by John Jensen Ph.D.

If you’ll stay with me for a few paragraphs, I want to lay out a roadmap for transforming your classroom in a couple weeks. Along the way, you’ll note many familiar elements yet details that at first may be off-putting. Maybe you’ve been burnt by classroom interventions that over-controlled and ended up wearing out both you and your students. So I first want to discuss the kinds of details we need and why.
What’s the difference between a Model T Ford and a 2009 Mercedes Benz? A Second World War V2 rocket and one carrying a Mars lander? The Wright brothers first successful plane and a modern Stealth jet? Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone and the modern cell phone?
Each pair have in common travel in a particular environment. A common basic concept binds each pair yet the difference between old and new lies in this. In the new version, more details are integrated to serve the purpose of the whole. Details come “on line” to make the concept work better–different materials, the mechanics and physics of their operation, and the energy applied. As each ingredient is improved, its integration into the whole produces better results. Inventors constantly push the edge of design for better results: “If we try it this way, could we extend its range?’ In each pair, we should note, the more advanced does not replace the more primitive. The Model T can stand in the parking space next to the Mercedes, and a driver can say, “Today, I’ll take the Model T” and be satisfied with 25 m.p.h. so as not to stress it.
With education we’re somewhat in that position. We can (and often do) choose to go with the 25 m.p.h. vehicle and the Alexander Graham Bell telephone. In all of human history, from plain to jungle, some have taught others. We innately know how. Although we add printing and writing so we can go farther, we can still choose the model employed in the jungle for thousands of years. We can revert.
If we want to improve education, we do it essentially the same way as with automobiles, planes, rockets, and phones. We bring details on line to serve the purpose. Realizing many years ago that this could be extraordinarily easy was the start of my Silver Bullet approach to learning. It presumes that certain conditions (instructions, directions, arrangements, etc.) completely under a teacher’s control can dramatically spur students’ motivation and mastery. Many readers of Ednews.org have accepted my offer of a free ebook copy of my method, and I‘ve often sent along a brief orientation to it also. Here, I’d like to expand on it and narrate a kind of roadmap to the book.
In it, you’ll note strategies divided into steps 1-2-3 etc., but these are not intended to confine a teacher. Usually the principle is clear and teachers may want to apply it their own way to save time or integrate it into their existing instruction. Having steps spelled out gives them an option to engage students and present ideas in their own way and then conclude with activities that increase long term learning. There’s typically much that could be said about why to employ the methods, but my focus instead is intensively on how–how teachers can obtain particular results if they want to.
The easiest way to get a sense for the approach is probably by reading Chapter 9. It describes my pilot program that transformed fractious, hostile fourth graders into an ideal class in six weeks with the watershed occurring about midway. While each of the 54 sections in the book serves a need, some are as foundational as a rocket’s tensile strength and the fuel propelling it. The numbers in parentheses designate sections in the book.
The first nine sections applied together generate a quick start, getting learning and good feelings underway. You may need nothing else, fulfilling one reader’s comment that we need to “do a lot of a few things” instead of “a lot of things not enough.” These are the few to do a lot.
(1-2) Students must first understand and organize new material. This is familiar ground but often done incompletely. The later steps become possible only after the material is organized. (3) Hard copy is an unfamiliar increment for many, having an efficient summary of key points in one’s own handwriting or duplicated in a form students can keep. Developing the hard copy consolidates their understanding, winning half the battle. The remaining aim then is installing in mind what they already possess in writing. Too many teachers are satisfied just to get it in writing. As students expand their understanding, the same process applies to the new increment–get it formed so you at least “have it” and then assimilate it permanently. (4) Referring to this summary as a learning feat presents it to students as something they will perform. (5) Partner practice–telling the hard copy back and forth–roots their learning in peer relationships, and is a safe setting in which to practice expressing it until they are sure they maintain it (6). A major motive comes into play as they perform it daily (7), standing up in a game-like format. They also draw on the brain’s natural retentive powers with a few minutes daily of mental movie (8). The most powerful means of improving their behavior toward each other is appreciation time (9), telling others how they generated good feelings. These nine methods can be instituted on day one. Used steadily, they ensure learning and good feelings, and can change your class in two weeks.
