The New Classroom Instruction That Works with Bryan Goodwin, ep. 185

The New Classroom Instruction That Works with Bryan Goodwin, ep. 185, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:01

Trying to get coaching cycle started and feeling like you just can’t make it work. I’ve got the email course for you. Realistic coaching cycles is a mini course sent right to your inbox. It’s five days of short videos that will teach you exactly what you need to do to start coaching cycles. document your work with a teacher and help them implement the learning you’ve done together. Get it for free at buzzing with MS b.com slash cycles and start your coaching cycles today. Hey, Coach, if you’ve been waiting for the competent literacy coach course to open up, your wait is almost over. The course is opening soon and I want you to be the first to note, make sure you’ve signed up at competent literacy coach.com to be included on the waitlist, you’ll be notified as soon as it opens for enrollment this year is going to be even better than before. I’ve updated the reading and writing modules to provide you with the knowledge you need to support your school and implementing practices that are proven to build skilled readers and writers get the PD you need to provide the PD and learning they need join the waitlist so you can join the course. Welcome to instructional coaching with Miss B where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Chrissy Beltran, an elementary teacher who became a coach, and I had to create my own coaching program that worked. Now I teach coaches how to design their coaching programs, build a school wide action plan and use differentiated strategies to support teachers. Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the episode tako coach, and welcome to Episode 185, the new classroom instruction that works with Brian Goodwin, you are listening to instructional coaching with Miss B. And today we are working through our series on better instruction. I’m so excited to bring this series to you because this has got some really great stuff, really good strategies and ideas and things that you’re going to want to really look at your school with a critical eye and say, Are we moving in the right direction. Just to remind you my course the confident literacy coach, I have a module all about how to support teachers and instructions specifically in reading and writing. And you can grab that a confident literacy coach.com, you can join the waitlist and get a coupon code for 15% off to us starting in May. So that’s pretty exciting. You’re going to have that code for 15% off. And that’s going to save a nice little piece of change for you. You can use that towards something else that’s really fun for you like maybe Brian Goodwin’s new book, I don’t know. So you can also grab a free course at buzzing with Miss b.com slash shift where I teach you how to help teachers embrace new practices. So if you’re trying to get some change to happen at your school, this is a great way to do it. If you’re supporting teachers, and SLR or any of the other practices that we’re going to chat about today. It’ll give you the methods that you need to make change happen. We are going to welcome Brian to the podcast and get this show started. So let’s welcome Brian to the podcast. Welcome, Ryan. It’s

Bryan Goodwin  02:52

great to be here. Christie, right. Great to meet you. And I’m excited to chat about instruction. I

Chrissy Beltran  02:57

am too I am too before we get to the nitty gritty of instruction, I would love to hear you introduce yourself. And I’d like to know just a few things to get started. Who do you help? And how do you spend most of your time and energy at work?

Bryan Goodwin  03:09

Yeah, that’s great. So you know, as a president and CEO of a nonprofit, my job is really to help our staff and to support them and to be a servant leader. And I’ve got a great team, which makes it really easy and fun. I sometimes feel like they it was the Verizon commercial where you had the the guy had all to do in the background. That’s what I feel like, right? My job was to get out of the way. But I think a lot of what I do is, you know, connect, connect with educators and then connect our staff with them, you know, to kind of develop the ideas that drive the organization. That’s how I spent a lot of my time doing this, you know, doing podcasts, webinars, speaking engagements, but then also working with our team to develop our programs and our solutions for helping educators everywhere.

Chrissy Beltran  03:52

I love that. So then do you have a favorite podcast? Because I know you’re a guest on lots of podcasts. But what do you like to listen to?

