Week 9

Big picture overview:

Curriculum, teaching, and assessment
Visible Learning by John
Hattie
Books by John Hattie
What he did

► John Hattie used over 68,000 education research projects and 25 million
students to research what makes student learning the most successful.

► According to Hattie's meta-analyses chapter of Visible Learning, the greater

the effect size, the more beneficial the approach. Whatever is at or greater
than 0.4 is seen as the "Zone of Desired Effects."

► Hattie contends that school learning and teachers must focus their energy on
enhancing skills with the help of these approaches.
Let’s watch this video:

► https://technologyforlearners.com/summary-of-john-hatties-research/
The key points

► Teachers have a positive impact on student learning

► There are high-impact practices that teachers can use to

Visible learners

► Set learning goals

► Express what they are learning;
► Describe the next steps in their learning;
► Know what to do when they are stuck;
► See mistakes as opportunities for additional learning
► Take feedback
Diagram
Let’s watch this video

► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzwJXUieD0U
1. Setting goals
Setting goals
2. Structuring lessons
2. Structuring lessons
3. Explicit Teaching
3. Explicit Teaching
4. Worked examples
4. Worked examples
5. Collaborative Learning
5. Collaborative Learning
6. Questioning
6. Questioning
7. Feedback
7. Feedback
9. Metacognitive Strategies
9. Metacognitive
Strategies
Think-pair-share activity

► There are 10 High-Impact Practices in the handout.

► Setting goals, structuring lessons, explicit teaching, worked examples,
collaborative learning, multiple exposures, questioning, feedback, metacognitive
strategies, differentiated teaching

1. Pick 2 practices that you think you can do in your classroom practice.
2. Give an example of how you will use this practice.
3. Pick 1 practice that you are NOT so good at and harder for you to do.
Activity 1
Gates Foundation –
Effective Teaching
Project
7Cs (Gates Foundation)

► Care
► Control or Classroom Management
► Clarify
► Challenge
► Captivate
► Confer
► Consolidate
What the project was about

► Involved 3000 teachers in six school districts around the

US
► Observe more than 20,000 lessons
► Involved panoramic digital video cameras that require
minimal training to set up, are operated remotely by the
individual teachers, and do not require a cameraperson.
► After class, participating teachers upload video lessons to a
secure Internet site, where they are able to view themselves
teaching (often for the first time).
How they measured teachers’ value-add

► A teacher’s “value-added” is the mean difference, across all tested students

in a classroom with a prior year achievement test score, between their actual
and expected performance at the end of the year.

► If the average student in the classroom outperformed students elsewhere who

had similar performance on last year’s test, similar demographic and program
participation codes—and classmates with similar prior year test scores and
other characteristics—we infer a positive value-added, or positive
achievement gain, attributable to the teacher
More fine-grained picture:
For every lesson
Intended learning outcomes
What the students are
expected to be able to do?

Teaching and Learning Assessments

How you want your students How will you judge how well
to learn? your students have learnt?
Let’s watch this video

► MET project overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdmDQ3p7Pic

► MET project teacher voices:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4AEQObrYgM
1. Care
Questions to Ask Ourselves

► How do you incorporate opportunities for students to share their personal

experiences, interests, and concerns?
► How do you respond when students seem sad or upset?
► How do you respond when students want to talk about issues they are facing
unrelated to your class?
► How do you customize support based on students’ specific learning needs?
► How do you show sensitivity and express encouragement when a student
seems frustrated or ready to give up
Suggested Strategies

► Greet students personally when they walk into the classroom.

► Check in with students privately if they seem upset and ask kindly if
something is bothering them.

► When you perceive that a student is not trying or has intentionally

done something wrong, examine your assumptions about that
student’s motivations and consider alternative explanations before
responding.
2. Confer
Questions

► How often do you invite students to share their ideas and opinions in the
context of learning activities?
► How often do you ask students to answer questions or solve problems
together and discuss their responses?
► How do you ensure that all students have opportunities to express their
views?
► How often do you provide students with opportunities to share their
thoughts about how learning activities should proceed?
► How often do you seek feedback from students about the effectiveness of
learning activities?
Suggested Strategies

► Establish and model expectations for respectful classroom exchanges,

especially in the context of disagreement.

► Incorporate small group and whole class discussions into learning activities.

► Invite students to share their views about how to structure specific learning
activities or how to handle classroom dilemmas.

