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Lots of questions from teachers and school leaders about TLAC 3.0.�� What’s new about it? If I’ve got 2.0 already, is 3.0 worth the trouble?

IMO it is, obviously. The new version includes five years worth of further insight…insight that’s shaped by amazing teachers and my incredible team of colleagues. But you’re right to want more specifics than that so here’s a brief guide to What’s New in TLAC 3.0:

Two completely new chapters:

One of the key themes of the new version of the book is decision-making.�� My goal was to support teachers in using the techniques effectively, to choose and adapt the right move at the right time. A big part of that is having a larger��mental model��of how learning happens. Chapter 1 endeavors to provide that. It describes five key ideas teachers should always be thinking about to maximize learning and discusses how they influence instructional choices. The first idea is the differing roles of Working and Long-term Memory; the second is the power of habits to ‘hack working memory�� and allow students to focus on the important things; the third is the pervasive importance of “selective attention”–guiding what students focus on and think about; the fourth is student motivation- the ways it is profoundly social and why students�� perceptions of classrooms norms is so important; the fifth is�� the importance of relationships- my discussion focuses on it in ways that some teachers might find surprising: for example the adage that students ‘won’t care about what you teach until they know that you care�� is deceptive because teaching students well is one of the most effective ways to show you care about them.

Chapter 2, also brand new, is about preparation, which is different from planning. Planning focuses on what you’ll teach and preparation on how. For example, if you are teaching the same lesson to your third period class and your fifth period class and one group is reluctant and reserved and one energetic and sometimes prone to getting carried away, you would prepare the same lesson differently�� you’d want to draw third period out a bit and focus fifth period when necessary. That would mean different tools. You’d prepare differently. I also apply the ideas from chapter 1. One of the best ways to be “present�� when students answer your questions, for example, and to hear what they say accurately, is to clear your own working memory by writing out an ‘exemplar’–an ideal student answer–and keeping it with you during the lesson.

Extensive discussion of research connecting the techniques to cognitive and social sciences:

This has been as long time coming. I’ve always seen the techniques I’ve learned from teachers as being aligned to what the science tells us but I haven’t been explicit enough in sharing those connections and teachers were right to ask for it. In this version of the book I’ve tried t do that much more explicitly.

Extensive discussions and reflections on the book’s place in the larger context of an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion:

Again teachers are right to have questions. The new version of the book starts with a preface that explains what my team and i believe about a just and equitable classroom and how schools can and must pursue those aims. I want teachers whose version of social justice includes holding high expectations for the students we love to feel clear and confident about how to accomplish that. And it’s a topic I take up extensively throughout. Many of the techniques are almost twice as long as they were previously so I could explain the connection more clearly. In some cases I re-named techniques to make their emphasis and purpose clearer and to prevent misapplications and misunderstandings that might come at a cost to students.

“Keystone�� videos:

One long standing challenge of using video to demonstrate teaching techniques is that it can distort them even while it displays them. You show a series of small moments in sharp detail and it’s easy to miss all of the other things that might happen around them during class.�� In this version of the book I’ve included more than a dozen longer running clips that show ten minutes or so of a teacher’s lesson, relatively uncut, so you can see how the techniques fit together and build a larger ethos of love and rigor. These are also ideal for master teachers to use to refine their own style and decision-making in the classroom.

A dozen new techniques

The 3.0 version has gone from 62 to 63 techniques but don’t be fooled. Sprinkled throughout are more than a dozen new techniques. They include a few, like Retrieval Practice and Knowledge Organizers, that help teachers use background knowledge more effectively.�� There are several such as Phrasing Fundamentals and Means of Participation that help teachers ask questions more productively. And of course the Lesson Preparation Chapter includes several new techniques. Among them Exemplar Planning, an idea developed by Paul Bambrick, has been especially popular.

Add to that full rewrites of your favorite techniques such as No Opt Out, Cold Call and Joy Factor and more than 100 new videos and you’ve got a book that I think represents a major advance over the 2.0 version.

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Lots of questions from teachers and school leaders about TLAC 3.0.�� What’s new about it? If I’ve got 2.0 already, is 3.0 worth the trouble?

