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Jul 9 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
@Steplab_co 's conference all about instructional coaching was BRILLIANT today! Full of interesting people. #stepfest

I went to @olicav's fantastic session on *Zooming Out with Clusters*.

Amongst many others, here are 4 key insights:
(Insight 1) External memory fields.

Working memory has limited capacity.
We should project and capture our thinking.
This means...
Think on paper.
Get your ideas down and make sense of them.
(Insight 2) Three-point communication.

If you're giving feedback (or having a hard conversation) sit side-by-side not face-to-face.

Then focus your attention on the 3rd point: a screen/paper.

What does this mean for coaching?
Sitting side-by-side creates a 'detachment gap' between the message (coaching feedback) and the messenger (coach).

It becomes about the *teaching* not the teacher.
(Insight 3) "Precise and provisional" (quote from the brilliant Jim Knight)

Coaches need to be *precise* in their feedback.
But they operate context-free.
Their feedback needs to be *provisional* i.e. capable of translation into the teacher's classroom context.
(Insight 4) Clustering WalkThru techniques

WalkThru techniques can be clustered to form groups of techniques.
The design is modular (like lego) you can assemble and reassemble them to suit your needs.
Check it out walkthrus.co.uk

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More from @overpractised

Sarah Cottingham Profile picture
Apr 28
*Interleaving*

Not a learning strategy I know much about.

Luckily @JW_Firth just did an excellent talk on it as part of the @UoL_CEN seminar series tonight, chaired by the brilliant @DrRebeccaGordon.

Here's what I took away:🧵
What's interleaving?
Shuffling/alternating items so each appears alongside contrasting ones.

It's classed as a 'desirable difficulty': slows pupil performance but improves learning.

Think of it as the *opposite* of doing/seeing the same thing over again (blocked practice).
How does it work?

Probably works best for subtle differences between things pupils are likely to confuse.

Interleaving (presenting the confusable things side by side) allows pupils to see the *differences* between them and so the *boundaries* of each concept.
Read 14 tweets
Sarah Cottingham Profile picture
Apr 24
*Memory* is incredibly interesting.

I've been studying it for a few years and hardly scratched the surface!

Here are 3 key things I've learned and what I think they might mean for teachers... 🧵
(1) Brains like to conserve energy

This makes sense because… the brain is responsible for a lot of energy consumption. From an evolutionary perspective, there wasn't always a guaranteed supply of energy.
Lots of this energy seems to taken up by *learning*.
Forming stable long-term memories -> involves protein synthesis -> takes energy.

This means… the brain is going to be selective about what it commits to long-term memory.

What might this mean for teaching?
Read 20 tweets
Sarah Cottingham Profile picture
Mar 10
Teaching is rewarding and challenging.

Here are 4 *counterintuitive concepts* about how we learn🧠
They add to the challenge but once we know them, they can guide our thinking.

You may be able to add to them...🧵
(1) To increase expertise, *don't* do as the experts do.

Why?

Putting pupils in the position where they have to "think like an expert" ignores the process of learning that got experts there.
There's no short-cut to expertise. Pupils need to build rich, well-connected schemas.

To do this, a lot of what pupils need to do looks nothing like 'expert thinking'.
Read 15 tweets
Sarah Cottingham Profile picture
Feb 11
🧠*Working memory* (WM) is described as limited: it only holds a few new chunks of info before overload.

This is a useful description. It focuses teachers on carefully managing pupils' WM capacity when teaching new info.

But here's two upsides to restricting entry to LTM...🧵
Upside #1: We avoid *information overload*

If WM wasn't a bottleneck and didn't rely on information from LTM to process new information, then it would let through every experience we attend to...😱
We'd end up with the equivalent of a dumping ground of memories - that cupboard in your house you can't bear to open: it contains everything but you can’t find anything!
Read 14 tweets
Sarah Cottingham Profile picture
Apr 18, 2021
BIG 😊. I just finished a first draft of my MA dissertation on the mechanisms of *retrieval practice* where I use neuroscience to inform education through psychology. Here's some of what I've learned so far 👇
When you retrieve a memory you activate lots of related memories too. This spreading activation in the brain alters the connections between the target memory and the related memories. It changes the neural landscape. But why does it do this?
The brain doesn't want the effort and confusion of memories competing with each other so it reduces competition with related memories by integrating them or pushing them away -- basically how you solve a playground fight: get the kids to make up or stay apart! But there's more -
Read 7 tweets

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