How Exceptionally Effective Teachers Think About Their Work

           “How can it be that some teachers succeed in remaining in our memory for years or even decades, whereas others fade into oblivion after just a short period of time?” ask John Hattie and Klaus Zierer in their book, Ten Mindframes for Visible Learning: Teaching for Success. They believe the answer lies in the way successful teachers think about teaching, which can be summed up in ten “mindframes”: 

Impact: 

- I am an evaluator of my impact on student learning. 

- I see assessment as informing my impact and next steps. 

- I collaborate with my peers and my students about my conceptions of progress and my impact. 

Change and challenge: 

- I am a change agent and believe all students can improve. 

- I strive for challenge and not merely “doing your best.” 

Learning focus: 

- I give and help students understand feedback and I interpret and act on feedback given to me. 

- I engage as much in dialogue as monologue. 

- I explicitly inform students what successful impact looks like from the outset. 

- I build relationships and trust so that learning can occur in a place where it is safe to make mistakes and learn from others. 

- I focus on learning and the language of learning. 

 Ten Mindframes for Visible Learning: Teaching for Success by John Hattie and Klaus Zierer (Routledge, 2018)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #989 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Leave One, Add One: An End-of-Year Retrieval Activity

          In this Retrieval Practice article, psychologist Pooja Agarwal (Berklee School of Music) suggests this 30-minute classroom activity for the final days of the school year (suitable for grade 6 through post-graduate): 

- Each student is given a blank sheet of paper. 

- Students sketch an animal of their choice in the top right-hand corner of their paper to anonymously identify their paper. 

- Everyone silently writes down one idea or concept they’ve learned over the semester or year – at least one full sentence. 

- Papers are collected and the teacher explains the subsequent steps. 

- Papers are randomly redistributed and students silently write on the paper they received one additional thing they learned in the class – different from their initial thought and different from what the student wrote on the paper they just received. 

- As each student finishes writing another idea, they hold up their paper and the teacher collects it and gives it to another student. The activity is now self-paced. 

 - This continues for 5-6 rounds, becoming “a bit zany as you run around collecting and handing out papers,” says Agarwal, “but it’s a lot of fun, too.” 

 - The teacher collects all papers and, calling out the name of each animal sketch, hands them back to the original student. 

 - In an all-class discussion, students share one cool thing that someone else wrote on their paper, perhaps two thoughts if there’s time. 

- Students can keep their papers as a vivid reminder of the many things that were learned in the class, or give them to the teacher for a self-assessment of what was learned – and what wasn’t. 

This is an ungraded activity, Agarwal emphasizes. “Retrieval practice is a learning strategy, not an assessment strategy.” It also serves to boost long-term learning. 

 “Classroom Activity for: Leave One, Add One” by Pooja Agarwal in Retrieval Practice, May 2023; Agarwal can be reached at ask@retrievalpractice.org.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #987 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.