IMO it is, obviously. The new version includes five years worth of further insight…insight that’s shaped by amazing teachers and my incredible team of colleagues. But you’re right to want more specifics than that so here’s a brief guide to What’s New in TLAC 3.0:

Two completely new chapters:

One of the key themes of the new version of the book is decision-making.�� My goal was to support teachers in using the techniques effectively, to choose and adapt the right move at the right time. A big part of that is having a larger mental model of how learning happens. Chapter 1 endeavors to provide that. It describes five key ideas teachers should always be thinking about to maximize learning and discusses how they influence instructional choices. The first idea is the differing roles of Working and Long-term Memory; the second is the power of habits to ‘hack working memory�� and allow students to focus on the important things; the third is the pervasive importance of “selective attention”–guiding what students focus on and think about; the fourth is student motivation- the ways it is profoundly social and why students�� perceptions of classrooms norms is so important; the fifth is�� the importance of relationships- my discussion focuses on it in ways that some teachers might find surprising: for example the adage that students ‘won’t care about what you teach until they know that you care�� is deceptive because teaching students well is one of the most effective ways to show you care about them.

Chapter 2, also brand new, is about preparation, which is different from planning. Planning focuses on what you’ll teach and preparation on how. For example, if you are teaching the same lesson to your third period class and your fifth period class and one group is reluctant and reserved and one energetic and sometimes prone to getting carried away, you would prepare the same lesson differently�� you’d want to draw third period out a bit and focus fifth period when necessary. That would mean different tools. You’d prepare differently. I also apply the ideas from chapter 1. One of the best ways to be “present�� when students answer your questions, for example, and to hear what they say accurately, is to clear your own working memory by writing out an ‘exemplar’–an ideal student answer–and keeping it with you during the lesson.

Extensive discussion of research connecting the techniques to cognitive and social sciences:

This has been as long time coming. I’ve always seen the techniques I’ve learned from teachers as being aligned to what the science tells us but I haven’t been explicit enough in sharing those connections and teachers were right to ask for it. In this version of the book I’ve tried t do that much more explicitly.

Extensive discussions and reflections on the book’s place in the larger context of an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion:

Again teachers are right to have questions. The new version of the book starts with a preface that explains what my team and i believe about a just and equitable classroom and how schools can and must pursue those aims. I want teachers whose version of social justice includes holding high expectations for the students we love to feel clear and confident about how to accomplish that. And it’s a topic I take up extensively throughout. Many of the techniques are almost twice as long as they were previously so I could explain the connection more clearly. In some cases I re-named techniques to make their emphasis and purpose clearer and to prevent misapplications and misunderstandings that might come at a cost to students.

“Keystone�� videos:

One long standing challenge of using video to demonstrate teaching techniques is that it can distort them even while it displays them. You show a series of small moments in sharp detail and it’s easy to miss all of the other things that might happen around them during class.�� In this version of the book I’ve included more than a dozen longer running clips that show ten minutes or so of a teacher’s lesson, relatively uncut, so you can see how the techniques fit together and build a larger ethos of love and rigor. These are also ideal for master teachers to use to refine their own style and decision-making in the classroom.

A dozen new techniques

The 3.0 version has gone from 62 to 63 techniques but don’t be fooled. Sprinkled throughout are more than a dozen new techniques. They include a few, like Retrieval Practice and Knowledge Organizers, that help teachers use background knowledge more effectively.�� There are several such as Phrasing Fundamentals and Means of Participation that help teachers ask questions more productively. And of course the Lesson Preparation Chapter includes several new techniques. Among them Exemplar Planning, an idea developed by Paul Bambrick, has been especially popular.

Add to that full rewrites of your favorite techniques such as No Opt Out, Cold Call and Joy Factor and more than 100 new videos and you’ve got a book that I think represents a major advance over the 2.0 version.

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New Crew! Clockwise from upper left: Engstrom, Frazier, White, McCleary

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These are exciting times for Team TLAC. The 3.0 version of our core teaching book has hit the shelves; we’re working with an ever-wider group of schools directly to support their teaching and professional development through extended partnerships; our Reading Curriculum is growing daily; and more schools than ever are using our Dean of Students curriculum. Plus our workshops are available online and we’ve started doing in-person training as well.

To do all that requires talent and I’m excited to announce some key additions to our already amazing team.

First, we’re proud to announce that Sadie McCleary, whose outstanding teaching is featured in TLAC 3.0 and who most recently taught at West Guilford High School in Greensboro, NC, has joined us as an Associate Director of Content Design and will be working on developing and disseminating new knowledge and ideas and has already made us a better team in a dozen ways.

We’re also proud to share that�� Teneicesia White has also joined our team as School Support Fellow. She’s the former principal of Aurora Collegiate, one of the top schools in Memphis, and has deep roots in the Memphis community. She’ll ��be supporting our partner schools in Memphis, and elsewhere, in refining instructional leadership practices, executing professional development and strengthening�� teacher support. She’s one of the most respected educators in Memphis so we’re thrilled to leverage her wisdom across even more schools.

