Letting Students Struggle May be the Key to Academic Success

 A piece earlier this month in The New York Times looking at research in how to maximize learning after the disruption of the pandemic examined the work of several educators -- and led to an interesting conclusion.

When students, especially students with learning challenges or those for whom teachers may have had historically low expectations, are not challenged, they do not get the depth of understanding that they would gain from strugging to master material. The article describes a number of ways of thinking about the process of struggling to learn material that can result in deeper learning and more complete understanding. 

Some educators use the metaphor of a "learning pit", a place where students can visualize the fact that they need to ask for help, work on the material, and through serious effort eventually "climb out" of the learning pit to a place of understanding. This process encourages students to become "comfortable with being uncomfortable". Another metaphor that has been used when students are encouraged to work through their discomfort with not understanding a lesson or subject is that of learning to ride a bicycle. If a teacher holds firmly to the back of the bicycle while the student is learning to ride, the student avoids the "cognitive wobble" that requires them to think more deeply. 

Dr. Manu Kapur, an educational psychologist whose meta-analysis of studies looked at how students learn best, found that simply teaching a topic was not the most effective method for achieving student mastery. Instead, students who had to struggle to solve problems before being taught precisely how to solve them learned better than when they were first taught a concept and then given a chance to practice it. 

For this "productive failure" approach to work most effectively, students should work collectively and should know that the goal of the lesson isn't to get to a specific correct answer. In addition, the problems presented should be difficult but not impossible and should have a number of possible solutions.

 All of the educators mentioned in the Times discussion noted that when work is too simple, and students do not have to struggle to understand and master material, they do not have the opportunity to deepen their learning. Especially now, when many students have been derailed by pandemic learning loss, it is important to make them aware that working hard, seeking help from their teachers and fellow students, and being comfortable with being uncomfortable can all contribute to better, deeper learning. 

Review: Essay Express Software

Essay Express: A Teacher-Focused Review

Ages: Grades 4 through 8

Content Areas: Language Arts

Cost: Varies depending on the license purchased. More information can be found on their website. Of note, a 30-day free demo is also available for you to explore before making a purchase. 

Last year, we reviewed the software program Animation-ish, created by one of my all-time favorite children’s authors Peter H. Reynolds and FableVision Learning. While researching the animation program I discovered Essay Express, which is described as “a powerful combination of interactive strategy-based exercises which use engaging stories, humor, and music to teach students how to structure a successful short essay”. FableVision Learning teamed up with Dr. Lynn Meltzer, Dr. Bethany Roditi, and a team from the Research Institute for Learning and Development (RILD) to create a researched based, creative learning tool to help develop students’ written competencies.

As a Learning Specialist, I often assess and work with students who struggle with the writing process. Writing is a complex task that requires multiple cognitive abilities to be deployed simultaneously. The breakdown in the writing process that causes students’ difficulties can manifest in a number of areas, including challenges generating ideas, effectively sequencing information, formulating a sentence or appropriately executing standard written conventions.For many classroom teachers, it can be challenging to pinpoint the specific area of weakness in a student, and subsequently devise evidence-based interventions to strength those deficiencies.

Essay Express is one very valuable tool educators can use to bolster their students' abilities, while feeling confident that the research that backs this program is instructionally sound. This writing program provides foundational skill development by employing nine cognitive strategies which break down, teach and strengthen each skill that is critical in crafting a well-structured essay. Essay Express is designed as a step-by-step process in which students can progress at their own rate, allowing the program to meet the needs of your student at the level of their writing ability. As such, it is a beneficial writing program for both special education and mainstream settings - all students, regardless of learning needs, can benefit from continually strengthening their writing ability. Furthermore, as teachers, the program provides you with a student performance tracking system, and ability to customize your essay questions to meet the specific needs of your curriculum.

