Episode 88: Cognitive Science and MCP


Voiceover: Welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. Each week we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self-paced, and mastery-based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other, so this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. 


Hello and welcome to episode 88 of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. My name is Tony Rosennan. She her pronouns and I am a program manager at Modern Classroom. I am joined by one of our expert mentors and I've had the lovely, lovely pleasure of getting to know Alison Stone. So welcome, Alison. Hi. I'm really excited to be on the podcast. I am just as excited as you. So it's so exciting to be in this space with you. And thank you so much for saying yes to the podcast. Before we get started, how are you feeling today? I'm feeling pretty good. I am currently on a half year sabbatical from teaching and I've been doing administrative Leadership program, and that's just giving me the opportunity to do a lot of thinking, which I'm appreciative of. What a nice feeling to be on sabbatical. I feel like I feel like I need to be on a forever sabbatical.


Participant #1:
Well, okay. So tell us more about who you are and how you started your Modern Classroom journey. So, I am a high school science educator in Central Bucks School District in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. I have been teaching at the high school level. I think this is year 17 for me. I teach human anatomy and physiology and I teach all levels of biology. We're a ten through twelve building. So we are like, truly a high school. I started doing Modern Classrooms Project in response to the pandemic, as I know a lot of your other guests have said. It was the summer after the shutdown. So the summer of 2020, I knew that I was going to have to approach things differently just because of how uncertain the 2021 school year was going to be. And I heard Kareem on Cul de Pedagogy, and then our person in charge of staff development said something to me about the free course. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to look that up. I'm going to look that up. I'm going to give that a try. And I did, and that was it. And I was like, okay, I'm doing this all out. So I worked that whole summer to get my anatomy and physiology course set up and implemented, and I haven't looked back since. And I'm glad that you had that support as well, from like an instructional coach or just to kind of have a support system. Did you have any coworkers that you did this with or were you just kind of on your own? Yeah. So my partner in crime, Kelly Pelloquin, who's also in my building and also teaches biology, she's just an early adapter of many things. But she dove in with May. She did biology, I did anatomy and physiology, and now we're working together. She's now teaching anatomy and physiology as well and sort of using my format that we developed in Canvas. And then I actually started teaching a biology course that she had taught and converted to modern classrooms. So I sort of used her format going into this past year. Oh, I love that. I bet it made it so much more manageable when you have a teacher bestie right beside you doing this, right? Absolutely. We're actually also now working on developing an Asynchronous course that our district is rolling out, and we're working as a team to develop that. So we're similar, but we also do have different styles and different ideas, and so I just love that diversity that it brings to planning together. Yeah, that sounds fantastic. It seems like you're doing some great things. So let's move on to the next question. I know that you'd approach me to talk about cognitive science, and it's wild because I know little about cognitive science. I like to think I know a lot. So I'm really excited to learn from you from this conversation. So tell us more about cognitive science and how that plays with modern classroom. This happened before modern classroom. I started to dive into some cognitive science and how that ties into good teaching and learning. I would say maybe like 2016. I started all my research and modern classrooms, I feel like really pulled on a lot of these ideas that I had been learning about, and that's why I adopted the model so quickly. But one of the things that we ask from our students is we want them to become independent learners. But if we want them to become independent learners, that means we need to teach them. Like, how do we actually learn? And you would be surprised. Again, I teach ten through 12th graders, and a lot of them are using strategies, studies strategies, that are actually pretty ineffective because nobody's taught them otherwise. So what is cognitive science? I think if you start with that and it's just a scientific study of how humans learn, and it originated probably in the early 1950s with this idea of information processing. And the information processing model tells us there's kind of three pieces to learning. So it's sensory input and what kinds of things are we paying attention to? This is like that attention piece. What are we attending to? Those things become encoded into the second part of the information processing cycle, which is your working memory. And we've all heard about that as teachers. Like, you can hold between five and nine items in that working memory, and then some of that stuff in the working memory can be then incorporated into long term