 Hi, I'm Tracy Tagomas-Binosa and this is part two of Making Classrooms Better, a summary of the information in my new book based on Mind-Branded Education, Science, and Practical Applications for the classroom. We're going to start off with some filters. Basically the first of the practical applications has to do with actually how giving people the tools to choose better activities. This book is not out to tell you, you know, use this method or use that method. It's out to tell you how, based on my Mind-Branded Education science, you can actually make better choices about how to plan, evaluate, and execute your classrooms. So one of the first key premises to this is that there's a very strong belief that without memory or without attention, there is no learning. Now if this is true, then the first filter, basically, any activity that might enhance memory or enhance attention would then probably lead to better learning. So if we look at this, the first practice then would be to plan activities that actually grab attention. But this is not as easy as it might sound. According to Posner, there's at least three different systems of attention in the brain. There's an orienting system, an alerting system, and the executive functioning system. And each is stimulated by different things. For example, if you hear a clap like that, you know, that's an alerting system. But being able to, you know, sustain attention for a long time, orient it correctly over the course of a learning period is a different system, as is executive functions, making a decision about or prioritizing what needs attention at what moment. So it's very important for teachers to plan activities that grab attention, but also understand that just getting that initial attention isn't enough. We have to have activities that sustain it over the course of the learning moment. We know that, you know, getting kids attention or kids who have problems with attention, their alerting system is on high. They just can't sustain things or their executive functions of choosing what's important might be calling attention to something that's not necessarily the most important thing for that learning moment in the class, or at least according to the teacher. So we know that kids are always, the brain is always paying attention. What we have to do is to help the students orient that attention. We as teachers play a big role in that and actually saying, hey, now, okay, so this is really important to pay attention. That's not cheating. That's like, you know, directing kids attention. That's helping them focus to the right things at the right time. This also means it's very important to realize that attention is also highly connected to affect. So kids in a good fielding situation are probably more likely to pay longer and more sustained attention than kids who feel ignored or bored or anxious or worried about the classroom situation. So attention, you know, works very closely also with emotional states. There is a concept in psychology called primacy recency. It means that you remember best what happens first, second best what happens last, and the stuff in the middle can be a blur. So if we know that somebody's an average attention span is maybe 10, 20 minutes, we know that a normal class period is not 10 or 20 minutes. It's usually much longer. So we have to sort of organize our time based around attention spans of our students. And the second point, the second classroom activity has to do with memory. Remember, the big partner of attention is memory and learning. We know that all learning passes is through sensory perception, right? You first feel something here, something, small something, and that will either stimulate a return to a memory that you have as something or you'll identify it as novel and you will learn in that method. But basically we know that all learning happens through the senses or memories of the senses. But memories is very complex. There's many levels to memory, right? What's very important, we know that there's short term memory and there's working memory and there's things that are triggered by emotions. But what's most important for learning is long term memory. So how do you get information into long term memory? And that's a real key trick for teachers because let's just say you teach something in a class and then at the end of the class period you test it. That's not going to tell you if it's stayed in a long, I've ever got to long term memory. That's just a, you know, sustained working memory. So it's not a good time to test that knowledge. You should actually wait, you know, 24 hours, 40 hours before you can nearly see if that's taken hold as long term memory. So since we know that all learning passes through the filter of prior experience, what does your brain do with that? Well, basically your brain is primed to see patterns. It's primed to recognize things that it remembers from before. If it finds a pattern, it hooks onto that and it can actually facilitate learning, right? But if it doesn't find a pattern, then it actually looks for novelty. And novelty is equally important in learning because things that stand out that are slightly different help the brain re-categorize and broaden its understanding of certain concepts when things actually fall. They don't fall into the normal pattern of things. When we think about the way that memory works, it's a bit more complicated as well. But all teachers should really know there's this general process of connections. Neurosynapsis, when there's neuroplasticity, connection between different groups of cells in the brain. There's a gap between these different groups of cells. That's called a synapse. And those are connected by neurotransmitters, which are electrical and chemical. Usually there's a chemical firing and then there's either a leaser or inhibition of chemicals. And when the right combination occurs, then those connections can happen and those groups of