The Master Teacher Blog

It can be challenging to figure out how to respond to the emergence of artificial intelligence, especially in the context of education. Some school districts have responded by banning the use of ChatGPT. Others are experimenting but remain unsure of the benefits and drawbacks. Of course, what we are seeing is just the beginning of the impact artificial intelligence will have on teaching and learning.

Regardless of what may lie ahead, there are immediate opportunities for educators to leverage chatbots, such as ChatGPT, to lighten their load and reduce the time they spend with a variety of common, but time-consuming tasks. Of course, just because these tools are available does not mean that they should become a substitute for professional judgment and skills. Nevertheless, here are ten ways in which chatbots can save time and provide opportunities for educators to engage in other high leverage activities:

1. Plan lessons. Chatbots can make activity suggestions, provide instructional strategy ideas, and identify potential resources. Benefit: Less time must be spent planning and more ideas are available to draw from.
2. Collect information and research. Chatbots can reduce the amount of time spent searching the internet and elsewhere for information to support instruction. A well-formed prompt can generate a succinct summary of a wide variety of information. Benefit: Less time spent searching and researching.
3. Generate ideas to help students see purpose and utility in what we are asking them to learn. We can infuse these ideas in discussions to reinforce connections and help students to place greater value on what they are learning. Benefit: Ideas and strategies to draw from, and students who are more engaged.
4. Locate examples and suggest applications for new content and skills. We can use these examples and suggestions to help students see utility in what they are learning, and we can design activities that take advantage of potential applications to keep students engaged. Benefit: Reduced time researching and better learning connections for students.
5. Modify content to match student learning readiness. Students learn best when presented with content that they can comprehend and that matches their skill level. Benefit: Less time spent modifying or interpreting challenging content and more learning success.
6. Provide succinct background information. Many students need additional background knowledge to benefit from our instruction. Chatbots can collect information and present it at the specific grade or reading level of the student. Benefit: Immediate resource to tap and more learning success.
7. Suggest ways to connect one academic discipline to another. Cross discipline learning tends to be more meaningful and can aid in retention of content and skills. Students often fail to make these connections and finding meaningful connections can be challenging and time consuming. Benefit: Reduced time spent researching and planning and improved student success.
8. Provide feedback and suggestions in response to student work. Chatbots can offer guidance for word choice, grammar, and syntax. Our follow-up conversations can add our feedback on the content and quality of their work. Meanwhile, we remain aware of areas of struggle and positioned to provide support. Benefit: Reduced time analyzing and providing supplemental feedback on mechanics while remaining focused on the concepts and content of student writing.
9. Grade student tests and quizzes. For some types of assessment, such as multiple choice and short answers, chatbots can grade student responses, and in some cases provide feedback to students. Of course, chatbots can also generate questions and develop writing prompts. Benefit: Reduced time spent preparing assessments and grading by hand.
10. Compose correspondence drafts. Deciding where to start and how to frame information in correspondence, particularly sensitive correspondence, can be a challenge. Chatbots can provide a place to start and content to edit and shape to support our message while maintaining our voice. Benefit: Access to starter ideas and wording and reduced time planning and composing correspondence.

Of course, the next question is how best to use the additional time that chatbots help us to create. Here are five ideas to consider:

• Conferencing with students about their learning
• Providing high-level feedback to students
• Counseling students regarding effective study strategies
• Building strong relationships with students
• Engaging students in authentic, performance-based assessments
• Taking a breath . . .

We may not be able to predict the future and artificial intelligence’s impact on education. However, there are important and useful purposes to which the technology can be applied now. Of course, the more experience we develop with artificial intelligence the better able we will be to make decisions about it and leverage its potential.

These are weeks of the year when emotions can become intense, and behaviors can challenge our patience. The coming end of the year can raise anxieties about exams, final grades, and other opportunities and consequences in students’ lives. We, too, can experience uncertainties, anxiety, and worry.

