April 12, 2025 • 25 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jocelyn (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast,
I'm Jocelyn and I'm recordinghere in Tasmania, on the lands
of the Palawa people.
A couple of episodes ago, Ishared a simple tool with you
that can help you gain clarityon what you're teaching and
structure successful learningopportunities for your students,
and that tool was theCurriculum Organiser.
(00:22):
If you didn't hear that episode, go back to season five,
episode 12, the Secret Weaponfor Effective Retrieval Practice
.
Today, I'd like to go a littlefurther in discussing what it
takes to set students up forsuccess by making what might be
a controversial declaration.
I think it's time we saidgoodbye to the Independent
(00:45):
Research Project, in its currentform.
Now, the The IndependentResearch Project is a core
feature in many classrooms,especially in upper primary and
secondary.
It's been used as a way forstudents to explore topics of
particular interest to them, andthe intention has been to often
(01:05):
give them practice withcritical thinking skills.
This idea is grounded somewhatin inquiry pedagogy, but also in
some of the ideas around 21stcentury skills that we need to
be building for .
students .
what What research tells us isthat critical and creative
(01:26):
thinking is grounded inknowledge.
The bit that's missing is thatwe have been thinking that we
could give these projects tostudents, and they will be
motivated by the choice andengaged by the opportunity to
follow their own thoughts andinterests, and then they will
(01:47):
naturally come to the learningsomewhat on their own.
The problem with this is that,while we do construct knowledge
over time, as in we add newthings to our existing
understanding, this is acognitive process.
It's not an effective orsuccessful method of teaching,
(02:09):
though for many years we havebeen encouraged to use it and
the name of it has beenconstructivism.
I want you to know that it'sentirely possible to have a
handle on the elements ofliteracy instruction that make
it explicit and robust and yetstill not see how this relates
to other subject areas we teach,and I remember being in that
(02:33):
exact place myself.
The difference between the sortof teacher I am now and the sort
of teacher I was then is that Inow understand the principles
of explicit instruction ratherthan just knowing what they look
like in one particularcurriculum area.
So it's okay to say, "do youknow what, I think I may be a
(02:57):
little stuck in a rut here andit's time to change things".
That's going to feel a littlescary.
We've all been there and beenscared and we need to go there.
We need to continue to go therebecause our students need to
feel supported.
When we give our studentsindependent research projects,
(03:17):
what we are essentially doing isasking them to teach themselves
when they are novices.
The underpinning principles ofcognitive load theory by John
Sweller and many others in thespace reminds us that novice
learners learn best with fullyguided instruction and that for
most of a student's life, allthe way through primary school,
(03:40):
secondary school andundergraduate education, they
are novices in what they arelearning.
And there's another element toconsider here: the role of
emotion in the learning process.
I'm going to share someinsights from David Sousa's
book, How the Brain Learns, nowin its sixth edition, and I've
previously shared this inanother episode of the podcast.
(04:03):
I highly recommend getting acopy for your school to use in
your professional learning work.
It's really easy to read andexplains complex cognitive
processes in a way that we canall understand.
Sousa tells us that there's ahierarchy of response to sensory
input.
"Any input of higher prioritydiminishes the processing of
(04:26):
lower priority data.
The brain's main job is to helpits owner survive, and
emotional data takes highpriority.
When an individual respondsemotionally to a situation, the
older limbic system, stimulatedby the amygdala, takes a major
role and complex cognitiveprocesses are suspended.
(04:48):
So those are direct quotes fromthe book.
In other words, when we feelheightened emotion related to
threat, when we're feelinganxious about being put in the
deep end of a learning situationthat we do not feel prepared
for, any thinking about newlearning is put to one side,
(05:09):
while our brain processes theperceived threat.
Sousa says, "Emotion is apowerful and misunderstood force
in learning and memory.
" Another way of stating thehierarchy is that, before
students will turn theirattention to cognitive learning
or the curriculum, they mustfeel physically safe and
(05:30):
emotionally secure in the schoolenvironment.
I've said for many years thatyou cannot separate learning
from emotions.
They are, in fact, inseparable.
If students don't feelsupported, if they don't feel a
sense of efficacy in their work,they're not going to be able to
engage in what we want them todo, and what we end up seeing is
(05:51):
a range of behaviours that arecounterproductive to strong
learning.
I also need to mention that itdoesn't matter how many times we
say we are here to support you,it's ok if you don't know, or
any of the other things we sayto try and make students feel
better.
If we are not structuring thelearning experience as one that
(06:14):
is safe and secure for students,none of those things that we
say matter.
We, with the best of intentions,can sometimes be responsible
for pushing students into thefight-flight-freeze response
with the tasks we assign.
