S4 Ep9 - Instructional Spring Cleaning - One Student at the Front

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Hi there. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast, the place where we get right down into the nitty-gritty of structured literacy. It's Jocelyn here, joining you from Tasmania, the lands of the Palawa people.

It's wonderful to be working in education at a time when we have a growing understanding of the importance of research and using evidence to guide our classroom decisions. The challenging thing about this is that we simply don't have that research evidence about every practice in the classroom. And even when it does exist, the context of application of practices matters a great deal.

For example, many studies are conducted using small groups in an intervention setting. This can give us great guidance about what is likely to get positive benefits in instruction. However, how that practice translates to the classroom, when you have 25 students in front of you and not five, is a matter that needs discussion.

The big question is what do we do when we don't have direct research evidence? How can we make sound decisions?

Well, for that, we can consider evidence-informed practice. I've previously spoken about the difference between evidence-informed practice and evidence-based practice in Season 3, Episode 22, How to Choose a Phonics Program. This episode comes with a handy free tool that you can use in your school to help you evaluate both new programs you might be considering and your existing phonics practices.

Evidence-informed practice exists at the intersection of research evidence, the experience and skill of highly capable teachers and the outcomes of the end user, the students. When we don't have direct research evidence about a practice, we can use these three points to guide our thinking and help us make an informed decision about what to do.

In this current series of episodes, I'm taking an evidence-informed approach to reflecting on some classroom practices that are common right across the grades of primary school and even secondary, and asking the questions:

What is the intention behind them?

How well do they meet the goals?

What research can we draw on to guide us?

Are these practices fit for purpose and what alternatives can we identify to help meet the goals that we were trying to achieve in the first place?

In the last episode, I considered classroom news and how we can up the ante on oral language and discussion in the classroom.

In this episode, I'm tackling a really common practice that is bringing students up to the front of the room, one at a time, to answer a question. This is a very common practice and is used in a variety of instructional contexts, including phonics lessons. Now I can see why it's attractive. It helps a teacher to check in with individual students because you can put all your focus just on them for a moment. It also allows you to provide direct assistance to that student. The student feels a bit special because they're at the front and they likely benefit from the individual attention. For the teacher and the student who is the focus at that time, it's great, no problem.

My question here is, what are the other students doing? I'm sure that program writers who include this practice would say that the other students are watching, listening and learning from the demonstration. If that was what really happens, it would be a win-win. But truly I'm highly sceptical about the claim of learning on the part of the students who aren't at the front.

An Example

Before I share my reasoning and refer to some research, let's examine what actually happens in some situations. Let's say that a teacher has been teaching a phonics lesson about the grapheme <double e>. We've had the students focus and it's now time for some word level spelling. The teacher might say, "Hmm, who's going to come to the front and show us how to spell sheep?" Ten hands shoot up, every kid straining to be the one chosen. The teacher says, "I'm looking for children who are sitting up nicely," the kids strain harder. The teacher then chooses Penny, who they had probably chosen in their heads before anyone even put their hand up. This results in groans and cries of "Oh, I wanted to do it!"

The student who is chosen is either now a bit smug or a bit self-conscious at being the recipient of this prized opportunity. If Penny's in the middle of the group, she needs to get up without stepping on anyone's boards, feet or fingers. She then needs to make her way to the front of the group, stepping gingerly between the classmates as she does so, like some kind of on the ground tightrope walker. Penny's board and texta that's been left on the floor are now fair game for any of the students who can reach. Guarantee there's a kid who thinks that Penny's whiteboard marker is better than theirs and will do a little swapsy when they think no one's looking.

Let's say that Penny makes it to the front of the class without a major incident or anyone having to go to the office for an ice pack to put on their stepped on fingers and it's time for the learning to start. She's focused, she's ready for the word. But what do you think the rest of the students are now thinking about? Some of them are still smarting from not having been chosen to come to the front and are thinking about how unfair it is. Others are thinking about the flowers they're now drawing on their boards. Some are talking with each other about the game they're planning for recess. And Jim? Jim is in agony because he has attentional issues and this lesson is already pushing him beyond his cognitive capacity to focus.

So there's Penny standing at the board, ready to learn. She's got the special pen in her hand. The teacher gives Penny the word 'sheep'. Penny is intently focused on sounding it out. She's carefully writing the letters to match the sounds she's saying. She gets it right. Wonderful! And the teacher says, "Okay, Penny, move over so that everyone can see what you've written. What do we think everyone? Did Penny get it right? She did, well done, Penny!" And Penny has had a great time because she's had the teacher's undivided attention that whole time. And again, I ask you what was happening for the rest of the class during that section of the lesson? The next step, according to some programs, is for students to either copy the word from the class board onto their own board or not write anything at all. They just kind of sit there, having looked at Penny's back as she received her one-on-one instruction.

