Newsletter – 23 October 2020

Parents may or may not be aware of the ‘High Impact Teaching Strategies’ or what Victorian teachers know of as ‘the HITS’?

The HITS are ‘…ten instructional practices that reliably increase student learning wherever they are applied.’ (Department of Education and Training, 2017)

The DET 10 ‘High Impact Teaching Strategies’ are:

1. Setting Goals
2. Structuring Lessons
3. Explicit Teaching
4. Worked Examples
5. Collaborative Learning
6. Multiple Exposures
7. Questioning
8. Feedback
9. Metacognitive Strategies
10. Differentiated Learning

These ten interactional strategies have been identified from the findings of thousands of studies, exploring what has worked in classrooms across Australia and around the world. Internationally regarded experts such as John Hattie and Robert Marzano have synthesised these research findings and ranked the effectiveness of teaching strategies by the contribution they make to student learning. Correspondingly, ten High Impact Teaching Strategies have been identified. At RGLPS, our teachers have been undertaking a range of learning to develop their knowledge of the HITS and strengthen their skills in using these strategies for effective learning and teaching.

Each week I thought I might provide a more detailed overview of one of the HITS to help parents support their child/ren with learning in the home. This week I am going to talk about Multiple Exposures.

Multiple Exposures means providing multiple opportunities for learners to encounter, engage with and elaborate on new knowledge and skills. An example is practising number facts, new vocabulary or spelling patterns over several days to help learners understand and retain their new knowledge. It could also be mindfully practising a process repeatedly until it becomes automatic and easily recalled. It took me several weeks to learn how to change gears on a manual car when I was learning to drive but I can do this automatically now!

The Multiple Exposures strategy essentially strengthens the neural pathways in our brains. Further, the more varied the experiences or exposure to the new ideas are, the more connections are made in our brains and the broader and deeper our understanding becomes. Hence, multiple exposures is most effective when practice is spread over several days and the interactions learners have with the new knowledge or skill is varied.

You can support your child’s learning by providing multiple exposures to new learning and regular opportunities for them to practise and review new skills.

For example:

• Deliberately use new vocabulary in different contexts to help children understand the full range of meanings of new words. Additionally, if children regularly encounter these words in their reading or use them in their own writing, they will learn the new words more quickly and thoroughly. This is one of the reasons teachers always advocate lots of reading!
• Read a variety of texts about a new idea/concept and then write about or discuss the new information. Do this over several days or weeks.  
• Play a variety of games to build children’s number and mathematical awareness eg Buzz, Bingo, dice games, counting patterns, Battleships, Snakes and Ladders etc.
• Play ‘shopping’ games with money to help students become familiar with the value of coins and how to count, add and subtract money when giving change.
• Use all of the senses to learn about a new idea or concept (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste). When learning about history, expose children to old photos, maps, artefacts, audio or video recordings, written reports, first person accounts, art works or visit an historical site in person. The more exposures and the more varied these exposures are, the deeper the insight and understanding of the event or concept will be.

Research demonstrates that multiple exposures greatly improves learner retention of new knowledge. It is proven to be most effective when exposures are used deliberately and consciously to assist learners to master new knowledge and skills, and when the exposures are repeated over time.

Next week I will talk about another one of the HITS – Collaborative Learning.