Teacher Development
Establishing Conditions For Learning
What the evidence says:
- Know and understand your pupils and their influences. Understanding a pupil’s context will inform effective responses to behaviours.
- Deliberately teach positive learning behaviours modelling and promoting respectful relationships.
- Proactively plan to reduce off task behaviours through effective lesson planning. Using differentiation, scaffolding, clear instruction and transitions.
- Use classroom management strategies to support good classroom behaviour - Consistency and routines are at the heart of promoting good behaviour and a positive learning environment.
- Tailor targeted approaches to meet the needs of individuals in your school. Be mindful of the need for adjustments and flexibility where appropriate, for example considering age-related development and children with SEND.
- Use the whole child approach which recognises that social and emotional development and wellbeing is an integral part of achieving success in school and for the future.
- Consistency and coherence at a whole-school level are paramount. Behaviour programmes are more likely to have an impact on attainment outcomes if implemented at whole-school level.
Best Practice:
Clear and consistent Routines
- Repeated teaching strategies help students feel safe, calm and secure. Routines should be taught explicitly and established at the start of the year, and then used every lesson across the year.
- Strategies such as meet them at the door, do it now, 5 to start, 5 to finish, countdowns, seating plans, planners on green all reduce opportunity for off task behavior.
Narrate the Positive
- Aim for the overall narrative of the lesson to be positive. Build a climate of respect and kindness, modelling positive responses by stating what you want to see, not what you don’t want to see.
- Always bring the focus back to the work. Try to de-escalate situations and avoid publicly highlighting students that are doing the wrong thing, giving them the stage.
Establishing conditions through High expectations
- Have high expectation for all learners. Push for 100% compliance on any expectations you have.
- The best condition for learning in most cases is silence and this is particularly important for SEND students.
Explicit instruction
- Understand the difference between task and behavioural instruction. Use both verbal and non-verbal to reinforce these.
- Make sure instruction is Specific and observable Not “pay attention” but “pencil down and look at me” Sequential “Feet under the table, pencil down, eyes on me” Front Loaded – Most important instruction first – In silence, when I say in one minute we will …. and has a Time and sound expectation - In silence for 1 minute.
Know why students are not doing what you ask
- Understanding why a student has not done what you have asked will help you understand how you can correct it. Most behavior can be pro-actively approached and teaching strategies put in place to avoid student being off task because – they don’t understand the work or there is an opportunity in the lesson. Very few behaviors are purely due to defiance.
Understand cognitive load
- Cognitive load theory (CLT) is an exceptionally robust piece of cognitive science research. CLT proposes that our working memories are limited and can be easily overwhelmed when presented with too much information. When students feel overloaded this results in a range of off task behaviours. Planning with CLT in mind can reduce behviour due to cognitive overload.
Understand and use the school behaviour policy
- Know how and when to use the three-line system. Consistently use systems for praise and sanction.
- Communicate with home as often as you can for both the positive and negative. If calling home for areas of concerns, be precise about what these are and set next steps and targets. Ring home frequently until these targets have been met.
Links to evidence:
Rhodes, Igraine (EEF) (2019) Improving behaviour in schools. Six recommendations for improving behaviour in schools.
Improving Behaviour in Schools | EEF (educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk)
Bennet, Tom (2017) Creating a Culture: How school leaders can optimise behaviour Department for Education (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Alice Dunn (2021) What’s best for behaviour management? ‘No excuses’ or restorative justice — what’s best for behaviour management? | Teach First
Mould, Kirsten (2020) What are effective Learning Behaviours – and how can we develop them in our pupils?
Quigley, Alex (2021) ‘Evidence into Action’, focusing on ‘Managing behaviour and building habits’.
