The Crafted Conversation 30th of September, 2024

Week commencing: 30th of September, 2024

Weekly Crafted Concept

To elaborate is to make connections beyond the detail or learning in front of us.

For the purpose of this discussion and the Podcast episode this week, I consider elaboration to involve the additional colour added to learning:

• questioning

• explaining and describing

• making links and connections

  • to previously learned material

  • memories

  • experiences

Elaboration is about interrogating the learning you are presented with. Why will that method work? What impact will that formation have on the game? Who will be the free player? Why does that happen? If that muscle contracts, which bone will it pull on?

As learners we already possess a wealth of memory traces, or schema, and learning material in our long-term memory. It is here that the new material can be given greater meaning, by connecting with what we already know to form a deeper sense of processing and encoding for the future.

Once encoded, learning must be retrieved with effort, ideally spaced over time in order to allow for some forgetting. In doing so, we retrieve the most salient and important information. Deliberate elaboration at this stage is the most powerful.

An example from my classroom.

I have just taught A Level syllabus around the impact of 19th century public schools on the development of modern sport. In doing so, we discuss the concept of morality, sportsmanship, and ethical behaviour and humility practiced on the sports field, known as the “cult of athleticism”. Physical endeavour for the development of character. I deliberately reminded my pupils of the similar values we learned over a year ago related to the values of the Modern Olympic Games. Pupils were able to link their knowledge of these values with the fact that the founder of the Modern Games was inspired by public school sport in the UK during the same time period.

This existing memory trace was thus decoded from long-term memory, elaboratively interrogated against the new learning, and re-encoded with deeper levels of processing.

In short:

Curious Craft: Application to The Classroom

• ensure that previous learning has a chance to be interrogated against the new via curriculum construction which practices regular spaced retrieval of prior learning

• discuss basic memory model theories with pupils to empower them with knowledge of how they learn, and the reasons behind your instructional choices

• design tasks which foreground the opportunity for pupils to contextualise their learning through elaboration:

  • how does it fit within their daily lives?

Curious Craft: Application to The Coach

• When coaching new tactical concepts or strategies, interrogate their positive and negative impacts

  • what could go right? What could go wrong?

  • what prior experiences do the team/athletes have?

• carefully construct stories which can act as opportunities to generate meaning and depth to player/athlete learning

  • “we play this way without the ball because of the history of the team/area we serve/fan base as a hard working mining town”

• build learning for athletes/players which allow for the coaching of foundational principles to be regularly relearned and applied to further, deeper tactical learning

The Crafted Conversation

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