assessANDfeedback

(0) Introduction and links to the other teacher training topics

Assessment before teaching with timely practice, enables the teacher to teach on firm learning foundations (see planTeaching) and the app to keep what the learner can already remember fresh (see retrievalPracticeTheory). Feedback of the type - tick or not - will strengthen the chunks in the learners' long term memory (see chunk-basedTheory).
Assessment during the teach part of the lesson enables the teacher to teach more effectively i.e. give instant feedback. Self assessment by the learner during the practice part of the lesson enables the learner to know to seek help from a teacher or their peers i.e. feedback-dialogue.
Assessment the next lesson, after teaching, enables the teacher, app and learner to work together to keep the learning fresh and gradually stretch the durability of recall-ability of new and existing learning. The time set aside for pre assess and retrieval practice additionally gives the teacher and learner the time and ability to do feedback-dialogue when errors are made. After a couple of months, the retrieval practice, scheduled by the app, means the teacher will almost always find the teaching of each lesson has become deeply embedded in long term memory and the teacher can teach more on the topic on the firm learning foundations.

1 (0) Introduction and links to the other teacher training topics
2 (1) Always teach on firm learning foundations = mastery learning
3 (2) Assess Pre-Assess Only Assignments
4 (3) Absent Learner List - ensures a maximum of 1 open assignment per learner
5 (4) Assess last lesson’s teaching + Decide between FOA, FOB and BELL:
- 5.1 Using the Absent Learner List in Edit Taught
- 5.2 Principles to Decide between FOA, FOB and BELL
6 (5) Teachers Assess (but don’t Mark) the timely practice assignments
7 (6) Assess t.p. Retrieval Practice part of the assignment
- 7.1 The 3 pre assess and 5 retrieval practice assessment options
8 (7) Get the most from feedback by remembering it's better called feedback-dialogue
9 (8) Feedback-dialogue is best after a good night's sleep

(1) Always teach on firm learning foundations = mastery learning

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 learners skills 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.

When the teacher finds each learners firm learning foundations on a topic and uses that data to decide where to start teaching that topic, the teacher can be confident that the learners will retain new teaching because

the teacher is teaching on firm learning foundations,
the app schedules a retrieval practice programme for each bite (layer) of new learning and
that when feedback needs to be given, it has the best chance of success, because the teacher and learner are entering into a feedback-dialogue and the app adjusts (reduces) the interval between asks of the similar questions from a layer in the retrieval practice schedule, so that the learner is most likely to remember and be able to apply the recent feedback.

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?

That’s why 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” and encouraging learners to “remember to use a question mark, if you need to”.

We don’t ask each learner a question from every layer in every topic because

it would take too long: we initially rule out some key layers that we consider too easy or too hard (based on the Level for Learner the teacher inputs into the app) and because
it would be too traumatic for learners. Hence the teacher can say to the class “Everybody will get some too easy, some OK and some too hard questions in their learned and remembered section, this is to help the app find out for the teacher, what to teach you soon.”

Instead we ask

questions on a few key layers of a topic, and
any that are answered 100% correctly we ask an additional verify question.

This gives us a broad brush stroke picture of the learner’s skills and learning gaps. We then ask

responsively questions from easier or harder key layers, and
any that are answered 100% correctly we ask an additional verify question,
then we sometimes ask questions from some scaffold layers and
any that are answered 100% correctly we ask an additional verify question.

This trial and improvement process means we can be fairly confident we are finding each learners' firm learning foundations from each topic.

It’s easy to teach too much and/or too hard and if we do

the learners will forget the new teaching and will inevitably become progressively more despondent about their ability to learn,
the retrieval practice system that timely practice uses would require more feedback capacity than the teacher has available and so only learning that the learner requires no feedback for would be retained

The pre assess process is set up so that the teacher can create and set

an assessment assignment for one whole lesson or
shorter assessment assignments to be completed in say 10 to 15 minutes of a fortnight of consecutive lessons,

After this, the timely practice app can show the teacher firm foundations for the first few topics.