Bryan Goodwin  03:58

I’m kind of a news junkie. So I tend to listen to a lot in the morning while I’m walking my dog. So and this may, this may be interesting. I have I have a blend of podcasts I listen to the New York Times I listen to that one the daily, I listened to The Wall Street Journal as well. And then there’s one that I really love. It’s called left, right and center is I love hearing like it’s a civil conversation about the issues that seem to divide us and I love that kind of thing to where people can be grownups and talk about issues that get contentious. But then, you know, maybe you get to something deeper when you listen more carefully to other people too. So I

Chrissy Beltran  04:29

like that. Yeah, my husband is a big news media guy as well. And he’s he listens to his fair share amount of podcasts and after a while they can, it can it can kind of stress you out, even even when the conversation is civil, it’s can be stressful. So that’s pretty, I think that’s admirable, you got to stay informed. So your book is titled The new classroom instruction that works. Right. So can you tell us why we need some new thoughts on classroom instruction? Yeah,

Bryan Goodwin  04:57

I mean some of it honestly, when you look at some The strategies they might not seem so new. But some of what has happened though, in the last like really generation last 2025 years, education research has really improved, it’s gotten a lot more sophisticated. What we’re now seeing in education research is what we were seeing, like in medical research, you know, decades ago, we’re now we’re looking at true scientific studies where we have a treatment group, a control group. And because of that, we can start to draw some causal claims, which is important, too. So I feel like we’ve gotten a lot more precise about what works in the classroom. The other thing we’ve been we’ve been doing is we’ve actually had decades of brain science, cognitive science, if you will, that really tells us how kids learn. And so we were trying to marry those two things together. So I think what’s newest, about the new classroom instruction that works is this twofold thing of looking at scientific studies in classrooms with diverse learners, that’s also really important, plus and saying, Can we overlay that on top of what we know about the process of learning how kids learn, because if you do that, right, if we can create learning experiences that better reflect how our kids brains work, it’s easier for them, it’s more joyful. And that’s, I think that’s the if I could put a subtitle on all of this, it’s joyful learning, right? That’s what we’re running into.

Chrissy Beltran  06:13

Yeah, that’s fantastic. When you have people who are excited and joyful in their work, they are more likely to want to follow you wherever you go. I mean, you’re right. Wherever you’re taking that lesson, and I think, you know, that’s so much of that joy does come from the teacher and you know, it’s, it can be hard to be joyful and be a teacher right now. So,

Bryan Goodwin  06:32

yeah, and that’s hopefully what some of us can do is fine. I think for some teachers I might make, it might remind them of that. That is what I do. Now, maybe I have a better sense of why I would do something like asking high level questions, Oh, I get what it’s actually doing for my kids brains, and why it makes learning more joyful and engaging for them to the better. We do that. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  06:51

I like that. So then I would love for you. You mentioned one strategy. Actually, just now, I’d love for you to dig in and share a few of your favorite strategies with us. So if you had to pick, like three or four that you would say are absolutely essential, regardless of content area, maybe something that would span across grade levels, what would you really, you know, think that teachers need to be embedding in their teaching? Yeah, I

Bryan Goodwin  07:12

think what we’re hearing that maybe, is a good reminder for folks, almost bookending, a little bit how we think about lesson and unit design. The first thing you know, we talked about cognitive interest cues. And we had, in previous editions of the book, we talked about advance organizers, those things are still important, but what we’re getting at is like that advanced organizer needs to hook kids interests, and hopefully their intellectual interests, right, it’s easy to have like a fun, tick tock video that gets kids gets their attention. But if it doesn’t lead them into learning, it’s not as effective. So this idea of cognitive interviews, tapping into student curiosity can be really powerful. I think we hear a lot of teachers saying, maybe since the pandemic, but honestly, I think it predates that. But kids are back in the classroom, like physically, but not so much psychologically, or, or emotionally, like how do I get my kids engaged, excited to come into my classroom. So I think that’s one of the big things we’re finding a lot of teachers are resonating with. The other one kind of goes along with that a little bit, Christy, where we’re talking about student goal setting, in the second phase of learning is getting kids to commit to learning. And what we mean by student goal setting is actually maybe the shift here a little bit is we’ve all learned about the importance of learning objectives, I need to have those clear, like kids need to know where I’m going, where the lessons going. But student goal setting is kind of flipping it a little bit on to the student side of saying, have I committed to learning? Do I have a goal that’s meaningful to me? Do I understand why this lesson is meaningful? So and then there’s a third, there’s a third set of strategies, but I might just kind of lump them all together, under extend and apply. So that’s the sixth chapter of the book. But we think about things like structured problem solving, cognitive writing, guided investigations, can almost be rolled into one big strategy about how do I get kids to extend and apply their learning. So they have their own voice, they have maybe a little bit of choice of what they learned, and they’re doing some inquiry, they’re doing some discovery. I think we also have found that and teachers will say that, you know, I know that’s important. But somehow in the midst of like pacing guides and trying to get through, you know, so much stuff and 180 days back, it’s that goes missing sometimes and we’re trying to let people know that that actually, that’s the most important thing you can be doing is getting kids in those deep learning experiences. So I think those are like, I cheated a bit. That was actually five strategies, but but maybe the idea of like, really, it’s about student engagement, getting kids to own their own learning. I think we have seen that now in classrooms studies, has been really powerful for all kinds of students, right, which is a good reminder tips. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  09:45

