Best practice

This topic is suitable for teachers and line managers.

1 Quick summary
2 (1) teach on firm learning foundations
3 (2) teach 1 layer per learner per topic per curriculum spiral
4 (3) learners (not teachers) mark the learners' practise-learn worksheets
5 (4) teachers assess (but don’t mark) the timely practice assignments
6 (5) schedule a “timely practice assignment” episode every lesson
7 (6) get the most from feedback by remembering it's better called feedback-dialogue
8 (7) sometimes best learned later may result in more embedded learning than feedback
9 (8) use the assessment for learning data to plan who learns what …
10 (9) … then plan the teaching and learning activities of the lesson
11 (10) schedule a cooldown before each holiday
12 (11) grow a growth mindset

Quick summary

The timely practice app was designed to allow the teacher to far more easily apply research backed best practice, to the task of

increasing the likelihood that teaching becomes embedded learning for low prior 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 prior attaining or under achieving (“our cohort”) 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 “our cohort’s” progress significantly accelerate.

(1) teach on firm learning foundations

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 have insufficiently 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 already know/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 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. “Our cohort” are often especially uncomfortable, so they often undermine its effectiveness by quietly not engaging, copying or otherwise avoiding answering, perhaps by claiming 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 more about our own learning, we are often seduced into thinking

that finding practice easy means we are learning well
that finding practice hard means we are not learning well.

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 our cohort - who no matter what the standard was, have learned that they won’t meet that standard - that when they use timely practice we are in the business of assessing them to help them learn better. (We probably won’t be able to avoid summative testing entirely.)
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.

(2) teach 1 layer per learner per topic per curriculum spiral

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 a “too-large-for-the-learner” bite i.e. several layers. Since the teaching and subsequent practice of a layer usually takes between 10 and 25 minutes, there will often be time to teach more than one topic per lesson, so the class can more quickly spiral through the curriculum if we use spare time to teach 1 small bite from 2 topics rather than 2 small bites from the same topic. In each spiral the teacher teaches less on a topic at one time but teaches many topics several times a year. In each curriculum spiral most learners learn a small bite more on their firm learning foundations.

Avoiding pitfalls: Learners with smaller working memories are vulnerable to a double whammy
Learners with smaller working memory capacities are less likely to build chunks in long-term memory after the lesson than their peers.
Learners with smaller working memory capacities are more dependent on chunks in long-term memory to process the content of lessons than their peers.

Every time we help ensure a learner create 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” 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 (depth-first) to a more tightly spiralled (breadth-first) 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

pre assess: the learner decides what they need to learn,
a more tightly spiralled curriculum: the learner splits up what they will revise into smaller blocks and space these out over their revision program,
retrieval practice, self-assessment and feedback-when-necessary: to ensure that the learner fully retains all their learning, the learner reviews frequently what they have learned and gets help if necessary.

If we think about teaching following an annual scheme of learning it is much more like cramming than a good revision program since

pre assess: may not be done at all or may not be done in sufficient detail or may be difficult for the teacher to use,
all the teaching on a topic: is done within a short period of time and only once a year,
practice questions: are done within a short period of time.

However it is not surprising we teach like "cramming" - as it is easier for the teacher - and it works for most learners

With timely practice the teacher can teach learners with a wide spread of attainment like a revision program rather than like cramming.

use an 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 when necessary feedback with their teacher,
the learners who are finding a topic easy, practise less and so have time for extra practice on other harder for them topics or time to learn more topics,
hence, 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 out the teaching of a topic most of the class can learn and retain what the teacher was previously expecting only the more able in the class to learn.

Mastery learning: ensuring that learners can use and apply pre-requisite skills to a high standard before learning new work. Mastery Learning is associated with an additional five months’ progress over the course of a school year compared to traditional approaches.
Chunk-based learning: this branch of theory came about from studying how experts practise and structure their learning. We are all limited to 4 ± 1 slots in our working memory. However if we can form a process into a chunk in long term memory, we reduce the number of slots required in working memory. The chunk replaces some of the working memory requirements. The chunk makes it easier to decide which process to use, remember the order of the steps of the process and makes it easier to apply the process. The power of chunks is that we can create chunks of chunks etc. Chunk-based theory strongly recommends a number of teaching-learning strategies including a spiral-curriculum and deliberate practice.
Cumulative practice: for what we consider higher order skills, such as generalising and problem solving, research suggests that when learners are using two different pieces of knowledge/skills/methods to learn a third, the learners are most successful if both the two existing pieces of knowledge/skills/methods are more strongly embedded before the third is learned.

... 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 an efficient process where the learners who are finding a topic harder, get more practice and feedback with their teacher - so nearly all learners are ready to learn the next bite in a few months time.

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 sections 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 most effective ways to teach new learning in the rest of the lesson.

(3) learners (not teachers) mark 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.

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. The timely practice app will schedule this question in 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.

(4) teachers assess (but don’t mark) the timely practice assignments

If the teacher finds, when assessing an assignment, that a learner is unable to independently and accurately answer a question, and the teacher decides to give feedback the next lesson, then this feedback-dialogue in the classroom has multiple benefits over marking (These are described in Top Tip 2).

The assessment outcome for each question should be communicated to the learner and the app. The most efficient way to do this is

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.