This looks different fordifferent children.
Some hold it all in giving youa smile on the outside, then
(06:36):
they go home where significantlyterrible things can happen,
such as self-harm, and this hasbeen on the rise in our student
populations for a while now.
Others pick fights withclassmates to get themselves
kicked out of the learningenvironment.
The fight is not just avoidancebecause they don't want to do
work.
We've actually triggered theflight response, which means
(06:58):
they will do whatever it takesto escape that threatening
environment.
Some children argue with youthat's your classic fight, and
the freeze can often look likesitting without demonstrating
any emotion or simply sittingwith a pen in hand for 45
minutes with just three wordswritten at the end of the period
of time.
(07:19):
I look back and I'm more than alittle ashamed at my best
attempts at assignment creationfor Year 5/6 students, but we
all have to acknowledge that wehaven't always had the
information needed to make soundjudgments, and we really do
need to forgive ourselves.
Not brush it off, sit in thefeeling of discomfort, it helps
(07:41):
us find the reason to go on anddo the hard work of improving.
But we can't sit in judgment ofourselves forever.
Nobody is able to move forwardand grow from a place of deficit
.
So recognise when thingshaven't been terrific, own it,
it's good and then make a planfor what's going to happen.
You do not have to changeeverything tomorrow, but we do
(08:04):
need small steps implementedconsistently well for our
students to learn.
A few more points from Sousa: data affecting survival and data (08:09):
undefined
generating emotions areprocessed ahead of data for new
learning, which in school iscalled curriculum.
If we want any chance of ourstudents focusing on strong
learning, we have to create alearning environment and culture
(08:31):
in our schools and classroomsthat says, "it's ok, I've got
you, I'm not going to let you gointo the zone of confusion and
if you're heading there, let meknow, it's my role to adjust how
things are happening so thatyou have desirable stretch and
desirable difficulty, but notoverwhelm.
(08:53):
" But not overwhelm.
I have tutored for the lastalmost 20 years and to my older
students, the secondary studentswho I have tutored, to every
one of them I have said, "it isnot your job to pretend that
everything is okay.
If I'm not making sense, what Ineed you to do is tell me if
(09:14):
this is confusing.
My job is to find a differentway to help you understand.
" And for so many of them, youcan see the relief physically:
the shoulders lower, the facerelax, they lean forward because
they're sitting in this zone ofconfusion for so much of the
time at school and they thinkthat that's just what learning
(09:38):
is like.
It doesn't have to be.
Finally, how a person feelsabout a teaching or learning
situation determines the amountof attention devoted to it.
Emotions interact with reasonto support or inhibit learning.
So this is from Sousa again.
If we feel we have a high levelof self-efficacy, if we feel
(10:01):
empowered, knowledgeable andstrong, we'll pay attention to
learning.
But if we feel out of our depth(this is back to me now), if we
feel out of our depth, thatwe're drowning or approaching
overwhelm, we will disengage andnot pay attention.
And this is as true for adultsas it is for students.
So supporting everybody in theschool as we move through new
(10:25):
phases of learning has to be apriority.
Supporting doesn't mean doingfor, it means creating enabling
structures and supports thathelp people to engage fully,
whether they be student in theclassroom or a teacher at the
front.
Now, the common independentresearch projects that we're
used to could includeinvestigating a country and
(10:47):
geography, that was my oldfallback, or, for older students
, taking an area of thecurriculum and sourcing
knowledge on it from theinternet.
Now, critical thinking is oftenthe justification given for
these projects, along withstudents learning to manage
themselves independently, andoften increased engagement
through personal interest iscited as a reason for this kind
(11:11):
of instruction.
However, if a student is anovice in swimming, we generally
don't let them paddle in theshallow end for a bit and then
just throw them in the deep end.
We make sure they can stayafloat before we ask them to do
harder things, and it needs tobe the same for learning.
But this idea of that commonindependent research practice
(11:36):
where we just let the studentsloose and say go fly free little
people and find knowledge, onlyworks if the students are
coming to the work with anestablished deep level of
knowledge about the topic, ifthey've already acquired all the
skills of independent work and,frankly, if they're not
(11:59):
children.
most children in classrooms,including secondary, require
guidance and explicit teachingto learn deeply and effectively.
They need us, as their teachers, to be their GPS in the
knowledge building journey.
Asking a student to go off andlearn information on their own
is a little bit like giving thema street directory that we've
removed the index from.
Now for those of us on theyounger side, a street directory
(12:21):
is a book full of maps, and ifyou wanted to go somewhere that
you hadn't been to before andyou didn't know the way, you
looked up the street in theindex in the back and then you
located the particular map.
You then had to figure out howto get from the page you were on
in the directory to the pageyou wanted to go.