neurons can connect together. That's basically learning in the brain. We can facilitate this or we can have problems with this. We know that kids under high stress situations, that proper combination of neurotransmitters, those chemicals needed to make those connections with the brain aren't present because high degrees of other chemicals in the brain, like cortisol or high stress things, will prevent the natural connection between those neurons. So learning in the brain is basically the new connections that are made between groups of neurons. When we use a variety of ways of getting the same piece of information into your brain, very interesting, these are in slightly different but overlapping neural pathways which strengthens the way that we can understand something. Those of you who study psychology understand things like a mental schema, right? A kid might have a mental schema of a dog as being like the poodle, right? Because they've only seen a poodle. But the more different types of dogs that that kid sees, that strengthens his mental schema of dogs. It can be broadened, right? He can see toy dogs and he can also draw a dog and he also sees a Doverman Pinscher as opposed to a poodle. So that mental schema is broadened in a similar way. If we put information about the same concepts learned in classes, for example, you want to teach a historical event, but you teach it talking about the actors in that event or the time period or contextualizing it in an economic structure or whatever. Different ways that you can put that same concept or those key concepts into the kid's head, the easier it is for retrieval because now there'll be several places that that kid can look for those connections in their minds. The third key best classroom practice has to do with spaced versus masked practice. This has a little bit to do with memory as well as for attention. They're very closely connected. But there is now evidence that shows that very clearly in since the 30s there's been studies going on, but now you can actually see the brain and how it actually does better when you space learning moments out rather than massing them all together. So a kid who has the chance, you know, let's say that you have five hours that you can study in a week, if you decide to do all studying together, you're not going to be nearly as well off as you if you spread that at a bit or even spread it out several times over the same day in different spaces, right? So spreading out into smaller chunks of learning moments is better because what is it doing? You're reinforcing these connections that you're making and that facilitates retrieval. So spaced versus masked practice is definitely the way to go. We also know that when you're able to revisit concepts and this would be over time. So maybe from first grade to second grade to third grade to fourth grade to fifth grade, when you constantly go back and reinforce those connections in new contexts, this is what helps kids transfer knowledge from one context to another. So when you're able to revisit the same learning concept, say you learn a math formula in one way at one level and that's reinforced, that's great. But then later on, you can actually see how a new application of that same formula can be applied. You continually strengthen those connections and you show the child that there's a broader application or broader use of those concepts and therefore they're remembered better, retrieved faster. We also know, though, and this is kind of interesting, easier concepts need less amount of time between learning moments, whereas more complex concepts need more time or more space between each of the learning moments. So if you're going to learn something, you know, simple like related to addition, you know, you can reinforce that pretty much on a daily basis and, you know, that's fine. Then you get a bit harder into fractions and then you start doing higher calculus. We find that you need more time between those bigger concepts in order to reinforce and it seems like it needs a lot more time to sort of settle those concepts into your brain. So the harder the learning test, the more time and space needed between learning moments. In a fourth best classroom practice, we would like to encourage teachers to incorporate more repetition. Very interesting, if you look at brain scans, that when somebody is trying to learn or to memorize something new, they'll often say it to themselves over and over again. This is generally combined with also a visual sketch pad. So basically you'll see something and you'll be hearing it. And that's the way we're pretty much, you know, trying to drill that into our own heads over and over again. We know that the variety of ways that you can do this then helps. So seeing something and writing it and hearing it is better than just seeing it or just hearing it, right? So when you try to remember new information, you either repeat it over and over and then you can also even see that visually. Those are slightly different ways of putting that same piece of information into your brain. So that repetition actually helps recall later on. This is very closely connected to taking advantage of variation and transdisciplinary thinking. So if you're trying to get a single concept into your head, that same concept is touched on in different disciplines. So if you can coordinate with the teacher who's doing the literature class and the one who's doing the art class and the one who's doing the math class to reinforce the concepts, then you have a real transdisciplinary way of connecting those concepts. And instead of a kid having that in their head, you know, a single siloed way, they actually have a greater link of that idea in a broader context. This means that teaching to slightly different memory systems really reinforces the rate of retrieval. So it makes it faster for us to get that information back out of our head if it's reinforced in multiple