Summer '24 Interlude E2: One-pagers make literacy research more accessible, with Jamie Clark

Episode Transcript
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Jamie Clark (00:00):
It's helped me as a leader and as an educator to
really think about the kind ofnuances of teaching and
learning and how we can bestsupport our students through
evidence-informed practices.

Susan Lambert (00:13):
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science

of Reading (00:15):
The Podcast from Amplify, where the Science of
Reading lives. What makesthink-pair-share a successful
strategy, and how can it bedone most effectively? That's
just one example of a techniqueunpacked in Jamie Clark's
wonderful new book, "TeachingOne-Pagers: Evidence-Informed

(00:37):
Summaries for Busy EducationalProfessionals." Jamie is the
team leader of learning andinnovation at a K–12 school in
Perth, Western Australia, andhis new book does a fantastic
job of breaking down complexconcepts. That's why I am so
excited to feature Jamie in thesecond episode of our summer

(00:59):
series. Jamie's going to tellus more about this project and
share what he's learned fromyears of distilling education
research down to a single pageof information. And I think
you'll come away from thisconversation with some
practical advice forimplementing specific
strategies likethink-pair-share, as well as

(01:20):
some fresh insights intoeffectively communicating
research. Also, stay tuneduntil the very end of this
episode for some excitingupdates about what's coming up
in this feed. But first, here'smy conversation with Jamie
Clark. Well, I'm so excitedabout today's episode, and so
happy to have you on, JamieClark, thank you for joining

(01:42):
us.

Thanks for having me, Susan. It's great to be
here.

I'm really excited to bring your story and
your new resource, calledone-pagers, which we'll get
into in a minute, to ourlisteners. But I think the way
that I was introduced to youand your work was through
LinkedIn, actually, socialmedia, right? All of a sudden,
I'm seeing these greatinfographics come out that are

(02:07):
packed full of really greatresearch to practice
information, and I'm guessingsome of our listeners have seen
those as well. So before wesort of dive into, you know,
what inspired you to start thiswork, I'd like to know a little
bit more about who Jamie Clarkis, what your background is,
and what do you do besidescreate these amazing
one-pagers?

Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, so I'm pretty much just astandard teacher , an English
teacher , originally from theUnited Kingdom, from England,
but I moved to Australia when Iwas about 30, about nine years
ago. My wife, we decided tohave a change of scene and a
new life, and yeah, I carriedon teaching. I'm still teaching

(02:48):
now as an English teacher , butI'm also a school leader as
well, so I get to work withstaff and do professional
development with staff. I'mquite a big advocate of
instructional coaching at myschool as well. I know it's
quite big in the U.S. So yeah,it's just kind of like, in its
infancy, like in Australia, andit's very much driving teaching

(03:09):
and learning. So I love havingconversations with teachers
about teaching and inspiringgood practice, but I guess the
main thing is that laser focuson evidence and research-based
practices, which I love, too.

When did that interest start for you in
really understandingevidence-based practices in the
research piece?

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't actually straight away
in my practice because when Iwas training as a teacher, it
wasn't really talked about asmuch and it wasn't as prevalent
as it is nowadays. And I thinkthat's probably come in the
last few years for me, throughthe wave of cognitive science
and sharing learnings from, youknow, like the learning and

(03:48):
memory ideas and things fromProfessor Daniel Willingham ,
for example, is a biginspiration for my work. So I
only really kind of startedreading about that material in
the last three or four years,which has inspired, you know,
to break that down and make itmore accessible for teachers.
And that's pretty much theinitiative with teaching

(04:09):
one-pagers as well, is how canwe make it in a format that's
accessible but also easy toshare with others?

That's super important because, like you
said, two things, teachersdon't always have access to the
research, and when they do,they don't always have time to
break it down in a way thatmakes sense, that they can make
it applicable in theirclassroom, which is why these
one-pagers are brilliant. Whatwas the inspiration for the
production of the very firstone-pager, and do you remember

(04:39):
what that very first one was?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, I've always been a
massive fan of design. So I,when I was in the U.K., I used
to spend hours just designingresources for the class, you
know, for students , to thepoint where it was a bit
obsessive, you know, usedMicrosoft Word, I used to use
Word to do it and PowerPointand whatnot and try to kind of

(05:02):
hone my design skills, eventhough the kids weren't too
bothered about that, I mean,they appreciated it, but I
dunno how well it contributedto their learning. But, you
know, since then I was kind ofquite passionate about
implementing good design andsummarizing the things we've
been talking about withcolleagues, you know, some

(05:22):
The first one I actually didwas on feedback because we , my
school had a professionaldevelopment session in the
morning and we called it a15-minute forum. And 15-minute
forums were just sharingsessions of good practice where
you share a resource or anidea. And the topic came up
around feedback and we weretalking about good strategies
to use in the classroom, and ateacher just said to me, "Look,

(05:45):
can you just summarize what yousaid?" And I thought, "Hmm." A
lightbulb went off in my head,you know, I'd just been
designing all these beautifulresources, and how can I put
that into one page, you know,for that teacher ? And that's
what I did. You know, I kindof, it wasn't probably as
polished as it is now, but itwas definitely a summary of
some key strategies and keyinformation around formative

(06:06):
assessment and actionablefeedback, which was the first
one I did.

