Solutions to Common Learning Problems

Low attaining and under achieving learners have a number of problems - the solutions of which, are hard for the teacher to apply without an army of personal tutors - or timely practice!

problem 1: low attaining and under achieving learners have many learning gaps

It takes time to find the best bite of learning from a topic to teach - and it will vary learner to learner in classes of low attaining learners.

This optimum bite can be said to be within the learner’s proximal learning zone i.e. the sweet spot between too easy and too hard and too little and too much.

This sweet spot will be topic to topic unpredictable and if we stray into teaching too hard or too much, we may find we have lost all teaching of the lesson, not just the too hard bits or the bits which prove to be too many.

solution 1: use a trial and improvement pre assess program

The progress on topic dashboard will show the teacher strengths and learning gaps for all the learners in a class on a given topic. We should teach to fill learning gaps - otherwise new learning is unlikely to stick. See also solution 2 to 4 since for maximum effectiveness solutions 1 to 4 need to applied hand in hand

https://timelypractice.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CKB/pages/3110469665/Arguing+for+change#(1)-teach-a-small-bite-on-firm-foundations---embed-that-learning---then-repeat

problem 2: low attaining and under achieving learners find learning difficult

It is hard to teach and learn, when both the teacher and the learner have to avoid multiple learning gaps which will block learning, especially when we meet some of these learning gaps unexpectedly.

It is hard to remain motivated - to keep putting the effort in - when we want to avoid feeling a failure or a fool.

It is hard to remain motivated - to keep putting the effort in - when as soon as we meet success, we are rushed on to learn something too hard for us, and the learning of the part we would have been able to learn, gets muddled up with the extra learning that is too hard.

It is hard to remain motivated - to keep putting the effort in - when we rarely meet success, and when we have met success in the past, we have soon forgotten what we learned.

solution 2a: teach a small bite of learning per topic per curriculum spiral

At timely practice we have divided the teaching and learning of each topic into small bites of new learning, which we call layers. Provided we are teaching on firm learning foundations, each layer is easy to teach and learn within a lesson.

However we must address problem 3 - otherwise the learning of the lesson will be lost to forgetting. Many more low attaining learners are consistently successful within lessons than catch up with their more highly attaining peers. This learning gap is due to the fact that most low attaining learners forget some or all of the learning of each lesson within a few days of each lesson. So we need to stop forgetting happening. We do this with increasing interval retrieval practice (solution 3) and if need be effective feedback (solution 4).

So the new learning of each lesson is easy to teach, learn, embed and hence soon becomes firm foundations for future learning.

solution 2b: spiral through the curriculum more than once a year

If we are successful at teaching a small bite of learning per curriculum spiral, but we don’t want learners to fall further behind their peers, then we must spiral through the curriculum more frequently then the higher attaining peers do - because those higher attaining peers can learn larger bites of learning at a time - whereas lower attaining learners can not. With timely practice it is easy to spiral through the curriculum faster, and to know exactly what to teach each learner each spiral.

problem 3: low attaining and under achieving learners often forget the learning of a lesson within a few days of the lesson

Let’s look at a typical situation: the learner learned what the teacher taught a few days ago. However when the teacher “quickly reviews” this learning, the learner has, seemingly, forgotten everything they learned those few days ago. This disrupts the teaching and learning and is very demotivating for the learner. Other similar situations are that the teacher asks the learner to do a homework or revise for a test on the learning of a lesson a few days ago- but the learner can’t because they have forgotten what they learned. Unless the learner can reteach themselves, or is in a fortunate home situation (family or friends or a personal tutor) they will lose that learning and are likely become demotivated as they may will reason: “what’s the point of working hard in lessons if I can’t use it later?”

solution 3: increasing interval retrieval practice

This solution - practice an additional question e.g. 2 days after the lesson, then 3 days after that, then 5, 8, 13 … days after the previous practice and so on - needs to be applied hand in hand with

• solutions 2a - teach small bites on firm learning foundations - because otherwise the learner might not be able to remember what they learned until their next maths lesson,

• solution 2b - repeat solution 2a frequently - because otherwise the learner will learn less then their peers who can learn larger bites at a time,

• solution 4 - give feedback if needed and reduce the interval between practises - so the feedback can be remembered to apply to the next retrieval practice question.