memory, which is what we want. That's when they have ultimately learned. But in addition to that, sometimes you can store things in long term memory, but they don't hang out there for very long. So you need to continue to rehearse and retrieve information from your long term memory. And the more you do that, the more you pull information out of your longterm memory, the more solidified it becomes and more embedded. And that's ultimately what we want for our students, is that long term learning piece. And so when I think about this in terms of modern classrooms, this is actually part of my unit zero, and I teach biology, I teach human anatomy and physiology. So there's some connection between how the brain works and obviously human anatomy and physiology. Not so much with biology, but I don't think it matters. Like, I want to teach my students to be better students. I want them to be better learners. I want them to be self sufficient learners. So I explicitly teach about information processing during my unit zero. And I think it's key to empowering students to learn independently. There are all kinds of things we can do in our classroom to promote the idea, like what we know about information processing. We can promote good practices, and by explicitly teaching it, students understand why as a teacher, I'm choosing certain activities. So that's sort of big picture of cognitive science. But one of the things that I found this year with the class I was working with was that it really tied into another piece of cognitive science, which is something called cognitive load theory. And I'm a novice when it comes to cognitive load theory. I don't know that much about it, but I'm learning more about it. And there have been a lot of people I've noticed on the Facebook group asking, and I know too, Tony Roslyn, some of the podcasts that you've recorded. People have asked about motivation and how to keep kids motivated. And I think a lot of it actually ties back to this idea of cognitive load theory. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that and then how that applies to the modern classroom set up and self pacing. And I'm so excited to learn about this as well. Right, so cognitive load overload, that's something that I've been also trying to kind of decipher when I'm working with adult learners as well. It's like I don't want to give too much information because then they're really not going to get all of the things. So I think this is where the lesson classification works really well, right? Like, the must do is super intentional with what we want our students to be looking at and then they should do and aspire to do, as well as the extra stuff that we would love for them to do, but not necessarily needed. I'm excited. Let's dive into it. Okay, so again, this is a big idea, and I'm a novice, but it's really about the working memory piece of the information processing. So again, we can hold so many items in that working memory between five and nine items depending on what's going on around us. But we can actually think of the working memory as a glass. This has been the most helpful for me. So like filling a glass with water, there's three parts of the working memory that fit in the glass. So the first part is intrinsic load and that's determined by the number of things that we're trying to learn and what are the connections between those things, what are we asking students to remember? And if it's something really challenging that intrinsic load is going to fill more of the glass than something that's not as challenging. Additionally, intrinsic load is really influenced by your students prior knowledge. So when we talk about scaffolding, like if they have some prior knowledge of the topic, that's going to help them decrease intrinsic load because they'll be able to pull some ideas from their longterm memory to incorporate the new ideas and build into that scaffold. So students who don't have good prior knowledge, intrinsic flow is going to be bigger and it's going to fill more the glass. And students who do have good prior knowledge, intrinsic load is not going to fill as much of their glass of water then we have extraneous load. And as teachers I think we probably have the most control over the extraneous load. And this is all the unnecessary details that can sometimes be included in your instructional material. So like if you throw up a cat meme that doesn't have anything to do with what you're trying to teach now the attention is directed towards the cat meme and not the new information. And so we're taking up more of that glass with that extraneous load. Or like you have some weird unrelated animation as part of your slide or even if you have a really monotonous voice, the text is tiny or too big or just hard to read. And then I almost feel like this is sort of, I don't know, like a non adaption of this idea of cognitive load theory. But this is something people always think about is like your classroom, is it like totally busy? Are there things hanging from the ceiling and all over your walls that could influence extraneous load? Although I don't know that that's as big a problem as sometimes people focus on. But it's still a piece of that extraneous load. So if we can minimize the amount of water that goes to the extraneous load, we're less likely to overflow. Finally, the third piece. So we've talked about intrinsic load. Extraneous load jermaine load is what we want. So this is that integration of new knowledge into the old knowledge