Hmm . And how did you find that was accepted
by your peers? Did they, didthey use it? Did you talk about
it? Did you find that they madesome kind of change based on
that infographic that youcreated?

Yeah, yeah, they did. The teacher I was talking
about was very kind ofinterested in the idea of
providing actionable feedback.
So it was a matter of, youknow, giving that to him, he
shared it with his department,and then they ended up blowing
it up onto an A3 poster andputting it in the office.

Oh, nice!

As like a reference point. The whole
intention around one-pagers isto spark those conversations,
you know, with educators and toget 'em to think, you know,
about the research, to help 'embuild knowledge or perhaps even
just refresh knowledge if theyalready have that insight into
delivering, you know, feedback,for example. So yeah, it was
quite successful, it was sharedaround and yeah, I saw it on a

(07:03):
pinboard in the office, whichis perfect 'cause it kinda
inspired me to think about,"Well, if they like that on
feedback, then how else could Iinspire them in another
context?"

And what was context number two? I promise
I'm not gonna ask you the orderof all you did!

Yeah, no , so, well , the first three that I
shared on social media were thefeedback one, and I did one on
thinking aloud and modeling,was another one.

Okay.

And that one actually included some elements
of technology in there as well.
So how can we use technologyto, you know, screen-record
answers or screen-record ourthought processes when
modeling, so we can capturethat in video format for
students, because part of myrole, and it still is, is to ,
is a digital integrator. So Iactually work with teachers
with technology, too, and howit can be used meaningfully in

(07:51):
the classroom. So the earlyone-pagers actually had some
information about how tech canbe integrated to support
teaching and learning. Butyeah, the second one was
modeling and thinking aloud ,which got a lot of attention on
social media and that had overa thousand retweets.

Wow!

So I knew that, yeah, I knew then that I'm
doing something right, 'causeit was resonating with
educators somewhere and maybeeverywhere across the globe.
And then the final one that Ishared of the old style
one-pagers was the questioningone, so one on questioning
techniques, which included,like, cold calling and, you
know, probing questions. Ithink we actually included some

(08:30):
strategies from Doug Lemov aswell.

Mm - hmm, mm-hmm.

I think you might have had Doug on the show, I'm
not sure.

Yep.

But he talks about no opt-out as well, that
strategy where, you know, youdon't allow students to opt out
of answering questions in theclass, but you, you know, ask
another student and then returnback to the original student to
rephrase or repeat the answer.
So it's little strategies likethat, which I included in
there, about powerfulquestioning strategies. And

(08:57):
those three, you know , set meoff on this journey. And I
designed all those in Keynote.

Wow. I know, though, that the new ones
you've designed outside ofKeynote, but we can talk about
that later. So you found thesethings really went viral and
you must have gotten somereally great feedback then on
what you were doing.

Yeah, yeah. I got some really good feedback on
it. And then people start torequest one-pagers to be made
as well.

Ohhh, okay.

Which was interesting because, I mean,
I'd love to do that, andsometimes I do, and sometimes
have collaborated with othereducators, but I'm kind of
standing by my own premise herethat educators are super busy
and time poor, and that that'ssame for myself as well. You
know, I've got a lot of thingsto take care of at school, so
sometimes I don't always havethe time to collaborate with

(09:44):
people, even though it'samazing to do so. So in the
end, yeah, I pretty much gotsome feedback from people and
start to refine my work. Thereis an educator on X called
Oliver Caviglioli, and he wrotethe WalkThru series, the
"Teaching WalkThrus" series,with Tom Sherrington. And
that's a massive, massive bookin the U.K., it's a set of

(10:08):
three, there are three of them,and they are five-step guides
to teaching, teaching andlearning strategies. So their
work actually inspired minebecause of the simplicity of it
and how accessible it is. It'svery much in a similar design
style as well, because I tookinspiration from Oliver
Caviglioli through the designwork. But I think one message

(10:30):
that he gave to me after aconversation with him was that
I needed to develop my ownstyle as well. And I think I've
achieved that quitesuccessfully in this book.