contexts. We also know, unfortunately, that most of what's going on in class is only pretty much in an oral context. There's like, you know, this teacher spewing at the students. So it's a uni-directional and it's also a single modal way of teaching. So the idea would be to keep in mind that all of your senses should come into play when you're trying to learn different concepts. It just makes sense because it reinforces the way that you can retrieve that information at a later time. Best classroom practice six has to do with planning authentic lessons. We as teachers spend a lot of time in teacher training programs learning how to plan a good lesson and to offer, you know, great logic and they should come first and then this should come second. That's terrific and that's very important. However, we need to spend equal amounts of time trying to think about, you know, how much does this relate to that kid's life? You know, how how can they use that? How do they see it? And this is what gets to the to the heart of really authentic lesson planning, trying to make it real and come alive for the student. We know that when things are more student-centered, when the student feels that this has an application to something outside of the classroom, then it's easier and easier to learn and more strongly reinforced in their minds. Best classroom practice seven has to do with implementing formative evaluation. We spend a whole lot of time talking about summative, you know, standardized tests and very little talking about the great importance of ongoing feedback. One of the best books in the field right now by Dylan William is wonderful in guiding us and thinking about how our activities can actually be assessment practices. So we're always giving feedback, constant feedback to the kid. The kid only has feedback, you know, every couple of weeks. He really has a hard time knowing what he needs to be improving. But if we find a way to constantly be giving him hints at what he could do better or, you know, praising what's going well, but also saying that he can do something else on an ongoing basis, not just waiting for that, you know, final, you know, end of unit test, then that kid will be learning better because he will have his faults called into play more clear. He'll know exactly what he needs to work on and then he can improve better. We know that, you know, a huge part of learning is just knowing how to self-correct. And you can do that once you have a habituated sense of how do I review my own processes. So we must first have, when we're younger, we need teachers, we need other people to tell us, you know, that's good, that's bad, you know, you can work on this. This is something you can always improve on. How about trying this way, you know, have you ever thought of whatever? That guides us. But as we grow up, we're able to do that by ourselves so we can self-regulate. So the idea would be as early on as possible to inter-corporate far more embedded formative assessment into our practice. A piece of that, a huge piece of that, and this is all very, you know, attitudinal is celebrating errors. If everybody knew everything, then we would need to go to school. So when you're in school, you're there to learn. And when you're learning, you're bound to make mistakes. And that's okay. In fact, that's to be celebrated because it actually shows that kids have the intellectual courage to try. So we need to create a space where we have a culture of evaluation that helps a kid think that anytime somebody's giving him feedback, it's to help him get better. It's not to hurt him. It's not to cause any damage. It's to actually say, you know, that's a, I never thought of like that. You know, how did you get that answer? Terrific. Have you thought about it in this other way? Guide them in the right way to think about things. But celebrate the fact that they're even trying because that's half the battle. The best classroom practice aid has to do with also with evaluation and the idea of using product, process, and progress evaluations as Buski recommends. In education, we tend to focus mainly on a product, you know, the end test score or the final presentation or whatever. What Buski tries to remind us is that we should also remember to acknowledge a student's progress and process. A student can also have, you know, great product and their process is totally lame because they go to the internet and they copy everything, right? So that's a bad process, a good product. But their progress oftentimes in the mind of their own student is far more impacting and influential in their further or in their future motivation than in then even the final product. So if you tell a kid, you know, I know this isn't the grade you were wanting, but I can see that you're really, you know, it's doing so much better than you were before. Acknowledging that progress is huge to a kid. So hopefully we remember to keep all three P's in mind when we are doing assessment with students. Now, having said all those things, you know, nasty about standardized tests, it's actually been shown that testing can improve learning. But it's not because of the test itself. It's because of what we do when we test. Helping kids think about how to prepare. How do I summarize that information? How do I, you know, can I, you know, put it in my own words? Can I actually bring this to the forefront of my mind really quickly? The forced retrieval of information that occurs when you practice for a test is really, really important in actually consolidating that learning moment. So hopefully you can use maybe ungraded tests, but the idea would be to have frequent testing that also reinforces learning moments. Best practice, 10 has to do with developing shared explicit learning objectives. We need to be clearer with the students. There's a lot to be said for great communication in classes, but if everybody has the same goal, then we can all be working towards