and we want that to happen. So we want to have enough space in the glass for the domain load to be there. And we also need to be explicit about how the content connects to their students. Prior knowledge. And so it's important to kind of tease out where they are in terms of prior knowledge and be aware of gaps in student knowledge, because, again, the less prior knowledge they have, the more the intrinsic load is going to fill and you won't have as much space for them to actually incorporate what they're trying to learn into their long term memory. Alison I think my mind is blown right now. I'm processing all of this wonderful information. I think the biggest takeaway for me was the extraneous load that you were talking about. Right. The unnecessary details that's included in the instructional material. And this is something that I tell my mentees all the time. It's like, be intentional with this model. You have to be super intentional. Like, as much as we love JIFFs, as much as we love these cool little images and memes and all of that, actually, the simpler your instructional videos are, the better. You don't actually need to have all of these fireworks to make it look engaging or exciting or whatever. And so this makes me feel good that there's research on it and you're telling us we don't actually need any of those things. We need it to be as simple and concise for students to really get the information that they need. So, again, being super intentional with what we put in front of our students. Right. Okay, continue. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And that was one of the things I was going to say. Really easy way to incorporate what I'm telling you into your lessons is how can you get rid of those things that don't really pertain to the learning? Right. And even I think sometimes with the practice activities we come up with, like, we want to have something that's fun and engaging, but are we making it too much about being fun and engaging and maybe not enough about the actual learning that we want to happen? How are we asking students to practice content? Are we asking them to play a game that they've never played before and they have to learn the rules of the game first, then they can practice with the content. And if you're doing that, you have to think, I mean, is there value in learning the game? Well, if you're going to use a game maybe throughout your course? Well, yeah, like, teach them the game because it's fun, and then they can learn the rules and use it. But if you're going to change the game every time, now you're losing valuable time and cognitive load capacity or cognitive capacity to just learn the rules of the game rather than the content that we want to practice. Yeah, and that makes so much sense. I know for me, when I was in the classroom, gamification was a big deal, and it still is, and I couldn't get on board because I just didn't it wasn't going to work for me as a teacher. And that was okay, right? So some teachers are really good with gamification, but for me, it wasn't about creating fun and engaging tasks. It was like getting my students to really master the content, the skills. And if we have time and capacity, then yes, we'll play those games. Another thing that I thought about too, this is making me think about all the tech tools and programs that are out there, right, and having to teach students the skill of accessing these different tech tools and programs. And so again, being super intentional with which tools and programs you want to use in your classroom. And just like what you said, right? If you're going to be using Flipgrid, then yes, it is really great for you to go over Flip grid and talk about it so students know how to access that and know how to use it. But if you're just going to use one thing at that one point, are you going to have time to go over how to teach that skill to students? And another thing too to keep in mind is our students are really great at figuring things out, right? I figured out TikTok because of them. They taught me how to create Tik tok videos because of them. It's really interesting. I know when I first started working as a teacher, I wanted to incorporate technology. So I just put in so many different tech tools and programs and that was definitely a mistake because it took time for me to introduce this tech tool, the program, and then students to get used to it, to try and figure out how to use it effectively and efficiently. And so that took away time from them actually learning the skill. And so the students would be like, oh, I learned how to use Storyboard, but not the skill that we were focusing on. So thank you for that. This is again so great. Continue on 100%. And that's another thing that I think of. And I've changed my practice to be like, why am I asking students to make these complicated videos about something they're learning about and they're spending so much time learning about the video software and they haven't actually come out on the other end learning about the content that I wanted them to learn about. And I've done the same thing. So just again, thinking about what are the best tech tools and what are the ones that move my students closer to those learning objectives, I'm going to pick those, I'm going to teach them early and then I'm going to rotate them maybe, but I'm going to use them frequently over the whole course so that I don't have to reteach that. And again, we can focus on the content, which is what I want them to come out of my classroom knowing. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about how I really see cognitive load as being a factor in students who are maybe chronically behind or you do something in class and like, no one's getting it done and it's taking forever. And why is that happening? There's been an article that's kind of been floating around on Twitter, and it's by a cognitive scientist named Steven Schu, and he actually has a great video to go along with it too. But Tony Rose, if we can include the diagram in the show notes, that'd be awesome. Yes, I'm planning on putting all of these diagrams in the show notes out. Okay. And so he wrote an article about choke points and pitfalls and learning. And so it comes back to this information processing model and all of the places where students can get frozen or like, they might fall into a trap where they think they're doing something that's helpful for their learning and it's actually not helpful for their learning. And so I think this is like a really good I wouldn't necessarily share this with students, but I think as a teacher, it's a good image to look at and just think to yourself, what's going on in my classroom? Is it because of one of these choke points of pitfalls? So, for example, as far as cognitive load, there could be a choke point in the mental effort or concentration. It's like, limited. And so we want to make sure that students really have that prior knowledge, and we might want to pre assess, and then if they don't have that prior knowledge and the pre assessment, we need to teach at first before we move on to the more complicated material, which is nice because modern classrooms allows for that. I feel like you could pre assess. And those kids who don't have that prior knowledge, you spend the time with them to give them the prior knowledge because why would you push them on to the harder stuff if they don't have that prior knowledge versus the students who have the prior knowledge? You can move them on and then hopefully they can get onto one of those Aspire to do assignments and to stretch their thinking so you have the space to do that. And then in a traditional classroom, you just really don't have that. So, yeah, I'm not going to read through that whole diagram, but it's like, super helpful. And again, it's a good thing to think about, like, when you're having problems in your classroom. I'm also reading a book right now called Teaching Secondary Science by Adam Boxer, and it's just, like, totally blowing my mind. He is a teacher over in Great Britain, and he uses a lot of cognitive science strategies to inform his teaching in a way deeper way than I do. But one of the things that he talked about in the book was this idea of mirrors or windows. So when you look out your classroom and everything is going amazing, your focus should be like, look at all these amazing things that my students are doing and pointing out, sally, you're just doing such an awesome job like staying on task. Johnny, you know the content so well. But then as a teacher, the converse of that is when I look out in my classroom and things aren't going well, there are many students off pace, I need to look in the mirror, what am I doing and what can I change as an educator to make things happen in a good way so that I'm looking through the window again and I just really like that viewpoint and it comes back again to this choke points and pitfalls. What are my students experiencing and what can I do as a teacher to help them get through that? So I wanted to talk a little bit about an experience because I'm on sabbatical. I've had the opportunity to visit some classrooms and one of them is a classroom of my teacher Bestie Kelly, and I was observing her implementing Modern Classroom Project and she was struggling with students falling off pace. So when I came to see her, we had decided that she was going to stop MCP, like the self pacing and do a teacher pace lesson, but go through a Modern Classroom lesson. So the first thing they did was they watched her video as a class and the video was about six minutes long and I timed the whole thing and it took about 20 minutes to watch that video as a class. And when she and I debriefed, we took a hard look at the video. She had seven or maybe more questions embedded in that six minute video and the questions I felt were like, it was good, they were good questions, but a lot of them were asking students to access prior knowledge, but she was also introducing new knowledge and many of the students sitting in front of her didn't actually have the prior knowledge. So we talked about how can we approach this in a way where we're making sure we are accessing that prior knowledge but not trying to do it at the same time that you're teaching new knowledge. By the time we were done the video, I felt as confused as the students even though I'm really comfortable with biology content because my attention was so distracted by those questions, even though, again, they were good questions. It was just like in the wrong format. So we took a look at it and we decided she was going to pull almost all the questions and keep the questions in the video really explicit to the content that the students were learning basically right from the video just to make sure they were still paying attention. The other thing we saw was students weren't taking the guided notes while we were watching the video. They forgot because they were paying attention to the video