good critical thinker is someone who has mastered lots of specific skills, or someone with a smaller set of yet-to-be-identified general skills. But educators aren’t researchers, and for educators, one fact ought to be salient. We’re not even sure the general skills exist, but we’re quite sure there’s no proven way to teach them directly. In contrast, we have a pretty good idea of how to teach students the more specific critical thinking skills. I suggest we do so. Here’s a four-step plan.
First, identify what’s meant by critical thinking in each domain. Be specific by focusing on tasks that tap skills, not skills themselves. What tasks showing critical thinking should a high school graduate be able to do in mathematics, history, and other subjects? For example, educators might decide that an important aspect of understanding history is the ability to source historical documents; that is, to interpret them in light of their source—who wrote it, for what purpose, and for what intended audience. Educators might decide that a key critical thinking skill for science is understanding the relationship between a theory and a hypothesis. These skills should be explicitly taught and practiced—there is evidence that simple exposure to this sort of work without explicit instruction is less effective.28

Second, identify the domain content that students must know. We’ve seen that domain knowledge is a crucial driver of thinking skill. What knowledge is essential to the type of thinking you want your students to be able to do? For example, if students are to source documents, they need knowledge of the relevant source; in other words, knowing that they are reading a 1779 letter from General George Clinton written to George Washington with a request for supplies won’t mean much if they don’t have some background knowledge about the American Revolutionary War—that will enable them to make sense of what they read when they look up Clinton and his activities at the time.The prospect of someone deciding which knowledge students ought to learn—and what they won’t learn—sometimes makes people uneasy because this decision depends on one’s goals for schooling, and goals depend on values. Selection of content is a critical way that values are expressed.29 Making that choice will lead to uncomfortable tradeoffs. But not choosing is still making a choice. It’s choosing not to plan.

Third, educators must select the best sequence for students to learn the skills. It’s obvious that skills and knowledge build on one another in mathematics and history, and it’s equally true of other domains of skill and knowledge; we interpret new information in light of what we already know.

Fourth, educators must decide which skills should be revisited across years. Studies show that even if content is learned quite well over the course of half of a school year, about half will be forgotten in three years.30 That doesn’t mean there’s no value in exposing students to content just once; most students will forget much, but they’ll remember something, and for some students, an interest may be kindled. But when considering skills we hope will stick with students for the long term, we should plan on at least three to five years of practice.

Some quotes from Benjamin Franklin on the value of reading and hard work

A short time ago I finished listening to the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. It was excellent. I particularly liked this section, which emphasises the value of reading and hard work!

This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour or two each day, and thus repair'd in some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me. Reading was the only amusement I allow'd myself. I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolicks of any kind; and my industry in my business continu'd as indefatigable as it was necessary. I was indebted for my printing-house; I had a young family coming on to be educated, and I had to contend with for business two printers, who were established in the place before me. My circumstances, however, grew daily easier. My original habits of frugality continuing, and my father having, among his instructions to me when a boy, frequently repeated a proverb of Solomon, “Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men,” I from thence considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth and distinction, which encourag'd me, tho' I did not think that I should ever literally stand before kings, which, however, has since happened; for I have 80stood before five, and even had the honor of sitting down with one, the King of Denmark, to dinner.

Can we teach students anything significant? Via Carl Rogers via @RethinkingJames

A podcast that I particularly enjoyed recently was James Mannion’s episode in which he shared some of the words of Carl Rogers. You can find the full podcast here (https://soundcloud.com/rethinking-ed-podcast/re03-carl-rogers) but the key takeaways are the bullet list of provocative statements that Rogers read out in a speech at Harvard University in 1952. This list is shared below:
Read more about the context of the following here: http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?11,178404 (I highly recommend reading the full article at the prior link).

a. I may as well start with this one in view of the purposes of this conference. My experience has been that I cannot teach another person how to teach. To attempt it is for me, in the long run, futile.

b. It seems to me that anything that can be taught to another is relatively inconsequential, and has little or no significant influence on behavior. That sounds so ridiculous I can't help but question it at the same time that I present it.

c. I realize increasingly that I am only interested in learnings which significantly influence behavior. Quite possibly this is simply a personal idiosyncrasy.

d. I have come to feel that the only learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered, self-appropriated learning.

e. Such self-discovered learning, truth that has been personally appropriated and assimilated in experience, cannot be directly communicated to another. As soon as an individual tries to communicate such experience directly, often with a quite natural enthusiasm, it becomes teaching, and its results are inconsequential. It was some relief recently to discover that Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, had found this too, in his own experience, and stated it very clearly a century ago. It made it seem less absurd.

f. As a consequence of the above, I realize that I have lost interest in being a teacher.