► Ask students to give each other feedback about how their work meets
established criteria
3. Captivate
Questions

► How do you make your lessons relevant to students’ lives and the world
outside of school?
► How well are your lessons paced? Are they too fast? Too slow? Is pacing
differentiated for varying skill levels?
► How interactive are your lessons?
► How successfully do your lessons pique students’ curiosity and engage them
actively in inquiry?
► How do your vocal inflections, movements, and mannerisms communicate
your enthusiasm and contribute to capturing and holding students’ attention?
► How effectively do you use appropriate technology to engage students in
learning?
► How do your assignments sustain students’ interest?
Suggested strategies

► Discuss how news articles or video clips relate to topics or concepts you are
teaching.
► Create projects that engage students in applying what they are learning in
meaningful real-world contexts.
► Use simulations or interactive online activities to engage students in learning.
► Provide opportunities for students to use digital tools to explore, create, and
communicate, both individually and collaboratively.
4. Clarify
Questions

► Do you provide orderly, structured explanations when introducing new ideas,

including illustrative examples?
► Do you anticipate questions by considering what students will likely find
difficult?
► Do you generate multiple explanations for potentially tricky concepts?
► Do you use a variety of methods and media to present and explain content?
► Do you regularly check for understanding using a variety of formal and
informal assessment strategies?
► Do you ask students to explain their reasoning to reveal points of confusion?
► Do you share clear success criteria for student work and provide specific
feedback based on those criteria?
Suggested strategies

► Explain concepts using multiple media, including text, images, audio, and
video.
► Use rubrics to articulate criteria for success and describe a range of
performance levels.
► Use exit slips at the end of lessons to check student understanding and use
responses to plan subsequent lessons, clarifying as needed.
► Write comments on student work describing specifically what has been
achieved and where more work is needed.
5. Consolidate
Questions to ask ourselves

► Do you summarize big ideas at the end of lessons and review them
periodically?
► Do you ask students to summarize and synthesize what they are learning?
► Do you make explicit connections between lessons?
► Do you help students make connections within and across the curriculum?
► Do you refer to relevant current events or other meaningful applications of
what students are learning to facilitate transfer of knowledge and skills?
► Do your assignments require students to build on prior learning?
► Do your assessments incorporate topics and skills from earlier lessons?
Suggested strategies

► Use KWL charts to track what students know about a topic, what they want to
know, and what they learn.

► Explain to students how to underline, highlight, and/or annotate texts and

then summarize the main ideas in their own words.

► Begin and/or end lessons with references to previously taught topics and how
they are connected.

► Ask students to reflect on what they have learned and how it relates to other
ideas or experiences.
KWL
6. Challenge
Questions to ask ourselves

► How do you set challenges that are at the appropriate level for each student’s
growth?
► How do you scaffold instruction to support students in rising to the challenges
facing them?
► How do you engage students in thinking deeply about key ideas?
► What do you do when students respond superficially or incompletely?
► How do you model the persistence and rigor that you expect from students?
► How do you respond when students express doubts about their own abilities or
begin to give up?
► How do you recognize and provide positive reinforcement for students who
succeed beyond their expectations?
Suggested strategies

► Regularly communicate the expectation that all students can achieve

challenging learning goals and you will support them in doing so.
► Ask open-ended, higher-order questions and use thinking routines such as
Think/Pair/Share to engage students in deepening and explaining their ideas.

► Probe student responses with additional questions that invite them to expand
their thinking.

► Ask students to refine their work in light of feedback until it meets criteria
for success.
7. Classroom management or Control
Questions to ask ourselves

► What expectations and routines do you establish for student behavior?

► How quickly do you get students settled and working at the beginning of class?
► How do you make sure students in class are busy learning and not wasting
time?
► How long before the end of class do you start to wind down the work?
► How do you respond when it appears that students are off task?
► How do you respond when students treat you or each other disrespectfully?
► How do you respond when students ignore or disobey what you have asked
them to do?
Suggested Strategies

► Organize the classroom for optimal efficiency to enable student access to

materials, equipment, and other resources. For example, make sure students
can easily locate their classroom folders, notebooks, or texts without
disrupting others.
► Establish classroom routines for individual and group work, transitions, and
class discussions.
► Work with students to develop an agreement about expectations for
classroom behavior, ask everyone to sign it, and post it publicly for regular
reference.
► Respond with logical consequences when students do not comply with agreed
upon behavior expectations
Think-Pair-Share Activity

► There are 7Cs: Care, Control or Classroom Management, Clarify, Challenge,

Captivate, Confer, and Consolidate

Talk to your seatmate and discuss the following:

1. Which areas are you good at?
2. Which areas do you need improvement in?
3. How can you further use your strengths in your class?
4. How can you improve in your weakness?
Activity 2
Part 3: Study strategies
Activity

► What are your favorite study techniques when you were a student (imagine
yourself as a secondary/college student)?

► What are your students’ favorite study techniques?

Who is more effective?

