Teaching Without Telling
February 21, 2008
Lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that throughout my teaching career, my definition of “teaching” has been a whole lot closer to “telling” than “causing learning to occur.”
We’ve known for a long time that students learn best when they are doing things through multiple modalities, particularly when they are speaking and actively doing the task to be learned. One source asserts that “students retain 10 percent of what they read, 26 percent of what they hear, 30 percent of what they see, 50 percent of what they hear and see, 70 percent of what they say, and 90 percent of what they say and do.” I’m not looking to squabble over those exact percentages, because other sources come up with somewhat different numbers, but the key point remains: students need to be speaking and doing more than listening and watching.
Then I started reading Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, which I highly recommend. They talked about how retention is increased dramatically when a message is made “sticky” — and one great way to do this is to make the subject matter to be learned a mystery. Let me explain:
Let’s say you wanted to teach your students about photosynthesis. It would be all too easy to begin by saying something like this: “Today we’re going to learn how plants use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to make their own food. This process is called photosynthesis and it begins when…”
What a mistake! First of all, since you’re only telling this to your students, a low percentage of this information will be retained. Second, because you’ve spolied the entire element of surprise, you’ve made an amazing topic sound absolutely lifeless.
Imagine having students actually observe plant growth, then starting a conversation by creating a mystery: “How can plants survive and grow without eating? If you and I went even a few days without food, we would feel very sick; if we went weeks without food, we would die. Why don’t plants die like we would?” Then let the students do most of the talking.
Once I’ve written this, it seems so obvious to do things in this type of manner, but for some reason the teaching style most of us seem to regress toward is one of mere telling. Even as I work on it, I also urge you to make ‘teaching without telling’ something you try to do more consistently.
The Amazon link to Made to Stick is here.
Entry Filed under: Education, Elementary Education, Fifth Grade, First Grade, Fourth Grade, Learning, Second Grade, Secondary Education, Students, Teaching, Third Grade, ideas, made to stick, school. .
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1.
Jenny | February 21, 2008 at 9:38 pm
The authors of Made to Stick have a great blog. They recently did a promotion looking for stories from teachers of lessons that stick: http://www.madetostick.com/blog/2007/10/03/100-books-for-100-stories/ It sounds like they’ll be posting the responses soon.
2.
Jen | February 21, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Oooh, I’ll have to find this. I’m in a master’s/certification program now and one of the aspects of our lesson plan that they always want to see is that giving away the punchline. “Tell them what they’re going to learn.”
I can see why it’s helpful sometimes, but I also heartily agree that making things a mystery, a solvable puzzle is really far more engaging. I’ll have to come up for a way to introduce the mystery rather than lay out the lesson — while making it look like I’m following the “rules.”
3.
Michaele | February 22, 2008 at 8:35 am
Makes me glad I’m a kindergarten teacher- we “do” all the time. Makes me cringe when I walk into upper grade classrooms and see kiddos sitting, in neat little rows, listening (possibly) to the drone-tone. Of course the teachers of those classrooms break out into hives if they ever have to enter MY room- students talking, moving freely, accidentally knocking something over, debating, exploring, creating and expressing themselves, working together…really freak them out.
4.
mpullen | February 22, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Great comments — I look forward to seeing the list of lessons that stick that were submitted to Chip and Dan Heath. I also hadn’t considered the fact that teacher ed programs might be working against us as they preach the old “tell what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell what you said” model of teaching. That could be why we all revert back to that! And to Michaele — I do think K-1 teachers, perhaps out of necessity, do more things to facilitate real learning than anyone else. Not only do they have the kids DOING things, but they also realize the importance of building a caring community. No wonder the old adage says “everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten”: that was perhaps the only grade where everyone felt loved and things were consistently taught in a “sticky” manner.
5.
jennybateacher | February 26, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I’ll bet you’d like this book: The Book of Learning and Forgetting by Frank Smith. Reminds us all that students are learning every second of every day, but sometimes they’re NOT learning what we intend for them to learn. Rocked my little 2nd grade teaching world. Here’s some more books I want to read soon– (I think you asked on my blog)
The 9 Rights of Every Writer: A Guide for Teachers by Vicki Spandel
What a Writer Needs by Ralph Fletcher
Wondrous Words: Writers and Writing in the Elementary Classroom by Katie Wood Ray
Best Practices in WRiting Instruction Edited by Steve Graham, et. al
Inside Writing and My Quick WRites for Inside Writing by Donald Graves et. al
Designing Professional Development in Literacy by Catherine Rosemary, et. al
Portfolio Teaching by Nedra Reynolds et. al
Because Writing Matters, NWP & Carol Nagan
A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves
The Artful Edit by Susan Bell
The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets by Ted Kooser