For more detailed information on how this works please see here or here.

problem 4: feedback will be quickly forgotten unless it is used soon

Feedback is another thing to remember on top of the original but flawed learning of the lesson which the learner could recall. Even if the feedback is successful, it along with the learning of the lesson will be forgotten, unless it is used soon.

solution 4: give feedback and after feedback give the learner an opportunity to apply the feedback soon

If teaching doesn’t seamlessly become embedded learning we should, usually, give feedback, to avoid wasting the teaching and learning that we have done so far.

timely practice’s primary purpose: needs to be effective for most learners most of the time because otherwise there will not be enough capacity from the teacher to give feedback when it is needed. It is highly likely that we will need to fix incomplete and incorrect chunks from prior learning, and this is more likely to need feedback than new learning. So we must make sure that timely practice’s secondary purpose - effective feedback - is in place.

In order to do this we need to

• make an opportunity in the lesson for feedback - when all learners are engaged in their timely practice assignments, the teacher will have the time to interrupt learners to give personalised feedback,

• make feedback more likely to be effective - schedule the next retrieval practice question soon - so the learner can apply the feedback, before they forget it.

Feedback is also excellent highly specific teacher training - the teacher finds out, in a timely fashion, individual learners' stumbling blocks to learning and gets a chance to fix them before the learning is forgotten.  When the teacher witnesses working memory overload symptoms, especially from multiple learners, the teacher will know they have tried to teach "too hard" or "too much". The teacher quickly develops skills and knowledge which would ordinarily take the teacher many years of teaching to acquire.

problem 5: low success, low motivation and poor effort

It is easy for both teachers and learners to despair when learners do little work in maths lessons and forget what they learned so quickly after the lesson. This can easily lead to a downward spiral of lack of success and decreasing motivation.

solution 5: success creates motivation 

We need to make sure learners are being successful - once learners feel they are being successful they will become more motivated. We can then begin to have an upward cycle of success and motivation. 

We break the downward cycle by getting learners to practise only skills that they already know - or skills they have recently learned. Solutions 1 to 4 acting hand-in-hand mean new learning becomes easier - many learners are able to learn many layers without the need for feedback and when feedback is required it is quickly successful. As a consequence of repeated success, learners begin to become more motivated, they answer more questions in a lesson, they may even be able to help their peers (sometimes for the first time in a very long time) and they are consequently less motivated to forget (yes! - this is really a well researched problem)

timely practice learners notice themselves learning

when

• they can independently recall and accurately answer a skill they recently learned,

• when after feedback they master a skill. Once learners have succeeded with one challenging layer, they are more likely to believe that they will succeed with other layers they initially find hard - this can be considered as growing a growth mindset!

• they return to learn something new on a topic, and the teacher begins their teaching by reviewing something which they learned earlier in the year, and which they now find easy,

• when they review their learning, either through looking back at old assignments or through testing, and see that what they found challenging before, they now find easy.
  
  

problem 6: poor numeracy skills

Most low attaining learners have missing times table, addition and subtraction facts and little understanding of place value; few understand when to multiply and fewer still when to divide. Many learners have incomplete or incorrect formal methods for the four operations - often due to the excessive working memory demands of formal methods.

With traditional maths teaching, once learners fall behind their peers in the mechanics of the four operations, we spend more time teaching them to apply methods and less time teaching them when to apply each method.

solution 6: teach numeracy skills and simultaneously teach harder topics by carefully reducing numeracy demands

We can build up learning on "numeracy" skills in the same small bite steps as we can build “topic content” skills. By finding and filling learning gaps and offering low working memory scaffolded methods alongside scaffolding traditional methods, we can teach missing skills whilst building confidence and flexible numeracy skills.

