Stating that all students learn at the same rate does not ring true; just as all students do not learn in the same way. I would think that significance, to each student, plays a big part in retention.
To continue my comment: There are ways to promote learning over time that connects facts and builds relationships, such as creating and weaving narratives and stories, demonstrating connections through concepts and theories, making connections to something personal that has direct relevance to a person's life (like learning about a variety of career options), learning how something happening in the world has relevance and meaning to a person's life, and so on. I recently heard a lecture on Black Holes that could have been boring and irrelevant, but the lecturer described how Black Holes are central to each galaxy, how they have huge gravitational pull yet they do not disturb much of the galaxy, how the lecturer and others are still studying and learning about the role they play in the galaxies, and how they are conducting their scientific studies of black holes. I will remember much of what she said because she was able to put Black Holes in an interesting context for me, telling a story about Black Holes and how important they are in the universe. My hope is that all educators can find ways to create meaning and relevance to the information they convey to students (or have them read and learn about), tying it to previous learning, using it for interesting and thoughtful discussions and activities, and making it interesting and worthwhile to learn. For more about key learning principles and their implications for teaching and learning, see pages 1-5 of my book, "Teaching for Lifelong Learning: How to Prepare Students for a Changing World".
I agree that information won't stick without a meaningful context, but you're making the assumption that students in this class were just taught a collection of dry facts about New York City with no meaningful context. I don't know if that was the case. Unfortunately there wasn't much information in the book about the content of the unit.
This column raises a whole host of issues about student learning. One immediate question I have is why should the student know or care whether their are five boroughs or five states in New York City. There is nothing for that student to hook onto in their lives or in their knowledge base that makes remembering this important. It signifies the importance of attaching factual information onto something relevant or interesting that promotes not only memory of facts but concepts and understanding. Perhaps the student would remember the five boroughs if it were part of of learning about America and the importance of the city to the history of the United States, or its importance as an entry place for immigration to the US, or its central role to theatre and the arts. This is unfortunately a critical problem for all students learning new information - if it is not tied to something larger conceptually, promoting understanding of a larger event, connected in some way to something important, it is not likely to be learned and retained. Think of. how many students who come to class in the fifth grade (as an example) have little retention of what they learned the years previously. Repeating something out of context, with little meaning, over and over doesn't really help that much. Finding context and meaning is much more important for retention. That's why in my work as a curriculum specialist I and others emphasize the need to promote understanding and meaning as a way for learning to be successful and last...
I thought that students who are good at creating educational experiences come up with the answer to the question ‘why should I care about this’ more spontaneously probably because of their background knowledge and playfulness and/ or curiosity. I could be wrong. One student might be wondering in which borough would I like to have a house/ vacation, or if I had a helicopter … etc. obviously the house ownership, vacationing, and owning a helicopter is probably a fantasy out of an environment that makes this sort of day dreaming possible.
Why should they be thinking this when learning just the names of the boroughs of NYC? They will only think of these if the teacher asks them to think about these things, and they learn more about what it is like to live within each borough. The question is a good one, especially if the teacher raises it...
Thank you for this review. I’d love to learn more on the best ways to help students build background knowledge and how to teach students to create their own educational experiences. There is so much more here that I hope you’d write about.
I have written quite a bit about how to build students' background knowledge (you might check out my book The Knowledge Gap, for example).
As for teaching students to create their own educational experiences, I think that needs to happen alongside building knowledge. For one thing, it's easier to create your own educational experience if you already have some background knowledge of the topic. But of course the ultimate goal is to enable students to learn on their own about topics they don't already know about.
The way to do that, I think, is to build their general academic vocabulary (which is best done by immersing them in lots of topics, since vocabulary doesn't stick in the abstract); familiarizing them with the complex syntax of written language; and enabling them to monitor and address breakdowns in their comprehension. For all three of those, I think explicit writing instruction, embedded in the content of the curriculum, can be highly effective.
Just to add some small point to this about teaching students to create their own educational experiences. While I agree with all of what Natalie Wexler has posted below and with previous posts about classroom expectations, students must also understand their own expectations for knowledge acquisition. I think this is where the work of John Hattie can be useful. The practice of students self-reporting their own expectations is an effective method to teach students how to grow and create their own educational experiences.
