How do we Make Learning Stick?

Making sure that our students can master the learning target or transfer what we set out to teach them  is a challenge that has come up again and again in my post-observation conference conversations this week.  As we have talked through your concerns two main strategies have surfaced: Explicit Instruction and Exit Slips

Explicit Systematic Instruction aka Explicit Instruction or The Gradual Release Model or I do, We do, You do 

Whatever you call it, the Gradual Release Model came about from the research of Fisher and Frey in reading and has since been proven to be a highly effective strategy for anything strategic that you want students to master.

The Gradual Release model is a more interactive, collaborative model than our traditional Madeline Hunter Lesson Plan of Guided and Independent Practice and emphasizes the importance of thinking aloud during modeling and collaboration during practice.  See this website for great videos and more information. This video, in particular, showcases all three steps very well.

While I see pockets of explicit instruction happening around school, I haven't had the opportunity to see many clear examples of modeling where the teacher is thinking aloud and inviting the students to be privy to his or her thinking.  During this phase, the teacher is not calling on students.  Rather, whether the teacher is interacting with text or modeling how to complete a math procedure, the teacher is thinking aloud, showing how he or she thinks through the strategy.  Check out this quick video of here of how a teacher thinks aloud how to make amounts with money.

I have seen several AWESOME examples of the We do and You do parts.  When I came in Rose Hay's class for her mini observation this week, she was just finishing her mini-lesson, referring to an anchor chart she had created for her students to refer to when they would be doing their "We dos."  Her target was, "I can refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza."  Her anchor chart had the relevant terms and definitions so for students to use in their upcoming discussions.  She had students perform small Reader's Theatre Scripts in groups and then go back to desks and then figure out how many scenes they would need using their knowledge of setting from her previous literature unit.

The key part of her "We do" was the collaboration between the students with her coaching.  After they participated in the Reader's Theatre they figured out with their groups how many scenes were needed.

 Linking to their knowledge of setting, they were able to refer to the scenes when discussing the play and they were getting lots of great practice performing the target.

Exit Slips that Mirror questions students' upcoming Summative Assessment
When talking about the transfer of learning, exit slips keep coming up.  Making exit slips congruent to how students will be assessed in terms of format, rigor, and content is crucial to transfer.  If you want students to be able to answer a multiple choice question about the content you are teaching, then you need to give them the opportunity to do so.

Tammy Fain is excellent at providing students with the opportunity to be assessed formatively in class the way they will be asked summatively in May.   Her students receive lots and lots of practice performing with the content in class before they are asked to do so on a test.  By the time students get to the state assessment, those multiple choice questions are a piece of cake.

I look forward to seeing more examples of the outstanding opportunities students are given to perform their learning target in the last couple weeks we have before break!