Book Discussion--Why Don't Students Like School? (Willingham)

[birchbark]

I'm not done with the book yet, but I wanted to post a few favorite nuggets from the last few chapters I've read.

 

- Most of what students learn in school concerns meaning, not what things look or sound like. So a teacher's goal should be to get his/her student to think about meaning. (p. 48)

 

- Effective teachers have two qualities: the ability to connect personally with students, and the organization of material to make it interesting and easy to understand. (p. 51)

 

- Stories are powerful. Use stories to teach or set up a lesson to follow the structure of a story. (pp. 51-52)

 

- Attention-grabbers can be distracting. Students tend to remember the attention-grabber over what you are trying to teach. (p. 62)

 

- Abstraction is the goal of schooling. Students should be able to transfer knowledge outside the classroom. (p.67) The more someone is able to transfer their knowledge, the deeper their understanding is of that knowledge.

 

-To aid comprehension of abstract ideas, provide examples (previous knowledge again) and ask students to compare. (p.78)

 

- Practice (drill) enables further learning, creates retention, and improves transfer. Practice is more effective when spaced out as opposed to "cramming." (chap. 5)

 

 

I'm definitely going to be more aware of reviewing what I consider important. Just because I have "covered" something doesn't mean that real learning has taken place. I'm liking Mrs Twain's history approach more and more.

[Mom0012]

Nm

[Pen]

I am wondering how the information in this book (and others by this other author, Sousa et al) compare to the Willingham book. This one by Sousa and also the one by him on learning with special needs both seem to suggest there is more value in taking learning styles into account.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I just finished chapter two and was interested in these comments: "Some educational thinkers have suggested that a limited number of ideas should be taught in great depth, beginning in the earlier grades and carrying through the curriculum for years as different topics are taken up and viewed through the lens of one or more of these ideas. From the cognitive perspective, that makes sense."

 

Does anyone have ideas of what that would look like? Perhaps Mrs Twain's history approach would be an example of this?

 

 

I'm about half way through the book and this intrigues me as well. Here are my thoughts (no wait. Here is someone else's thoughts. lol)

 

Take a look at this article from a (Catholic) blog. You don't have to agree with the ideas, but it is an illustration of teaching through various "lenses" or unifying themes/ideas. Again, I'm not interested in discussing the contents, but just using this as an illustration of the principle.

[sagira]

Resurrecting a thread- is anyone still reading this, interested in discussing this book? There must be people who have read it by now- how are you planning to incorporate this new information into your homeschool?

 

I just downloaded a sample from Kindle, but I will buy it as soon as I'm done with the sample to read as soon as school starts. I want to be able to read and implement right away. School starts for us early September.

[Tress]

Good idea for a bump!

 

The book arrived a couple of weeks ago, but I haven't read it yet.

I do want to read it before school starts (september 2).

[sagira]

Our school starts September 3 - I'm already on a schedule of teacher development, re-reading CM books, TWTM and listening to lectures when I discovered a thread about this book. I need to be consistent and disciplined to finish what I started, but I want to read this too.

[Tress]

Our school starts September 3 - I'm already on a schedule of teacher development, re-reading CM books, TWTM and listening to lectures when I discovered a thread about this book. I need to be consistent and disciplined to finish what I started, but I want to read this too.

The consistent part is what is difficult for me at the moment.

 

I'm really pushing myself at the moment with Latin, Greek and Math (and with translating into Dutch: CWP and Henle) and I find that I have trouble adding something else that needs brainpower.

 

I have read several teacher training books the last few weeks and I'm feeling a bit 'full', like those ideas need settling. But I do think that this book is important to read *before* starting the year, in order to implement what I learn from it.

 

I'm going to give it a try next week.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I read the book on kindle this summer- wish I'd gotten a hard copy, because it's a book I would like to be able to flip through more easily. 

 

Things I liked and how I plan to implement: 

 

- Teach the concept before giving the demonstration or doing the experiment.  Otherwise you might "waste" that lesson with kids unable to make the connection.

