5 Ways to Superior Teaching

Announcer (00:00): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:05): We are counting down the top 10 episodes of all time of the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. And coming in at number seven is Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath on Neuroscience Research: 5 Ways to Superior Teaching. This is a 2019 episode and received 24,517 downloads.

Vicki Davis (00:29): Today we’re going to talk about neuroscience. Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, author of Stop Talking, Start Influencing: 12 Insights from Brain Science to Make Your Message Stick. And Jared, you have five ideas to make our teaching actually stick according to neuroscience. And isn’t this something that teachers want anyway? You know, we’re talking all the time. How can we get that message to remain in our students’ minds?

Jared Cooney Horvath (00:58): With this book, we go into 12 principles of how human beings learn, with the idea that, cool, as teachers, how can I then adapt my practices to best fit with those rules? And so I figured today if we’re gonna do five things, I kind of pulled out five different chapters. Is that cool? Should we just tuck in?

Vicki Davis (01:14): Let’s do it. What’s our first?

Jared Cooney Horvath (01:16): Number one has to do with memory, and we call it recall. So for the longest time we’ve been studying memory, and we were so interested in how do I put information in to make a memory stick. Like it needs to be emotional, needs to be repetitive, all this stuff. And it turns out we were looking in the wrong place. If you want memory to stick, it’s all about accessing the memory, recalling that memory, pulling it back up. Think about something like the periodic table, which I’ve studied dozens of times in my life. I’ve put that information in dozens of times. I couldn’t tell you anything about it now, because I just never accessed it. Whereas something like Game of Thrones, which I’ve only watched once — because I talk about it every day, because I read about it, because I debate about it, my memory for that show is so deep. And it’s because every time I access the memory, that memory gets better, deeper, stronger. So rule number one, we always say then, is recall. You want deep memories. It’s how are you getting your students to access and actively bring that information up? Forget about how you’re putting it in. It’s how are they bringing it out.

Vicki Davis (02:19): So I’ve seen charts that show that a student studies it in one day and then they study it halfway through the next day and then they repeat study it. So this whole cramming thing, we know it doesn’t work. We have to repeat.

Jared Cooney Horvath (02:31): And I’d say too, with the studying, beyond simple repetition — if all they’re doing is rereading notes or rereading a chapter, that’s just putting the information back in. That ain’t helping. So as they repeat over time, it’s gotta be more and more access, less and less putting it back in. So rewrite your notes. Try and teach somebody else, have a debate, have a quiz. Not simply reread.

Vicki Davis (02:53): And if we really want to understand it, I guess that’s why the teachers who taught us that were truly tested cumulatively — we actually remembered it.

Jared Cooney Horvath (03:00): Bingo. That’s when you start to realize that something like testing can actually be an incredible learning tool when used correctly.

Vicki Davis (03:07): But it’s just so hard. And do you think some teachers think because some kids memorize that that means all of them should be able to?

Jared Cooney Horvath (03:14): Anyone should be able to memorize anything. It’s just we don’t know what kids are thinking about in between. So when you’ve got one kid that just shows up and is magically great at all this stuff, we think, that was a natural skill. When in truth they might have just been thinking about it all night. And every time they’re bringing up facts and ideas while they’re laying there in bed, that’s helping them memorize it. So we miss some of the key bits and so we start to assign that to natural skill — well, this kid’s good at memorizing. When in truth, no, it could just be that that kid knows how to play that game really well.

Vicki Davis (03:42): Wow. Okay, so what’s your second?

Jared Cooney Horvath (03:44): Number two: spoken words and written text do not mix. So it turns out that when you’re reading words, your brain processes that in the same exact way as though you were speaking the words out loud, listening to them. So just like you don’t have enough brain space to listen to two people speaking simultaneously — you can hear two people speaking, but you can’t understand them at the same time — same exact thing. You can’t read and listen to somebody speak simultaneously and understand both. So why does this matter? K through five, really probably don’t think too deeply about this, but once you start getting up in high school and things like PowerPoints and handouts, those start to enter the fray. Now we’ve got this issue that if you’re trying to teach with a bunch of bullet points behind you on a board, or a handout with a bunch of words, you’re essentially asking them to do the impossible — to both hear you and read those words at the same time. They can’t do it. And to make matters worse, when they try and jump back and forth between them, which they’ll try to do, they lose information from both. They’d be much better off either just putting the words away and listening, or reading the words without you trying to speak over them.

Vicki Davis (04:49): [One of my] children is dyslexic. So he actually listened to the book being read as he read it, you know, with his finger following across the page. So would you say that that dual encoding in learning reading is different from — you’re trying to deliver content, don’t have the text and the words?

