This week, we will continue with thoughts on moving students from Surface to Deep Learning (pages 34-39). Let’s discuss the challenges and the tools or resources we could use to overcome those challenges:
1-Post a high-impact teaching strategy you know your class needs, but you're struggling to implement effectively. Tell us about the specific challenges that are getting in your way; and
2-try to respond to others’ challenges with ideas, tools, or resources to help them.
One high-impact teaching strategy I implement is structured academic discussions to help students move from surface-level recall to deeper reasoning. When students talk through their ideas—connecting evidence, explaining their reasoning, and listening to peers—they’re far more likely to internalize concepts at a deep level.
ReplyDeleteOne of the challenges I face is time and consistency. With pacing guides and assessment deadlines, it can be hard to slow down enough to let students engage in meaningful conversations. Another obstacle is that some students are hesitant to participate; they either lack confidence or prefer to give short answers, which limits the depth of discussion. The majority of my kiddos talk through the chat box, so I don't get a chance to hear their reasoning behind a lot of our discussions or the same students will talk each time. I also give input in the discussion with personal connections to model the process.
I've been looking at using sentence stems and discussion protocols (such as Think-Pair-Share, Socratic Seminars, or Four Corners). These tools give students structure, which builds their confidence, and they don’t require long stretches of class time if implemented consistently and correctly. I also think digital collaboration tools (like Padlet or Jamboard) could help quieter students contribute their thinking in writing, which can later feed into richer verbal discussions.
Ultimately, my goal is to move from asking, “Who knows the answer?” to “How did you arrive at that answer?”—and then creating space for students to learn from each other. Let's see what happens!!
I love your ideas and sentiments! Do/can you combine the discussion protocols with the collaboration tools? Or do one OR the other?
DeleteOne strategy I know my class needs is cognitive task analysis (helping students explain how and why they solve problems). This is one of Hattie’s highest-impact strategies, and it’s a key step in taking students from surface to deep and transfer learning.
ReplyDeleteI struggle with time and pacing. When I stop to ask students to explain their thinking I feel like I don’t get through as much practice as I planned. I end up cutting those reflection opportunities short to finish the lesson. Another challenge is on my end is if I include an open-ended explanation question in an assignment, it takes a lot of time to assess compared to multiple-choice or short-answer problems. Balancing the value of deeper responses with the reality of grading time has been difficult.
I agree grading is more time consuming. Maybe you could use those opportunities for practice and not for formal grades - Just a thought.
DeleteOne strategy I would like to use more often is organizing and transforming notes with an effect size of .85. This is students taking their notes or acquired knowledge and creating something new. Most of my students struggle with the creation as they don't want to "get it wrong". They prefer to wait for the teacher to give explicit directions instead of exploring for themselves. Often I end up giving too much guidance in transforming notes and take away some of the effectiveness. I feel like I need to streamline my own information delivery so students can in turn use that information to create meaningful notes. I also feel like there is a time consideration as due to pacing concerns I cannot allow them to be in creation mode all of the time. I believe there is a way to help students better organize then create with their notes without sacrificing their personal connections and voice.
ReplyDeleteI am going to try giving my students a different form of notes in a program called BrainRaider- its an online digital notebook. I will have a set of slides for students to use to respond to several questions to summarize the slides as notes. Then they will use those notes to fill in a graphic organizer and use at least one other resource (starting with the free online textbook CK12.org) to gather more information about a specific topic in their notes before using the graphic organizer to create an infographic. This does require me to spend a little time showing some infographics and explaining what is meant by infographic. Students can then use Canva to create the infographic to share how they transformed their notes.
Brain Raider also has some interesting functionality allowing students to draw or add images based on a prompt. I believe over time this will be beneficial as a way for students to transform notes and make more connections. At the end of the day, deeper learning through transforming notes is about the student making the notes work for them and not just a manual copy and paste situation. My goal is to help them create something they can use even in high school as a reminder or even a new skill set.
Wow! Just watched the demo video...what is the student feedback?