I like that. Because you’re talking about cognitive engagement, you know, the actual engagement of kids thinking deeply about the content, reflecting on it, connecting it to their own lives into their own interests and, and, you know, like the idea of student goal setting and monitoring you know, we’re wanting kids to be reflective about their learning process, right as they’re going through this content because like I’ve actually seen, you mentioned scope and sequence and, and you know, they can be helpful. And they can be the bane of your existence as a teacher, right? So I have actually seen social studies curriculum, it’s so packed in. It’s like so much information is smashed into people probably, I mean, in elementary, I see if people spend 30 minutes on social studies a day. That’s a lot, unfortunately. And so then I have literally seen teachers out of desperation, right, because they’re held accountable for assessments are held accountable for curriculum, they’re just writing bullet points on an on a chart tablet, and putting it in front of students. And then that’s the learning. That’s it

Bryan Goodwin  10:43

right now. Right? Yeah. You know, I like to quote Daniel Willingham, he’s a cognitive scientist at University of Virginia, he makes the point that kids only remember what they think about. So we need the kids time to think about what they’re learning. And I think that is partly going slower to go faster. Or maybe to go deeper. I think you’re right, I think it’s, what happens is social studies and science are given short shrift, because we feel like we’ve got to focus so much on reading and math. But I’ve seen examples of grade schools that are saying, We’re gonna build those Reading and Math Foundations, maybe in the morning, we’ll have our usual reading and math block. But afternoons are going to be these guided investigations that will be kind of integration of social studies of science, but also pulling in reading and math skills to really kind of make it come to life. And if you do that, well, and I’ve been in schools that do this really well. And you know, it’s the afternoon is that it’s where the learning begins, and you watch kids come in from from the noon, you know, recess, they’re excited, like, Okay, now, now I get to do something that’s really meaningful to me. Yeah, I

Chrissy Beltran  11:41

think that we’ve moved away a lot of schools over time moved away from like, interdisciplinary units. Because I mean, maybe the way they were done wasn’t, I was more like, Oh, we’re gonna learn about apples. And then that’s, you know, so we’re gonna color an apple picture or whatever. So it’s not that they were always done in, like, this amazing way. But so many, please, people have moved away from that, and everything is very siloed. I feel like, you know, and instead of saying, Well, we’re going to practice, we’re going to learn some things and reading, we know that kids have to have background knowledge to be strong readers, right? So why don’t we read about what we’re learning in science, and then they echo it across their day, you know, and then use some of the strategies during the different content areas. And in reading and writing that you have listed in your book, you have just so many great ideas that people can embed in that those lessons,

Bryan Goodwin  12:23

you know, and that’s actually our hope Christy’s that that by helping teachers have a shared vocabulary of what we mean by good instruction. Now we can work together, if I know what you mean by cognitive interest to you like, oh, okay, now we’re working on the same page here. And so, and that is also, our other big hope for this book is that it elevates the profession. I believe teaching is a profession, no question about it. We asked the question in the beginning the book like, is it a profession? It’s a rhetorical question, of course it is, right. But the point is, like, we want educators to understand that there’s a lot of sophistication to what we’re doing here, and they should be proud to be in this profession, they should understand that it’s on the same par As like engineering or medicine, like, we have learned a heck of a lot about how the brain works. In fact, we’ve know more about how the brain works than at any point in human history. And so that’s also a reason to be excited about being in this profession, that we can do some really great things for kids, by having a shared vocabulary by having a shared professional knowledge of how learning happens and the strategies that we can use to help kids get there. Could