How we choose to respond to our emotions and the emotions of students will play a consequential role in how they’ll feel about, behave, and process what happens in the final days and weeks. We can be a stabilizing force or a stimulus for further anxiety and emotional outbursts. Fortunately, this can also be a time for modeling and teaching students how they can gain and maintain control in the face of challenges and disorientation. Here are five statements that we’d be wise to avoid and strategies we can employ to continue to teach and support students as the end of the year approaches.

Don’t worry, you’ll do/be fine. Predicting the future isn’t useful in most circumstances. Students won’t always do or be fine, and they may have solid reasons for being worried. Students are responding to their interpretation of what’s happening. They may feel uncertain, threatened, or worried for reasons that are important to them and unknown to us. A better approach is to help students to understand and develop strategies to deal with their anxiety and worries. As examples, we might ask students to think about what’s worked for them in the past. Or we might ask them what advice they’d give to a friend who was worried about a similar situation.

You need to cheer up/calm down. It usually isn’t helpful to tell students how they should feel. Their emotions are real to them. The problem isn’t their feelings, but what they need to do with them. Our role is to help students learn strategies for dealing with their feelings. As examples, we might teach students self-soothing strategies, such as taking a walk, listening to music, or drawing or writing to express their feelings. Or we might encourage students to engage in mindfulness activities that help them become better aware of, reflect on, and manage how they’re feeling.

Don’t let me see/find/catch you doing that again. While our intent might be to have students not engage in unacceptable behavior, this statement says something different. The message is that students shouldn’t be caught. We don’t want students to focus on not being caught. We want them not to engage in the behavior. A better approach is to help students to understand why the behavior is unacceptable and develop alternative behaviors that help them to be successful through other approaches. For example, rather than telling students not to be caught copying other’s work, we can counsel students on the importance of asking questions, seeking clarification, or otherwise securing assistance that helps them to learn and be successful on their own.

You’re smart/talented/gifted. Praise can be a motivator, but it can also get in the way of learning and success. When we tell students they’re smart, talented, and gifted, students might assume they shouldn’t have to struggle, make mistakes, or seek help. When they find themselves in situations that challenge them, they can worry or assume they’re not as exceptional as our praise indicates. Consequently, they may choose to give up or find other ways to continue to appear intelligent. Our praise can be more helpful and supportive if we focus on the effort and strategies students employ in their learning and work. Effort and strategies are within students’ control while intelligence isn’t.

You’re making me mad/angry/furious. This statement may be intended as a warning to students, but the fact is people don’t “make” others angry or upset. Anger is a reaction that comes from within us. We have the power to determine what we think, how we respond, and how we’ll behave. When we say that someone’s causing our emotions, we deny responsibility for our feelings and behavior. We also risk sending the message to students that they don’t have to take responsibility for their behavior. Rather than blaming students for our emotions, we might say that we disapprove of the behavior, or state that behavior is unacceptable and offer alternative actions they can take that would be acceptable. For example, we might offer to meet with a student privately to discuss the situation.

We can’t avoid many of the emotions that accompany the end of the year. However, we can use this time to teach, coach, and counsel students how to manage what they’re feeling and develop strategies to respond to the challenges they face. Of course, we too can employ these strategies to help us to stay calm, focused, and successful as we negotiate our way to the end of the year, too.

It may be surprising to hear that the greatest amount of learning loss in schools isn’t related to or a result of the pandemic. It’s true many students didn’t learn as much as expected or at a pace anticipated during the pandemic. As a result, too many students exited the pandemic with learning that lagged. Yet, the pandemic impact largely isn’t learning loss. It’s learning that simply isn’t gained.

This might seem like a semantic difference, but the fact is many students face real learning loss at a larger scale annually than what’s been sacrificed to the pandemic. Students learn a great deal during the typical school year only to lose much of what they’ve learned in a few weeks or months. Too often, recapturing the learning students lost leads to reteaching, remediation, or intense review.