If you are curious about what this software can do, or how an educator could utilize this program in their classroom, a detailed and robust Educator’s Guide is available. There you will find detailed instructions on how to use the progress tracking portion of the software, as well as lesson extensions and printable resources included in the software. In addition, for a great video summary of the merits of this program, FableVision Learning has created an excellent animated video to showcase Essay Express. Beyond this resource, Mr. Reynolds and Fable Vision Learning also offer a variety of tools for creating a creative classroom, which are worthwhile to explore. Most are literacy based and infuse elements of high quality art or animation to inspire learning among your students.

The Best Evidence Encyclopedia

The phrase "research-based" is thrown around a lot, these days, but what does it really mean? And how can one be sure that educational programs and policies are soundly based on reliable research? Those without easy access to professional journals will find the Best Evidence Encyclopedia  to be an excellent resource for answering all manner of education questions.

You may be familiar with other resources for evaluating educational programs and policies. Our blog has featured posts about the What Works Clearinghouse, operated by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education and Usable Knowledge, a new initiative from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The BEE is designed to be an especially accessible resource of this kind.

The Best Evidence Encyclopedia, or BEE, is a free site created and maintained by the Johns Hopkins University School of Education's Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education (CDDRE). The goal of the site is to provide teachers, principals, policy makers, and researchers with balanced, authentic information that will help them choose curricula and tools that are most likely to work in K-12 classrooms. The BEE, which is organized by both academic discipline and grade level, is easy to navigate. Users can also search for a specific term, or browse the sections on early childhood education and comprehensive school reform.

In addition to being valid, the information shared by the BEE is refreshingly easy to understand. CDDRE staff members write summaries of the studies that meet the BEE's strict criteria, then send them to the studies' authors for approval before they are posted on the site. Not only can users read the summaries for free, but they may also access the full texts of each article.

A strong background in upper-level statistics is not needed to make sense of the BEE's conclusions. Their program rating scale is simple and straightforward; programs and curricula are rated based on the overall strength of the evidence supporting their effects on student achievement. For example, programs with sufficiently large treatment groups and significant effect sizes are described as having "strong evidence of effectiveness." Programs rated as having "limited evidence of effectiveness" are ones for which no convincing studies demonstrating their merit have been published. It should be noted that this doesn't mean the programs are poor, only that no substantial research has yet shown that they work.

Want to stay in the know? Sign up for the BEE's bi-weekly electronic newsletter. The Best Evidence in Brief offers a quick round-up for current news in education research. It's an excellent resource for those who want to look behind the headlines to learn practical information about what works in schools.

Educators and others who are interested in sound teaching practices couldn't ask for a sounder, or more useful, resource.

Learn with Homer: Reading App Review

Recommended Ages: 2 to 6

Content Areas: Early Reading

Price: Free (with in-app purchases). A web-based version has a 30 day free trial and then a monthly subscription fee.

Why We Love It:
Learn with Homer was created by Stephanie Dua, a Brooklyn mother and Harvard Public Policy graduate who spent her early career working in educational policy and reform in New York City. When Ms. Dua’s eldest daughter began searching for engaging at home reading resources, she realized there was a need for a high quality, research backed digital foundational literacy program.

The Homer Method infuses the best research on how children learn to read, with high quality, engaging art and storytelling to create a program that supports children in becoming successful readers. You don’t have to just take their word for it; the team behind Learn with Homer publishes all the research that underpins their program, so parents and teachers can assess it for themselves.

The program is designed to be a sequential, step-by-step learning process where the child progresses at his or her own personalized pace and each new skill builds upon those previously mastered. The program starts with the basics of sounds and letters before moving on to words, ideas and knowledge. The program includes original artwork from talented illustrators, songs, rhymes and game-based learning theories to truly make the reading experience enjoyable for a child. Each of the stories and activities are thoughtfully created or illustrated for the Read with Homer Program, making it an incredibly comprehensive and robust early reading application. It is easy to see why Learn with Homer has been the recipient of so many awards and acknowledgements.