- Don't be afraid to drill what needs to be drilled, especially math.  A little practice every day is better than mega-doses with gaps.  Concretely, we are really putting into use the mental math problems at the back of SM TMs.  I put up 10 problems, some of which are review and reinforcement, and that is how we start our math lesson each day. 

- Providing hooks and frameworks in the WTM way (or any neo-classical method) is extremely helpful.  We will continue to expose, expose, expose, and add in a time-line memorization.

- Higher level skills are ALSO things to drill- so continue attacking SM CWP until the basic patterns can be seen- ie, this is a type of problem where I find a missing addend, this is a type of problem where I am making groups (dividing), etc.

- I was never one to worry about learning style, but now even less so.  I worry about what is the best way that *I* can present the information, rather than what is the best way my kid can learn it.

 

What I'd like to learn and work on is the idea of presenting lessons as a narrative in order to make them more engaging and memorable. 

-

[Murphy101]

I have not read the book - yet.

 

Applications of Why Don’t Students Like School? (Willingham)

1.

One chapter (potentially contentious for many homeschoolers) emphasized the importance of drill work. Gasp! It also discussed the need to continually practice old material so that it will be retained long-term.

I think the problem as *I* see it is memorization without implementation. By third grade, my kids are doing multiplication daily in math. They should have their facts well memorized by that point and we shouldn't need to continue drilling something they are using every day. I have incorporated memorization into our days via CCM, but the information is basic knowledge foundation they will use daily throughout their education. A huge number of memorization tasks in schools is pointless data dumping. Like memorizing a list of prepositions. They make them memorize prepositions when what they should know is how to identify prepositions.

 

I also think memorization success when they are younger will help them become better students bc they won't have developed the mindset of "not being good at that". Which I think is one of the most awful things public schools teach and in that regard, I think the Asian school of thought about ability not being innate to be true and empowering.

 

--History: I will continue to do world history and American history overview books every year as my main spines, along with studying three specific history subjects in depth. Alternatively I could see a 4-year history cycle working for families if they could think of a way to do review of the three years of the cycle they were not currently covering.

I like this too.

 

2.

Another chapter delivered the startling news that there is no evidence for the popular homeschool “teach your children according to their individual learning styles†method. Double gasp!

Hmm. That would a difficult thing to make evidence for simply because it would be difficult to set parameters for what it even means. LOL

 

And from a school setting, it can be exceptionally difficult to impossible to implement.

 

Personal applications:

--Ignore all workshops and curricula at the homeschool convention which berate me for not teaching each of my kids differently based on his or her learning style (auditory, visual, kinesthetic).

--Continue my current practice of presenting all lessons the same way to each child using verbal explanations as well as visual explanations on the white board, and requiring my kids to demonstrate understanding with both verbal and written responses. I can’t remember the source, but I learned that retention of new material is high if a person hears an explanation of the lesson, verbalizes it himself, and writes it.

This is the tried and true method of instruction across most cultures for centuries. It's not perfect bc there are always exceptions, but when instructing more than one or two kids, the odds are in favor of it being effective. If for no other reason that many times half of what works is what gets the job most efficiently and actually done. ;)

 

3.

I loved learning the evidence behind the Asian concept that hard work can increase intelligence. Dh and I are busy reorienting our minds away from the western idea that our kids are born with a set amount of intelligence which can’t be changed.

 

Personal applications:

--Praise my kids for working hard rather than for “being smart.†Give them credit for good performance, emphasizing that it was due to their hard work.

I am not Asian, but this is the mind set I was raised with and have tried hard to instill in my kids. I detest people saying things to them like, "Some people just aren't mathy. Or some people just aren't good at ____." I forbad those phrases in my home. What I say is:

 

"Someone might seem to have it easier or be more naturally inclined. That's got nothing to do with anyone's smarts or ability. You must work harder to be just as good and some day it might even make you better at it."

 

4.

One chapter was about the importance of background knowledge as a requirement for learning skills. Hirsch’s book The Knowledge Deficit fleshes this one out much more completely, but ends up with the same conclusion.

