1. Almost all students can learn

Some students are easy to teach—they seem to learn no matter what their teacher does. Some students learn with moderately good teaching. And some students are really hard to teach; they learn only if they are taught very carefully. Obviously, there are a few students who, because of a severe disability, are prevented from learning certain things. For example, a deaf person cannot be taught to sing in a barber-shop quartet. A mentally-challenged person will never become a physician. For the most part, however, students with conditions that affect their learning should be viewed as requiring teaching methods that enable them to overcome their difficulties, and the same high standards and bright future should be held out to them.

2. Almost anything can be learned

A student who finds it hard to learn reading might be someone who finds it easy to learn carpentry or chess. There are few, if any, people to whom all learning comes easily. Yet, given expert teaching and plenty of patience, almost everyone can achieve an adequate level of performance in almost any field—from ballet to physics to teaching prowess to drawing. It is true that the length of time it takes to achieve competency will vary considerably. It is also true that only a few students will develop a very high level of proficiency. And it is true that a student won’t learn if he doesn’t want to. Good teaching and high expectations, however, can produce seeming miracles.

3. There are almost no circumstances under which students can’t learn

It is true that students will be unable to learn if they are in physical or emotional distress and, if this is the situation, the teacher should forget about teaching and try to relieve the distress. However, students who are experiencing physical or emotional discomfort can still learn; in fact, in some cases, instruction can even help to take the students’ minds off their problems for a while. Naturally, the teacher should still do whatever she can to ease any discomfort, especially in the case of young children, but it is an evasion of responsibility to assume that students can’t learn if they are hungry or tired or upset about their parents’ divorce. Other impediments to learning include students who don’t speak the language of instruction, are inadequately prepared, or are chronically absent. There is no denying that such circumstances present serious challenges; however, in almost all cases they are surmountable. At Kobi Nazrul school in the slums of London, where the children are overwhelmingly poor and almost all are immigrants, the students score well above the national average and only three per cent of pupils are registered as having special needs.

4. Basic skills should be taught before higher-order skills

Basic skills, like sounding out unknown words or multiplying numbers, are the building blocks of learning. They must be in place before students can progress to higher-order skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving. Of course, an illiterate student can’t think critically about something he can’t read. Of course, he needs to be able to multiply in order to do algebra. This is so obvious that it seems unnecessary even to mention. Even so, in some educational circles there is a tendency to give premature emphasis to higher-status skills like critical thinking. By supplying students with crutches like calculators and spell-checkers, teachers can enable their students to function in areas for which they have not been properly prepared. In addition to the danger that the students will be unable to perform without their crutches for the rest of their lives, an even more fundamental concern is that students may develop bad habits by being forced to improvise coping strategies. It’s like a novice skier who is encouraged to ski down difficult runs before the necessary skills are in place. He may make it to the bottom safely every time, but his form is apt to be faulty. The likely result is fossilized bad habits and a disinclination ever to lay the groundwork necessary for advanced performance. Both basic and higher-order skills are important, but they must be taught in the right order.

5. Factual knowledge is important

The tendency these days is to de-emphasize the teaching of factual knowledge on the grounds that it is enough for students to be able to look up information (as opposed to knowing it). But skills are virtually useless in the absence of knowledge—it is not possible to think critically about a topic about which one has no knowledge. Without a good grasp of statistical probability, for example, any opinions one might form on the validity of standardized testing are simply guesses. Some educators tend to play down the importance of factual information in the belief that facts are inferior to understanding—but understanding depends on facts. As well, many educators worry that facts are soon outdated, but most basic knowledge, for example the elements of the periodic table or the date of the French Revolution, is unchanging. The best way to equip students for a rapidly-changing world is to teach them the things that do not change. Finally, many educators underline the importance of “learning how to learn” in the belief that there is now far too much knowledge for anyone to master all of it. In fact, information-accessing skills are not difficult or time-consuming to acquire, and they do not merit a heavy emphasis. It is, however, very important to construct a solid scaffolding of core knowledge to which subsequent learning can be attached. The ability to learn something new depends on the ability to accommodate the new thing to the already-known.

