Deep Learning Strategies Your Professors Kept Quiet About
Facilitator: Miguel Guhlin (@mguhlin) | https://tinyurl.com/quietprof
Are all instructional strategies useful at every moment of instruction? Not really. Some strategies lend themselves to use when introducing skills and new concepts.
Others, known as deep learning strategies, focus on consolidating knowledge and building relationships between introductory skills.
Join us as we learn together about strategies your professors kept quiet about in school.
Topics
Ready, Get Set...
- A Quick Recap of Phases of Learning
- Setting the Stage for Deep Learning
- Digital Tools That Amplify Effect
- Announcements and CPE Credit Tracking and Announcements
1- A Quick Recap: Phases of Learning
"What and when are equally important when it comes to instruction that has an impact on learning. Approaches that facilitate students' surface-level learning do not work equally well for deep learning, and vice versa.
Matching the right approach with the appropriate phase of learning is the critical lesson to be learned."
- Hattie, Fisher and Frey (Visible Learning for Mathematics, 2017
Get a guided introduction to Hattie’s work via the TCEA Strategies That Work courses. What’s more, you get powerful videos, a $49 TCEA membership, and CPE hours for the same or less than buying a book. You have fifteen courses to choose from, including the latest Evidence-Based Teaching course.
The TCEA Evidence-Based Teaching course provides a detailed walkthrough of the Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO), including the research underpinnings. It’s the perfect way to introduce your instructional coaches, teachers, and administrators to research that works. Participants earn 12 CPE hours, a digital badge, and certificate upon completion.
Surface learning
This phase of learning is characterized by students:
- Studying without much reflecting on either purpose or strategy
- Learning many ideas without necessarily relating them
- Memorizing facts and procedures routinely
- SOLO Taxonomy - Uni/Multi-Structural:
- Student has a lack of understanding or knowledge of concept, OR
- Student has an idea of what it is but not what to do with it or how it connects to other ideas.
Deep Learning
- SOLO Taxonomy - Relational Level
- Student can link ideas together to see the big picture
- Student seeks meaning, relates and extend ideas
- Looks for patterns and underlying principles,
- Checks evidence and relates it to conclusions,
- Examines arguments cautiously and critically, and
- Becomes actively interested in course content.
2- Setting the Stage: Deep learning
Deep Learning strategies facilitate students establishing relationships in and among content. Students work to consolidate their understanding, applying and extending surface learning after building requisite knowledge.
It involves deep processing, or "the ability to understand a new concept in terms of already familiar concepts and already familiar connections between them"
Which instructional strategies work best?
"Elaboration, strategy monitoring and metacognitive strategies all have strong effect sizes at this stage and enhance learning. Consolidation of deep learning is when working with others becomes the most powerful, according to this model.
Listening to others in discussion and finding ways to connect and extend knowledge...Self-questioning and verbalizing...are also effective strategies to consolidate deeper learning. (Source: KQED)
When acquiring deep level, "use strategies such as organization, strategy monitoring, concept mapping, and metacognitive strategies. Consolidate deep learning by using strategies like self-questioning, self-monitoring, self-explanation, self-verbalizing, peer tutoring, collaboration, and critical thinking techniques. (Adapted from source: Peter DeWitt in EdWeek)
Time for A Quick Reflection
Take a few minutes and share the strategies you have relied on to encourage Deep Learning in your classroom.
3- Digital Tools: Amplifying Effect of Strategies
So, what are some high-effect size, instructional strategies your professors kept quiet about in school?
Here is a list of my favorite Deep Learning Strategies. And, it may very well be that you have already explored these via TCEA TechNotes, TCEA's Online, Self-Paced courses.
Here are a few of my favorites. Which are your's? Share which and why in the chat, if you don't mind.
Let's get started...
Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO) (left),
a tool for guiding lesson design for diverse learners.
Use the choice board (right) to get you started on designing. It features four choices for each of the lesson design stages in ALDO.
Strategies Your Professors Never Showed You
Strategy #1: Concept mapping (0.64)
"The creation of graphic, hierarchical representations of course content. When students arrange new information, connecting it to what they know, they learn best."
The key concept is students engaging in metacognition. As I create a concept map, an outline, or take notes, I am full of questions that may include:
Should I build my understanding around this main idea?
Is this the main idea? What are the supporting or related concepts?
How do main idea and the supporting ideas connect to what I already know?
How can I best represent or arrange ideas to reflect what I know and what I am learning?
This self-interrogation is ever-present in all the strategies that involve diagramming and concept mapping. It is also important to distinguish between main ideas and supporting details (essential for summarizing, outlining, and a bunch of other strategies).
This venerable desktop mapping tool has made the jump to the cloud in this version. Like yED Live, it offers simple functionality as a cross-platform and browser-based tool. Unfortunately, it lacks saving to Google Drive and student account creation. Educators may still want to try out this tool for academics. Watch some videos to get started.
Saves to Google Workspace. This is one of my favorite, free tools for creating concept maps, as well as diagrams. Get started with Diagrams.net via app.diagrams.net.
This venerable desktop mapping tool has made the jump to the cloud in this version. Like yED Live, it offers simple functionality as a cross-platform and browser-based tool. Unfortunately, it lacks saving to Google Drive and student account creation. Educators may still want to try out this tool for academics. Watch some videos to get started.
Strategy #2: Reciprocal teaching (0.74)
"A deep learning, instructional strategy which aims to foster better reading comprehension and to monitor students who struggle with comprehension. The strategy contains four steps: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting.
It is “reciprocal” in that students and the teacher take turns leading a dialogue about the text in question, asking questions following each of the four steps.