and there was like too many things going on in the video. They couldn't remember to take those guided notes. So if you can imagine a student who has they need extra support in the classroom and they may have some disabilities that make it difficult to hold information and working memory, or they don't have the prior knowledge, this is going to be really frustrating for them. And it might be a choke point, like they might say, I don't care if this video is six minutes long, it's going to take me 20 minutes to do and I'm not going to know anything at the end of it. I think it was just really valuable for us to take a really hard look at that video. And she has seen that now that she's looking at her videos and the questions she has embedded. So not just the videos, it's just the questions embedded, she's gotten a little bit better buy in from her students moving through. And that all makes sense, right? And that was something that I would tell my mentees, is that if you have a six minute video, just be super intentional. Again, that word right, of the questions that you're asking. And it has to be something that you just said in the video as opposed to a brand new thing that they should have known and we're assuming that students should know. So that really took away from learning the content. And that was my experience as well when I first started with Modern Classroom and the videos was that students were taking 2030 minutes watching a six minute video because I had them doing so many things. They were answering questions, they were taking guided notes. And it was just a lot, especially like for my students who are also just learning English, and my students who had five or four and IEP, it was a challenge because it was so many things that I was getting them to do. And so I had to take away all of those barriers, like that one was on me. And so, I mean, what you said earlier, too, it resonated with me about the mirrors or windows, right. I think as teachers, sometimes it's easier for us to just kind of say, oh, well, the students can't do this or the students can't do that, or like, oh, because so and so they're not able to do this. And actually our students are able to do everything and anything we throw at them with the correct scaffolds and the support and really just keeping in mind this cognitive overload as well, too right? And so this is all great things to keep in mind. And it's hard sometimes to look at the mirror and just kind of reflect on like, okay, what am I doing as a teacher that's not working? What barriers am I creating that students are not being successful with these things that we're doing in class. And so I think that's a really great practice, right, like the mirrors or windows. And so this is great that you're able to go in and observe your teacher bestie and just kind of reflect on the practice. Right. And it seems like your teacher busy was very receptive to being like, okay, yeah, I meant, well, my intention was this, but it did not the impact was not that and just kind of like pivoting right. And just making sure, okay, what can I do now to disrupt or take away all these barriers that I've created without even meaning to create? These are great. Alison, you're blowing my mind. This is amazing. I feel good because as a teacher, I'm like, okay, I was doing some of these things. I was getting to it, and I feel like I should have known this from the get go. But it's really nice to see that there's, like, studies and that there are better ways to get our students to where we need them to be. Yeah, absolutely. And unfortunately, I don't think enough teacher preparation programs include this information. And I think it's really valuable to have it and be like, oh, that's why it doesn't work, versus, again, saying, well, the students just can't handle it. I had my own experience in the fall where I had one particular student who was an English Language learner getting stuck on quizlet practice. So I really like quizlet. I think it's really valuable. I like the learn function. I don't know if everybody knows about the learn function in quizlet. So great. It's really good. And at one point it differentiates if students having trouble with a particular term. It just keeps bringing that back until they get it. But the first part of it is multiple choice. But then the second part of it, they have to type in the word. And so some of my students, particularly my English Language learners, were getting stuck because it was hard to spell the word that they'd spell them wrong and then it would flip that back. So we started using a word bank, which they have provided in their guided notes, but I would just direct them to that, use this word bank while you're doing the quizlet. And for some students that works, but I still had some students who just, like, just kept getting stuck on that quizlet assignment, which I had in pretty much every lesson that I was doing. So I ended up printing out flash cards with the terms, and then they just played a matching game. And then when they were ready, I would come over and just check and make sure that they match the words, the definition correctly and just got them off the computer completely because it wasn't working for them and it was too much work for them to again, they were experiencing one of those chosen points that they couldn't move beyond, and then they were getting behind the rest of the students. So I had to look at my practice and say, well, what barriers are they experiencing? Why