And we’re also lucky to have added Sarah Engstrom to the team. She’ll be Associate Director of Curriculum Development, designing and developing rich, knowledge driven units for our Reading Reconsidered curriculum and helping to think about how to make reading teachers more successful at teaching our units. She joins us from another outstanding network, Mastery Charter Schools in Philadelphia where she was Director of Elementary and Middle School Literacy.

Finally we’re incredibly pleased to announce that Denarius Frazier, one of the most influential teachers we’ve worked with and learned from, and who, not incidentally, is on the cover of 3.0, will join us as a Senior Advisor. He’ll provide guidance and support to our team directly and to the schools we partner with while maintaining his post as principal at Uncommon Collegiate Charter High School. Result: he’ll constantly be channeling up-to-the-minute experience into our learning!

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This year has been the hardest in memory for many teachers. Over the next few weeks we’ll be trying to share ideas and free resources to help get people over the hump. Team TLAC’s Hannah Solomon shares this first post on the topic.

Now is a really tough time to work in a school.

Pre-Covid the job of teacher or school leader stretched far beyond the hours of a school day.�� Drawn to this work because of the opportunity to work directly with young people we accepted that writing and prepping lessons, building meaningful relationships with 25 to 125 young people, creating classroom community, coordinating communication with families would sometimes take more time than the hours in a school day. It was often part of the bargain; the cost of doing an important job well. And mostly we managed. Sometimes it was, as Walt Disney put it “kind of fun to do the impossible.”�� Or what then felt like it.

But the challenges and pressures of the fall ��21 return have added extra stresses that make it hard to achieve success even at the bargain of extra hours.

Almost all 50 states reported shortages for the 2020-2021 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education.�� Schools in every jurisdiction and of every type report massive shortages of staff. It was so good to be back at first. But it got pretty stressful pretty fast when we started spending every spare moment of our days covering classes, creating sub schedules, and in some cases, driving school buses.

Teachers who wish they could be spending time preparing their lessons are instead covering classes outside of the subject and grade level. Social workers can’t provide in class support to students struggling with the transition back to school because they find themselves on double lunch duty and on the playground during recess.

All this while there are greater rates and intensity of student needs. It’s been a tough year for them. The anxiety and time away from school make being back in school difficult. And they’re out of practice at school and paying attention.

Many educators, in short, are walking right up to the brink of “impossible�� calling out for help.

What is a teacher, a coach, a social worker, a school nurse to do in this moment?�� How is a school leader to respond in a way that validates the struggle, honors the effort, and inspires exhausted educators to do what is best �� and perhaps beyond possible �� for the terrific kids sitting in front of them?

Part of what the crisis demands is what business scholar Daniel Goleman calls “emotionally resonant�� leadership. It’s not enough for school leaders to constantly remind educators about the importance of this moment in education and the urgency of addressing the learning lost as a result of the pandemic.�� School leaders must also respond to the reality of understaffed teams by helping and supporting teachers (both new and experienced) to adjust their work strategies and priorities to ensure they support students and maintain sustainable lives in challenging circumstances.

As a team, we try to help teachers and leaders solve the complex problems of our field with simple and actionable solutions.�� With that goal in mind, we will be using this blog space over the next few months to present advice, PD support tools, and recommendations from our colleagues in schools to try to both save time and add student-facing value for those of you who are in there, every day, with the kids.

As a first step, we are pleased to offer five TLAC Online modules for free use over the next 6 weeks:

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These five 15-minute modules, fully revised to align with TLAC 3.0 content, present teachers with immediate strategies for establishing smooth and positive classroom culture.�� If you’re a teacher and you find yourself spending more time than you’d like repeating directions rather than digging into content, these may be helpful.�� If you’re a school leader who doesn’t have time to plan a PD for your newest teacher, we hope these gift you back 2 hours of your day, while at the same time giving your new teachers the extra support they may need

Keep your eyes open for our next post, in which we will release a full unit of our Reading curriculum for free in hopes of lessening the burden for reading teachers.

We wish we could find an experienced teacher to fill every vacancy and give you time to be everything your students need this year.�� We hope this series of “free solutions�� at least gives you both a bit more time and a helpful set of tools to maximize the precious time you have with your students every day.

–Hannah Solomon

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Brittany Hargrove, TLAC Director of Advocacy and Partnerships, has been working hard to develop our new Dean of Students�� Curriculum and to support schools in using it to develop students�� socio-emotional learning. She recently interviewed two colleagues who’ve been piloting the curriculum:

As many of you know, we’ve been developing a Dean of Students�� Curriculum over the past year or two.�� With generous support from the Kern Family Foundation we’ve tried to develop a curriculum that can serve two functions: 1) allow schools to study character education proactively and positively and 2)�� allow Deans of students to teach and build student-knowledge rather than just giving consequences when young people engage in counterproductive behavior.