Many factors contribute to such widespread learning loss including:

• Lack of connection, purpose, or relevance associated with what’s learned. 
• Learning to achieve a grade rather than build knowledge and skills. 
• Single dimension instruction, such as lecture.  
• Patterns of instruction that feature limited or no review over time. 
• Learning that occurs and is assessed at a superficial level. 
• Absence of application of and continued practice with new learning. 

So, what can be done to counter such significant, persistent, systemic learning loss? Fortunately, much research and experience are available and can be brought to bear in support of our efforts. Here are a dozen strategies we can employ regardless of our students’ ages or the content or skill we’re supporting them to learn:

• Focus on the purpose and value of what students are asked to learn. When students know why they’re learning and how they can use what they learn, motivation increases, and recall is extended.  
• Employ multiple strategies to engage learners in new content. Rather than relying on a single method, such as lecture or reading, consider creating a simulation, engaging students in discussion, sharing a video explanation, using graphics, and adding other strategies that can add to the learning experience. 
• Have learners create, describe, or model what they’re learning. For example, students might write a set of instructions or directions to apply what they’re learning. They might develop a summary explaining the topic, or they might demonstrate the application of a new skill. 
• Provide or have students draw pictures or develop graphic representations. Teach students to create mind maps to demonstrate relationships among components of what they’re learning.  
• Create micro-learning experiences. Engage students in short seminars – five to ten minutes - on specific topics and skills. Share virtual demonstrations students can view remotely. Consider recording a series of podcasts, especially for complex or multi-part content.  
• Weave new content and skill into a game format to increase engagement, sustain attention, and create emotional connections. However, be careful not to have the game overwhelm or distract from the intended learning.  
• Have learners track, document, and provide evidence of their learning. Making a case to prove learning builds ownership and helps students move learning from working memory to long-term memory.  
• Pair students who are on similar learning paths. As students engage, reflect, and learn together, they can help to fill in information gaps, clear up confusion, expand each other’s perspectives, and sort for significance.  
• Have students develop model lessons to teach content or a skill they’ve learned. The process of organizing information and sharing with others not only helps to clear up confusion and fill learning gaps, but teaching also deepens learning and extends learning retention.  
• Enlist students in developing assessment questions and creating quizzes to assess their own and each other’s learning. Like teaching new content, contemplating good questions and seeking ways to assess understanding also embeds learning deeper in memory.  
• Have students develop integrating tasks and projects, including across disciplines and subjects, that feature or demonstrate key concepts and skills they’ve learned. Consider giving students a list of concepts and skills from which they might draw as they design. Opportunities for autonomy and creativity in these activities can maximize engagement and learning retention. 
• Schedule frequent opportunities for reviewing and revisiting knowledge and skills from past learning. Creating games from, exploring applications of, and finding new implications for past learning can add fun and variety to these important activities. 

Learning can be challenging enough. Once students have made the effort to learn, it makes little sense to have them quickly forget, only to relearn later. Fortunately, it takes only a little more time and effort to nurture learning that sticks than it does to stimulate learning that’s quickly forgotten.

The end of the school year offers a final opportunity to communicate with parents and reflect on the past year. It can also be a great time to provide parents with recommendations and advice to help their children retain what they’ve learned and prepare for learning that lies ahead next year.

We might begin our end-of-year communication - whether in a formal letter, email, video, or by other means - by sharing our gratitude with parents for sharing their children with us for the past year. Children are the center of parents' lives, and their trust in and support for us is a crucial contributor to learning success. Our message can reinforce the importance of this relationship and encourage parents to make a similar investment in teachers with whom their children will learn in the future. Our communication also might include a brief recounting of the year’s highlights and shared special experiences. Reflecting on the year can be a good way to bring closure and remind parents of the important role they play in their children’s learning.