Yeah, it's, it's amazing. I know, for our
listeners, we were having aconversation before the
recording started, I have apreview copy, it's not even
available in the United Statesyet, it will be by the time
this podcast launches. But Icame home from vacation, opened
up the package, and I sat downand paged through it. And it's,
it's not only full of amazinginformation, it's beautifully

(11:02):
designed. It's the kind of bookthat you are going to have on
your, not on your shelf, awayfrom view, but very much
accessible. And I like how yousaid before that it reminds
educators of things maybe theyknew before that, you know, you
have to dust these ideas offand refresh them in your mind
and reinvigorate your practice.

(11:24):
And so it is just beautifullydesigned and a lovely book.

Yeah. I mean, one thing that people often get
wrong about one-pagers is thatit has all the answers. It has
all the strategies. But, youknow, I always say that it's a
reminder, it's a conversationstarter. You know, it's not
supposed to house everything.
It's supposed to just gonnainspire conversation and
develop good practices , youknow, which is different to
other books on the marketbecause often they tell you the

(11:50):
ins and outs of a strategy andhow to implement it, and then
what to do afterwards andwhatnot . But this is very much
bite-size, you know, it'ssupposed to be read and leafed
through like you did, where youpick it up, can dip in and out
of it. And the bonus thingabout it, I've got it here, is
it smells really good.

It does!

Smells like a magazine.

To engage all of our senses in this beautiful
book. That's, that's great. Soyou went from doing a few
one-pagers, getting some goodfeedback, finding your own sort
of design style. How did youget to, "I'm going from that
to, I think I'm gonna put thisinto a book and do more of
these"?

Yeah, well, it's been a long journey actually.
Like, I mean, this book took meabout three months or four
months to do , by myself. Andthat was pretty much after two
years of learning how to usethe software and also
practicing how to draw as well,'cause I'm not the best drawer
. But in this book, I'veactually used my , I've

(12:51):
actually designed my ownartwork and used little
illustrations to signifyconcepts and stuff. So the
whole process for that reallytook a long time. The initial
idea for this book came abouttwo years ago, and I did
approach the guy I talked aboutbefore, Oliver Caviglioli, and
we had an idea to do a similarbook, but about design for

(13:11):
educators , because he'sobviously an, he's an
instructional designer, and hecould see obviously potential
in the ideas that I brought tohim. So we were gonna
collaborate on a book called"One-Pagers," but it was about
instructional design , and thatsubsequently fell through,
Oliver was too busy, but Istill had this in my head that

(13:32):
I wanted to produce this book.
And it just kind of emergedfrom there that I thought,
well, I'll give it a break, sixmonths, I'll do a bit of
practice, I'll make someposters, which are free on my
website, that people use quitefrequently. And I've seen them
across the world in differentclassrooms, which is fantastic.
So I took a break, I did somepractice. I honed my skills in

(13:52):
Adobe Illustrator and AdobeInDesign, and then I decided,
right, well, I've got theskills, I've got, I've had some
practice and I'm ready now toput this into a formal
publication. So yeah, I workedon it solidly for four months,
probably at the end of lastyear, and decided to split it

(14:14):
into the sections you seetoday. And it's worked really,
really well.

Yeah. I'd love to talk a little bit about how
the book is organized, and Idon't know when the right point
is to talk about how youdecided, first of all, how did
you decide what research is inand what research is out? Like
what are you gonna include andwhat are you not going to
include in this book?

Yeah, I, that's a good question. I just included
the research, which has had animpact on my career. And that's
pretty much about, like Imentioned before, the elements
from cognitive science aboutthinking and about learning and
memory, because I feel quitestrongly that teachers need to
know this because in order tohelp our students learn

(14:57):
effectively, they need to knowhow they learn, and sometimes
why they do not learn. So thefirst collection in the book is
all about that. It's about, youknow, the cognitive
architecture of the human mindand how we can best present
information to students, how itcan best support them to
generate knowledge and whatnot. So that's broken down into

(15:17):
five main pieces, is thatparticular collection.

Okay. So you said there's three collections.
I just opened the table ofcontents now so I can make sure
I get those right. The book isorganized in three collections,
collection one is Learning andMemory.

Yeah.

Collection two, Expert Teaching Principles, and
collection three, ClassroomCultures. So talk a little bit
about what's inside thosecollections.

