More Thoughts on Drilling, a.k.a. Practice

Since we know the purpose of drilling is to make certain processes automatic, how should we practice?

Research shows something we all know - steady, daily practice is better than cramming. Additionally, you do not have to practice as much at one time when you are practicing regularly. If a test of spelling words, vocabulary, math facts, countries and capitals, or you name it is at the end of the week, it is better to drill or practice a little of the material each night than to wait until the night before the test. The effectiveness of steady practice over cramming applies to any discipline, whether it be academic, athletic, or musical.

However, if we want to ensure that our students do not forget previously learned material, I don't think we should always leave it up to them to drill or practice it on their own. Not all of them will. For a number of reasons, we should lead them in practice at school. Classroom choral responses are more fun than drilling at home. Weak or insecure students can gain confidence as they practice in groups. Also, the teacher can assess a student's competency away from a graded assessment and exhort him to greater effort. Finally, it gives the teacher more control of the learning. By leading the practice and ensuring the student's participation, the teacher is making the student learn.

Math classes may want to begin start with class wide recitation or drill of previously learned math facts and formulas and Latin classes could begin with the declining of nouns and conjugating of verbs. I imagine every class could think of some course knowledge that needs to be automatic if there is going to be any new learning.

If you are not doing this in your classes, try it. I drilled exercises with the band for many, many years. It never mattered how good they were - it only made them better.

Is Drilling Worth It? Chapter 5 of "Why Students Don't Like School"

Many "educrats" decry what they sarcastically describe as the "drill and kill" method of fact learning. They argue that drilling kills the sense of wonder and discovery of "real" learning. But we all know we need to be able to recall facts or perform certain mental or physical acts without thinking. A musician cannot play fluently without drilling scales and finger techniques, nor can an athlete develop reflexive skills without drilling certain physical movements.

Drilling is nothing more than focused, repetitive practice. Its purpose is to help students gain confidence and improve their skills. I will admit that drilling for its own sake is boring and can kill off motivation. If you practice scales and finger techniques, but never play a tune, eventually you would say "to heck with this!" If an athlete drilled for hours everyday, but never played a game, his reaction would be the same.

Nevertheless, drilling makes the difficult easy. Consistent, correct practice eventually leads to the freedom to be creative in ways that would otherwise have been impossible.

In order to be meaningful, drilling has to lead to something greater than itself. Scales lead to playing tunes, batting practice leads to standing at the diamond waiting for the pitch. In education, fact drilling should lead to application, analysis, and and other higher ordered thinking.

Drilling or practice doesn't have to be boring. Nor does everything require drill. According to Willingham, teachers need to implement drilling in a way "that students find maximally useful and interesting."

"Odd as it may seem, that sort of practice (drilling) is essential to schooling. It yields three important benefits: it reinforces the basic skills that are required for the learning of more advanced skills, it protects against forgetting, and it improves transfer.

More later.

Shallow Knowledge

We have all been in classrooms where we ask a question about the previous day's lesson and get an answer that's an exact duplicate of what we said or wrote on the board. You wonder if the student really understood what he's saying. The student has just demonstrated rote learning, but not true understanding. In fact, rote learning means there is no understanding.

Willingham calls limited understanding "shallow knowledge." Shallow knowledge is information tied to an analogy or example that cannot be used to create further analogies or examples. He uses the example of "Carpe Diem." You can tell a student it means, "Seize the day," figuring the student understands that concept. However the student can know the translation without knowing it's true meaning. In fact, it's possible the student, if the saying hadn't been written down, might have interpreted "Carpe Diem" to mean "Cease the Day!" We have all seen examples of student test responses that hilariously demonstrate this kind of misunderstanding. The students' knowledge is truly "shallow."

"Deep knowledge," on the other hand, is knowledge that can be applied to many different contexts. This is the aim of good teaching. Unfortunately deep knowledge does not always come easily. Many students only look at the surface structure of problems when trying to apply knowledge.

For example, if a student can calculate the this problem:

Jayne is reseeding her lawn. The lawn is 20 feet wide and 100 feet long. She knows that lawn seed costs $10.00 per bag, and that each bag will will 1,000 square feet.

How much money does Jayne need to seed her whole lawn?"

but not this problem:

Jon is varnishing his tabletop, which is 72 inches wide long and 26 inches wide. The varnish he needs costs $8.00 per can, and each can will cover 2,300 square inches.

How much money does he need to buy the varnish?

it is because he can't see past the superficial difference between the problems. If he can't see that both problems have the same deep structure, he can't see they require the same steps for their solution.

So how do we lead our students to deep knowledge and understanding?

1. Ask students to compare different examples. You can guide students to discover deep similarities, while skimming over superficial differences.
2. Ask questions that require students to demonstrate deep understanding. This goes far beyond quizzing them about factual knowledge. For example, a student may be able to follow the arithmetical procedure of "borrowing", but may not be able to explain why it works. Lacking the deeper understanding of place value and regrouping may cause the student to have trouble later on as math becomes more complex.
3. Set appropriate benchmarks (Bloom's Taxonomy) for your student's level of understanding. Let the students know of your expectations for deep understanding.

More Willingham - Why Is It So Hard For Students To Understand Abstract Ideas?

In chapter four of Why Don't Students Like School, Dr. Willingham discusses the difficulties students have comprehending abstract ideas and applying them in unfamiliar situations. He says the teachers need to expose their students to many different examples of an abstraction to help them understand it - the mind prefers the concrete to the abstract.

He gives an example of a student who can calculate the area of a table top, but is stumped when it comes to calculating the area of a soccer field. The student needs to solve area calculation problems for tabletops, soccer fields, envelopes, doors, and so on.

Understanding is Remembering in Disguise

The easiest way to understand something new is to relate it to prior knowledge.

Analogies are great for this. Concrete examples are helpful as well. A teacher can try to explain iambic pentameter until she is blue in the face, but the explanation may be useless until the students actually hear the rhythm in the verse.

"Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?

And burnt the topless towers of Illium?"

Come to think of it, that might even not be enough! If the concrete example is not familiar, it may not have the intended effect. (To successfully explain iambic pentameter you might have to begin with a discussion of simple meter using a familiar example like, "Jack and Jill went up the hill...")

Examples must be familiar to be effective. Familiar examples bring old ideas into working memory, so we can "make comparisons we had not made before or think about features we had previously ignored."

But does retrieving and applying old information to an abstraction lead to deep understanding? Does this guarantee that new knowledge and understanding will transfer to the outside world? No.

The next section will concern the issue of shallow knowledge and lack of transfer.

Brain Rules

Jane Doerries gave me a copy of the book, Brain Rules. The author, Dr. John J. Medina is a developmental molecular biologist and the director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at University of Washington School of Medicine.

He has developed 12 rules about the brain, which he calls "... principles for surviving and thriving at work, home, and school." In order, the rules are:

1. Exercise boosts brain power.
2. The human brain evolved, too.
3. Every brain is wired differently.
4. We don't pay attention to boring things.
5. Repeat to remember.
6. Remember to repeat.
7. Sleep well, think well.
8. Stressed brains don't learn the same way.
9. Stimulate more of the senses.
10. Vision trumps all other senses.
11. Male and female brains are different.
12. We are powerful and natural explorers.

If you want to learn more, go here to see a series of video clips covering each rule. I think you will find the clips entertaining.