For Parents
Beyond teaching your child the fundamentals of reading, Learn with Homer will also expose your child to music and rhymes from a variety of cultures to help them learn correct pronunciation and verbal timing. Science, history and art are also infused in the non-fiction reading resources to teach new vocabulary. Writing is also an element of the Learn with Homer App through their Pigeon Post which allows your child to compose, send and receive digital postcards from loved ones. Extensions beyond the digital space are also available through printed projects which include craft ideas, writing practice activities, coloring pages and puzzles. Through the parent dashboard, you can also keep track of the progress your child has made and see his or her growth over time.

For Teachers
Learn with Homer has a classroom dashboard which allows teachers to track the progress of their entire class in real time. As a former classroom teacher, I found this aspect valuable for my formative assessment, as it allowed me to identify the strengths and weaknesses in my individual students. This, in turn, helped inform any subsequent reading interventions and activities I employed. Furthermore, you can feel confident in utilizing this tool in your classroom, as the team behind Learn with Homer has done all the work of linking their program to the Common Core standards for you in a document published on their website.

Finding Educational Research from Harvard and Elsewhere

The faculty and students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (GSE) are engaged in a wide range of research projects, many of which have practical application to teachers, school administrators, and others interested in the most up-to-date findings on education and educational policy. Up until now, however, there has been no central clearinghouse for all of the research undertaken by the Harvard educational community; research findings and reports have been published in academic journals and dissertations and sometimes mentioned in Ed., the magazine of the GSE, but finding information on a specific subject or project has been a bit of a hit-or-miss process.

To address these issues, the GSE has just launched a new initiative, Usable Knowledge, designed to make all of the research generated by the Harvard GSE community accessible to those who can benefit from it.

As noted by Jim Ryan, Dean of the GSE, "...No research finding — no matter how profound — will make much difference in the lives of students if it is simply left to dwell in the Ivory Tower. If we hope to expand educational opportunity and improve student outcomes, it is imperative that we make our research findings accessible to those who can act on them. Enter Usable Knowledge — a project that will take new ideas and innovative solutions generated by our faculty and our students and put them in the hands of teachers, principals, superintendents, policymakers, and others who can have a real impact on students, schools, and education more broadly."

Of course, there are other helpful resources for those seeking information on educational research. ERIC, the Educational Research Information Center of the U.S. Department of Education, is celebrating its 50th Birthday this year. ERIC is one of a number of programs of the Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, including the What Works Clearinghouse, which has been the subject of a previous Yellin Center Blog. With a budget of $200 million and a staff of nearly 200 people, the Institute is itself a rich resource for those interested in research on educational subjects. 

Literacy Lessons from Teachers College - Part II Vocabulary

I recently attended an exciting two-day conference on literacy in the elementary and middle grades hosted by faculty from Columbia University’s Teachers College. Through lectures, readings, discussions, and collaborative group work I learned a great deal about the implications of current research on literacy assessment and instruction. I look forward to sharing what I learned about phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing with readers of the Yellin Center’s blog!

Vocabulary knowledge can help, or hinder, reading comprehension enormously. Unfortunately, much of the vocabulary instruction students receive is not supported by research. Too many students receive a list of vocabulary words each week with the assignment to look up their definitions and use them in sentences. The words often have no relationship to each other or to content the students are studying in their classes. Effective vocabulary instruction is tied closely to the reading and writing students do in other subjects. And, like most high-quality teaching methods, sound vocabulary instructional practices show students how to understand words on their own, sometimes without even the aid of a dictionary!

Five Myths about Vocabulary

1) Learning definitions is sufficient.

In fact, students must have the chance to both see and use words in multiple contexts.

2) Weekly vocabulary lists are an effective way to learn new words.

Higher-quality learning is achieved when words are connected to each other and to curricular content.

3) Teachers should teach all unknown words, especially words written in bold/italic font.

This would result in unrealistically long lists of words that students couldn’t learn deeply. Instead, teachers should mindfully select key words for study.

4) Learning Latin and Greek roots is too difficult for young children.

Children are ready to learn roots in primary school.

5) Word learning can’t be fun.

