Happy New Year! 🎊🎆 My first morning of 2026 has been dedicated to digging deeper into research used to support the choice-based models growing in popularity in the US. 🤓 ☕️ 📖

Here we go.

King-Sears et al. (2023) is the meta-analysis CAST often cites when saying UDL “supports” student learning outcomes not necessarily that it improves them. That wording matters. 🧵🚩

1/7

https://x.com/SoLInTheWild/status/2006562770066473201

🚩 CAST summarizes King-Sears et al. (2023) by saying UDL shows “moderate-to-large positive effects” on student achievement. That sounds decisive but a closer look at the meta-analysis reveals several important red flags.

2/7

🚨Books I read in 2025 every teacher should consider 📚

1️⃣ What the book is about
2️⃣ One concrete way it changed my instruction 🧵👇 1️⃣ The Writing Revolution 2.0

📖This book explains how sentence-level writing builds both content knowledge and reading comprehension.

✅Because of it, I now plan daily sentence-level writing tasks instead of saving writing for extended assignments.

To think critically about a Civil War soldier’s letter, students need factual/conceptual knowledge: Who fought for what? What the both sides believed. What battles were happening. Without that background, critical thinking is just guessing. Knowledge makes analysis possible. 🧵 Students can’t “analyze” a graph of declining global birth rates without prior knowledge: what fertility rate means, why education access matters, what urbanization does. Without that conceptual base, they’re not analyzing—they’re eyeballing lines. Knowledge drives the thinking.

A thread about why I told a student no when she asked if we could “do something totally different” today and what that moment says about working memory, novelty, and the engagement trap many students and teachers fall into. 🧵1/10 A student asked me today:

“What are we doing in class?”

I said, “The usual.”

She paused. “Can we do something totally different for once?”

2/10

🚨Making learning stick isn’t about cramming more in. It’s about how it’s sequenced. One of the most powerful ways I’ve found is sequencing my lessons using the elaboration theory model. This approach completely changed how I plan units and how students retain what they learn. 🧵 Elaboration theory, developed by Reigeluth, is built on a simple idea: start with a broad, meaningful overview of the content, called the epitome, then elaborate by adding more detail, depth, and complexity over time. In other words, we need to zoom out before we can zoom in.

A major impact of cognitive science on my instruction is the lens through which I plan a lesson. Previously, I was always hyper-focused on the WHAT and a little bit of the HOW. That’s flipped completely. When I create a lesson I’m now organically using 10 HOW questions…🧵👇 🎯How will I break new information into small chunks that naturally build cohesively?
🎯How will I activate necessary prior knowledge to effectively assimilate the new information?
🎯How will I establish a meaningful cognitive structure for new information to stick to?

As an experienced teacher, one of the most enriching parts of studying cognitive science is how it gives meaning and context to different situations I have seen play out in my classroom hundreds, if not thousands, of times over the years. For example, assimilation theory…👇🧵 One of these insights I recently came across: meaningful forgetting vs forgetting through interference depends on how well the new learning was initially assimilated. I’ve seen it play out so many times this way—Student A retains a “residue of the new meaning”, Student B doesn’t.

Unit 0: Learning How to Learn is done! I’m sharing the booklet with a few disclaimers. The booklet includes the following sections:
✔️Part 1: Memory
✔️Part 2: Retrieval Practice
✔️Part 3: Learning Myths
✔️Part 4: Metacognition
✔️Part 5: How Our Brains Learn
✔️Exam Revision Guide Parts 1-5 each contain:

✅Essential question
✅Knowledge goal
✅Bullet-proof definition
✅Advance organizer
✅Vocabulary list
✅Short reading
✅Comprehension questions
✅Vocabulary practice
✅”Headlines” summary
✅Metacognitive reflection
✅Retrieval practice
✅Spaced practice

Terrific overview of what effective online teaching and learning looks like. Below are some of my takeaways and key questions to consider based on previous experience with online teaching.

Remember, online teaching isn’t reinventing the wheel. It’s about repurposing it.

https://twitter.com/iste/status/1239611145599713281

“Online learning should never be an excuse to assign busy work, but rather to address clear engaging learning objectives.”

If Ss were in your brick and mortar classroom, would they still be doing this assignment? Is the meaning and value of it something Ss know and can express?