Daniel T. Willingham

1 card

1. 01

   Between six and ten the foundation the whole of school later stands on is poured: fluent reading, automatic arithmetic and the habit of working twenty minutes on something hard — three things, checkable at home, instead of ten activities.

   Why Don't Students Like School? · 2009

   Fluency is not speed, it is the absence of decoding effort.

   What changes: the brain can finally automate. Whatever it automates now frees capacity later. The steps. One, read aloud twenty minutes a day, alternating — one page them, one page you — until they read without stumbling. Fluency is not speed, it is the absence of decoding effort, and without it comprehension has no room left in working memory. Two, times tables up to ten, automatic, no counting on fingers, by the end of third grade; five minutes a day of spaced repetition beats an hour of tutoring a week. Three, homework is done at the same time, in the same place, with no phone in the room, and you check it, you do not do it. Four, after twenty minutes of real effort, a break — you do not punish tiredness. Five, one team sport and one thing done for pleasure, not five. Six, the screen stays in the shared room; their bedroom gets no screen, not now and not later. Seven, ask them in the evening what was hard today, not what mark they got. What you do not do: you do not compare with a sibling or a classmate, you do not pay for grades, and you do not give them their own phone just because their class has one.

   “Memory is the residue of thought. You remember what you thought about, not what you were told — so the question for any lesson is what the child was made to think about.”

   Open the card →