Rose, Nick, White, Ben (2019) The challenge of changing behaviours. Changing behaviours | Ambition Institute
Sydenham Staff Library. Further Reading
Teach New Material
What the evidence says:
- As teachers, we should be aware of the cognitive load on our students when we are teaching new material. (Sweller, 1988)
- Presenting material in small steps lifts the load on a student’s working memory allowing them to make sense of the new material (Rosenshine, 2012)
- Fully guided instruction is the most efficient way to teach new material with students gradually gaining independence as their long term memory becomes more secure (Sweller, Clark, Kirschner 2012)
- Eradicate all distractions and ensure student’s attention is solely on your explanation. (Hobiss, 2017)
- Combining verbal and visual information during instruction leads to greater learning gains (Mayer, 2019)
Best Practice:
· Connect to prior learning
o Make use of what students already know. Always instruct students to connect new learning to existing learning.
· Subject knowledge
o Good teacher explanation is underpinned by strong subject knowledge. Use the expertise in your department to improve your own understanding.
· Concrete Examples
o Use concrete examples for abstract concepts as learner’s brains actively seek out concrete examples (Willingham, 2009)
§ Say if you wanted to teach students what a Pomelo fruit was, when first describing one it would be better to say: “It is like a large grapefruit but with green skin and pink flesh”, rather than: “It is 30cm in circumference, green and weighs about 100 grams.” In this example the grapefruit is the concrete example.
· Self Explanation
o Provide time for student self explanation after you have given a full explanation with multiple examples. E.g.
§ In a recent observed English lesson, students were exploring the character Inspector Goole from Priestley’s ‘An Inspector Calls’, the teacher presented the class with four theories about who Inspector Goole could be before pairing students up to explain the ideas to each other through structured talk, followed by independent writing.
· Clear, sequential powerpoints with simple images
o Keep powerpoints free from unnecessary distractions. (See Page 20, NSW document below) Reveal information sequentially rather than in one big chunk. Harness the power of a simple diagram or image with a verbal explanation to reduce cognitive load. Don’t talk and display lots of text at the same time.
· Teach Vocabulary
o Teach targeted tier 2 and 3 vocabulary explicitly like you would any other new material.
Links to evidence:
- Clark, Kirschner, Sweller (2012) Putting Students on the Path to Learning https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Clark.pdf
- Rosenshine (2012) Principles Of Instruction https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Rosenshine.pdf
- Hobiss (2017) Why I think it is important to study attention in school children
- Centre for Education and Statistics (2018) New South Wales https://khsbpp.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/cognitive_load_theory_practice_guide_aa.pdf
- EEF (2019) Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools
- Adam Boxer (2020) Dual Coding for Teachers Who Cant Draw. Simple explanation of Mayer’s Multimedia theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16SBht2iF_k
Sydenham Staff Library. Further Reading
Question
What the evidence says
- Instruction, which includes posing questions during lessons, is more effective in producing achievement gains than instruction carried out without questioning students. (Rosenshine, 2012)
- Asking process questions on how students answered a question or completed a problem leads to better learning (Rosenshine, 2012)
- Increasing wait time between questions and answers leads to deeper thinking. (Cotton, 1988 and Lemov 2016)
- Oral questions posed during classroom instruction is more effective in fostering learning than written questions (Cotton, 1988)
Best Practice
· Ratio
o Learning happens when students think hard. The best questioning ensures more students are thinking in greater depth. Doug Lemov in ‘Teach Like a Champion’ asks teachers to consider this ratio, with some excellent classroom examples in the blog below by Adam Boxer.
· No hands up
o A simple habit to ensure more students are thinking is to have a no hands up classroom and targeted questions.
o Students can only raise their hands when wanting to ask a question
· Timing of Questions
o With older and higher ability students, ask questions before (as well as after) material is read and studied. (Cotton, 1988)
o Question younger and lower ability students only after material has been read and studied. (Cotton, 1988)
· Think Pair Share
o An incredibly simple way to ensure that all students are thinking. Ask a question to the whole class then:
§ Think. Every student needs to think of an answer
§ Pair. Discuss with the student next to them.
§ Share. Select some students to share with the class
· Pose Pause Bounce Pounce
o Another powerful simple technique
§ Pose a question to the whole class.
§ Pause. Give plenty of thinking time if it is a challenging question.
§ Pounce. Select a student to answer the question
§ Bounce. Choose another student to elaborate on the first answer or make a connection.
