Sam Altarac retweetledi
Why is education so damn fad-prone? My latest looks at our field's worst habit: its endless enthusiasm for shiny new things instead of sticking with what works.
thenext30years.substack.com/p/why-is-educa…
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Sam Altarac
4.7K posts
Sam Altarac
@SamAltarac
HS Math & Science teacher | Math & Science education consultant | CogSci | Here to learn.
Montréal, Québec Katılım Nisan 2012
1.4K Takip Edilen587 Takipçiler
Sam Altarac retweetledi
If you teach anyone at all, and you don't know about @helenrey's CogSci book summaries, you are missing out. It's a wonderful resource summarizing the most important books on cognitive science: bit.ly/3Q7dEnG
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
I used to think that cognitive load theory explains 90% of the problems we have in teaching and learning. I no longer think that.
It's 99%.
Anna Stokke@rastokke
Reflecting on the multiple-strategy approach to teaching basic math operations: it creates confusion & cognitive overload, but it also comes with an opportunity cost. If so much time is spent on multiple strategies, when do students actually become fluent with any one of them?
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
We're actually at the high-water mark of admitting this. Just substitute "Hirsch was right" any time someone says "knowledge-rich curriculum" (its advocates tend not to acknowledge or are ignorant of their debt to Hirsch). But the hurdles to effective implementation remain high.
Joshua D Phillips@JoshPhillipsPhD
I wish the educational system would just admit that E.D. Hirsch was right and then structure the curriculum accordingly.
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
This is a REMARKABLE book.
The breadth and depth are breathtaking.
To find out what has a good likelihood of working in your classroom and why that might be, this research-informed +nuanced book is for you!
Thanks so much @hruizmartin!
Summary here: itsalearningcurve.education/cogsci-book-su…
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
I could say I’m surprised. But I’d be lying.
Marc Porter Magee 🎓@marcportermagee
Education research the least likely to replicate according to a huge new paper published by Nature
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
Ever had a student ace a test on Friday and forget everything by Monday?
In this clip @KimberlyBerens5 explains exactly why that happens: we are measuring the wrong thing.
Accuracy is a false ceiling. If we want learning to actually stick we need to focus on true fluency. Watch the clip to hear why fluency is the only functional measure of mastery and how it leads to retention, application and endurance.
Catch our full chat on the latest episode of Knowledge for Teachers! 🎧👇
learnwithlee.net/s04e05-dr-kimb…
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
I'd never heard of Paolo Freire until ed school. I realized instantly he had nothing useful to say to me as a South Bronx teacher. It's a sin he still gets assigned, not because it indoctrinates teachers, but because it wastes their time.
Tom Bennett OBE@tombennett71
A classic from the vaults
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
You cannot teach critical thinking. You can teach domain specific expertise, which enables you to think critically about that domain. Brilliant chess players do not make great military commanders.
More problematically, people who think they have great critical thinking skills are often the ones who get hoodwinked by any fashionable idea, because they lack the domain expertise to interrogate nonsense.
James Melville 🚜@JamesMelville
“I think critical thinking should be a school subject. I've always encouraged my kids to question absolutely everything.” ~ @sequi_simon Completely agree. Critical thinking should be on the school curriculum. But governments hate critical thinkers.
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
So good
Daniel Willingham@DTWillingham
New article from E. D. Hirsch and me on (1) the evidence for the importance of knowledge in reading; (2) why it’s taken so long for people to acknowledge the evidence; (3) what we predict if the role of knowledge is taken seriously. educationnext.org/rediscovering-…
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
“Our lack of a systematic, sequential, and shared curriculum induces low literacy and low wisdom. That poses a deep danger to civic competence and thus to democracy itself.”
Daniel Willingham@DTWillingham
New article from E. D. Hirsch and me on (1) the evidence for the importance of knowledge in reading; (2) why it’s taken so long for people to acknowledge the evidence; (3) what we predict if the role of knowledge is taken seriously. educationnext.org/rediscovering-…
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
It's not just phonics: Schools have failed to teach reading because they ignore 50+ years of findings in cognitive psychology that reading depends on general knowledge. ED Hirsch has been banging this drum for a long time but Ed Schools shut their ears because the whole idea was unromantic & had a vaguely right-wing aroma. Now he joins with Dan Willingham to make a strong case that kids can't read if they don't have the background knowledge that makes sense of the rarer vocabulary, allusions, and understandings that allow us to read between the lines - which all reading requires. educationnext.org/rediscovering-…
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
NEW BLOG. Impressively wrong- why Alfie Kohn's advice on behaviour management is not good behaviourguru.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/impres…
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
Priceless this paragraph by @tombennett71 about Alfie Kohn. I've read it several times and have to chuckle each time I do. Thanks for putting a smile on my face today!!
Tom Bennett OBE@tombennett71
NEW BLOG. Impressively wrong- why Alfie Kohn's advice on behaviour management is not good behaviourguru.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/impres…
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
Struggling readers don’t catch up with easier books.
In fact, they often fall further behind.
Less complex text =
• less vocabulary exposure
• less syntax development
• less knowledge building
The gap doesn’t close. It widens.
Better inputs → better readers.
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
When Dr. Comer said “no significant learning can occur without a significant relationship”, he wasn’t talking about the relationship between teacher and students.
He was talking about the relationship between student and the content.
How do I know? I asked him.
theeffortfuleducator.com/2018/05/09/rel…
k@alfkkifine
unpopular relationships opinions that would get you in this position???
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
Sadly this is what passes for science of learning in many us schools.
Dylan Wiliam@dylanwiliam
@Principal_Jon Students can't learn from teachers they don't like You only use 10% of your brain The cone (or pyramid, or triangle) of learning For more, take a look at "Instructional illusions" by Kirschner, Hendrick and Heal (I liked it so much I wrote a foreword for it).
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
@C_Hendrick Also, the way that most people use the term "forgotten" refers to retrieval strength. What we are often unaware of is the way that things we learned long ago are still there, just waiting to be reactivated...
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Sam Altarac retweetledi
“Students don’t need synthetic phonics instruction. They need good books to discover their own love of reading.”
“Students don’t need to memorize their math facts. They need authentic problems to discover the joy of math.”
Same exact vibes. Same exact mistake.
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I don’t remember if it was @adamboxer1 or @Doug_Lemov, someone explained this as a form of “opting out” of class - they know if they wait long enough, the teacher will just give the answer and they won’t have to think too hard. @rastokke called it being “cognitive misers” - the brain wants to use the least effort at all times.
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I was soooo skeptical of this and I tried it in earnest this week (granted small group) and damned if it didn’t work like @sharemath said. I knew they were so reliant on the teacher eventually giving them the answer and I knew they’d been taught it… so I wrote the problem in the steps silently and paused without filling in for them
It’s such a proof point of CLT
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No literally the strategy I’ve been using the most lately is: does looking at the notes you just took answer that
Violeta𓅓@MamanLunettes
Half my effectiveness in teaching math is just answering students’ questions with “look at it again, think about it” and then stopping for a good minute of silence. Most students coming from high school don’t have the habit and it takes some time to teach it but it’s v impactful
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