Chrissy Beltran  13:24

you give us You mentioned cognitive interest skews a couple of times? One of your favorites? Can you could you share a little bit about what that can look like? And how a teacher can go about choosing or a coach can go about supporting a teacher and choosing something that actually does the job of the strategy that you’re really trying to get to? Yeah,

Bryan Goodwin  13:40

no, obviously, it’s one that’s important. And what you’ll find is that if you do this, well, it weaves throughout an entire unit, right? So but an idea might be to say, first of all, step back and look at your unit and say, what are the big ideas that I want kids to know here? What are those enduring understandings? When am I teaching kids when they’re eight or 18? I want them to remember where they’re at. Right? And so then you would say, Okay, if I know the big idea, maybe it’s like we’re trying to teach. I understand the concept here is really the watercycle for example, right? Now you can think about how would I draw kids and felt less than is there a way to use like mystery here? Like, how does water go in the sky and then come down, like, help kids frame this as a mystery or we talk about things that are like cognitive conflict or basically just incongruity so something that seems the opposite of what we would think you know, I always like to point out I live here in Denver, Colorado, so today is actually a good example where when the wind is blowing on the mountains it’s actually pretty warm here. It’s like we’re gonna be in the 50s today because the winds coming out of the mountains like wait, that seems backwards from what I would think that’s a that’s an incongruity. Another one would just be like any kind of suspense right? Language Arts is full of that what’s going to happen in the next chapter. We also talk about like riddles or things that that incomplete sequences, mathematics is full of all of that. The other one is like, its controversy, academic controversy kind of safely, ways like Well, there’s two different ways to solve this math problem. Which way would you do it? Right? Or even like debates on that, that are I noticed teachers, like, I don’t want to introduce any kind of conflict in my classroom or controversy, but there are say things like, you know, what should we do about endangered species like the wolf or introduced species? You know, do we need to eradicate them, and so forth. So anyway, those are like four kind of ways that we can think about, you know, using something that draws kids into the lesson that really becomes you know, something they want to explore or inquire about, or come to their own answers on.

Chrissy Beltran  15:33

Yeah, I like that. I think I’ve seen people use that whenever they focus their work on a model of like inquiry, right? And so then they post something up, and then they engage kids with questioning, like, what are you thinking? What are you wondering here? And then they can use that as a driver throughout their unit?

Bryan Goodwin  15:47

Yeah. And actually, what you just said, is really important, too. I mean, like, kids come up with the questions, right? Show them something and say, Well, why do you think this happens? Like, why would this thing float where this other thing doesn’t? What’s really going on here? And so obviously, science is easy to do that with but we have lots of examples in the books about different in every subject area, you can frame something to get kids drawn, interested. And if you do that, you know, like, that’s not the end of the you know, but like, at least starting there, because if you don’t do it, you can keep on teaching, but the kids aren’t really following you. They’re not really

Chrissy Beltran  16:19

right. Right, right. You got to get them in there hooked right at the beginning, so that they are invested. Right,

Bryan Goodwin  16:24

exactly. It takes some time and thinking up front. But it’s well worth the effort. The other thing, the other point you make is like you don’t have to go it alone. Why not do some team teaching? And you know, every third grade teacher says, well, we’ll be coming together, what would be a great way to introduce this lesson that keeps kids engaged? And, you know, doesn’t have to be every lesson, you’re using a cognitive interest cue, but maybe it’s the unit has a big overarching kind of mystery, that we keep throwing kids back, you’re like, are we getting closer to solving our mystery? How, you know, where are we right now in our learning?

Chrissy Beltran  16:53

Yeah, I like I love that. And I think you’re right, whenever we can work together with our teams of teachers, we can do great things, because people are sharing that burden. It’s a lot to plan an incredible unit all yourself all the time, you know, yeah. But partnerships.

Bryan Goodwin  17:07

Yeah, we talked about it having a what’s in it. For me. That’s an that’s an advertising thing. Right? What’s in it for me? And but that’s where like, sometimes teachers can come together, you know, sometimes you forget, why am I teaching this? What’s in it for the kids for that for them to learn this? So coming together in grade level teams or cross curricular teams and saying, Why is this? Why is this in the standards for starters? And how do we make kids understand what’s in it for them? If they learn this? How they’ll benefit? How they can use this knowledge to benefit themselves or others? Right?