Our observation about the important role parents play in learning can serve as a transition to reminding parents of the crucial role they’ll play in retention of their children’s learning during the summer months. For example, we might share with parents that without ongoing stimulation and reinforcement of learning, students can lose a full month or more of school year learning over the summer. Consequently, students may enter school in the fall with their learning having fallen back from where it was in the spring and necessitate time consuming reteaching and stressful catch-up. Spread over multiple summers, lost learning can accumulate to as much as a full year.

Of course, we need to share formal summer learning opportunities offered by the school or in the community that parents can access for their children. These opportunities can serve as valuable counter forces to learning loss. However, there are many other opportunities of which parents can take advantage beyond or, in some cases, in place of formal summer learning experiences. Here are four strategies we can share with parents to counter summer learning loss and help their children be prepared when school resumes in the fall.

First, parents can look for everyday opportunities to make connections and discuss applications of learning. Not all summer learning must be planned and formal. Parents can seek out connections in everyday experiences. Routine events can offer rich opportunities for children and young people to apply concepts and skills they’ve learned during the year. Common tasks and projects can provide opportunities to apply math skills or observe scientific phenomenon. News events can be starting places to make geographic connections and explore historical contexts.

Second, parents can make it a practice to read to, read with, and read to share with their children. For young children, listening to someone read can increase vocabulary, stimulate imagination, and build motivation to become a reader. For older children and even adolescents, reading aloud or listening to recorded reading can keep reading skills sharp and provide enjoyable shared family experiences. For example, on long car trips consider having one person read as others listen and then discuss what was read. Also, parents might consider having each family member select something they’d like to read and then have family members share what they’re reading, how they’re reacting, and what they’re learning.

Third, parents might seek out fun events that also offer learning opportunities. Visits to museums, libraries, historical sites and exhibits, attendance at cultural events, and even nature and neighborhood hikes can offer valuable opportunities to reinforce and extend learning. During and after the experiences, parents can help children and young people to place the experience in context and make connections. Equally important, parents need to pay attention to questions their children ask and take time to explore implications and reinforce aspects of significance.

Fourth, parents can use summer opportunities to preview key skills and concepts students will learn in the coming year. Our communication might preview highlights of the next year’s curriculum to help parents become aware of what lies ahead. We can offer ideas and examples of how parents can expose students to key concepts and skills. The idea isn’t to have parents pre-teach, rather they can look for opportunities to expose students to and discuss what they’ll be learning. We know the more background knowledge students bring to new learning, the easier and more successful learning becomes.

Certainly, as we reflect on a sincere end-of-year message to share with parents, we understand parents want their children to have a relaxing, fun-filled summer, especially in the aftermath of the past three years. Fortunately, summer learning doesn’t necessarily have to be time-consuming or drudging work. When combined with family activities and shared experiences, summer learning can be a great antidote for learning loss - and it can be fun.

There's much about which we can be confused and uncertain in today’s world. Yet, one thing is clear: Our future depends on a citizenry that possesses the capacity to function successfully in a complex, technological, rapidly changing world. An informed, skilled, and learning-capable citizenry and work force are becoming more important each day. The introduction of and rapid growth in artificial intelligence is just one of many shifts driving rapid and disruptive changes in the workplace. Today’s workplace demands and rewards workers who continue to learn and adjust in response to changing conditions, expectations, and functions.

We need a citizenry with strong learning skills and who value learning as key to their success. Economists and workplace experts point to this challenge with growing urgency and alarm. Consider a sampling of recent voices:

James Bessen, an economist and the executive director of the Technology and Policy Research Initiative at Boston University School of Law notes the importance of workers knowing how to learn rather than any specific skill, as technology related skills constantly change.

Heather McGowan, author of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, advises that schools must focus less on transferring knowledge and more on the ability of independent learning.

The World Economic Forum recently noted that in the 1980’s learned skills had a life cycle of three decades. Today, learned skills have a shelf life of five years.

Kelly Palmer and David Blake, authors of The Expertise Economy, make the argument that credentials no longer hold much importance. Employers seek skills, expertise, and the ability to learn.