When a student is unable to articulate what they think they can achieve based on what they think they have mastered, that is certainly a starting indicator that additional remediation or support must be provided. For example, in a classroom you could ask students how many Founding Fathers think they could name. If you have explicitly introduced 6 FFs, but in a pre-assessment, students say they can only name 3 or 4, then you know there are gaps that require reinforcement. A teacher could then explicitly inform students that they are missing 2-3 FFs. These self-reports can serve as a guide to teach students how to identify the gaps in their own knowledge building but also reinforce the need to go back and shore up those gaps independently.
While Natalie and this post highlights the three-times rule, there is additional evidence that the learning and practice rate is even higher, closer to 7 repetitions. As background knowledge is the key to getting to that 7 repetitions figure, this presents additional considerations for how teachers support students in creating their own experiences. If a teacher cannot provide more than 3-4 opportunities in a classroom setting, then there should additionally be opportunities for students to create their own educational experiences through practice, repetition, and reflection. Presenting this information, that 7 repetitions support mastery, to students and families early will only help students to recognize when they must branch out and create their own opportunity to ensure success.
Also - while RCTs have their strengths & weaknesses - as does EVERY research design…
The key to an effective intervention is replication! Yes - every teacher creates their own individual learning context for their class… An effective intervention is one that is strong enough in its design that it will be effective across a range of teachers…
And randomly allocating students may not be real option in so many schools and districts - hence Quasi-experimental designs might be a more viable option in many schools. Today’s focus on large scale RCTs means many small scale studies maybe less likely to be funded - limiting research to ONLY focus on studies funded at a large scale?
This limits opportunities for many researchers - especially those early in their careers?
You noted Nutall’s 3 encounter rule… Isobel Beck’s research found students needed 12 encounters with each new word (for vocabulary) and defined an encounter as “a successful learning opportunity”! The students you describe had zero encounters according to Beck’s definition as their learning opportunities seem to be unsuccessful. And if you have read any on Engelmannn’s research - that focuses totally on students, their learning and designing a curriculum sequence that supports students’ learning so it is successful each lesson? I agree with much of your post - this comment is intended as an extension rather than a criticism!
Personally, I believe that the most important element is the teacher's willingness to listen to the student and then fully engage with the student/students in order to provide answers and solutions that meet their uncertainty (and pique their curiosity further). The teacher should be dedicated and committed and the student should be confident enough to engage.
I have only ever worked in a high-poverty school district. Although I do spend some time in some of our more affluent schools, my heart is in the higher poverty side of town. In my 24 years in this district, I see so many rewards and resources going to the schools who are already so far ahead. All the latest STEM programs naturally gravitate to our affluent schools. I see a very natural divide and funneling into either blue-collar or white-collar systems. While one school is providing enrichment and STEM, another school is providing intervention.
What I would like to get more information on is, how can we facilitate a "catching up" in the area of background at an expedited pace. Have you come across research that would "catch kids up?"
The longer you wait to "catch kids up" on background knowledge, the more catching up there is to do and the harder it is. That's why it's important to start building knowledge, through the curriculum, as early as possible.
But there are ways to catch students up at higher grade levels. You can't cover EVERYTHING they might have missed, so the key is to focus on what they're missing that is preventing them from understanding what they're currently supposed to be learning.
There are various ways to do that, but simply asking kids what they know (or think they know) about a topic before beginning instruction on it can uncover misconceptions or gaps in knowledge.
It can also be helpful to engage kids in carefully constructed writing activities that can reveal gaps in knowledge or understanding that teachers and even students themselves might not be aware of. (See The Writing Revolution, a book I co-authored.)
Once you have identified gaps or misconceptions, or course, it's important to address them through bringing in additional materials and engaging in explicit instruction.
And having students write about what they're learning can make new information stick better, even if they don't have a pre-existing framework of knowledge to fit it into. There's research showing that when kids write about what they're learning, in any subject and at any grade level, it boosts their learning . See this meta-analysis:
I’m glad I stumbled upon your article. (Thanks, algorithm magic.) I’ll poke around your newsletter archive, but is there anything in particular you could point me to that would help me continue improving my stories for adult language learners?