A B

► A student is studying for a spelling ► A student practices writing each

quiz. She practices spelling the
words by writing each one several
times directly below the word
printed on the sheet. After
practicing one word repeatedly,
she would move on to the next one
and practice writing that word
several times below it. She spends
30 minutes doing this.
word only once, and after
transcribing the final word, going
back and writing each one again,
and so forth, until the practice is
complete. She spends 30 minutes
doing this.
Who is more effective?
A B
► Imagine an eighth-grader trying to
learn some basic concepts
pertaining to geology for an
upcoming in-class exam. He reads
over his notes diligently, in a single
session the night before the exam.
The total hours spent studying is
3 hours.
► Imagine the student will his notes
and texts during a shorter session
several evenings before the exam
and then study them again the
evening before. In this case, the
student distributes his studying
across two sessions. In session 1,
he studies for 1.5 hours. In session
2, he studies for 1.5 hours. The
total hours spent studying is 3
hours.
Who is more effective?
A B
► Students had a brief tutorial on solving
for the volume of one kind of solid (e.g.,
a wedge), and then immediately
practiced solving for the volume of four
different versions of the particular solid
(e.g., finding the volume of four
different wedges). They then received a
tutorial on finding the volume of another
kind of solid (e.g., a spherical cone), and
immediately practiced solving four
versions of that solid (e.g., finding the
volume of four different spherical cones).
They repeated this practice for two more
kinds of solid. All students practiced
solving four problems of each type.
► Students first were given a tutorial on
how to solve for the volume of each of
the four solids, and then they practiced
solving for each of the four versions of
solids in turn. They never practiced the
same kind of solid twice in a row; they
practiced solving for the volume of a
wedge, followed by a spherical cone,
followed by a spheroid, and so forth,
until they had practiced four problems of
each type. All students practiced solving
four problems of each type.
Among these 10, choose 2-3 strategies
that are most effective
Practice Testing

► Consider two students who have just read a chapter in a textbook: Both
students review the most important information in the chapter, but one
student reads the information again, whereas the other student hides the
answers and attempts to recall the information from memory. Compared with
the first student, the second student, by testing himself, is boosting his
long-term memory. Thus, unlike simply reading a text, when students
correctly retrieve an answer from memory, the correct retrieval can have a
direct effect on memory.
Practice Tests

► Practice tests can have an indirect effect on student learning. When a student
fails to retrieve a correct answer during a practice test, that failure signals
that the answer needs to be restudied; in this way, practice tests can help
students make better decisions about what needs further practice and what
does not. In fact, most students who use practice tests report that they do so
to figure out what they know and do not know.9
How to make it even more effective?

► Student learning can benefit from almost any kind of practice test, whether it
involves completing a short essay where students need to retrieve content
from memory or answering questions in a multiple-choice format.

► Research suggests, however, that students will benefit most from tests that
require recall from memory, and not from tests that merely ask them to
recognize the correct answer.
For teachers

► Teachers can give practice tests in the classroom. The idea is for teachers to
choose the most important ideas and then take a couple minutes at the
beginning or end of each class to test students. After all students answer a
question, teachers can provide the correct answer and give feedback. The
more closely the practice questions tap the same information that will be
tested on the in-class examination, the better students will do. Thus, this
in-class "testing time" should be devoted to the most critical information that
will appear on the actual exam.

► Even using the same questions during practice and during the test is a
reasonable strategy.
Practice Testing

► Students should continue testing themselves, with feedback, until they

correctly recall each concept at least once from memory.
► For flashcards, if they correctly recall an answer, they can pull the card from the
stack; if they do not recall it correctly, they should place it at the back of the
stack.
► For notes, they should try to recall all of the important ideas and concepts from
memory, and then go back through their notes once again and attempt to correctly
recall anything they did not get right during their first pass. If students persist until
they recall each idea or concept correctly, they will enhance their chances of
remembering the concepts during the actual exam.
Let’s watch this video of practice testing
or retrieval practice
► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkdIzNbKP18&t=20s
How can teachers use distributed
practice?
► The idea is to return to the most important material and concepts repeatedly
across class days. For instance, if weekly quizzes are already being
administered, a teacher could easily include content that repeats across
quizzes so students will relearn some concepts in a distributed manner.

► Repeating key points across lectures

► Administering a cumulative exam that forces students to review the most

important information. If the teacher highlights which content is most likely
to be retested (because it is the most important content for students to
retain), then preparing for a cumulative exam does not need to be daunting.
Distributed practice

► Distributed Practice or Spaced Practice

► Let’s watch this video of distributed practice or spaced practice:

► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h6tEEbpwJo&t=78s
Why distributed practice works

► Students will retain knowledge and skills for a longer period of time when
they distribute their practice than when they mass it, even if they use the
same amount of time massing and distributing their practice.

