Teaching Kids Who Read with Daniel Willingham

Episode 038: Dr. Dan Willingham, Cognitive Scientist

Connect with Dr. Willingham
Website: http://www.danielwillingham.com/ | Twitter: @DTwillingham

Connect with Vrain Waves
Website: vrainwaves.com | Twitter: @VrainWaves | Becky Twitter: @BeckyEPeters | Ben Twitter: @mrkalb

Links & Show Notes

• Loving reading the most (05:07)
• Make it an easy choice (07:12)
• Rewards & incentives for reading (07:26)
• “Take your kids seriously as a reader as soon as you can.” - Dan Willingham
• Making books the topic around the water cooler (10:15)
• Fluent decoding, comprehension, and motivation - the three-legged stool of raising kid who read
• “Before he can develop taste, he must experience hunger.”
• 30 min reading with the principal @ Indian Peaks Elementary - Kathi Jo Walder (11:36)
• Camp EmpowerED in SVVSD - May 28 & 29th, Register HERE
• Dr. Willingham’s books: The Reading Mind, Raising Kids Who Read, Why Don’t Students Like School
• Dan’s next book: Memory & Self-regulation of memory (12:46)
• Make It Stick, Mark McDaniel & Peter Brown, Henry Roediger (note: Read this book! It’s amazing!)
• Re-reading (14:07)
• Highlighting (17:22)
• Annotating is much better (19:43)
• Vocabulary instruction for understanding complex texts (20:31)
• Explicit vocabulary instruction works AND it’s very sensitive to context - need a number of examples to round out understanding
• Encouraging reading for leisure with rewards & incentives (24:41)
• Attributions (stickers, rewards, etc… what role do grades play in this??)
• Drop Everything & Read; Sustained Silent Reading (28:31)
• Research: Manning, M., & Lewis, M. (2010). Sustained silent reading: An update of the research.
• Digital vs. Analog reading (30:54)
• YouTube video APS Conference in San Francisco - psychological science in K12 education (34:09)
• What psych concepts do we, as teachers, need to get better at? (35:49)
• How kids behave & what they do
• Theories of memory & knowledge; Behaviorist / Cognitive / Constructivist
• Research on Homework (39:31)
• Homework as a reflection of school values
• Takeaways (41:47)
• Ask the Cognitive Scientist column
• Why Don’t Students Like School
• “Memory is the residue of thought. To teach well, you should pay careful attention to what an assignment will actually make students think about, not what you hope they’ll think about, because that is what they will remember.” - Dan Willingham