I create “comprehensible input” for English speakers learning French, Spanish, or Italian. This article further underscores why this story-based language practice is so critical in addition to textbook content. It adds context, repetition, and an “interest hook” to language skills introduced in an academic setting.
I haven't written anything particularly focused on adult language learners, but I do think providing them with engaging stories could be helpful. You might be interested in this article by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham about how the human mind is hardwired to take in information better when it's presented in the form of a narrative:
Did any of this research from Nuthall or Carnegie Mellon include students with diagnosed dyslexia? In my experience as a private tutor teaching dyslexic students of all ages reading and spelling, many more repetitions are needed.
One of my students is an extremely bright 11 year-old with tons of background knowledge about animals, space, etc., but his ability to retain the spellings of common words is hindered by his dyslexia. If the research studies do not take dyslexics into account, can we really extrapolate the findings to students with this learning profile?
As far as I know, neither of the studies included students with dyslexia, so I can't say their findings are applicable to those students. And I would take any numerical rule with a grain of salt. For one thing, the size and complexity of a "concept" or unit of knowledge seems to me to vary widely.
I'm not sure that spelling a word correctly would count as such a unit in either study. But if it did, there's obviously a big difference between learning to spell a word (and some words are harder to learn to spell than others) and learning, say, the concept of photosynthesis. For me, the takeaway is that students need repeated engagement with something (not just exposure but engagement) before they can be said to have learned it -- probably more engagement than most are getting.
Thank you. What's interesting is that most dyslexics much prefer to delve deeply into a topic. My now 19-year-old dyslexic son loves snakes and has since he was a little boy. He wanted my husband to read aloud from the Snakes of Virginia book since he could not decode those words yet, but wanted the knowledge this non-fiction text provided. Much of public school glosses over many topics as opposed to a deeper dive.
If spelling focuses on morphology, then I think it would come closer to a unit of knowledge. For example, the words sneeze, snort, sniff, snout, snot all start with sn; this is not coincidental! Those consonants are used in words related to the nose. I share information like this with my students so that over time, they realize that spelling is not random, nor arbitrary.
Stating that all students learn at the same rate does not ring true; just as all students do not learn in the same way. I would think that significance, to each student, plays a big part in retention.
Plus, you never know who was exposed to what and how many encounters they had prior to your teaching it.
Seriously, teacher, leave them kids alone.
To continue my comment: There are ways to promote learning over time that connects facts and builds relationships, such as creating and weaving narratives and stories, demonstrating connections through concepts and theories, making connections to something personal that has direct relevance to a person's life (like learning about a variety of career options), learning how something happening in the world has relevance and meaning to a person's life, and so on. I recently heard a lecture on Black Holes that could have been boring and irrelevant, but the lecturer described how Black Holes are central to each galaxy, how they have huge gravitational pull yet they do not disturb much of the galaxy, how the lecturer and others are still studying and learning about the role they play in the galaxies, and how they are conducting their scientific studies of black holes. I will remember much of what she said because she was able to put Black Holes in an interesting context for me, telling a story about Black Holes and how important they are in the universe. My hope is that all educators can find ways to create meaning and relevance to the information they convey to students (or have them read and learn about), tying it to previous learning, using it for interesting and thoughtful discussions and activities, and making it interesting and worthwhile to learn. For more about key learning principles and their implications for teaching and learning, see pages 1-5 of my book, "Teaching for Lifelong Learning: How to Prepare Students for a Changing World".
I agree that information won't stick without a meaningful context, but you're making the assumption that students in this class were just taught a collection of dry facts about New York City with no meaningful context. I don't know if that was the case. Unfortunately there wasn't much information in the book about the content of the unit.
This column raises a whole host of issues about student learning. One immediate question I have is why should the student know or care whether their are five boroughs or five states in New York City. There is nothing for that student to hook onto in their lives or in their knowledge base that makes remembering this important. It signifies the importance of attaching factual information onto something relevant or interesting that promotes not only memory of facts but concepts and understanding. Perhaps the student would remember the five boroughs if it were part of of learning about America and the importance of the city to the history of the United States, or its importance as an entry place for immigration to the US, or its central role to theatre and the arts. This is unfortunately a critical problem for all students learning new information - if it is not tied to something larger conceptually, promoting understanding of a larger event, connected in some way to something important, it is not likely to be learned and retained. Think of. how many students who come to class in the fifth grade (as an example) have little retention of what they learned the years previously. Repeating something out of context, with little meaning, over and over doesn't really help that much. Finding context and meaning is much more important for retention. That's why in my work as a curriculum specialist I and others emphasize the need to promote understanding and meaning as a way for learning to be successful and last...
