This course teacher training is made of 5 topics, this topic: best practice with timely practice, is made of 11 layers. The teacher may read about each layer here and if desired or required can use the timely practice app to embed the course into their long-term memory. |
The timely practice app was designed to allow the teacher to far more easily apply research backed, best practice, to make teaching more likely to become embedded learning for low attaining and under achieving learners. In the main it isn’t that teachers don’t know what works, its that without a tool like timely practice, best practice is too time consuming for teachers to apply.
The vast majority of learners who can be described as low attaining or under achieving have smaller working memory capacity than their peers. However this is not the main reason that they are not achieving as well as their peers. Their main problem is being educated in a system set up for those with average and above average working memories. Having a smaller working memory capacity per se, is far less of a problem. With timely practice we have consistently demonstrated that: once the teacher starts to teach in a smaller working memory friendly way, the teacher will see that previously low attaining and under achieving learners' progress significantly accelerates.
Effective pre assess, finding out what learners "already know" means we can make best use of lesson time.
We won't teach learners what they "already know", nor attempt to teach them work for which they don't have sufficiently firm learning foundations; instead we can teach in the "sweet spot" between. So teaching and learning become more efficient, i.e. we can increase the output (retained learning) per hour (of lesson time).
With timely practice, teachers only need to pre assess a topic once, before they teach the topic for the first time. Next time the teacher spirals around to teach the topic, the teacher will be able to see in fine detail what the learners know and don't know yet from the assessment of retrieval practice data the app collects.
Of course it is no good collecting robust assessment for learning data, unless the teacher uses it to better plan teaching.
A traditional pre assess process which asks all the learners the same questions at the same time - whether they answer within a test, selecting from multiple choice options or using mini white boards - makes many learners uncomfortable. Low attaining learners are often especially uncomfortable, so they often undermine its effectiveness by quietly not engaging, copying or otherwise avoiding answering, perhaps by claiming it is a waste of time because they know everything or nothing or perhaps by asking - when will I use this in life? |
People are not naturally good judges of what they have learned, so rather than finding out if teaching has become learning, by asking learners if they know something or by assessing them at the end of the lesson, it would be better to assess by questioning at least one sleep after teaching. Research by Bjork tells us that, until we learn something about our own learning, we are often seduced into thinking
In fact almost the opposite is true. Fluency of practice is not an indicator of learning taking place, it's when we struggle to practice (Bjork calls it desirable difficulty) that we embed learning better i.e. it's easier for us to recall for longer. Once learners, learn about learning, over time, they will overcome this misconception. |
timely practice ensures that
pre assess and retrieval practice are "low stakes". Learners, over time, learn their assessment is formative (to help their learning) not summative (to judge them against a standard). We need to teach most low attaining learners - who no matter what the standard was, have learned that they won’t meet that standard - that we are in the business of assessing them to help them learn better.
it may take some time for learners to begin to feel comfortable, what the teacher can do to help is keep sticking with the message: “I’m finding out what will be easiest and most valuable to teach next” and “I’m finding out how well you can recall recent learning, so that you can recall it more easily in the future”
How do we pre assess? - we use a trial and improvement process - please read this if you are curious to know more about how this works.
How do we schedule retrieval practice? - please read this about how we do it in the app and this if you want to know about the research.
At the moment we only do a 2 round pre assess - ideally in some circumstances, some learners will do a third round. We hope, in the future, to
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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 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.
Avoiding pitfalls: Learners with smaller working memories are vulnerable to a double whammy
Learners with smaller working memories are more dependant on using chunks from long term memory than their peers.
However, learners with smaller working memories are less likely to build chunks in long term memory than their peers.
Every time we help ensure a learner creates a chunk in long term memory from the learning of the lesson - when they otherwise would create no chunk or create an imperfect chunk - we are ensuring the learner will make more progress when they otherwise would.
