Tim Warre - Atomic Classroom Habits

 Innovate ELT 2023 

Oxford TEFL, 20-21 May, 2023

Tim Warre - Atomic Classroom Habits

Tim’s session at Innovate ELT 2023 was based on the book ‘Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results’ by James Clear (2018) and observations of the habits of some of his more successful students.

First of all, a clarification. I’d initially interpreted the ‘atomic’ in the title of the talk as a negative adjective: a habit to be eliminated, but in fact – as is clear in the title of the book – atomic actually refers to ‘tiny’: small changes that are doable and manageable. Clear calls this the ‘aggregation of marginal gains’, which ultimately lead to growth and development: an altogether more positive message!

The Four Laws of Behaviour Change

Tim introduced us to four rules that will facilitate the adoption of positive habits:

1. Make it obvious

2. Make it attractive

3. Make it easy 

4. Make it satisfying

He then went on to give examples of how he had applied these rules in his own daily life. He wanted to increase the amount of time he spent reading, so.... 

Make it obvious – place a book on your pillow every morning.   

Make it attractive – use ‘temptation bundling’ strategies, e.g. after you’ve read three pages, you get to check twitter. 

Make it easy – the book is right there, close to hand.  

Make it satisfying – use a habit tracking app to track your streaks. Set a yearly goal on Goodreads 

In the next stage of the workshop, Tim suggested some strategies for applying some of these rules with your students, This was a packed session, so I'm only sharing a small sample here.

Implementation intentions

Set ‘implementation intentions’ on the first day of class. Students state what habit they hope to adopt and add when and where to make it realistic. The teacher gives themself as an example.

This kind of activity takes advantage of students’ initial enthusiasm. I’ve done a similar activity with a ‘Student Contract’ for years. The challenge is to maintain that energy, so Tim followed up with suggestions about how to make the changes sustainable.

Retrieval Practice

Integrate plenty of opportunities for ‘Retrieval Practice’ into your classes – spaced repetition to help learners retrieve information from long-term memory. Here Tim recommended some ideas from the book ‘Retrieval Practice’ by Kate Jones, a History teacher working in mainstream education. Some examples include ‘retrieval placemats’ and ‘retrieval grids’ which can be seen in the images below:

Use the first 5 minutes of class to choose a topic from the grid and ‘brain dump’ what they remember in pairs. Then check their notes and add further information (in a different colour). In the next class, choose a different square from the grid.

Tim suggests putting ideas for retrieval practice on cards (e.g. four ways of disagreeing politely) together with the dates these were introduced in class. Students get extra points for remembering things from further in the past.

Habit Tracking

Using Habit tracking apps can make progress more satisfying. Apps such as Habitica  gamify your progress. You can even set group challenges and win weapons and power points to defeat the app ‘bosses’ (feral dust bunnies was a particular favourite!).

The session was packed with practical and useable classroom activities. Consult Tim’s blog for further ideas,

For anyone interested in following up with what research has to say about the habits and strategies used by successful language learners, I’d recommend Griffiths, C. (Ed.) (2009) Lessons from Good Language Learners, CUP.

You can also watch James Clear talking about Atomic Habits here