...
Summary: Learners are more likely to be able to build an accurate chunk in long term memory, during the night after the lesson, if we teach them one small bite - a timely practice layer - rather than if we teach them a “too large for the learner” bite i.e. several layers. Since the teaching and subsequent practice of a layer takes between 10 to 30 minutes, often there will be time to teach more than one topic per lesson, so the class will more quickly spiral through the curriculum, each time teaching a small bite more on firm learning foundations.
...
| Expand |
|---|
| title | Simplistic explanation of how teaching 3 small bites on a topic rather than 1 large bite per year advantages low attaining learners |
|---|
|
Suppose the "big" bite of teaching on a topic with blocked teaching could be split into 3 small "bites" and let's suppose the learners might judge them as: "OK", "hard" and "very hard". With blocked teaching a teacher might find that a few "more able" learners in the class learn and retain all of the "big" bite, but most learners will not. Instead with a more tightly spiralled scheme of learning, the teacher can teach the "OK" bite in term 1, the "hard" bite in term 2 and the "very hard" bite in term 3. However, since the learners master the "OK" bite during term 1, through their timely practice, when the teacher returns to teach the "hard" bite in term 2, the learners will find the "hard" bite much easier to learn. So now the learners will judge that bite as "OK" and by term 3 the "very hard" bite will also be "OK" for the learners to learn - as through retrieval practice with timely practice - they will have mastered both the "OK" and "hard" bites. So by spacing out the teaching of a topic most of the class can learn and retain what the teacher was previously expecting only the more able in the class to learn. |
...
end of lesson assessment cannot tell us what we want to know - “has teaching become learning?” - because learning will only be embedded in long term memory in during sleep the nights sleep night after the lesson , - so we will need to ask this question later,an assessment question at least one day later
learners may learn the skills they were taught without fully completing the practise-learn assignment.
...
| Expand |
|---|
| title | Top Tip 2: only write the assessment outcome: don't give value judgements, don't give hints, don't correct working, don't try and find where or why errors were made |
|---|
|
The only exception to this rule, is for example, if the learner makes an error in a complex multistage word problem, the teacher might want to write down the numerical answer (on the learner's page, or on the teacher’s lesson plan page) to save the teacher having to work out the answer to check the learners correction. If the assessment outcome is a tick or best learned later or run-out-of-time: there is no need for feedback in the next lesson. If the assessment outcome is feedback on attempt or feedback on blank: then we expect the learner to try and self correct or get peer to peer help or initiate a feedback-dialogue with the teacher, within the rules of the classroom. By assessing and where necessary, engaging in personalised feedback dialogue in the lesson, we gain multiple advantages: The teacher is replacing the time and effort they would spend on marking, non-directed time, with only the possibility that they may need to spend directed time, inside of lesson time, on feedback. The teacher need not feel guilty, as not marking + giving feedback in the lesson (if necessary), helps the learner learn better. The non-directed time spent by the teacher will be less - today - because this kind of assessment is far quicker than marking, and will be less - in the future - because feedback is far more likely to be successful and so similar questions will be asked less frequently and answered more accurately. The learner has a chance to self correct or self reflect or get peer-to-peer help: so the teacher may not need to spend lesson time giving feedback or failing that, the learner has time to read the question again and will be primed to adjust their chunk or mental schema (Kornell et al 2009) during the feedback-dialogue; With in-lesson feedback-dialogue the learner is far more likely to engage with the teacher than they are likely to engage with the teacher's marking. Without marking by the teacher, the teacher and learner can start the feedback-dialogue from a common place. With in lesson feedback-dialogue the teacher has a chance to learn about learner's past thinking and/or influence the learner's future thinking, more effectively than with marking. Feedback-dialogue makes excellent, non threatening, feedback for the teacher on fine detail ways to improve future teaching. It allows the teacher to gain decades worth of high quality teaching experience within a much shorter span of time. Feedback-dialogue provides an opportunity for the teacher to help the learner to better deal with the emotions brought up by errors e.g. to move on from self-criticism or making excuses or blaming others and to help the learner reflect about their question reading or process or problem solving skills i.e. help the learner grow a growth mindset. Feedback-dialogue is likely to increase the learner's motivation whereas marking is likely to decrease it. Sometimes during feedback-dialogue the teacher and/or learner will realise that the layer is best learned later - and this is also a productive use of the teachers and learners time - because now they can stop putting their time and effort into making this layer stick and instead put their efforts in to embedding other layers which are far more likely to stick. After all we can’t expect to go from a place where most teaching is forgotten to a place where absolutely all teaching becomes embedded learning. Surely a process where almost all teaching becomes embedded learning should satisfy us - there is no shortage of other layers to teach - before returning, to see if this layer will stick in a few months time.
The main disadvantage (such as it is) is that there is very little in the way of an easy to follow paper trail of the efforts the teacher has put in. There is the record that feedback dialogue has been requested, and possibly the corrected workings by the learner. In future assignments we usually see the learner being able to answer correctly similar questions and there is the record of the subsequent progress on the layer within the timely practice app. If the teacher must be checked up on, then the “checker-upper” must do the work to find out if the teaching is successful or not. This counterposes with a marking trail - where the teacher is doing the work of demonstrating that they have tried - but cannot possibly demonstrate that they have been successful - in embedding the learning. |
| Expand |
|---|
| title | Top Tip 3: if the assessment outcome is feedback on blank, position the asterisk** so that the learner can see it, but preserve almost all of the answer space. |
|---|
|
Not giving hints etc will pay dividends, as the answer space can be used to answer the question by the learner and teacher to model answering if the learner gets peer-to-peer help or feedback-dialogue with the teacher by the learner if the learner can actually do the question - perhaps they just didn’t see it, they got distracted, they were having “an off-day” etc
** or other symbol used to show that the answer is not fully correct but that the teacher wishes the learner to try and self correct/get peer help/get feedback |
| Expand |
|---|
| title | Top Tip 4: use the answers within timely practice |
|---|
|
Even though many questions will take the teacher "next to no time" to work out the correct answer, the teacher should use the answers provided by the app, because the small bits of extra time to read the question and work out the correct answer add up, it distracts the teacher from the assessment task - i.e. how well is this learner able to apply their learning - it is harder, and therefore takes fractionally longer, for the teacher to switch back and forth between doing maths and assessing maths.