Most students love word play!

What Works

First, teachers must know that there are multiple levels of “knowing” a word. One can know it phonologically (i.e. correct pronunciation), orthographically (i.e. correct spelling), semantically (knowledge of correct definition), and/or syntactically (i.e. can use it correctly). Students don’t need to know all this terminology, but understanding that there are different ways to know a word can help them to determine which words they need to study more closely. Teachers should encourage kids to put words into categories. Here is one such scale:

• Level One - Can define and use in a sentence 
• Level Two - Understand in context but not in isolation
• Level Three - Know the vague gist of (for example, knowing that “persecute” has a negative connotation but not knowing why)
• Level Four - Have never heard the word before

Research indicates that when teaching new vocabulary, instructors should aim to provide students with both depth and breadth in terms of vocabulary knowledge. Students should know enough words to make sense of what they read, but they should also learn selected words deeply. How can one know a word deeply? By being familiar with the nuances of its meaning, understanding which words and concepts are analogous and opposites, and understanding what parts of the word (affixes, roots, etc.) give it its meaning.

To learn a word well, students must have multiple exposures to the word in the context of meaningful sentences. Additionally, students come to “own” a word only after they have had chances to use it in writing and conversation. Games provide excellent opportunities for students to use new words.

Watch for upcoming posts about reading comprehension and writing!

Learn to Add with Addimal Adventure

Wouldn’t it be great if few Ph.D.s from Columbia University’s Teachers College could be on hand 24-7 to teach your child to add? If you have an iPad, download the free Addimal Adventure app from the iTunes store and you’ll get just that. 

Addimal Adventure is the brainchild of Teachley, a foundation that creates interactive electronic learning tools based on cognitive science research. In Addimal Adventure, Captain Memo and his pals will recruit your child to defeat the evil Professor Possum. The sharp graphics pop off the iPad’s screen appealingly, looking more like a show on Cartoon Network than an educational computer game. There’s a storyline here, and an engaging one at that, and your child will giggle at the characters’ funny quips and delight in being included in the adventure.

Addimal Adventure isn’t just great at catching and holding your child’s attention, though. It teaches genuinely useful strategies for learning and using addition. In each “Tool Round,” simple problems are presented and children can choose which strategy they want to use to solve each one. For example, the “Count All” button will present the problem using digital manipulatives. Kids count them, then indicate the answer using the number line at the bottom of the screen. Three additional, more advanced strategies are also taught. Between Tool Rounds, kids can watch the plot of the game unfold in short scenes, then practice their fact speed in the Speed Round. If they’re stumped, they can choose to get a hint that will remind them how to use one of the strategies they've learned. 

Addimal Adventures keeps track of all the facts a child answers correctly and incorrectly and displays them between rounds. The result is a motivating display of all the facts kids got right, which grows as they progress through the app.

Currently, Addimal Adventures is intended for home use. In January, however, Teachley will be launching a pilot data- reporting system for classrooms that will allow teachers to track students’ progress. Think your school might be interested in participating? Sign up now.

Art to Support Learning

Students generally relish the chance to create art. They love the opportunity to express themselves and enjoy experimenting with different media. Fitting art into an already full school day, alas, can be a challenge. But according to Mariale Hardiman, co-founder and director of the Neuro-Education Initiative at Johns Hopkins’ School of Education, choosing between art and core instruction may not be necessary; it seems the two can support each other quite well. Her research has found that the use of arts in the classroom does more than make students happy: it can improve their retention of information.

LWT Gunnersbury Triangle

In a simple, elegant experiment, Hardiman compared groups of students who simply learned facts about history with groups who learned history with an art component. For example, students might draw a picture to illustrate historical events, put historical facts into songs, or write creatively about historical information. After learning, both groups of students were tested, and initially there weren't any differences between their scores. But when the students were tested again three months later, the arts group demonstrated much better retention than the control group.