The app is intended to hold the teacher back from teaching too much and/or too hard, meaning

the learners generally retain their learning until the next lesson, and when this happens regularly learners become progressively more motivated,
very little feedback is required to ensure the retrieval practice system that timely practice uses ensures learners retain new learning for the long term

(2) Assess Pre-Assess Only Assignments

Preparing for lessons requiring a warm up assignment,

Create a P&P (planning and preparation) session - the type will be Warmup and the date will be the date of the lesson when timely practice pre assess will happen
Open that P&P session and tap Continue to move past the Assess t.p. section (this is the first assignment, so there are none to assess yet).
Change the nominal number of questions (if you want a longer or shorter assignment).
Leave both retrieval practice and pre assess assignments ticked (this is good practice for 2 reasons which are explained later)
Tap the Create button, tap Continue
Select the type of Download you prefer: duplex concatenated (all learners assignments printed double sided with additional blank pages to easily separate them), simplex (single sided) or each learner separately. Click the appropriate green arrow(s).
The assignments will be found in your downloads folder.

The 3 pre assess assessment options in pre assess are tick, bell and reset

tick	bell	reset

tick	bell	reset

tick is for a fully independent and accurate answer
BELL, stands for BEst Learned Later. It is used for an almost (but not fully correct answer) or for a one part correct answer or for a question not answered (but the teacher assumes that the learner has had a chance to read and try to answer the question).
reset is for when the teacher assumes the learner hasn’t had a chance to answer the question e.g. the last few questions of the assignment are all left blank (the learner seems to have run out of time) or e.g. a blank answer line, when a short question is sandwiched between longer questions (the teacher thinks that the learner may not have seen the question). This assessment option can also be used if the teacher can’t quite read the learners answer e.g. a 3 has been changed to a 5 (the pre assess process is not a test, the purpose is to find out what the learner already knows, later the teacher can train the learner in good exam skills).

Assess the first pre-assess assignment

Read about the process, rather than watch the mp4s

(3) Absent Learner List - ensures a maximum of 1 open assignment per learner

For the second and subsequent Warmup assignments, we need to make sure that each learner has a maximum of one open assignment. In this mp4, we see how learner F (who was absent last lesson), didn’t have their assignment assessed (because they didn’t complete it, because they were absent) and the teacher makes a list/remembers who the absent learners were and unticks these learners' names, before pressing the Create button in the Create t.p. section of the planning and preparation session.

(4) Assess last lesson’s teaching + Decide between FOA, FOB and BELL:

Once we begin to use timely practice for teaching, we will create a tpTeach style of Planning and Preparation session.

Using the Absent Learner List in Edit Taught

If a learner has been absent from a lesson, then we don’t want to add the layer we wanted them to teach them, into their retrieval practice (as we know they haven’t learned it). So using the Absent Learner List, tab the yellow squares of the layers of the absent learners. We aren’t going to judge whether we think the learner learned what was taught last lesson (as it won’t be accurate), we are going to leave the timely practice app to find out whether the learner has retained until the next lesson, what they were taught last lesson.

Principles to Decide between FOA, FOB and BELL

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.

FOA: feedback on attempt, the learner has made an attempt and the teacher thinks it’s worthwhile to give feedback, the symbol is a speech bubble with writing inside,
FOB: feedback on blank, the learner hasn’t made an attempt but the teacher still thinks it’s worthwhile to give feedback, the symbol is an empty speech bubble,
BELL: BEst Learned Later, the teacher and/or the learner think that feedback isn’t working, the symbol is a bell.

(5) 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

(6) Assess t.p. Retrieval Practice part of the assignment

The 3 pre assess and 5 retrieval practice assessment options

	tick	FOA	FOB	BELL	reset

	tick	FOA	FOB	BELL	reset
		Speech bubble with writing inside	Empty speech bubble.
pre assess	independent and accurate answer	N/A	N/A	not fully accurate	The learner ran out of time or seems to have not seen the question. If this happens semi-regularly, reduce the Pace for Practice
retrieval practice	independent and accurate answer	question attempted, and feedback might work	question not answered, but feedback might work	feedback isn’t working

(7) Get the most from feedback by remembering it's better called feedback-dialogue

Every time we help a learner fix a chunk in long term memory - when they otherwise would be left having learned no chunk or an imperfect chunk - we are ensuring the learner will make more progress when they otherwise would.

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).

(8) Feedback-dialogue is best after a good night's sleep

Contrary to our expectations, feedback is better given after one sleep, than directly after an error. It seems that if we give feedback on the day of the error, we may not be as effectively triggering reconsolidation - see chunk-basedTheory(2) - that is we are not as effectively triggering the brain to change chunks in long-term memory. On the other hand, if we leave feedback for too many days, then feedback is not as effective as it could be, because forgetting has further deteriorated the learning our feedback is trying to fix.