#i’ve just finished an educators workshop and i’m fired up if you can’t tell
Text
if you experience climate anxiety and are bogged down by the “what can i even do as an individual” mindset then you need need need to get involved in supporting your local indigenous communities. i mean it. when we say “land back” as a means to combat the impacts of climate change that needs to happen in actionable ways. land acknowledgements are not enough. reblogging tumblr posts is not enough. and yes i know that we know the names of the <20 people killing our planet but there are genuinely things you can do at your local levels. i’m so so so lucky to live in a place with many indigenous-run non-profits committed to habitat restoration, food sovereignty, re-introducing native species etc. and seeing this “land back” in action is one of the most inspiring things i’ve ever seen in terms of climate resiliency. just spending time removing invasive plants and planting natives and hearing about how the native birds are coming back and one day our children’s children will be able to eat fish from waters heavily polluted by the military. change is happening. and i guarantee it is happening in your area. sure it’s not going to completely reverse things but you need need need to get out of that doomer mindset. and if you’re not physically able volunteer on-site then find those organisations and give them your money and spread the word about them to those in your life who you know can help. i know so many of us are just trying to get by day by day but there can be no business as usual in this current world. you have the ability to help promote indigenous land stewardship right now.
#i’ve just finished an educators workshop and i’m fired up if you can’t tell#climate change#climate resiliency#land bsck#indigenous land#keep hawaiian lands in hawaiian hands#aloha aina#mine
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
Of The Big And The Small
Allenbert Week Day 2:Hogwarts AU (But it isn’t… i don’t do Harry Potter so it's part one of my free day!)
Continuation of my Dishonored!AU taking up my Hogwarts!AU day of Allenbert week as I have no idea about Harry Potter - Julian meets the Loyalists and has a strange visit from a god of lightning…
Read on AO3
Love is a distant aroma at best
A withering smile that’s stuck deep in your vest
At night air it wraps its fingers around
Your body it shakes from the now distant sound
Of the sound of her voice
A sweet symphony
Played over and over Until’ you are free
Julian has to say - Eddie’s a brilliant boatsman. The boat graceful cuts through the murky (dirty) waves as they head downstream admit the ruined city. It makes Julian’s heart ache - he wasn’t born nor raised in Central but it’s been his home since he was gifted by the old Duke to Joe’s father (He doesn’t understand exactly why even to this day - Why would you gift the best swordsman in the Isles to another ruler? The Duke knew he would be felled the second he did so, Julian saving his life dozen so before he was traded.)
As the Star Pit Pub looms into view, crumbling tower and quarantine walls catch his eye first - how did Eddie put it? “We are right under the Lord Regent’s nose and he doesn’t know it”. No one would think to look for them here, or at least Julian hopes so. He is the most wanted man in the Isles after all, and if his suspicions are correct Thawne has something to do with that. With Joe dead and Iris missing it was the perfect opportunity for Thawne to move into the highest seat of power - and who would dare defy a former Spymaster? (The only thing more scary would be a former Blade Verona winner with a grudge and blood on his hands. Oh the irony)
Eddie, thankful doesn’t expect him to contribute to the conversation. He’s surprisingly educated, seemingly knowing everything going on around them in the water (Julian trusts him. He thought after being betrayed would finally beat that annoying habit out of him, but apparently no. He really hopes he can trust these ‘Loyalists.’)
Gliding to a halt, Eddie guides Julian towards the pub entrance before turning back towards his boat ( Baby. Eddie’s very attached to it) and leaving with a few final words. “Wells and Zolomon are inside. They’ll want to see you before you go visit Hartley in his workshop.” He seemed… Jumpy, and quickly makes his way back to the water’s edge leaving Julian in the cold, barren courtyard with only instructions to see their ‘leader’ (It’s been 15 years - Julian hasn’t taken orders from anyone lower than royalty in that time and he isn’t starting now.)
Julian has never visited the Star Pits Pub before - It’s not the kind of place an Emperor would spend his time so he was never there for work nor is it a place that a Lord (Royal Protectors are very highly classed in society, no matter is they are from Keystone ) would spend his free time. He’d heard rumors of the types there - Baron and Baroness recently out of the Golden Cat and looking for a place to stay and bar brawls every second night. He doesn’t, however expect to see a Grand Guard Admiral and a Nobel drinking at the bar, room empty except for their hushed tones. Seeing Julian enter the room they hush, matching fierce eyes watching with hunger and greed as he makes his way across the abandoned bar towards them.
“Lord Albert? I’m Admiral Wells, the leader of our little band of Loyalists. It is… good to see you are okay. Well as okay as a man tortured in Iron Heights for 6 months could be.”
His partner, a tall bulky man who rings all kinds of warning bells in Julian’s head smiles, showing slightly too many teeth that would cause any lesser man to flinch. But Julian was born and raised in Keystone - Gangs and Overseers rule the streets and Julian learnt from a young age to deal with threats of the human kind.
“Lord Hunter Zolomon. I represent the nobility in our group. Have you visited Rathaway yet?” Zolomon sounds… bitter. Apparently he thinks Rathaway below him, dishonored family and all even though they all lost their titles the moment they turned their back on the Lord Regent. Julian doesn’t trust these too - But they’re his only hope. He doesn’t bow or shake their hands, simply nodding how he remembers Iris doing to her staff and turns to leave (And hid his smirk at Well’s and Zolomon’s expressions - priceless .)
Hartley Rathaway, in all accounts, was a genius. What the accounts didn’t tell him was that Hartley Rathaway was a giant douche. He didn’t look up as Julian entered, did not say anything except when he asked Julian to grab another canister of whale oil. Of course, Julian grabs him the canister from upstairs (He’s not a villain - he knows he has to get on the genius’ good side as he’s making all Julian’s weapons. Now that’s something he knows can’t be flawed by a angry creator) and Rathaway finally finishes his mask, a horrible mess of steel and fabric that reminds him of a skull. Along with his new sword, a weird Central backsword that folds into it’s own hilt. The kind teacher with cold hands and heart, Caitlin, guides him to a room in the attic far away from everyone else and twice as cold.
“I’m sorry about the room Lord Albert - Wells and Zolomon guessed you wanted your own room” And they don’t want you anywhere near them. She doesn’t say it, but it’s heavily implied in her words.
Caitlin leaves before he can ask about the cold band around her finger and the ice over her mood and for the first time in 6 months Julian sleeps freely.
The music it fades
The violin slows
Darkness it rises
As the sun goes
It’s colder than usual as he wakes - and it’s too bright in his dingy attic. Both were clues to where he was - if the floating whales and rock formations weren’t a blinding answer.
He had always imagined the Void as a endless darkness, crushing all who dare enter without the thing’s approval - His mother had been a devoted Abby member after all, the Seven Structures were etched into his heart alongside her betrayal - but seeing it as it was, lightning and pure energy flying around, he couldn’t help but feel like the Abbey was wrong. They had always taught the people to fear the Void ( Force He’d be informed later, the master of the force grumbled at one of their… meetings. Mortals call this the Void… it was, at one time, but not in my time. It’s a force beyond your limited perception - Not a endless void. )
“Hello Julian”
Of course - if the Void exists, then he must as well. The Overseers would kill for this knowledge (Everyone in the Isles knows the Seven Structures - they don’t have a name for the god, just him - Julian’s mother was a devote, reciting the Structures morning and eve, Julian and Emma obeying their mother’s will and doing the same. He could not forget them if he tried, although somehow facing the very being the Structures were created to oppose they seem to slip from his mind in a way 6 months in Iron Heights could not)
He’d speak up but he doesn’t really know what to call him. Somehow he understands, if his amused chuckle is anything to go by.
“If you need to give me a name, The Flash will do. But let’s talk about you. Youngest Blade Verona winner in history - and the first Keystonian Lord Protector to boot. So very fascinating . Because of which, and your impending impact on the future to come I’ve decided to mark you”
He has a second to ponder the Flash’s words Mark? Before his hand is on fire. (It isn’t. But the red-hot fire pokers Eobard had him tortured him with hurt less.) When the flames recede black lines dance up his hand like lightning, stopping just below his elbow. On closer inspection it wraps around his arm, never passing onto his fingers however. He’s heard of it before - a heretic’s mark, but he has never had the opportunity to see one up close.
“I’m fascinating ?” Julian echoes the Flash’s previous statement - pinching his words and easily dropping from his usual keystonian drawl to match the Flash’s easy Central accent (Defaulting to sarcasm when he’s unsure - how Emma would feel about this)
“Of all who came before, and all who will come after you have to be the most fascinating. A mere mortal I can’t see the future of? Fascinating. And, of course, who would want someone with such a pretty face like yours to die?” Julian catches the singular golden eye wink at him before disappearing in yellow sparks like the abyss around him.
Did The Flash just flirt with him?
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
What helps kids really learn
Andrew Stadel on episode 220 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter
How do kids learn and remember? Teacher Andrew Stadel, @mr_stadel founder of the popular site estimation180.com, talks about this pursuit of learning in the classroom. This topic is his summer research topic. As you ponder the classroom, look at what you’ll research to become a better teacher.
Richard Byrne, author of Free Technology for Teachers, has some fantastic courses for history teachers and those wanting to learn about technology. Check out http://ift.tt/2lomeMO.
Listen Now
Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher
Stream by clicking here.
***
Enhanced Transcript
What helps kids really learn?
[Recording starts 0:00:00]
To celebrate the end of the first season of the Ten Minute Teacher Podcast on June 16th, we’re running a giveaway. The Dash and Dot robot wonder pack from Wonder Workshop Stay tuned at the end of the show for how to enter.