So for students, it's likewe've taken the index out.
(12:42):
We haven't even told them howto find the end point.
Independent research projectsleave our anxious children, our
children who struggle with focusand our children with literacy
and numeracy difficulties,drowning in a sea of confusion.
I recently read a blog postsuggesting that in mathematics
teaching children should spendmost of their lesson time in the
(13:04):
zone of confusion, and I haveto say that just doesn't make a
whole lot of sense to me.
The zone of confusion is alsothe zone of overwhelm,
disengagement and anxiety, andthis isn't just my opinion.
Cognitive load theory andinformation processing theory
tells us that we need tocarefully manage the load on
(13:25):
students' working memory.
Everything new has to passthrough working memory and be
rehearsed and practiced to getit into long-term memory.
And if things have to beprocessed through working memory
, we can manage about two, maybeat a big stretch, three, novel
bits of information at a time.
So when we ask students toinvestigate a topic of their
(13:46):
choosing, we're basicallyguaranteeing that a good
proportion of students willexperience significant cognitive
overload.
However, my call for an end tothis common practice in its
current form doesn't mean we'renot encouraging students to
think about interesting andmotivating topics.
It doesn't mean we're notteaching children skills of
(14:08):
reading and gatheringinformation.
It doesn't mean we don't expectsome form of you do within the
I do, we do, you do structure.
Of course, all of those thingsare important.
We need to engage students inopportunities to think
critically.
That's essential.
If we're not critical thinkers,we believe everything we're
(14:29):
told, but the core thing thatbuilds the capacity to think
critically is knowledge and asteachers we need to manage that
journey and check forunderstanding all the way
through to make sure that ourstudents are actually building
the knowledge we need them to,to do all of that thinking.
I have an alternative, I'm notjust here to complain.
(14:51):
I think that we can get awin-win within structured
teaching and some student choiceand agency in the work.
We can have high engagement,high levels of interest and
learn important skills withoutthrowing students completely
into the deep end and waitingfor them to sink or swim.
We also don't have to structureevery single thing so that the
(15:15):
tasks the students produce atthe end are cookie cutter and
you can't tell one from theother.
But I'd like us to think alittle bit about the sinking
thing.
For many of our students, thosewho struggle with anxiety,
reading difficulties,communication challenges, focus
issues or anything else thatimpacts self-esteem, they've
They've been sinking thinkingfor years.
(15:35):
It's our role to build trustwith and for them.
You may have heard me saybefore,.
explicit Explicit teaching issaying to the students, students
I've got you right here in myhands, hands and if you've seen
me live, I actually put my twohands cupped next to each other
and say, say it's ok okay,you're going to be ok okay, and
(15:57):
that's a critical question toask when reflecting on our
curriculum, organisation andtasks.
Are we holding studentscarefully in our hands so they
can trust us with theirvulnerability, to take some
learning risks to stretch outfrom where they are now, or are
we throwing them in the deep end?
I'm not talking about babyingand children, I'm talking about
(16:19):
managing the learningenvironment.
so So there is desirabledifficulty and appropriate
stretch, not overwhelm.
So what's my solution,?
I hear you ask.
Well, let me unpack a couple ofideas for you.
Let's look at alternatives tothe independent research project
that still enables students,particularly in years five to
ten, to explain of interest andstretch a little without that
(16:43):
deep end I've mentioned.
Withina text-based unit, so a
literature unit in EnglishEnglish, One one approach that
we've used is to have teacherswork together to plan and do
some of the teaching .
when When working with a schooland coaching teams in writing
their own literature unitsunits, This this has been
particularly useful for teachingpersuasive speeches, for
(17:05):
example.
So we've had two year, 5/6teachers both teaching their
students about persuasivespeeches in their own classrooms
.
They teach all the vocabulary,building the knowledge, building
the speech structuresstructures, the language
functions, all the backgroundknowledge and skills required to
write a persuasive text,including examining exemplars
(17:26):
and discussing them as workedexamples.
All that deep work is done inyour own classroom.
When it's time for students towrite their own speeches, and
because it's in text based units, it's a good idea to have both
reading and writing as a focushere, here's where we create
that win-win of student choiceand teacher guidance.
So the teachers work togetherand create a list of a couple of
(17:50):
ideas for topics that theythink may be appropriate for the
students, and then the studentscollectively suggest a couple
more.
So you may end up with a listof five or six potential topics
on the board.
Then get both classes togetherand all the students vote on
their favourite ideas,continuing until you've narrowed
the list to two.
You've distilled your list fromfive or six and now you're
(18:15):
ready for the next part of theunit.
When students begin writingtheir speeches, they split up
during English time, so oneteacher manages one topic group
and the other teacher managesthe other.