 

Personal applications:

--The Core Knowledge K-8 Sequence contains comprehensive lists of content and skills which are necessary for learning the relevant background knowledge and becoming well educated. My goal is to teach this information systematically in K-8, reviewing often.

--Start early with learning and memorizing factual knowledge. “Better early than late†is the best course, not the other way around!

I would agree with that. I don't think my kids need to be able to label a plant or cell in elementary to do biology in high school. I do think it combined with many other things over the early years will make biology much easier at some point. If nothing else, it will save a significant portion of time covering elementary topics.

 

5.

Kids need to understand underlying concepts before they try to commit something to memory. I know a family who did Classical Conversations Memory Masters in which their kids memorized all of the material, but they had not covered the content. It ended up that they could recite all of the memory work but didn’t know what a lot of it meant. For example, one of the history sentences they learned went something like, “King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215.†The kids knew this sentence by heart, but they had no idea who King John was, what the Magna Carta said, or why the Magna Carta was important. This is contrary to how we should do memory work.

Yes and no. At some point in the near future I would hope they learn that info in more depth. However, most memory work is absent deeper concepts because knowing the framework allows for deeper concepts to follow. Memory work is the well through which a student can access deeper content. You usually get the well first and it might take time to reach water with it. So while I agree just giving the well itself won't quinch the thirst, having the well is often a starting requirement. Did that analogy make any sense?

 

For example, my 6 year old is doing CCM. I'm pretty sure she doesn't understand all the complexities of the Caribbean and south American colonial revolutions from French and Spanish rules even though we briefly discussed it just Monday. That's okay. We're building a well at this stage. Right now this particular well isn't tremendously deep. We'll get there.

 

Interesting.... I wonder if my library has either of these books...

[Chrysalis Academy]

It's a great book, I read it this summer too. I was a card-carrying cognitive neuroscientist in a former life, and I think he's right on.  I've been referring to this book a ton in various discussions of math learning.  One of the things that really struck me (besides what has just been mentioned) is his discussion of novice learning vs. expert learning, and the misguided idea that students should be solving problems like experts.  We can see the results of trying to teach kids to read like experts - the whole-word fiasco - and it's equally true in other areas.  I thought this was an especially helpful chapter.

[Chelli]

I forgot to come back and update our school changes.

 

1) A bigger priority on memory work, not just for the sake of memorizing, but things that we've learned within context for history, science, poetry, Shakespeare passages, Bible verses, etc.

 

2) I posted earlier in the thread about the changes I'm making to the history rotation. I'm definitely keeping those.

 

3) I'm actively seeking out curriculum that teaches via narrative. I'd already noticed that dd9 learns much, much, much better if something is told in a story format. This has led me to attempt a full-on CM approach this year. We'll come back to MCT language arts next year, Beast Academy has enough of a story to it that dd9 is loving that and Life of Fred holds both of my dds attention. For science the Sassafras twins has been perfect as a narrative science book. I'm also working on training my dds (and myself) to see the "story" in art and music when we do our art and music appreciation. 

[birchbark]

While not directly from the book, I have bookmarked a couple articles on math. The first one is written by Willingham, and the second is recommended by him. These have been very helpful to me.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

While not directly from the book, I have bookmarked a couple articles on math. The first one is written by Willingham, and the second is recommended by him. These have been very helpful to me.

 

Thank you very much for these links!!!  I wanted to quote my favorite part of the Willingham article here, as I think it gives some really strong applicable advice for math, but for some reason I am unable to copy/paste from the pdf.  It is on page 5, right hand column, paragraph beginning "Manipulatives seem ..." through to the end of that section. 

 

I've also got to transcribe some of my favorite quotes from his book, which are in my Kindle highlights...  I'll work on that in a bit.

[Mrs Twain]

Thank you very much for these links!!!  I wanted to quote my favorite part of the Willingham article here, as I think it gives some really strong applicable advice for math, but for some reason I am unable to copy/paste from the pdf.  It is on page 5, right hand column, paragraph beginning "Manipulatives seem ..." through to the end of that section. 

 

I've also got to transcribe some of my favorite quotes from his book, which are in my Kindle highlights...  I'll work on that in a bit.