An array of other ways to help students, however, are ready to install as needed. Improving communications is done by providing students criteria for conducting a discussion, and then having them rate themselves on their use of the specific skills (10-11). Developing their ability to listen and give total attention to each other can be done in pairs (12-13), and a variety of topics, conflict resolution skills, and group structures can stimulate whole class discussions (14-16). The use of ratings is valuable for many purposes–students scoring themselves or others on specific measures in the direction a teacher wishes to channel development (17), and the formal division of the class into captain-led organization groups can serve many purposes (18).
Several sections (19-28) help facilitate students’ self-awareness, management of feelings, changing unproductive thought processes, gaining greater use of their own latent traits, incorporating life wisdom, and gaining class order and cooperation. For classes that have been allowed to disintegrate into disorder, a judicious use of consequences (28) may need to be employed from the start to enable the other methods to work.
Student learning can be deepened, more readily absorbed, and more permanently retained (29-36). Peg list (29) explains how to “peg” ideas as they arrive in sequence so they can be quickly reinforced, and the practice element (30) explains how to tell the degree to which a learning method deepens learning by how directly it calls on a prior impression in the mind. A way to involve parents regularly and valuably yet briefly is by a designated listener agreement (31) with them. Some ways to help even kindergarteners master knowledge are noted (32), but my belief is that nearly all the methods work K-12 if scaled back to students’ frame of reference and taken in sequence. Memory hooks (33) contain suggestions of a familiar type. A way for students to plot their degree of concentration (34) stimulates them to get better at it. Walk Away (35) and Time Capsule (36) methods are ways to achieve perfect mastery of difficult material, such as in math and foreign languages, by using qualities of the brain efficiently.
Using maps (37), understanding degrees of precision (38), and saving the basics (39) address specific learning needs, while learning everything (40) is proposed and explained as a major purpose of education. Students can stimulate each other and save learning time by dividing subjects (41) and focusing on progress (42).
Scoring is distinguished from grading (43-50). I explain why the former encourages students more (it’s how they personally view their own effort), and how scoring by points-of-knowledge and time-explaining are objective measures of actual learning that make sense to students. Various configurations of scoreboards are offered, and suggestions for how to score language, math, reading, and writing.
Demonstrating learning occupies the last four sections (51-54). I apply the title of Academic Mastery Report (51) to a way to synthesize on one page all the scores a student masters in all subjects to present a more refined picture of his/her actual learning than do customary means. Curriculum performance (52) is the big brother of impromptu performance (8), a design for students to show off their learning in public in front of an audience. In checkpoint morning (53) they spend a half-day in a series of learning tasks and partner collaboration to master specific knowledge they choose for themselves. Team competitions (54) may be comprehensive involving several schools at once or confined to a few days in a single classroom.
A description of my pilot program and suggestions for implementation end the text, followed by ten appendices containing discussion topics, scoreboard designs, communication skills check sheet, progress ladder, and team competition worksheet.
Since math is a concern in so many localities, I’ll summarize a few points about it in terms of the sections above. Math lends itself well to my methods because of the specificity of its details and its cumulative nature, new sections building on prior understanding. What‘s correct or incorrect is typically clear concerning formulas, steps, sequences, and relationships. With math you can form very specific learning feats (4). A solid math task at any grade level is to master every term in the glossary of the textbook, usually 200-300 items, plotting each student’s progress visibly on a scoreboard reserved for this (47 and appendix 6).
An all-senses recording of summary, word-by-word explanations of math processes with hand-written hard copy (3) is, I believe, an overlooked, valuable increment. Asking “What are you doing?“ of students working long division can return a word salad of vague procedures. Any material that becomes easier as it becomes clearer should be put into a form that makes it extremely clear. Writing down their understanding adds precision and ownership. Explaining their understanding to a partner (5) can be especially helpful in math because in facing a peer we are congenitally driven to want to make sense, so we tax the limit of our understanding to do that. Presenting their understanding to another extricates them from stressful isolation and engages the linear, orderly part of their mind to resolve vagueness. Their needs for attention rise and are satisfied as they stand up to present answers successfully to questions they’ve practiced (7) and are applauded for them. Keeping visible track of their progress on a public scoreboard (47-48) increases their ownership of the results of their effort.
Two weeks to transformation.

John Jensen is a licensed clinical psychologist and author of The Silver Bullet Easy Learning System: How to Change Classrooms Fast and Energize Students for Success (Xlibris, 2008). He will email a free ebook copy of it to anyone requesting it, and welcomes comments sent to him directly at jjensen@gci.net.

Of course, having an educated population may not be the best thing if you want to rule over people.