Obviously, meeting this challenge is complex and will require significant shifts and realignment in our education system. However, there are actions we can take to increase the focus on learning and development of our students’ learning skills. Here are five steps we can take immediately:

Help students to set learning goals and identify steps and activities to help them reach those goals. Obviously, the goals need to be aligned with identified standards and competencies. But just as practical, the goals need to reflect student commitment more than the assigned goal itself.

Monitor the level of challenge presented for students to ensure success is possible with appropriate focus and effort. It shouldn’t be so easy that it prohibits new learning. Known as the Zone of Proximal Development, the best learning outcomes tend to be generated within this range.

Coach students to reflect as they struggle, make progress, encounter setbacks, and grow. The practice of reflection is among the most powerful learning strategies available. As students become increasingly skilled at reflection, they become increasingly independent learners.

Focus feedback and recognition on the effectiveness of learning strategies and aligned learning effort. Help students understand how their effective strategies and smart effort position them to learn increasingly difficult concepts and skills. Meanwhile, they’ll build confidence in their learning, as well as build tolerance for unsuccessful, initial learning attempts.

Whenever possible, frame new learning in the context of the value and purpose it represents. Purpose drives powerful learning. The more we can connect learning to the value it provides, the more students will come to appreciate learning, and the more likely they’ll choose to continue to learn, even when we aren’t present.

While we work with students to develop the skills necessary to become independent learners, we need to keep in mind that acquiring the skills to learn is only half of the formula for success. Unless students also have the desire to learn, possess the curiosity to learn, and understand the value of learning, the impact of their skills experiences limits. We need to focus our attention, support, and encouragement on the development of both elements in this success equation.

We serve in institutions with the mission of nurturing learning. On the surface, this statement seems obvious. Yet, when we examine the focus, practices, incentives, and culture present in most schools, this relationship isn’t always clear. For example, when asking what’s most important to achieve in school, students are likely to respond with “getting good grades.” Such a response isn’t surprising when we consider the messages students so often hear from adults. We tell them, “Study hard to get good grades.” We should advise them to “study so they learn well.” Grades should serve as a reflection of learning, not the purpose for it.

We might think this is a distinction without a difference until we examine its implications. In fact, when grades become the relied-upon driver for student attention and effort, learning too often takes a “back seat.” Learning becomes a servant of grades rather than grades reflecting learning. When this happens, we and our students risk becoming victims of several unfortunate outcomes. As examples:

Earning points becomes more important than finding purpose. Students can become distracted by how to increase their grades and can lose sight of the importance of and reasons why they're learning.

Performance gets valued over progress. When grades symbolize status and accomplishment, it’s easy for students to want to look good and appear smart over engaging in struggle while developing knowledge and skills.

Cheating can become a strategy. If the point is to get a good grade, finding a short cut can seem like a rational consideration.

Learning is seen as a means rather than an end. In life, learning is the differentiator. Grades that aren’t supported by learning are artificial and useless in the “real world.”

Learning recall is compromised. When learning is driven by grades, once the grade is assigned students typically forget much of what they’ve learned, as their brains believe the purpose for learning has been served.

Grades can mislead. People who attempt to understand what students know can be deceived by the grades students received.

Of course, the position grades occupy in the culture of most schools may seem unassailable. While we may not be able to immediately change the system, there are steps we can take to counter the pressure and influence of grades that can compromise learning. Here are four actions to get started.

Focus on purpose as students are introduced to and engage with new learning. We may not always think deeply about why students should learn what we’re asking. Yet, we know that in life, purpose is the strongest driver of learning. Not everything we ask students to learn has immediate life application, but our students can still benefit from our reflection. Here are some questions we might ask: Why’s this learning important? How might it improve students’ lives? How might they use what they’re learning beyond the confines of the classroom? Of course, achieving a goal to gain competency in a skill can be a purpose. Meeting a challenge can be worth putting in the effort, especially when working with others. Providing service and support to others while learning together can also be a reason to build one’s skills and knowledge.

