STRUCTURED LITERACY SCHOOL CLOSURE
Last Thursday, 68 members of our staff took part in our first ‘Structured Literacy’ closure day. We explored the history of reading and the science that is being presented today in how students best learn. Some key theories that we focused on were; ‘Cognitive Load Theory’ and ‘How the Brain Learns to Read’.
The concept of Cognitive load is not just an important concept for teachers but for parents too. Cognitive load theory builds on the premise that working (or short-term) memory has a limited capacity. Information is processed in working memory, where small amounts of information are able to be stored for a very short time, if people do nothing with that information it is forgotten. Three types of cognitive load;
- Intrinsic Load (How difficult is the task?)
- Extraneous Load (How is the information Presented? What does the environment do for the learner?)
- Germane Load (Is the learner able to link new information with information already stored in the long term memory?)
This small diagram below shows the complexities that Extraneous Load has on students' attention.
- Visual Distractions
- Visual disturbances
- Surprises
- Seating (not knowing who they are setting next to)
- Temperature (too hot, too cold)
- Noise (announcements)
- Smell
- Other people/students (knocking at the door)
- Class phone
- Overwhelming material that is being presented to them (powerpoints/irrelevant information)
Some questions that were discussed were;
When students' attention is lost, how much time do we lose to gain it back?
How does this then affect getting that information into students' long term memory?
What ‘extraneous distractions’ can we control?
Overall, we had a wonderful day learning evidence based practices.