Yeah, so the first collection, as I said, is
Learning and Memory. And thereason I called it that is
because it kind of relates toDaniel Willingham's model in
his book, which is "Why Don'tStudents Like School," his
famous book that is veryinfluential for educators
across the world. And he talksabout on page 12 of that book,

(16:01):
the simple memory model, simplemodel of the mind. So what I
did was, I used that as aframework for the one-pagers in
collection one. So the five keyelements of that diagram are,
you know, securing attention,the idea of working memory,
building knowledge and schemas,cognitive engagement to help

(16:23):
students think hard, and thengenerative processes. So all
those kind of five elements arekind of born out of Daniel
Willinghan's diagram. And I'veused Oliver Caviglioli's
interpretation in the book ofthat diagram with the head and
the arrows and the the dots,which you see quite a lot. So
that's what collection one is.

(16:43):
And all the one-pagers kind ofhinge upon that diagram.
Collection two is ExpertTeaching Principles. So there
are six key principles that allinstructional practices kind of
are underpinned by, which is,you know, modeling, challenge,
powerful questioning, feedback,and explanation as well. So

(17:05):
there are summaries ofgenerally how we can best
deliver those strategies tostudents. And then finally, I
got that far in planning and Ithought, well, what could top ,
what could kind of finish itoff and round it off? Because
I've done quite a lot onmemory, I've done a lot on some
expert teaching principles forteachers. And it just made

(17:25):
sense that the last collectionwould be about the culture of
the classroom. So how can wemanage behavior effectively?
How can we build motivation instudents, you know, how can we
give effective praise, forexample? How can we set and
establish great homework that'smeaningful? So lots of those
elements come out in ClassroomCulture, in collection three.

Hmm . That's great. And again, just this
idea of being able to dip inand out of these ideas. It's
just a brilliant way toorganize these. Now I realize
we are on a podcast, and thisis all audio, but I'd really
love if we could sort of paintthe picture for our listeners
about what these one-pagersactually look like. So

(18:11):
challenge to you, designchallenge in words, can we take
one of these one-pagers, likemaybe the, I know you have one
on think-pair-share.

Yeah.

Can you just describe how it's laid out, the
kind of information itincludes, and maybe why you
think that one is particularlyimportant to talk about?

Yeah, sure. I just wanna , you know, before I go
into the actual one-pager, isjust explain a little bit
about, you know, what's on eachone, because I think it's
important that they all haveconsistency in terms of their
layout and their structure.

Great.

So at the beginning of the book, what
I've done is I've written areader's guide, and the
reader's guide outlines howbest to use the book. So I
actually say, you know, justread through it in
chronological order. But eachone-pager has a certain
structure, which is the what,the why and the how. And

(19:06):
basically that obviouslyexplains what the strategy is
or what the concept is, whyit's important, and that's
where the research elementcomes in, you know, so I often
reference a key voice fromeducation in there as well. So
for example, in, you know, inthe formative assessment one,
Dylan William is the key voice,the illustration on the page,

(19:27):
and the why just addresses, youknow, why would we want to
introduce that into ourpractice? What is the purpose
of it? And then from there,you've got your how, which are
the practical, actionablestrategies that teachers can
use and look further into ifthey wish. So that's how it's
set out. And I found thatreally simple for teachers to
engage with because it's nottoo much, it's not too heavy.

(19:51):
And when, you've probably seenyourself, you know, when you ,
when you're looking through thebook, it's very simple to read,
you know, each, from page topage, there's not too much
text. And the text there is, isbroken up into different
sections very neatly andclearly. So the one-pager,
which you mentioned, thethink-pair-share, is actually
part of collection one, whichis broken up into five main

(20:14):
pieces. And this piece is thecognitive engagement piece.

Mm - hmm.

And that means how can we best engage students
cognitively to drive theirthinking? Because, as Daniel
Willingham says, you know,without thinking, learning
doesn't happen. You know,memory is the residue of
thought, which is the famousquote from Daniel Willingham .
So basically, you know,think-pair-share is a strategy
to help cognitively engagestudents. And this one-pager

(20:42):
explains, as I said, the what.
So what is it? Well,think-pair-share is a way to,
you know, foster communication.
It's a great tool for deepthinking. It's an excellent
routine that can be used forstudents to collaborate, a
great strategy forcollaboration, building
confidence, but alsoaccountability as well. So the

(21:03):
one-pager basically has on itthose three areas, but it also
has a nice diagram because I'vetried to include visuals in
this book as well that are notjust illustrations—

Mm-hmm.