· Hinge Questions
o These multiple choice questions appear at key points of a lesson to gain a quick snapshot of a every single student’s understanding out and to flush any misconceptions
§ Dylan Wiliam discusses further here:
· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5SZZt207k
· Mini Whiteboards
o Elicit a response from every student using mini whiteboards. Particularly useful for short answer questions and multiple choice
o Red, yellow and green cards in planners are useful for multiple choice questions assigning a colour to each answer
Links to evidence
- Rosenshine (2012) Principles Of Instruction https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Rosenshine.pdf
- Cotton (1988) Classroom questioning https://educationnorthwest.org/sites/default/files/resources/classroom-questioning-508.pdf
- Boxer (2020) Ratio https://achemicalorthodoxy.wordpress.com/2020/02/09/ratio/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5SZZt207k
- Christodolou (2013) Closed and High Order Questioning https://daisychristodoulou.com/2013/10/closed-questions-and-higher-order-thinking/
- Fletcher- Wood (2013) Hinge Questions https://improvingteaching.co.uk/2013/08/17/do-they-understand-this-well-enough-to-move-on-introducing-hinge-questions/
Sydenham staff library, further reading
Model
what the evidence says
- Modelling of skills, task completion and problem solving by a teacher is a cornerstone of effective teaching. Revealing the thought processes and metacognition of an expert helps to develop pupils’ metacognitive and independent skills. (EEF, 2018)
- New learners who are asked to learn through problem solving perform worse on future tests than those who are taught using modelling and worked examples. Those who learnt through problem solving particularly struggled when transferring their understanding to a slightly different problem. (Clark, Kirschner, Sweller, 2012)
- Modelling and worked examples reduce the cognitive load on students allowing them to focus on the processes of learning a new skill rather than simple task completion (Rosenshine 2012)
- Modelling should be gradually removed thus developing independent and highly metacognitive students (EEF, 2018)
best practice
· I do, We do, You do
o A simple sequence to follow
§ I do. Teacher models to the class with metacognitive instruction whilst all students pay attention
§ We do. Worked examples in which both teacher and student work at the same time. This is often the most neglected part of the sequence.
§ You do. Guided practice in the first instance with partially completed examples leading to greater independence. (see practice section below)
§ ‘I, we, you’ is explained in the following blog https://classteaching.wordpress.com/2018/12/05/i-we-you-a-simple-approach-to-modelling/
· Live modelling
o Modelling works best when it is created in front of the student’s eyes by the teacher rather than through examples prepared before the lesson
o Modelling through a visualiser whilst connected to the whiteboard can be powerful particularly when using the same equipment as the students.
§ Try writing a model answer or solving an equation live on the visualiser whilst all students are observing intently
o When modelling on a whiteboard, make sure all students can clearly see and the writing is clear and legible
· Thinking out loud
o Teachers should verbalise their metacognitive thinking (‘What do I know about problems like this? What ways of solving them have I used before?’) as they model. Think aloud about how you are solving the problem and lift the veil of hidden thinking. (Hardmen, 2001)
· Worked Examples
o This is a problem that has already been solved. Every step is fully solved and explained
o Gradually give students more independence with partially worked examples
· Mastery versus Coping Models
o Weak learners learn more from focusing their observations on weak models, whereas better learners learn more from focusing on good models. (Braaksma et al 2002)
§ Mastery models shows the task done perfectly, demonstrating high levels of confidence. This model benefits higher attaining students
§ Coping/ weaker models show slight hesitations and errors in the task completion but with a gradual improvement. This benefits lower attaining students in the first instance but with increasingly better models as they progress.
