To most of us, learning something "the hard way" implies wasted time and effort. Good teaching, we believe, should be creatively tailored to the different learning styles of students and should use strategies that make learning easier. Make It Stick turns fashionable ideas like these on their head. Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors offer concrete techniques for becoming more productive learners. Memory plays a central role in our ability to carry out complex cognitive tasks, such as applying knowledge to problems never before encountered and drawing inferences from facts already known. New insights into how memory is encoded, consolidated, and later retrieved have led to a better understanding of how we learn. Grappling with the impediments that make learning challenging leads both to more complex mastery and better retention of what was learned. Many common study habits and practice routines turn out to be counterproductive. Underlining and highlighting, rereading, cramming, and single-minded repetition of new skills create the illusion of mastery, but gains fade quickly. More complex and durable learning come from self-testing, introducing certain difficulties in practice, waiting to re-study new material until a little forgetting has set in, and interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another. Speaking most urgently to students, teachers, trainers, and athletes, Make It Stick will appeal to all those interested in the challenge of lifelong learning and self-improvement.

A supplementary text that provides a practical yet comprehensive explanation of learner-centered instruction.

This book provides data and uses stories and personal insights gleaned from nearly 6,000 observations in real classrooms across the nation. The mix of data and descriptions provide a clear picture of the rich interaction of teacher and student behaviors – and how one predicts the other. Graphs and tables provide concrete visual representations of the often surprisingly low rates of effective instructional practices used in the average classroom. In addition to a description of how the large dataset was developed, there are descriptions of what it is like to visit multiple classrooms in different schools, what the data tells us about teaching and learning in our public school system, and what the implications are for pre-service teacher training, school professional development, research, and understanding interaction effects.

This resource provides teachers with tips, suggestions, and strategies for classroom management and maintaining a positive learning environment. This book offers creative ideas and current research-based techniques for topics like observing the physical and social classroom environment, handling classroom disruptions, keeping students engaged, communicating with families, and more.