Translate the science of learning into strategies for maximum learning impact in your classroom.
The content, skills, and understandings students need to learn today are as diverse, complex, and multidimensional as the students in our classrooms. How can educators best create the learning experiences students need to truly learn?
How Learning Works: A Playbook unpacks the science of how students learn and translates that knowledge into promising principles or practices that can be implemented in the classroom or utilized by students on their own learning journey. Designed to help educators create learning experiences that better align with how learning works, each module in this playbook is grounded in research and features prompts, tools, practice exercises, and discussion strategies that help teachers to
- Describe what is meant by learning in the local context of your classroom, including identifying any barriers to learning.
- Adapt promising principles and practices to meet the specific needs of your students―particularly regarding motivation, attention, encoding, retrieval and practice, cognitive load and memory, productive struggle, and feedback.
- Translate research on learning into learning strategies that accelerate learning and build students’ capacity to take ownership of their own learning―such as summarizing, spaced practice, interleaved practice, elaborate interrogation, and transfer strategies.
- Generate and gather evidence of impact by engaging students in reciprocal teaching and effective feedback on learning.
Rich with resources that support the process of parlaying scientific findings into classroom practice, this playbook offers all the moves teachers need to design learning experiences that work for all students!
John Almarode is a professor of education at James Madison University. He was awarded the inaugural Sarah Miller Luck Endowed Professorship in 2015 and received an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia in 2021. John started as a mathematics and science teacher in Augusta County, Virginia. John has written multiple books, book chapters, papers, and reports. His collaborative work with colleagues on what works best in teaching and learning includes How Tutoring Works, Visible Learning in Early Childhood, and How Learning Works, all with Corwin Press.
Douglas Fisher is professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. Previously, Fisher was an early intervention teacher and elementary school educator. In 2022, he was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame by the Literacy Research Association. He has published numerous articles on reading and literacy, differentiated instruction, and curriculum design, as well as books such as Your Introduction to PLC+, Welcome to Teaching, How Feedback Works, Teaching Reading, and RIGOR Unveiled. Fisher loves being an educator and hopes to share that passion with others.
Nancy Frey is a professor in educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. Her published titles include The Courage to Learn, The Art and Science of Coaching, How Scaffolding Works, and The Illustrated Guide to Visible Learning. Frey is a credentialed special educator, reading specialist, and administrator in California and learns from teachers and students every day.