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Emma Donnan Elementary and Middle School in Indianapolis, Indiana has been piloting our DOS Curriculum and we had an opportunity to interview Eddie Rangel and Matthew Rooney to learn from them and their experience. They’ve been focusing on teaching positive lessons schoolwide to help students come to terms with some of the pandemic’s emotional and psychological challenges. They shared these reflections on the first few weeks of school.

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How does your school utilize the DOS Curriculum (responsive, proactive, therapeutic approach)? Please explain.��

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We used the DOS curriculum at the beginning of the year as our “Prep Academy.�� After a year and a half of hybrid and virtual instruction, we welcomed Emma Donnan Middle School scholars back into our doors fully in-person for the first time. We knew (and continue to know) that the acclimation back to school is a challenge for many of our young people. Therefore, we used the DOS curriculum as some of the content for our first days back to school. As we practiced transitions, lunch, arrival/dismissal, and in-class procedures, teachers delivered intentionally selected DOS curriculum lessons to focus on the social-emotional implications of our return to school.�� We handpicked the lessons that best fit the needs of our school community, connected best to our school values, and helped set our scholars up for success with our focus areas and goals for the year. It also allowed our new teachers to practice executing strong lesson plans without the added academic pressures. But, most of all, these lessons�� reliance on peer and partner work helped our scholars build relationships with each other and our staff.

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Since the beginning of the year, we’ve primarily used DOS curriculum lessons for proactive lessons in our Friday Advisory hour. During this time, each grade level executes a DOS lesson in homerooms, selected by the grade level chair, that best addresses specific cultural/social-emotional challenges from that grade level.��

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Which lessons have you used and what successes have come from those lessons?

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We have best used the following lessons:

HomeworkFacing Academic ObstaclesChallenging Negative Self-TalkSetting and Achieving Your GoalsHow Failure Can Help Us Succeed

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Our middle school scholars�� in particular feel the challenges the pandemic has created for them academically so we’ve tried to utilize lessons in the DOS curriculum that support scholars as they deal with the often overwhelming feeling of being “behind.�� For example, we use the “Thought Traps”in the Challenging Negative Self-Talk lesson in our social work, Dean, and teacher-advisor conversations with scholars who are struggling with confidence. Our scholars have a strong aversion to failure, so the lessons from How Failure Can Help Us Succeed is embedded into our academic program as well.

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We would love to hear about your experience welcoming students back to school. What are some of the bright spots in terms of students�� social-emotional needs?

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Our scholars were very happy to return to school, as were our staff. One of the bright spots has been the ability to support scholars who needed access to counseling and mental health supports while at home, who now can take advantage of those programs in our school every day. Our teachers have done an incredible job of cultivating strong homeroom culture (since, due to the pandemic, our middle school scholars remain in one classroom throughout the day with teachers rotating). When we unveiled our Scholar Ambassadors program (a group of scholar leaders who support the school in a number of ways), we had over 60 applicants. Scholars want to make their school a better place and have their voices heard.

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What are your areas of focus in terms of students�� social-emotional needs?��

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Our most important areas of focus are (1) developing strong teacher-student relationships, (2) building scholar confidence through providing specific academic feedback on how to grow, (3) building ownership through Scholar Ambassadors & other programs, (4) intentional ebullience initiatives to build a positive school culture, and (5) increasing family engagement through both proactive and responsive weekly goals.

We want to thank Eddie and Matthew for allowing us to learn from their school community!

If you are interested in learning more about or in piloting our Dean of Students Curriculum please visit: ​��.

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Studying video of teaching together is a great way for professionals to improve on their craft. This year TLAC’s Hilary Lewis & Rob Richard have been running video self-study sessions with various schools, including the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine. They shared these notes:

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A month ago, our team had the pleasure of meeting with Bob Arnold and Rene Claxton from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine for another Video Collaborative. As always, the experience provided us with an incredible opportunity to connect with amazing educators—to support their strategic plans and growth, and we too, learn so much from their work. We are excited to share a bit of our conversation here in this blog post.

Rene was featured in the footage we reviewed together. She’s Director for Palliative Care Undergraduate and Graduate Medical Education at Pitt Med and we were watching her practicing aspects of holding difficult end of life conversations with young doctors.

Since our team spends most of our time watching K-12 teaching and learning—we especially appreciated the opportunity to deepen our own understanding of adult learning and higher education instruction with institutions like Pitt Med. Moreover, it is exciting to see how much overlap there is—that is, that great teaching practice is not that dissimilar when looking across classrooms in higher education classes or in grade schools. A concrete example of this is the importance of community building.

