GCSE retake

The aim of this course is to be able to teach learners who will not take the retake exam in November at an appropriate level of difficulty whilst still preparing those who will take the retake exam in November (when, initially, the teacher may not know enough about the learners to decide which category each learner will fall into).

Often in retake courses the teacher starts "teaching hard" to fill gaps for the early entry learners and this further "turns off maths" the other learners.

What timely practice does is offer a way to teach the following in parallel:

• slower working learners (i.e. need more time to complete questions) who although close to the grade 4 boundary need more time to master what they are taught,
• more diligent (willing to do more out of lesson practice) learners close to grade 4 boundary (early entry?), 
• more diligent (willing to do more out of lesson practice) learners needing the whole academic year (or longer) to reach the grade 4 boundary,
• more diligent (willing to do more out of lesson practice) learners needing the whole academic year (or longer) to reach the grade 5 boundary,
• faster working learners close to grade 4 boundary, (early entry?),
• faster working learners needing the whole academic year (or longer) to reach the grade 4 boundary,
• less motivated learners (who will quickly "give up" on questions they are not sure of).

In a nutshell we offer

• a pre assess, teach and retrieval practice programme for 2 months (prior to the November exam - where learners complete practise questions to recall and correct prior learning and embed new learning),
• sufficient pre assess data to help the teacher to decide what teaching is most valuable for the remaining 7 months after the November early entry exam and support to teach use retrieval practice to embed this teaching, 
• a scheme of learning where the teacher sometimes teaches the whole class, but often teaches small groups of learners carefully targeted learning (for short 5 minute bursts) while the rest of the learners do pre assess, practice or retrieval practice questions. 

scheme of learning

The first half term is given here - after this a bespoke scheme of learning can be created to suit the class for the remainder of the year

training: teacher

The teacher needs to be willing to trust the pre assess and so often teach 2 or 3 small groups for short periods, ideally 5 minute bursts carefully targeted teaching (for which the learners have pre requisite skills). Whilst the teacher teaches the small groups, the rest of the class should be doing carefully targeted practice (provided by us), in order to embed prior and recent learning. 

The teacher will need to keep records of the pre-assess data for the first week, thereafter the timely practice app will collect all the assessment for learning data.

training: the learners

This is done in 3 sessions within the first 4 lessons and will introduce the learner to recent (and less recent but forgotten) research on how we humans learn and retain learning.

resources

We provide resources - please bookmark this link - which you may share freely with the learners, so that learners who are absent can do there best t catch up with the missed lesson.