Free trial = add to our research

Big Picture

Compare the learners' learning progress when teaching:

  • the school’s existing units within the scheme of learning for 3 to 6 weeks (the control) with

  • the same learners' progress using timely practice for the same time period.

Comparing is a little complicated because …

We are comparing 2 quite different ways of teaching and embedding learning:

 

The school’s existing unit(s) (control)

The allocated timely practice topics (experiment)

 

The school’s existing unit(s) (control)

The allocated timely practice topics (experiment)

Spiral though the annual scheme of learning

One spiral per year

Depth first journey through the SOL

Teach everything everything that will be taught on a topic during the year within a few days.

A few spirals per year

Breadth first journey through the SOL

Teach a small bite on a topic within a lesson.

Teach the topic a few times per year

Embedding of learning

Often self directed revision.

20-60 minute test on the topics (soon) after the 2-3 weeks teaching block.

Revision organised by timely practice

Recently learned topics practised more frequently but in each 10-15 minutes session in each lesson, any topic may be revised.

So we need to find a way to measure progress fairly

 

The school’s existing unit(s) (control)

The allocated timely practice topics (experiment)

 

The school’s existing unit(s) (control)

The allocated timely practice topics (experiment)

Unit of measure

timely practice layers are small bites of learning on each topic

Which topics will be taught in the trial

e.g. 1 of the 2 units of algebra from the SOL

e.g. all of the topics from at least one topic theme geometry and measure and some from another probability and statistics

Auto pre assess the topics in the trial using timely practice

Set up class.controlBefore in timely practice app

Add all topics within the unit to the scheme of learning

Set up class.experiment in the timely practice app

Add all topics allocated to timely practice

Preparation: time to fully assess learners on the topics before teaching begins. Before each lesson, create and print the assignments, after each lesson assess the completed assignments.

Allow 10 minutes from each of 6 lessons for learners to do a pre assess from class.controlBefore

Allow 10 minutes from each of 6 lessons for learners to do a pre assess from class.experiment. Not all topics will be pre assessed, but enough will be pre assessed that teaching may begin.

Calculate number of layers each learner “already knows”

Take a snapshot of each topic in class.controlBefore. All the blue layers are the layers count as “already knew”

Take a snapshot of each topic in class.experiment before planning teaching for the unit. All the blue layers are the layers count as “already knew”

Duration of teaching

 

The school will chose the units, and therefore the number of lessons of the trial.

e.g. 11 x 1 hour lessons of a 3 week unit

The same number of lessons, but subtract time spent embedding learning after the teaching time.

e.g. 11 lessons - 2 lessons = 9 lessons (see Wait below)

Teach

Teach the unit as normal

Revise and test after the unit as normal

Teach all the topics from the first topic theme (e.g. 11 topics from geometry and measure) and as many as is comfortable from another topic theme (e.g. 3 to 7 topics from probability and statistics). Continue to create pre assess assignments for learners who still have topics which are not fully pre assessed.

Wait

Wait 6 weeks - no revision allowed

Continue with 5 to 10 minutes of timely practice

1st fortnight: every maths lesson

2nd fortnight: twice a week

3rd fortnight: once a week

This might be 17 sessions of 7 minutes = 120 minutes , hence duration of teaching time has 2 lessons subtracted.

Assess

Set up class.controlAfter in timely practice app. Add all topics within the control unit to the scheme of learning.

Or if continuing with timely practice, add the topics from the control unit to class.experiment SOL

Create and assess up to 6 pre assess assignments, allow about 10 minutes per lesson. All the blue layers are the layers from the control topics count as “now knows”

Take a snapshot of each topic in class.experiment after 6 weeks. All the medium and darker blue layers are the layers which count as “now knows”, the very pale blue layers are fragile - meaning the learner is still learning them, so they should not be counted.

Calculate embedded progress

For each learner calculate: progress = number of layers “now knows” - number of layers “already knew”

Analysis

Compare the progress with both types of teaching.

Compare number of layers learned from each topic.

 

In all schemes of learning we have encountered (to date) learners are taught 3 to 5 topics within 3 weeks.

If a learner was to take a GCSE exam tomorrow we would expect the number of layers learners “already know” for the 3 to 5 topics to be:

  • entry level: between 4 and 20 layers

  • grade 1: between 6 and 25 layers

  • grade 4: between 20 to 50 layers

If the current scheme of learning uses retrieval practice, we will need to discuss with you, how to calculate when 6 weeks after the teaching of the unit should be calculated.

timely practice unit

The number of layers a learner already knows from the timely practice trial topics will be larger (as we are measuring more topics), so in 3 weeks the number of layers the learners “already know” might be

  • entry level: between 4 and 20 layers

  • grade 1: between 6 and 25 layers

  • grade 4: between 20 to 50 layers

The app uses a trial, verify, improve and verify procedure to find which layers each learner knows.

It takes 2 consecutive questions asked and answered on a layer for it to be counted as “learned”.

For the pre assess and post assess, there is no need to insist on strict test conditions as learners won’t be able to directly copy, because each is allocated a random starting question. However learners showing each other how to answer their questions should not be allowed.