the same thing. However, when it's not clear to a kid, and especially a kid who might have some difficulties focusing their attention or whatever, what, what is really important? What is the real goal of this? If that isn't really explicitly shared, then many kids will have a hard time reaching that goal. So the teacher can say, okay, listen, this is where we're starting from, this is where we want to get to, so this is what we're going to do. That shares, you know, the goal of the class, and that's really, really fundamental in arriving. All of this has to do with teacher clarity. We know that teacher clarity can be broken down into many different pieces, but it has to do with, you know, the precise words to the kids understand the vocabulary that teacher is using to explain those directions. Immediacy, I mean, is the timing of the delivery of the information correct? Is the nonverbal communication that teacher uses to share that information appropriate? And how does that stimulate more motivation on the part of the individual learner to actually execute that task in the right way? Some teachers like to say the information, ask the student to repeat the information. They oftentimes write the information, especially in classes where you might have several second language learners. It's really important to be clear about what is expected. One way to do that is to maybe use the smart guidelines, for example, you know, choosing objectives that are specific, things that are easily measurable. They can be achieved. It's not out of the grasp of the students that's realistic and that is well timed if the timing is appropriate for that particular objective. Best practice, 11 has to do with clarity and immediacy, which is connected to the first point of sharing the objectives. But this has more to do with clarity of speech and the communication process between student and teacher. We know that some students can actually totally tune out to teachers. Some kids need to see things written to remind themselves. They need to keep checklists. You know, that other classroom structures might always have a written or a digital record of what's expected or steps for the students to take depending on their ages. So that's, again, to reinforce the idea of teacher communication is really important. Cheeseboro and Mikralski break this down into things that have to do with fluency, precision, the way the classroom units are structured. That there's sufficient amount of time allowed for those instructions, as well as for execution and feedback. And that vocabulary is precise. We know that teachers' words sometimes don't match their body language. And so you might say, you know, oh, you're doing just fine in my class. The words are fine, but the way it was delivered, the students gonna pay far more attention to really, to that quick notion of the feeling behind that word, those words, as opposed to what was your intended message. So we have to be more conscious as teachers to reflect on that and to think about the ways that we're delivering our message. Are we being clear enough? Are we not being kind of sending? Are we being encouraging, but we're not being, you know, too soft in the way we're saying things? So that balance is really difficult. And most teachers find wonderful teaching tool is videotaping. I mean, just watching yourself in a class and interacting with students, it's a great way to give yourself feedback about how to improve your communication skills with students. Best practice 12 has to do with mastery learning. So to give feedback in order for a student to achieve X level of competency, that doesn't mean passing a test or, you know, maybe a measure of competency could be, you know, showing that you understand a formula or it's used or whatever. But the idea is to get kids into a habit of designing mastery goals for themselves. They know what's going to be expected. What is a demonstration? What is evidence that a kid has mastered X? You know, the colors, the periodic table, whatever it might be, you know, certain moments in history or certain literature genres. What are you going to accept as mastery evidence of that? So once that's decided is to help kids actually see how they lay out those goals for themselves, okay? They know what they have to show. Now what do they have to do in order to be able to have that evidence of mastery learning? Best classroom practice 12 has to do with, again, with this idea of mastery learning, but also for continual improvements so that the students don't just see, they don't just see learning in the class as, you know, passing that particular class. It's to actually reach a level of mastery that has transference. That can be transferred to other aspects of their lives. This also has to do with just this overall, general, continual, forever, iterative cycle of feedback from externally and then also metacognitioning, understanding how to regulate myself internally. We oftentimes send messages and we're not even aware that we're sending those messages. Teacher feedback happens all the time and even when the teacher's not even aware that they're giving feedback. And this is true for negative moments as well as positive moments. So we know that there can be kids who really try our patience. And at one more or another, you might just blurt out to them, you know, Jose, you know, you forgot your homework again, you're never going to mount anything, you know. That took less than five seconds to say, but it will probably, you know, ruin his thoughts forever about coming back to class or wanting to be a good student or thinking of himself as being capable. So size communication also has a lot to do with these things of motivating students and for their continual self-improvement and learning and for designing their own mastery level skills. This is also connected with this idea of mastery is not like getting the stickers. We are sticker crazy. Sorry to say this