As we watched Rene’s instruction, we were impressed with the culture of learning she had built with her medical students. Her students were practicing scenarios with each other—learning how to intentionally communicate support to families when their family member falls ill. This is an incredibly important and delicate skill that can change the doctor-patient relationship, so practice is important.

During Rene’s session, each student practiced while their classmates and professor observed. In reality, and in practice, this moment can be high stress. Alas, in Rene’s classroom, it was clear that it was a safe space because all her students felt comfortable practicing, getting, and giving feedback and practicing again.

We think this is due in large part to how Rene carefully and intentionally communicated with her students about her classroom norms. While engaging in practice and feedback, Rene used beautiful community building language, “We have a group of people ready to help,�� when their peer was stuck on some language and needed the group’s support and feedback. In our Building Strong Classroom Cultures workshop, we discuss the importance of learners feeling safe, successful, and known (). Learners need to know that it’s okay to err, okay to make mistakes—because the classroom is a safe space to do just that. We were moved by this moment as the student who needed support was subsequently showered with ideas from his peers—which he was able to take and use in his practice.

These tiny moments are so important—even more so as we work to build relationships with our students after a year of being apart. Having a vision of the culture you want to create in your classrooms, like Rene’s, is essential from day one. And our team learned that in fact, the footage that we watched from Rene was her first class with the group; our jaws agape—we were impressed again with how from the first day of class she created such a safe and supportive learning environment.

We thank Rene, Bob, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical School for sharing their practice with us.

If you are interested in being a part of the Video Collaborative, please check out our site for more information:

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Graphic by Grace Hudson (@MissH_biology)

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A few weeks ago I co-wrote an article with on the idea of retrieval practice questions. After some further conversations Kate shared this new reflection on how to use exit tickets to build long-term memory and learning.

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Inspired by a recent conversation with Doug on Teachers Talk Radio, I have been reflecting on how exit tickets can be used at different points in the learning process. Exit tickets have been widely used in classrooms due to their simplicity, ease and usefulness as a formative assessment technique. However, it is important for teachers to understand the specific purpose they serve and what information they provide.

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Exit tickets consist of one to three questions (or problems) that students answer at the end of a lesson that the teacher can collect quickly and easily. They are deliberately short, clear and concise, intended to hone in on and assess understanding of the main points of the lesson. Exit tickets can provide useful data and insight for teachers about what students understood (or struggled to understand). However, it is important for teachers using exit tickets to be aware of the distinction between learning and performance. Based on their research findings professors Robert and Elizabeth Bjork have written extensively about this distinction. Performance demonstrates whether to-be-learned knowledge or skills can be produced during the instruction phase itself, which can be evident via an exit ticket but this is not always a reliable indicator of learning, which occurs when there is a change in long-term memory. The Bjorks argue that what teachers can measure during the instruction process, in a lesson, is performance but not (yet) learning.

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Performance can be dependent on recency and cues that are present during the lesson but are unlikely to be present at a later time in a different context, when some skill or knowledge is required. Bjork and Bjork (2009) write that ��information coming readily to mind can be interpreted as evidence of learning, but could instead be a product of cues that are present in the study situation, but that are unlikely to be present at a later time. We can also be misled by our current performance. Conditions of learning that make performance improve rapidly often fail to support long-term retention and transfer, whereas conditions that create challenges and slow the rate of apparent learning often optimize long-term retention and transfer��. The implications of this with exit tickets is that the end of a lesson is a good time to check for understanding. Misconceptions and misunderstandings can be highlighted with exit tickets, informing and guiding future planning for the teacher. But this is not to be confused with long term learning.

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Exit tickets at the end of a lesson will not tell or show teachers if that information has been transferred to long term memory and can be recalled from long term memory. To do that it is necessary to revisit the questions or problems at a later date to find out what students can recall because, as Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) stated; learning constitutes a change in a student’s long-term memory and capability.

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In order to do this, teachers must allow some time for forgetting and revisit the exit ticket questions or problems again at a later date. Exit tickets can be recycled into an entrance ticket, ideal for a ‘Do Now�� task at the start of a lesson. The same questions and problems can be posed (or adapted) for students to answer from memory. This will allow students the opportunity to recall information from prior lessons and the exit ticket is being used at this point to assess long term learning.

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Another important factor to consider: explaining to students why the questions on the exit ticket are being repeated. This helps students themselves grasp the distinction between performance and learning. If students know they will be asked the same questions again in a different lesson, this can further add to the low stakes nature of retrieval practice. Students may even rehearse the information and test themselves, knowing they will be asked those questions so that they are in a stronger and more confident position to recall information from long term memory. Students that might tend to rush answering questions on an exit ticket, as they focus on leaving the lesson will have to ensure their focus is on the exit ticket; as they will be expected to recall this information again at a later date.