Focus on the learning process over the product, especially early in the teaching and learning cycle. For example, we might focus instruction and coaching on key strategies for learning, on effective ways to invest learning effort, and on connecting students with key resources to support their learning. Our coaching might focus on where students struggle, on what insights they’re gaining, on what they see as next steps, etc. Meanwhile, we should also consider delaying the assignment of grades for as long as possible. Multiple studies have shown that when grades are assigned, students devalue feedback and focus on the grade. Grades focus on the product and can overwhelm attention to the process.

De-emphasize grades as the reason for learning. Learning builds competence and confidence. Learning creates capacity, options, and power, while grades provide limited value if not supported by real learning.

Remind students that grades have a limited “shelf life,” while learning holds its value. Some students and parents argue that good grades are crucial to get into the post-secondary school of their choice. While in many cases this may be true, it’s good learning that allows students to stay there once they’ve been admitted. Meanwhile, learning leads to good grades, so preoccupation with grades as the goal isn’t necessary.

Admittedly, grades have come to occupy an outsized place in schools and in the learning lives of students. But, they can be a significant distraction from rich, lasting learning. We may not be able to fully dispel the perception of their importance in learning, but we can coach our students to gain a better understanding of and better perspective on how the narrow pursuit of grades can be an empty promise and “fool’s gold” in their pursuit of life meaning and success.

This is the time of year when we face the challenge of preparing our students for upcoming assessments and exams. Students have been exposed to a wealth of content, concepts, and skills over the past weeks and months. We know that students often forget much of what they’ve heard and taken in over time. Now we need to understand how well they’ve absorbed, stored, and can recall and apply what they’ve learned. Our challenge is to bring what students have learned to a conscious level and shore up what they still need to learn. Test preparation strategies that refresh learning and extend recall can help students do this.

However, our goal shouldn’t simply be just to have our students do well on an exam. While having our students do well is part of their and our success equation, we really want them to be able to recall, apply, and connect what they’ve learned beyond the exam. Test preparation may be the immediate activity, but it’s a great opportunity to help students to refresh, reinforce, and ramp up what they’ve learned. Our real goal is to have students be able to retrieve what they’ve learned and access it long after they’ve finished the exam and left our class.

Giving students practice questions that mimic the format they’ll encounter on the exam and reviewing strategies for developing and choosing question responses can assist students to accurately demonstrate what they know. However, these activities do little to reinvigorate what students have learned or uncover gaps and “soft spots” in their learning. Interestingly, some of the strategies we used during initial instruction to help students remember can also be useful in refreshing and reinforcing past learning. Here are four strategies that can help our students get ready for major exams while also extending their learning recall.

Schedule brief, frequent, and focused refreshment sessions. Start early and allow plenty of time. For example, we might take the first or last few minutes of daily class routines for quick review and assessment of what students know and what may need to be reinforced. Students will be better able to re-activate prior learning if they engage in small doses of review over time, rather than large dose cramming in the final days before the assessment. These sessions should include concepts and skills with which students did well during initial instruction and areas of struggle. Just because students scored well on previous assessments doesn't mean they can recall and apply previous learning now. In areas where students struggled during initial learning, we need to pay particular attention to aspects and elements that challenged them. We can also challenge ourselves to find new approaches that might sidestep learning traps and trip-ups and create more successful learning paths for students.

Have students engage in retrieval practice. This relatively simple research-based strategy can provide a significant advantage to students’ preparation. We start by giving students a specific topic, process, or skill on which to focus. Students then do a “mind dump” by recounting, orally or in writing, everything they can recall from prior learning related to the recall target. Students can quickly refresh their memories while identifying areas that may need reinforcement. Interestingly, this approach has been shown to be more efficient and effective than reteaching. Of course, we can encourage students to repeat this process on their own as they prepare for exams individually or in small groups. A key benefit associated with this activity is its ability to extend recall well beyond the completion of an exam.