I thought that students who are good at creating educational experiences come up with the answer to the question ‘why should I care about this’ more spontaneously probably because of their background knowledge and playfulness and/ or curiosity. I could be wrong. One student might be wondering in which borough would I like to have a house/ vacation, or if I had a helicopter … etc. obviously the house ownership, vacationing, and owning a helicopter is probably a fantasy out of an environment that makes this sort of day dreaming possible.
Why should they be thinking this when learning just the names of the boroughs of NYC? They will only think of these if the teacher asks them to think about these things, and they learn more about what it is like to live within each borough. The question is a good one, especially if the teacher raises it...
Thank you for this review. I’d love to learn more on the best ways to help students build background knowledge and how to teach students to create their own educational experiences. There is so much more here that I hope you’d write about.
I have written quite a bit about how to build students' background knowledge (you might check out my book The Knowledge Gap, for example).
As for teaching students to create their own educational experiences, I think that needs to happen alongside building knowledge. For one thing, it's easier to create your own educational experience if you already have some background knowledge of the topic. But of course the ultimate goal is to enable students to learn on their own about topics they don't already know about.
The way to do that, I think, is to build their general academic vocabulary (which is best done by immersing them in lots of topics, since vocabulary doesn't stick in the abstract); familiarizing them with the complex syntax of written language; and enabling them to monitor and address breakdowns in their comprehension. For all three of those, I think explicit writing instruction, embedded in the content of the curriculum, can be highly effective.
Just to add some small point to this about teaching students to create their own educational experiences. While I agree with all of what Natalie Wexler has posted below and with previous posts about classroom expectations, students must also understand their own expectations for knowledge acquisition. I think this is where the work of John Hattie can be useful. The practice of students self-reporting their own expectations is an effective method to teach students how to grow and create their own educational experiences.
When a student is unable to articulate what they think they can achieve based on what they think they have mastered, that is certainly a starting indicator that additional remediation or support must be provided. For example, in a classroom you could ask students how many Founding Fathers think they could name. If you have explicitly introduced 6 FFs, but in a pre-assessment, students say they can only name 3 or 4, then you know there are gaps that require reinforcement. A teacher could then explicitly inform students that they are missing 2-3 FFs. These self-reports can serve as a guide to teach students how to identify the gaps in their own knowledge building but also reinforce the need to go back and shore up those gaps independently.
While Natalie and this post highlights the three-times rule, there is additional evidence that the learning and practice rate is even higher, closer to 7 repetitions. As background knowledge is the key to getting to that 7 repetitions figure, this presents additional considerations for how teachers support students in creating their own experiences. If a teacher cannot provide more than 3-4 opportunities in a classroom setting, then there should additionally be opportunities for students to create their own educational experiences through practice, repetition, and reflection. Presenting this information, that 7 repetitions support mastery, to students and families early will only help students to recognize when they must branch out and create their own opportunity to ensure success.
For more on the student learning rate: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2221311120
Also - while RCTs have their strengths & weaknesses - as does EVERY research design…
The key to an effective intervention is replication! Yes - every teacher creates their own individual learning context for their class… An effective intervention is one that is strong enough in its design that it will be effective across a range of teachers…
And randomly allocating students may not be real option in so many schools and districts - hence Quasi-experimental designs might be a more viable option in many schools. Today’s focus on large scale RCTs means many small scale studies maybe less likely to be funded - limiting research to ONLY focus on studies funded at a large scale?
This limits opportunities for many researchers - especially those early in their careers?
You noted Nutall’s 3 encounter rule… Isobel Beck’s research found students needed 12 encounters with each new word (for vocabulary) and defined an encounter as “a successful learning opportunity”! The students you describe had zero encounters according to Beck’s definition as their learning opportunities seem to be unsuccessful. And if you have read any on Engelmannn’s research - that focuses totally on students, their learning and designing a curriculum sequence that supports students’ learning so it is successful each lesson? I agree with much of your post - this comment is intended as an extension rather than a criticism!