—but they're also practical diagrams as well,
that chunk information andsequence information as well.
So this particular diagram onthe think-pair-share one-pager
is clever in the respect thatit actually scaffolds the
process for students. So it'sbroken up into three areas. And
Susan, you can probably seethis if it's in front of you,

(21:34):
that it has, you know, thethink, the pair, and the share,
and it guides students throughthe process. So this is
actually intended for teachersto be able to teach this to
their class, to give studentsideas and prompts of how to
conduct think-pair-shareeffectively. So for example,
you know, it prompts them to,in the think stage, to
consider, you know, what ideasdo I need to think about now,

(21:56):
what approach would work inthis context? And then it kind
of prompts 'em to think aboutthings they can remember from
what they've learned before.
Like you might wanna refer to adiagram or something the
teacher modeled last lesson, orperhaps important topics or
concepts we've been taughtrecently. So these are all
prompts on this diagram thatreally help the students to do

(22:17):
a really good think-pair-sharethat's structured, and likewise
for the other two phases aswell, the Pair phase, the
diagram also helps with that aswell, because it prompts them,
the students, to askthemselves, you know, "What
ideas will I put forward to mypartner?" You know, "How do my
partner's ideas improve myown?" And , " How will I
actively listen?"

Hmm.

So all these prompts on this diagram really
kind of helped to structureeach stage of the process and
promote active listening. Andfinally, the last strand of
that diagram obviously promptsstudents to give a rehearsed
answer. I thinkthink-pair-share is important
because it makes students feelsafe before they share with the
class. And it also encouragesall students to think and

(22:59):
contribute as well, which isthat definitely the point of
this, of this particularone-pager, is how can we drive
thinking from both students inthe pair? And how can we feel
confident and prepared to sharewith everyone else?

I am looking at that diagram night right now
and the think-pair-share. And Iwonder, did you have it in your
mind that not only is thisgoing to help teachers to sort
of unpack processes like these,but did you have it in your
mind that students wouldbenefit from this visual as
well?

Yeah, yeah, definitely for this one,
probably not all of them, butfor this one. I've included
this diagram on purposebecause, as I said to you, when
I use this diagram with myclass, I show them it. And I
use it as a step-by-stepprocess. So I'll model how to
do a good think-pair-share bygetting two students at the
front go through the diagramand say, in this phase, in the

(23:49):
Think phase, we need to reallyconsider the topics you've
learned before. You might wannawrite down your answer. You
might wanna kind of think aboutmy explanation from last lesson
and brainstorm some ideas. Andnot rushing that phase as well
is important, the Think stage.
So yeah, I very much use thisdiagram to teach the students
how to do a goodthink-pair-share. But the

(24:10):
one-pagers don't all do that.
That's just this specificexample.

I like this one because I think
think-pair-share is a prettyubiquitous strategy that
teachers employ in theclassroom, but I don't know
that they always understand thedepth and the purpose of the
strategy. Would you agree withthat?

Absolutely. I think that's actually well put.
And I think that's probablywhat I was getting at. You
know, with my experience withthink-pair-share in the past
before, like really structuringit like this and teaching it
like this , was a little bithit-and-miss. You know,
sometimes I'd ask the kids todo the Think phase and maybe
rush it and not give 'em enoughtime. Nowadays I actually give
them some , a piece of paper ora mini whiteboard to write down

(24:50):
their ideas as well, because Ithink it helps them . And then
in the Pair stage, you know, Iwouldn't circulate the room,
for example. And I think that'simportant as well as a teacher,
you know, to make sure you'relistening for any
misconceptions or you are, youknow, listening in for any good
answers and preloading studentsand asking them, "Would you two
mind sharing in the Sharephase?" You know? So I guess,

(25:13):
yeah, it's definitely somethingI've improved on myself.

And I mean, I have a , obviously this is

Science of Reading (25:19):
The Podcast, and we talk a lot
about English language arts.
You're an English teacher, butthis strategy, this spans all
content areas. So we're talkingabout just really good
instructional practices.

Yes. Yeah. And every single one-pager is
context free . So in otherwords, it's not tied to a
specific subject area. So anyteacher in any subject can
flick through and think, "Well,how does that apply to my
learning area?" And likewisefor primary teachers as well,
or elementary school as I thinkyou guys call it, because I
work in a K–12 school as well,which is elementary right

(25:56):
through to high school in yourcase, I think. And you know,
I've talked about it with theprimary school teachers at my
school and also the secondaryschool teachers at my school.
And they both are very excitedby it and they can see the
benefit and how it can beapplied to their own classroom
practice.

And I wonder, too, now you got me thinking, I
wonder, too , about higher edusing these same sort of
principles and strategies fromthese one-pagers and
professional developmentopportunities. It seems to me
that it's really context free ,any grade level, any age, any
content.

It's very broad.
And since it's been released inthe U.K. I've had lots of
teacher training colleges reachout to me as well and say,
"Look, this'd be great fornewly qualified teachers or
teachers training in theirfirst year or whatever, and can
we get some copies?" It's onlyjust, you know, begun as this
journey. I think it's got a lotof potential. I've also
released an implementation packon my website as well to help

(26:52):
teachers implement it intotheir professional learning
structures. As you mentioned,it does link quite nicely to
school initiatives andprofessional development. So it
can easily fit in withinstructional coaching or it
can fit into professionaldevelopment workshops as like a
reference point.

