Sticky Learning

Interactive notebooks have been on our radar for several years now. In most classrooms, you'll see INB's full of information, from guided notes to cut-and-glued anchor charts. INB's are often used as a resource for students to reference when reviewing content, however, they have potential to be so much more! How can we help students process what they put in their INB's? The answer is OUTPUT. Instead of simply filling notebook pages with information, have your students take time to process that information and leave some sort of output on the page.  Here is an example of a common INB entry. Student A glued in a diagram and filled in the blanks with teacher guidance. Is this learning likely to stick? Probably not.  Now take a look at Student B's notebook. The same diagram was used, however, Student B then talked to a partner about a real-life example of this process and wrote about it in his own words.   Including output in interactive notebooks gives students a chanc...

  A stick-it-together mat is a collaborative tool that allows students to have individual processing time before they engage in discussion with a group. After introducing students to new content, the teacher pauses and poses a question so that students can digest what they have learned. The students take a few minutes to review their notes and compose an individual answer on a post-it note. In small groups, students place their response on the mat and take turns sharing their answer. Once all group members have shared, the group works together to come to a consensus on what the best, most complete answer to the question is.  When using this strategy, it is imperative that there are group roles and procedures in place that ensure individual accountability, as well as cooperative learning.  Beyond giving students time to process and discuss content, it is even more likely that learning will stick if the question posed by the teacher asks the students to make a connection. B...

"Try something new. No one will die." Principal Kristin Phillips challenges the traditional mass learning approach to teaching one-and-done units. She explains (rather hilariously) how our brains retain information and how we can apply this to our teaching.  Her real-world examples will leave you reconsidering WHY we teach the way we do and WHAT we can do about it.  What if we tried something new to get learning to stick? 

Have you ever found yourself reviewing for a test at the end of a unit and wondering if it's possible that all 20 of your students suffer from short-term memory loss?  Do you ever hear your colleagues say things like this? "Obviously, no one taught fractions in third grade last year, because my students have no idea what a fraction is." Why is it that we can remember every word to a song from 20 years ago, but not recall the date the American Revolution began?  Consider this: there is a difference between having been taught something and having learned something . Read that again! There IS a difference...and that difference is "sticky learning."  Sticky learning, or Velcro learning, is a term coined in the education world that simply refers to teaching in a way that enables students to move information from working memory to long-term memory. Leah Chang (2019) says that, " stickiness refers to how the brain learns and retains information." It is cri...