Where do you think their attention is now?

Do you really think that every six-year-old in that class was actively sounding out sheep to themselves, highly invested in Penny spelling the word right?

I've spent many years teaching the early years and I have never, ever, ever had a class where every child could independently maintain attention. You know why? It's not because my students were disadvantaged or had an attentional deficit, although that was true for some of them. It was because the ability to independently focus on your own learning doesn't fully develop until the late teen years, and that comes from Stanislas Dehaene in his book How We Learn.

The Research

And here's where we get to the research considerations about this practice. Well, we don't have instructional research about this practice, but we do have access to research findings about attention and information processing. So let's consider that. A quick search of the internet for the expected attention span of young children brings up statistics for six-year-olds such as 12 to 18 minutes of attention on a task. That's a fairly typical figure across the range of sites.

But on what kind of task? Lego, a computer game, a phonics lesson? This information isn't shared when these numbers are quoted.

A team of researchers at a university in Indonesia were quite specific about the environment they were including in their study to measure the attention span of children aged between six and seven years old. What they did was they actually went into a classroom and they monitored how long students focus for. Here's what they reported in a peer-reviewed journal in December 2020.

The data was obtained by observing one Grade One elementary school in its natural setting with a time sampling method. Observations are based on the on-task and off-task behaviour shown by the students, and the off-task behaviour was things like students getting up out of their seat and talking to each other. They found that the longest time elementary school grade one students were able to show on-task behaviour indicated that their attention span was seven minutes. They also noted that this was quite a way off the expected 15 to 18 minutes that's usually cited.

Now the researchers acknowledged that the findings of this study should not be used to generalise to a wider population. The sample size was small and there was no control group to compare with. They also didn't state what type of tasks the students were engaged with or name any other factors that may impact the results.

So let's not treat this study as gospel, but we can think about it and how it reflects what we see in classrooms. When I ask a group of early years teachers about the attention spans of their students, they often laughingly say, "Oh, about 30 seconds."

When I ask experienced teachers about the difference between students 10 years ago and students now, they all say that students are less resilient and less able to concentrate, among other things. Perhaps increased screen time has had an impact on this area. This is certainly a growing area of research, and what we have so far indicates that large amount of time on screens negatively impacts students' attention spans.

I'm not a researcher and this episode is not about screen time, but I do think that there is anecdotal evidence for the fact that children's attention spans are not what they used to be, so maybe a practice that was once okay now isn't. I'd also like to say that attention is closely linked to self-regulation and that can be developed.

Learning-Play-Learning-Play

I've taught children who literally couldn't self-regulate for learning for more than five minutes. Five minutes of learning, five minutes of play, then it became seven minutes of learning with three minutes of play. With firm expectations, careful management and success-focused instruction, those kids were soon following on with a lesson that comprised of 35 minutes of learning with three minutes of play. Of course it wasn't 35 minutes on the one task, I'm not a magician. So self-regulation can be taught, and this does directly relate to attention and on-task behaviour. But I also know that there is such a thing as executive functioning fuel, not an official scientific term. And that once this fuel is depleted, something has to happen to refuel the tank.

So all of these things come into play when we consider the situation of Penny coming up to the board to write her word. Remember my concern wasn't for Penny, it was for the other students. Part of the problem with this practice is that it often comes towards the end of the mat time portion of a phonics lesson, when children have likely already been sitting on the floor for a considerable period of time, sometimes up to half an hour. If you use our work for phonics, you'll see that this is definitely not a feature, but it does happen often in different classrooms.

So think about the attention span of the typical year one student, optimistically 18 minutes according to some research. By the time you get to the point where Penny is coming to the board half an hour into the lesson, the executive functioning fuel of the kids is severely depleted.

Let's then consider that when the teacher's focus is on helping Penny write the word at the front, the rest of the class is expected to keep themselves focused. Now you might have a shot at getting them to pay attention if you were guiding their thinking and their actions. But on their own? Feels a little unrealistic to me. And if we think about the times when the wheels fall off the behaviour of our little people who require additional support, it's times like this, when there isn't an adult directly guiding and supporting regulation. So the self-regulation demands of this practice pose a problem for the rest of the class who is not standing at the board.

A further issue for me when I consider quality learning experiences is that the rest of the students in this scenario are largely passive in the task. From the moment they are not selected to be the one to come to the board, they are passive. They are passive while they wait for Penny to get to the front. They are passive as Penny works out how to spell sheep, even if the teacher says, "Everyone else make sure you're sounding out the word and thinking about how you'd spell it." They are passive in evaluating whether Penny got the word right because the teacher has helped her, so of course it's right. And then if the students are directed to write that word on their boards, they're passive there too, after all, they are simply copying.