This enables students to havechoice over their speech topic,
but also allows teachers toensure that students have the
(18:35):
required knowledge of that topic.
So these topics could besocietal issues, school issues,
whatever's appropriate and willwork for that group of students.
The teacher then activelybuilds the knowledge of the
issue with those students over alesson or two.
When it's time to write,teachers use differentiated
(18:56):
strategies to provideappropriate support for
different students.
Those who can writeindependently do so, while
students who need step-by-stepsupport receive it.
Then students read theirspeeches to each other back in
their own classrooms, meaningyou have a range of topics being
presented, not just cookiecutter speeches being delivered.
(19:16):
This win-win approach can beapplied to various curriculum
areas.
But before I elaborate, let meaddress the question: what if
you have a super bright studentin the gifted space who wants to
explore a topic outside of thetwo that were voted on?
Well, I would imagine you wouldlet them.
The difference here is we'retalking about desirable
(19:37):
difficulty and appropriatestretch for all students in the
class.
Having one teacher-guided topicthat they apply their learning
to might be too much scaffoldingfor a gifted student.
If a student can manage towrite a speech on a different
topic, let them.
They probably have knowledge intheir heads that other students
don't have anyway.
Just make sure that you'refact-checking what they're
(20:00):
including and find a way tosupport them in exploring the
topic.
It's fine for that student,it's just not appropriate for
everybody.
Let's think about applying thiswin-win thinking to other
curriculum areas.
So in HASS, or Humanities andSocial Sciences, whether you're
exploring history, economics,business or geography, you, as
(20:20):
the teacher, can teach the deepknowledge students need about
the topic.
Make sure they have thevocabulary, make sure you check
for understanding throughout,build their knowledge so they
understand what's happening andthen explore the topic from a
couple of different perspectives.
This is deep learning, not justa few weeks of disconnected
(20:41):
tasks one after the other.
So, for example, if you'reteaching about climate change
and rainfall impacts, there's alot of knowledge to build and
many different perspectives toexplore.
You spend time doing that withstudents, ensuring they
understand, and only then mightyou have them work with a real
world problem to suggestsolutions or think critically
(21:02):
about.
At that point students mightadopt particular perspectives,
the farmer versus the factoryowner versus the consumer versus
the politician.
If they have the knowledge todo that, they could choose which
perspective to write from.
See the difference?
We still have teacher guidanceand we still have student choice
(21:24):
, but the teacher has made sureeveryone has the prerequisite
skills and knowledge beforeasking them to produce something
independently.
Let's switch back to Englishbefore we finish up.
After exploring a textthoroughly, unpacking the
characters, discussing how theauthor brought the story to life
and teaching about languagefeatures, structures and
(21:46):
functions, and checking that thestudents understand, not just
assuming they do because you'vedone it, you could take a scene
from the book and ask studentsto choose a character through
which to explore and unpack thescene.
Again, we have student choice,but we aren't throwing them in
the deep end.
(22:06):
And for that gifted student,well, they might take the
perspective of a character notintroduced in the book at all,
someone a step removed orbriefly mentioned in the text.
Perhaps the character we caninfer would exist but hasn't
been directly explored in thestory.
We don't have to abandoncritical thinking and
(22:27):
perspective taking.
We don't have to abandonstudent voice or student agency.
What we need to do is ensurethat these elements are
implemented in ways that supportcognitive load.
It really is time for theindependent research task in its
current form to be banished tothe archives.
(22:49):
If you're still unsure afterhearing this episode, I want to
ask you a question.
At University, when you werestudying for your teaching
degree, what did assignmentslook like?
Were you asked to come up withyour own topic, or were you
presented with knowledge,information and vocabulary and
asked to answer one of severalpre-developed questions?
(23:09):
That's how it was for me.
I wasn't handed a task thatsaid go figure out what you
might like to do.
Even as adults, we're not askedto do those things without high
levels of support.
In University, if we want toexplore a question that isn't
one the lecturer has presented,we have to get it approved to
ensure we're on the right trackand we'll be successful.
(23:30):
And yet somehow we expect ourstudents to do things we don't
even ask adults to do.
When we think about it likethat and consider student
emotions and what it takes to besuccessful, I think there's no
question that these independentresearch tasks in their current
format really have to go, butteachers need support to
(23:52):
consider alternatives, andthat's what I hope you get from
this podcast episode.
As always, I hope that teachingis enjoyable and invigorating
for you and that you can workwith that sense of purpose of
improving children's lives thatwe all aim for.
We can't do it on our own.
Together, everyone really doesachieve more, and on that note
(24:16):
I'm going to say happy teachingeveryone.
I'll see you next time.