are they feeling that frustration that they can't move forward? Once you have it, then you have it. So now I have it. And in the future, when I see that happening, that can be my response also with reading. A lot of students struggle with reading, but I'm not teaching reading, I'm teaching biology, and I don't want the reading to be a barrier for my students. So anytime I have something that has a long passage or longer directions, I like to record my voice and just embed that into my canvas and say, you know, you can read these directions or you can listen to Mrs. Stone read the directions. And the number of students who just pop in their headphones quietly, nobody else needs to know that they're actually listening to me read. It's just awesome. And it's just like, again, reducing one of those barriers that in the past students would act out or whatever when I asked them to read something because it was a difficult task for them and they were trying to balance too many things when they were reading, sounding words out, whatever, so they couldn't focus on the actual content that I wanted them to learn. And this is like a way to do that, to differentiate for them. That's not going to embarrass them and it's going to give them the tools they need to move forward and get unstuck. Alison I teach reading and I do the same thing. I think it's just, again, making the learning accessible, right? And so, of course, we're going to have students who struggle with specific skills and it's not for us to reprimand them or make them feel bad about it, but it's as to lift them up and to provide those supports and scaffold so that they do feel confident to make those mistakes, to try out those skills that they've been struggling with for a long time. And I think the beauty of teaching is that we get to change our strategies, our practices, as often as we want to, as often as we need to, because our students are so different every single year. And I think with Modern classroom too, is that it provides time for teachers to be able to do that. And I mean, I know there's a lot of front loading as far as planning is concerned with Modern classroom, but then when you're in the classroom, you have all of the time to be able to see and notice, oh, my students are not they're stuck here. So let me create a different option for them so they can be successful and they're not stuck. So getting them to be unstuck, we have more energy and time for that in a modern classroom, I believe, because I think when I was teaching traditionally, right, my class time was all about lecturing and making sure everyone was doing the same thing all the time. And that was such a struggle. And so of course for me to be like, oh, I'm going to stop and pause and create a different venue, a different option, a different entrance point for the student. That was really overwhelming for me when I was teaching traditionally. And so with Modern Classroom, it really opens up that time and space and that energy as a teacher to kind of sit back, reflect and think, okay, here's another option, or here's another entrance point that my students can do to show me that they've mastered the skill, and then also, what are the barriers? So if it's easier for me to record something, I'll go ahead and record that, because, again, that's not the struggle that I want my students to have. Yes. And that's what gets me just so excited about Modern Classroom and certainly my experience in the fall. It is so beautiful to be able to sit back and watch and notice and then respond instead of just trying to control the situation in the classroom. And it makes the learning visible. I think Modern Classroom, more than anything now, things are visible that weren't visible to me before. I wouldn't necessarily have noticed that the quizlet wasn't working for certain students because I just, okay, we're done. We're moving on. Because that's where everybody is, but that's not where everybody is. Right? So Modern Classroom really gives you that flexibility to see it in real time, which is so exciting. And this is where I wasn't paying as much attention to this cognitive load theory idea before I was teaching Modern Classroom. But now that I'm doing Modern Classroom, now, that little piece of cognitive science that I know researchers see in the lab, like, I'm actually seeing it right in front of me in the classroom, which is pretty exciting. Yeah, I know. I was really bummed because it was my 10th year of teaching when I found out about Modern Classroom, and all I could say was, Oh, my gosh, I wish I had this. Ever since day one, I wish I had this because I feel like I would have done some cool things. I still did cool things, but it wasn't as cool as Modern Classrooms. So, Alison, can we talk about the reflection and the metacognition of all of this as well? Because I know reflection is a huge part of Modern Classroom. Yeah. And again, this is definitely a strategy that I was looking at even before Modern Classroom. But if we're talking about getting our students to understand how to learn, and then the idea of mastery shifting their attention from what grade did I get to? But what do I know is so important? And I think building in space for reflection for students, and I know this is part of the free course or the mentoring course, but getting students to reflect frequently on what do they know and what don't they know, it's just like, essential like that. How do they move forward if they don't have a way of evaluating