The MCIULearns Podcast

Mastering Math Retention and Comprehension with Dr. Paul Riccomini

• Montgomery County Intermediate Unit • Season 6 • Episode 1

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Join the MCIU on October 30th, December 4th, and December 5th as we unlock the keys to effective math education and retention with insights from Dr. Paul Riccomini, a leading expert in high-intensive education techniques. Discover how understanding cognitive processes—specifically the front end and back end of learning—can revolutionize your teaching approach. Learn practical strategies to manage working memory and prevent overload using graphic organizers and manipulatives, ensuring your students can absorb and process information efficiently. Dr. Riccomini also sheds light on retention techniques that help encode information into long-term memory, making it easier for students to recall and apply their knowledge.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

So there are very specific strategies that are designed to help kids handle this information in working memory. And the big point with teachers is working memory is limited and once it gets overloaded, learning will come to a screeching halt and a stop. So if you're trying to help kids learn something new the first time, then you're going to be focusing on techniques designed on the front end. When you're trying to help kids retain information, that's going to be focusing on the back end. For whatever reason, we just have not really focused on upgrading our retention techniques. So there are three retention techniques that I focus on.

Brandon Langer:

Hello Montgomery County and welcome to the MCIU Learns Podcast and Season 6. I can't believe it. We're already in year six of the MCIU Learns Podcast. My name is Brandon Langer and I'm the Director of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships. These are our conversations with ed leaders, thought leaders, everyone working in the space of education to improve outcomes on behalf of children. I'm excited to be kicking off this year with a great conversation about math education, and it's brought to us by our newest project consultant. Her name is Kirpa. I'm going to let her introduce herself and thank you for joining us.

Kirpa Chohan:

Awesome, it's exciting to be here. My name is Kirpa Chohan. I specialize in secondary math and I've had 10 years of classroom experience, including middle school and high school, and I just started this role in March and I'm excited to learn and grow in this role. Today with us we have Dr Paul Riccomini. Dr Paul Riccomini is renowned for his work on high-intensive education techniques and techniques that help students succeed in math and special education. Dr Riccomini, thank you for being here with us today. I'm glad to be here with everyone, thank you, so let's dive in. To start, would you be able to explain or share with us your background and what inspired you to focus on math and special education, and what particular is high intensive instructional techniques?

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

Sure. So I come from a family of educators. Both my mom and my dad were teachers. My dad became a school psychologist. My mom was a PE teacher. I have several siblings that are in the classroom, so we were surrounded by educators.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

My great-great aunt was the teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in western Pennsylvania, so teaching has been in our DNA for quite some time and I got very interested in math and I went down the route to be a secondary math teacher and the influence of my father and his background in special education and school psychology he encouraged me to really take more classes on the neuroscience of learning kids that are struggling and I got really interested in why two kids sitting right beside each other one has a disability, one doesn't they get the same instruction, the same opportunities, same practice, same manipulatives, picture representation, and one kid is getting it and one kid is just consistently struggling. So that was really kind of my impetus to go into the field and then also to pursue my PhD, which I did at Penn State, where I really delved into how can we support kids in learning mathematics, and that's really what I have been focusing on for the last 23 years.

Kirpa Chohan:

That's so interesting. A lot of your work is on cognitive processes involved in retaining and understanding mathematical information and why they are important to effective teaching. Would you be willing to explain a little bit about your work?

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

Sure. So this is, in my opinion, one of the most important things for educators is to really ground themselves in the cognitive process, and educators have all been trained on this, but we sometimes stray away from it or forget about it. But this is really how everyone learns any subject area, whether it's in school or out of school is that we have executive functioning, which includes the interaction between how we take in information, how that information is processed and eventually learned. So I break the cognitive process up into what I call the front end and the back end. So the front end is when you're trying to learn something new. So as a teacher, you're trying to teach kids something new. So strategies and techniques that are designed to help kids learn on the front end are specifically designed to address how kids take in information, and that could be adjusted by graphic organizers, organizing the content using manipulatives, picture, representation, sort of allowing the kids to take that information in. But this is where the cognitive process really gets important for learning. So as they take in information, it gets dumped into what we call the working memory or the short-term memory. That's really the oven in the kitchen. That's where the learning is happening. The cookies are being made. So there are very specific strategies that are designed to help kids handle this information in working memory. And the big point with teachers is working memory is limited and once it gets overloaded, learning will come to a screeching halt and a stop. So the strategies are designed to either help the kids take information in in a more organized fashion or apply techniques that offload that's a key phrase with me that offloads kids' working memory so they can better focus on the task at hand.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