 

I was just talking with someone about this example yesterday.  Her child could not understand word problems until the parent changed the characters.  Once the characters or situation became familiar, the child solved the problem quickly and without problem.  So it seems that familiarity in examples is very important versus just concreteness.  There are examples of this concept in Willingham's book, too.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Ok, these are quickly transcribed from my kindle clippings...  The page references are all for kindle locations, so I didn't include them here.

 

Willingham Quotes

 

When you plan a lesson, you start with the information you want students to know by its end.  As a next step, consider what the key question for that lesson might be and how you can frame that question so it will have the right level of difficulty to engage your students and so you will respect your students’ cognitive limitations. 

 

The phenomenon of tying together separate pieces of information from the environment is called “chunkingâ€â€ [great example of chunking on the KISS grammar website as well]

 

Some educational thinkers have suggested that a limited number of ideas should be taught in great depth beginning in the early grades and carrying through the curriculum for years as different topics are taken up and viewed through the lens of one or more of these ideas.  From the cognitive perspective, this makes sense.  [i have a comment higher up in this thread specific to this idea.]

 

Do whatever you can to get kids to read.  [related to the importance of background knowledge, familiarity]

 

Students can learn information form math problems, or through sample sentences when they are learning grammar, or from vocabulary you use when you select a classroom monitor.  [Very Charlotte Mason sounding to me.  That is, assign copywork from history or science passages, or that illustrate complex language structure, important thoughts, etc.  Use math problems that illustrate real-world application (let’s double this cake recipe!) or data analysis ((Let’s use your plan growth data to find the average growth per day of bean sprouts and its standard deviation)]

 

To teach well, you should pay careful attention to what an assignment will actually makes students think about (not what you hope they will think about), because that is what they will remember.  [Things like making a tile mosaic teach children to make mosaic, not about Roman history, etc.  It doesn’t mean the activity might be worthwhile, but realistically, it probably doesn’t add anything to history study]

 

Effective teachers have both qualities.  They are able to connect personally with students, and they organize the material in a way that makes it interesting and easy to understand. 

 

I’m going to suggest that organizing a lesson plan like a story is an effective way to help students comprehend and remember.

 

[How to create a narrative story] The first C is causality, which means that events are causally related to one another.  For example, “I saw Jane.  I left the house†is just a chronological telling of events.  But if you read, “I saw Jane, my hopeless old love, I left the house,†you would understand that the two events are linked causally.   The second C is conflict.  A story has a main character pursuing a goal, but he or she is unable to reach that goal.  […] Conflict occurs because there is an obstacle to the goal.  […] The third C is complications.  […]  Complications are sub-problems that arise from the main goal.  […]  The final C is character.  A good story is built around strong, interesting characters, and the key to those qualities is action.  A skillful storyteller shows rather than tells the audience what a character is like.   

 

The story structure applies to the way you organize the material that you encourage your students to think about, not to the methods you use to teach the material. 

 

Review each lesson plan in terms of what the student is likely to think about.

 

The surest way to help students understand an abstraction is to expose them to many different versions of that abstraction- that is, to have them solve area calculation problems about tabletops, soccer fields, envelopes, doors, and so on.  There are some promising new techniques to hurry this process. 

 

The two reasons to practice- to gain competence and to improve are self-evident and probably not very controversial.  Less obvious are the reasons to practice skills when it appears you have mastered something and it’s not obvious that practice is making you any better.  Odd as it may seem, that sort of practice is essential to schooling.  It yields these important benefits: it reinforces the basic skills that are required for the learning of more advanced skills, it protects against forgetting, and it improves transfer.

 

Again, the goal is to provide students with some understanding of how others create knowledge, rather than to ask students to engage in activities of knowledge creation.

 

Whenever you see an expert doing something differently from the way a non-expert does it, it may well be that the expert used to do it the way the novice does it, and that doing so was a necessary step on the way to expertise.

 

Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn. 

 

Your knowledge of the word footbath is stored as meaning, independent of whether you first learned the word by seeing someone take a footbath or hearing a description of it, or by actually soaking your own feet.  Most of what teachers want students to know is stored as meaning. 

