Introducing The Science of Learning Resource Guide
Research, tools, resources and news—all in one place
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Welcome, Bell Ringers, to the second-to-last official newsletter of 2024. We are here in Nashville, gearing up for a relaxing Christmas. This morning, I was finishing this newsletter and yelled to my husband, “This teacher used the research to improve his teaching and the kids learned more!” (More on this below.)
And…I think I heard him say, if I’m not mistaken, somewhat under his breath, that I was a dork. I don’t even care. Learning is exciting, what can I say?
Speaking of exciting, I’m launching a new feature that will be woven throughout newsletters starting right at the top of 2025:
The Science of Learning Resource Guide
There will still be news, essays, thoughts, chats, everything you’ve come to love in a dorky newsletter about learning stuff. But paid subscribers will get more—a “Get Started” pack intended to give readers a comprehensive view of the science of learning. Included:
Tools for Practice: In my reporting over the last couple of years, I’ve talked to a lot of educators and school leaders who have taken science of learning principles and applied them in the wild, in their schools and classrooms. And now I want to bring those stories to you. In this monthly feature, launching today (skip down to the main body of the newsletter!), we will look at one science-of-learning technique, resource, or practice, and get on-the-ground details of how educators incorporated it, how they tweaked it to suit their students’ needs, and how it’s working. I’m hoping as it grows that Tools for Practice will serve as an encyclopedia for educators, leaders and even parents filled with ideas on how to implement evidence-based techniques.
Interview with an Expert: The Bell Ringer has already been interviewing all the experts we can—but next year they’ll get a glow-up. I’ve learned Riverside (that’s right, watch out) and I’m not afraid to use it: there will be more video, and better, more in-depth conversations with the educators, researchers and experts making the news about the science of learning. Beginning next year, you can listen, watch or read about the topics you care about the most.
A growing research library of resources: I want to make it easy for educators, parents and interested, curious people to get a handle on what we mean by “cognitive science research on learning” and “how it applies to classrooms and beyond.” So I’m starting a resource library with the key pieces of research, books and podcasts, and news stories that will give readers a holistic view not only of the research but also how it is being translated into policy and action.
Today’s letter is a preview of Tools for Practice, and I liked it so much, I screamed at my husband.
Coming Soon
This week I got a chance to talk with The Knowledge Gap’s Natalie Wexler about her new book Beyond the Science of Reading: Connecting literacy instruction to the science of learning. We talked about a blind spot in the science of learning—how to use cognitive science principles to tackle improving reading comprehension and writing, and why so few practitioners are making that important connection. Here’s a sneak preview, look out for this interview drop on Friday, January 10:
Recent stories
* Read about everything that happened this year concerning the science of learning. What do you think the next year will hold? “If my reporting in talking with teachers and parents is on target, the science of reading hasn’t necessarily been successfully connected to the idea that many of the same principles work for learning generally, not just in reading.”
* Read about the evolving science on motivating students—this new research goes beyond “grit,” and might surprise you. “Yeager digs into 80 years of research on the best ways to motivate young people so they can succeed, feel accomplished, and develop so they can enter the world of working with others. This doesn't happen on a worksheet or in an ‘SEL’ class, but in a more comprehensive environment created among the adults and leaders—teachers, parents, coaches, and employers—that help usher kids into the world. The environment is created by forming relationships, but a very specific kind of relationship—a piece that has been missing from a lot of ‘make strong relationships with students’ conversations.”
Tools for Practice Preview: Taking notes gets an upgrade to improve students’ memory of what they learned
The problem:
Last year Andrew Shimrock, a sophomore Spanish teacher at The Episcopal Academy in Newtown, Pennsylvania, noticed that his students weren’t able to easily recall Spanish vocabulary and verb conjugations. Students spent most of their time in his class taking notes—but the teaching and activities he’d designed weren’t doing as much as he wanted to help students get more Spanish into their long-term memories.
“I was pretty frustrated over the last two or three years with students’ memory,” Shimrock told me in a recent interview. “In learning Spanish, memory is incredibly important. It's hard to be able to converse and actually communicate your ideas if you can't remember some of the words, verbs, high frequency words—and even the way you conjugate a verb.”
