Jonily : Oftentimes, we think we're getting kids a good
cognitive demand. But we're actually giving them cognitive
loads of good
Cheri Dotterer: morning. Welcome to tier one interventions with
Jonily Zupancic and Cheri Dotterer, a
Jonily : Jonily Zupancic. Here Jay Z in the house today. And
tier one interventions is really about strengthening our core in
schools, if you think about your body, or our overall health
really depends on our poor and our poor strength. So in schools
are poor, is our tier one general classroom, general ed
teacher, with intervention specialist or other support
personnel in the classroom, and inclusive model serving all kids
at the same time. So tier one interventions is about the
instructional strategies that are going to enhance and
maximize the learning for all students, regardless of ability
or disability. Tier one needs to be strong enough to make certain
that all ability levels of students get their needs met.
And I know this can seem really overwhelming for the general
classroom teacher. However, tier one interventions is all about
what are those techniques? Those techniques have to do with the
student body, brain, and emotion? And how do we get all
three of those things ready to learn the content. When tier one
general classroom course I'm Your Math girl. But it doesn't
matter what the content what the subject is in tier one
classroom. The same techniques apply for all content areas, all
subject areas, without a strong tier one foundation. We tend to
overload tier two small group and tier three intensive one on
one intervention to the point where schools and districts
don't have the personnel to serve all of these students. So
when we're getting these kids ready for learning, and being
able to do that in an inclusive, least restrictive environment,
tier one, there are certain instructional strategies that we
need to focus on. If you're a general classroom teacher,
administrator, support specialists, occupational
therapists, speech therapists, intervention specialists,
instructional coach, whatever your role is, in your school or
district want you to think and evaluate in your mind, the
strength of your tier one. Now, how do we do this? There are
certain components in tier one, meaning, how visual is the
content? How much do we adapt to student visualization? How do we
embed conceptual cognitive stimulating multi sensory
approaches to our content? How is our content leveled and
adaptive? What connections and associations are we making and
supporting students to make? And we might be thinking, how do we
do this in a classroom with 36 students and not overload the
facilitators, the instructors, the teachers in the room, and
that is where we have this gap. And this gap can be filled with
our strategies on tier one interventions. Before we get
into the mathematics of this, I want to talk about getting the
brain ready for learning. And I want to compare two phrases
cognitive load and cognitive demand. Cognitive Load is much
more of a negative aspect, cognitive demand is the sweet
spot. All of us have different tolerances for cognitive load,
cognitive load, our stimulus that are coming in things that
are happening around us that we can't handle, and our brains
begin to disconnect, malfunction. Set apart. And this
is where many times frustration and behaviors arise with
students when they have too great of a cognitive load. At
times, our instruction for students triggers cognitive load
when we think we're trying to reach cognitive demand.
cognitive demand, on the other hand, is all about getting
students in the zone. So even our students with ADHD or
processing issues or focus issues, if we can still simulate
and instruct and facilitate using all those components I
mentioned, conceptual, visual, multi sensory, if we can use all
of these techniques in the right way to simulate a good, just
right cognitive demand for students, their brains and
bodies and emotions get in the zone, just like if you're an
athlete, and you're in the zone and time passes, and you don't
even realize how much time has passed and you're able to
perform at the optimal level of your sport. Same thing in the
classroom, if I can facilitate so that kids are at, they're
just right cognitive demand level, that's when ultimate
learning occurs. Now, I'm not saying that this is easy, there
are simple strategies. But teaching is very complex. And
tier one interventions is about breaking down that complexity
for us facilitators implement implementing in an easy way,
however, becoming more savvy and artful with our teaching. If we
get kids into that sweet spot, that cognitive demand, not only
are we going to maximize learning, but we're going to
help support students attend focus. Get them motivated, we're
going to help students understand how to use their
stamina to stay on task for longer periods of time. And
we're going to enhance their independence and perseverance of
tasks. Oftentimes, we think we're getting kids a good
cognitive demands, but we're actually giving them cognitive
load. So if you notice your students are out of focus or not
attending, or you noticed your students behaviors are starting
to turn negative. Yes, there are a lot of factors that go into
that one of the major factors is the facilitation or lack of good
technique by the instructor. So what do we do to get kids into
this good cognitive demand, I do have to back up and say,
research has continued to show that the number one factor in
student achievement is the quality of the teacher. So think
about yourself. And for the last 20 years, I've videotaped and
audio taped and analyzed myself and my own teaching, so that I
can continue to be a better instructional facilitator
tomorrow than I was today, using these components that I keep
mentioning. So this difference between cognitive load and
cognitive demand is at times very subtle. However, what we're
going to teach on these sessions, is how to get that
sweet spot how to get that just right cognitive demand. It's a
lot of people call it the Goldilocks principle. So
Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and you got the three bears in
the soup that's too hot the soup that's too cold, the soup.