 

Meaning has a life of its own, independent of sensory details. 

 

“Every student is intelligent in some way,†or ask students to identify “What kind of smart are you?† I think teachers stay this in an effort to communicate egalitarian attitude to students: everyone is good at something.  But there are a couple of reasons to be leery of this attitude.  First this sort of statement rubs me the wrong way because it implies that intelligence brings value.  Every child is unique and valuable, whether or not they are intelligent or have much in the way of mental ability.  I admit that being the father of a severely mentally retarded child probably makes me sensitive on this issue.  My daughter is not intelligent in any sense of the word, but she is a joyful child who brings a lot of happiness to a lot of people.

 

In China, Japan, and other Eastern countries, intelligence is more often viewed as malleable.  If students fail a test or don’t understand a concept, it’s not that they’re stupid- they just haven’t worked hard enough. 

 

Why doesn’t Anne learn better when the presentation is auditory, given that she’s an auditory learner?  Because auditor y information is not what’s being tested!  Auditory information would be the particular sound of the voice on the tape.  What’s being tested is the meaning of the words. 

 

[On the persistence of the learning styles hypothesis… just found it to be a good quote in general…] The great novelist Tolstoy put it this way: “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of great complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their lifeâ€

 

Think in terms of content, not in terms of students.

 

Change promotes attention. [from activity to seat work to lecture, from abstract to word problems, etc.  There is a table in Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic Learners section of ch.7 summarizing the so-called learning styles.  He suggests using the various learning styles and techniques to create more interest (change) during any given lesson to encourage attention.]

 

Cognitive processes (such as synthesizing and critiquing) cannot operate alone.  They need background knowledge to make them work.

 

Therefore, you should praise process rather than ability.  In addition to praising effort (if appropriate), you might praise a student for persistence in the face of challenges, or for taking responsibility for her work.

 

Avoid insincere praise, however.  Dishonest praise is actually destructive.  If you tell a student “Wow, you really worked hard on this project!* when the student knows good and well that she didn’t, you lose credibility.

 

In the last ten years or so, many researchers have emphasized that teachers ought to have rich subject-matter knowledge, and there do seem to be some data that students of these teachers learn more, especially in middle and high school and especially in I math. 

 

 

-------------------------

Phew, my fingers are tired!

 

 

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

While not directly from the book, I have bookmarked a couple articles on math. The first one is written by Willingham, and the second is recommended by him. These have been very helpful to me.

 

A word on the Schmidt article:

 

It is always reassuring when people who seem to know what they are talking about reinforce my choice in math curriculum.  A lot of people talk about the superiority of the Singapore method due to its mental math techniques, rigor, etc.  I learned something new in this article in that it also stated that one of Asian math strengths is a very limited number of topics-  4-6 per grade - as greatly improving effectiveness.  This makes me leery of SM's possible common core editions that are apparently forthcoming. 

 

It's also a good reminder that no matter what math curriculum one chooses, sticking with it will be much more effective than jumping around, due to the internal coherence of any given program. 

[Korrale]

Hope I don't get in trouble for resurrecting a thread, but as I read through all the comments about the book a couple of things I had seen before were in the back of my mind. I had seen these two videos on YouTube; one about how teaching reading is about expanding content knowledge and the second was about learning styles. I went and searched for them and voila! They were views done by Willingham himself.

 

Here is the video about learning styles.

[Korrale]

Now here is the link about the importance of content of knowledge.

 

 

Willingham does have a few other videos. I am going to watch them later. His YouTube account name is danielwillingham. So they are pretty easy to look up.

[TKDmom]

Hope I don't get in trouble for resurrecting a thread, but as I read through all the comments about the book a couple of things I had seen before were in the back of my mind. I had seen these two videos on YouTube; one about how teaching reading is about expanding content knowledge and the second was about learning styles. I went and searched for them and voila! They were views done by Willingham himself.

 

Here is the video about learning styles.

<snipped>

 

Those were awesome! Thanks for sharing. I still haven't gotten around to reading his book yet. I'll have to move it up in my priorities.   :D