Bye.
Hello and welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast,
I'm Jocelyn and I'm recordinghere in Tasmania, on the lands
of the Palawa people.
A couple of episodes ago, Ishared a simple tool with you
that can help you gain clarityon what you're teaching and
structure successful learningopportunities for your students,
and that tool was theCurriculum Organiser.
(00:22):
If you didn't hear that episode, go back to season five,
episode 12, the Secret Weaponfor Effective Retrieval Practice
.
Today, I'd like to go a littlefurther in discussing what it
takes to set students up forsuccess by making what might be
a controversial declaration.
I think it's time we saidgoodbye to the Independent
(00:45):
Research Project, in its currentform.
Now, the The IndependentResearch Project is a core
feature in many classrooms,especially in upper primary and
secondary.
It's been used as a way forstudents to explore topics of
particular interest to them, andthe intention has been to often
(01:05):
give them practice withcritical thinking skills.
This idea is grounded somewhatin inquiry pedagogy, but also in
some of the ideas around 21stcentury skills that we need to
be building for .
students .
what What research tells us isthat critical and creative
(01:26):
thinking is grounded inknowledge.
The bit that's missing is thatwe have been thinking that we
could give these projects tostudents, and they will be
motivated by the choice andengaged by the opportunity to
follow their own thoughts andinterests, and then they will
(01:47):
naturally come to the learningsomewhat on their own.
The problem with this is that,while we do construct knowledge
over time, as in we add newthings to our existing
understanding, this is acognitive process.
It's not an effective orsuccessful method of teaching,
(02:09):
though for many years we havebeen encouraged to use it and
the name of it has beenconstructivism.
I want you to know that it'sentirely possible to have a
handle on the elements ofliteracy instruction that make
it explicit and robust and yetstill not see how this relates
to other subject areas we teach,and I remember being in that
(02:33):
exact place myself.
The difference between the sortof teacher I am now and the sort
of teacher I was then is that Inow understand the principles
of explicit instruction ratherthan just knowing what they look
like in one particularcurriculum area.
So it's okay to say, "do youknow what, I think I may be a
(02:57):
little stuck in a rut here andit's time to change things".
That's going to feel a littlescary.
We've all been there and beenscared and we need to go there.
We need to continue to go therebecause our students need to
feel supported.
When we give our studentsindependent research projects,
(03:17):
what we are essentially doing isasking them to teach themselves
when they are novices.
The underpinning principles ofcognitive load theory by John
Sweller and many others in thespace reminds us that novice
learners learn best with fullyguided instruction and that for
most of a student's life, allthe way through primary school,
(03:40):
secondary school andundergraduate education, they
are novices in what they arelearning.
And there's another element toconsider here: the role of
emotion in the learning process.
I'm going to share someinsights from David Sousa's
book, How the Brain Learns, nowin its sixth edition, and I've
previously shared this inanother episode of the podcast.
(04:03):
I highly recommend getting acopy for your school to use in
your professional learning work.
It's really easy to read andexplains complex cognitive
processes in a way that we canall understand.
Sousa tells us that there's ahierarchy of response to sensory
input.
"Any input of higher prioritydiminishes the processing of
(04:26):
lower priority data.
The brain's main job is to helpits owner survive, and
emotional data takes highpriority.
When an individual respondsemotionally to a situation, the
older limbic system, stimulatedby the amygdala, takes a major
role and complex cognitiveprocesses are suspended.
(04:48):
So those are direct quotes fromthe book.
In other words, when we feelheightened emotion related to
threat, when we're feelinganxious about being put in the
deep end of a learning situationthat we do not feel prepared
for, any thinking about newlearning is put to one side,
(05:09):
while our brain processes theperceived threat.
Sousa says, "Emotion is apowerful and misunderstood force
in learning and memory.
" Another way of stating thehierarchy is that, before
students will turn theirattention to cognitive learning
or the curriculum, they mustfeel physically safe and
(05:30):
emotionally secure in the schoolenvironment.
I've said for many years thatyou cannot separate learning
from emotions.
They are, in fact, inseparable.
If students don't feelsupported, if they don't feel a
sense of efficacy in their work,they're not going to be able to
engage in what we want them todo, and what we end up seeing is
(05:51):
a range of behaviours that arecounterproductive to strong
learning.
I also need to mention that itdoesn't matter how many times we
say we are here to support you,it's ok if you don't know, or
any of the other things we sayto try and make students feel
better.
If we are not structuring thelearning experience as one that
(06:14):
is safe and secure for students,none of those things that we
say matter.
We, with the best of intentions,can sometimes be responsible
for pushing students into thefight-flight-freeze response
with the tasks we assign.
This looks different fordifferent children.