If you are not convinced about limiting what the amount taught per topic per spiral - why not just give it a go - with a class of learners who you don’t expect to retain most of what you are expected to teach them and see how it works out?
In our development of timely practice and our training of teachers we have found that changing from an annual to a more tightly spiralled scheme of learning is the hardest of the changes for teachers to take on. We accept that some schools would prefer to use timely practice without doing this - however our experience is that this significantly dilutes learning gain. For these schools we offer trials where they can measure and compare gains in embedded learning.
An effective revision program uses these key behaviours
If we think about teaching following an annual scheme of learning it is much more like cramming than a good revision program since
However it is not surprising we teach like "cramming" - as it is easier for the teacher - and it works for most learners |
Efficient process: Some learners will more quickly master what they have recently learned in a topic than others, but by using retrieval practice and waiting until the next spiral of the curriculum before teaching another layer on the topic
the learners who are finding a topic harder, get more practice (and if necessary feedback with their teacher),
so (in almost all cases) learners are ready to learn another layer of learning when the class returns to learn more on the topic in the next spiral of the curriculum,
when the teacher returns to teach the topic in the next curriculum spiral, they can see which learners are ready to learn a new layer and which are not. The teacher may be able to apply what they learned from the feedback process during the previous spiral, to help all learners, but especially those learners who didn’t master a layer in the previous teaching spiral.
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 teaching most of the class can learn and retain what the teacher was previously expecting only the more able in the class to learn. |
We hope, in the future, to use A.I. based on our data analysis to find if and when the rule
can be broken without loss of progress. |
... taken together imply that it is better, for the low attaining learner, to come back to topics more frequently, but learn less new work each time. timely practice doesn't use either of the standard ways to solve the mastery learning problem - what to do when some learners in the class have learned and some have not yet learned - instead we use timely practice to help the learner build a chunk or add to an existing chunk in long term memory, so each learner can learn a little more from a topic, spiral by spiral. The timely practice app ensures that the practice done within timely practice assignments is deliberate practice. timely practice enables learners to improve their skills by practice and the teacher to use feedback and scaffolding to help the learner when required. |
The following layers describe in more detail how the teacher can apply increasing interval retrieval practice, adjusted by feedback to help the learner to build chunks in long-term memory through regular timely practice during most maths lessons.
The practise-learn worksheets are made with cut-off answers, because
Learners will learn better by doing this self assessment, and will have the opportunity to get help if they make mistakes during the lesson.
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, although the teacher may spot check during the lesson, to check that the learners are self assessing their work.
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 in the nights sleep after the lesson, we will need to ask this question a little later,
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. The timely practice app will schedule this for the next assignment. All the teacher needs to do is tell the app which learners were absent, and therefore shouldn’t be assessed on the topics taught that lesson.
Assessment is about improving future learning, whereas marking may have the following purposes:
To make sure there are no remaining written errors on the page: the reason might be that then the learner can revise from their exercise books. This is not a good use of time, because we want learning to be improved soon, rather than hope learners will return and revise at a later date.
The teacher guesses what the learner was thinking/ not thinking when the learner made their error(s) and give hints or clues or model answers to help the learner. This is not a good use of time because often the teacher will guess wrong, or the learner won’t read, or understand if they do read, what the teacher has written.
The teacher gives value judgements in the hope of changing learners effort/motivation in lessons. This is not a good use of time, because value judgements, even positive ones, may decrease rather than increase the likelihood of learners learning from suggestions and the learners motivation.
A repetition of all or part of the original teaching. This is not a good use of time, because if the teaching of the lesson, didn’t lead to embedded learning, the teachers explanation - which is necessarily less detailed and can’t involve assessment for learning, as the lesson could - is less likely to lead to embedded learning.
Although each may sometimes be effective, the probability that any of these will be effective at embedding learning is low, and the cost to the teacher is high.