and we overdo this all the time. And if everybody gets a sticker, then it's like nobody gets a sticker. So what was the point? So if we're going to give praise, it should be well-merited and it has to be authentic. And kids really only appreciate it when it's sincere. If it's canned feedback, it doesn't help. Motivators within classroom context actually build those self-established goals. There's a lot of, you know, wonder right now or debate still about whether or not you should motivate using carrots or sticks. You know, do you get students to do this, you know, with happy face stickers or do you beat it into them? I mean, that's been the longest debate in education forever. We know that people can learn in any of these quadrants, right? We can learn negative extrinsically when the teacher says, you do this or you're not going out to recess. Okay, so that's negative extrinsic and you can learn. What's really interesting is to know that when things are learned in a positive intrinsic way, the probability of replication, the probability of reuse is much higher. So if I throw you in a swimming pool and you don't have to swim, you know, I can force you to sink or swim, right? But the likelihood that you go back to the pool happily and jump in by yourself is really low. So what we want to try to do is teachers be more strategists, you know. How can I want, how can I get this kid to want that learning moment for himself? Best Classroom Practice 13 has to do with nurturing student-teacher relationships and this has a lot to do with the concept of affect in learning. We know that emotions are critical to learning. You cannot separate decision-making from learning. All decision-making involves emotion at some level. So this goes back to the same thing of teacher clarity. When a teacher might, you know, have this kind of a face and they say, you're doing great, you know, that doesn't mean the words are right, but the way that's delivered, the connection between the teacher and the student isn't there. So we know this is really key because it's a survival mechanism. The brain is not going to stick around and let the body get hurt. So if there's any threat around, we know we want to run. We want to run from that. So it's very, very important that teachers learn to measure their body language and actually in the tone of voice and the way they, their facial expressions when they're trying to interact with students. We have some wonderful information from Hattie that has to do with the concept of expert teachers versus experienced teachers. There's a big difference. Experienced teachers will just do what worked once upon a time over and over and over again. Whereas an expert teacher tends to be able to tailor their interactions with each student based on the student. So that's really, that's an art. That's the art of teaching I think is being able to tailor and make those, those interactions with students. This is also connected to the idea that when a student feels supported, we know that a student who feels like they have a good relationship with their teacher is really positive. But there's now some wonderful evidence that has to do with collective efficacy. When several teachers recognize a single student or when the group recognizes individual efforts, that reinforces the motivation for a student to continue what they were doing beforehand. So when several teachers can get together and give a pat on the back to a student who has come through something difficult or whatever, that has a huge impact on student learning outcomes as well. Classroom Practice 14 has to do with accepting that, you know, the brain is plastic and it's, and ill-intelligence is fluid and you're going to learn at different times, right? And that you can believe in your students. It's impossible for the brain not to learn. So the idea is to believe that in your students, even those that, you know, really try your patience, they are going to be able to learn, you know, we have to find the way, but we have to actually believe that it's our role to, to make those changes in the students' own perceptions of themselves as learners. The problem that Hattie identifies is that we are often very unaware of our own prejudices about teaching and learning, about kids who come from ex-neighborhood or, you know, oh, it's, you know, Johnny's brother or whatever. You, you have these judgments and that colors the way you interact with the students. So your relationship with the student is already almost defined sometimes by your own prejudices. So we're challenging teachers to actually look and, and think about what it is that they already think they believe about learning. And this is really, really important because it has a lot to do with labeling. Teachers who say, oh, yeah, that's right. Well, he's, you know, he's got attention problems or he's that learning specialist kid or he's whatever. By labeling kids, we condemn them, you know, to actually only succeeding in that level because they themselves believe that you don't believe that they're going to learn. So they don't even try. This means that teachers, okay, so students who think that their teachers think that they can learn do learn. But the opposite is also true. If a student thinks, even erroneously, if the student thinks that the teacher thinks he can't learn, then they're not going to try. So we have to be very, very careful about the messages we send to students, spoken or unspoken. Really wonderful book that I highly recommend. Norman Dodge's The Brain That Changes Itself really celebrates this notion of plasticity. Kids are not stuck with the mental abilities they're born with. A damage brain can often reorganize itself so that when one part fails, another can substitute. The circuits can be what, rewired. It's not, you know, fate. You're not like stuck with the brain that you're born with. Things change. Okay. In the final section about filters, about planning and