Jared Cooney Horvath (05:05): Yep, yeah. And that’s a wonderful caveat. Learning how to read, it’s still the best thing you can do is exactly that — is read while listening to somebody speak. But once you have reading essentially on autopilot, so when the words are there you’re just translating them into speech, that’s where we start to get this kind of discrepancy. And if you want to get really interesting, you get that same bottleneck when you’re writing. So we have a third thing to think about, and there’s no real answers here, it all depends on your purpose — but note taking. Turns out you cannot write and take notes while listening to somebody speak at the same time. Something starts to get lost in that translation. But you—

Vicki Davis (05:39): A lot of teachers won’t let kids record on, you know, Evernote or OneNote — and you can record the audio and the video and go back and look later. But there are teachers who literally won’t let kids record, and it just makes me cringe, you know, as a mom of kids who have learning differences.

Jared Cooney Horvath (05:53): And that’s when ideally you start to go, okay, well if you’re not gonna record, or if there’s not gonna be access to say slides or notes afterwards, then you have to start thinking about — cool, how are we gonna embed note taking into the session itself? Rather than saying just take notes as we’re going, is there a way to every 10 minutes say, sweet, now we’re gonna take three minutes, do a free recall? Or every 15 minutes we stop and we do group notes together? Some way to embed that process into the lesson itself so you don’t clash, and you make it a learning tool — something that actually boosts their understanding of the material as well.

Vicki Davis (06:25): Okay, so what’s our third?

Jared Cooney Horvath (06:26): I think I want to go with threshold for this one. So it turns out as you get used to an environment, your attention threshold starts to shift. Now, what this means is the world has a bunch of noise — it’s got sights, sounds, tastes, and all these things are coming into our senses. So to process all of that, our attention has this thing called a threshold, which says, okay, anything below this threshold we’re simply not going to process. Something has to be powerful enough to break my threshold. Now, the longer I’m in one environment getting used to that, my threshold starts to move up. It’s almost as if my brain says, okay, everything here is cool and safe. Fine, let’s make it harder for you to pay attention to things. That way, if anything wonky comes out, you’ll easily pay attention to it. But most of the rest of the stuff is just gonna fall under the threshold and you won’t have to worry about it. And this resonates more than during, say, a lecture or a direct content aspect of a lesson. But once you reach about 10 to 15 minutes of direct content, the kids are used to the room, they’re used to the lights hitting their eyes, they’re used to the hum of the air con — their threshold will start to creep up. And you need to find a way every 10 to 15 seconds to reset their threshold and buy yourself more time. Otherwise it’s gonna be harder and harder and harder for them to pay attention.

Vicki Davis (07:37): How do you reset your threshold? Tap dance?

Jared Cooney Horvath (07:39): Essentially all you have to do is break the kids’ prediction. So if the threshold’s going up because they’re used to the environment, you need to do something that’s unpredictable or changes the environment in some way. So it’s as simple as, if you’re talking, you show a video clip, or you tell a joke, or you get them to answer a question or chat to someone next to them. Anything to break that repetitive pattern should reset their threshold and buy you another 10 minutes before it starts to creep up again. And you’ll see the best lectures and lessons always have these little moments every 10 to 15 minutes where they ask you to do something or think about something. And they’re doing that to buy more time afterwards to get more ideas over to you.

Vicki Davis (08:17): Okay, what’s our fourth?

Jared Cooney Horvath (08:19): Fourth, why don’t we go with story for this one? So the way the brain processes information is it essentially assumes that whatever just happened must link to and somehow drive what is about to happen. So essentially the brain thinks in cause and effect — even when there isn’t any cause and effect, it will drive that. If you think about dreaming: when we’re awake and we think about the dreams we had last night, they’re usually chaotic. Like one minute you’re on a mountain, the next minute you’re on an ocean, then you’re taking a test. It’s just nonsense. But when you’re asleep and in the dream, it makes perfect sense, because the brain is saying, well, if you’re on a mountain and then the ocean, must be connected — and it makes you feel as though that’s a continuous story. So simply put, the brain thinks in narrative, in cause and effect, story. So this means the more you can find the story behind the facts, you can start to mimic the way the brain naturally works. And it becomes easier for students to understand and remember the material you’re talking about. And when I say find the story, it can be anything. Every fact has a moment when it was invented, or discovered, or occurred. And if you can find that right framing and turn that into a cause and effect narrative — so it’s not just the Pythagorean theorem, it’s the Pythagorean theorem because a bunch of mathematicians were trying to discover the face of God and determined this was the best ratio to use. Now people start to think differently and they can remember ideas a lot better and a lot longer.