(5) schedule a “timely practice assignment” episode every lesson

The timely practice assignment episode (5-25 minutes) does many valuable “jobs” for teacher and learners. These jobs are traditionally hard for the teacher to schedule sufficient time for:

Learners review the teacher’s assessment of their last lesson’s assignment and
- self correct when they can and
- get personalised feedback when they need it.
The teacher has far more time to give personalised feedback to learners because
- learners are independently engaged in completing their new assignment which
- efficiently schedules retrieval practice questions which
- embeds all prior learning ever more deeply into long term memory.

These “jobs” ensure that the new learning done in the remainder of each lesson becomes firm foundations for future learning, rather than soon forgotten.

The primary task is embedding learning and the secondary task is giving feedback.

To do a “timely practice assignment” episode in a lesson the teacher will:

return the most recently assessed assignment to each learner and give each learner their new assignment,
train the learners what is expected of them during this episode of the lesson.

The teacher may want to display the following

https://timelypractice.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CKB/pages/3346202625 (using timely practice for pre assess only)

https://timelypractice.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CKB/pages/3274670105 (using timely practice for teaching and retrieval practice and possibly pre assess)

on the whiteboard/a poster for

the learners and
to share with teaching assistants and other adults visiting the classroom.

Discourage learners from working out a score for their assessed assignment (its not written in the poster 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.

(6) get the most from feedback by remembering it's better called feedback-dialogue

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, consider planning a cooldown.

Feedback can be more properly thought of as feedback-dialogue, a dialogue between the learner and the teacher - it should be more personalised than reteaching - 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 (ask if you would like this training).

(7) sometimes best learned later may result in more embedded learning than feedback

In Assess t.p. the decision between feedback 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?

and the answer to this question depends on the learning context (see the Top Tips below)

(8) use the assessment for learning data to plan who learns what …

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 expandLinear the teacher may need to look at the learners skills in the topic simplifyPQ (x/÷)

Teaching up to 3 different layers will usually provide sufficient differentiation for the learners without undue complexity for the teacher.

When the teacher is more confident 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 for teaching purposes. 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.

Training on how to do this is found in (5) above

(9) … then plan the teaching and learning activities of the lesson

Rather than aim for “rapid progress” every lesson what we need is to aim for “sustained progress” every lesson.

Without ensuring that new learning is durably embedded in long term memory “lots of learning” quickly becomes “lots of forgetting”. The timely practice assignment episode does this job, so it should be part of every lesson.

A lesson might be made up of e.g.

a timely practice assignment episode + teach-learn episode on topic A + practise-learn episode on topic A
a timely practice assignment episode + teach-learn and practise-learn episodes on topic A and B
a timely practice assignment episode + whole class project

the timely practice assignment episode

Usually the teacher’s best use of the timely practice assignment episode is giving feedback rather than teaching (as described in (5) above). However 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 “for the next 3 minutes: begin your (silent) do now: look at your assessed assignment and begin your new assignment”.

teach-learn episodes

Make use of the fact that each layer is quick to teach and learn (because all the pre-requisite skills are mastered), so KISS whole class teaching (keep it short and simple). Well thought out teach-learn questions for each layer are available from https://timelypractice.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CKB/pages/150995025

There are a number of ways the teacher can use the advantage of knowing exactly what learners already know on a topic, but remember it is completely OK to teach e.g. layer 1, layer 2 and 3 (where 2 is a scaffolded version of 3) and then layer 4 in the same session one after the other.

practise-learn episodes

Well thought out practise-learn worksheets are available from

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 new learning than by learning at a pace that works for them.

It’s essential that learners follow up the teach-learn on a layer with independently answering the questions within the correct practise-learn worksheet (or a similar alternative). However sometimes the practise-learn worksheet questions from the second topic may be need to be deferred until the next lesson, in which case defer adding the layer as taught (via Edit Teaching) until the next lesson. So sometimes a lesson might be made up of

a timely practice assignment episode + teach-learn and practise-learn on one topic + teach-learn on a second topic or
a timely practice assignment episode + practise-learn on last lesson’s second topic + teach-learn and practise-learn on this lesson’s topic.

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.

To help get the class together again e.g. in order to move on to teach a second topic, have some activities which can fill up to 5 minutes, but which won’t move the learner on in learning the topics that are being taught in the lesson.

(10) schedule a cooldown before each holiday

A cooldown with timely practice involves some maths lessons where timely practice assignments are done, but no new layers are taught.

The purposes of a cooldown are

to avoid wasting teaching time: e.g. a newly taught layer will need more than a week of timely practice before it is likely to be remembered for 2 weeks. Hence continue with timely practice until directly before a holiday, but without any new teaching during the cooldown period will make better use of learning time (use the rest of lesson time to do activities which aren’t learning new maths content - see suggestions below).
to embed learning prior learning so that it can be recalled, without recourse to feedback, after the holiday. If layers become overdue during a holiday, and can’t be asked, then the learner is less likely to be able to recall this learning after the holiday. By allocating some cooldown lessons before the holiday (for which the teacher creates assignments with e.g. 30% more questions), fewer layers are likely to become overdue during the holiday. (Increasing the number of retrieval practice questions, means layers are more likely to be asked closer to when they are “ready” - rather than closer to when they become “overdue” ).

(11) grow a growth mindset

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 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.