What really helps kids learn? Episode 86
The Ten-minute Teacher podcast with Vicki Davis. Every week day you’ll learn powerful practical ways to be a more remarkable teacher today.
VICKI: Several episodes back, one of our educators (see Dan Meyer http://ift.tt/2qCGpIU ) just went on and on about Andrew Stadel @mr_stadel
and his Estimate 180 website. http://ift.tt/1dVJzbZ But today, we’re actually going to talk about learning. So Andrew, I was just listening to a teacher talk the other day and they were frustrated. And they’re looking at these final exams and, yeah, there’s some kids who’ve mastered it but there are some kids who just don’t seem to be leaning the material. And I know that you are passionate about understanding what helps things stick into the mind
ANDREW: Yeah, I feel like I’m just getting on to the road of the beginning of my journey to really dive into the dive into the idea of what helps us learn as long term learners not only as adults but our students too and how can we support them in that. Creating and environment, creating activities and lessons and structures so that they thrive and also are able to remember the content that we teach.
I think right now, I’m going to say I’m at the beginning of my journey, there’s two books that I’m just kind of going back and forth with. One of the books is called Make It Stick, http://amzn.to/2rpqu3c there’s three authors on that; Peter Brown, Harry Roediger and Mark McDaniel and that’s just kind of learning the premise is pretty such the science of successful learning.
And then there’d David Sousa, I think is how you say his name, I could be wrong, and his is How The Brain Learns, http://amzn.to/2rpz4iI and he has a specific addition on mathematics. So as a math teacher by trade, just thought back of various time in my classroom when kids understand but will not remember a handout or a review packet or some worksheet because there’s really no meaning to it.
[00:02:00]
Yet they would remember the craziest things, if I told a story, I how I used math in life or for example, like you said in Estimation 180 I provided my students with visuals and ways for them to make sense of the world around them so I take pictures of things and ask them to estimate quantities or heights or distances. And I when I would show early estimation pictures at the beginning of the year and then I maybe use them a little bit later in the year or review – it was amazing, it blew my mind away that kids would actually remember some answers or be really close. And I was like there’s something there, there’s something that sticks.
And so, I’m a musician – two; music is a form of language and a way for people to communicate, find a communality. And I’m always amazed at how music strikes people differently and how it sticks with people. So as a musician may I’ll listen to the guitar tracks more than the vocals or the lyrics but yet for other people they listen to the lyrics more than me, yet it still sticks. You can’t memorize your favorite song on the first listen, it takes time, it takes repetition, it takes coming back to. And the more I’m reading and learning, it feel like education activities and learning and lessons need that idea that we have to kind of grapple with something at first, there’s something hooky there, you like it but you have to return to it.
You need practice on it, you need to be tested on it. So I’m listening to my favorite song and all of a sudden it stops. Could I continue that song on in my head, could I hum it, could I listen? The same kind of goes in education. Like, if the bell rings, could my students continue their thought process, could they continue making sense of what I was teaching that day in math? So that’s what I’m grappling with.
VICKI: So Andrew, as you wrestle with this, I mean, we know we need meaningful practice but memorization and boring routine – I mean, isn’t the word boring and the word memorized reviled in education right now?
[00:04:00]
I mean, some people really rebel against repetition. So how can we repeat without being boring? And do we have to memorize? I mean, sometimes we have to, right?
ANDREW: Yeah, it’s a good question. If we break those two words down, like, boring is totally relative, it’s objective. Memorization is more a matter of fact but think everybody’s brain is differently wired. So how do people memorize things more than others? It’s such a great question whereas something that I found was engaging to me might not have been engaging to my students, it might have been boring to them.
As educators, we could all sit around and joke like – you know, you hear it coming. Like, my hair could be on fire and no one is paying attention kind of thing. Like, we’ve all had those days. So in terms of memorization, yeah, I really want to know more about that because the more experience I got as an 8th grade teacher – multiplication facts were important to me that my students knew them but at the same time the more as I progresses in my craft of teaching it was like, well, what if my kids could just make sense of multiplying?
Like kids struggled with 12s, like that’s wired that kids struggled with 12s. It’s totally fine but then for some reason they were fine with 11s. So 5 x 11 kids would just go 55, great. So that can empower that kid to do that and I’d just say, “Look, add five more to that to get your 12th five and that makes it 60.” And that’s empowering and then hopefully that logic sticks and not the multiplication fact. I need to learn more.
VICKI: Yeah, the thing I’m hearing you say is that you’re trying different ways and I’m actually having a flashback, at the end of the school year I do anonymous student surveys, I’ll ask you, “What do you like best, what do you like least.” And one question where they say they like best, half of the class said, “I love it when you circle up, you tell stories and we have conversations.” And then the other half class said, “You talk too much.”
[00:06:00]
And it’s like, “Well which is it?” I think that we somehow think that we’re going to get 100% approval form everybody for how we do this repetition. And I think that’s unrealistic. I mean, do you or is it just me?
ANDREW: Yeah. I agree 100% and I’ve actually reminded myself of that when I do consulting, when I work with districts, teachers feel like I should come and present them with this overboard and yet we need repetition and we’re going to say, yeah, we’re not always going to have a high of engagement, we’re not always going to be people pleasers, we can’t please everybody. And I don’t think that’s what we need to get into it for.
VICKI: Yeah. And I always tell my students, you’re going to thank me when you’re 23.
ANDREW: I agree 100% that you can’t please everybody.
VICKI: But we don’t want to use that as a cop out either, I mean, I know teachers who are worksheet wonders and they just use worksheets. I mean, have your read enough, Andrew, to know that business as usual, worksheets as usual don’t work?
ANDREW: For the most part, yeah, I’ve scratched the surface on that one a little bit. So the short answer, yeah, I think I’ve read enough, I’m convinced enough based off the reading I’ve done. But I’m also convinced on the personal experiences I’ve had. There’s a time and place for it, though. It’s playing sports. Like if I’m at practice and a coach shows me how to do something then now on my own time I can go work on that muscle memory. There’s a time and place where playing basketball I had to go practice my free throws. But at practice, the coach would specifically help me with my form, how to release the ball, how to set the ball up, the same thing that happens in the classroom. Like, as teachers, we got to be in a position to kind of help students understand things or use critical thinking or problem solve and work on those mechanics face to face with them. And then there might be a time and place where it’s like, “Look. You just need to kind of do some ground work here, you got to practice a few things.”
[00:08:00]
And that is part of making things stick a little bit but it’s not the end all where you just hand out a worksheet and be like, “Yeah, do 50 of these and you’ll remember it.”
VICKI: Andrew, as we finished up, we’ve really talked about a lot of issues. This is almost like a conversation you and I might have if we were on the same school in the faculty teacher’s lounge about learning because these are things that we teachers talk about. But could you give a 30-second pep talk to those teachers who just feel like, “It’s the end of the year and have I actually taught anything?”
ANDREW: What gets you excited about what you teach? I tend to fall back on Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk and why do you want to wake up and get out of bed? So on Monday what gets you excited that you’re going to get up out of bed, go to school, greet your students at the door and teach them. And so that for me is what helps guide my work as a teacher and as a coach. And so I share the enthusiasm with other teachers and say, “What gets you excited? What are some things that you experience in your life that you’re excited about and you can share with your kids?”
And it’s amazing, like you said, you have a conversation or a story-telling opportunity with your kids and those stick and the learning will actually come out of it. So find stuff you’re excited about and share it with your kids.
VICKI: And, you know, teachers, teaching is a relentless pursuit of learning, it’s hard, it’s not easy. There are no easy answers. And I would just encourage you on this motivational Monday, what are you wrestling with now? What are you going to find your books on this summer? What are you going to look into so that you can be a better teacher in the fall because that, teachers, is what truly makes us remarkable?
On June 16th we’ll finish up Season 1 of the 10 Minute Teacher. So celebrate, we’ve partnered with one of my favorite robots for teaching coding, Dash and Dot form Wonder Workshop. Go to http://ift.tt/2rZ88GW and enter to win your very own Wonder pack form Wonder workshop and to learn more about how you can use Dash and Dot to teach programming to kids, aged, kindergarten and up.
Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at http://ift.tt/2quX4Nu. Never stop learning.
[End of Audio 0:10:27]
[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email [email protected]]
Bio as submitted
Andrew Stadel is a Digital Learning Coach for Tustin Unified School District in California, working with secondary math teachers to use and implement technology in meaningful ways to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics. Andrew is the creator of Estimation 180, http://ift.tt/1dVJzbZ, a website designed to provide students and teachers with daily challenges to help improve their number sense.
Blog: http://ift.tt/1dVJzbZ
Twitter: @mr_stadel
Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.
The post What helps kids really learn appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!
What helps kids really learn published first on http://ift.tt/2yTzsdq
0 notes
Text
What helps kids really learn
Andrew Stadel on episode 220 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter
How do kids learn and remember? Teacher Andrew Stadel, @mr_stadel founder of the popular site estimation180.com, talks about this pursuit of learning in the classroom. This topic is his summer research topic. As you ponder the classroom, look at what you’ll research to become a better teacher.
Richard Byrne, author of Free Technology for Teachers, has some fantastic courses for history teachers and those wanting to learn about technology. Check out http://ift.tt/2lomeMO.
Listen Now
Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher
Stream by clicking here.
***
Enhanced Transcript
What helps kids really learn?