· Modelling and Practice
o The EEF report states that practice straight after modelling is vitally important
links to evidence
- Rosenshine (2012) Principles Of Instruction https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Rosenshine.pdf
- EEF (2018) Metacognition and Self Regulated Learning
- Braaksma et al (2002) Observational Learning and the Effects of Model–Observer Similarity
- Thornton (2019) I, we, you modelling https://mrthorntonteach.com/2019/10/05/i-we-you/
- Freis (2020) I, we, you modelling in my classroom https://classteaching.wordpress.com/2020/01/28/i-we-you-modelling-in-my-classroom/
- Fletcher-Wood (2018) The Magic of Models https://improvingteaching.co.uk/2018/09/02/showing-what-success-looks-like-the-magic-of-models/
sydenham staff library, further reading
Practice & Scaffold
what the evidence says
· The more successful teachers provide extensive and successful practice both in the classroom and for homework. (Rosenshine, 2012)
· Practice including rephrasing, elaborating, summarising and encountering similar questions but in different forms leads to greater retention in the long term memory (Rosenshine, 2012)
· Thinking about the meaning of the content leads to deeper processing. Practice tasks should be designed to make students think about the deeper meaning. (Craik and Lockhart, 1972)
· The gold standard of practice, followed by many expert performers, is deliberate practice. (Ericsson, 2016). As teachers we can design tasks and a classroom environment that maximise these deliberate practice principles:
o Push beyond one’s comfort zone
o Work towards well defined specific goals
o Focus intently on practice activities
o Respond to high quality feedback
o Develop a mental model of expertise
· Carefully designed guided practice and scaffolded tasks, with support gradually withdrawn as the pupil becomes proficient, can allow pupils to develop skills and strategies without placing too many demands on their mental resources. (EEF, 2018)
· Multitasking is an impossibility when thinking deeply. Remove all attention distractions and design practice tasks that ensure students only think about what you want them to think about. (Craik and Lockhart, 1972)
· The most successful students can self regulate their own learning whilst engaged in practice. They are adept at metacognitive strategies like planning, monitoring and evaluation. (Zimmerman, 1989)
best practice
· Classroom conditions
o If students are engaged in independent practice the optimum classroom condition is silence. This allows them to ‘focus intently on practice activities’ (Ericcson, 2016)
o Minimise any distractions or attention grabbers during practice. Seemingly benign acts like looking through a pencil case can interfere with a student’s attention during practice.
· Aims of practice tasks
o Tasks are best designed with a very clear aim in mind. Be careful of designing practice activities and tasks that engage students in unintended ways
§ E.g. asking students to make a powerpoint about the Battle of Hastings might make students better at using powerpoint rather than deepen their understanding of the Battle of Hastings and its significance to British History
· Scaffolding
o For complex tasks, scaffolding is essential. It allows all students to attempt challenging work that moves their learning forward. It prevents teachers simplifying work for lower achievers. This is likely to widen the gap between students. Scaffolding can take the form of:
§ Extra models showing success
§ Cue cards and checklists
§ Writing frames
o Scaffolds are temporary structures. The aim is always to gradually remove them over time.
· Metacognition and self regulation
o Rosenshine recommends more guided and scaffolded practice for all students allowing space in the working memory for metacognition. Students therefore spend more time evaluating the way they are practising rather than merely trying to find the right answer.
o Students engaging successfully in independent practice may be a shared goal of our school but this is not best achieved by practising to be independent.
o Self regulation including planning, monitoring and evaluation should be modelled by teachers and then taught as skills and knowledge specific to each subject. (Zimmerman,1989)
· High Success Rate
o Plan for an 80% success rate when asking questions and designing practice tasks. Students are gaining greater fluency through retrieving previous knowledge as well as being challenged to learn new material or skills.
links to evidence
- Rosenshine (2012) Principles Of Instruction https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Rosenshine.pdf
- EEF (2018) Metacognition and Self Regulated Learning
- Zimmerman (2019) Learning and Adolescent Mind http://learningandtheadolescentmind.org/people_04.html
- Didau (2019) The Myth of Multitasking https://learningspy.co.uk/featured/three-animated-films-about-learning/
- Tsai (2019) Teaching Great Writing One Sentence at a Time. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/learning/teaching-great-writing-one-sentence-at-a-time.html
- Lemov (2013) https://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/the-art-of-the-sentence/
sydenham staff library, further reading
Check Understanding
what the evidence says
- The more effective teachers frequently check all student’s understanding at every stage of the learning process. (Rosenshine, 2012)
- Students learn by connecting their understanding of new information to prior knowledge followed by a mental summary: the “gist” of what they have learnt. When left on their own, without a check for understanding, students will often make errors when creating this mental summary. (Rosenshine, 2012)
- The most fundamental component of teaching is imparting information to students, assessing and evaluating the students’ understanding of this information, and then matching the next teaching act to the present understanding of the student. (Hattie, 2008)
- More complex skills like writing essays, playing a game of netball or answering long form questions, can be broken down into smaller tasks to practise. There is great value in designing assessments which try to capture progress against these smaller units (Christodolou,2017)
- Check for understanding should be at the heart of the learning process and must be at the forefront of every teacher’s planning (Wiliam, 2011).
- Students are more likely to act on feedback from their peers than they would on feedback from a teacher. (Wiliam, 2015)
best practice
· Formative assessment
o The 5 strategies for powerful formative assessment as recommended by Dylan Wiliam are:
1. Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions
2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning
3. Providing feedback that moves learners forward
4. Activating students as learning resources for one another
5. Activating students as owners of their own learning
o Each strategy relies on the strengths of the other strategies and is unlikely to work on its own
· In the classroom
o Have you understood versus What have you understood
§ A simple change can have a radical shift in checking for student’s understanding
§ Asking “Have you understood?” probably leads in most cases to a nod of the student’s head. Presuming understanding at this stage can be damaging.
§ It is potentially more powerful to ask “What have you understood?” and ask students to explain to each other in pairs first or for everyone to write down their answers followed by targeting students to answer in front of the class.
§ Multiple responses often raise subtle misconceptions that can then be addressed.
o Many other all class response techniques are covered in the “Question’ section above
o Peer and self checking
§ Checking for understanding is at its most effective at the point of learning. This can be better achieved by teaching students how to self regulate, and check their learning against very clear criteria.
§ Students can also check for understanding of their peer’s learning provided this is carefully controlled and taught by the teacher.
§ This process also reduces teacher marking outside of the lesson
links to evidence
- Christodolou (2017) What makes a good formative assessment https://daisychristodoulou.com/2017/02/what-makes-a-good-formative-assessment/
- Rosenshine (2012) Principles Of Instruction https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Rosenshine.pdf
-
Sherringham (2019) Revisiting Dylan Wiliam’s Five Brilliant Formative Assessment Strategies.
- https://teacherhead.com/2019/01/10/revisiting-dylan-wiliams-five-brilliant-formative-assessment-strategies/
- Wiliam (2015) Practical Ideas For Classroom Formative Assessment https://www.dylanwiliamcenter.com/2015/02/03/practical-ideas-for-classroom-formative-assessment/
sydenham staff library, further reading
Feedback
what the evidence says
- The starting point of good feedback is asking the right questions in the first place. Key activities should provide the teacher insight into the students’ learning. (Wiliam, 2017)
- “If a teacher is marking everything a student does, it is bad teaching. It is using time in a way that does not have the greatest benefit for students”. (Wiliam, 2017)
- Key complex activities to be assessed by the teacher. All other assessment can be student led. (Christodolou, 2017)
- Summative grades should never be given with formative feedback. Teachers should be aware that it is unreliable to use a summative grade for a test that doesn’t assess a wide domain of knowledge and skills. (Hattie, 2007)
- Strong teacher feedback can have a strong impact on student learning. Poor feedback can have a negative impact. Feedback can often get in the way of learning. (Wiliam, 2011)
- Feedback is information with which a learner can confirm, add to, overwrite, tune or restructure information in their memory. This information can be domain knowledge, meta-cognitive knowledge, beliefs about self and tasks, or cognitive tactics and strategies (Winne and Butler, 1994)
- One problem of feedback is that some students view the entire process of feedback as the teacher’s responsibility. They expect to be told what they need to achieve, how they are currently doing and how they get there. In the initial stages, there is a responsibility on the teacher to provide the feedback but the students who are really successful have greater ownership of the feedback process. (Hendrick and Kirschner, 2020)
- Praise that directs the student away from the task and towards the self is unlikely to be beneficial as it contains little information of how to improve (Hattie and Timperley, 2007)