We think incorporating the arts into learning wherever possible is a great idea, and not just because it seems to promote better memory for facts. Adding an art component to classroom work allows artistic kids to shine in a way that they sometimes can’t in a purely academic setting, building self-esteem. And, of course, art encourages children to be creative, flexible thinkers and to experiment with symbolism and abstract concepts.

Want to provide opportunities for your students to pair art with curriculum? Here are some ideas:


Creative Writing








Poetry

Ask students to write a poem about what they’re learning. Use models and get creative. Show kids some limericks and ask them to write their own about a character in a novel. Rewrite one of Shakespeare’s sonnets to become an ode to a plant cell, a planet, or the Constitution.

Letters

Challenge students to take on the role of a historical figure or a fictional character and ask them to write a letter (or an email) to another figure or character. This isn't a new idea, but it can become really fun when kids are given unexpected roles. A student could write a letter to a cloud from the perspective of a plant who is hungry and needs exposure to sunlight so it can use photosynthesis, for example. Students struggling with algebra? Have fun with tricky concepts such as like terms by asking students to write a love letter from the perspective of 2x explaining why s/he adores 5x but has no interest in mixing with 6y.

Short Stories

Creating fictionalized accounts can make academics come alive. Challenge kids to write a story about the experiences of an oxygen molecule who is breathed in, circulated through a body, then breathed out. Ask kids to imagine that they are Louis XIV’s footman or Genghis Khan’s horse. What would they hear and see in these roles?


Visual Art








Comic Strip

Ask students to tell a story (the plot of a novel, the series of events during an important time in history, the transition of water from a solid to a liquid to a gas) frame by frame.

Cause-Effect Panels

For students struggling with causes and effects, illustrating the relationship can be very helpful. Set the stage for cause-effect panels by asking students to fold a sheet of paper in half. On the left side, they can illustrate the cause, and on the right, they can draw the effect or effects. If a student is studying the effect of temperature changes on matter, for example, he can draw a picture of a thermometer with rising mercury on the left, and molecules bouncing into each other with frantic arrows between on the right. Sometimes, students may need to divide the right side of the paper to show several effects. For example, The Stamp Act caused the colonists to both boycott British goods and to form the Sons of Liberty, so a cause-effect panel illustrating that relationship would have two parts to its effect side. This activity can be enriched by assigning a short piece of writing to describe the cause-effect relationship shown, or by asking a student to explain their work orally.

Diagrams

Need to learn about the anatomy of the heart or the difference between Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns? Sometimes the best way to commit lots of small details to memory is to draw them. Ask students to draw and label their own diagrams showing the details of these complicated concepts. Color-coding can make diagrams even more valuable; perhaps students could color the pathways of blood into the heart in blue and the pathways out of the heart in red, or shade the columns’ similarities in yellow and their differences in green.


Performance Art








Music

Really talented musicians will love the opportunity to come up with their own songs about academic topics. For students who don’t play music or write songs, challenge them to rewrite songs they know so that they lyrics are about an academic topic they are studying, like the events in a novel, the Bill of Rights, or the order of operations.

Skits

Challenge kids to write and perform short skits that illustrate important events and concepts. Perhaps they could perform a short dialogue between nobles as they discuss the merits and potential risks of presenting King John with the Magna Carta. Have students act out word problems to help them visualize the situations being described. Assign students the roles of different elements and ask them to come up with a skit about what would happen if some of them ran into others at an element party or on a bus; what reactions would occur? What would passers-by notice?

Staged Debates

Comparing and contrasting the ideologies of historical figures, the concepts of different geometric shapes, or the arrangement of plant and animal cells? Give pairs of students opposing roles and ask them to generate some arguments about why their perspective is superior to that of their opponent. Costumes can bring this idea to life!

Icon credits: Itzik Gur (paint, music); Design Contest (pencil).