[Recording starts 0:00:00]
To celebrate the end of the first season of the Ten Minute Teacher Podcast on June 16th, we’re running a giveaway. The Dash and Dot robot wonder pack from Wonder Workshop Stay tuned at the end of the show for how to enter.
What really helps kids learn? Episode 86
The Ten-minute Teacher podcast with Vicki Davis. Every week day you’ll learn powerful practical ways to be a more remarkable teacher today.
VICKI: Several episodes back, one of our educators (see Dan Meyer http://ift.tt/2qCGpIU ) just went on and on about Andrew Stadel @mr_stadel
and his Estimate 180 website. http://ift.tt/1dVJzbZ But today, we’re actually going to talk about learning. So Andrew, I was just listening to a teacher talk the other day and they were frustrated. And they’re looking at these final exams and, yeah, there’s some kids who’ve mastered it but there are some kids who just don’t seem to be leaning the material. And I know that you are passionate about understanding what helps things stick into the mind
ANDREW: Yeah, I feel like I’m just getting on to the road of the beginning of my journey to really dive into the dive into the idea of what helps us learn as long term learners not only as adults but our students too and how can we support them in that. Creating and environment, creating activities and lessons and structures so that they thrive and also are able to remember the content that we teach.
I think right now, I’m going to say I’m at the beginning of my journey, there’s two books that I’m just kind of going back and forth with. One of the books is called Make It Stick, http://amzn.to/2rpqu3c there’s three authors on that; Peter Brown, Harry Roediger and Mark McDaniel and that’s just kind of learning the premise is pretty such the science of successful learning.
And then there’d David Sousa, I think is how you say his name, I could be wrong, and his is How The Brain Learns, http://amzn.to/2rpz4iI and he has a specific addition on mathematics. So as a math teacher by trade, just thought back of various time in my classroom when kids understand but will not remember a handout or a review packet or some worksheet because there’s really no meaning to it.
[00:02:00]
Yet they would remember the craziest things, if I told a story, I how I used math in life or for example, like you said in Estimation 180 I provided my students with visuals and ways for them to make sense of the world around them so I take pictures of things and ask them to estimate quantities or heights or distances. And I when I would show early estimation pictures at the beginning of the year and then I maybe use them a little bit later in the year or review – it was amazing, it blew my mind away that kids would actually remember some answers or be really close. And I was like there’s something there, there’s something that sticks.
And so, I’m a musician – two; music is a form of language and a way for people to communicate, find a communality. And I’m always amazed at how music strikes people differently and how it sticks with people. So as a musician may I’ll listen to the guitar tracks more than the vocals or the lyrics but yet for other people they listen to the lyrics more than me, yet it still sticks. You can’t memorize your favorite song on the first listen, it takes time, it takes repetition, it takes coming back to. And the more I’m reading and learning, it feel like education activities and learning and lessons need that idea that we have to kind of grapple with something at first, there’s something hooky there, you like it but you have to return to it.
You need practice on it, you need to be tested on it. So I’m listening to my favorite song and all of a sudden it stops. Could I continue that song on in my head, could I hum it, could I listen? The same kind of goes in education. Like, if the bell rings, could my students continue their thought process, could they continue making sense of what I was teaching that day in math? So that’s what I’m grappling with.
VICKI: So Andrew, as you wrestle with this, I mean, we know we need meaningful practice but memorization and boring routine – I mean, isn’t the word boring and the word memorized reviled in education right now?
[00:04:00]
I mean, some people really rebel against repetition. So how can we repeat without being boring? And do we have to memorize? I mean, sometimes we have to, right?
ANDREW: Yeah, it’s a good question. If we break those two words down, like, boring is totally relative, it’s objective. Memorization is more a matter of fact but think everybody’s brain is differently wired. So how do people memorize things more than others? It’s such a great question whereas something that I found was engaging to me might not have been engaging to my students, it might have been boring to them.
As educators, we could all sit around and joke like – you know, you hear it coming. Like, my hair could be on fire and no one is paying attention kind of thing. Like, we’ve all had those days. So in terms of memorization, yeah, I really want to know more about that because the more experience I got as an 8th grade teacher – multiplication facts were important to me that my students knew them but at the same time the more as I progresses in my craft of teaching it was like, well, what if my kids could just make sense of multiplying?
Like kids struggled with 12s, like that’s wired that kids struggled with 12s. It’s totally fine but then for some reason they were fine with 11s. So 5 x 11 kids would just go 55, great. So that can empower that kid to do that and I’d just say, “Look, add five more to that to get your 12th five and that makes it 60.” And that’s empowering and then hopefully that logic sticks and not the multiplication fact. I need to learn more.
VICKI: Yeah, the thing I’m hearing you say is that you’re trying different ways and I’m actually having a flashback, at the end of the school year I do anonymous student surveys, I’ll ask you, “What do you like best, what do you like least.” And one question where they say they like best, half of the class said, “I love it when you circle up, you tell stories and we have conversations.” And then the other half class said, “You talk too much.”
[00:06:00]
And it’s like, “Well which is it?” I think that we somehow think that we’re going to get 100% approval form everybody for how we do this repetition. And I think that’s unrealistic. I mean, do you or is it just me?
ANDREW: Yeah. I agree 100% and I’ve actually reminded myself of that when I do consulting, when I work with districts, teachers feel like I should come and present them with this overboard and yet we need repetition and we’re going to say, yeah, we’re not always going to have a high of engagement, we’re not always going to be people pleasers, we can’t please everybody. And I don’t think that’s what we need to get into it for.
VICKI: Yeah. And I always tell my students, you’re going to thank me when you’re 23.
ANDREW: I agree 100% that you can’t please everybody.
VICKI: But we don’t want to use that as a cop out either, I mean, I know teachers who are worksheet wonders and they just use worksheets. I mean, have your read enough, Andrew, to know that business as usual, worksheets as usual don’t work?
ANDREW: For the most part, yeah, I’ve scratched the surface on that one a little bit. So the short answer, yeah, I think I’ve read enough, I’m convinced enough based off the reading I’ve done. But I’m also convinced on the personal experiences I’ve had. There’s a time and place for it, though. It’s playing sports. Like if I’m at practice and a coach shows me how to do something then now on my own time I can go work on that muscle memory. There’s a time and place where playing basketball I had to go practice my free throws. But at practice, the coach would specifically help me with my form, how to release the ball, how to set the ball up, the same thing that happens in the classroom. Like, as teachers, we got to be in a position to kind of help students understand things or use critical thinking or problem solve and work on those mechanics face to face with them. And then there might be a time and place where it’s like, “Look. You just need to kind of do some ground work here, you got to practice a few things.”
[00:08:00]
And that is part of making things stick a little bit but it’s not the end all where you just hand out a worksheet and be like, “Yeah, do 50 of these and you’ll remember it.”
VICKI: Andrew, as we finished up, we’ve really talked about a lot of issues. This is almost like a conversation you and I might have if we were on the same school in the faculty teacher’s lounge about learning because these are things that we teachers talk about. But could you give a 30-second pep talk to those teachers who just feel like, “It’s the end of the year and have I actually taught anything?”
ANDREW: What gets you excited about what you teach? I tend to fall back on Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk and why do you want to wake up and get out of bed? So on Monday what gets you excited that you’re going to get up out of bed, go to school, greet your students at the door and teach them. And so that for me is what helps guide my work as a teacher and as a coach. And so I share the enthusiasm with other teachers and say, “What gets you excited? What are some things that you experience in your life that you’re excited about and you can share with your kids?”
And it’s amazing, like you said, you have a conversation or a story-telling opportunity with your kids and those stick and the learning will actually come out of it. So find stuff you’re excited about and share it with your kids.
VICKI: And, you know, teachers, teaching is a relentless pursuit of learning, it’s hard, it’s not easy. There are no easy answers. And I would just encourage you on this motivational Monday, what are you wrestling with now? What are you going to find your books on this summer? What are you going to look into so that you can be a better teacher in the fall because that, teachers, is what truly makes us remarkable?
On June 16th we’ll finish up Season 1 of the 10 Minute Teacher. So celebrate, we’ve partnered with one of my favorite robots for teaching coding, Dash and Dot form Wonder Workshop. Go to http://ift.tt/2rZ88GW and enter to win your very own Wonder pack form Wonder workshop and to learn more about how you can use Dash and Dot to teach programming to kids, aged, kindergarten and up.
Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at http://ift.tt/2quX4Nu. Never stop learning.
[End of Audio 0:10:27]
[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email [email protected]]
Bio as submitted
Andrew Stadel is a Digital Learning Coach for Tustin Unified School District in California, working with secondary math teachers to use and implement technology in meaningful ways to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics. Andrew is the creator of Estimation 180, http://ift.tt/1dVJzbZ, a website designed to provide students and teachers with daily challenges to help improve their number sense.
Blog: http://ift.tt/1dVJzbZ
Twitter: @mr_stadel
Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.
The post What helps kids really learn appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!
What helps kids really learn published first on http://ift.tt/2jn9f0m
0 notes
Text
What helps kids really learn
Andrew Stadel on episode 220 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter
How do kids learn and remember? Teacher Andrew Stadel, @mr_stadel founder of the popular site estimation180.com, talks about this pursuit of learning in the classroom. This topic is his summer research topic. As you ponder the classroom, look at what you’ll research to become a better teacher.
Richard Byrne, author of Free Technology for Teachers, has some fantastic courses for history teachers and those wanting to learn about technology. Check out http://ift.tt/2lomeMO.
Listen Now
Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher
Stream by clicking here.
