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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Daniel Coyle
Read between
May 18 - June 16, 2015
Effort-based language works because it speaks directly to the core of the learning experience,
Jensen couldn't answer my question because at its heart the question didn't make sense. Is it possible to look at two seedlings and tell which will grow taller? The only answer is It's early and they're both growing.
Gallimore and Tharp recorded and coded 2,326 discrete acts of teaching. Of them, a mere 6.9 percent were compliments. Only 6.6 percent were expressions of displeasure. But 75 percent were pure information: what to do, how to do it, when to intensify an activity. One of Wooden's most frequent forms of teaching was a three-part instruction where he modeled the right way to do something, showed the incorrect way, and then remodeled the right way,
Wooden's “demonstrations rarely take longer than three seconds, but are of such clarity that they leave an image in memory much like a textbook sketch.
He taught in chunks, using what he called the “whole-part method”—he would teach players an entire move, then break it down to work on its elemental actions.
He formulated laws of learning (which might be retitled laws of myelin): explanation, demonstration, imitation, correction, and repetition. “Don't look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That's the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts,” he wrote in The Wisdom of Wooden
They succeed because they are tapping into the second element of the talent code: ignition. They are creating and sustaining motivation; they are teaching love. As Bloom's study summed up, “The effect of this first phase of learning seemed to be to get the learner involved, captivated, hooked, and to get the learner to need and want more information and expertise.
Ron Gallimore, who is now a distinguished professor emeritus at UCLA, has a good way of describing the skill. “Great teachers focus on what the student is saying or doing,” he says, “and are able, by being so focused and by their deep knowledge of the subject matter, to see and recognize the inarticulate stumbling, fumbling effort of the student who's reaching toward mastery, and then connect to them with a targeted message.
Skill is insulation that wraps neural circuits and grows according to certain signals. In the most literal sense, master coaches are the human delivery system for the signals that fuel and direct the growth of a given skill circuit, telling it with great clarity to fire here and not here
Matrix is Gallimore's word for the vast grid of task-specific knowledge that distinguishes the best teachers and allows them to creatively and effectively respond to a student's efforts.
soon as the student could accomplish the feat (play that chord, hit that volley), the coach would quickly layer in an added difficulty. Good. Okay, now do it faster. Now do it with the harmony. Small successes were not stopping points but stepping-stones.
A 2007 University of Washington study found that, for children aged eight to sixteen months, each hour spent per day viewing “brain science” baby DVDs decreased vocabulary acquisition by 17 percent.
kaizen, which is Japanese for “continuous improvement
The myelin model also highlights the importance of seeking new challenges. Experiments have found that situations in which people are forced to adapt and attune themselves to new challenges (i.e., make errors, pay attention, deep-practice) tend to increase cognitive reserve. One study showed that elderly people who pursued more leisure activities had a 38 percent lower risk for developing dementia. As one neurologist pointed out, the mantra “Use it or lose it” needs an update. It should be “Use it and get more of it.
Carol Dweck, the psychologist who studies motivation, likes to say that all the world's parenting advice can be distilled to two simple rules: pay attention to what your children are fascinated by, and praise them for their effort.
Each wrap of myelin is a unique tracing of some past event.
In the whorls of myelin resides a person's secret history, the flow of interactions and influences that make up a life, the Christmas lights that, for some reason, lit up.