Some hold it all in giving youa smile on the outside, then
(06:36):
they go home where significantlyterrible things can happen,
such as self-harm, and this hasbeen on the rise in our student
populations for a while now.
Others pick fights withclassmates to get themselves
kicked out of the learningenvironment.
The fight is not just avoidancebecause they don't want to do
work.
We've actually triggered theflight response, which means
(06:58):
they will do whatever it takesto escape that threatening
environment.
Some children argue with youthat's your classic fight, and
the freeze can often look likesitting without demonstrating
any emotion or simply sittingwith a pen in hand for 45
minutes with just three wordswritten at the end of the period
of time.
(07:19):
I look back and I'm more than alittle ashamed at my best
attempts at assignment creationfor Year 5/6 students, but we
all have to acknowledge that wehaven't always had the
information needed to make soundjudgments, and we really do
need to forgive ourselves.
Not brush it off, sit in thefeeling of discomfort, it helps
(07:41):
us find the reason to go on anddo the hard work of improving.
But we can't sit in judgment ofourselves forever.
Nobody is able to move forwardand grow from a place of deficit
.
So recognise when thingshaven't been terrific, own it,
it's good and then make a planfor what's going to happen.
You do not have to changeeverything tomorrow, but we do
(08:04):
need small steps implementedconsistently well for our
students to learn.
A few more points from Sousa: data affecting survival and data (08:09):
undefined
generating emotions areprocessed ahead of data for new
learning, which in school iscalled curriculum.
If we want any chance of ourstudents focusing on strong
learning, we have to create alearning environment and culture
(08:31):
in our schools and classroomsthat says, "it's ok, I've got
you, I'm not going to let you gointo the zone of confusion and
if you're heading there, let meknow, it's my role to adjust how
things are happening so thatyou have desirable stretch and
desirable difficulty, but notoverwhelm.
(08:53):
" But not overwhelm.
I have tutored for the lastalmost 20 years and to my older
students, the secondary studentswho I have tutored, to every
one of them I have said, "it isnot your job to pretend that
everything is okay.
If I'm not making sense, what Ineed you to do is tell me if
(09:14):
this is confusing.
My job is to find a differentway to help you understand.
" And for so many of them, youcan see the relief physically:
the shoulders lower, the facerelax, they lean forward because
they're sitting in this zone ofconfusion for so much of the
time at school and they thinkthat that's just what learning
(09:38):
is like.
It doesn't have to be.
Finally, how a person feelsabout a teaching or learning
situation determines the amountof attention devoted to it.
Emotions interact with reasonto support or inhibit learning.
So this is from Sousa again.
If we feel we have a high levelof self-efficacy, if we feel
(10:01):
empowered, knowledgeable andstrong, we'll pay attention to
learning.
But if we feel out of our depth(this is back to me now), if we
feel out of our depth, thatwe're drowning or approaching
overwhelm, we will disengage andnot pay attention.
And this is as true for adultsas it is for students.
So supporting everybody in theschool as we move through new
(10:25):
phases of learning has to be apriority.
Supporting doesn't mean doingfor, it means creating enabling
structures and supports thathelp people to engage fully,
whether they be student in theclassroom or a teacher at the
front.
Now, the common independentresearch projects that we're
used to could includeinvestigating a country and
(10:47):
geography, that was my oldfallback, or, for older students
, taking an area of thecurriculum and sourcing
knowledge on it from theinternet.
Now, critical thinking is oftenthe justification given for
these projects, along withstudents learning to manage
themselves independently, andoften increased engagement
through personal interest iscited as a reason for this kind
(11:11):
of instruction.
However, if a student is anovice in swimming, we generally
don't let them paddle in theshallow end for a bit and then
just throw them in the deep end.
We make sure they can stayafloat before we ask them to do
harder things, and it needs tobe the same for learning.
But this idea of that commonindependent research practice
(11:36):
where we just let the studentsloose and say go fly free little
people and find knowledge, onlyworks if the students are
coming to the work with anestablished deep level of
knowledge about the topic, ifthey've already acquired all the
skills of independent work and,frankly, if they're not
(11:59):
children.
most children in classrooms,including secondary, require
guidance and explicit teachingto learn deeply and effectively.
They need us, as their teachers, to be their GPS in the
knowledge building journey.
Asking a student to go off andlearn information on their own
is a little bit like giving thema street directory that we've
removed the index from.
Now for those of us on theyounger side, a street directory
(12:21):
is a book full of maps, and ifyou wanted to go somewhere that
you hadn't been to before andyou didn't know the way, you
looked up the street in theindex in the back and then you
located the particular map.
You then had to figure out howto get from the page you were on
in the directory to the pageyou wanted to go.