their own learning. And so I actually do a weekly every Friday, we do like a Friday survey where I might say to them, tell me three things you learned this week. Tell me something that you struggled with this week. What's something that you want to make sure you do for next week? Just getting them to reflect. And I know that you've had that in the past on other podcasts, like talking about, like, a weekly email or whatever that they send out where they are. But not just that, but also, what do I now know and what do I still need to work on? What don't I know yet? And getting them to really think about it. One of the things I like to do sometimes is at the beginning of class, sometimes we do retrieval activities. So just practice what they knew. They learned a lesson before, a week before, a month before. So we do a little practice with that. But I might throw up, like, a matching vocabulary question on the board, and I'll say, go ahead and do this. And then I'll say to the whole class, okay, I want you to raise your hand. If you use the test taking strategy, like elimination for this question, and you have a bunch of students raise your hand. And then I'll say, okay, I want you to tell me how many of you looked at the word and you automatically knew the definition and you just kind of looked for it and you knew right away. And those kids raise their hand and I say, well, those of you that use test taking strategies, I just want you to internalize for a second that you're still a novice because you had to eliminate you didn't know that word right off the bat, and those of you who knew the definition right away and you just needed to find the definition in the list. You guys are experts, so where are you on the schedule on there? Are you a novice? Are you an expert? And just giving them the chance to reflect on that, not calling anybody out for it. But we do need to show students that there's a difference between recognizing something and knowing something. And so I try to build in those kinds of deeper metacognitive activities as often as I can. How do you know what you learned? Those kinds of questions, I think, are really helpful for students and getting them to move forward to the next piece of their education, which is really owning their learning. That's what I wanted to say. Owning their learning. Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge fan of retrieval practice only because I know that that works, right? And so with the guided notes, I go back and forth with a couple of implementers and also, just like my colleagues about guided notes, I really want my students to do retrieval notes. So after watching the video, then they can write down everything that they learned so I can see what those misconceptions are and what they actually got out of the video. Another thing that I was thinking too, Alison, when it comes to reflection in the metacognition practice, it's really interesting because I teach middle school, and so I had to teach my students how to reflect. It wasn't just a skill that they had because working with 6th graders, you tell them, what did you learn? They'll be like, I don't know, nothing. And it's like, no, let's really think about it. I had to model how that looks. I had to show an example. I had to get them to practice over and over so that they can get that reflection piece down right. So it's not just a hurried like, okay, I'll just do this and I'll get it done in two minutes. But really taking the time to reflect on what they learned and how they learned it and what are some things that worked for them and what didn't work for them. Teachers sometimes are like, oh, this is a skill that's been taught already. It's not take a moment to just make sure that students know exactly what you mean by reflecting. Yeah, absolutely. And actually made me think of something that I'm working on creating more of these. But there's an AP psychology teacher. His name is Blake Harvard, and he's involved with actually with CogX. And I think there's going to be a webinar with CogX rooms soon. But he has this activity that he calls brain Book buddy. And he has you could have a worksheet, and at the top of the worksheet you would put a box, like a box for students to color and then right next to it, brain. And then a box for students to color and next to that right book. And then a box for students to color and next to that right buddy. And what his students do is they retrieve first so they get the worksheet. It's got information maybe from a prior lesson. They answer as much as they can on the worksheet without using any notes, just using their brain. So purely retrieval. The next thing they do is they look at what they highlight all the next thing they do is they highlight all of the things that they could remember, like, let's say blue, and then they color that little box, brain box blue. And then the next thing they do is they go to their notes and try to fill in any gaps, anything they missed, any of those words that they fill in, maybe they highlight those yellow and they color their book box yellow. And then if there's anything they're still missing, so maybe something that they didn't fill in in their guided notes or something that they missed, they're going to maybe turn to a partner or somebody else in the classroom and see if they can fill in any of the other things that they're missing. And then that last thing they're going to do is highlight that maybe in pink. And those are the things I had to talk to