Page Comparison

For subsequent spirals the teacher may want to add more topics to a topic theme. e.g. Once some learners have mastered equivalent fraction skills within fractionINTRO and sufficient skills within givenDIVsign skills and/or prime skills then the teacher may want to begin to teach simplestForm to some learners.

For efficient teaching (teaching which gives results in a high proportion of embedded learning), learners should only learn new skills for which they have mastered the pre requisite skills. i.e. the teacher and SOL have gentle but relentlessly rising expectations.

assess prior learning: assess last lesson’s teaching within 2. Edit Taught and assess existing learning within 3. Assess t.p. (timely practice)

plan and resource teaching: found in 4. Plan Teaching. FYI the teach-learn and practise-learn activities are found in Learning Resources within this, the CKB (customer knowledge base)

schedule retrieval practice: within 5. Create t.p and within 6. Download t.p. (timely practice).

The sub heading, in each learners PDF assignment Already Learned and Remembered? is what the teacher will think of as pre assess. Over time this the app finds out what learners can already independently and accurately recall in all the topics within the apps SOL.

The sub heading, in each learners PDF assignment Retrieval Practice and contains questions to ensure prior learning and new learning becomes ever more deeply embedded in the learner’s long term memory. The app prioritises fragile learning over more deeply embedded learning. The app ensures that the wait between one practice and the next of a layer of similar questions is long enough to promote a stretching of duration the learner can readily recall the learning of the layer for. This timely practice, well timed deliberate practice, means that learning will be rarely be forgotten and (almost) all retrieval practice questions are worthy of feedback. (FYI Occasionally, a recently taught layer may judged as “requiring too much feedback”, and the assessment option best learned later (bell) will ensure the app removes the layer from all of the learner’s future retrieval practice assignments).

In a class where there is a wide spread of attainment this is very likely. e.g. a low attaining learner may only “already know” fewer than 30 layers whereas a learner at about GCSE grade 4 is likely to “already know” well over 100 layers. The learner who knows more will need to answer questions on far more layers in order for the app to find the “goldilocks” place to begin teaching in each topic.

So once some learners no longer have pre assess questions to answer, the teacher should make good use of lesson time for the lowest attaining learners. Consider creating slightly longer timely practice assignments so that:

• learners who haven’t finished pre assess yet, will finish more quickly;

• there will be time to teach learners who have finished pre assess an extra topic, whilst their peers answer further pre assess questions.

The learners who have finished pre-assess can learn a layer from one topic with the class and an additional layer from one or even two other topics per lesson, whilst the learners who are still doing pre assess do longer assignments. The teacher should make good use of the time when the majority of learners are doing long pre-assess assignments, which don’t require feedback-dialogue, to spend time with the lowest attaining learners - this time, well spent - will increase the motivation of the lowest attaining learners and be a chance to fix some fundamental gaps, which will make it easier to teach the whole class in the future.

The topics the learners who have already finished pre-assess can be drawn from all topic theme, but the teachers would be advised

• to teach 10bond, base10add and sequenceMultiple if necessary;

• to avoid teaching extra layers on a topic within 4 6 weeks of when the topic is scheduled to be taught to the whole class (so that the extra layer will be well embedded, before the teacher comes to teach the topic to the whole class);

• to begin to teach multiply by 10 etc and at least 3 of the 4 operations (multiply or divide may be missed out);

• to fill in fundamental learning gaps such coordinate, fractionINTRO, sequenceArithmetic, orderFDP, fractionOF, scaleInterpret and proportionalGraph;

• to use the early layers of some topics to fix other topics e.g. stemLeaf, correctTOnearest and decimalFraction to improve place value, inequality to improve understanding of negative number;

• to teach some layers, such as simplifySD (sum/difference), simplifyPQ (product/quotient) and solvingReady, which may help learners to overcome any fear of algebra that they might have and also to enable the lowest attaining learners to shine when the whole class begins to learn the topic together (It can be a really good “sales technique” for retrieval practice, when the lowest attaining learners can do more than their peers because “we learned it last half term with timely practice”) - especially when it is clear that these learners can learn also easily learn the another slightly harder layer on their firm learning foundations).

The teacher should not give feedback on pre assess questions because

• we want pre assess to be fast and accurately find each learner's firm learning foundations;

• each learner’s retrieval practice pool should only contain layers which the learner already knows or has recently be taught (adding almost correct layers into the retrieval practice pool will mean that the teacher needs to give feedback before they have taught the timely practice layer - this will usually be a poor use of the teacher’s time - so please don’t do this);

• throughout the time when learners are only or mainly doing pre assess, the teacher can concentrate on getting this message across: the pre assess section, headed Already Learned and Remembered? is to help the teacher teach all learners in the class better in the future. Everybody will have some too easy and some too hard questions. Over time the timely practice app will get better at finding out what each learner can do - unlike a test - meaning that once the teacher begins teaching using timely practice, the learners will find learning and remembering learning easier.