If the teacher does need to do feedback-dialogue in the classroom then
the teacher replaces marking - which is non-directed time work - with feedback in the classroom - which is directed time work,
the learner is more likely to improve their learning,
the necessity for the teacher to guess what is going on in the learner’s head is reduced or avoided and
more of the responsibility for improving future learning can be given to the learner.
The assessment outcome for each question should be communicated to the learner and the app. The most efficient way to do this is
This saves the teacher a little time for each question |
Teacher’s may find suppressing their urge/habits to write more a little difficult at first - but stick with it - not only will it reduce the teacher work load in non-directed time, it will also
make retrieval practice more effective at embedding learning.
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). 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 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. |
Not giving hints etc will pay dividends, as the answer space can be used to answer the question
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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
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Return the most recently assessed assignment to the learners, along with their new assignment.
The teacher may want to show or adapt the following and display it on the whiteboard/card for learners, while the teacher trains the class on how to get the most from this episode of the lesson.
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:
Begin answering questions in your new assignment
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FYI At the moment it isn’t easy for the teacher to tell to the app, after feedback between the teacher and the learner, that a layer is best learned later for the leaner. So for now it's easier to to tell the app when assessing an assignment.
Discourage learners from working out their score (its not written in the card above, because that might be counterproductive). It is better to concentrate on feedback, and judge oneself on progress. We know that when a learner gets only feedback, they pay better attention to the feedback than when they get a score and feedback.
Feedback should be done after some teaching has become embedded learning, so sometimes reteaching - especially after a long gap between lessons - will be more efficient than giving feedback. If the long gap between lessons can be foreseen, then a cool down period can be planned within the SOL.
Remember the layer has already been taught and successfully practised in the lesson, so feedback must be something more e.g.
help the learner add the bit they have forgotten of a skill or process, to the bit that they have remembered of the skill or process,
if accuracy is an issue - help the learner to check though their workings out - with the ultimate goal that the learner begins to be able to do this for themselves,
adapt the learner's past thinking to influence the learner's future thinking,
use the opportunity to train the learner to figure out what strategy or knowledge will ensure the learner can solve similar problems in the future,
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 instead help the learner reflect about their question reading or process or problem solving skills, without fear of feeling a failure or a fool,
sometimes feedback gives the teacher and or learner the opportunity to realise that the layer is best learned later.
Additionally, the process of feedback-dialogue, makes excellent, non threatening, feedback for the teacher on the fine details for future teaching.
Examples of feedback-dialogue are given within the questions for this layer.
The decision between feedback on attempt and best learned later, can be complex as we are deciding on the best use of the teacher’s and learner’s lesson time.
The question isn’t about just whether the teacher and learner can use the feedback process to “get the learner to be able to ask similar questions in the layer” but also about balancing the cost in lesson time allocated and the cost to the learner’s limited supply of motivation.
In a nutshell the question is
Will the learner, in the next week or two, “need too much help” to embed this learning?
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In the future we will use A.I. to give teachers “our best guess” + make it easier for the teacher to tell the app, after a feedback attempt, that the layer is best learned later.
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, limiting the teaching on a topic to a maximum of 3 different layers, provides sufficient differentiation for the learners, without undue complexity for the teacher.
A scaffolded pair (where the questions in the easier layer of the pair includes some scaffolding, and the questions in the harder layer of the pair do not) can be counted as one layer. The teacher talking about the differences “what scaffold might be included with this question” and “what might this question look like without the scaffold” can help learners move more successfully from the layer with the scaffold to the layer without.
In https://timelypractice.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CKB/pages/3110699127/Using+timely+practice#(9)-plan-teaching-on-firm-learning-foundations the teacher will find detail on how to see the class' progress on all topics pre assessed.
Here a tutor has a challenge of teaching 4 very different learners, who have “weird and unexpected” strengths and weaknesses.
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Future improvements - allow the teacher to see when a layer has all its pre requisites from other topics.
Guidelines for scheduling of timely practice, teach-learn (T-L) and practise-learn (P-L) episodes within a lesson.