So this task in a targeted lesson has so little value for the majority of children that it's a big no from me.

But could it be tweaked? Can it be adjusted a little to make it better?

Well, sure, we could pull pop sticks from a cup to choose the student, but the rest of it's still a factor.

We could have all the students sound out the word while Penny's at the board, but there's still the distraction of her actually being up there in the first place.

There is also the impact of the teacher having split attention and eye contact. You can only put your eyes in one place at a time. They can be on Penny or they can be on the rest of the class. Research indicates that eye contact leads to better attention by students and therefore better learning outcomes.

Could we give all of the children a completely different word to sound out on their boards after Penny has done her word? Well, yes, we could, but we've still wasted time in Penny getting to and from the board in the first place.

So, yes, you can tweak it to improve it, but is improvement really the goal? Well, for me it's not. How about we draw a firm line in the sand and be super clear about what classroom practice is and isn't going to get us maximum bang for our buck? After all, we know that our little people don't have that much attention. We have to optimise every second of it, so let's do that.

Time For a Spring Clean

How can we give this practice a spring clean?

The first thing I do is think about how much time children are actually sitting on the mat and build movement into the teaching routine every 10 minutes. I don't mean a dance party or jumping around the room like kangaroos, but having children move from the floor to the desks and back. This does not have to be a free-for-all. Just be super strict on what you want and make the movements silent: no chit-chat.

Rather than having the students writing while sitting on the floor, we do word reading on the floor, then move to the desks for writing in books. Students then come back to the floor for different activities, usually around shared sentence writing before they go back to the desk. I understand how some people might worry about the distraction of all that moving around, but trust me, providing the movement opportunity within the lesson keeps the students focused. Just make sure that your instructions are super tight and your routine is well established.

The second thing is to recognise that we're aiming for full engagement in our lessons, not passive following along. So instead of having one child come to the front, just have every child sound out the word and write it down. If you want to feature a student, have that student sit at the front of the room during the whole group word writing and then show their board to the rest of the students. They can be the tick it or fix it helper.

I wouldn't be doing this every day, but on a Friday as a way to introduce a little bit of novelty without distracting from the lesson, it could be a good option.

Now, am I saying I would never, ever have a student come to the front of the class ever again? Of course not. That would be silly. What I am saying is that targeted instruction needs targeted focus and full participation. Getting intrinsic load right in this is so important, and there are things that we do in the classroom that feel sweet and purposeful to us but actually distract the students. They create extraneous load and make it harder for students to learn, particularly those with attentional challenges. I'm also not saying that I've never done this in a lesson, but over time my practice has evolved and now I look at instruction through the lens of Cognitive Load Theory and Information Processing Theory, not just what I've always done or what a program says.

Remember, evidence-informed practice sits at the intersection of research, the experience of skilled and knowledgeable teachers and positive student outcomes. Our feelings and preferences never override what the research has to say, but we can consider our professional judgment in making decisions for our students. In fact, I think we have to. If we can't think about instruction through the lens of knowledge and respond to the needs of our students through using our experience, what are we doing?

One last thing: just because a program includes a particular practice, don't take it for granted that it's evidence informed. If you aren't sure, if something isn't working for you, you have questions, get digging. Ask a bunch of questions, firstly of the program developer and then other people in the space, and the program developer needs to be able to give you detailed reasoning about why they've chosen to do something. We are fortunate to live in a modern technological age where we can access research findings.

I'm not saying to go rogue and change things willy-nilly, but be curious about how your resources are evidence aligned. You might find out that a practice is evidence aligned and you just didn't have the information to know it.

But if that's the place you reach, your time won't be wasted, because now you'll really know why you're doing what you're doing. You're not just following along.

I have a couple more classroom practices in mind for this mini series about Spring cleaning Instructional Practices. So come back next week and listen in. And I'll just finish this off by saying that all of this information that I'm sharing with you is my take, it's my lens on the research and how that applies to the classroom. You may have a different way of using these practices that avoids all the distraction, that avoids students sitting passively. If that's the case, if you are able to create a line from the research through your experience and you're showing that your students, every single one of them, is getting an outcome, keep doing what you're doing, because that is evidence informed.

Until next time, happy teaching everyone. Bye.

References:

Dehaene, S. (2021). How we learn: Why brains learn better than any machine…for now. Penguin Books.

Asprilia, Tioni & Qodariah, Laila & Purba, Fredrick. (2020). First Grader's Attention Span During In-Class Activity. GUIDENA Jurnal Ilmu Pendidikan Psikologi Bimbingan dan Konseling. 10. 144-150. 10.24127/gdn.v10i2.3151.

Show Notes:

S3 Ep22 - How to Choose a Phonics Program

S4 Ep8 - Instructional Spring Cleaning - News

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