***
Enhanced Transcript
What helps kids really learn?
[Recording starts 0:00:00]
To celebrate the end of the first season of the Ten Minute Teacher Podcast on June 16th, we’re running a giveaway. The Dash and Dot robot wonder pack from Wonder Workshop Stay tuned at the end of the show for how to enter.
What really helps kids learn? Episode 86
The Ten-minute Teacher podcast with Vicki Davis. Every week day you’ll learn powerful practical ways to be a more remarkable teacher today.
VICKI: Several episodes back, one of our educators (see Dan Meyer http://ift.tt/2qCGpIU ) just went on and on about Andrew Stadel @mr_stadel
and his Estimate 180 website. http://ift.tt/1dVJzbZ But today, we’re actually going to talk about learning. So Andrew, I was just listening to a teacher talk the other day and they were frustrated. And they’re looking at these final exams and, yeah, there’s some kids who’ve mastered it but there are some kids who just don’t seem to be leaning the material. And I know that you are passionate about understanding what helps things stick into the mind
ANDREW: Yeah, I feel like I’m just getting on to the road of the beginning of my journey to really dive into the dive into the idea of what helps us learn as long term learners not only as adults but our students too and how can we support them in that. Creating and environment, creating activities and lessons and structures so that they thrive and also are able to remember the content that we teach.
I think right now, I’m going to say I’m at the beginning of my journey, there’s two books that I’m just kind of going back and forth with. One of the books is called Make It Stick, http://amzn.to/2rpqu3c there’s three authors on that; Peter Brown, Harry Roediger and Mark McDaniel and that’s just kind of learning the premise is pretty such the science of successful learning.
And then there’d David Sousa, I think is how you say his name, I could be wrong, and his is How The Brain Learns, http://amzn.to/2rpz4iI and he has a specific addition on mathematics. So as a math teacher by trade, just thought back of various time in my classroom when kids understand but will not remember a handout or a review packet or some worksheet because there’s really no meaning to it.
[00:02:00]
Yet they would remember the craziest things, if I told a story, I how I used math in life or for example, like you said in Estimation 180 I provided my students with visuals and ways for them to make sense of the world around them so I take pictures of things and ask them to estimate quantities or heights or distances. And I when I would show early estimation pictures at the beginning of the year and then I maybe use them a little bit later in the year or review – it was amazing, it blew my mind away that kids would actually remember some answers or be really close. And I was like there’s something there, there’s something that sticks.
And so, I’m a musician – two; music is a form of language and a way for people to communicate, find a communality. And I’m always amazed at how music strikes people differently and how it sticks with people. So as a musician may I’ll listen to the guitar tracks more than the vocals or the lyrics but yet for other people they listen to the lyrics more than me, yet it still sticks. You can’t memorize your favorite song on the first listen, it takes time, it takes repetition, it takes coming back to. And the more I’m reading and learning, it feel like education activities and learning and lessons need that idea that we have to kind of grapple with something at first, there’s something hooky there, you like it but you have to return to it.
You need practice on it, you need to be tested on it. So I’m listening to my favorite song and all of a sudden it stops. Could I continue that song on in my head, could I hum it, could I listen? The same kind of goes in education. Like, if the bell rings, could my students continue their thought process, could they continue making sense of what I was teaching that day in math? So that’s what I’m grappling with.
VICKI: So Andrew, as you wrestle with this, I mean, we know we need meaningful practice but memorization and boring routine – I mean, isn’t the word boring and the word memorized reviled in education right now?
[00:04:00]
I mean, some people really rebel against repetition. So how can we repeat without being boring? And do we have to memorize? I mean, sometimes we have to, right?
ANDREW: Yeah, it’s a good question. If we break those two words down, like, boring is totally relative, it’s objective. Memorization is more a matter of fact but think everybody’s brain is differently wired. So how do people memorize things more than others? It’s such a great question whereas something that I found was engaging to me might not have been engaging to my students, it might have been boring to them.
As educators, we could all sit around and joke like – you know, you hear it coming. Like, my hair could be on fire and no one is paying attention kind of thing. Like, we’ve all had those days. So in terms of memorization, yeah, I really want to know more about that because the more experience I got as an 8th grade teacher – multiplication facts were important to me that my students knew them but at the same time the more as I progresses in my craft of teaching it was like, well, what if my kids could just make sense of multiplying?
Like kids struggled with 12s, like that’s wired that kids struggled with 12s. It’s totally fine but then for some reason they were fine with 11s. So 5 x 11 kids would just go 55, great. So that can empower that kid to do that and I’d just say, “Look, add five more to that to get your 12th five and that makes it 60.” And that’s empowering and then hopefully that logic sticks and not the multiplication fact. I need to learn more.
VICKI: Yeah, the thing I’m hearing you say is that you’re trying different ways and I’m actually having a flashback, at the end of the school year I do anonymous student surveys, I’ll ask you, “What do you like best, what do you like least.” And one question where they say they like best, half of the class said, “I love it when you circle up, you tell stories and we have conversations.” And then the other half class said, “You talk too much.”
[00:06:00]
And it’s like, “Well which is it?” I think that we somehow think that we’re going to get 100% approval form everybody for how we do this repetition. And I think that’s unrealistic. I mean, do you or is it just me?
ANDREW: Yeah. I agree 100% and I’ve actually reminded myself of that when I do consulting, when I work with districts, teachers feel like I should come and present them with this overboard and yet we need repetition and we’re going to say, yeah, we’re not always going to have a high of engagement, we’re not always going to be people pleasers, we can’t please everybody. And I don’t think that’s what we need to get into it for.
VICKI: Yeah. And I always tell my students, you’re going to thank me when you’re 23.
ANDREW: I agree 100% that you can’t please everybody.
VICKI: But we don’t want to use that as a cop out either, I mean, I know teachers who are worksheet wonders and they just use worksheets. I mean, have your read enough, Andrew, to know that business as usual, worksheets as usual don’t work?
ANDREW: For the most part, yeah, I’ve scratched the surface on that one a little bit. So the short answer, yeah, I think I’ve read enough, I’m convinced enough based off the reading I’ve done. But I’m also convinced on the personal experiences I’ve had. There’s a time and place for it, though. It’s playing sports. Like if I’m at practice and a coach shows me how to do something then now on my own time I can go work on that muscle memory. There’s a time and place where playing basketball I had to go practice my free throws. But at practice, the coach would specifically help me with my form, how to release the ball, how to set the ball up, the same thing that happens in the classroom. Like, as teachers, we got to be in a position to kind of help students understand things or use critical thinking or problem solve and work on those mechanics face to face with them. And then there might be a time and place where it’s like, “Look. You just need to kind of do some ground work here, you got to practice a few things.”
[00:08:00]
And that is part of making things stick a little bit but it’s not the end all where you just hand out a worksheet and be like, “Yeah, do 50 of these and you’ll remember it.”
VICKI: Andrew, as we finished up, we’ve really talked about a lot of issues. This is almost like a conversation you and I might have if we were on the same school in the faculty teacher’s lounge about learning because these are things that we teachers talk about. But could you give a 30-second pep talk to those teachers who just feel like, “It’s the end of the year and have I actually taught anything?”
ANDREW: What gets you excited about what you teach? I tend to fall back on Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk and why do you want to wake up and get out of bed? So on Monday what gets you excited that you’re going to get up out of bed, go to school, greet your students at the door and teach them. And so that for me is what helps guide my work as a teacher and as a coach. And so I share the enthusiasm with other teachers and say, “What gets you excited? What are some things that you experience in your life that you’re excited about and you can share with your kids?”
And it’s amazing, like you said, you have a conversation or a story-telling opportunity with your kids and those stick and the learning will actually come out of it. So find stuff you’re excited about and share it with your kids.
VICKI: And, you know, teachers, teaching is a relentless pursuit of learning, it’s hard, it’s not easy. There are no easy answers. And I would just encourage you on this motivational Monday, what are you wrestling with now? What are you going to find your books on this summer? What are you going to look into so that you can be a better teacher in the fall because that, teachers, is what truly makes us remarkable?
On June 16th we’ll finish up Season 1 of the 10 Minute Teacher. So celebrate, we’ve partnered with one of my favorite robots for teaching coding, Dash and Dot form Wonder Workshop. Go to http://ift.tt/2rZ88GW and enter to win your very own Wonder pack form Wonder workshop and to learn more about how you can use Dash and Dot to teach programming to kids, aged, kindergarten and up.
Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at http://ift.tt/2quX4Nu. Never stop learning.
[End of Audio 0:10:27]
[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email [email protected]]
Bio as submitted
Andrew Stadel is a Digital Learning Coach for Tustin Unified School District in California, working with secondary math teachers to use and implement technology in meaningful ways to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics. Andrew is the creator of Estimation 180, http://ift.tt/1dVJzbZ, a website designed to provide students and teachers with daily challenges to help improve their number sense.
Blog: http://ift.tt/1dVJzbZ
Twitter: @mr_stadel
Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.
The post What helps kids really learn appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!
What helps kids really learn published first on http://ift.tt/2xx6Oyq
0 notes
Text
What helps kids really learn
Andrew Stadel on episode 220 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter
How do kids learn and remember? Teacher Andrew Stadel, @mr_stadel founder of the popular site estimation180.com, talks about this pursuit of learning in the classroom. This topic is his summer research topic. As you ponder the classroom, look at what you’ll research to become a better teacher.
Richard Byrne, author of Free Technology for Teachers, has some fantastic courses for history teachers and those wanting to learn about technology. Check out www.coolcatteacher.com/edtech.