A lesson might be made up of e.g.
timely practice + T-L on topic A + P-L on topic A
timely practice + T-L on topic A + P-L on topic A + T-L on topic B + P-L on topic B
timely practice + whole class project
the timely practice episode
Usually the teacher’s best use of the timely practice episode is giving feedback rather than teaching. But the teacher can interleave timely practice with teaching e.g. if only one learner must learn layer 6 and all the other learners layer 2 or 3, the teacher might teach layer 6 to the learner, whilst the rest of the class “begin your silent do now: looking at your assessed assignment and beginning your new assignment, for the next 3 minutes”.
teach-learn (T-L) episodes
Always make use of the fact that each layer is quick to teach and learn (because all the pre-requisite skills are mastered), so keep whole class sessions short (i.e. KISS keep it short and simple).
Acknowledging that some learners will spend a few minutes of some lessons “being quiet and allowing the teacher to teach other learners something that is too easy/too hard for you to learn right now” is better than pretending that all teaching will be both accessible and learned by all learners. In my opinion this leads to too often: shoving too many bites of learning down each learner's throat, with the outcome that many low attaining learners only partially digest the learning of the lesson and too easily muddle methods, miss skills and give up: the classic signs of working memory overload. |
There are a number of ways the teacher can use the advantage of knowing exactly what learners already know on a topic.
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Remember it is completely OK to teach e.g. layer 1, layer 3 (and layer 4 which is the same as layer 3, but without the scaffolding) and layer 5 in the same session one after the other.
It's not so much that the teach-learn part of most lessons have been a problem for low attaining learners, it's the practising part which often lets low attaining learners down. So getting practise-learn and retrieval practice “more right” will lead to large learning gains, without the more sophisticated options suggested above. |
practise-learn (P-L) episodes
It's not OK to get learners to practise several new practise-learn worksheets on the same topic, as almost always this will lead to muddling methods and greater need for feedback later.
It’s OK to teach some learners 2 topics in one lesson, and others only 1 topic. Remember learners are more likely to be left further behind, by consistently failing to embed learning, than by learning at the pace that works for them.
It’s essential that learners follow up the teach-learn on a layer with their teacher, with independently answering their practise-learn questions, but sometimes the practise-learn questions from the second topic may be need to be deferred until the next lesson, in which case defer adding the layer as taught until the next lesson too.
There are a number of ways the teacher can use the advantage of knowing exactly what learners already know on a topic, and exactly what each leaner should learn next.
Some of these include the good practice of activating the learners in the class to be teachers:
I’ve not had the class control skills to say “Tuck your practise-learn worksheet under your planner, but don’t begin it, until I say you can”, but you might be one of those super-teachers, and may be able to use it to good effect. When the teacher knows exactly which skill to teach to each learner, in advance of the lesson, the teacher can find many ways to make better use of lesson time. |
To help get the class together again e.g. to move on to teach a second topic - have some activities which can fill about 5 minutes of time, but which won’t move the learner on in learning the topics that are being taught in the lesson.
which can be used by learners who finish earlier than their peers do. |
A cool down with timely practice involves some maths lessons where timely practice assignments are done, but no new layers are taught.
Before a half term holiday: 1 or 2 lessons Before the 2 week holidays: almost a week Before the 6 week holiday: 1 or 2 weeks |
The purposes of a cool down are
to embed learning, which may be otherwise asked too late, as it will become overdue within the holiday period - hence often the teacher will create longer or catch up assignments
not to waste time teaching, what we can be almost certain will be forgotten - hence using the rest of lesson time to do activities which aren’t learning new maths content
The teacher can also reserve, topics to teach just prior to a slightly shorter cool down period,
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Facilitate learners to grow a growth mind set 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.
With timely practice learners get to see how feedback and further practice helps them to master layers, which they have previously had difficulty learning. Over time, and sometimes through feedback-dialogue, 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.