6. Hard work must be encouraged

In North America, it is common to attribute success to innate ability, while in Asia success is generally thought to be the result of hard work. The difference has far-reaching consequences. North American students who think that they have low ability may give up before they start. In contrast, Asian students are often motivated to work very hard because they believe they can always do better if they work harder. The results of international comparisons of student achievement suggest that the latter philosophy is better. Real competence, whether in sports or music or academics, comes only with extensive repetition and preparatory work. A high level of performance is not the result of great spurts of progress, but rather a progression of small steps taken in the course of hundreds of hours of groundwork. Even when there is the appearance of a great intuitive leap, for example Darwin’s theory of evolution or Edison’s invention of the light bulb, a look behind the scenes reveals years of investigation and hard work prior to the breakthrough.

7. Lessons should be clear and precise

Teachers must know their subject thoroughly if they are to teach it effectively. A good command of the subject matter is necessary for a number of reasons, including the ability to explain the new concept clearly and concisely, to choose the most effective modes of presentation, to answer students’ questions accurately, to anticipate problem areas and nip them in the bud, to devise the best methods of application and practice, and so on. New concepts must be taught with exquisite clarity and precision to reduce the possibility of confusion to an absolute minimum. For example, in teaching the colour red, it is important to include a wide variety of examples of red objects, lest the student look at a red apple, a red ball, and a red clock, and conclude that “red” means “round.” If there is any ambiguity at all, chances are that at least one student will reach the wrong conclusion and actually be worse off after the lesson than he was before it—because now he will have to unlearn the mistake and then learn the correct lesson. Far better to get it right the first time.

8. New concepts should be practised until they have been completely mastered

The number of bits of information that the human mind can handle in the brief span of working (short-term) memory is very limited—five to nine items at most. To handle complex problems, humans have evolved a clever strategy to work around their mental bottleneck. This strategy is the chunking of information, so that one memory item can embody dozens or even hundreds of facts. For example, the term “tectonic plates” conjures up a huge amount of information to a geographer, yet takes up only one of the precious five to nine spots in his working memory. The limitations of working memory mean that teachers must be careful not to overburden their students’ capacity lest the presentation of too many demanding tasks simultaneously overwhelm them. For example, the popularity of “inventive” spelling means that students are constantly interrupting their creative flow to think about mechanical aspects of composition such as spelling. In contrast, excellent spellers who have learned by rote the spelling of hundreds of words are freer to concentrate on the content of what they are writing. To free their students’ minds for higher-order thinking, teachers must teach new skills and knowledge so systematically and thoroughly that they become automatic.

9. New concepts should be taught in sequence

The best way to teach complicated topics is to break the learning down into small pieces and teach them step by step in a logical sequence. After each new concept has been practised and learned to the point of automaticity, the student is ready for the next one. Almost all learning is dependent on prior learning. When teaching fractions, for example, a teacher should first ensure that his students know their numbers and number facts. The teacher begins by teaching the concept of “half,” explaining it and then showing the students how to represent the concept (½). Once this step has been mastered, the teacher introduces other simple fractions, followed by very simple addition problems, and so on. Although the power of sequential learning is most obvious when teaching mathematics, nevertheless the principle has universal application. By adding one small building block after another, teachers can make it possible for their students to construct an amazing tower of complex learning.

10. High student achievement is not dependent on lavish spending

Learning essentials are physical comfort, paper and pencil, freedom from distraction, reasonably homogeneous classrooms, manageable students, access to a library, and good teaching. Everything else is a luxury. Hundreds of comparative studies have found that student achievement is unrelated to inputs such as overall spending, class sizes, teachers’ salaries, and computer purchases. In some studies, the more money school boards spent, the worse students performed! It may be that the extra funds attract less-dedicated teachers and result in spending that is actually detrimental to student learning, such as extra bureaucracy and high-tech equipment. There is no need for fancy buildings, expensive supplies, outings, up-to-date technology, extensive support networks, and so on, although these things can be helpful. Students can learn anywhere that good teaching is provided.  