|
...
| Info |
|---|
Top tips for learners doing their timely practice assignments Look at your assessed assignment and see all the questions you got correct - by doing this you embed this learning more deeply. Look at each question which has an asterisk, * , assessment outcome and decide: can you answer it now, perhaps you missed the question out by mistake? can you see an “oops” in your workings out? if so, you may circle it or fix it, did you “mis-copy” some of the numbers from the question? if so, you can circle the errors or fix them, do you need some feedback-dialogue with a teacher in the room? + does that teacher need to be a paid teacher?, if so, get help or make it easy to find the question for when its your turn for help e.g. draw a dark line down the edge of the question or write page 2, Q7, fold over the corner of the page etc is there a question that you think is best learned later?, if so, wait until you find a similar question in your new assignment, when you can write the bell symbol instead of an answer.
Begin answering questions in your new assignment are there any questions you need to have feedback from last assignment before you answer? - write e.g. Q4 at the end of your assignment, so that you will remind yourself to return to the question, if you are stuck, look to see - is the question in the learned? section- this means its a pre assess question, so just miss it out and write bell or draw the bell symbol (best learned later), if you need help on other questions, it’s ok to ask for help - your teacher will write the feedback symbol beside the answer line - this will mean you get help when you need it, but the app won’t think you could easily answer, and instead will give you another practice question sooner, and so you are much more likely to be able to answer independently and accurately next time, is there a question that you think is best learned later? if so, tell your teacher by writing the bell symbol instead of an answer - although if you do this too often, your teacher won’t always listen to you! you are allowed to ask teachers to read words or sentences to you - and they won’t use the feedback symbol.
Teachers and teaching assistants expect you to answer each question independently, if you do not don’t answer your questions independently then you won’t make progress. Please don’t try and “sneak extra help” from teaching assistants - they will record the feedback symbol beside the answer line and your teacher will know! |
...
Usually the teacher will only need to consider the progress on topic of the topic they plan to teach, to decide which layer to teach each learner. However sometimes the teacher may need to look at the progress of topic of another topic e.g. for the topic expand linear the teacher may need to look at the learners skills in the topic simplify x/÷
Usually teaching 1 to 4 different layers are enough i.e. provides will provide sufficient differentiation for the learners but without making undue complexity for the teacher.
...
| Expand |
|---|
| title | Why doesn’t timely practice collect full information on each learner in each topic? |
|---|
|
Mainly because it would take too long and it would be too traumatic for many learners - who have low self esteem in terms of their maths learning. We ask questions on a few key layers of a topic - which gives us a broad brush stroke picture of the learner’s skills and learning gaps - but only questions at an appropriate level for the learner. We know that relatively frequently quite often asking one question on a layer is insufficient to find if a layer is secure or not, so we always ask a second question if the learner seems to know the first. (For learners with lots of learning gaps/who rush when answering questions - asking 2 questions on a layer is very necessary - as for up to 40% half of their layers, we will find one question answered correctly and a second not). Using the information on key layers we ask a question on layers, we call them interesting layers, we think teachers will find this information interesting in order to plan their teaching. There are some layers which we don’t ask questions on - usually these are layers which include considerable timely practice scaffolding - so the learner is unlikely to have met these type of questions before. After teaching the layer, the scaffolding will be very helpful to the learner, but before teaching the scaffolding is likely to be confusing. Our auto pre assess process is on our plans to improve soon. However the data the app collects will provide much better data than the teacher can expect to when using one or two pre assess questions at the start of the lesson because we significantly reduce the likelihood of copying, answering a question on an assignment is much less stressful than answering a question in a class, where some learners will feel they will be “shown up” so teachers are less likely to see a false negative, we ask 2 questions on any layer on different days so teachers are less likely to see a false positive, the app collects all the data in an easy to visualise way - so that planning is easy for the teacher and so every learner is likely to be able to learn what they are taught
… and we also ensure that the teacher is unlikely to teach too much to each learner on a topic, so each learner is likely to be able to recall the learning of each lesson, the next lesson, when the retrieval practice will begin to embed the learning deeply into long term memory. |
...
| Expand |
|---|
| title | Here are some examples of 5 minute fillers |
|---|
|
some maths puzzles or patterns to find within a times table grid written on e.g. a flip chart create a second “catch-up” timely practice assignment (which will have questions on more embedded layers, which are unlikely to need feedback: to do this create a second assignment, the catch up one, directly after creating an assignment for a lesson - the urgent question will have gone into the first assignment, so will be full of non-urgent questions) the “catch up” assignments, can be completed “any when in within the next week” without causing the problem that the retrieval practice questions will be asked too late, and so can be used as filler activities, ask learners to annotate recently learned questions with think aloud speech and thought bubbles (either questions the learner is really confident they know, or questions the learner has recently had feedback on), ask learners to pair up and test each other on some times-table facts they are learning (perhaps have an envelope for each learner with a few flash cards in), ask learners to draw a cartoon of a given maths word,
which can be used by learners who finish earlier than their peers do. |
...