That's just right. So the Goldilocks principle is how do
we get our instructional facilitation just right at a
just right level for students, so that their brains are
absolutely ready to intake the learning, there are no barriers
to learning. And we can do that with one lesson with 36 Plus
kids in one classroom. Cognitive Load, cognitive demand share,
you are our neuroscience brain based expert. Talk to us a
little bit about how what we do impacts the brain and learning
if you could, please. Sure.
Cheri Dotterer: I've been thinking a lot about this as
you've been talking, and you're talking about the flow cycle. So
the flow cycle was developed by a psych kya tourist
psychologist, several years back, he's been gone a couple of
years, and I'm probably gonna butcher his name. It's me. Hi,
son. chicony. Hi. Beautiful, beautiful, hee hee. It's one
I've been having to practice for a long time to get that one out.
Anyway, he realized that there were four steps to, to creating
productivity through these four steps. Our body goes through
them on a continuous basis. And what Jonily is talking about is
that spot called flow. That's when cognitive demand is
essentially at its peak. And so when we're looking at struggle
is when we're getting the information in. And it might
sound a little bit weird as far as the title goes, when I I
think about struggle, I think about concentrating on getting
the notes down on paper, getting the concept in my brain release
must happen next. And that's why recess. And these triggers that
in these activities that I share all the time are so important,
because there needs to be a break between the taking in of
the material and the putting out of the material. And so what we
do during release is we have to have physical exercise, it can
be as short as 30 seconds, it can be as long as several hours.
While that is happening, the brain is taking that new
information that you've been thinking about. It's pairing it
with this information that we've already had in our brain, it's
integrating them together, so that when you get to the point
of re engaging with the material, again, you're in a
state where you can really come through and think about all
kinds of different things that are related to the same topic,
but you didn't know. And that's why asking questions, getting
kids to ask questions is so essential, because that helps
that brain and that flow process occur. And that will only last
20 minutes, then our brains usable the fuel that's up here,
and we need to refuel it again. And recovery is multi
dimensional, multi sensory, multi dimensional. It's not just
going back out and having physical exercise. It's also
hydration, nutrition, interaction with the community.
So this is a part with release and recovery. Having
communication is really helpful and beneficial to the whole
process. I think, even if we've talked about something totally
not part of the topic. So think about that, when you're thinking
about what you're doing with the kids. If you're even doing a 40
minute lesson with them, their brain went into cognitive load,
about 20 minutes in.
Jonily : As we are thinking about this low cycle, I want to
pinpoint struggle for a moment. I had mentioned frustration
earlier. So cognitive load, really triggering frustration.
There's a difference between frustration and struggle, subtle
differences between frustration and struggle. And the
differences are the same differences in cognitive load,
cognitive demand, cognitive load is going to cause a negative
frustration. However good facilitation, inspiring
cognitive demand, is going to trigger good struggle in
education. We have this phrase that's been coined very recently
called productive struggle. That's exactly what we're
talking about here. productive struggle. If you're an
education, you know that this is what is going to trigger kids
into a good, just right cognitive demand. Depth of
Knowledge is another educational phrase where we know that we can
have deep learning happen through a good just right
cognitive demand, all these phrases in education that had
been coined, they all relate back to what the science says is
the flow states and chicks Me sent chick me how you did it
better than than I did. Sherry is called the godfather of flow,
Steven Kotler, and just given a shout out to Steven Kotler, he
has a podcast his team, he's written a number of books. One
of his books is called The Art of impossible. He is if Mihai is
the The Godfather, the grandfather of flow. Steven
Kotler is the father of flow and then a great friend and coach
and mentor of mine of Sherry's carry over Brunner has taken
flow into another direction as far as business personal
relationships entrepreneur, and has extended it to how in our
daily lives, our professional lives and our personal lives as
adults can We become more productive, and eliminate or at
least barrier, some of the distractions that come in, sort
them out and get into this flow state and go through this cycle.
