Xtras + FAQ
Lesley Goddard
Sufficient research on all of these aspects will be introduced throughout this - the explaining and training course - but here are links to the key research for the curious:
FAQ
base10add is skills for adding on 10 using place value e.g. continue the sequence 34, 44, 54
base10skills is using place value to multiply e.g work out 20 x 700
place0value99 - i.e. place value between 0 and 99 - it covers reading and writing numbers in words and digits, teenage numbers: 11 to 19 and the value of the tens and ones digits
place100value9999 - i.e. place value between 100 and 9999 - it covers completing/understanding the value of digits in a place value grid and writing numbers in words and reading numbers written in words
placeValue10000up - i.e. place value over 10 000 - reading and writing larger numbers especially ensuring that learners know that the columns ten thousand and hundred thousand come before a million in a place value grid
If the teacher hasn’t tapped the floppy disc, then just tap the correct assessment outcome.
If the teacher has tapped the floppy disc (and the assessment has been saved), the teacher need not do anything, the app will self adjust the retrieval practice interval over time.
This helps the app decide on the urgency for adding questions on layers into the next retrieval practice section of the timely practice assignment. The option feedback-on-blank is considered more urgent than feedback-on-attempt. However feedback-on-blank may be an indication that the teacher should select best learned later - because the teacher and learner might be better off putting their limited feedback time to better use.
The teacher should not give feedback on pre assess questions because
we want pre assess to be fast and accurately find each learner's firm learning foundations;
each learner’s retrieval practice pool should only contain layers which the learner already knows or has recently be taught (adding almost correct layers into the retrieval practice pool will mean that the teacher needs to give feedback before they have taught the timely practice layer - this will in most cases be a poor use of the teacher’s time - so please do not assess with a tick partially correct answers);
throughout the time when learners are only or mainly doing pre assess, the teacher can concentrate on getting this message across: the pre assess section, headed Already Learned and Remembered? is to help the teacher teach all learners in the class better in the future. Everybody will have some too easy and some too hard questions. Over time the timely practice app will get better at finding out what each learner can do - unlike a test - meaning that once the teacher begins teaching using timely practice, the learners will find learning and remembering learning easier.
Almost all teachers, by their very nature, will find selecting bell when an answer is almost correct hard to do. The teacher can remind themselves, that they are selecting bell because they can see the learner hasn’t fully mastered all of the topic, but has mastered some of the topic and it is the timely practice app’s job to find learning strengths and gaps within the topic. Equally teachers find it hard to resist giving feedback, when requested by the learner on incorrectly answered layers. Try to resist, as the feedback will be on a random layer - perhaps a “too hard layer” that the trial and improvement process stumbled across. Once the teacher starts teaching the topic, the teacher will be able to give feedback on the layer which the learner is likely to be able to learn easily, rather than a random layer. Any feedback, if feedback is even needed after teaching the layer, will then be on the learner’s firm learning foundations and therefore is likely to stick.
Our experience is that low attaining learners don’t close the learning gap with their peers no matter
how high the quality of teaching is,
how high the teachers expectations are,
how hard the learners work,
how many questions the learners practise at the point of teaching
… unless we address forgetting. Of the two most effective ways to improve retention of learning, we have found that personalised retrieval practice is more effective and efficient than practice tests. This is because
tests are one size fits all - meaning some learners will be answering too many too easy for them and others will be attempting to answer too many too hard for them questions - which is a waste of lesson time,
tests, unless they are too easy for all, give rise to more questions that need feedback - ideally feedback-dialogue - than the teacher has capacity to engage with,
hence either learners get insufficient and generally inefficient feedback - meaning the embedding of learning is less efficient than it could be.
Our experience is that end of lesson assessment is a waste of time! What we need desperately to know is
Can the learner still remember (at least some of) what they learned in their previous lesson in their next lesson?
If the learner can remember how to answer questions on the layer they learned last lesson, then the retrieval practice scheduled by timely practice can begin to work at embedding this learning more and more deeply and accurately in the learners long term memory i.e. stretching the durability of the recall-ability of the learning.
If the learner can only partially answer questions on the layer they learned last lesson, then feedback can be used to fix the missing or incorrect parts.
If the learner can’t remember anything from the last lesson, then reteaching or best learned later will be needed. However disappointing this is for the teacher, the teacher needs to know that the teaching and learning activities of the lesson “haven’t worked” for some/most learners. Perhaps it's due to poorly spaced lessons or a long weekend, perhaps it's due to teaching a too hard layer e.g. teaching layer 1 of correctDP before sufficient correctTOnearest has been mastered. If the teacher finds that teaching of the lesson can’t be remembered in the next lesson, the teacher has the possibility of doing something different. The teacher should congratulate themselves, they have found and have the opportunity to fix, learning which would otherwise have been forgotten. If the teacher didn’t find out until the next end of unit/term/year test (as with traditional teaching) they would’t be able to do anything other than reteach. Whereas, with timely practice, the teacher and learner have time to engage in a series of feedback-dialogue sessions to fix these gaps in learning, up until the point where the teacher and/or learner decide that the feedback-dialogue isn’t working: the teacher can bell (best learned later) the layer next time they assess a similar question.