Now, once information is learned, the fancy word for that is called encoding. So when we encode information, that means we've taken it, we've processed it and we've moved it into the long-term memory. So now we are talking about the back end of learning. So up to that point it was the front end, now on the back end of learning this. Up to that point it was the front end, now on the back end of learning. This is anything that's going to help kids retain what they have learned. So strategies have to be matched to the purpose of the lesson. So if you're trying to help kids learn something new the first time, then you're going to be focusing on techniques design on the front end. When you're trying to help kids retain information that's going to be focusing on the back end.

Brandon Langer:

So I have a follow-up there, because you just brought up a couple. First of all, this is fascinating to me. Second of all, I'm curious because you mentioned something about working memory and working memory often, I think, gets ignored in the executive functioning conversation. I think we spend a lot of time on what I would call inhibitory control or self-awareness, spend a lot of time on what I would call inhibitory control or self-awareness. You know those types of skills, but is it? Is there anything to support the idea that if working memory reaches its capacity, like you kind of said, that learning stops and therefore the other skills also suffer due to that? I'm just I know it's not really on topic for the math conversation, but yeah, so you know working memory is limited, so everything loads working memory.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

So in math, when you're solving a problem and I'm not talking a word problem, but when you're solving any type of problem it's a multifaceted task that requires language, language of instruction, vocabulary, free skills, because our content is very foundational and it's a progression. It requires kids to make connections of the new information with previously learned information. So in math it could be pre-skills or things of that nature, but it could also be experience. So you're working on a unit on geometry and you're doing some measurement. Kids may have experience at home or at a job where they were doing those things. So all of that loads working memory and when it gets overloaded, everything suffers. So their higher order thinking suffers, their reasoning, their generalization, their application, their interpretation, everything really gets bogged down. So that's something that I really tune into is most of the strategies that are designed to help kids learn something on the front end are going to have something in place that offloads something out of that working memory.

Brandon Langer:

So then I think that leads right into the next part. Sorry, you were teeing up before I took us on that tangent there around retention strategies. So what are those retention strategies, and particularly how they relate to mathematical concepts, and what should teachers be doing throughout the academic year to implement those in their classroom?

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

Yeah. So this idea of retention is something that I was not in the first half of my career. I was more focused on strategies to help on the front end of learning, and it was probably about 10 years ago I really started to dig into this body of literature on retention and I, quite frankly, was shocked at what I was reading in terms of comparing that to what I did as a classroom teacher. So I was a middle school and high school math teacher and special ed teacher, so I've seen both ends of the spectrum. So, as I was really digging into this research and I was reflecting back on the things I did to help kids retain information and it was completely disconnected from the research and some of this research has been around half a century, if not longer. So, for whatever reason, retention in the math classroom has not significantly changed from when I taught almost 25 years ago to when I was a teacher. Math teachers always like to say is we're creatures of habit, we tend to do the same things across time. So this body of research has really delineated there are three critical variables that have to be in an activity in order for it to help retention. So, like the takeaway and I get into this in depth when I work with teachers. The big takeaway is that the activity has to be designed with a mechanism that forces the kids to go into their long-term memory and retrieve the encoded information repeatedly. And if that doesn't happen, we have these activities that teachers are spending a lot of time planning and a lot of class time engaging kids in that are not actually doing what we think they're doing, and it's a disconnect. And this is not a criticism of teachers. It's not embedded in the programs For whatever reason. We just have not really focused on upgrading our retention techniques.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

So there are three retention techniques that I focus on. One of them is called space learning. Over time it's been around a long time. That's the one I think teachers are closest to doing. The second one is interleaving practice format, and that is math specific and that's not built into the publishing programs and we as teachers don't really do that. So that's that is a big one.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

And the last one is called practice test retrieval. So the slot and the space learning and the practice retrieval are appropriate for any content area, any grade level where the interleaving is math specific, at any grade level. So the other nice thing about these retention strategies is they're K-12 appropriate. So that's rare in the instructional design world is that I can have an AP Calc teacher sit next to a kindergarten teacher and they can learn the exact same strategy. Obviously the delivery and the content will be different, but these are K-12 appropriate. And I think this is the next big upgrade for teachers is to really dig in and have a better, deeper understanding and then have the tools to address retention, because that is the key in math is retention long-term.