best practice
· Effective Feedback
o Hattie states that feedback must answer three major questions for the student
1. Where am I going? What is my goal? What am I trying to achieve?
2. How am I going? What is my current level of performance relative to my goal?
3. Where to next? What do I need to practice to make better progress?
o Feedback can come from a variety of sources, the teacher, self generated, peers, the work itself
· Changing the student and not the work
o “The focus of feedback should be on changing the student rather than changing the work” (Wiliam, 2016). Instead of correcting previous work, students practice getting better with future tasks, hence improving their ability to do something.
· Specific Feedback
o Giving feedback like “you need to use more complex vocabulary” will be ineffective. For example:
§ In an English lesson on Shakespeare, sharing the exam board descriptors such as “extensive vocabulary should be used widely” is not useful information for a student with limited vocabulary.
· More powerful feedback would instruct students to use terms such as “soliloquy” and “iambic pentameter” and then design an activity that makes them use those words.
· Live marking
o Remember that some of the most useful feedback is at the point of learning and feeding back in lesson both verbally and written can be powerful in improving learning
· Whole class feedback
o Look for common misconceptions in student’s books and then plan how you would re-teach misunderstood content
§ Devise new activities including bespoke DIN tasks.
§ Devise self marking quizzes on Teams, questions and tests to address misconceptions
o Remember correcting previous work may not always be the most effective way of improving future performance
· DIRT (Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time)
o Unless time is planned for students to respond to feedback then it is unlikely it will make any difference to their learning. The only important thing about feedback is what the student does with it.
o Feedback should be more work for the student than the teacher.
· Self assessment and regulation
o The best person to mark a test is the person who took it, as long as this is closely controlled and monitored by the teacher.
o An ultimate goal is to eventually create effective self-regulating learners. Over dependence on the teacher’s feedback particularly with older students can be negative. Students have to be taught how to self regulate. (EEF, 2018)
· Peer feedback
o Two stars and a wish
§ Group students into pairs. When students are giving feedback to each other, informed by a good understanding of what success looks like, they identify two features of the work that are positive (the “stars”) and one suggestion for how the work could be improved (the “wish”). Students can be much tougher on each other than the teacher would feel able to be.
§ Done well peer feedback may be more effective than teacher feedback, because students are more likely to act on feedback from their peers than they would on feedback from a teacher. (Wiliam, 2016)
· Knowledge Development Feedback
o The best type of feedback makes students think about the who, what, why, when and how of the task (Kirchner, 2018)
§ You could ask “Why did you choose this formula? What would you have done if the task was X? Would you have done it differently?
links to evidence
- Wiliam (2016) The Secret of Effective Feedback. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr16/vol73/num07/The-Secret-of-Effective-Feedback.aspx
- Kirschner and Neelen (2018) https://3starlearningexperiences.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/no-feedback-no-learning/
- Hendrick, Kirschner (2020) Feed up, Feedback, Feed forward from How Learning Happens
- Donarski (2019) A Better Plan for Feedback https://perspected.wordpress.com/2019/02/28/a-better-plan-for-feedback/
sydenham staff library, further reading
Secure Learning
what the evidence says
· The most important part of the curriculum is the powerful knowledge and skills the students have learnt and secured in their long term memory (Counsell, 2018)
· Learning is a persistence change in knowledge (McCrea, 2019)
· The best evidenced study strategies to boost student’s long term learning are retrieval practice and spaced practice (Dunlosky 2013)
· The more you know about a topic the easier it is to learn new information about that topic. One of the goals of education is to help students develop extensive and available background knowledge which sets them up for lifelong learning. (Rosenshine, 2012)
· When studying, students should engage in the meaning of the information. A student who deliberately prepares for a test but neglects deep processing of the material is unlikely to learn and remember much. (Marsh and Butler, 2013)
· Memory is the residue of thought (Willingham, 2009). Learning depends upon how deeply the student has processed it.
· When we recognise information that we encounter through reading or instruction we often confuse that with learning. Shimamura (2018) calls this ‘The illusion of familiarity’. In order to deepen our understanding we must generate our own versions of that information from memory without looking at the source.
best practice
· Retrieval Practice
o Practice testing is the best way to build memory. These tests should be low stakes to remove any anxiety.
o Some retrieval should be basic recall of facts to gain fluency. This allows space in the working memory to solve deeper problems in the future.
o The Do it Now is a great opportunity for short low-stakes testing incorporating interleaving and spaced practice.
· Spaced practice
o Provide students opportunity to practice remembering over time. Leave space for forgetting (Ebbinghaus,1885)
o Make the questions more difficult as time progresses. This builds more flexible and durable memory. (Fletcher-Wood, 2019)
o It is natural for there to be short term confusion and lack of fluency when learning new material. Spaced practice allows understanding to be built up over time. (Furst, 2019)
o Students need support with spacing practice out independently. They must know the list of topics you want them to study.
· Teaching students how to study is as important as teaching them content
o Model the most effective study strategies in class to prepare students for powerful study
§ Practice testing and retrieval practice
§ Flashcards (see Christolodou link below)
§ Cornell note taking (see Allison link below)
§ Blank paper ‘brain dump’
§ Using narrative structures when learning sequences(see Adam Boxer ResearchEd video for good example)
§ Creating a study timetable with spaced practice
o See the Sydenham Study Guide for further details.
o Many students rely on ineffective revision techniques such as highlighting, rereading and cramming. Teachers are recommended to discourage these methods as they have poor evidence for long term learning (Dunlosky, 2013)
· Three Times Rule
o In his extensive research on learners, Graham Nuthall found that students need time to process new concepts; not simple repetition but opportunities to come at material in different ways. Provided a student is able to piece together in working memory, the equivalent of three complete definitions or descriptions of a concept, that new concept will be constructed as part of the student’s long term memory
· Elaboration and linking to create flexible learning
o To build fluent and flexible knowledge is an aim of education
§ Build activities and tasks into your curriculum that make students connect and contrast two pieces of information together. This makes sure students are engaging with the deeper meaning of the content
· Asking questions like “How is Baroque painting different to Renaissance painting?”
§ Training students to ask themselves and each other elaborative-interrogative questioning like “How does this happen?” Why did this happen?” when studying a topic helps secure learning.
· Homework
o Homework is vital in securing and consolidating learning and should focus on two areas
§ Spaced retrieval practice
§ Deliberate practice
links to evidence
- Dunlosky (2013) Strengthening the Student Toolbox: Study Strategies To Boost Learning https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/dunlosky.pdf
- Learning Scientists (2016) 6 strategies for effective teaching. https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2016/8/18-1
- McCrea (2019) Learning: What is it and how might we catalyse it? https://www.ambition.org.uk/research-and-insight/learning-what-is-it/
- Christine Counsell (2018) Curriculum https://thedignityofthethingblog.wordpress.com/author/christinecounsell/
- Christodolou (2020) What makes a good flashcard https://daisychristodoulou.com/2020/04/what-makes-a-good-flashcard/
- Runekles, Chris (2018) Effective Flashcards https://researchschool.org.uk/durrington/2018/09/19/effective-flashcards/
- Furst, Efrat (2019) Understanding ‘understanding’ https://sites.google.com/view/efratfurst/understanding-understanding
- Allison, Shaun (2018) Supporting retrieval practice with Cornell note taking https://classteaching.wordpress.com/2018/09/24/supporting-retrieval-practice-with-cornell-note-taking/
- Sydenham School Study Guide
- Shimamura (2018) MARGE A whole brain learning approach for students and teachers https://shimamurapubs.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/marge_shimamura.pdf
- Sherrington, Tom (2019) Introducing MARGE https://teacherhead.com/2018/10/03/introducing-marge-a-superb-ebook-about-learning-by-arthur-shimamura/
- Fletcher-Wood (2019) Deep Learning https://improvingteaching.co.uk/2019/10/20/deep-learning-planning-for-knowledge-transfer-responsive-teaching-update/