The other thing this has me thinking is that if
a teacher or a group ofteachers or a school is super
interested in doing an evendeeper dive into the particular
one-pager concept, you provideopportunity to point them in
places where they can do thatdeeper dive then, right?

Yeah, yeah. The one-pagers are specifically
designed with, you know, theresearch at the forefront. So
initially I actually had theRead More elements, there's a
Read More tag at the bottom ofeach page and it says like,
"Suggested research to lookfurther into," to guide, to
teach in the right direction.
But I actually had a biggersection on each page initially,

(27:48):
you know, like a column ofextra papers to read. But I
just thought that was a bit toooverwhelming. And what I did
was just cut it back to onesuggested paper or a book to
read for each summary so it'snot too overwhelming. But at
the back of the book, you canfind a Read More section and
it's a reference list of allthe top, you know , research
which has inspired eachsummary. So I guess one of the

(28:10):
main rules that I went by in myown head was to make sure it's
not too overwhelming on anypage, or any bit of information
is too complicated.

A little retrospect questions. One is,
what was the hardest conceptfor you to actually distill
into a one-pager?

There's a couple of answers probably to that
actually, 'cause, that's a goodquestion. I'd probably say
like, it's a bit of a get-outclause, but I'd say the whole
thing is actually quite hard todesign in itself, 'cause you've
got so much information andyou've got so little space. A
lot of the space is taken upthrough design, you know,
because you don't wanteverything crammed on the page,

(28:51):
either. It's like when you goto a, you know, a professional
development session and you seeit , the presenter presenting a
slide full of writing and text.
And it's just way toooverwhelming.

Right.

So the design for me was important to help
readers easily digest it andaccess it, 'cause the clarity
for me is, is what hooks themin. So, yeah, I think the
hardest bit to design wasactually the layout and getting
all the information onto apage. If you wanted me to pick
out an actual kind of concept,though, in terms of summarizing

(29:22):
and distilling a concept, I'dprobably choose the cognitive
load theory. It's in theworking memory part of section
one. And the reason that I'mchoosing that one is because
it's such a complex theory tounderstand first and foremost,
and I'm talking about JohnSweller's cognitive load theory

(29:43):
here.

Yeah.

You know, there's a lot of information in there.
It is complicated. And tosimplify those complex ideas in
simple language, but also onone page, is incredibly
difficult. So I actually justended up using a diagram for
half of the one-pager to tryand distill that information
into a visual and then add someextra strategies underneath of

(30:05):
how we can consciously thinkabout reducing cognitive load.
So I'd probably say that one. Imean, all of them I'm happy
with. If I had to add any moreinformation, I'll make the
one-pager bigger. I'd probablysay that one needs more space.

How were the folks that you're representing
their work, how were theyinvolved in this work at all?
Did you get feedback from anyof these researchers on what
they thought about what youwere working on?

Yeah, yeah, I did.
I just wanted to contact themanyway to let them know that
I've illustrated them, becauselike , my drawings I wasn't
very confident about. So I'mlike, are you happy with this
drawing? It does look like you,right? So that was the starting
point. And then I'd say, "Look,if you've got any feedback, I'd
really appreciate it." So forexample, I reached out to John

(30:49):
Sweller , who is a professor inAustralia and he's the
cognitive load theory guru. Ialso reached out to Dylan
William, as well, who's aformative assessment guru. And
Dylan William actually wroteone of the testimonials on the
back of the book, and same forProfessor John Hattie as well,
who's an Australian researcherwho wrote a testimonial for the

(31:11):
back of the book. He reallyliked the concept as well. So I
did reach out to these people,you know, to clarify that my
ideas or their ideas were beingrepresented effectively. And on
the most part, they agreed. Ididn't really get responses
from one or two of them. So Ijust kind of took it on that,
yeah, it's good enough. Andyeah, I'm pleased with the

(31:32):
feedback they did give, and I'mvery pleased they were happy
with their drawings as well.

I think this is the first time I realized that
not only are you responsiblefor the design and the content,
but you also responsible forthe drawings. And I think the
way that you approach thesedrawings are brilliant. So
congratulations for learning anew skill, to represent what
you were—

That's what happened with those two years.
I was kind of lost, not knowingwhat to do or just practicing
with the drawing. And , butagain, that's inspired by
"Teaching WalkThrus," which aresimilar illustrations , they
are black and white like mine,but there's a very much,
Oliver's is very much moresketchy, mine's a little bit
more detailed, but it doesstick to a very similar
approach with the black andwhite illustrations.

