I decided to start here with the work of John Hattie, because it really comes down to being efficient with the time we have with students and the time we have to plan for our students. Remember, John Hattie completes a meta-analysis of hundreds of instructional strategies every year and ranks them according to their effectiveness and influence on student growth. One years input yields one years growth. A hinge point of .4 equals one year growth. We should strive to use strategies that are effective in providing at least one years growth or more! For more information, see https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/
(DO NOT let the second most influential strategy called "Self-Reported Grades" turn you off... most people see that as kids grading themselves... nope...
John Hattie explains that....
"Children are the most accurate when predicting how they will perform, if I could write my book Visible Learning for Teachers again, I would re-name this learning strategy “Student Expectations” to express more clearly that this strategy involves the teacher finding out what are the student’s expectations and pushing the learner to exceed these expectations. Once a student has performed at a level that is beyond their own expectations, he or she gains confidence in his or her learning ability."
Below is the clock face strategy shared with you during August PD. We didn't have the time to really model this strategy for you as it should have been. This modeling would have taken over an hour, I demonstrated it in less than 30 minutes. What would have happened differently, would have been more recapping, going back to the different numbers and having you all standing up and teaching each other 1 -12 repeatedly, until you knew them. Then, the next day, we would of practiced them again. This strategy is a good one to use in your classroom if you have lists of items that need to be remembered. The strategy works when it is chunked as it is taught, and recapped frequently with students saying and doing the motions. It is a lot like a narrative chain (stay tuned), in that storytelling is used to help remember lots of information. Clock face add numbers 1 - 12 to aid in retention.
What I really like about this clock-face, is all of the strategies mentioned are influenced by teacher actions and aid in development of teacher to student relationships. Which we all know is the heart of learning.
Stay tuned to next weeks blog, where we will dive into classroom management strategies.