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Exit tickets can include questions that aren’t based on the content of that specific lesson but instead asked questions based on material previously covered, as a retrieval opportunity in contrast to checking for understanding. Questions from a previous exit ticket could be recycled and repeated once some time has passed.

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The example below allows the same template and same questions to be distributed to students. It also illustrates to students the importance of the lesson content and that it shouldn’t be forgotten once the lesson is over. Exit often implies the end but actually an exit ticket is used in the early stages of the learning process.

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Another idea is to have students compare and contrast their responses from the exit and entrance tickets; do the answers vary or differ in terms of accuracy or depth? This can further illustrate the impact of forgetting on learning. The additional benefit of using exit tickets as entrance tickets is the workload implications for teachers by reusing the same resource with their classes.

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A carefully designed exit ticket can be used at different points in the learning process, checking for understanding (performance) and later allowing an opportunity for recall (learning).

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Thanks to Professor Robert Bjork for checking the accuracy of this post.

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References:

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Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching. Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller & Richard E. Clark. (2006)

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Elizabeth L. Bjork and Robert Bjork Making Things Hard on Yourself, But in a Good Way: Creating Desirable Difficulties to Enhance Learning (2009)

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The Orioles have given BP a cognitive science-informed make-over

I came across an interesting article last week on how the Orioles�� farm system is re-thinking batting practice and thought I’d share some reflections here.

The article, by Steve Melewski for MASN sports network, describes how the Orioles have reworked bating practice to better prepare and develop hitters. Though the article doesn’t mention it, the changes are clearly informed by principles of cognitive science�� and implemented with what strikes me as a bit of wisdom.

Traditional batting practice, as the article describes it, involved “raking against slower, grooved fastballs��- that is, the pitches were predictable, and hitable, most often strikes an often delivered by machine.

As my colleague Marc Mannella has pointed out the primary benefit of this approach is that it makes batter confident before a game- possible to a degree that’s an illusion–i feel good doing something much easier and more predictable than what the game will ask of me–but still player perception is not irrelevant. Something the Orioles have wisely taken into account.

The limitations of the traditional approach are several. 1) It’s all blocked practice or serial practice. That is, the batter for the most part knows what pitch he will face and therefore does not have to practice reading and reacting to different pitches. This means that batters are not practicing the key perceptive and reactive aspects of hitting. 2) Multiply this times ten if batters are hitting from a batting machine where they do not have to read cues from a pitcher’s delivery.

Result: “confidence and well-driven balls during batting practice�� but reduced long term perceptive development and incomplete preparation for that night’s game

So the Orioles replaced it with a “routine that would be tougher for the hitters at 4 o’clock, but might lead to more production beginning at 7 o’clock.��

They divided BP into four rounds of five swings each. “Round one would be as in the past. Easy swings off fastballs to get loose. But then starting in round two, hitters would face a mix of pitches thrown by their coaches. Everything from breaking balls to changeups, and the hitter doesn’t know what is coming. There is an emphasis on what they would be facing in the game that night. If it’s a pitcher with a big loopy curveball, the coaches would do their best to simulate that.��

You can see the idea of randomizing training coming in here. The key to hitting is not knowing what pitch is coming and having to read and react to the uncertainty of it. Suddenly batters are practicing that. The fact that the pitches are thrown by coaches is imperfect but key.�� Can a coach perfectly replicate the perceptive cues batters will see from an opponent? No, but they can generally replicate perceptive cues.�� And all the research suggests that hundreds of hours of reading those cues adds up to knowledge and skill at reading pitches.�� A big part of hitting is�� accumulated experience.

As hitting coach Ryan Fuler puts it in the article “these guys are seeing nasty sliders every day, hard fastballs, changeups, so when they get into the game they don’t have to think. They are ready to do damage.��

One additional change (I suspect) is that the proportion of bad pitches faced in BP goes up. This might seem like a bad thing but it’s not (at least I don’t think so). Suddenly if every pitch isn’t a grooved fastball and I’m not swinging at every pitch, the emphasis is on pitch selection, on the art of perception and decision-making. “It’s a very strong focus (in BP). I don’t want to swing at pitches that are not strikes. It flows right into the game. If I am taking borderline pitches in BP, hopefully I do the same in the game. I want pitches you can do damage on, not a borderline pitch that you have to put a very good swing on to have success,�� says Orioles minor leaguer Patrick Dorrian in the article.

So the first round builds confidence�� five simple fast balls�� a nice nod to to continuity (it feels familiar to hitters) and to the delicate psychology of baseball. The second round is all about unpredictability and therefore practicing the critical skills of hitting: reading, reacting to and selecting pitches.