evaluating and practices, the activities that come in at the end are kind of lumped together. There are some things that are techniques, some things that are strategies, some things that are actions, and some things that are activities, and others that are methods. These things we sort of, as teachers, we mix up these terms all the time, but I think it's worth, you know, sorting those out a bit, because they do speak to different levels of intervention in the classroom. Best classroom practice 15 is to foster metacognition and mindfulness. So we, if we want students to end up being lifelong learners, we have to choose appropriate methodologies and actions and activities that help improve deep thinking about things. So becoming more conscious of your own thinking, like metacognition, thinking about thinking, is probably one of the biggest challenges we have in school. But it's also one of the easiest, because it can be incorporated as a daily activity. Just asking a student, hey, that's the right answer. How did you do that is having them reflect on their own thinking processes. So we can strengthen metacognitive skills just by those simple actions. So there's some wonderful research in neuroscience now that actually shows how connections between areas of the brain are strengthened through simple metacognitive reflective practice. Very interesting also in neuroscience is that decision making and metacognition tend to have overlapping circuits in the brain. They're very similar. So we know that decision making is highly connected to metacognition. So understanding why we think about things or how we think about things actually helps us think better in the future. Training in metacognitive skills is wonderful because they can definitely be improved. There's a lot of evidence that shows that metacognitive skills can be enhanced. If this is one of the overall goals of teaching, of learning, of our whole formal education process is to have people who understand themselves better. I know how I think about this. I know when I learn best, I understand how to get to the solution. Those particular habits have to be reinforced continually in our classroom. It's not like, okay, I got that right, move on to the next thing. We need to take advantage of successes and failures in the classroom and ask the students in front of us to think about how they got that answer. That's really huge in the greater picture of what we're looking for in long-term, lifelong learners. Very interesting is that there's two ways. And remember, I think most teachers are very clear about feedback and how important that is. But that's an external way to help you know what you're doing. Metacognitive skills development is the internal way of doing the same thing. Okay? So metacognition is helping us basically learn how to give ourselves feedback. Best classroom practice 16 has to do with using Zimmerman in colleagues practice when filtering to select activities. Very interesting study. Zimmerman, Daniels and Hyde tried to figure out what were the best things that teachers could do in their classrooms and found that activities in the classroom that had at least one of these characteristics ended up being better than activities that had none of these characteristics. And that activities that had several of these characteristics were even better. If you reflect on this from an MBE perspective, you'll find that the reason this is a great way to filter activities is because they either enhance memory or they enhance attention. Since we know attention to memory are fundamental to learning, very interesting. If an activity you're choosing does not have at least one of these characteristics, don't do it. But if it can have several of these characteristics, it's probably a really good indicator that it's a good activity to include into your classroom planning. 17, develop students' ability to identify similarities and differences. This comes from Rasano's work that's really very simple in its concept and it's something that we ask three-year-olds to do. But we ask people to do this throughout. You know, you do your doctoral studies and you're still looking for similarities and differences. So it's one of these first intellectual habits that we try to form in kids. But this has to happen continually. Why is this so important? Because remember how the brain looks for novelty as well as for patterns. Very, very helpful to kids to get into the habit of asking themselves, what do I already know about this? How is this different from what I already know? This gives us a really strong construction of foundation upon which students can learn new things. So being able to spot differences to identify similarities can be developed throughout the lifespan. 18, develop students' ability to summarize and to note take. Taking notes is hard because, and we think that, we all, I think, ask our students to take notes. The problem is, you know, none of us have probably ever taught our students how to take notes. Everybody presumes students know how to take notes. And it's not natural. It's not natural. Summarizing and being able to synthesize your ideas into your words. I mean, somebody else's ideas into your words is not easy. And this has to be taught. And hopefully you will take the time in your class to actually help guide students in this process. This is so important because if you're just going to copy what the teacher says, you're basically working really low on the level of thinking. But if you're able to synthesize what they're saying, connect it to prior experiences, and potentially, you know, be able to come up with something new on your own, that is higher order thinking. And that's what we're looking for. So just getting kids to copy doesn't help. You do anything but improve membership. 