For years, my tennis partner tried to get me to change the grip on my forehand volley. She’d rotate my hand, we’d hit a few, and then we’d move into playing. The balls would start to come harder and faster, and I’d go right back to my old ways.
I’ve been thinking about the hand grip as content and returning the ball as context: For a little while, the content was hard within an easy context, but then, before the content got easy, the context got hard. I couldn’t master the new skill because I needed more time with tough content and an easy context.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to content and context in my educational work this year.
As an instructional coach, I frequently find myself side by side with students who struggle and strive to master grade-level concepts and skills. Once students hit about fourth grade, we ask them to learn new content and write about it with newly developing skills. That’s hard! More and more, I’m nudging myself to think about their content and context.
In one of the fourth-grade classrooms where I’ve been coaching, we have integrated social studies with information writing. Students select historical topics with in study of Connecticut and write information pieces about those topics. Last week, I watched a girl struggle with her piece about Martin Luther King Jr. Who knew that he worked in the Connecticut tobacco fields one summer?
If I’m asking a student to write an informational piece about Martin Luther King, and she honestly doesn’t know much about him, then I have to decide whether to give her the information about MLK and teach writing skills, or expect her to read and learn about MLK and hold off on the writing skills. Is my content learning about MLK or is my content learning the skills of information writing? Either is okay, but I don’t want to teach new content within new context.
I think of cognitive demand as how much I’m asking students to do that is below their mastery level in one activity or assignment. I’ve created a chart that helps me think about the cognitive demand I place on students:
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High Content |
Low Content |
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High Context |
Low learning potential When students feel overwhelmed, it’s difficult to be a productive learner. |
High learning potential. Students can practice new skills within content they already know. |
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Low Context |
High learning potential Students can learn new content using skills they’ve already mastered. |
Low learning potential. When asked to do simple tasks that just fill time, students are bored and rarely learn. |
So what to do? My goal is not for this student to write a beautiful informational piece about Martin Luther King if that task is far beyond her zone of proximal development. My goal is to have her skills develop in such a way that the next time she has a similar assignment, she has a better understanding of how to complete it. Since my learning priority for her is information writing, and not learning all about MLK, I created some choices for myself and her teacher.
Since we decided that the learning priority is information writing, here are some options:
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I give this child already-created notes about MLK, so the task is not about research and note taking. The task is about writing those notes into sections and/or paragraphs by creating sentences with transition words. This option is a good one if she is authentically interested in MLK.
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I widen the topic. Instead of writing about one famous person who has spent time in Connecticut, I might suggest that the student’s topic change to Important People Who Have Spent Time in Connecticut. Depending on her interests and background knowledge, she could have other choices, but the point is that the topic becomes much broader. That way, the student doesn’t have to integrate as much research and information.
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Instead of… |
Widen it with… |
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The Pequot War |
Wars of Connecticut |
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The Boston Tea Party |
Events that led up to the American Revolution |
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Nathan Hale |
Famous people in the American Revolution |
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I allow the student to choose a different topic altogether, one that she already knows more about. That way, the spotlight of the learning is on how to write an information piece.
If I decide the learning priority is the historical or informational content, then I take a different approach. I can collect a text set about MLK that spans reading difficulty levels and includes a short video or audio clip. Students need to read easier material or watch basic videos about a topic first. That way, they develop some background knowledge. Once they have some understanding of a topic, they are able to integrate more difficult information. During this time, I might ask her to take notes, react to texts and ideas, and think about why MLK is famous: My focus is on how she’s learning about a topic and not on how to write an information piece.
For this student, I kept the focus on information writing and created bullets of information she could use as a foundation for her writing. She was interested in her topic, engaged in her work, and available for learning about strong introductions, interesting sections, transitional words, text features, and conclusions. She had plenty she was learning, and she had information she could access.
The truth is, I still hold my tennis grip incorrectly. Maybe I’ll take my own advice about learning this summer and stand in front of a ball machine for a while. I can program it to give me the same gentle shot over and over while I try to master something hard.