Listen Now
Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher
Stream by clicking here.
***
Enhanced Transcript
What helps kids really learn?
[Recording starts 0:00:00]
To celebrate the end of the first season of the Ten Minute Teacher Podcast on June 16th, we’re running a giveaway. The Dash and Dot robot wonder pack from Wonder Workshop Stay tuned at the end of the show for how to enter.
What really helps kids learn? Episode 86
The Ten-minute Teacher podcast with Vicki Davis. Every week day you’ll learn powerful practical ways to be a more remarkable teacher today.
VICKI: Several episodes back, one of our educators (see Dan Meyer www.coolcatteacher.com/e69 ) just went on and on about Andrew Stadel @mr_stadel
and his Estimate 180 website. www.estimation180.com But today, we’re actually going to talk about learning. So Andrew, I was just listening to a teacher talk the other day and they were frustrated. And they’re looking at these final exams and, yeah, there’s some kids who’ve mastered it but there are some kids who just don’t seem to be leaning the material. And I know that you are passionate about understanding what helps things stick into the mind
ANDREW: Yeah, I feel like I’m just getting on to the road of the beginning of my journey to really dive into the dive into the idea of what helps us learn as long term learners not only as adults but our students too and how can we support them in that. Creating and environment, creating activities and lessons and structures so that they thrive and also are able to remember the content that we teach.
I think right now, I’m going to say I’m at the beginning of my journey, there’s two books that I’m just kind of going back and forth with. One of the books is called Make It Stick, http://amzn.to/2rpqu3c there’s three authors on that; Peter Brown, Harry Roediger and Mark McDaniel and that’s just kind of learning the premise is pretty such the science of successful learning.
And then there’d David Sousa, I think is how you say his name, I could be wrong, and his is How The Brain Learns, http://amzn.to/2rpz4iI and he has a specific addition on mathematics. So as a math teacher by trade, just thought back of various time in my classroom when kids understand but will not remember a handout or a review packet or some worksheet because there’s really no meaning to it.
[00:02:00]
Yet they would remember the craziest things, if I told a story, I how I used math in life or for example, like you said in Estimation 180 I provided my students with visuals and ways for them to make sense of the world around them so I take pictures of things and ask them to estimate quantities or heights or distances. And I when I would show early estimation pictures at the beginning of the year and then I maybe use them a little bit later in the year or review – it was amazing, it blew my mind away that kids would actually remember some answers or be really close. And I was like there’s something there, there’s something that sticks.
And so, I’m a musician – two; music is a form of language and a way for people to communicate, find a communality. And I’m always amazed at how music strikes people differently and how it sticks with people. So as a musician may I’ll listen to the guitar tracks more than the vocals or the lyrics but yet for other people they listen to the lyrics more than me, yet it still sticks. You can’t memorize your favorite song on the first listen, it takes time, it takes repetition, it takes coming back to. And the more I’m reading and learning, it feel like education activities and learning and lessons need that idea that we have to kind of grapple with something at first, there’s something hooky there, you like it but you have to return to it.
You need practice on it, you need to be tested on it. So I’m listening to my favorite song and all of a sudden it stops. Could I continue that song on in my head, could I hum it, could I listen? The same kind of goes in education. Like, if the bell rings, could my students continue their thought process, could they continue making sense of what I was teaching that day in math? So that’s what I’m grappling with.
VICKI: So Andrew, as you wrestle with this, I mean, we know we need meaningful practice but memorization and boring routine – I mean, isn’t the word boring and the word memorized reviled in education right now?
[00:04:00]
I mean, some people really rebel against repetition. So how can we repeat without being boring? And do we have to memorize? I mean, sometimes we have to, right?
ANDREW: Yeah, it’s a good question. If we break those two words down, like, boring is totally relative, it’s objective. Memorization is more a matter of fact but think everybody’s brain is differently wired. So how do people memorize things more than others? It’s such a great question whereas something that I found was engaging to me might not have been engaging to my students, it might have been boring to them.
As educators, we could all sit around and joke like – you know, you hear it coming. Like, my hair could be on fire and no one is paying attention kind of thing. Like, we’ve all had those days. So in terms of memorization, yeah, I really want to know more about that because the more experience I got as an 8th grade teacher – multiplication facts were important to me that my students knew them but at the same time the more as I progresses in my craft of teaching it was like, well, what if my kids could just make sense of multiplying?
Like kids struggled with 12s, like that’s wired that kids struggled with 12s. It’s totally fine but then for some reason they were fine with 11s. So 5 x 11 kids would just go 55, great. So that can empower that kid to do that and I’d just say, “Look, add five more to that to get your 12th five and that makes it 60.” And that’s empowering and then hopefully that logic sticks and not the multiplication fact. I need to learn more.
VICKI: Yeah, the thing I’m hearing you say is that you’re trying different ways and I’m actually having a flashback, at the end of the school year I do anonymous student surveys, I’ll ask you, “What do you like best, what do you like least.” And one question where they say they like best, half of the class said, “I love it when you circle up, you tell stories and we have conversations.” And then the other half class said, “You talk too much.”
[00:06:00]
And it’s like, “Well which is it?” I think that we somehow think that we’re going to get 100% approval form everybody for how we do this repetition. And I think that’s unrealistic. I mean, do you or is it just me?
ANDREW: Yeah. I agree 100% and I’ve actually reminded myself of that when I do consulting, when I work with districts, teachers feel like I should come and present them with this overboard and yet we need repetition and we’re going to say, yeah, we’re not always going to have a high of engagement, we’re not always going to be people pleasers, we can’t please everybody. And I don’t think that’s what we need to get into it for.
VICKI: Yeah. And I always tell my students, you’re going to thank me when you’re 23.
ANDREW: I agree 100% that you can’t please everybody.
VICKI: But we don’t want to use that as a cop out either, I mean, I know teachers who are worksheet wonders and they just use worksheets. I mean, have your read enough, Andrew, to know that business as usual, worksheets as usual don’t work?
ANDREW: For the most part, yeah, I’ve scratched the surface on that one a little bit. So the short answer, yeah, I think I’ve read enough, I’m convinced enough based off the reading I’ve done. But I’m also convinced on the personal experiences I’ve had. There’s a time and place for it, though. It’s playing sports. Like if I’m at practice and a coach shows me how to do something then now on my own time I can go work on that muscle memory. There’s a time and place where playing basketball I had to go practice my free throws. But at practice, the coach would specifically help me with my form, how to release the ball, how to set the ball up, the same thing that happens in the classroom. Like, as teachers, we got to be in a position to kind of help students understand things or use critical thinking or problem solve and work on those mechanics face to face with them. And then there might be a time and place where it’s like, “Look. You just need to kind of do some ground work here, you got to practice a few things.”
[00:08:00]
And that is part of making things stick a little bit but it’s not the end all where you just hand out a worksheet and be like, “Yeah, do 50 of these and you’ll remember it.”
VICKI: Andrew, as we finished up, we’ve really talked about a lot of issues. This is almost like a conversation you and I might have if we were on the same school in the faculty teacher’s lounge about learning because these are things that we teachers talk about. But could you give a 30-second pep talk to those teachers who just feel like, “It’s the end of the year and have I actually taught anything?”
ANDREW: What gets you excited about what you teach? I tend to fall back on Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk and why do you want to wake up and get out of bed? So on Monday what gets you excited that you’re going to get up out of bed, go to school, greet your students at the door and teach them. And so that for me is what helps guide my work as a teacher and as a coach. And so I share the enthusiasm with other teachers and say, “What gets you excited? What are some things that you experience in your life that you’re excited about and you can share with your kids?”
And it’s amazing, like you said, you have a conversation or a story-telling opportunity with your kids and those stick and the learning will actually come out of it. So find stuff you’re excited about and share it with your kids.
VICKI: And, you know, teachers, teaching is a relentless pursuit of learning, it’s hard, it’s not easy. There are no easy answers. And I would just encourage you on this motivational Monday, what are you wrestling with now? What are you going to find your books on this summer? What are you going to look into so that you can be a better teacher in the fall because that, teachers, is what truly makes us remarkable?
On June 16th we’ll finish up Season 1 of the 10 Minute Teacher. So celebrate, we’ve partnered with one of my favorite robots for teaching coding, Dash and Dot form Wonder Workshop. Go to coolcatteacher.com/wonder and enter to win your very own Wonder pack form Wonder workshop and to learn more about how you can use Dash and Dot to teach programming to kids, aged, kindergarten and up.
Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at coolcatteacher.com/podcast. Never stop learning.
[End of Audio 0:10:27]
[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email [email protected]]
Bio as submitted
Andrew Stadel is a Digital Learning Coach for Tustin Unified School District in California, working with secondary math teachers to use and implement technology in meaningful ways to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics. Andrew is the creator of Estimation 180, www.estimation180.com, a website designed to provide students and teachers with daily challenges to help improve their number sense.
Blog: http://www.estimation180.com/
Twitter: @mr_stadel
Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.
The post What helps kids really learn appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!
from Cool Cat Teacher BlogCool Cat Teacher Blog http://www.coolcatteacher.com/e220/
0 notes
Text
What helps kids really learn
Andrew Stadel on episode 220 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter
How do kids learn and remember? Teacher Andrew Stadel, @mr_stadel founder of the popular site estimation180.com, talks about this pursuit of learning in the classroom. This topic is his summer research topic. As you ponder the classroom, look at what you’ll research to become a better teacher.