a buddy about. Then you ask them to reflect. Okay, so the things that you highlighted in blue, which I think is what I said, their brain was, you're good. You know those so that you can feel confident. You know that information. If you had to go to your notebook, those are some things that you still need to study. So you might even, in your notebook, highlight those places in your notebook just to make sure you take a look at that and think about it in the future. And then the buddy one, me as a teacher, I may want to look at that and say, oh, why didn't you have that done? Was I not clear that on the video? Or the student could say, maybe I'm not filling my guided notes out correctly, and I need to make sure I'm paying more attention when I do my guided notes. So you're doing your content, but you're also building in that metacognition when you're doing that little activity, really simple, really quick activity, you can do it with anything that you already have. You don't even need to put the boxes at the top. You can kind of just walk your students through it. It's a great way to work in metacognition, but still in a way where you're focused on your class content. I love that because then they get to practice with the content multiple times. Right. So the brain, the book, and then the buddy and something, too, that I tell my students all the time is that maybe sometimes what I'm saying doesn't resonate with the students, so they're not understanding. So then that's why I have student leaders or student teachers in the class, because then maybe their buddy can say it one way and then it clicks. Right. The light bulb is on, and they get it. I'm okay with that as a teacher, too, of being like, you know what, the way that I delivered this didn't make any sense to you, but then another student was able to provide that information for you. That is amazing. So, yes, please use your buddy.


Participant #1:
Yeah. I really love that. All of this is just such great information to know as a teacher, and it kind of makes you want to go back in the classroom to just kind of toy around with it. But let's move forward. I feel like, Alison, you and I can talk about this for hours. Yeah. So what do you hope for our listeners to take away from you? So the one thing is, I didn't really know about learning science. Again. I've been teaching for 17 years. Ten years in I really didn't know anything about it. And that's when I started to do my research. So there is a whole world of learning science out there that many teachers in the United States are unaware of. And I would encourage you to just look at even one of the resources that we're going to include in the show notes. Cognitive scientists are doing really interesting research, and there are a number of really smart educators out there, too, that are incorporating these discoveries into their teaching. And I think they're seeing, like, huge dividends by inserting cognitive science ideas into their classroom, teaching students how to learn, and giving them the tools to be successful in the future. Yeah, and even if you don't know a lot of the research behind it, I know for me, I didn't know the research behind it, but it's kind of nice to hear that some of my practices, I've been doing it just right and appropriately for my students. And so yeah, this is really great. Thank you. So what are your goals as we move forward? Wrapping up the school year. So, as I mentioned before, I'm working on a completely asynchronous online course for my district, so I'll be incorporating the Modern classroom model and also making sure that my knowledge of cognitive science is going to be used to sort of inform the layout of the course. Excited to start using those weekly emails since this is going to be an asynchronous course. I think they're going to be really valuable for the students that are participating in it. Yeah, and that's great. So how can our listeners connect with you? So you can email me, Alison Stone. It's Allison with one L stone, as in a rock. So, Alison Stone@modernclassrooms.org, I'm also pretty active on Twitter, and my Twitter handle is at allisonstone CBS d. Awesome. And I know you have a webinar coming up, Alison, so you want to tell us more about that so we can hear more from you? So the webinar is more about, like, institutional change and how to get teachers to buy into big educational shifts that make sense for education in a positive way, like sort of shifting school culture. Gosh, you're so cool. You're just so cool. I don't have anything else except they are so cool. And I want to continue talking to you. This is amazing. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today, listeners. Remember, you can always email us at podcast@modernclassrooms.org, and you can find the show notes for this episode at podcast modernclassrooms.org 88. You can also read a recap of this episode on the Modern Classrooms blog, and in a few days, we'll have this episode's transcript uploaded for you as well. Thank you all for listening. Have a great week, and we'll be back next week.


Voiceover: Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode. And remember, you can learn more about our work at www.modernclassrooms.org, and you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at Learn.Modernclassrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at modernclassproj, that's P-R-O-J. We are so appreciative of all you do for students and schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast.