What is Atomisation?

Quick start guide to Unstoppable Learning, and Atomisation

There are three kinds of atomisation.

1. Routine Atomisation

2. Factual Atomisation

3. Conceptual Atomisation

The best place to start is with Routine Atomisation.

Nearly everything you teach in maths is going to be one of The Four Elements:

1. Categorical Concept

2. Transformation Concept

3. Fact

4. Cognitive Routine

More on each of these in the future.

For now, cognitive routines are step by step processes. Expanding a pair of brackets, solving an equation, finding the area of the shape, these are all Cognitive Routines.

Right now, the dominant model is to teach these using worked example problem pairs, an idea made popular by John Sweller. Doug Lemov further popularised it with the TLaC technique ‘I do, We do, You do.’

When Sweller wrote about using worked examples, he was comparing it to a minimally-guided approach to teaching, like discovery learning. Compared to minimal guidance, worked examples are fantastic for managing cognitive load. Problem pairs are even better: the teacher works through an example, and then students get to try an almost identical example, with the original still up there for reference.

However, I do / We do problem pairs hit a hard limit for managing cognitive load, and so they still leave many children overloaded. If you have ever gone through a problem pair with a class and there were still kids in the room looking confused, or saying ‘I don’t get it,’ or just otherwise giving up, that’s what’s happening.

Routine Atomisation is the solution to this.

First, think through everything that has to go on in your head to solve the problem.

When you do this, you will discover that every ‘step,’ what we’re now going to call an Atom, will be one of the four elements.

And now you can do two things:

1. You can see what exactly is new learning for students, or exactly where they are struggling (this is like having X-Ray vision on students’ struggles!)

2. You can isolate and teach that atom completely independently of everything else <- this is what guarantees success

Here’s an example for finding the area of a Trapezium, using the formula:

Now let’s look at each atom.

Atom 1

Students should already be able to identify trapeziums before learning how to find their area. So this isn’t new.

Atom 2

The formula for the area probably is new.

Atom 3

This is also new. This atom is all about spotting which lengths are needed to calculate a trapezium’s area.

Atom 4

This is substitution, it shouldn’t be new to students.

Atom 5

This is calculation, or evaluation. It also should not be new. Students should have already worked with expressions like this one before being asked to use a formula to find the area of a trapezium.

Atom 6

This is stating the correct units, based on the information in the diagram. Students will probably have learned to find the area of other shapes before the trapezium, so this also isn’t new.

Now, it’s possible (probable) that students in your class will be weak on any number of these atoms. This is part of where the great challenge and complexity of teaching in a real classroom comes from. But we can simplify the problem for a moment, pick it apart one bit at a time, if we start by imagining that their prerequisite knowledge is secure. If it is, then the only things students need to learn are atoms 2 and 3.

Atom 2 is a fact, so there isn’t a lot for us to do other than state the fact, and then give them ‘shed loads of practice’ in retrieving the formula from memory.

Atom 3 is absolutely key. Traditional worksheets tend to give students only the three lengths they need (try going to google images now, and searching ‘area of a trapezium worksheet,’) so they never get to practise selecting the correct three lengths; they rarely develop the concept that it’s ‘those’ three lengths, in ‘that’ arrangement, that are key to the trapezium’s area.

This is an example of what I call a plutonium atom, the atom where all the power lies, something that will transform the end result, and increase their odds of success.

So what is it we do with atom 3 to assure that success?

We’ll take a look at that in a future post.