Kirpa Chohan:

We're really excited to have you come in and on October 30th we are focusing. The session that you're providing is on how to enhance retention, and it is K to 12, and it's going to go over all these strategies and, if I'm not correct, if I'm not correct, these strategies also have a little bit of crossover with the learning scientists. Right, it's one of it's the three strategies out of the six that's mentioned in their work as well, correct?

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

Absolutely. They all have a very, very robust literature base that supports them, with many different students across many different grade levels. Obviously, there's some gray areas, as is the case with all research, but, yeah, these are definitely anchored with the science of learning.

Kirpa Chohan:

Perfect. And then we also have you coming in on December 4th and December 5th and those sessions are a little bit separated because they are grade band separated. So we have one elementary and one secondary session and they are focused on problem solving and reasoning, and I'm guessing that they are separate grade bands because the brain functions different at an earlier stage in elementary level and secondary level. Would you be able to tell us why, for the elementary level, developing mathematical language is crucial for students and how it supports their mathematical reasoning?

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

Yeah. So this is another area that's really gaining a lot of momentum recently. Is this idea of language and its interaction with learning math. I don't think anyone. I think everyone agrees that content.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

Language is important for any subject area and if you look at other subject areas like ELA, they spend a lot of time teaching vocabulary. Teachers have learned lots of vocabulary strategies. You see it in science and social studies, but in math the language is kind of getting embedded simultaneously with everything else and what we're really seeing is vocabulary with everything else and what we're really seeing is the vocabulary. Knowledge in math accounts for about 25% of a kid's test score at the end of the year, and that's a lot. And math is a science. Therefore it has a very specific language and if kids don't understand the spoken language of instruction they're not going to be able to learn it. So we have that piece there and it starts day one. And what tends to kind of be challenging with kids in learning math language is they don't ever hear it outside of math class. The only time they're going to hear and have opportunities to say, use verbal or written is during math class. So that puts us at a big disadvantage.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

When I taught. I would say the only subject area that I did anything special on vocabulary was when I taught geometry. Most math teachers say well, geometry is a whole other language, we have to teach it. But most of the time we're just kind of simultaneously embedding vocabulary. So this is getting a lot of attention. The vocabulary expands quickly.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

By third, fourth grade kids have already been exposed to three to four hundred math-specific terms that often have different meanings outside of math class, which further complicates things. So it's really sort of one of these things that we all know it's important but we kind of struggle a little bit of how to maybe go a little bit more intensive on the techniques. The big issue is there's too many vocabulary words to spend to teach every single one of them, so we have to prioritize. So part of intensifying instruction is making some decisions related around priority. Vocabulary kind of spans the front end and the back end. So we have to teach it on the front end, so we have to help kids learn it. But then the other thing is we have to make sure that they're remembering it. So we're going to kind of span both the front end and the back end with vocabulary.

Kirpa Chohan:

That's really interesting. And for the secondary grade, Ben, you are doing work, you're working on the teachers with work solution strategy. What does that entail?

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

Yeah, so work solution strategy is a technique that has been building what I call sort of a critical mass of research. So initially with this technique a lot of the research studies were done in university lab settings so and it was finding this technique to be very effective. The sort of the caveat with that is it's in university settings, so it was using lots of college students and then you have a skewed sample Like who are the samples in that? But over the last 10 years we've now reached a critical mass of studies that have worked with kids and it's finding the same things that it found in the labs. Now in classrooms where you have kids of varying abilities, varying backgrounds, varying language pieces, and they're finding that it is very effective. Now this is a technique that has really only been studied in middle school and up, so that's why we kind of parse this out.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

I don't do this with elementary Now. From a theoretical framework, I think this technique could probably work down to third or fourth graders. We just have not studied it yet. But essentially the work solution strategy leverages worked examples of in a guided practice slash practice situation and what they found is when you give kids a fully worked example where they interact with it. It offloads their working memory because they're not writing or trying to calculate or trying to remember a step. They're more in a reasoning and explaining task. So by offloading that out of their working memory, we're freeing up their capacity. They have more capacity to reason and explain. So, teachers that have worked with me and those that will work with me through these sessions, you're going to see me really going back to that cognitive process, because that really is anchoring all of the strategies that we will be learning.

