Thirty second rule is not just for food

I often write about Return on Investment ideas and today’s tip is high on ROI. We all know the thirty second rule about dropped food, but here is another thirty second rule to help you stay organized.

Today’s post takes around one minute to read and can save anyone who spends time with others up to ten times that amount of time in a single incident.

An organized person should be able to find whatever s/he is looking for in thirty seconds or less—yes, WHATEVER—that favorite blue sweater, the flyswatter, any document saved on your hard drive—WHATEVER. If you cannot find what you are looking ofr in thirty seconds, make a plan to get more organized. Organization will be continue to be addressed in the next several blog posts.

In the meantime here is the thirty second organizational tip that may surprise you: Offer a finder’s fee. Yes, a finder’s fee. It’s simple, just shout out, “Whoever finds the flyswatter gets twenty-five cents.” Your lost item will be found in less than thirty seconds. Depending on your situation, you may need to offer more than twenty-five cents, but you get the idea. The “fee” could be an extra dessert, a pass on helping clean the kitchen, or an extra ten minutes of time in the bathroom. 

Try it—it will help you find what you need quickly and add some humor in this stressful time of year.

In the next post, I will offer another time saver that I learned from the same sister who uses the finders fee—purple people washers.

Testing compares with …

High stakes testing season is right around the corner. Both students and teachers are starting to feel the pressure. In recent posts, we have been highlighting Return on Investment ideas for learning and teaching. Today’s blog emphasizes the learning strategy that has the highest ROI. The strategy also takes little time.

According to Robert Marzano’s meta-analysis, the instructional strategy that has the highest effect on achievement is Identifying Similarities and Differences.* Comparison is one of the processes of this effective strategy and comparison takes little time.

When we learn anything, we compare. Most of the time, we compare naturally: we compare shapes of leaves to identify plants; we compare new vocabulary words to words we already know; we compare characters in movies to people we know.  Try consciously using comparison when learning difficult new material.  Ask yourself how the new math process compares (or contrasts) with a process you already know. Ask yourself how the complex science theory compares with a simpler theory that you already understand. Ask yourself how the main idea of paragraph one compares with the main idea of paragraph two. At this time of year we might ask ourselves how testing compares to learning. You get the idea:

Just fill in the blanks: How is ________________  similar to _____________ ? How is ______________ different than _______________?

When we teach anything, we can help learners explicitly compare. Provide a Venn diagram or T-chart or other graphic organizer to help learners get into the mindset of comparing and contrasting.  One online free source for graphic organizers is http://freeology.com/graphicorgs/

Using a strategy with high ROI is important in this testing season. Next time we will talk more about finding time with organization tips. You might be surprised at the thirty second organizational rule.

*Reference: Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock. Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2001. Print

Utility, Curiosity and Specificity

In the October 27, 2014 post I discussed Return On Investment strategies for learners.  Writing a good subject line of an email is an important ROI strategy for not only learners, but also for teachers. Every email you write is both a learning and teaching experience. Two important components are evident in all emails. The most important component is who sent the email. The second most important component is the subject line.

Subject lines can be one of three types—Utility, Curiosity, or Specificity, according to Daniel Pink’s book To Sell is Human. 

A utility subject gives the practical side of the email information. It might be something like, “Here is how to read with more purpose” or “Learn to correctly cite sources.”

A curiosity subject line piques the inquisitiveness of the reader and might be something like, “Simple, specific, small”  or “Critical thinking and vacuum cleaners.” 

Specificity is just what it says and often includes a number such as “7 steps to a debt-free life” or “3 Methods to attain short goals.”

Subject lines have ROI power. Look at the last several emails in your sent box. Do the subject lines invite the recipient to actually read the email?  If we take just a few minutes to make our subject lines enticing, our messages will have more impact. 

Write subject line last

Earlier this month I promised a short post about subject lines. The short version of the post is, develop the habit of writing the subject line of any email LAST. Writing the subject line last is a good learning strategy and a good time management strategy.

In the Dec. 3 post I wrote, “[Three Little Words] does force the reader to pay attention to what is most important. It is a bit like writing the subject line of a message in an online discussion thread or in an email--the short subject line forces the writer to think about what is most important.”

By writing the subject line last, you can always be sure your subject line reflects the most important information in your email, which is a good learning, thinking, and communication strategy. A good subject line can even entice the reader to actually READ your email.

