Wisdom Wednesday | Powerful Teaching

Hello educators. I'm Tanya with Sidebyside Educational Consulting and I have a question for you. What if you could increase student learning and make it stick without adding more to your already full plate? Well, on this wisdom Wednesday, I'm excited to share this incredible resource called Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning. In powerful teaching, authors Puja Argawal and Patrice Bane explore four simple researchbacked strategies that do just that. These practices boost long-term retention and deepen learning. And the best part, you don't need any fancy materials to start using them. So, here are the four high impact strategies that you'll learn in this book. Number one is retrieval practice. We've been talking about that for the whole month of June. Instead of asking students to reread or to re review their notes, we ask them to recall to bring back to mind what they've already learned. So, one thing you can try that's very simple is a quick brain dump in class. Have students jot down everything they can remember from yesterday's lesson or last week's lesson, but no notes allowed. Number two is spacing. Spacing spreads the learning over time rather than cramming it in all at once. It's one of the most effective ways to build durable learning. So try this. Mix in a few questions from earlier units throughout the month or throughout the year. It's a quick and powerful way to revisit and reinforce content. Number three, feedbackdriven metaccognition. This strategy helps students reflect on what they know and what they need to work on. It builds their awareness and their ownership of their learning. So after a quiz or a review, maybe you ask students to highlight what they felt really confident about and maybe what they were a little unsure of or maybe what they guessed on and then review the results together. That gives them ownership over their learning so they can say these are the things that I need to be thinking about for next time. Number four, interle simply rearranging the order of retrieval without changing the content. Interleing mixes it up just like real life problem solving. So if you have if you're thinking about math and you have 20 problems that are structured in the same way, they use the same algorithm. All students really have to do is plug and chug without intentional decisionmaking about what they're doing. But if we use interle, we can mix up the types and the formats of those problems so students practice selecting the right strategy, not just repeating the same one over and over again. Powerful Teaching is a really great read if you're passionate about evidence-based strategies that work with students of all ages. Let me share with you a few of the chapters that you'll find. So, build a foundation with retrieval practice, right? Empower teaching with retrieval practice strategies. Energize learning with spacing and interle. Engage students with feedbackdriven metacognition. And how about combining [clears throat] the power tools and harnessing your toolbox? A chapter that I especially like for uh coaches and leaders is powerful professional development for teachers and leaders. This is a really great read for the summer. It's not long. It's a really easy read. And I want you to think right now about the strategies that I mentioned that maybe you've already used in your classroom. Which one has worked for you? or which one are you excited to try in the upcoming year? Drop us a comment and let's keep the learning going. Have a great summer everybody.