So for students, it's likewe've taken the index out.
(12:42):
We haven't even told them howto find the end point.
Independent research projectsleave our anxious children, our
children who struggle with focusand our children with literacy
and numeracy difficulties,drowning in a sea of confusion.
I recently read a blog postsuggesting that in mathematics
teaching children should spendmost of their lesson time in the
(13:04):
zone of confusion, and I haveto say that just doesn't make a
whole lot of sense to me.
The zone of confusion is alsothe zone of overwhelm,
disengagement and anxiety, andthis isn't just my opinion.
Cognitive load theory andinformation processing theory
tells us that we need tocarefully manage the load on
(13:25):
students' working memory.
Everything new has to passthrough working memory and be
rehearsed and practiced to getit into long-term memory.
And if things have to beprocessed through working memory
, we can manage about two, maybeat a big stretch, three, novel
bits of information at a time.
So when we ask students toinvestigate a topic of their
(13:46):
choosing, we're basicallyguaranteeing that a good
proportion of students willexperience significant cognitive
overload.
However, my call for an end tothis common practice in its
current form doesn't mean we'renot encouraging students to
think about interesting andmotivating topics.
It doesn't mean we're notteaching children skills of
(14:08):
reading and gatheringinformation.
It doesn't mean we don't expectsome form of you do within the
I do, we do, you do structure.
Of course, all of those thingsare important.
We need to engage students inopportunities to think
critically.
That's essential.
If we're not critical thinkers,we believe everything we're
(14:29):
told, but the core thing thatbuilds the capacity to think
critically is knowledge and asteachers we need to manage that
journey and check forunderstanding all the way
through to make sure that ourstudents are actually building
the knowledge we need them to,to do all of that thinking.
I have an alternative, I'm notjust here to complain.
(14:51):
I think that we can get awin-win within structured
teaching and some student choiceand agency in the work.
We can have high engagement,high levels of interest and
learn important skills withoutthrowing students completely
into the deep end and waitingfor them to sink or swim.
We also don't have to structureevery single thing so that the
(15:15):
tasks the students produce atthe end are cookie cutter and
you can't tell one from theother.
But I'd like us to think alittle bit about the sinking
thing.
For many of our students, thosewho struggle with anxiety,
reading difficulties,communication challenges, focus
issues or anything else thatimpacts self-esteem, they've
They've been sinking thinkingfor years.
(15:35):
It's our role to build trustwith and for them.
You may have heard me saybefore,.
explicit Explicit teaching issaying to the students, students
I've got you right here in myhands, hands and if you've seen
me live, I actually put my twohands cupped next to each other
and say, say it's ok okay,you're going to be ok okay, and
(15:57):
that's a critical question toask when reflecting on our
curriculum, organisation andtasks.
Are we holding studentscarefully in our hands so they
can trust us with theirvulnerability, to take some
learning risks to stretch outfrom where they are now, or are
we throwing them in the deep end?
I'm not talking about babyingand children, I'm talking about
(16:19):
managing the learningenvironment.
so So there is desirabledifficulty and appropriate
stretch, not overwhelm.
So what's my solution,?
I hear you ask.
Well, let me unpack a couple ofideas for you.
Let's look at alternatives tothe independent research project
that still enables students,particularly in years five to
ten, to explain of interest andstretch a little without that
(16:43):
deep end I've mentioned.
Withina text-based unit, so a
literature unit in EnglishEnglish, One one approach that
we've used is to have teacherswork together to plan and do
some of the teaching .
when When working with a schooland coaching teams in writing
their own literature unitsunits, This this has been
particularly useful for teachingpersuasive speeches, for
(17:05):
example.
So we've had two year, 5/6teachers both teaching their
students about persuasivespeeches in their own classrooms
.
They teach all the vocabulary,building the knowledge, building
the speech structuresstructures, the language
functions, all the backgroundknowledge and skills required to
write a persuasive text,including examining exemplars
(17:26):
and discussing them as workedexamples.
All that deep work is done inyour own classroom.
When it's time for students towrite their own speeches, and
because it's in text based units, it's a good idea to have both
reading and writing as a focushere, here's where we create
that win-win of student choiceand teacher guidance.
So the teachers work togetherand create a list of a couple of
(17:50):
ideas for topics that theythink may be appropriate for the
students, and then the studentscollectively suggest a couple
more.
So you may end up with a listof five or six potential topics
on the board.
Then get both classes togetherand all the students vote on
their favourite ideas,continuing until you've narrowed
the list to two.
You've distilled your list fromfive or six and now you're
(18:15):
ready for the next part of theunit.
When students begin writingtheir speeches, they split up
during English time, so oneteacher manages one topic group
and the other teacher managesthe other.