The Essential Elements of Good Teaching

• Only one new item must be taught at a time, the student having already mastered all of the prerequisite learning.
• The new item must be explained with great precision and clarity, and the teacher must check to make sure that the learner understands the new concept.
• The student must practise the new learning.
• The student’s mistakes must be corrected immediately.
• The student must practise the new learning until it is automatic.
• Short, separated-in-time practice sessions are most effective.
• The teacher must check and recheck that the new learning has been remembered later on, as new learning is easily forgotten.
• The new learning must be revisited from time to time, ideally in application to and consolidation with other learning.
• The student must be praised and encouraged.  

Sample Lesson

The following lesson plan illustrates the principles outlined above. It teaches beginning readers, who are probably about two months into learning to read, how the long sound of the letter ‘o’ is represented in written English. This lesson would appear in the sequence just after the children have learned some sounds that can be represented by more than one letter (‘ck’, ‘sh’, ‘th’ etc.). The students know and are able to print without conscious thought all of the letter-sound correspondences that will be encountered in the lesson. All students have been provided with small dry erase boards and markers. An uninterrupted block of time has been set aside for the lesson. The whole class is seated in desks in rows facing the teacher. The teacher is enthusiastic and complimentary about the children’s progress.

• The teacher reviews the known sounds that are represented by two letters (sh, th, ch, and ck).
• The teacher announces that the day’s lesson is on how to represent the sound /O/. Some practice is given in remembering the sound (for example, John was so surprised that he shouted “Oh” and /O/ is the first sound you hear in ogre). The children chant the sound /O/ several times.
• The teacher asks whether anyone knows how the sound /O/ is represented in English words. She works through the responses until she has elicited ‘o-e’, ‘oe’, ‘oa’, ‘ow’, and ‘o’. As each is identified, she puts a poster for the appropriate letters on the wall (e.g., the ‘oa’ poster might show a picture of a bar of soap with ‘soap’ printed underneath).
• The teacher holds up a series of flashcards with /O/ words for the class to read out loud as a group.
• The teacher instructs the students to divide their dry erase boards into four sections, assigning each quadrant one of the four ways of representing the sound /O/. One at a time, the teacher prints a number of /O/ words on a flipchart, instructing the students to print each word in the appropriate quadrant of their dry erase board, saying each sound aloud as he or she prints the corresponding letters. After printing each word, the students hold up their dry erase boards so that the teacher can check them and correct any errors.
  • If the word is correctly spelled but is in the wrong column, the student is told to move the word to the correct column.
  • If the word is incorrectly spelled but is in the right column, the student is prompted to correct the spelling.
  • If the student has used the wrong representation of the sound /O/, he is provided with the correct representation.
  • If the word has too many letters, the student is told he has an extra sound.
  • If the word has too few letters, the student is told he is missing a sound. If the word is incorrectly spelled and is in the wrong column, the student is first told to move the word to the correct column and then is given prompts to correct the spelling.
• The teacher breaks the students into groups of four to play Crazy O’s, a card game that practises /O/ words.
• The teacher has the class as a group read a decodable story with a lot of /O/ words, such as “A Row with the Old Oak Pole.” They discuss the story.
• The teacher assigns the story as homework.
• The next day, the teacher begins the lesson by calling on individual students to read a page of “A Row with the Old Oak Pole,” the rest of the class following along in their readers. The teacher ascertains how well the /O/ sound has been learned. It is likely that at least one more day’s practice will be needed until all the students have learned it to automaticity. Some students will need extra practice which the teacher should arrange at whatever times best suits the circumstances—at lunch time, after school, at home, or on Saturday.