Coach students to engage in self-quizzing. We might encourage students to generate questions they anticipate will be on the exam. We might “prime” this activity by reminding students of the major concepts and skills they’ve studied and likely will be included in the assessment. By developing questions, students will focus on key content they need to know. Their answers to the questions they generate can build confidence and uncover areas needing more focus and study. A twist to this activity is to have students exchange questions and have classmates develop responses for review by the question creator. The exchange likely will broaden the thinking and preparation in which students engage, as different students predictably will focus on different aspects of the content.

Have students build “mind maps” to demonstrate elements, relationships, and key concept hierarchies. Mind maps can be particularly helpful to students who prefer to organize their thinking and recall with visual representations. Seeing the map in their minds can be a great assistance to them as they respond to exam questions, and "mind maps" retain easily long after the exam is complete. If students build "mind maps" during initial learning, now is a good time to have students retrieve them, review them, and explain their meaning to a classmate. The process of explaining will further solidify recall and may surface areas of confusion or memory loss that’ll need to be addressed.

Obviously, we want our students to do well on key unit and end-of-year assessments. However, we also know students often focus their attention on upcoming exams and quickly forget content once the assessment is complete. These strategies can help students learn more effectively now, as well as build long-term memory they can access in the future.

Over the years researchers have documented a long and growing list of what often are called “best practices” in instruction and learning activities. The goal has been to sort and sift what educators typically do to stimulate learning and determine which practices generate the most learning. For example, researcher John Hattie has compiled an extensive list of practices that have been evaluated for learning effect or impact using meta-analysis. Robert Marzano and others have developed similar lists from which educators can select and apply in their work with students.

While these lists and accompanying research can be helpful, not all “best practices” work in every circumstance and with every student. In fact, so called “best practices” can fall short in their impact when misapplied. Some practices are more appropriate for younger students. Other practices work best with highly motivated students. Still others may be appropriate for introducing content or honing key skills. Some practices also may rely on adequate background knowledge and skill levels for students to find success. Other practices depend on high levels of teacher experience and expertise.

The fact is that “best practices” aren’t necessarily effective practices unless they match the learning readiness of students, are consistent with and build on previous and planned instruction, can be facilitated with our level of knowledge and skill, as well as tie into other related factors. Best practices become effective practices only when they’re thoughtfully applied in ways and under circumstances that match their design. Unless we understand the context, connections, and current capacity of learners, we can’t have confidence in the effectiveness or appropriateness of a given practice or strategy.

When considering what instructional and learning support strategies to employ, there are several questions we can ask ourselves to ensure that “best practice” will be effective practice with our students:

What's the goal of our instruction? Any decision regarding instructional and learning support activities must start with a clear goal. We need to consider whether the strategy or practice we’re considering matches and supports our intentions.

What role will students play in this activity? Some practices and activities require students to be actively engaged while others depend on students listening to and absorbing information. Obviously, the age, maturity, and personalities of our students need to play a role in the choices we make.

How impactful is this practice likely to be with my students? We can consult available research to gain a general understanding of how well the practice we’re considering is likely to generate significant learning. Of course, we also need to consider what we know about our students and how they’ve responded to similar activities in the past.

Do our students possess necessary background knowledge to be successful? Strategies that may be highly successful with students who are experienced with the content and possess background experience may not be as impactful with students who lack the context and knowledge necessary to engage successfully in the activity.

How will this instruction or learning activity fit with and build on previous instruction? An instructional and learning support activity may sound interesting, exciting, and engaging, but it won’t fit well with the learning paths on which our students are traveling. It may be that we need to delay implementation until our students are ready, or we may need to modify the activity to fit the context where we want to use it.