The third and fourth rounds allow for specific focus and for player agency: “After the second round they can decide what they want to see the next two rounds. They might opt for more traditional BP or for another mix, or maybe they’ll have the coaches throw all curveballs, for instance. Their call,�� the article notes.�� This aspect of letting the players participate in choosing how to use the practice is a smart way to respect their perspective and gain buy-in to a new procedure. You can hear Dorrian’s comfort with the new and also his appreciation for the old in his reflection on how he uses the last two rounds:

“It can change, depending how I feel that day,�� he says. “If I feel a little weak with the bat or don’t feel super confident, I’ll do an extra round on fastballs, just to get it going. But if I’m really locked in and I feel good, I’ll do mix the whole time. It’s so similar to game-like.��

Two last thoughts. 1) It’s interesting to hear Dorrian reflect on how he approaches his BP decisions. As you might expect as a player he sees BP primarily as a tool to prepare for that night’s game.�� If i were his coaches I might be thinking about it slightly differently. One of the biggest challenges in developing players in professional baseball–I think–is the density of games. Once the season starts you play basically every night. There’s never “pure�� practice�� just to learn for the long term. But the Orioles�� model of BP actually does focus more on long-term development than other approaches. And it would do so even more if perhaps coaches subtly challenges players to think about it that way.�� “Take round four to prepare for tonight but allocate round three to a personal goal (e.g. i need to react to off-speed pitches after fastballs) and work on it for a month at a time. Have a more long term focus.��

The other last thought comes from this comment from hitting coach Ryan Fuller: “It’s pretty incredible when you look at our staff. All of us have different arm angles, too. Ramsey a little bit lower slot. If we know the guy is going to be a bit of a slinger down low, he comes out for early work to replicate that. Having the staff here to replicate that is huge. None of us are lefties, so if there is a lefty, we utilize the machine to try and create what they will see.��

Given how important arm channel is to perception it’s super smart to to be thinking about matching caches to opposition throwing styles. 2. Given that they have no lefties and thus “utilize the machine�� to replicate left-handed opponents, there’s a beautiful natural experiment to be run here. Comparing Oriole hitters�� long run progress and short term success against right handed pitching versus left handed pitching might tell them something about the effectiveness of the new model since, essentially, they can only apply it consistently on in the former case.

Here’s Melewski’s article:

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When the room crackles to life��

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Turn and Talk is a powerful tool in the classroom. Done well it can cause the room to crackle with energy and give students the opportunity to rehearse and develop ideas in a smaller setting before sharing them with the whole group.

Watch, for example, how the energy in these three Turn&Talks (that’s Denarius Frazier, BreOnna Tindall, & Christine Torres, you’re watching�� the videos can all be seen in TLAC 3.0) create positive energy and build a norm of engaged participation.

Again, part of what you’re seeing is norms the teachers have established. Students jump into Turn &Talks with enthusiasm because they know everyone else in the room is going to do so as well: all-in- without hesitation or skepticism. They’re not worried they will turn and say something to a partner who will roll her eyes or ignore what they said. Students deserve to discuss ideas in that kind of setting!

But there is a lot planning and design required to make your Turn&Talks sing like that. That’s why I’m so excited to share this video we shot a few weeks ago in Hannah Cook’s classroom at Memphis Rise Academy, in Memphis TN. It’s her very first Turn&Talk of the year and you can see her building up the component parts of the Turn&Talk intentionally.

Notice that her students have written responses first before she tries her first Turn&Talk. The first time the do a Turn&Talk in her room she knows they’ll have plenty to say because they will have written about it in advance. They’ll all have something to say the moment the Turn&Talk starts.

She does a quick bit of trouble shooting to make sure everyone knows who their partner is. Then she scripts the beginning.�� She ‘manages turns�� so students know who will go first. She’s eliminated one more cause of hesitation and awkwardness so the first time they try Turn&Talk it feels crisp and energetic and she is able to establish a highly visible norm of energetic participation form the outset.

Next she focuses on the importance of listening as much as talking.�� Message: Your role as a student is to listen for areas of agreement. Afterwards, she’ll ask students to write them down. This emphasizes how important listening and consensus building are. It also means that students heard and important. Their peers will talk about how much they agreed with and valued their ideas. This will build a sense of value and belonging.

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Written Retrieval Practice Can Be Positive and Powerful

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I recently joined Kate Jones, teacher of history in Abu Dhabi, and author of five books including the Retrieval Practice collection and Five Formative Assessment Strategies In Action, on her show on Teachers Talk Radio. In talking about Retrieval Practice and other topics we hashed out an idea for ‘hybrid�� retrieval practice, using questions that harnessed some of the benefits of multiple choice questions with some of the benefits of open recall questions. We then decided to collaborate on this post to develop the idea further.