Interleaving Can Lead to Improved Outcomes

Here at The Yellin Center we have long suggested that students benefit when their assignments are designed with the concept of "interleaving" in mind -- where no two problems or questions of the same kind appear in order. So, for example, a homework assignment might include newly learned long division problems, but also some multiplication and even addition and subtraction. This is different from more traditional tests or problem sets, where the questions follow the blocks of the curriculum and material from earlier lessons is only reviewed when it is time for year end tests.

Photo: Silenceofnight/Flickr

A recent discussion of this practice was included in an excellent Science Times section of The New York Times which focused on "learning what works" in education. The article looks at research from a team at the University of South Florida which looked at interleaved math instruction in a small sample (140 students in all) in a Tampa middle school. The students found that interleaved problem sets took a bit longer to do, at first, but that when they needed to study for a test they could spend less time reviewing because all the material they had learned was still fresh in their minds.

Furthermore, the results when the students took tests were remarkable. The scores on problems presented in the traditional manner averaged 38% -- but they scored an average of 72% on the material they covered through interleaved problems. The Times discussion included opinions of various psychologists and learning researchers as to why interleaving is beneficial, which ranged from noting that it engaged particular kinds of memory (something we call "paired associate memory"), to opining that since students need more time when they are first working with interleaving, the additional assistance they may get from their instructors makes a difference in how much they learn.

The research team plans to expand its investigation to see the impact of interleaving when it is used more broadly, with a far greater number of students. We will be interested to see the results.

Improving Elementary School Students’ Writing

The What Works Clearinghouse, an excellent source for meta-analyses of educational studies, has recently released a report on research-based methods for helping elementary school students become better writers. Teaching Elementary School Students to be Effective Writers shares four key findings. The report classifies the evidence for each of its recommendations as having minimal, moderate, or strong evidence backing it, although it should be noted that all of the report’s research-based recommendations will help strengthen students’ writing skills. We’ve summarized the report’s findings for you below; please consult the report for further details about the panel’s rationale and suggestions for implementation.

Recommendation 1: Provide daily time for students to write

Evidence: Minimal

The panel noted that, while research has not thoroughly examined whether simply providing children time to write leads to favorable outcomes, practices which have been shown to improve writing take time to implement. The panel recommends that one hour a day be devoted to writing, beginning in first grade. Writing practice need not be limited to language arts; it can occur in the context of other content areas, like lab reports of science, inventing word problems in math, etc.

Recommendation 2: Teach students to use the writing process for a variety of purposes

Evidence: Strong

This recommendation involves teaching students about the different stages of writing (planning, drafting, sharing, evaluating, revising, editing, and publishing) and has the gradual transfer of responsibility to the student at its core. To help students be successful as they take on more and more of the writing process independently, the panel recommends that teachers impart strategies for each stage. It is recommended that strategy use be introduced in first grade, with strategies becoming more complicated as the student is promoted through the grades. Additionally, students should be taught to understand the different purposes of writing, and be given opportunities to practice them. Students have been shown to benefit from thinking about different audiences for their writing, and should analyze others’ writing to determine what makes it good.

Recommendation 3: Teach students to become fluent with handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, typing, and word processing

Evidence: Moderate

Writers who struggle with mechanical fluency cannot devote as much focus to their ideas. Most of the studies reviewed found that increased fluency in forming letters, spelling words correctly, and using appropriate punctuation led to improved writing outcomes. Young children should be taught to hold a pencil correctly and form letters using an efficient sequence of movements. Older students should focus on improving spelling and constructing sentences that convey meaning as efficiently and fluently as possible. Typing can greatly improve all students’ writing but is particularly beneficial for students who struggle with handwriting.

Recommendation 4: Create an engaged community of writers

Evidence: Minimal

A supportive classroom environment in which teachers and students all collaborate to improve each other’s writing provides a rich setting for children to appreciate the importance of writing, as well as the assistance they need to improve their skills. Students should be allowed to choose their own topics as often as possible; this increases motivation and helps students to invest in the classroom’s writing community. All students should be both writers and editors, and students should have opportunities to collaborate during the writing process.

Please consult the report for helpful tables and detailed suggestions for implementing these valuable recommendations!