It's very, very modern and very engaging. What
about, you know, stepping backto think about key takeaways
you've had, new learnings thatyou've had. You know, you can't
tell me you don't come to theend of a project like this that
has a lot of opportunity, youknow, you must be super proud
of what you've done. How areyou thinking about this in

(32:35):
retrospect?

Yeah, it's kind of just sinking in now that it's
out there, 'cause I've beenwaiting for so long for it to
be out there. The new learningsfor me are just, well , I
suppose it's helped me toreflect on my own practice as
well, because I've had to do alot of research and to
double-check the research andto make sure it's written in a
concise way. And then to findsome strategies that supplement

(32:57):
the research as well that are ,you know, practical for
teachers to use in theirclassroom immediately. So for
me, the main takeawaypersonally on a selfish level
has been to upskill myself andhelp build my own practice and
be very conscious about what Iuse in the classroom and what I
do in the classroom. And is itresearch-based? And what does

(33:17):
cognitive science say about it?
And how can I, you know, refinethings and maybe help others as
well? And you know, I've takenthat forward into some
professional learninginitiatives that I'm running at
school as well, where I'mhelping the early careers
teachers help develop theirpractice and support them. So
it's helped me as a leader andas an educator to really think
about the kind of nuances ofteaching and learning and how

(33:40):
we can best support ourstudents through
But, you know, on top of that,it's been a learning curve on
the design front, too. Thetakeaways from that are that
I'm probably gonna do anotherbook at some point , which is a
supplementary book to this. Soyeah, it's definitely got
bonuses and I'm , I guess themain thing as a teacher for me
is that you always need tolearn and that you never stop

(34:01):
learning. And, you know, thisis an example of that.

One of the really big goals of this,
though, was to find a way tobring research to others. And I
think a lot of us in this work,I'm trying to do the same
thing, too , through the use ofa podcast, other folks are
trying to do it in other waysto really help teachers
understand the research,understand evidence-based
practices, make it digestibleand interesting. For those that

(34:30):
are also trying to communicatethis, whether it's using a
podcast or whether it's using aone-pager for your book, what
kind of general advice wouldyou give folks when you are
trying to help communicate aresearch-to-practice thought?

Whenever I talk to teachers, I wanna make it
relatable to them . And if Ihad to give advice on how
people can, you know, impartresearch to others or inspire
others, I would probably makeit relatable, how does it apply
to your practice, and what arethe key things that you can get
out of it that you can do thenext day? I think sometimes,
like, when you say research,people will just kinda switch

(35:07):
off and think, "Oh, it meanslike a heavy book," or "It
means a research paper that wehave to, you know, read
through, and it'll take mehours to get through it." It's
not necessarily the case. LikeI think, you know, the best
research is the stuff that youcan glean information from and
then do something with that'sactionable and practical. So if

(35:28):
I had to give that advice toanyone, I'd say if you're
trying to inspire a teachingand learning program, or you're
trying to help others getbetter, you know, what are the
key elements? What are the fivedot points you can get from a
research paper? What are thethree takeaways? How might you
visualize that into a simplediagram? Or, you know, how
could you put that on one slideof a PowerPoint or a keynote?

(35:51):
So it's, for me, you know, Ithink I'm quite good at this,
I'm just kind of realizing thatI think I'm pretty good at it
and taking out the key conceptsand, you know, just kind of
making it clear what thebackbone of something is and
how you can then improve fromit.

I think, at least for us here in the United
States, with the Science ofReading movement and the
reemphasis on evidence,research-based practices, some
people sometimes get lost inthe weeds of, "Who do I listen
to, or "Who do I not listento?" And if you were gonna
speak to at least the listenershere in the United States, and

(36:29):
I know the podcast goes acrossthe world, but what would you
say to them in terms of howthey can look at your
one-pagers and instill someconfidence that you just didn't
make this up, that this isreally based in evidence and
there's a place they can go toto actually confirm that?

That's a good question. I mean, I always
recommend, you know, to readthe literature yourself and
find out yourselves . So that'swhy I included the Read More
sections, you know, on eachpage. I also would probably say
check out some other books thatare part of the same kind of
canon, if you like, as mine,which are from John Catt

(37:08):
Educational, the publisher,because all their books are
very practical and they'reresearch-based, and you can see
where they're from as well.
They're all from the same veinin terms of cognitive science,
and similar voices too , whichare , you know, Daniel
Willingham, Dylan William ,Robert Bjork, for example, on
the idea of learning andmemory, too. So I think that

(37:29):
the body of research is bigenough now, that you don't have
to convince people anymoreabout retrieval practice and
the science of learning. Ithink that's definitely an
accepted field of psychologyand education, but it's just
giving context to that. So whoare the people who have
presented these theories andwhat have they said? And
getting nuggets of informationand quotes from them, which

(37:51):
kind of backs up theinformation too .

