what the lessons will be like

Owned by Lesley Goddard
Last updated: Jun 16, 2022
5 min read

The lessons in  week 1 (G+M 1st time) go into to detail, and week 2-3 (G + M 1st time) goes into less detail. 

This page gives broad description of the teaching and learning cycle.

changing the teach, learn, forget cycle


Without retrieval practice many low attaining learners forget what they learn within a few days of the lesson (point of teaching).

When we teach too much at a time, we are likely to see working memory overload symptoms: muddling methods, missing steps, giving up. Even retrieval practice and extensive and frequent feedback can't fix this. 

However, if we teach a little at one time, and return to teach more from each topic several times a year we can change the

teach, learn, forget , repeat cycle

to a

teach, learn, practise, wait, practise, wait a little longer*a*, practise, wait longer,*h* practise, wait even longer, practise etc spiral

*a* the wait time will probably be on parr with the time an average learner can remember for after the point of teaching

*h* the wait time will probably be on parr with the time a high attaining learner can remember for after the point of teaching

prepare

assess

For the pre assess assignments (entitled learned?) you will need to record who has completed which assignments and any answers they got correct in your classes copy of the spreadsheet

For the timely practice assignments use the codes:

  • tick
  • star (I want to give feedback)
  • the word "bell" (best learned later - i.e. this is a bit hard for you)

but don't mark, i.e. give the learner the correct answer because

  • we want the learner to have a chance for a second think (except when writing correct spelling),
  • we want, ideally, to find the learners stumbling block through giving feedback with the learner (we are trying to get the learner to fix their incorrect or complete their incomplete chunk which they are building in their long term memory), 
  • we know that learners very rarely read what we write and they even less frequently absorb it!

plan and resource

Use the assessment spreadsheet to decide what to teach each learner (usually just one layer) keep a note of this somewhere and share it with the support teacher.

Print out the appropriate practise-learn worksheets for each learner (consider writing their names on?).

Decide how to teach with the differentiation required by the spread of layers for the class.

Print the appropriate FAKE timely practice assignments for each learner. Once a learner is in a learning track, whether one of the 2 tracks: easier or harder (for the first week or two) or whether we split into 3 tracks, they should usually stay on the track for a while. The FAKE timely practice assignment reviews what was learned in previous lessons. Normally timely practice assignments are completely personalised and review exactly what the learner needs, but the FAKE ones are the next best thing. 

You may have catch up assignments (from when the learner was away) or pre assess assignments for learners to do, I'd suggest having a file with a divider for each learner, where you can keep these safe, as this helps sharing between teacher and support assistant. You can put practise-learn worksheets in that the learner missed when they were away, but these should be low priority. 

Find a filler activity (which can ideally be displayed on the whiteboard for those that finish early)

a typical lesson

warm up

Return assessed timely practice assignments, give feedback to individual/group/whole class as appropriate.

Give learners their timely practice for the lesson (and sometimes an extra pre assess)

teach-learn

This is where you will teach (either as a whole class or in small groups). Sometimes you may decide to teach a small group and get them to do their practise-learn while the rest of the learners do their timely practice. Then while the others are learning and practising the new skills of the lesson this small group can do their timely practice.

What you shouldn't do is teach everybody everything and get them to try and do all the practise-learn worksheets. Its OK to show learners things that they are not ready to learn (with whole class teaching you have often have no choice), but get each learner to complete one practise-learn worksheet.

Have a list to hand of who will be practising which layer and then you can direct your questions to the correct students.

Sometimes you might e.g. have a SMART board with 3 questions on for learners to write their answer on the mini-white board and encourage learners to try one, two or three as appropriate. 

e.g. Write down the volume of 
solid 1solid 3
solid2

Obviously what you don't want to do is share publicly who is learning which layer, but you can prompt learners e.g. "Senel how could you work out the volume of, point to shape 2" when you go through the answers. Hopefully you will find that you usually spend less than 10 minutes on this part of the lesson

practise-learn 

This is when the learners will do personal practice on their practise-learn worksheet. Most worksheets have answers, which you may want to cut off, or you may be happy to fold these over. The learners should mark their own work. A growing number of the worksheets are double sided, intended to be cut up into top and bottom and a thin slice for the answers in the middle. (i.e. one set of skinny answers per two worksheets). 

less is more

Normally with timely practice we add to the timely practice assignment only exactly what the learner should practice, but with FAKE this can't be done, so we must resist the desire to "just quickly teach them something extra" 

extra

First look and see if there is any catch up work in the learner's section of the folder.

However you will want something for learners to fill their time with. Again better to give them something which won't end up muddling their learning from the lesson - so puzzles or short "doing activities" from other unrelated topics.

If you have certain learners regularly finishing early, you might get them to make up and test each other on flash cards (e.g. shape names), or to try and make up an extra question like in their timely practice assignment.

ender

Of course it's nice to bring the class together with an activity that they can all do together, but we know that any end of lesson assessment of what learners have learned won't be "worth the paper it is written on" we can only find out if learners have learned if we ask them to recall, at least one sleep later. (As when the learner goes to sleep is where the brain gets busy tidying up - throwing out, filing and mending).