g. When I try to teach, as I sometimes do, I am appalled by the results, which seem a little more than inconsequential, because sometimes the teaching appears to succeed. When this happens I find that the results are damaging. It seems to cause the individual to distrust his own experience, and to stifle significant learning. Hence I have come to feel that the outcomes of teaching are either unimportant or hurtful.

h. When I look back at the results of my past teaching, the real results seem the same – either damage was done, or nothing significant occurred. This is frankly troubling.

i. As a consequence, I realize that I am only interested in being a learner, preferably learning things that matter, that have some significant influence on my own behavior.

j. I find it very rewarding to learn, in groups, in relationships with one person as in therapy, or by myself.

k. I find that one of the best, but most difficult ways for me to learn is to drop my own defensiveness, at least temporarily, and to try to understand the way in which his experience seems and feels to the other person.

l. I find that another way of learning for me is to state my own uncertainties, to try to clarify my puzzlements, and thus get closer to the meaning that my experience actually seems to have.

m. This whole train of experiencing, and the meanings that I have thus far discovered in it, seems to have launched me on a process which is both fascinating and at times a little frightening. It seems to mean letting my experience carry me on, in a direction which appears to be forward, towards goals that I can but dimly define, as I try to understand at least the current meaning of that experience. The sensation is that of floating with a complex stream of experience, with the fascinating possibility of trying to comprehend its ever-changing complexity.

Some (insightful) thoughts on teaching Grammar, via @DaisyChristo

Following is a thread from Daisy Christo, found in full here: https://twitter.com/daisychristo/status/1353341490920108032
Interesting to see lots of talk about grammar lately. Here's a thread from me on why I think explicit grammar instruction is important, but not all explicit grammar instruction is created equal!

I think explicit grammar instruction is important because it helps pupils to write better sentences. Pupils often write run-on sentences, and they aren't sure where they should put a full stop. This makes their writing much harder to understand.
For me, grammar instruction is about sentence structure. It's not about pedantic ‘gotchas' designed to show how clever you are or how stupid everyone else is. It's about helping students to marshal their thoughts into coherent, logical sentences.
(On that note, I am sure there will be errors in this tweet thread, because I am writing it pretty quickly. I apologise for them in advance and hope it doesn't impede your understanding too much!)

To write good sentences, I think you have to know what a verb is and what a subject is. So what's the best way to teach those? You can teach definitions – a verb is a doing word, a noun is a person, place or thing, a subject is the person or thing that is doing the verb.
The problem with definitions is that they just aren't enough. You need examples, lots of them. If you just rely on definitions, pupils will develop lots of misconceptions.

Here's an example. Ask pupils to find the verbs in the following two sentences.
“I run to the shops.”
“I went for a run to the shops.”

Often, they'll say ‘run' is the verb in both of them.

Lots of misconceptions going on here – that if a word involves action, it must be a verb. That words have a fixed part of speech attached to them. That words like ‘went' can't be a verb because they don't seem to involve movement.

Expressive Writing is a great writing programme that has lots of carefully sequenced sentence examples that are designed to build understanding of these key concepts and avoid the common misconceptions.

What about grammatical terminology? Interestingly, Expressive Writing does not use grammatical terminology! Instead of using the word verb, it says ‘the part that tells what happened'. Instead of subject, it says ‘the part that names'.

This was a deliberate choice by Siegfried Engelmann, the creator of EW. He thought that traditional terminology was so badly taught that it just confused pupils and got in the way of understanding how sentences functioned.

I have some sympathy with this point of view, & I do think Expressive Writing is fab. But by the end of the programme, constantly saying ‘the part that tells what happened' gets quite tedious and repetitive. You start to realise why we develop labels for important concepts!
In the words of another of my favourite education writers, @Doug_Lemov , labels have a purpose!

What about this fronted adverbial, then? I am not that keen on it. I'd rather start with the fundamentals. I would like pupils to really understand what a verb is before they learn about the adverb or the fronted adverbial.
If they can't identify the verb in the following two sentences, I wouldn't want to teach adverbs or fronted adverbials.

“I run to the shops.”
“I went for a run to the shops.”

I also worry that fronted adverbials are taught in isolation as a quick fix to improve repetitive sentence openings. So they can get shoehorned in without regard to meaning. EG ‘Suddenly, he crept through the darkness'.

I'd prefer to teach other concepts first. For example, I really like @TheWritingRevol lessons on the noun appositive. They focus on meaning – how the noun appositive gives you more information about the noun.
I'm really looking forward to our webinar on Tuesday with @TheWritingRevol where we will be discussing these issues in greater detail! It's for @nmmarking subscribers – make sure you've registered!

A visual summary of Cognitive Load Theory in Action, via @learnwithmrlee

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