Almost all teachers, by their very nature, will find selecting bell when an answer is almost correct hard to do. The teacher can remind themselves, that they are selecting bell because they can see the learner hasn’t fully mastered all of the topic, but has mastered some of the topic and it is the timely practice app’s job to find learning strengths and gaps within the topic. Once the teacher starts teaching the topic, the teacher will be able to give feedback on the best bite of learning i.e. layer layer which the learner is likely to be able to learn easily, rather than a random layer that is part of the apps - which may be much harder to learn - that the trial and improvement process stumbled across. This Any feedback, if feedback is even needed after teaching the layer, will then be on the learner’s firm learning foundations and therefore is likely to stick.

It is likely, with poorly spaced lessons e.g. a lesson on Thursday and then not another until Tuesday that many learners will have forgotten enough of their learning of the Thursday lesson to warrant a whole class approach. The teacher may decide to move to the nexxt next lesson the layers found within Edit Teaching, (tap and tap again for the blue forward arrow) after the Thursday lesson. Instead the teacher can start or end Tuesday’s lesson with a few recap questions or ask the learners to repeat their practise-learn worksheet on what they learned on Thursday, and the teacher will see these layers in Taught Edited, as well as the layers taught in the Tuesday lesson.

For some very low attaining learners, where the school decides more input is required for them, the school can add in an extra 5 minute timely practice session between poorly spaced lessons in school time: e.g. additional time with a learning support teacher or in registration with the support of the form tutor or with family-buy-in for homework. Thereby increasing the likelihood that the learner can recall learning between one lesson and the next.

Traditionally the teacher only teaches each topic once per year, so in the subsequent year it will be a waste of time for the teacher to wonder “why doesn’t this learner know this layer already?” The reasons: absent, forgot, was taught too much etc, won’t help the teacher teach better in the future.

With timely practice, the teacher might want to look back at their teaching within the first/previous curriculum spiral of the year and find “pride in a job well done”.

Additionally where the teacher uses a SOL in which the teacher spirals through the curriculum and teaches many topics a few times a year, then the question “why doesn’t this learner know this layer already?” may help the teacher teach the current class better:

• e.g. the teacher could focus on a learner in the lesson (particularly with questioning within the teach-learn part of the lesson) because they have already been taught, but have not learned the layer already.

• e.g. the teacher needn’t give particular focus to learners who were absent last time the topic was taught. However the teacher might ensure that the topic gets priority when there is only time to teach the learner one topic in a lesson (when 2 have been planned) or the class the topic when there is not time to spiral through all the topics in the last curriculum spiral of the year.

• It will take up to 4 create + do PDF assignment + assess (but give no dialogue-feedback) sessions, to pre assess a topic. However several topics will be pre assessed in parallel.

• Low attaining learners (e.g. <grade 2) will need to pre assess up to 15 integer, 7 FDPR, 4 word problem, 9 algebra, 11 G+M and 8 P+S topics

• Higher attaining learners (e.g. ≥ grade 4) will need to pre assess 14 integer, 14 FDPR, 9 word problem, 12 algebra, 14 G+M and 10 P+S topics

How long the pre assess takes will depend on the attainment of the class and the intensity at which the school wants to do the pre assess process.

Here are some suggestions for the way pre assess can be done

1. The school could allocate 10 to 15 minutes of lessons for pre assess (replacing lesson warm up) and the rest of each lesson used for teaching as normal.

2. The school could allocate the majority of 4 lessons for pre assess (with longer assignments). Part of the first lesson could be allocated to explaining the pre assess process + for the other 3 lessons - adjust the Pace for Practice and have filler activities for learners to do if they finish early.

3. The school could allocate 1 complete lesson for doing 2. (see above), and then 10 to 15 minutes of subsequent lessons for pre assess, replacing lesson warm up, (as in 1. above).

4. A small group preparing for intervention tutoring could be pre assessed in 1 lesson: with the first 8 question assignment created prior to the lesson, and then 3 episodes of assess + but no feedback + create next + do next PDF assignment, within the lesson. Provided the group is small e.g. 3 learners and the teacher/tutor has access to a tablet device and printing facilities, the teacher should be able to assess, create, print and supervise the learners.

Pre assess will feel less threatening than traditional tests as the learners will become aware of

• questions they can do returning, and

• questions they couldn’t do being dropped.

When trying to calculate how much time pre assess will require in advance of teaching

• For option 1. and 3. allow at least 6 maths lessons in advance of the trial (to allow for some learners being absent on occasional days).

• Option 4. will only take 1 lesson - if one of the tutees is absent, they can do the pre assess the next lesson whilst the tutor is teaching the other tutees.

• Option 2. will feel the most traumatic, but if it is replacing a block of revision + 3 GCSE practice papers it will be less traumatic than the GCSE papers (and the data collected will be far more useful for future teaching).

Carefully add the SOL into the app, making sure it is not pre assessing

• what has been taught within the last 4 weeks -

• what will be taught during the pre assess process.

as otherwise what is intended as pre assess will be post assess and too much learning, which is about to be forgotten will be found. This in turns means that the teacher will not be unlikely to be teaching on firm learning foundations for all topics.