It is likely, with poorly spaced lessons e.g. a lesson on Thursday and then not another until Tuesday that many learners will have forgotten enough of their learning of the Thursday lesson to warrant a whole class approach. The teacher may decide to move to the next lesson the layers found within Edit Teaching, (tap and tap again for the blue forward arrow) after the Thursday lesson. The teacher can start or end Tuesday’s lesson with a few recap questions or ask the learners to repeat their practise-learn worksheet on what they learned on Thursday, as well as the layers taught in the Tuesday lesson.
For some very low attaining learners, where the school decides more input is required for them, the school can add in an extra 5 minute timely practice session between poorly spaced lessons in school time: e.g. additional time with a learning support teacher or in registration with the support of the form tutor or with family-buy-in for homework. Thereby increasing the likelihood that the learner can recall learning between one lesson and the next.
See also suggestions in planTeaching(6)
The app will let the teacher know, if the learner has retained the learning from the previous lesson, when the teacher assesses the next timely practice assignment.
What we expect teachers will find is that:
some learners who look like they aren’t learning - prove to have actually been learning,
some learners who do everything that is asked of them and appear to be learning - prove to not have learned, yet, the layer. However feedback-dialogue between the teacher and the learner will usually fix this. Sometimes enough learners will have forgotten the learning of the lesson, to warrant a whole class review. The teacher should congratulate themselves, they have found and have the opportunity to fix, learning which would otherwise have been forgotten.
Absolutely not. We have worked hard to reduce peer-to-peer copying, because copying is the enemy of pre assess and retrieval practice. Each learner begins with a randomly assigned question, which significantly reduces peer-to-peer copying. Most layers have 6 to 20 questions so the chance of two learners sitting adjacent to each other having the same question is very low. Once learners realise they have different questions, they rarely even try to copy.
Many teachers like to start their lesson with timely practice in lieu of a lesson warm up, and some teachers like to designate the first 5 minutes of each lesson as a “silent, do now”, meaning the teacher can focus on settling the class and not get side-tracked by feedback.
Of course in the future we would like to automate this - and auto prepare a “lesson plan page” for the teacher to print out, but for now 1. and 2. below form the lesson plan and 3. reminds the teacher to let the app know any variations to the lesson plan.
the list of learners who will learn each layer from a topic list, helps the teacher plan efficiently without overloading the teachers working memory;
the order of teaching list, helps the teacher plan efficient teaching of the lesson in the planning and preparation session - and recall their plan within the lesson.
the Absent learners list helps the teacher not duplicate their effort within Edit Teaching and helps retrieval practice be done efficiently within Create t.p.
In Edit Teaching, the list helps ensure that layers are not added into retrieval practice that we know the learner didn’t learn.
In Create t.p., the list helps ensure learners only ever have one timely practice assignment the app at a time, meaning the timely practice app can schedule retrieval practice most efficiently. If a learner returns from an absence and had several timely practice assignments “to catch up on”, then they are likely to feel overwhelmed and wish they hadn’t returned to school. Worse, if the learner doesn’t get retrieval practice on the learning of their first lesson back (because they were completing old assignments first) they would feel (accurately) that they are not learning well as they can.
We would emphasise that this is a might, timely practice works well without and teachers have enough to do - so this is a personal preference option.
Traditionally the teacher only teaches each topic once per year, hence in the subsequent year, it will be a waste of time for the teacher to wonder “why doesn’t this learner know this layer already?” The reasons: absent, forgot, was taught too much etc, won’t help the teacher teach better in the future.
With timely practice, the teacher might want to look back at their teaching within the first/previous curriculum spiral of the year and find “pride in a job well done”.
Additionally where the teacher uses a SOL in which the teacher spirals through the curriculum and teaches many topics a few times a year, then the question “why doesn’t this learner know this layer already?” may help the teacher teach the current class better:
e.g. the teacher could focus on a learner in the lesson (particularly with questioning within the teach-learn part of the lesson) because they have already been taught, but have not learned the layer.
e.g. for learners who were absent last time the topic was taught, the teacher might give priority to the absent-last-time topic over the other topic (when teaching 2 topics has been planned).
Whether the school/department/teacher is using timely practice to find out
how effective their current SOL with one class and how effective a timely practice SOL is with another class
or to compare a year where some teaching is done using the current SOL and some using a timely practice SOL
they will need to decide what the lead time needs to be - when sufficient pre assess is likely to have been done - so they can measure embedded learning at the start of a trial. We are happy to give advice about this.
FYI The pre assess of the existing SOL should match the existing SOL. With most traditional schemes of learning, a block or unit is made up of only part of a topic theme e.g. algebraic tinkering in Kangaroo Maths contains the algebra topics simplifySD (sum difference), simplifyPQ (product quotient), expandLinear, factorise and valueAlgebra but not the other algebra topics algebraGraphs, inequality, sequenceT2T , sequenceOther, sequenceP2T, solveSingleStage, solveMultiStage and writeAlgebra.