DeleteA high-impact strategy that I would like to do more of is organizing and transforming notes. I have tried to incorporate this into my lessons this week. In 7th grade, they are using the notes we have done and things we have clarified through class discussions to create a graphic that explains one of the conflicts in the Middle East from the point of view of a person on one of the sides. In 8th grade, students will use their notes we have done this week on the removal of the Creeks and Cherokees in Georgia to create fake instagram posts as if they are a person or group involved and explain why the Creek chief signed a treaty to give up their land, explain how President Andrew Jackson feels towards the Natives, and write a post as if they are Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. One other strategy I would like to include more is having my students summarize their notes.
ReplyDeleteOne challenge I am facing is finding a good time in a unit to include assignments like these. It seems like we are always pressed for time in a unit to stay on track with the pacing guide and when tests/benchmarks need to be given. To include more summarizing, I would like to start or end class by having students summarize the notes we previously did. I feel like the questions and prompts I ask my students verbally or in a warm up do lend itself really nicely to being able to summarize what we just talked about in our notes.
With asynchronous learning, I feel the high-impact strategy to foster self-directed learning and improvement is Self-judgment and Reflection (ES= 0.81) through the use of rubrics. Students are encouraged to use the provided rubrics within the Google Classroom framework, to no avail. Through some peer brainstorming (thank you, Dr. Bone!), I’ve decided to gamify the use of rubrics in the upcoming 9 weeks. For each STEAM project they will need to complete a Google Form of the rubric, and match MY rubric to earn points in “Crossing the RubRicon”. Additionally, they earn points by improving their work according to the rubric, and ultimately compete to create the following 9-week game board. Incentives throughout the game include: Avatars (100); 25 Dojo Points (200); Free Critical Thinking Pass (500); Free STEAM TVEEs or SS pass (1000); and, the FINAL Leaderboard Winner at the end of the 9-weeks will receive a $25. Gift Card of their Choice!
ReplyDeleteI agree, this is a strategy I myself need to improve on. Students directing their own learning and reflecting on themselves can be a difficult task to incorporate into lessons. However, I like the way you incorporate the rubric for kids to connect theirs with yours. I think that will allow them to really reflect on their work and become more autonomous.
DeleteOne high-impact teaching strategy that I would like to use more of is Self-judgement and reflection. I know how important it is for students to be able to look at their own work and decide what changes might need to be made, but I struggle to get that to happen in my class with my students. For example, there are times that we are copying down notes and some of my students copy the notes down wrong OR we are doing a practice problem and they got it incorrectly. When we go over the problem in class they will participate and tell me they did it incorrectly but they will not go back and make corrections or self reflect on their own work. It is sometimes a challenge trying to get to the Higher impact strategies when my students are saying "I don't care about this". I would love to teach these skills and to get my students to use self judgement or self reflection more in the classroom. I am brainstorming ways to allow for self judgement or reflection in a way that my students will attempt.
ReplyDeleteI believe classroom discussions (ES = 0.82) are a high impact teaching strategy that 2nd and 3rd grade would greatly benefit from. I feel like at this age the students are still developing confidence. Being able to talk, exchange and process ideas with their peers in smaller group settings such as breakout rooms would help lower anxiety and increase classroom engagement as a whole. However, this can be challenging to include regularly because of time constraints and the amount of content we need to cover.
ReplyDeleteIn middle school ELA virtual classrooms, classroom discussion (.82) is a high impact strategy for building critical thinking and communication skills. However, in online breakout rooms, students sometimes struggle to know how to jump into a conversation or how to respond thoughtfully to their peers. One effective strategy is to provide students with discussion stems. I have been using these with 7th and 8th grade Ela groups. I have provided them with with some discussion stems and also with a video that models how to thoughtfully answer the questions. My goal is for them to begin to feel more comfortable and confident in classroom discussions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone so far and have the same struggles of time management and content pacing guides. There is so much to cover for each subject that the idea of doing more engaging activities is over whelming! I strive to give my students discussion time but as said previously, some students will never talk and others will take over every time. When I call on others, they will answer but not willingly.