Vicki Davis (09:46): Totally. And when you talk about history and you tell the stories — and I mean, so many times students will say, I remember that story you told me, and it could have been five or six years ago and they remember the stories. That’s absolutely true. Okay, so what’s our fifth?

Jared Cooney Horvath (09:59): Last one, and this one tends to get some people angry, so we saved it for last here. But it’s: facts always precede skills. And this one can get a little tricky at times, but in human beings, we like to think about competencies or skills as dissociable — as once you have that ability, you can apply that ability anywhere. But it turns out in human beings, we can only apply our skills when we understand the facts we need to apply them to. And this is why all learning trajectories will start with surface learning. You have to start with facts, or else all your skills are essentially inaccessible. So to demonstrate, I thought I’d tell a quick story. This will only work for your listeners. So we’ve gone through this podcast. Chances are you’ve heard everything and understood everything, which means you, as a listener, have the skill of listening comprehension. You’ve been using it all along. So use that skill now to understand the story I’m about to tell you. So this would have been two weeks ago. It was the T20 Big Bash, and we’re in the final over. My team up nine runs and there was only two balls to go in the last over. So essentially the other team’s playing tip and go. We throw a Jaffa, lose a point, next one goes through, slips for four, then drives offline for four. We go into a super over, drop 22 off of an off spinner, and lose a game that we should have easily won. Now, unless you understand cricket very well, I’m guessing you weren’t able to understand a word that just came out of my mouth. And that’s because you don’t have the facts. It doesn’t matter that your skill of listening comprehension is good — once I shift facts into a realm you don’t understand, you can no longer apply that skill. So we have this issue with the brain where facts, and embedding facts, is what allows skills to emerge and be applicable. So bring this back to the classroom now. This is why a lot of people say before you go into project-based learning, or before you go into exploratory learning, it’s worth spending a couple days laying the foundational groundwork — because that’s what’s gonna allow them to actually go deep and start to apply their skills to those new facts.

Vicki Davis (12:01): Absolutely. I’ve been through some courses where we call it front loading the words, or front loading the content. And I rarely teach with textbooks, but I have one class with textbooks. You know, I’ll ask kids, how often do we look at what’s coming up? Because it helps us learn.

Jared Cooney Horvath (12:15): Absolutely. When we start to frame facts, then we can actually move forward with our skills.

Vicki Davis (12:21): One last question. What is something that you think a lot of teachers do that they think is teaching, but goes completely against what neuroscience says works?

Jared Cooney Horvath (12:32): Okay, this is gonna sound slightly weird, but I think one common practice that goes against the neuroscience of learning is stress avoidance. I think there’s a big movement in education now to make kids feel as calm, as comfortable, as peaceful as possible. And although that’s a wonderful goal for outcomes like well-being and self-control, it turns out if you want to learn, you need to feel a small bit of stress. Stress is what triggers the chemical cascade that allows you to start building memories. And this is why whenever you’re learning something new and you’re slightly uncomfortable, that discomfort is the sensation of learning. That mini stress — that is the sign that your brain is starting to update and change. So when we try and protect students from feeling any kind of stress or discomfort, and we always jump in and try and save them, that’s not how learning happens. You want the brain to change, to understand, to take in memories — you’ve gotta let it feel slightly uncomfortable and you’ve gotta let it sit in that. Not too long. I mean, I’m not talking days of stress, but I’m talking 15 minutes of struggle and stress is probably a good thing.

Vicki Davis (13:38): Well, in the video games that they love — I mean, if you look at some of the video game research, you know, a 50 percent failure rate is okay.

Jared Cooney Horvath (13:46): And they love it. It’s ’cause they’ve depersonalized it. It’s highly stressful. I used to play video games growing up and I’ve broken a lot of controllers because you get stressed — but you’ve depersonalized it. You understand that’s part of the gaming process and you don’t see it as a reflection of yourself. So how do we get kids to recognize that same stress is okay in learning? That’s just part of the process and it’s not a personal reflection. When you feel stressed, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It just means you’re doing learning.

Vicki Davis (14:10): Okay, so teachers, here’s the book: Stop Talking, Start Influencing: 12 Insights from Brain Science to Make Your Message Stick. Go out and get it, and let’s apply neuroscience. And I’ve got a lot of thinking to do about this stress avoidance. But we’ve talked about memory and recall and accessing and practicing. The second one we talked about — spoken words and written text don’t always mix, and to give time for that note taking, and please, teachers, let your kids record. Have the threshold in our environment. So we change things up every 10 to 15 minutes, tell stories. And remember that facts precede skills — there are things that we need to front load and get in their environment. Thanks, Jared.

Jared Cooney Horvath (14:49): Thank you so much.

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