Chrissy Beltran  17:34

Yeah, like that you’re getting into something that, that we’re very curious about here? Because my audience is instructional coaches. Right? So we’re talking about how we can support schools and moving towards embracing new strategies and things across the school. So do you have any thoughts about how we can structure our school wide support as we guide teachers to embracing these practices?

Bryan Goodwin  17:54

Yeah, so one of the biggest things that’s throughout the book is the idea of making sure teachers are intentional, helping them become intentional, we see that as a breakthrough moment, I’m sure you have to Krissy when teachers also understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. And so I think it’s instructional coaches, it could be just some simple, you know, or, you know, softer feedback around, I see you doing this, tell me more? Why did you choose that strategy? What we’re hoping to have? The kids do what we’re hoping to have got happening in their brains, their minds as they were learning. And so that’s where I think a lot of the book, because it’s all front loaded, what do we know from cognitive science about why this strategy is important? And then what is the strategy? And sometimes it could be something as simple as like, I’m just gonna ask a higher level question here and use wait time when there’s a whole bunch of cognitive science behind why that works. But that’s also where, as a coach, I think it’s helping teachers become reflective in their practice and say, Well, why did I choose that strategy? And in some cases, I know, I was guilty of this as the teacher. I didn’t know why I did something. It was like, you know, it’s Wednesday, I guess. So helping teachers think about there’s a, what are you hoping to see happen for your kids as you do this strategy is really powerful, too. So that’s, I think that’d be my guidance is like, the reflective questions are really powerful. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  19:11

I love the focus on intentionality. Because we do see people kind of going through the motions, you know, well, I did it because it was the next page in the workbook. I did it because, you know, because you told me that anchor charts are good. I did you know, to check to do proper learning, right. So

Bryan Goodwin  19:25

I did Yeah, right. Exactly.

Chrissy Beltran  19:26

Isn’t that what you want us to? I know, you guys like to see the so I did it, you know, but then whenever we’re planning together, or we are talking about how something went, we have those opportunities to say, Okay, well, what was the impact on kids? And is that the impact you wanted? You know, doing what can we adjust to change and get to the impact that you wanted? Yeah. So the structure of your book, can you tell me about that once more because I think that could be a really helpful way for coaches to work with teachers and say, Okay, we have this collection of strategies here we can pull from you know, so how was your book organized so that they could use it to their benefit?