Personally, I believe that the most important element is the teacher's willingness to listen to the student and then fully engage with the student/students in order to provide answers and solutions that meet their uncertainty (and pique their curiosity further). The teacher should be dedicated and committed and the student should be confident enough to engage.
I have only ever worked in a high-poverty school district. Although I do spend some time in some of our more affluent schools, my heart is in the higher poverty side of town. In my 24 years in this district, I see so many rewards and resources going to the schools who are already so far ahead. All the latest STEM programs naturally gravitate to our affluent schools. I see a very natural divide and funneling into either blue-collar or white-collar systems. While one school is providing enrichment and STEM, another school is providing intervention.
What I would like to get more information on is, how can we facilitate a "catching up" in the area of background at an expedited pace. Have you come across research that would "catch kids up?"
The longer you wait to "catch kids up" on background knowledge, the more catching up there is to do and the harder it is. That's why it's important to start building knowledge, through the curriculum, as early as possible.
But there are ways to catch students up at higher grade levels. You can't cover EVERYTHING they might have missed, so the key is to focus on what they're missing that is preventing them from understanding what they're currently supposed to be learning.
There are various ways to do that, but simply asking kids what they know (or think they know) about a topic before beginning instruction on it can uncover misconceptions or gaps in knowledge.
It can also be helpful to engage kids in carefully constructed writing activities that can reveal gaps in knowledge or understanding that teachers and even students themselves might not be aware of. (See The Writing Revolution, a book I co-authored.)
Once you have identified gaps or misconceptions, or course, it's important to address them through bringing in additional materials and engaging in explicit instruction.
And having students write about what they're learning can make new information stick better, even if they don't have a pre-existing framework of knowledge to fit it into. There's research showing that when kids write about what they're learning, in any subject and at any grade level, it boosts their learning . See this meta-analysis:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0034654320914744?journalCode=rera.
I’m glad I stumbled upon your article. (Thanks, algorithm magic.) I’ll poke around your newsletter archive, but is there anything in particular you could point me to that would help me continue improving my stories for adult language learners?
I create “comprehensible input” for English speakers learning French, Spanish, or Italian. This article further underscores why this story-based language practice is so critical in addition to textbook content. It adds context, repetition, and an “interest hook” to language skills introduced in an academic setting.
I haven't written anything particularly focused on adult language learners, but I do think providing them with engaging stories could be helpful. You might be interested in this article by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham about how the human mind is hardwired to take in information better when it's presented in the form of a narrative:
https://www.aft.org/ae/summer2004/willingham
Did any of this research from Nuthall or Carnegie Mellon include students with diagnosed dyslexia? In my experience as a private tutor teaching dyslexic students of all ages reading and spelling, many more repetitions are needed.
One of my students is an extremely bright 11 year-old with tons of background knowledge about animals, space, etc., but his ability to retain the spellings of common words is hindered by his dyslexia. If the research studies do not take dyslexics into account, can we really extrapolate the findings to students with this learning profile?
As far as I know, neither of the studies included students with dyslexia, so I can't say their findings are applicable to those students. And I would take any numerical rule with a grain of salt. For one thing, the size and complexity of a "concept" or unit of knowledge seems to me to vary widely.
I'm not sure that spelling a word correctly would count as such a unit in either study. But if it did, there's obviously a big difference between learning to spell a word (and some words are harder to learn to spell than others) and learning, say, the concept of photosynthesis. For me, the takeaway is that students need repeated engagement with something (not just exposure but engagement) before they can be said to have learned it -- probably more engagement than most are getting.
Thank you. What's interesting is that most dyslexics much prefer to delve deeply into a topic. My now 19-year-old dyslexic son loves snakes and has since he was a little boy. He wanted my husband to read aloud from the Snakes of Virginia book since he could not decode those words yet, but wanted the knowledge this non-fiction text provided. Much of public school glosses over many topics as opposed to a deeper dive.
If spelling focuses on morphology, then I think it would come closer to a unit of knowledge. For example, the words sneeze, snort, sniff, snout, snot all start with sn; this is not coincidental! Those consonants are used in words related to the nose. I share information like this with my students so that over time, they realize that spelling is not random, nor arbitrary.