Richard Byrne, author of Free Technology for Teachers, has some fantastic courses for history teachers and those wanting to learn about technology. Check out www.coolcatteacher.com/edtech.
Listen Now
Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher
Stream by clicking here.
***
Enhanced Transcript
What helps kids really learn?
[Recording starts 0:00:00]
To celebrate the end of the first season of the Ten Minute Teacher Podcast on June 16th, we’re running a giveaway. The Dash and Dot robot wonder pack from Wonder Workshop Stay tuned at the end of the show for how to enter.
What really helps kids learn? Episode 86
The Ten-minute Teacher podcast with Vicki Davis. Every week day you’ll learn powerful practical ways to be a more remarkable teacher today.
VICKI: Several episodes back, one of our educators (see Dan Meyer www.coolcatteacher.com/e69 ) just went on and on about Andrew Stadel @mr_stadel
and his Estimate 180 website. www.estimation180.com But today, we’re actually going to talk about learning. So Andrew, I was just listening to a teacher talk the other day and they were frustrated. And they’re looking at these final exams and, yeah, there’s some kids who’ve mastered it but there are some kids who just don’t seem to be leaning the material. And I know that you are passionate about understanding what helps things stick into the mind
ANDREW: Yeah, I feel like I’m just getting on to the road of the beginning of my journey to really dive into the dive into the idea of what helps us learn as long term learners not only as adults but our students too and how can we support them in that. Creating and environment, creating activities and lessons and structures so that they thrive and also are able to remember the content that we teach.
I think right now, I’m going to say I’m at the beginning of my journey, there’s two books that I’m just kind of going back and forth with. One of the books is called Make It Stick, http://amzn.to/2rpqu3c there’s three authors on that; Peter Brown, Harry Roediger and Mark McDaniel and that’s just kind of learning the premise is pretty such the science of successful learning.
And then there’d David Sousa, I think is how you say his name, I could be wrong, and his is How The Brain Learns, http://amzn.to/2rpz4iI and he has a specific addition on mathematics. So as a math teacher by trade, just thought back of various time in my classroom when kids understand but will not remember a handout or a review packet or some worksheet because there’s really no meaning to it.
[00:02:00]
Yet they would remember the craziest things, if I told a story, I how I used math in life or for example, like you said in Estimation 180 I provided my students with visuals and ways for them to make sense of the world around them so I take pictures of things and ask them to estimate quantities or heights or distances. And I when I would show early estimation pictures at the beginning of the year and then I maybe use them a little bit later in the year or review – it was amazing, it blew my mind away that kids would actually remember some answers or be really close. And I was like there’s something there, there’s something that sticks.
And so, I’m a musician – two; music is a form of language and a way for people to communicate, find a communality. And I’m always amazed at how music strikes people differently and how it sticks with people. So as a musician may I’ll listen to the guitar tracks more than the vocals or the lyrics but yet for other people they listen to the lyrics more than me, yet it still sticks. You can’t memorize your favorite song on the first listen, it takes time, it takes repetition, it takes coming back to. And the more I’m reading and learning, it feel like education activities and learning and lessons need that idea that we have to kind of grapple with something at first, there’s something hooky there, you like it but you have to return to it.
You need practice on it, you need to be tested on it. So I’m listening to my favorite song and all of a sudden it stops. Could I continue that song on in my head, could I hum it, could I listen? The same kind of goes in education. Like, if the bell rings, could my students continue their thought process, could they continue making sense of what I was teaching that day in math? So that’s what I’m grappling with.
VICKI: So Andrew, as you wrestle with this, I mean, we know we need meaningful practice but memorization and boring routine – I mean, isn’t the word boring and the word memorized reviled in education right now?
[00:04:00]
I mean, some people really rebel against repetition. So how can we repeat without being boring? And do we have to memorize? I mean, sometimes we have to, right?
ANDREW: Yeah, it’s a good question. If we break those two words down, like, boring is totally relative, it’s objective. Memorization is more a matter of fact but think everybody’s brain is differently wired. So how do people memorize things more than others? It’s such a great question whereas something that I found was engaging to me might not have been engaging to my students, it might have been boring to them.
As educators, we could all sit around and joke like – you know, you hear it coming. Like, my hair could be on fire and no one is paying attention kind of thing. Like, we’ve all had those days. So in terms of memorization, yeah, I really want to know more about that because the more experience I got as an 8th grade teacher – multiplication facts were important to me that my students knew them but at the same time the more as I progresses in my craft of teaching it was like, well, what if my kids could just make sense of multiplying?
Like kids struggled with 12s, like that’s wired that kids struggled with 12s. It’s totally fine but then for some reason they were fine with 11s. So 5 x 11 kids would just go 55, great. So that can empower that kid to do that and I’d just say, “Look, add five more to that to get your 12th five and that makes it 60.” And that’s empowering and then hopefully that logic sticks and not the multiplication fact. I need to learn more.
VICKI: Yeah, the thing I’m hearing you say is that you’re trying different ways and I’m actually having a flashback, at the end of the school year I do anonymous student surveys, I’ll ask you, “What do you like best, what do you like least.” And one question where they say they like best, half of the class said, “I love it when you circle up, you tell stories and we have conversations.” And then the other half class said, “You talk too much.”
[00:06:00]
And it’s like, “Well which is it?” I think that we somehow think that we’re going to get 100% approval form everybody for how we do this repetition. And I think that’s unrealistic. I mean, do you or is it just me?
ANDREW: Yeah. I agree 100% and I’ve actually reminded myself of that when I do consulting, when I work with districts, teachers feel like I should come and present them with this overboard and yet we need repetition and we’re going to say, yeah, we’re not always going to have a high of engagement, we’re not always going to be people pleasers, we can’t please everybody. And I don’t think that’s what we need to get into it for.
VICKI: Yeah. And I always tell my students, you’re going to thank me when you’re 23.
ANDREW: I agree 100% that you can’t please everybody.
VICKI: But we don’t want to use that as a cop out either, I mean, I know teachers who are worksheet wonders and they just use worksheets. I mean, have your read enough, Andrew, to know that business as usual, worksheets as usual don’t work?
ANDREW: For the most part, yeah, I’ve scratched the surface on that one a little bit. So the short answer, yeah, I think I’ve read enough, I’m convinced enough based off the reading I’ve done. But I’m also convinced on the personal experiences I’ve had. There’s a time and place for it, though. It’s playing sports. Like if I’m at practice and a coach shows me how to do something then now on my own time I can go work on that muscle memory. There’s a time and place where playing basketball I had to go practice my free throws. But at practice, the coach would specifically help me with my form, how to release the ball, how to set the ball up, the same thing that happens in the classroom. Like, as teachers, we got to be in a position to kind of help students understand things or use critical thinking or problem solve and work on those mechanics face to face with them. And then there might be a time and place where it’s like, “Look. You just need to kind of do some ground work here, you got to practice a few things.”
[00:08:00]
And that is part of making things stick a little bit but it’s not the end all where you just hand out a worksheet and be like, “Yeah, do 50 of these and you’ll remember it.”
VICKI: Andrew, as we finished up, we’ve really talked about a lot of issues. This is almost like a conversation you and I might have if we were on the same school in the faculty teacher’s lounge about learning because these are things that we teachers talk about. But could you give a 30-second pep talk to those teachers who just feel like, “It’s the end of the year and have I actually taught anything?”
ANDREW: What gets you excited about what you teach? I tend to fall back on Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk and why do you want to wake up and get out of bed? So on Monday what gets you excited that you’re going to get up out of bed, go to school, greet your students at the door and teach them. And so that for me is what helps guide my work as a teacher and as a coach. And so I share the enthusiasm with other teachers and say, “What gets you excited? What are some things that you experience in your life that you’re excited about and you can share with your kids?”
And it’s amazing, like you said, you have a conversation or a story-telling opportunity with your kids and those stick and the learning will actually come out of it. So find stuff you’re excited about and share it with your kids.
VICKI: And, you know, teachers, teaching is a relentless pursuit of learning, it’s hard, it’s not easy. There are no easy answers. And I would just encourage you on this motivational Monday, what are you wrestling with now? What are you going to find your books on this summer? What are you going to look into so that you can be a better teacher in the fall because that, teachers, is what truly makes us remarkable?
On June 16th we’ll finish up Season 1 of the 10 Minute Teacher. So celebrate, we’ve partnered with one of my favorite robots for teaching coding, Dash and Dot form Wonder Workshop. Go to coolcatteacher.com/wonder and enter to win your very own Wonder pack form Wonder workshop and to learn more about how you can use Dash and Dot to teach programming to kids, aged, kindergarten and up.
Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at coolcatteacher.com/podcast. Never stop learning.
[End of Audio 0:10:27]
[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email [email protected]]
Bio as submitted
Andrew Stadel is a Digital Learning Coach for Tustin Unified School District in California, working with secondary math teachers to use and implement technology in meaningful ways to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics. Andrew is the creator of Estimation 180, www.estimation180.com, a website designed to provide students and teachers with daily challenges to help improve their number sense.
Blog: http://www.estimation180.com/
Twitter: @mr_stadel
Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.
The post What helps kids really learn appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!
from Cool Cat Teacher BlogCool Cat Teacher Blog http://www.coolcatteacher.com/e220/
0 notes
Text
What helps kids really learn
Andrew Stadel on episode 220 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter
How do kids learn and remember? Teacher Andrew Stadel, @mr_stadel founder of the popular site estimation180.com, talks about this pursuit of learning in the classroom. This topic is his summer research topic. As you ponder the classroom, look at what you’ll research to become a better teacher.