Bryan Goodwin  19:58

Yeah, exactly. So really, we go through a six phase model of learning, and one of the things that’s in the book to point out Christie is that when you look at the model of learning, it’s about what’s happening for kids. So you see a lot, a lot of models instruction, you know, there’s going back to the man on Hunter, all of that. And that’s, that’s good stuff, we tried to flip it a little bit on its ear by saying, it’s what’s happening for kids, right? So here’s the six phase model of learning, I don’t think is gonna surprise anybody. But basically, to learn something, you have to do six things. And the first thing is you have to become interested in it, right? If I really want to learn something, I have to become interested in it, hopefully, because I’m intrinsically motivated, and don’t just have to be cajoled into learning something. And that’s the first phase. Second phase is commit to learning. And that’s because we know that learning is mental effort, right? There’s, you have to apply your brain and our brains always want to switch off or switch down to kind of a lower effort mode. So committing to learning is about setting goals and knowing why I’m going where I’m going, okay, that’s sort of like the setting the table. But then we talk about focusing on new knowledge. And there’s a lot of learning a lot of cognitive science around how we focus on new knowledge, how if we can make learning visual, it’s much more powerful for kids giving them models examples to follow. That’s their sort of like a direct phase of learning as well, too. And so direct construction is not bad. It’s just if it’s only if it’s the only thing you’re doing, that’s where it’s bad, right? So focus on new knowledge is the third phase. The fourth phase really gets out another mental, a cognitive science principle of consolidation, if we’re going to learn something, we have to start to connect dots, categorize cluster at connect new learning to prior knowledge, that’s the key to every learning. Our brains are big neural networks. So we talk about makes sense of learning is the fourth phase. And that’s, that is where things like cooperative learning can come into play. But we’ve we’ve, we’ve switched the terminology a bit, we call it pierces the consolidation of learning, because that’s what’s happening, more high level questions that make me have to think about what I’ve learned, connect dots connected to my prior experience, all that. So that’s the fourth phase of learning. The fifth phase is practice and reflect because ultimately, if I’m gonna learn something, I have to come back that new knowledge multiple times, we know that from cognitive science, there’s a process called myelination, the more I repeat a memory, the more I wrap myelin around that neural connection, the stronger that connection becomes so practicing reflecting, but that’s not just rote learning. It’s the reflection piece, like what don’t I get yet? What else can I do here? So there’s, there’s strategies that we’ve associated with that practice and reflect phase. And then the sixth phase, is extending apply. And so that’s, that’s what I mentioned earlier, where, if I’m going to learn something deeply, I have to, I have to go back that new knowledge, not just multiple times, multiple ways. And so if I’m now having to think about a period of history, and develop my own argument about what really happened here, and learning that much more deeply, and I will retain that knowledge about God that so that’s the six phases. And so really, you know, for as far as like helping teachers through that, the other point I’ll make is don’t run out and do all 14 strategies at once. Maybe focus on if I think about that those six phases of learning, where’s maybe my biggest opportunity to improve the process of learning, and then maybe drill down on that? And is there a strategy or two, that might be really powerful, because maybe there either I can build on something I’m already doing, or it’s something that maybe we haven’t been doing as intentionally as we could have been? And then we can develop that. So I think the you know, we actually can almost use those six phases as a diagnostic tool to say, Well, where do we think the process if the process of learning is breaking down? Where might it be breaking down? Along those six phases?

Chrissy Beltran  23:41

Yeah, I love that. I mean, that could be used kind of to evaluate your own unit planning and making sure you have kids have opportunities to do all of these different things throughout your unit, or your week. Yeah, I really like that. All right, well, how can people keep learning from you if they want to learn more about your strategies, your method, all of this stuff?

Bryan Goodwin  23:59

Yeah, there’s lots of stuff on our website, we’re nonprofit. So while we do, we’d have products that are sold through ASCD is where we try to put a lot of stuff out there as well, on the website, necro MC, Arielle dot o RG. So you’ll see a lot of there’s there’s a white paper on this whole process of the six phase model of learning called Student Learning Networks, we have other things we put out there on best first instruction, which is really what this is, right? This is. And we believe that the better we can do with that, the fewer kids are going to need to be in tier two. And tier three, we actually do have a strategy that kind of addresses tier two. But you’ll find lots of lots of good stuff, blogs, all kinds of examples about how to do this stuff on the website. And then if you want to dive even deeper, obviously, you can contact us. We do a lot of work with instructional coaches, helping them you know, deliver better instruction for their teachers, and really develop a strong kind of coaching apparatus in schools too.

Chrissy Beltran  24:56

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here today. Brand

Bryan Goodwin  25:00

It’s been great to be here. Thank you, Christina, I enjoyed the conversation.

Chrissy Beltran  25:04

Did you get a lot of stuff from that this? Brian is one of those people that has information coming out every time he opens his mouth, right? He has so many great ideas. And I hope that you managed to grab a few. But I also want you to check out his book, new classroom instruction that works because it is a good one. It has some really great strategies. And I do firmly believe that this is what’s missing in a lot of our classrooms. We have teachers delivering information and kids not really working with information, right. So if you are looking for ways that you can get teachers to embrace new ways of doing things, whether that’s SLR or any other new practice or asking teachers to try out, you can head to buzzing with Ms. b.com slash shift and grab the making the shift webinar. It’ll give you the tools that you need. And next week, I’m excited. I’m going to have a really special guest. Zahra Hammond is going to be here to talk about culturally responsive teaching. And I cannot wait to talk with her because I’ve been wanting to talk with her for a long time and I know that you have been wanting to hear from her so until then, happy coaching now that you’ve got so much to think about head over to buzzing with Miss b.com to grab some free downloads, become a VIP, and check out the podcast show notes. Happy coaching!