So tier one instruction, maximizing tier one instruction
is absolutely essential. I want to give you three takeaways. And
we just talked about this. Teresa, we just talked about
this right before we came on live here in the recording.
There are three specific examples of instructional
facilitation strategies that if you leave with nothing else
today, these are three things that I do as a teacher, as a
facilitator, that is going to bring kids into a good
productive struggle, cognitive demands, and that sweet spot,
they're the same. In one lesson for all 2634 students that I
have in the classroom. And they are content that I am sharing
with students, I'm going to ask these questions, what do you
see? What do you notice? And I'm going to use my favorite three
words, tell me about. So in tier one, and instruction in the core
classroom, we want to frequently and repetitively be using those
questions and prompts. What those questions and prompts do
is trigger perspective for the student. And the students brain
cognitively, will adjust in education, we call it
differentiate. Naturally, it'll differentiate the levels for
each individual student, without me producing seven or eight
different lessons, what do you see? What do you notice and tell
me about should be tools in our toolbox that we're using
multiple times a day multiple times a lesson to gain student
perspective. And then I can be responsive in my teaching, take
student perspective, and use that to instruct my content
that's going to engage students and focus students, it's going
to tell them you belong, I care what you think. And I mentioned
this before, I'm going to mention Daniel Pink again, and
Dr. What motivates humans, I want to know that I belong, I
want to know that my thoughts matter, I want to know that my
perspective matters. So we can engage in all of those emotions,
and increase the cognitive demand and get students to that
sweet spot with those three prompts. I get this question all
the time, we get this question all the time. Are your
strategies research based? That's a big topic. How do I
know that this is going to work? What's it grounded in? And my
answer to that is absolutely yes. Everything we're teaching
for this core general classroom is research base. Now we have to
define what research base means. And then I've just given you all
of the examples of it research based is the work that we do. Is
it grounded in the Mighty Hands of giants that have come before
us and what that means is the research and the work that
others have done? How has that then impacted or affected the
parallels in the strategies that we teach? So research base is
about looking at these influencers, many names that
I've just mentioned, I'm gonna mention one other book, Make It
Stick, make it stick, make it stick is a number of researched
strategies for cognitive science. And all of the
strategies that Sherry and I are teaching are supported through
the strategies that at the university level, are taught in
the book make it stick and in other places about how to
trigger and stimulate? Good, just right cognitive demand. So
absolutely, yes, positively. And that is why I wanted to mention
so many names this morning and references to what this work
looks like. And as we move into specifically the math work, I'm
going to be referring to each of these strategies that are based
on cognitive demand and everything we talked about. No,
I always say to teachers, when they come to trainings, I always
say there's so much user error, so much user error, and even us
as adults need interactions. Oh, Over time, you need the same
training with a different twist over to hesitate on action.
Action is hindered by perfection. Don't wait till you
have it all figured out to go implement, go implement wrong,
go in. I mean, I encourage you take action go implement wrong.
And then next time, just do it better. But do not let
perfection hinder your action and implementing it to see
Cheri Dotterer: the slide deck before everybody else. And I'm
sitting here going, Oh, but then again, I'm not the math teacher,
and I've got to give it that. I thought I understood math until
I met Ingo.
Jonily : You guys, we don't none of us do. None of us do. I have
a bachelor's degree in mathematics in pure mathematics,
I was not going to be a teacher. Then I started teaching, I'm
certified secondary started teaching eighth grade. And it
was in that first year of teaching that I connect with
what Cheri just said, I was good at math, I knew math. And man, I
got stumped on my first year of teaching. I taught these
beautiful lessons, and my kids weren't getting it. And I
couldn't help them. What I found out very rudely and cruelly is I
did not know math. And I have a bachelor's degree in
mathematics. None of us, even us adults, that did well at math in
school. Listen to me, you were a bright kid, you only achieved
because you worked hard. And you mimicked no one asked you to
think deeply. And so you're missing so many understandings
of mathematics. We are all a product of our system, our tier
one core system. And that system has proven to be broken time and
time again. Because us as math teachers, as secondary math
teachers, we do not understand the math well enough to help our
students understand at a deep level, we don't. And I can prove
it to you time and time again, with example, after example. And
I don't mean to be a downer at the end of this training. But
what I'm saying is we need to fix it through tier one
interventions, through our collaborations and connections
to our therapists, and our support staff. And you will only
get these interventions that are game changing, that truly work
that are the next generation of math achievement that we've
never seen before. You will only get them here with Tier One
interventions.