trainLearners
- Lesley Goddard
(0) Introduction and links to the other teacher training topics
Changing what is important in lessons and the flow of lessons, won’t go well, unless we put some time into training the learners in our classrooms. That said, learners seem to take more easily to the proposed changes than teachers do. “Doing timely practice” every maths lesson is important to achieve the huge learning gains which are possible (see retrieval practice theory).
Learners from our cohort welcome the chance to learn smaller bites (see plan teaching), get a much higher proportion of the questions they attempt correct (see retrieval practice theory), have more opportunities for feedback-dialogue with their teacher (see assessment and feedback) and with greater success are usually happy to work more independently, demonstrate increased motivation (by answering more questions) and grow a growth mindset (by more readily engaging in feedback-dialogue and self-talk).
(1) Getting the most from the timely practice warmup sessions
Warmup is when all the learners are doing pre-assess process and none of the learners are learning new content with timely practice.
Here is a poster
to display on your whiteboard, when learners begin the warm up process, and
to print out and display in the classroom - so visiting adults can help - in the most helpful manner.
(2) Learners (not teachers) self-assess the learners' practise-learn worksheets
The practise-learn worksheets are made with cut-off answers, because
Learners will learn better by doing self assessment and will have the opportunity to get help during the lesson, if they have made mistakes.
Teachers should not use their non-contact time assessing the learners' practice questions on the topics of the lesson. That is not a good way to find out if teaching has become learning. The teacher may spot check during the lesson, to check that the learners are self assessing their work, and “help learners learn to self assess” using the answers (but should not “do assessment for them”)
We know that
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 during sleep the night after the lesson,
learners may learn the skills they were taught without fully completing the practise-learn assignment.
The first time we can find out - “has teaching become learning?” i.e. has teaching resulted in the desired change in the long-term memory of each learner - is by asking a retrieval practice question on the skill the next maths lesson. See also planTeaching(3)
(3) Getting the most from the tpTeach and cooldown sessions
Here is a poster
to display on your whiteboard, when learners are doing their timely practice, and
to print out and display in the classroom - so visiting adults can help - in the most helpful manner.
(4) Grow a growth mindset
When learners notice that feedback-dialogue and retrieval practice enables them to independently and accurately answer questions from layers which they initially found hard to answer, they are more likely to be prepared to engage further with feedback-dialogue. We have noticed that they are also more likely to engage in self-talk, motivational (often spoken aloud dialogue with themselves) to help them recall learning. Bit by bit, learners begin to grow a growth mindset because the learner begins to have confidence that their attainment is improving and that they will always be able to learn, even if they find leaning a little hard at first.
Facilitate learners to grow a growth mind set more quickly by helping learners to deal with the emotions of getting answers wrong / being unable to solve problems, in a way that promotes good learning behaviours in the future.