Do students possess the skills to engage productively in the learning? Some best practices require students to work independently, manage their time and focus, and employ specific techniques and tools to be successful. When presented with learning expectations that surpass our students’ current capacity, they’re likely to struggle and may fail. We may need to delay the activity or take the time necessary to build student skills before moving forward.

What level of interest or commitment will students have in the activity? The better we know our students, the better able we’ll be to answer this question. In some cases, students will naturally be drawn to the learning and content we consider. At other times, we may need to build curiosity and establish a compelling purpose before introducing the activity. The bottom line is that if students fail to see purpose, value, or aren’t interested, the impact of an otherwise “best practice” will likely fall short.

We have available to us a wide array of instructional practices and learning support activities. Our challenge is to match their application with what’s most likely to be effective considering what we know about our students, what we know about the concept or skill, and the timing and context within which the activity will be introduced.

This time of year elementary schools start thinking about and planning next year’s schedules and staffing assignments. For most schools, the choice arises among three options: self-contained classes, platooning, and looping. A key consideration that’ll drive this decision is which model best serves the students. Fortunately, a growing body of research helps clarify the learning implications of these decision options.

But first, some definitions. The self-contained classroom, the dominate model for generations, has one primary teacher responsible for core instruction and learning for a defined group of students for a single year. Platooning retains a defined group of students, but instruction and responsibility for learning in core subjects are shared among a group of teachers, each of whom is responsible for a portion of the curriculum, such as math, English language arts, etc. Teachers rotate among the classes at a specific grade level either by going from room to room, or by having students come to them. In looping, students have one primary teacher for core subjects, and they remain with the teacher for more than a single year.

From a research and experience perspective, self-contained classrooms provide opportunities to form strong relationships between students and teachers, but many teachers have a stronger background and better instructional skills in some subjects than others. Consequently, instructional focus and student learning can vary across subjects. Platooning addresses the potential for instruction in each core subject to be of higher quality and delivered by a teacher with a higher level of commitment to the subject. But this risks sacrificing the close relationships that typically develop in a self-contained classroom. Looping supports even stronger relationships between students and teachers as the relationship spans a longer time. However, like self-contained classrooms, uneven preparation and instructional skills impact learning.

So, how can we sort for the best option? Multiple studies show platooning doesn’t result in better academic achievement as measured by standardized tests. In fact, past multiple studies highlight decreased scores in reading and math when specialists deliver instruction. Equally concerning, the number of student absences and suspensions grew. Sadly, the negative impact was greatest for the most vulnerable students, including students with special needs.

Students in self-contained classrooms perform better than matched students in platooned classes despite concerns about uneven teacher preparation and skills. The factor driving the difference is the crucial role of the relationship between students and teachers in early grades. Also, the knowledge teachers have about individual students allows them to respond to students' unique learning needs.

Meanwhile, studies show that students in looping classrooms do better than students in either self-contained or platooning classes. Again, this additional time students and teachers spend together leads to strong relationships, a key differentiator. Further, the additional time allows teachers to tailor instruction and support for students with distinctive learning needs. Interestingly, a variation on looping multi-age classes offers different grade level students greater benefits. It allows teachers flexibility to teach content as students are ready, as opposed to limitations of a tight, grade level curriculum.

Admittedly, many factors go into decisions about scheduling and teacher assignments. However, evidence shows that placing relationships at the center is a crucial consideration to make for our youngest learners.

Takeaways:

For young learners, the presence of strong, positive relationships with their teachers has a greater influence on learning than teacher expertise alone.

Investing in teacher expertise across subjects in elementary grades offers a better return than having teachers teach in their strongest curricular area.

Vulnerable students need a combination of strong relationships. A teacher who knows them well is able to respond to their individual learning needs.

For middle and high school students, multi-disciplinary teaching teams that work closely together provide important support and shared knowledge about student needs, despite exposure to multiple teachers each day.

Through our experience with and the ongoing research on platooning, looping, and self-contained classes, we strive to distill the best learning methods and strategies for our students.