“I tell students all the time,” he continued, “if you want to be a convincing language speaker—if you want to travel, if you want to be able to actually say you can speak Spanish—you're going to have to be able to remember in the moment, without looking at a dictionary or your phone.”
The intervention:
Shimrock, who had spent the last few years working with the Center for Teaching and Learning, a professional development organization for educators housed at the Episcopal Academy, decided to try a different tack for note-taking. He drew on his knowledge of research on retrieval practice—pulling learned material “out” of the brain, or retrieving it, in order to remember it—and wanted to incorporate it into students’ present moment in class. He designed an intervention that built retrieval practice right into the note-taking itself.
(Image from Pedagogical Research on Retrieve-Taking, Center for Teaching and Learning)
First he explained the concept of retrieval practice to students, and how their new note-taking practice would go: as he presented the slide deck to students, every few slides they would stop taking notes on what he was saying. Then they’d quickly try to write down everything they remembered from the previous 10 minutes or so of instruction.
The cue to stop, drop and remember, Shimrock said, was a slide of a golden retriever—reminding students it was time to “retrieve” what they’d just learned.
After a few minutes of independent retrieval, students turned to a partner to fill in the gaps. For students who really struggled, it was a “wake-up call” that they hadn’t retained much and needed to do more during note-taking.
“It was helpful for two reasons—it forced them to see what they were remembering. But it was also helpful for me to see what they were capturing, and what they weren't.”
Students complained at first that “retrieval-taking” was too challenging—students would sigh when they saw the golden retriever. That’s because thinking is hard, Shimrock said. And maybe students had just been copying down notes and not really thinking about what he was saying.
“I think there's some deprogramming here. They're just so used to writing everything down, because that's how they ‘learn,’” he said. “So, ‘If I write the whole slide down, I've learned it.’ And that’s not it.”
The results:
Shimrock, with the help of the Center for Teaching and Learning’s executive director, Justin Cerenzia, kept data on student quizzes and test scores, to see if students’ memories actually improved when it came time to assess their Spanish skills.
Tracking student data over the course of about seven months, from November to May, Shimrock found that student quizzes and test scores improved substantially. On average, quiz scores went up by nearly 8 points, and test scores by 13. Cerenzia and Shimrock also picked out two individual students to track—a higher-achieving student and a lower-achieving one, and found that the student who struggled improved their test scores by 17 points during the length of the intervention.
(Images from Pedagogical Research on Retrieve-Taking, Center for Teaching and Learning)
Shimrock said now he doesn’t need to review as much before a test, because students are retaining more words and verb conjugations. And it’s made him think about what students are really doing when they’re taking notes.
“When you go into classrooms and students are writing, it looks really great, but it doesn't actually mean they're thinking about what they're doing,” he said. “Ultimately if they're forced to remember constantly, it does help.”
More research on retrieval practice:
*Check out this database of retrieval practice research from Powerful Teaching’s Pooja K. Ajarwal.
* “Psychologists Identify the Best Ways to Study,” Scientific American, provided by the Center for Teaching and Learning.
* “Combined Effects of Note‐Taking/‐Reviewing on Learning and the Enhancement through Interventions: A meta‐analytic review,” Kobayashi, Keiichi, Educational Psychology 26, No. 3, no. June 2006 (1): 459–77, provided by the Center for Teaching and Learning.
Want to share an evidence-informed practice you’re using in your classroom? Tell the Bell Ringer!
* Did you know that every issue of The Bell Ringer comes to you in an email, but you can find the entire archive at The Bell Ringer website?
* For newsy comments on education issues, talks with teachers, etc, and maybe even some contentious conversations about math and inquiry learning just like in the heyday of Twitter, you can follow me on Blusky. That’s where the majority of my edu-curiosity is based at the moment. Come find me and let’s chat.
* Last but not least, If you are enjoying this newsletter, will you please take a moment to like this post, and share with your teachers and network? That’s how the word gets out about the research on learning.
I loved the case study on retrieval practice here!