4 proven methods to significantly raise attainment
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- assessment for learning tells the teacher how well learners have learned something and so teachers can then act, if need be, to improve that learning.
- feedback is a process that enhances learning by providing learners with the opportunity to improve their current or recent attainment, by comparing with an ideal.
- mastery learning requires teachers to hold back from teaching harder knowledge/skills/methods until the learner has mastered the prerequisite knowledge/skills/methods.
- retrieval practice or spaced learning requires that practice questions are spaced out over time - rather than done in a block just after teaching - so that the learning can be recalled for longer.
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To apply mastery learning we start with assessment for learning to find a suitable starting point to teach each topic. We ensure that the learner has all the pre-requisite skills and that what we will be taught is neither too easy nor too hard. Once taught, the retrieval practice or spaced learning enables the learners to extend the duration for which they can remember that learning for. Sometimes feedback between the teacher and the learner is required if part or all of the learning has been forgotten or misapplied. In order to ensure recall and accuracy whilst minimising the number of practice questions we use a an increasing interval retrieval practice or spaced repetition system (SRS); and we make sure that that the feedback is worthwhile by ensuring that the learner can remember the feedback when they come to practice the next similar question. Over time the app tracks the learners' depth of learning - this is done by regular assessment for learning of the timely practice assignments. By looking at the Progress on Topic the teacher can see when the leaners have "mastered" the recently learned layer from the topic and are ready to move on to learn harder work.
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Whether you prefer to use the vocabulary of of chunks or mental schema or schemata to talk about how learners build up interconnections in long term memory, there is little doubt that this is the mechanism of how humans learn to do the many complex things we are capable of. Happily chunk-based learning can help learners with smaller working memory capacity learn, as their more highly attaining peers do, because the chunks in long term memory replace some of the working memory requirements for answering questions. The recommendations from chunk-based learning of teaching standard problems throughly first, to teach using an improving spiral curriculum , teaching and to teach from the known to the unknown and the simple to the complex match the way that each topic is split into layers and the recommendations of finding and firming learning foundations before moving on to teaching on firm learning foundations.
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