Richard Byrne, author of Free Technology for Teachers, has some fantastic courses for history teachers and those wanting to learn about technology. Check out www.coolcatteacher.com/edtech.
Listen Now
Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher
Stream by clicking here.
***
Enhanced Transcript
What helps kids really learn?
[Recording starts 0:00:00]
To celebrate the end of the first season of the Ten Minute Teacher Podcast on June 16th, we’re running a giveaway. The Dash and Dot robot wonder pack from Wonder Workshop Stay tuned at the end of the show for how to enter.
What really helps kids learn? Episode 86
The Ten-minute Teacher podcast with Vicki Davis. Every week day you’ll learn powerful practical ways to be a more remarkable teacher today.
VICKI: Several episodes back, one of our educators (see Dan Meyer www.coolcatteacher.com/e69 ) just went on and on about Andrew Stadel @mr_stadel
and his Estimate 180 website. www.estimation180.com But today, we’re actually going to talk about learning. So Andrew, I was just listening to a teacher talk the other day and they were frustrated. And they’re looking at these final exams and, yeah, there’s some kids who’ve mastered it but there are some kids who just don’t seem to be leaning the material. And I know that you are passionate about understanding what helps things stick into the mind
ANDREW: Yeah, I feel like I’m just getting on to the road of the beginning of my journey to really dive into the dive into the idea of what helps us learn as long term learners not only as adults but our students too and how can we support them in that. Creating and environment, creating activities and lessons and structures so that they thrive and also are able to remember the content that we teach.
I think right now, I’m going to say I’m at the beginning of my journey, there’s two books that I’m just kind of going back and forth with. One of the books is called Make It Stick, http://amzn.to/2rpqu3c there’s three authors on that; Peter Brown, Harry Roediger and Mark McDaniel and that’s just kind of learning the premise is pretty such the science of successful learning.
And then there’d David Sousa, I think is how you say his name, I could be wrong, and his is How The Brain Learns, http://amzn.to/2rpz4iI and he has a specific addition on mathematics. So as a math teacher by trade, just thought back of various time in my classroom when kids understand but will not remember a handout or a review packet or some worksheet because there’s really no meaning to it.
[00:02:00]
Yet they would remember the craziest things, if I told a story, I how I used math in life or for example, like you said in Estimation 180 I provided my students with visuals and ways for them to make sense of the world around them so I take pictures of things and ask them to estimate quantities or heights or distances. And I when I would show early estimation pictures at the beginning of the year and then I maybe use them a little bit later in the year or review – it was amazing, it blew my mind away that kids would actually remember some answers or be really close. And I was like there’s something there, there’s something that sticks.
And so, I’m a musician – two; music is a form of language and a way for people to communicate, find a communality. And I’m always amazed at how music strikes people differently and how it sticks with people. So as a musician may I’ll listen to the guitar tracks more than the vocals or the lyrics but yet for other people they listen to the lyrics more than me, yet it still sticks. You can’t memorize your favorite song on the first listen, it takes time, it takes repetition, it takes coming back to. And the more I’m reading and learning, it feel like education activities and learning and lessons need that idea that we have to kind of grapple with something at first, there’s something hooky there, you like it but you have to return to it.
You need practice on it, you need to be tested on it. So I’m listening to my favorite song and all of a sudden it stops. Could I continue that song on in my head, could I hum it, could I listen? The same kind of goes in education. Like, if the bell rings, could my students continue their thought process, could they continue making sense of what I was teaching that day in math? So that’s what I’m grappling with.
VICKI: So Andrew, as you wrestle with this, I mean, we know we need meaningful practice but memorization and boring routine – I mean, isn’t the word boring and the word memorized reviled in education right now?
[00:04:00]
I mean, some people really rebel against repetition. So how can we repeat without being boring? And do we have to memorize? I mean, sometimes we have to, right?
ANDREW: Yeah, it’s a good question. If we break those two words down, like, boring is totally relative, it’s objective. Memorization is more a matter of fact but think everybody’s brain is differently wired. So how do people memorize things more than others? It’s such a great question whereas something that I found was engaging to me might not have been engaging to my students, it might have been boring to them.
As educators, we could all sit around and joke like – you know, you hear it coming. Like, my hair could be on fire and no one is paying attention kind of thing. Like, we’ve all had those days. So in terms of memorization, yeah, I really want to know more about that because the more experience I got as an 8th grade teacher – multiplication facts were important to me that my students knew them but at the same time the more as I progresses in my craft of teaching it was like, well, what if my kids could just make sense of multiplying?
Like kids struggled with 12s, like that’s wired that kids struggled with 12s. It’s totally fine but then for some reason they were fine with 11s. So 5 x 11 kids would just go 55, great. So that can empower that kid to do that and I’d just say, “Look, add five more to that to get your 12th five and that makes it 60.” And that’s empowering and then hopefully that logic sticks and not the multiplication fact. I need to learn more.
VICKI: Yeah, the thing I’m hearing you say is that you’re trying different ways and I’m actually having a flashback, at the end of the school year I do anonymous student surveys, I’ll ask you, “What do you like best, what do you like least.” And one question where they say they like best, half of the class said, “I love it when you circle up, you tell stories and we have conversations.” And then the other half class said, “You talk too much.”
[00:06:00]
And it’s like, “Well which is it?” I think that we somehow think that we’re going to get 100% approval form everybody for how we do this repetition. And I think that’s unrealistic. I mean, do you or is it just me?
ANDREW: Yeah. I agree 100% and I’ve actually reminded myself of that when I do consulting, when I work with districts, teachers feel like I should come and present them with this overboard and yet we need repetition and we’re going to say, yeah, we’re not always going to have a high of engagement, we’re not always going to be people pleasers, we can’t please everybody. And I don’t think that’s what we need to get into it for.
VICKI: Yeah. And I always tell my students, you’re going to thank me when you’re 23.
ANDREW: I agree 100% that you can’t please everybody.
VICKI: But we don’t want to use that as a cop out either, I mean, I know teachers who are worksheet wonders and they just use worksheets. I mean, have your read enough, Andrew, to know that business as usual, worksheets as usual don’t work?
ANDREW: For the most part, yeah, I’ve scratched the surface on that one a little bit. So the short answer, yeah, I think I’ve read enough, I’m convinced enough based off the reading I’ve done. But I’m also convinced on the personal experiences I’ve had. There’s a time and place for it, though. It’s playing sports. Like if I’m at practice and a coach shows me how to do something then now on my own time I can go work on that muscle memory. There’s a time and place where playing basketball I had to go practice my free throws. But at practice, the coach would specifically help me with my form, how to release the ball, how to set the ball up, the same thing that happens in the classroom. Like, as teachers, we got to be in a position to kind of help students understand things or use critical thinking or problem solve and work on those mechanics face to face with them. And then there might be a time and place where it’s like, “Look. You just need to kind of do some ground work here, you got to practice a few things.”
[00:08:00]
And that is part of making things stick a little bit but it’s not the end all where you just hand out a worksheet and be like, “Yeah, do 50 of these and you’ll remember it.”
VICKI: Andrew, as we finished up, we’ve really talked about a lot of issues. This is almost like a conversation you and I might have if we were on the same school in the faculty teacher’s lounge about learning because these are things that we teachers talk about. But could you give a 30-second pep talk to those teachers who just feel like, “It’s the end of the year and have I actually taught anything?”
ANDREW: What gets you excited about what you teach? I tend to fall back on Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk and why do you want to wake up and get out of bed? So on Monday what gets you excited that you’re going to get up out of bed, go to school, greet your students at the door and teach them. And so that for me is what helps guide my work as a teacher and as a coach. And so I share the enthusiasm with other teachers and say, “What gets you excited? What are some things that you experience in your life that you’re excited about and you can share with your kids?”
And it’s amazing, like you said, you have a conversation or a story-telling opportunity with your kids and those stick and the learning will actually come out of it. So find stuff you’re excited about and share it with your kids.
VICKI: And, you know, teachers, teaching is a relentless pursuit of learning, it’s hard, it’s not easy. There are no easy answers. And I would just encourage you on this motivational Monday, what are you wrestling with now? What are you going to find your books on this summer? What are you going to look into so that you can be a better teacher in the fall because that, teachers, is what truly makes us remarkable?
On June 16th we’ll finish up Season 1 of the 10 Minute Teacher. So celebrate, we’ve partnered with one of my favorite robots for teaching coding, Dash and Dot form Wonder Workshop. Go to coolcatteacher.com/wonder and enter to win your very own Wonder pack form Wonder workshop and to learn more about how you can use Dash and Dot to teach programming to kids, aged, kindergarten and up.
Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at coolcatteacher.com/podcast. Never stop learning.
[End of Audio 0:10:27]
[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email [email protected]]
Bio as submitted
Andrew Stadel is a Digital Learning Coach for Tustin Unified School District in California, working with secondary math teachers to use and implement technology in meaningful ways to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics. Andrew is the creator of Estimation 180, www.estimation180.com, a website designed to provide students and teachers with daily challenges to help improve their number sense.
Blog: http://www.estimation180.com/
Twitter: @mr_stadel
Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.
The post What helps kids really learn appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!
from Cool Cat Teacher BlogCool Cat Teacher Blog http://www.coolcatteacher.com/e220/
0 notes
Text
What helps kids really learn
Andrew Stadel on episode 220 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter
How do kids learn and remember? Teacher Andrew Stadel, @mr_stadel founder of the popular site estimation180.com, talks about this pursuit of learning in the classroom. This topic is his summer research topic. As you ponder the classroom, look at what you’ll research to become a better teacher.
