These are my notes on Powerful Teaching. I’d like to say I finished the book, but I only made it 3/4ths of the way through before I ran out of time. I may add more content below, but these are my big take-aways.

This was a great book on four powerful teaching strategies. It’s well worth it to master their usage in K-Adult classrooms. Be sure to view the companion website to the book.

Four Powerful Teaching Strategies

There are four powerful strategies that boost student learning. These include the following:

1-Retrieval Practice

This strategy occurs when learners recall and apply multiple examples of previously learned knowledge or skills after a period of forgetting.

• It boosts learning by pulling information out of students’ heads (e.g. quizzes/flashcards)

• It works by enabling students to practice bringing information forward to remember it better.

• Helps students remember what to transfer

• Learning strategy, not assessment strategy

• Retrieval practice boosts transfer learning

• Students do better when they are quizzed versus not quizzed, as much as 13% more.

• Provide a mix of fact-based and HOTS retrieval

• Multiple choice questions are as, or more effective than short answer questions

• Writing down works better than concept mapping for retrieval practice

Retrieval Practice Activities

Brain Dumps/Free Recall

• Pause lesson, lecture

• Write down everything you can remember

• Continue lesson

• Ask students to swap Brain Dump with a peer.

Then, do a Think-Pair-Share:

• Is there eanything in common that both of us wrote down?

• Anything new that neither of us wrote down?

• Any misinformation?

• Why do you think you remembered what you did?

Two Things

• Pause lesson

• Ask, “What are two things you learned yesterday? Today?”

• Ask, “What are two things you’d like to learn more about?”

Retrieve-Taking

• Pause lesson

• Students write down what they want to study

• Give feedback on what they wrote

• Continue with lesson

Daily MiniQuizzes

• Formulate questions

• Put clues on slips of paper

• Students write down answers

• Collect clues

• Analayze Mini-Quizzes

Retrieval Routines

Colored index cards

• Label cards with “A” “B” “C” “D”

• Have students hold cards up in response to questions

Bell work/exit tickets

Retrieval Guides

• Provide students with an outline of your lesson

• Read text aloud

• Retrieve and write down information in Retrieval Guide

• Think-Pair-Share

2-Spaced Practice or spacing

Boosts learning by spreading lessons and retrieval opportunities over time so learning isn’t crammed all at once.

3-Interleaving

Mixes up related topics and encourages discrimination.

4-Feedback

• Provides student opportunity to know what they know, and know what they don’t know

• This increases students’ meta-cognition or understanding their learning progress.

• Helps students apply knowledge correctly

Benefits of Strategies

Research shows that there are various benefits. These include

• Enhance higher order thinking skills and knowledge transfer

• Raise student achievement by a letter grade or two

• Boosts learning for diverse students and subject areas

• Increases use of effective study of strategies out of class

• Improves mental organization of knowledge

• Increases student engagement and attention

• Blocks interfering information

• Improves learning of related information

• Increases HOTS and transfer learning

• Identifies gaps in students’ knowledge

• Increases meta-cognition and awareness of learning

Stages of Learning

There are several stages of learning. These include the following:

1-Encoding

When we meet information for the first time, or initially learn something.

2-Storage

Keeping encoded information and how long it is retained.

3-Retrieval

When we reach back and bring out of our minds the information we previously learned. When we access information and bring it to mind.

Connections

Social-Emotional Learning

• Investigates how we interact with the world around us, or what happens outside our heads.

Cognitive Science/Psychology

• Behind the scene behavior in our heads or invisible behavior