This enables students to havechoice over their speech topic,
but also allows teachers toensure that students have the
(18:35):
required knowledge of that topic.
So these topics could besocietal issues, school issues,
whatever's appropriate and willwork for that group of students.
The teacher then activelybuilds the knowledge of the
issue with those students over alesson or two.
When it's time to write,teachers use differentiated
(18:56):
strategies to provideappropriate support for
different students.
Those who can writeindependently do so, while
students who need step-by-stepsupport receive it.
Then students read theirspeeches to each other back in
their own classrooms, meaningyou have a range of topics being
presented, not just cookiecutter speeches being delivered.
(19:16):
This win-win approach can beapplied to various curriculum
areas.
But before I elaborate, let meaddress the question: what if
you have a super bright studentin the gifted space who wants to
explore a topic outside of thetwo that were voted on?
Well, I would imagine you wouldlet them.
The difference here is we'retalking about desirable
(19:37):
difficulty and appropriatestretch for all students in the
class.
Having one teacher-guided topicthat they apply their learning
to might be too much scaffoldingfor a gifted student.
If a student can manage towrite a speech on a different
topic, let them.
They probably have knowledge intheir heads that other students
don't have anyway.
Just make sure that you'refact-checking what they're
(20:00):
including and find a way tosupport them in exploring the
topic.
It's fine for that student,it's just not appropriate for
everybody.
Let's think about applying thiswin-win thinking to other
curriculum areas.
So in HASS, or Humanities andSocial Sciences, whether you're
exploring history, economics,business or geography, you, as
(20:20):
the teacher, can teach the deepknowledge students need about
the topic.
Make sure they have thevocabulary, make sure you check
for understanding throughout,build their knowledge so they
understand what's happening andthen explore the topic from a
couple of different perspectives.
This is deep learning, not justa few weeks of disconnected
(20:41):
tasks one after the other.
So, for example, if you'reteaching about climate change
and rainfall impacts, there's alot of knowledge to build and
many different perspectives toexplore.
You spend time doing that withstudents, ensuring they
understand, and only then mightyou have them work with a real
world problem to suggestsolutions or think critically
(21:02):
about.
At that point students mightadopt particular perspectives,
the farmer versus the factoryowner versus the consumer versus
the politician.
If they have the knowledge todo that, they could choose which
perspective to write from.
See the difference?
We still have teacher guidanceand we still have student choice
(21:24):
, but the teacher has made sureeveryone has the prerequisite
skills and knowledge beforeasking them to produce something
independently.
Let's switch back to Englishbefore we finish up.
After exploring a textthoroughly, unpacking the
characters, discussing how theauthor brought the story to life
and teaching about languagefeatures, structures and
(21:46):
functions, and checking that thestudents understand, not just
assuming they do because you'vedone it, you could take a scene
from the book and ask studentsto choose a character through
which to explore and unpack thescene.
Again, we have student choice,but we aren't throwing them in
the deep end.
(22:06):
And for that gifted student,well, they might take the
perspective of a character notintroduced in the book at all,
someone a step removed orbriefly mentioned in the text.
Perhaps the character we caninfer would exist but hasn't
been directly explored in thestory.
We don't have to abandoncritical thinking and
(22:27):
perspective taking.
We don't have to abandonstudent voice or student agency.
What we need to do is ensurethat these elements are
implemented in ways that supportcognitive load.
It really is time for theindependent research task in its
current form to be banished tothe archives.
(22:49):
If you're still unsure afterhearing this episode, I want to
ask you a question.
At University, when you werestudying for your teaching
degree, what did assignmentslook like?
Were you asked to come up withyour own topic, or were you
presented with knowledge,information and vocabulary and
asked to answer one of severalpre-developed questions?
(23:09):
That's how it was for me.
I wasn't handed a task thatsaid go figure out what you
might like to do.
Even as adults, we're not askedto do those things without high
levels of support.
In University, if we want toexplore a question that isn't
one the lecturer has presented,we have to get it approved to
ensure we're on the right trackand we'll be successful.
(23:30):
And yet somehow we expect ourstudents to do things we don't
even ask adults to do.
When we think about it likethat and consider student
emotions and what it takes to besuccessful, I think there's no
question that these independentresearch tasks in their current
format really have to go, butteachers need support to
(23:52):
consider alternatives, andthat's what I hope you get from
this podcast episode.
As always, I hope that teachingis enjoyable and invigorating
for you and that you can workwith that sense of purpose of
improving children's lives thatwe all aim for.
We can't do it on our own.
Together, everyone really doesachieve more, and on that note
(24:16):
I'm going to say happy teachingeveryone.
I'll see you next time.
Bye.
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