Writing the subject line last is also a time saver.  If you have ever accidently pushed the send button before you finished writing an email, you know it took you as long--or longer--to write a second email as it took you to write the first partial email message. In the second email you had to explain your error and finish writing the message you intended to write in the first place.  If you accidently push the send message before you have finished the message and you have not written a subject line, your email cannot be sent! How simple is that for a timesaver tip!?

We will talk more about the importance of writing a good subject line and provide some examples next post—next year, 2015. 

Three little words

In the last post we talked about the importance of knowing your own first steps to learning.  Highlighting is one first step for many students.  Summarizing may be a first step for others. Some use summarizing to overcome the challenge of paying attention. Students may use summarizing techniques such as explaining information to a fictitious person that does not know the material or using sticky notes to summarize each paragraph.

Has anyone tried the summarizing technique of "Three Little Words"? "Three Little Words" is a technique that forces the reader to get to the heart of the message. It is a challenge to summarize the material into exactly three words. Consider starting with summarizing each paragraph, but moving on to a larger chuck of material such as a section or page.

It seems artificial and awkward at first, but it does force the reader to pay attention to what is most important. It is a bit like writing the subject line of a message in an online discussion thread or in an email--the short subject line forces the writer to think about what is most important.

Tell us how “Three Little Words” works for you. 

Next post will be a short one on subject lines. Stay tuned. 

Most important step

In the last post I promised to discuss time-saving, Return On Investment strategies for learners. As a teacher, I like to use what I think are “big bang for my buck” strategies to put learners in position to learn best. By “big band for my buck” strategies I mean strategies that take little time to create and/or facilitate and return robust learning for the students. In other words, my ROI is big—little time and big learning.

Learners can develop their own time-saving, ROI strategies to facilitate their own learning. So the first step is to notice how you best learn.

One of the best time-saving learning strategies is to determine which is your personal best learning strategy. Choose your most important first step.
Marking is one of the most important steps to me. It is important to hightlight important information so you can go back to the information, review it, and build on it.  I have to always remind myself to be selective in what I highlight. When I am reading a hard copy text, I have a tendency to mark too much material as important and then reviewing still takes too much time since I have too much marked.

The biggest mistake beginning highlighters make is to highlight too much information. Always highlight phrases rather than sentences and limit yourself to no more than three most important phrases per page when you first start highlighting.

Highlighting via electronic methods has a real advantage for me since I can unhighlight a phrase or sentence when I find something else more important than what I had previously highlighted. I cannot unhighlight when using a regular highlighter--my regular highlighter does not have an eraser.

Next post we will narrow the highlighting even more with a technique I call “Three Little Words.”

In the meantime, I invite you to share your personal most important step here. 

Time well-spent asking questions

There really are dumb questions. Teachers used to tell their students that there are no dumb questions with the intention of encouraging their learners to ask about what was unclear to them. Dumb questions are out there, though--they are questions to which the asker already knows the answer—and more than 80% of classroom questions are questions to which the teacher/asker knows the answer. Teachers ask factual questions to which they—and many of their students—already know the answers.

Fewer teachers are now asking those dumb questions. Today’s excellent teachers ask questions that can be described with a different “D” word—deep. Deep questions are about what may be unclear to even the teacher, that take critical thinking to answer, and are worth the time it takes to delve into the answers. To increase the Return on Investment, teachers are now getting into the habit of asking questions to which they do not know the answer. The ROI will be deeper critical thinking and more robust classroom discussion.

 In the last two posts, I provided information from the Aptos California High School website, http://www.aptoshs.net/cliq9. We have discussed high expectations and building trust. Today let’s turn our attention to asking questions with high ROI. These questioning strategies take no more time than asking questions that have factual answers but reap far deeper results—not just for low expectancy students, but for ALL students:

The teacher asks questions of ALL students with the same frequency and depth. Teachers could even keep an official record of the students asked each class period.

Teacher makes sure ALL students’ questions are answered at the same rate and with the same depth.

Teacher makes sure ALL students are asked challenging questions. A technique I use when a student is reluctant to respond, is to encourage by asking, “If you had to guess, what would you say?”

Students notice the expectations:

When asked, students say the teacher expects everyone to participate.

When asked, students say the teacher asks difficult questions of every student.

Asking deeper questions takes no more time that asking the other “D” questions. Develop some questions that can apply to almost any content. Some of my own go-to critical thinking questions include

·         How would you compare …? contrast …?

·         How would you explain…

·         Based on what you know, how would you explain …?

·         What would be your own original way to …?

What deeper questions have you developed for your classroom that increase ROI?

Next post we will discuss ROI strategies for learners. If you have a favorite strategy for learning, please share it here.