Building Fundamental Skills

Houston, we have a problem! 

During the summer break before my son’s freshman year, we were visiting family back in Russia. My son sat down to do some math with my aunt, a university professor, to see if he was ready for high school. Alexander had always had As in all of his math classes, so I was not worried.

“So, what do you think?” I asked my aunt.

”He grasps complex concepts well, but he needs more math fluency.” 

“What does it mean?” 

“He is just not fast enough. He thinks about things that he should do quickly, without thinking.” 

 “How does he get faster?”

 “He needs daily practice – like 10-20 mins-just to work on getting faster at basics.” 

Ever since that summer, Alexander has been attending Kumon, twice a week for 30 mins a day. 

This is how Kumon works. The center tests you on a set of problems to find a good starting point and assigns homework for daily practice. To get promoted to the next set (next grade level), you have to solve a number of problems within a time limit. The problems are very repetitive, and you are not allowed to jump forward because you think you know how to do it. The only way to move forward is by demonstrating speed and accuracy on the test. My incoming freshman, a straight A student in his Algebra class, took the Kumon math fluency test and got placed into the 7th grade math level (a heavy blow to his ego). For the next 3 years he had been doing daily drills to get faster at math. It has finally paid off as a nearly perfect math score on his SAT test. 

Getting Faster

Alexander gained his knowledge and love for math at school thanks to the inspiring teachers he had along the way. What he needed was fluency, and he gained that fluency at Kumon.

Alexander needed to master the fundamental skills to free up his working memory for more rigorous tasks. The more automated fundamental skills you have, the bigger portion of your working memory can be allotted to processing a complex task. You can’t develop a skill without practice. John Hattie in Visible Learning points out that understanding does not equal a skill. Knowledge becomes a skill only through abundant practice (Hatty, 2012).

Often, students feel unsuccessful and frustrated while completing a complex task because their working memory is overloaded, processing every little thing as a major undertaking instead of being able to rely on a series of automated skills necessary for carrying out each step. Multiplication tables and irregular verb forms are examples of those basic skills that are fundamental.

Practice does not have to come in the form of a worksheet, but it does need to happen in one way or another because without this necessary component of learning there is no automaticity.

When learning to play soccer, we run drills to pass the ball with accuracy so that during the game we can focus on the bigger picture and let our muscle memory do its magic. Language learning is different from forming a physical habit, yet some elements do require a degree of automaticity to free up some room in our working memories. We accept the need to practice in so many areas of our lives, but at school we often don’t have time for it. 

Should we make time? And how do we do it? 

“Let the cement set!” Dr. Rich Allen 

A few years back I served as an ELA instruction coach for a secondary campus. I had an opportunity to shadow Dr. Rich Allen, an educational psychology guru. As we analyzed lessons, I wrote some phrases that resonated with me. Rich commented several times on the pacing of the lessons, “Let the cement set!” Dr. Allen meant that after we teach a unit of content, we need to give our students time to digest information before moving on to something new because “Too much too fast won’t last.” 

New or Review? What is 85/15?

A few days ago I was reminded of my instructional rounds with Dr. Rich Allen when I read an excellent blog post by Jon Gustafson about making lessons 85% review. The 85/15 concept is based on the idea of introducing new information to the students in very small doses. I looked further into the research by Seigfriend Englemann, and it appealed to me as a teacher, as a learner, and as a mom. 

What could it look like in a classroom? 

Offering a large dose of the familiar and only a teaspoonful of the new builds not only language fluency but competence and confidence in our students. 

Delivering lectures that are short and to the point is a skill. Most of us would need a timer, self-discipline, and a high degree of commitment, but it appears to be the only way to make room for practice. Providing information through explicit direct instruction in small amounts while constantly connecting it to prior knowledge is key.

The larger portion of the lesson would be comprised of strategically planned multiple exposures to the academic language of the lesson, hands-on activities, and retrieval practice opportunities. Here are some ideas of how we can present students with multiple opportunities to interact with the content through structured conversations, reading, and writing.

 Understanding that students need time to digest information helps us build our lessons with realistic expectations. Give yourself and your students grace and patience! What if we stop worrying about covering EVERYTHING and focus on helping kids to get really good at SOMETHING.

As Dr. Allen said, “Less is Best!” 

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