Book 10. Atomisation

Here are the resources referenced in the Tips for Teachers guide to Atomisation.

Want to know more?

Kris Boulton and I have recorded a series of podcasts on Atomisation:

1. #024 Kris Boulton – Part 1: Planning Lessons, Engelmann and Differentiation
2. #031 Kris Boulton – Part 2: Minimally guided instruction, Understanding, How before Why
3. #098 Kris Boulton – Part 3: Is cognitive science almost useless for designing effective teaching?
4. #190 Atomisation and Unstoppable Learning with Kris Boulton
5. #201 Atomisation in Action – episode 1 (with Kris Boulton and Lee Wheeler)
6. #203 Atomisation in Action – episode 2 (with Kris Boulton and Lee Wheeler)
7. #207 Atomisation in Action – episode 3 (with Kris Boulton and Lee Wheeler)

Also, be sure to check out Kris’ Unstoppable Learning website and sign up for his newsletter.

Footnotes

1. Principles of Instruction by Barak Rosenshine. Read an analysis of the paper here
2. #190 Atomisation and Unstoppable Learning with Kris Boulton. Listen to our conversation here
3. Check out the Unstoppable Learning website here
4. Theory of Instruction: Principles and Applications by Englemann and Carnine, available here
5. #082 Mark McCourt: the return! Teaching for mastery. You can listen to the conversation here
6. You can read more about planning Learning Episodes here
7. I write about conveying purpose to students here
8. Teaching with Worked Examples – Why the Selection of Problems for Exemplification is Critical by Wesenberg et al. Read an analysis of the paper here
9. I wrote about this in a post called “Just give them a calculator” that – according to the comments – certainly divided opinion! You can read it here
10. A Study of Students’ Readiness to Learn Calculus by Carlson, Madison, and West. Read an analysis of the paper here
11. This is the classic 80/20 Principle. 20% of the effort, gives us 80% of the results
12. The Components of Direct Instruction by Watkins and Slocum. Read an analysis of the paper here
13. There is a 5th type of Atom called a Comparative. Gradient and Speed are examples. But they occur so infrequently that I have chosen to omit them from this book to focus on the four Atom types (Categorical, Fact, Transformation and Routine) that you will encounter most frequently.
14. Read Kris Boulton’s post How to Teach Element 1 of 4: Categoricals here
15. There is a good video on using PowerPoint’s morphing feature here
16. You can read Kris Boulton’s post, Concrete Example – Teaching Bearings (1) here
17. For more on Call and Respond and Explain, Frame, Reframe, check out
    The Tips for Teachers guide to Call and Respond.
18. Your mini-whiteboard routines need to be tight when assessing Transformation Atoms. The Tips for Teachers guide to Mini-whiteboards contains lots of ideas to support this.
19. A good place to start is Kris’ post on Expansion Sequences here