Want to see dramatic results in your students? Use reciprocal teaching (all four strategies) at least three times per week for three months. for 15-30 mins each time.
The creators of the Reciprocal Teaching strategy, Ann Palincsar and Ann Brown (1984, 1986) for just 15-20 days, assessment of students’ reading comprehension increase from thirty percent to seventy to eighty percent.
Source: North Central Comprehensive Center Reciprocal Teaching Curriculum Gateway at NCREL.org. Watch all their videos online.
Another Take:
Best Practices
When introducing RT to students, the following process can be helpful:
Teacher provides direct strategy instruction
Introduces, defines, and models the four strategies (summarizing, predicting, questioning and clarifying)
Students become actively involved
Teacher selects “reader-friendly” texts
Teacher leads students through interactive dialogue, providing specific wording to model
Students participate at their own levels, with teacher guidance and feedback
Teacher gradually relinquishes control to students
Students assume the role of teacher by taking turns leading their peers through the same types of dialogues in small collaborative reading groups discussing more complex texts that they have read independently
Teacher provides support on an as-needed basis only
Students eventually begin to internalize the strategies, so that they can use them independently in their own academic reading
Strategy #3: Self-Judgment and Reflection (0.75)
With an effect size of 0.75 (as of John Hattie's latest research), Self-judgement and Reflection have the potential to considerably accelerate student achievement. It occurs when:
- Students track their progress to maximize learning potential.
- Take ownership of their data
Research offers two more tips:
1) Cultivate metacognitive knowledge instruction in students.
2) Use self-developed tests more than intervention-independent tests.
Approach A: Create Capacity Matrices or Learning Target Cards
Marine, Tales from a Very Busy Teacher, shares her insights on creating learning target cards. Her goal is to make learning targets as visible as possible. As you might suppose, this combines with Teacher Clarity strategy, which seeks to ensure students understand what the learning objective(s) is/are.
"...self-assessment tickets help students self reflect and self regulate while they’re learning. I call them “Learning Target Tickets” with my students. They’re pretty simple to use and be used for any lesson, in any content area." (source)
Marine offers these tips for using these "learning target tickets:
After the engagement activity or attention grabber, state the learning objective
Ask students to write it down on their tickets then self-assess their level of learning in the "before lesson" column. This is a capacity matrix with the added innovation of before lesson/after lesson/teacher analysis rows on the side.
When the lesson ends, ask students to rate their grasp of content in the after lesson column
Ask students to write a short reflection on the lesson
Afterwards, you could ask students to share their biggest growth area or reflection via audio (e.g. Vocaroo, Mote), or video (e.g. Flipgrid).
Approach B: Create Capacity Matrices or Learning Target Cards
Want a quick way to find out if students need assistance? They could fill out a ticket and turn it in as a self-assessment.
Use bins like the one Marine shows left if working with paper and pencil.
Or, try digital exit tickets, as suggested right.
Share in the chat how you plan to use ONE Deep Learning strategy to encourage metacognition,
Announcements - Learn with TCEA
April 14, Online Testing Livestream
Texas will move to mandatory online testing in 2022-2023. As you prepare to make this a reality in your districts, what questions do you have and/or what struggles are you experiencing? TEA will be “in the house” to answer your questions and make you aware of resources that may assist you in your efforts.
Texas will move to mandatory online testing in 2022-2023. As you prepare to make this a reality in your districts, what questions do you have and/or what struggles are you experiencing? TEA will be “in the house” to answer your questions and make you aware of resources that may assist you in your efforts.
June 12-14, Elementary Technology Conference
Join us in Galveston, June 12-14, for THE summer conference exclusively for PreK-5 educators. If you work with early childhood and elementary school learners, this is THE conference for you. You pick your sessions and gather helpful, ready-to-use resources, tools, and strategies specific to your grade level(s).
Join us in Galveston, June 12-14, for THE summer conference exclusively for PreK-5 educators. If you work with early childhood and elementary school learners, this is THE conference for you. You pick your sessions and gather helpful, ready-to-use resources, tools, and strategies specific to your grade level(s).
June 21-23, Google Summer Camp
Interested in learning more about Google’s awesome learning tools without spending all your time watching videos, reading articles, and researching on your own? Yes? Well then, you should definitely attend TCEA’s online Google Summer Camp June 21-23, 2022.
Interested in learning more about Google’s awesome learning tools without spending all your time watching videos, reading articles, and researching on your own? Yes? Well then, you should definitely attend TCEA’s online Google Summer Camp June 21-23, 2022.
June 28-30, Librarian Conference
Calling all librarians! TCEA’s first annual Librarian Conference will kick off this summer, and we want YOU to be a part of it. Three days of virtual learning exclusively catered to all things library? Yes, please.
Calling all librarians! TCEA’s first annual Librarian Conference will kick off this summer, and we want YOU to be a part of it. Three days of virtual learning exclusively catered to all things library? Yes, please.
If you’re interested in topics like the latest research on reading, organization and time management tools, promoting your library, and curation tools and tips, this summer camp is perfect for you. Join your fellow librarians and media specialists for TCEA’s very first summer librarian event and grow your network, knowledge, and library.
July 11-15, Robotics Summer Camp
Does the idea of learning about and implementing robotics in your classroom or school feel overwhelming, intimidating, or semi-panic inducing? Fear not. Robotics is possible for everyone with the Mission Possible: LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 and LEGO® SPIKE™ Prime Robotics Summer Camp.
Does the idea of learning about and implementing robotics in your classroom or school feel overwhelming, intimidating, or semi-panic inducing? Fear not. Robotics is possible for everyone with the Mission Possible: LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 and LEGO® SPIKE™ Prime Robotics Summer Camp.