ReplyDeleteThe high impact strategy I want to utilize more is evaluation and reflection (0.75). The younger students tend to not realize when they do not understand a topic. It's like the phrase "you don't know what you don't know." If I ask if they understand, more than likely they will all say yes. Sometimes I feel like they are embarrassed to admit they do not understand and other times, they think they do. In order to combat this issue and assist with my students self reflecting. I do not utilize pre-tests as often as I should so I think that is they receive a low grade on a pre-test, then they will be forced to reflect on what they didn't understand. Pre-tests will also give me data to see where my students currently are academically.
The high impact teaching strategy we are continuing to work on in my small group is Elaboration and organization (ES=0.75) expanding on what the students already know. When working in Small groups with my students, I notice there is background knowledge that some students know and others do not. For instance, some students may know that cvce words have a long vowel. Some students have not remembered that skill so I have to reteach the strategy. Then through Elaborative interrogation (Es= 0.59) how do you know this to be true, and then move into Strategy monitoring (ES=0.54) to ensure that learning strategies are continued to be use from Surface to Deeper Level Learning. We continue to work on these strategies and recognize that each learner is different. When we group students, we will group them based on similar needs and also allow them to learn from each other.
ReplyDeleteA high-impact strategy that I am trying to implement and use more is classroom discussion (.82) and reciprocal teaching (0.74). The main difficulties I am finding with implementing these strategies are time constraints, helping to guide the students through the discussions and the reciprocal teaching steps/strategies. I believe as we continue to practice, the time constraints will lessen some since the students will not need as much guidance and the discussions will become more meaningful.
ReplyDeleteSelf-judgement and reflection (ES=.81) is something I know all students need. I am struggling with 1) TIME. I see the students twice a week. This limits the amount of time for everything we do, not just this strategy. 2) PREPARATION. I need to do more preparation to make sure students have solid examples to compare the quality of their work to. I also need concrete guidelines that they can understand and in turn, critique their own work. 3) CURRICULUM. I have used several different curriculum in the past few years due to resources being obtained via grant or other sources. I have had to make changes each time. However, I just started a new project with one grade level last week and I made a point to include a self grading rubric and we are learning how to use it right now. Hoping this helps the depth of learning and quality of work.
ReplyDeleteOne high-impact strategy I try to incorporate as much as possible is cognitive task analysis (1.29). I do this primarily through student kept Digital Portfolios and student blogs. With several students this is a slow process, but I have to keep reminding myself that it is a complicated one. I have seen students who have caught on to how to keep up their digital portfolios and use them effectively have greatly improved their cognitive abilities. They make connections easier and can understand the "why" in what we are learning more easily than those who are still working to understand the concept.
ReplyDeleteThis does take time. When I've talked with other teachers about student digital portfolios and blogs, they almost always say, "I don't have the time that I can devote to teaching them how to do that." Quite honestly, at times I get frustrated and momentarily think the same thing. However, I quickly follow that up with the next thought . . . I can't afford to NOT take the time after seeing how much it can benefit them once they have caught onto it.
One high-impact strategy I want to strengthen in my virtual PE classroom is facilitating formal class discussions to promote transfer learning. I know that when students can verbalize what they’ve learned, connect it to prior experiences, and hear how their peers apply similar concepts, they move from surface understanding to deeper, transferable knowledge. For example, after a lesson on goal setting or fitness components, I’d like students to discuss how they’ve applied those skills outside of PE—whether in sports, academics, or daily routines.
ReplyDeleteThe challenge in a virtual setting is engagement and structure. Many students are hesitant to unmute or share during live sessions, and it can be difficult to replicate the energy of an in-person discussion online. I’m working to overcome this by incorporating structured discussion prompts and digital tools like Padlet or Canva videos, where students can post and respond asynchronously. My goal is to create more meaningful dialogue that helps students see how PE skills transfer beyond the class and into their everyday lives.