► Unfortunately, however, many students believe that massed practice is better

than distributed practice.
Other promising
techniques
Interleaved practice

► Distributed practice is better than massed practice

► Distributed practice typically refers to distributing the practice of

the same problem across time. Thus, for spelling, a student would benefit
from writing each word on a worksheet once, and then cycling through the
words until each has been spelled correctly several times. Interleaved
practice is similar to distributed practice in that it involves spacing one's
practice across time, but it specifically refers to practicing different types of
problems across time.
Interleaved practice

► In interleaved practice, students first were given a tutorial on how to solve

for the volume of each of the four solids, and then they practiced solving for
each of the four versions of solids in turn. They never practiced the same kind
of solid twice in a row; they practiced solving for the volume of a wedge,
followed by a spherical cone, followed by a spheroid, and so forth, until they
had practiced four problems of each type.
Interleaved vs. massed practice
Why it works

► Interleaving problems requires distributing practice, which by itself benefits

student achievement.

► Massed practice robs students of the opportunity to practice identifying

problems, whereas interleaved practice forces students to practice doing so.
When students use massed practice, they can almost robotically apply the
same steps to the next problem. That is, they do not have to figure out what
kind of problem they are solving; they just have to apply the same rules to
the next problem.
► For interleaving, when a new problem is presented, students need to first
figure out which kind of problem it is and what steps they need to take to
solve it. This is often a difficult aspect of solving problems.
Tips for teachers

► Given that the review sessions were basically practice tests, one
recommendation is sound: when creating practice tests for students (whether
to be completed in class or at home), it is best to mix up problems of
different kinds. Even though students initially may struggle a bit more, they
will benefit in the long run.
Let’s watch this video of interleaved
practice
► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArMn_6lSoEA

► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbDpYMp8F6o
Elaborative Interrogation and
Self-explanation
► Imagine a student reading an introductory passage on photosynthesis: "It is a
process in which a plant converts carbon dioxide and water into sugar, which
is its food. The process gives off oxygen.“

► Elaborative interrogation: She would try to explain why this fact is true. In
this case, she might think that it must be true because everything that lives
needs some kind of food, and sugar is something that she eats as food. She
may not come up with exactly the right explanation, but trying to elaborate
on why a fact may be true, even when the explanations are not entirely on
the mark, can still benefit understanding and retention.
Self-explanation

► Imagine a student reading an introductory passage on photosynthesis: "It is a

process in which a plant converts carbon dioxide and water into sugar, which
is its food. The process gives off oxygen.“

► Self-explanation: She would try to explain how this new information is related
to information that she already knows. In this case, perhaps she might
consider how the conversion is like how her own body changes food into
energy.

► Students can also self-explain when they solve problems of any sort and
decide how to proceed; they merely explain to themselves why they made a
particular decision.
Written and graphical formats

► Learning information using both written and graphical formats – for some
types of information that were originally presented as text (such as on lecture
slides or in a textbook), transforming that information into a different visual
format, such as a diagram (and then studying both), can be helpful.
Worked examples + practice problems

► If you are learning to solve a problem type that requires the execution of a
multi-step procedure (of which a common learning technique is to complete
sets of practice problems), consider reviewing worked examples.

► Refers to a practice problem that has already been solved (with each step of
the problem-solving procedure displayed in sequence). By studying a worked
example, you can better learn how a given problem type is successfully
solved. Worked examples can also help you better remember the solution
steps to a problem type.
Some tips for teachers
What doesn’t work so well

► Highlighting

► Rereading

► Cramming

► Mnemonics

► Mental imagery
Let’s listen to this

► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU7NL78OpR4&t=1141s
► (Start at 7 minutes)
Questions about the group work
1. What do you mean by ‘innovative’ in the QEF project?
Answer: Innovative just means anything that teachers are not doing as part of their day-to-day jobs. It doesn’t mean
that no one has ever done it before.

2. Do we need to submit a written output for the group report?

Answer: No, just the PPT and the group presentation. Each group presents for 13 to 15 mins max.

3. What if we cannot fit in the time given to us?

Answer: The detailed lessons for your QEF project should be included in the Appendices or Supplementary Materials in
your PPT. You need only present some of them but not the whole thing.

4. Who will upload and when should we submit the PPT?

Answer: Assign 1 classmate in your group to upload the group project PPT. The deadline is the day of your group
presentation.

5. How do we ensure fairness in the group project?

Answer: I will ask you to evaluate your peers within your group. Unless there are problems raised during the group
work, the whole group will receive one overall grade for their group presentation. In case there are huge
discrepancies, and some students are identified as not doing their part, I will make a judgment on a case-by-case
basis.