It's hard work to become an expert in your own
craft, including becoming anexpert in the craft of teaching
and learning. So just a shoutout to all the teachers there,
especially the ones that arediving in and digging in to
learn more , and those thatsupport them in terms of
coaching. So, I know the book,as we're talking right now, the

(38:15):
book is in the U.K., it'sscheduled to release in the
United States, and I think thisepisode will probably drop
about the time that it'sscheduled to release . And I
know you would love toget—well, first of all, we'll
link our listeners in the shownotes to your website. I know
that you would love to getfeedback on what people are
thinking about this, how thisbook is being used all over the

(38:37):
world. Any final thoughts toleave with our listeners about
using this resource, or thepower it might have?

Yeah, as you said, I love the feedback on it
because it will shape the nextsteps, you know, for my next
project. And just a bit ofinsight, you know, I'm planning
on developing a book which isgonna supplement this, which
will be , I don't wanna givetoo much away actually, but
it's gonna be a collection ofprofessional development
materials that support thefirst book. But any feedback

(39:08):
from, you know, people who haveused it and how they've used it
for whatever initiativesthey've done will definitely
help shape the next project.

That's great.
And as I shared with youbefore, and this is maybe just
one other plug for all of thelisteners out there to get on
Amazon and get this thingordered, is if I was still
overseeing a school or, youknow, had a bunch of people
that were reporting to me and Iwas trying to lead them through
teaching and learning, thiswould almost be or could almost

(39:39):
be a year-long ormultiple-year-long professional
development opportunity, justto understand one of the
one-pager s , see what it lookslike when you actually
implement it and really, reallystudy that particular piece.

Yeah, yeah. One part of the implementation
process, which I suggest forthe one-pagers, is that schools
who use it actually first startby defining and identifying a
learning problem in theircontext. So we'd , in other
words, we don't just wanna pickout random one-pagers to work
on, but you wanna tailor thatto a specific area or issue or

(40:15):
problem that students arefacing in your school. So
whether that is, you know, the, I dunno , behavior might be a
problem or cognitive engagementwhere students aren't
listening, or perhaps not—orstudents aren't thinking
enough, then you might tailor aset of one-pagers that center
around addressing the issue andthen maybe use them to support
professional development, likecoaching or run some workshops

(40:38):
or sessions in departmentsbased on that particular
collection. So I think it allstarts with, you know, what is
the purpose of using them andwhat issue can we address in
order to solve that particularlearning problem?

Great advice.
Well, Jamie Clark, thank you somuch for joining us. Your book
is a gift to the field ofteaching, so thank you so much,
and we'll be anxious to talkwith you again to find out what
kind of impact it's having. Sothank you again for joining us.

Thank you so much.
It's been great.

Thanks so much for listening to my
conversation with Jamie Clark,team leader of learning and
innovation at a K–12 school inPerth, Western Australia, and
author of the new book,"Teaching One-Pagers:
Evidence-Informed Summaries forBusy Educational
Professionals." Check out theshow notes for a link to that

(41:33):
book, as well as links tofollow Jamie and his work. Join
the conversation about thisepisode in our Facebook
discussion group, Science ofReading: The Community. Now,
before we go, a couple ofexciting updates. First, check
back here in just one week fora special look at the brand new

(41:53):
podcast series Beyond My Years.
Beyond My Years will featurestories and insights from some
legendary, longtime educatorslike Joyce Abbott, a real-life
inspiration for theEmmy-Award-winning series,
Abbott Elementary.

Joyce Abbott (42:09):
I'm humbly honored. I've always been
humbly honored. It's reallykind of, you know, it's
shocking. It's still actuallyreally sinking in, and then the
success of the show is like,wow.

Then in September, we're launching the
ninth season of Science ofReading: The Podcast. I'll tell
you more about our Season Ninetheme very soon. First, we have
one more episode in our summerseries, a fascinating
conversation about highereducation with a closer look at
one university that's becominga leader in training future

(42:44):
educators in structuredliteracy.

Lisa Lenhart (42:46):
If you're in higher ed, you have to really
sit down and have some hardconversations with each other.
It has not been easy.

Stay tuned for all of that. Science of

Reading (42:59):
The Podcast is brought to you by Amplify. For more
information on how Amplifyleverages the Science of
Reading, go toamplify.com/ckla. Thank you so
much for listening.

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