Alongside teaching numeracy skills, the early teaching of many harder topics within timely practice is done in a low-numeracy-demand way. This means that once learners have improved their numeracy skills they are not left behind in other more mathematical topics.

problem 7: learners can’t or won’t revise

Revision isn’t revision if you have completely forgotten what you’ve learned. In this instance it’s re-teaching. Teaching oneself maths is notoriously hard, and expecting the lowest attaining learners to do this, is not only unfair but very unlikely to occur.

solution 7: reduce the need + increase the motivation for revision with retrieval practice

Ensuring that learners learn within one lesson and embed this learning in subsequent lessons - for low attaining learners - is quicker and cheaper in terms of teacher's and learners' time than the reteaching of many skills year on year.

Once learners have built some confidence through success and understand the process of embedding learning, learners asking to take extra homework for a holiday - “so I don’t forget what I learned” - becomes a reality. Similarly, when learners find a stumbling block they will think about it between lessons, so that they are more likely to master and retain their new skills.

problem 8: learners find using/creating generalisations and problem solving very hard

Low attaining learners are often not able to independently solve problems or utilise generalisations shared by the teacher, nor come up with their own.

Without the ability to create or use generalisations learners are overwhelmed by the trees - they cannot see the wood.

Without the ability to see a path from given input information to the required output solution - problem solving is unlikely to be successful.

solution 8: sufficient deliberate practice

Research on cumulative practice says that when learners “are using two different pieces of knowledge/skills/methods to learn a third” they are “most successful if both the two existing pieces of knowledge/skills/methods are more strongly embedded before the third is learned”. This then, is another facet of mastery learning, holding back from teaching new skills until the prerequisite skills are mastered.

My experience is that low attaining learners can generalise and problem solve, only after they have practised the required skill sufficiently. Once a skill has been learned, the learner is able to understand, use and explain to their teacher or their peers both generalisation and problem solving.

Certainly learners often exhibit working memory overload symptoms: missing steps and giving up with problems that require use of generalisations. It could be that place holding between the steps of the generalisation and the question to which they must apply the generalisation overload their working memory capacity. Or it could be that one must hold several examples in mind in order to generalise - and this will overload working memory without the support of chunks built in long term memory.

To successfully solve problems - at least the kind you get in maths exams - one must find the path from the given inputs to the required solution. Well developed triggers of chunks built in long term memory, built by sufficient deliberate practice, help the expert to solve problems by trying at most only a few paths.

Many low attaining learners need deliberate practice to be prepared to read and process “long” descriptions. So timely practice provides careful layers in problem solving topics to assist the teacher to provide appropriate deliberate practice to develop motivation and chunks with well developed triggers.

problem 9:  scaffolding doesn’t lead to embedded learning

Scaffolding within a lesson - which allows learners to learn alongside their peers within the lesson - often doesn’t lead to embedded learning after the lesson. Within the lesson, learners can appear to learn when we provide scaffolding. Similarly fading the scaffolding within the lesson appears to be successful. However a few days later, many learners cannot use the skills the teacher taught and the learners appeared to learn.

solution 9: fade the scaffolding after the lesson

Fading scaffolding, as the phrase implies, requires time, if we remove scaffolding before the learner is ready, we are likely to lose the learning. If we teach topics only once a year for a lesson or two during the year, we are unlikely to be able to fade scaffolding sufficiently slowly (and we’ll need a tutor per learner to be able to do this). As learners practice questions from a layer (a small bite of learning from a topic) they build up chunks or mental schema in long term memory which help them to remember how to answer similar questions - thus the learners building up their own scaffolding - through the repeated retrieval practice of timely practice. We provide scaffolding in one of two ways within timely practice

1. Each layer on a topic is only a small amount harder than the previous, so learning on prior layers creates chunks in long term memory, which act as internal scaffolding

2. Sometimes the same maths occurs in two layers, one layer with scaffolding given within the question and later the same type of questions are repeated in a layer without the scaffolding.