Richard Byrne, author of Free Technology for Teachers, has some fantastic courses for history teachers and those wanting to learn about technology. Check out www.coolcatteacher.com/edtech.
Listen Now
Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher
Stream by clicking here.
***
Enhanced Transcript
What helps kids really learn?
[Recording starts 0:00:00]
To celebrate the end of the first season of the Ten Minute Teacher Podcast on June 16th, we’re running a giveaway. The Dash and Dot robot wonder pack from Wonder Workshop Stay tuned at the end of the show for how to enter.
What really helps kids learn? Episode 86
The Ten-minute Teacher podcast with Vicki Davis. Every week day you’ll learn powerful practical ways to be a more remarkable teacher today.
VICKI: Several episodes back, one of our educators (see Dan Meyer www.coolcatteacher.com/e69 ) just went on and on about Andrew Stadel @mr_stadel
and his Estimate 180 website. www.estimation180.com But today, we’re actually going to talk about learning. So Andrew, I was just listening to a teacher talk the other day and they were frustrated. And they’re looking at these final exams and, yeah, there’s some kids who’ve mastered it but there are some kids who just don’t seem to be leaning the material. And I know that you are passionate about understanding what helps things stick into the mind
ANDREW: Yeah, I feel like I’m just getting on to the road of the beginning of my journey to really dive into the dive into the idea of what helps us learn as long term learners not only as adults but our students too and how can we support them in that. Creating and environment, creating activities and lessons and structures so that they thrive and also are able to remember the content that we teach.
I think right now, I’m going to say I’m at the beginning of my journey, there’s two books that I’m just kind of going back and forth with. One of the books is called Make It Stick, http://amzn.to/2rpqu3c there’s three authors on that; Peter Brown, Harry Roediger and Mark McDaniel and that’s just kind of learning the premise is pretty such the science of successful learning.
And then there’d David Sousa, I think is how you say his name, I could be wrong, and his is How The Brain Learns, http://amzn.to/2rpz4iI and he has a specific addition on mathematics. So as a math teacher by trade, just thought back of various time in my classroom when kids understand but will not remember a handout or a review packet or some worksheet because there’s really no meaning to it.
[00:02:00]
Yet they would remember the craziest things, if I told a story, I how I used math in life or for example, like you said in Estimation 180 I provided my students with visuals and ways for them to make sense of the world around them so I take pictures of things and ask them to estimate quantities or heights or distances. And I when I would show early estimation pictures at the beginning of the year and then I maybe use them a little bit later in the year or review – it was amazing, it blew my mind away that kids would actually remember some answers or be really close. And I was like there’s something there, there’s something that sticks.
And so, I’m a musician – two; music is a form of language and a way for people to communicate, find a communality. And I’m always amazed at how music strikes people differently and how it sticks with people. So as a musician may I’ll listen to the guitar tracks more than the vocals or the lyrics but yet for other people they listen to the lyrics more than me, yet it still sticks. You can’t memorize your favorite song on the first listen, it takes time, it takes repetition, it takes coming back to. And the more I’m reading and learning, it feel like education activities and learning and lessons need that idea that we have to kind of grapple with something at first, there’s something hooky there, you like it but you have to return to it.
You need practice on it, you need to be tested on it. So I’m listening to my favorite song and all of a sudden it stops. Could I continue that song on in my head, could I hum it, could I listen? The same kind of goes in education. Like, if the bell rings, could my students continue their thought process, could they continue making sense of what I was teaching that day in math? So that’s what I’m grappling with.
VICKI: So Andrew, as you wrestle with this, I mean, we know we need meaningful practice but memorization and boring routine – I mean, isn’t the word boring and the word memorized reviled in education right now?
[00:04:00]
I mean, some people really rebel against repetition. So how can we repeat without being boring? And do we have to memorize? I mean, sometimes we have to, right?
ANDREW: Yeah, it’s a good question. If we break those two words down, like, boring is totally relative, it’s objective. Memorization is more a matter of fact but think everybody’s brain is differently wired. So how do people memorize things more than others? It’s such a great question whereas something that I found was engaging to me might not have been engaging to my students, it might have been boring to them.
As educators, we could all sit around and joke like – you know, you hear it coming. Like, my hair could be on fire and no one is paying attention kind of thing. Like, we’ve all had those days. So in terms of memorization, yeah, I really want to know more about that because the more experience I got as an 8th grade teacher – multiplication facts were important to me that my students knew them but at the same time the more as I progresses in my craft of teaching it was like, well, what if my kids could just make sense of multiplying?
Like kids struggled with 12s, like that’s wired that kids struggled with 12s. It’s totally fine but then for some reason they were fine with 11s. So 5 x 11 kids would just go 55, great. So that can empower that kid to do that and I’d just say, “Look, add five more to that to get your 12th five and that makes it 60.” And that’s empowering and then hopefully that logic sticks and not the multiplication fact. I need to learn more.
VICKI: Yeah, the thing I’m hearing you say is that you’re trying different ways and I’m actually having a flashback, at the end of the school year I do anonymous student surveys, I’ll ask you, “What do you like best, what do you like least.” And one question where they say they like best, half of the class said, “I love it when you circle up, you tell stories and we have conversations.” And then the other half class said, “You talk too much.”
[00:06:00]
And it’s like, “Well which is it?” I think that we somehow think that we’re going to get 100% approval form everybody for how we do this repetition. And I think that’s unrealistic. I mean, do you or is it just me?
ANDREW: Yeah. I agree 100% and I’ve actually reminded myself of that when I do consulting, when I work with districts, teachers feel like I should come and present them with this overboard and yet we need repetition and we’re going to say, yeah, we’re not always going to have a high of engagement, we’re not always going to be people pleasers, we can’t please everybody. And I don’t think that’s what we need to get into it for.
VICKI: Yeah. And I always tell my students, you’re going to thank me when you’re 23.
ANDREW: I agree 100% that you can’t please everybody.
VICKI: But we don’t want to use that as a cop out either, I mean, I know teachers who are worksheet wonders and they just use worksheets. I mean, have your read enough, Andrew, to know that business as usual, worksheets as usual don’t work?
ANDREW: For the most part, yeah, I’ve scratched the surface on that one a little bit. So the short answer, yeah, I think I’ve read enough, I’m convinced enough based off the reading I’ve done. But I’m also convinced on the personal experiences I’ve had. There’s a time and place for it, though. It’s playing sports. Like if I’m at practice and a coach shows me how to do something then now on my own time I can go work on that muscle memory. There’s a time and place where playing basketball I had to go practice my free throws. But at practice, the coach would specifically help me with my form, how to release the ball, how to set the ball up, the same thing that happens in the classroom. Like, as teachers, we got to be in a position to kind of help students understand things or use critical thinking or problem solve and work on those mechanics face to face with them. And then there might be a time and place where it’s like, “Look. You just need to kind of do some ground work here, you got to practice a few things.”
[00:08:00]
And that is part of making things stick a little bit but it’s not the end all where you just hand out a worksheet and be like, “Yeah, do 50 of these and you’ll remember it.”
VICKI: Andrew, as we finished up, we’ve really talked about a lot of issues. This is almost like a conversation you and I might have if we were on the same school in the faculty teacher’s lounge about learning because these are things that we teachers talk about. But could you give a 30-second pep talk to those teachers who just feel like, “It’s the end of the year and have I actually taught anything?”
ANDREW: What gets you excited about what you teach? I tend to fall back on Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk and why do you want to wake up and get out of bed? So on Monday what gets you excited that you’re going to get up out of bed, go to school, greet your students at the door and teach them. And so that for me is what helps guide my work as a teacher and as a coach. And so I share the enthusiasm with other teachers and say, “What gets you excited? What are some things that you experience in your life that you’re excited about and you can share with your kids?”
And it’s amazing, like you said, you have a conversation or a story-telling opportunity with your kids and those stick and the learning will actually come out of it. So find stuff you’re excited about and share it with your kids.
VICKI: And, you know, teachers, teaching is a relentless pursuit of learning, it’s hard, it’s not easy. There are no easy answers. And I would just encourage you on this motivational Monday, what are you wrestling with now? What are you going to find your books on this summer? What are you going to look into so that you can be a better teacher in the fall because that, teachers, is what truly makes us remarkable?
On June 16th we’ll finish up Season 1 of the 10 Minute Teacher. So celebrate, we’ve partnered with one of my favorite robots for teaching coding, Dash and Dot form Wonder Workshop. Go to coolcatteacher.com/wonder and enter to win your very own Wonder pack form Wonder workshop and to learn more about how you can use Dash and Dot to teach programming to kids, aged, kindergarten and up.
Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at coolcatteacher.com/podcast. Never stop learning.
[End of Audio 0:10:27]
[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email [email protected]]
Bio as submitted
Andrew Stadel is a Digital Learning Coach for Tustin Unified School District in California, working with secondary math teachers to use and implement technology in meaningful ways to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics. Andrew is the creator of Estimation 180, www.estimation180.com, a website designed to provide students and teachers with daily challenges to help improve their number sense.
Blog: http://www.estimation180.com/
Twitter: @mr_stadel
Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.
The post What helps kids really learn appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
funkycatsworld
🌴🌈funkycats🔲🔳
fairiesrp
Angels and Fairies
ileanacarvajal
Ileana Carvajal
oceanlover18
In Spite Of Everything..