19, reinforce effort and provide recognition. Maybe over done, over said. Very different though from feedback, which is really important. Feedback tells a kid and gives them sort of a plan. You know, what do I need to do next to improve? Whereas when you reinforce effort and you provide recognition, you're basically just investing in that kid. You're telling him, you know what? I see how hard that was. I see how tough it was to, you know, to make those connections, to make that link in your head and congratulations. And that is really a very important thing for us to always remember to do. It's not like, oh yeah, obviously they should have done that. That's what I'm here for. They should know that. No, we need to celebrate that. We need to say, you know, well done. Gosh, you know, that was, I know that was hard. Good job, you know. That's what students really hope for from the person in authority, you, when they actually master something. 20, provide professional homework and practice. We know that different people will have different experiences with different concepts and core concepts are necessary to build, you know, higher order thinking and mental schemas. So the concepts are really important. The problem is different people, since all new learning passes through the filter of prior experience, some people might have had a lot of prior experience and need very little homework or practice. Whereas other people, the concept might be totally new and they need a lot of homework and practice. And we need to create structures in our classroom where we have that flexibility, that variety, that not everybody has to do the same type of homework or get the same amount of practice because different people will need different things. But it has to be meaningful. Kids know when, you know, this is like, you know, busy work. It's not homework. I would often ask my kids, did you actually have homework? And they say, oh yeah, it's Mr. Smith, you know. He, don't worry, he never checks. He never uses it. It's never used in the class. So if you're going to send homework, use it and make sure that it's structured in a way that those kids who need more practice can do more practice and those kids who need less practice don't have to do as much of the work. 21, prepare students to set personal objectives and give themselves feedback. Remember we talked about, you know, developing metacognitive skills. This has, this is very closely linked to that. Slightly different. Because metacognition is sort of developing these habits of mind reflection over time throughout your lifespan. When you're giving yourself feedback, you're basically giving yourself kind of an internal rubric and different level skills. Okay, I'm going to get to this. I'm going to get to that. I'm going to get to the next one. So you're helping kids develop a ladder towards success for themselves where they can actually give themselves, you know, the carrots they need to get to the next level. This means becoming more autonomous and having them take the time to reflect, you know, what is it that I want to do? How am I going to have success with this? What do I need to plan? You know, what resources do I need to get there? And it's a planning process. So it's basically, you know, laying out the steps towards success and helping the kids, you know, work through that and practice that throughout their lifespan. 22 is to teach students to generate and to test hypotheses. I know we begin to do this maybe around, you know, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade and you say, you know, what do you think will happen? That's terrific. But this is something that I notice even in university students, they oftentimes don't understand the natural next step. I've identified a problem. I think this caused the problem. I think this could be a solution. I'm going to apply this. I'm going to analyze my results. And then I'm going to rethink this, you know, just go through this general cycle of scientific experimentation or of inquiry is something that is fundamental to anything, any field and any job that people are going to have in the future. So we need to constantly reinforce practice and helping students understand how to generate and test their own hypothesis about things. 23 is to use cues and triggers. These come from Marsana as well. Basically saying, you know, we're not out here to answer questions for students. We're out here to get the students, you know, to find their own ways of thinking about things. So rather than tell them, you know, what the right answer is, can we lead them down the right path? Can we offer them enough cues or can we give them some keyword triggers that might help them stimulate that connection of memory to the information that they have so that they can reinforce that themselves. And that can be their own way of thinking about things instead of something, an answer that's been, you know, digested by the teacher. So in summary, those first best classroom practices have to do with planning, evaluation activities. This is using a backward designs idea, right? And this means, you know, enhancing or remembering that memory and attention are very important that we have to include repetition, variation, significance, depth and authenticity in the planning of our lessons. When we evaluate, we have to always consider product process progress. As we do this, we have to consider also teacher clarity and communication as well as the role of feedback. On the activities we use, we should really focus on continually developing those metacognitive skills and using the filter of best practices by someone to be able to come up with better filters for activities that stimulate memory and attention. And then we should use the right activities and choose the strategies that actually reinforce these basic core concepts of things that help us remember and pay attention better and that we should also use Marsano's instructional strategies that were mentioned in the last and seven concepts there. Okay. That's the first half of this. Hope you'll tune into part three. Thanks.