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Typically there are two formats in which students can be asked to use retrieval practice in writing: free recall questions (often called “open response�� in the US) and multiple choice questions (MCQ).

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Free recall questions generally require more effort—more ‘desirable difficulty�� from students to answer. This is because recall—remembering something without a cue—is harder than recognition—which requires knowing, selecting and identifying the right answer when you see it. It involves more challenge and mental effort too but it is the increased effort that makes it effective strengthening the information in long term memory. A free recall task enables students to elaborate and extend their responses, taking retrieval practice to a deeper level that isn’t possible with the limitations of MCQs. These are all benefits of the free response approach.

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But free recall questions can be more time consuming for teachers to grade and students to complete. MCQs by contrast can allow for faster retrieval practice. Designed well they can allow teachers to gather a lot of information quickly and easily, and by inserting potential misconceptions into answer choices, make sure students aren’t fooled by them. MCQs can provide a nice change of pace for students and tend to be preferred by students because of their simplicity in contrast to free recall although some students can find the limitations of MCQ frustrating, as they restrict students from demonstrating what they can recall. MCQs require careful design in terms of the questions and, especially, potential answers- the plausibility, nuance and specificity of them will dictate the level of challenge of a question; this is important to ensure MCQs are desirably difficult.

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When using retrieval practice teachers often seek to ‘lower the stakes’—to get the retrieval practice benefits without making things feel like a formal assessment. To do that it can often be helpful to add an “I don’t know yet�� choice among multiple choice responses. This makes it safe to say I don’t remember and it’s preferable for students to tell teachers they don’t know than for them to possibly guess right and have the teacher assume an understanding that isn’t there. This identifies in a gap in knowledge, for both the student and teacher to be aware of. However, adding an “I don’t know�� answer choice to MCQs can also create an unintended consequence. It can be an easy option that in some cases might cause students not to struggle to recall things they aren’t sure they remember.

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In a recent conversation the two of us came up with a possible alternative to address these challenges. Instead of adding a fourth of fifth choice to the MCQ that reads, “I don’t know yet …�� include an option on MCQs for students who aren’t sure but with language that asks students to practice recalling what they DO know.

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And so choosing the option isn’t a short cut for students who seek to avoid full effort.�� We liked the idea of adding choice that reads,�� “I know that …�� with students then asked to fill in the blank describing as much as they could recall on the topic.

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We liked it because students might not know the answer to the MCQ but it is highly likely they will have some prior associated background knowledge that is connected to the question. The option “I know that …�� allows the student to share what they can recall from memory. Therefore they are not missing out on a retrieval opportunity but also from a confidence perspective, this allows the student to recognise and reflect that they can recall relevant information even if they can’t answer that specific question.

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Unlike, “I don’t know�� asking students to write what they can recall is actually the opposite of the ‘easy option�� approach because it is the only response that requires an extended answer and elaboration. Combining MCQs with �� I know that …�� is also combining possibilities for cued recall and free recall, taking a hybrid approach to retrieval practice.

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A common problem with MCQs is that unless we require further elaboration, such as an explanation as to why the selected option is correct or incorrect, we often don’t actually know if students can recall this information correctly? Is it an educated guess, involving some recall, as knowledge of the other distractors can lead to power of elimination, therefore there is an element of recall still. Or could a guess simply be completely random and potluck? The correct answer is in front of students for them to identify and select or take a chance, with a likely 1 in ¾ chance of it being correct.

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As there are pros and cons to using MCQs and free recall, we can combine them via ‘hybrid retrieval tasks�� to gain the benefits of each. A MCQ about the causes of WW1 could ask; Who killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914?

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Kaiser WilhelmGavrilo PrincipNedjelko CabrinovicI know that ��

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There is an opportunity for further recall even for students who are unsure of the answer.

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However, even if a student answers the question correctly ( option 2; Gavrilo Princip ) this still doesn’t show if the students understands or can recall why the assassination of Franz Ferdinand contributed to the outbreak of WW1 in 1914, which is essential in the study of causes of WW1. This caused us to think about another adaptation: an MCQ with two follow ups:

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Who killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914?

Part 1:

Kaiser WilhelmGavrilo PrincipNedjelko CabrinovicNot sure but I know that ��

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Part 2: This led to the outbreak of war because��

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The factual recall of who killed Franz Ferdinand is important, however it simply isn’t enough. This approach enables the teacher to maximize the benefits of both MCQs and open recall. By combining a hybrid model we are creating desirable difficulties but also creating opportunities for retrieval success and retrieval challenge in the classroom.

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Thanks to Kate for co-writing this. For more of her insights you can follow her on Twitter: @KateJones_teach

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