I’m loving my updated “How Learning Happens” knowledge organizer. Yes, I spend the first couple of days of the school year teaching students the basics of human cognitive architecture. It gives them the lens through which they’ll understand why I teach the way I do and the foundational principles behind our procedures, routines, and instructional practices. Some people will probably be annoyed by that. Let’s all be cool about it, OK?

One of the biggest drivers in my shift toward explicit instruction has been simplifying everything. I used to try to gamify, activify, and engagify every lesson—bells, whistles, and all. It wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t especially effective. I taught under the impression that I had to “make it fun.” One of the best lessons I taught all year happened today, and here’s what it required: a visualizer, a blank outline map of the Caribbean, and all the critical content I know to explicitly teach my students with. That’s it. Add in lots of questions, choral response, turn-and-talk, concrete examples, active observation, and show calls, and you have everything you need for an effective and engaging lesson. In previous years, I would have turned this simple Caribbean geography lesson into a high-energy, activity-based experience: stations, a gallery walk, or some kind of puzzle or game. There would be movement, noise, and “engagement,” but most of the new information would be lost in the shuffle. Working memory would be so overloaded that very little would actually stick. Now I know teaching explicitly and simply is the most effective way to make learning happen.