Kirpa Chohan:

Those are really great strategies and especially now, we need to move our students more to reasoning and having those problem solving skills, because that's what the market like, the global market and our needs. We have one last question for you, and that is we just learned that you started your first day today, and many of our school districts are also starting their first day of school this week, and we have so many teachers who are trying to. They're so excited and ready to try out some new ideas. What advice would you give mathematics teachers seeking to improve their instructional practice and support their student learning more effectively?

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

So first I would say, take some deep breaths. Math is hard. It is a content that progresses and you as a teacher cannot control what happened last year, you can't control what's happening at home, and that you really have to focus on the kids that you have in front of them and trying to meet them where they're at. And I and I recognize as a teacher, that becomes very challenging as we get older because kids have not experienced success. They tend to have be very unmotivated again about math and that creates all kinds of challenges. But the key piece is there are things that and things I'm using very globally that we can do to help kids learn and acquire mathematics. And you know it is one of those subject areas that a lot of people struggle with. A lot of people have bad experiences with just talk. You know, parent open house If you've had that, I'm sure you've had that conversation about, I don't know. Remember how to do this math or this is new math.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

And the teacher is the most important part of a kid's math program. Curriculum is important, important part of a kid's math program. Curriculum is important. Assessments are important, but assessments don't teach anybody anything. It is the teacher taking that information and putting it in a way that is digestible and accessible to the kids and just understand you are important in this role. It doesn't get much better than that, right? That's right. And you know, even though I've moved into the ivory tower, I did teach several years but I've got a lot of siblings that keep me grounded in what's happening in the classroom. Anytime we have a family get together, I'm hearing all about what's happening. Yeah.

Brandon Langer:

I'm in the same boat as you. My whole family's in education. My wife's a teacher. We're talking shop even when we're not supposed to be talking shop.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

Yeah, exactly, and teachers are a vital part of our society and I just think that they need to hear that more and more and more.

Brandon Langer:

Well, I really appreciate today's conversation. I find it fascinating. The last couple of years we've had a number of math guests. These are among my favorite conversations and you hit a lot of things on the nail, on the head there for me at the end around some things about language and what that is in math and the challenges it presents. In math we talk similarly. I'm a former music teacher, very similar in the music area, so that really rang true to me.

Brandon Langer:

I'm excited for these upcoming offerings on October 30th and December 4th and 5th. So thank you very much for joining us, sharing kind of a teaser for what's going to be covered this fall. Kirpa, thank you so much for joining and bringing these to MCIU this fall. I do have one parting question for the two of you, because I am doing something a little bit different to wrap these up this year, totally off the beaten path. If you're going to give the audience listening one song to go listen to to kick off their school year to, you know something that you've been listening to at the end of summer here, I need a song from each of you.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

Here. I'm going to let you go first.

Kirpa Chohan:

I think I'm going to go with Thunder by Imagine Dragons. Just because it's the start of the year, we have all this excitement and I think we can do something about it.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

I love it. Well, brandon, although I do math, I am terrible with songs and games. So I have a 13-year-old daughter who is a Taylor Swiftie, so I'm going to say any Taylor Swift song.

Brandon Langer:

Any Taylor Swift song Is what.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

I would go with.

Brandon Langer:

From pop. What I've learned about pop culture is there are millions of people right along with you in that boat. So I think you know, and I know we have a couple of those in this office that will also jump in on that bandwagon as well. But, all right, great, there you have it. Thank you both for sitting down and talking today, again looking for the offerings this fall, and we'll look forward to having you. This is on site, right At the MCIU, kirpa.

Kirpa Chohan:

Yes, it is.

Brandon Langer:

Awesome, we'll look forward to hosting you, dr Riccimini. Thanks again for joining us.

Dr. Paul Riccomini:

Thank you and I look forward to seeing you again.

Brandon Langer:

Thank you For all those listening. We offerings up on our MCIU Learning Network, learnmciuorg. You can follow us across all the social networks at MCIU Learns. Please reach out if you have any questions and we look forward to seeing you this fall you.