# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Improving our use of assessment often means deepening our understanding of the curriculum.

If you teach, you assess; assessment is part of teaching. But what do you assess? And how? And when?

The four steps below will help you align your curriculum, your teaching and the assessment processes you use. And that begins with understanding your curriculum.

Step 1: Understand your curriculum intimately

As a teacher, you can improve your teaching by improving your assessment practice, not (as Dylan Wiliam has so concisely put it) because you're not good enough, but because you - like any teacher - can always be better.

What is a curriculum?

Christine Counsell - one of the foremost thinkers in the UK on matters of curriculum - wrote on her blog about the curriculum as "content structured as narrative over time". This wonderfully captivating idea has held my interest ever since I read it, and any reader or film fan will understand what she means: the content matters, but so does the order in which it is encountered. The endings of Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad make very little sense to anyone who hasn't read or watched what comes before! Similarly, some of Wordsworth's poetry makes little sense if you don't know the context of social reform at the time, and the growing calls for rights to individual freedoms of thought and expression. Content - structured as narrative over time - is a helpful way of thinking about the concept of curriculum.

Who's in charge: the curriculum or the test?

One common factor in teaching and assessment decisions has, for a long time, been the high-stakes end-of-course exam. It's hard not to be drawn to 'teaching to the test', because the outcomes of those tests matter to our students and to our schools. But one of the consequences of this can be a narrowing of the curriculum; those high-stakes tests can only ever sample and assess small areas from the whole curriculum, because that's what they're designed to do.

Narrowing of the curriculum reduces the equity of education offered in our classrooms; our students have a restricted educational experience. One way of combatting this is to have - and for teachers to understand intimately - a detailed and robust curriculum. Replacing vague descriptions of the content our students should learn with a clear and concise narrative is at the heart of a move away from the high-stakes test as the ultimate arbiter of what and when we teach, something that both Cambridge Assessment's Tim Oates and No More Marking's Daisy Christodoulou have asserted.

Step 2: Turn abstract curriculum concepts into the concrete learning constructs

Many curriculum documents contain statements written as abstractions. ' Develop algebraic fluency' is one such abstraction which is really hard to define unless you truly understand this aspect of mathematics; ' Select vocabulary judiciously ' is another which gets language teachers the world over arguing. Here are some examples of other curriculum constructs:

Multiply two-digit numbers together

Understands hyperbole and uses it to create effect in original writing

Apply the concept of equality to evaluate two democratic systems of government

So that our students can access, develop and master the content in their curriculum, we need both a more detailed and concrete understanding of the narrative of curriculum content, and of what students would know, understand and be able to do along the learning journey, and upon reaching their destination.

We need to 'operationalise' curriculum statements - to make them meaningful and comprehensible by placing them in their domain-specific structure and setting out a clear narrative. When we do this, we create what are known in the language of assessment as constructs - the clearly-defined and understood targets of our assessment practices, the jigsaw pieces of our curriculum selected for assessment.

And that structure should be based on the domain-specific learning progressions, or the 'content as narrative over time' as Christine Counsell might consider it (for example, 'fluency in mental arithmetic' is a construct which requires addition and subtraction as a foundation, and progresses to the more complex skills of multiplication and division long before content associated directly with algebra is introduced).

Curriculum constructs are not isolated units of knowledge, understanding or skill. As we learn, we integrate new information with our prior knowledge, reshaping our long-term memories; in doing so, we have to recognise that curriculum constructs are steps along a much longer learning progression. When we assess, we try to estimate where on that continuum our students currently are, and where they should move to next.

Step 3: select assessment questions and tasks which target the constructs you have identified

The only way to know which jigsaw pieces students have when they come to your classroom is to assess them in some way.

The only way to know if students have put more pieces into the puzzle after you've taught them is to assess them.

But each time you assess, you're only able to take one quick glance at that bigger puzzle your students are assembling, so it's worth remembering that taking "multiple inadequate glances" (in the words of Prof Rob Coe) will help you make that picture more visible.

Step 4: treat assessment as a process of teaching, not an isolated event

Keep revisiting, keep asking questions and setting tasks designed both to help students retrieve information and to provide you with the information needed to make your next steps decisions. Avoid seeing assessment as the thing that you do at the end of a teaching sequence, viewing it instead as an ongoing process to support teaching and learning.
Understanding how a curriculum is built of its component parts, and how to assess your students' mastery of them are key features of our Assessment Lead Programme. Try a free sample of the Programme here!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this blog, we outline four steps that will help you align your curriculum, your teaching and the assessment processes you use.

# data[].attributes.body
https://bunsenblue.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/turn-and-talk/

# data[].attributes.headline
Retrieval practice - myths, mutations, mistakes

# data[].attributes.subject
Retrieval practice - myths, mutations, mistakes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When activating prior knowledge, it can be tempting to remind students of previously studied material. After all, this can be much quicker than asking questions to all members of the class, ensuring full participation, and then providing the correct answers and feedback. There is often a lot of content teachers need to deliver and present in a lesson, in addition to checking for understanding and accuracy before moving onto to the next section or topic. Retrieval practice can be challenging for students and the level of difficulty will depend on a variety of factors (e.g., the complexity of a topic or how long has elapsed since the content was last revisited). Despite these challenges with implementing retrieval practice, teachers need to persevere and focus on retrieval practice instead of providing the class with reminders of prior learning!

The "generation effect" refers to the long-term benefits of generating an answer from memory, compared to being presented with an answer or information. Professor Robert A. Bjork writes, "basically, any time that you, as a learner, look up an answer or have somebody tell or show you something that you could, drawing on current cues and your past knowledge, generate instead, you rob yourself of a powerful learning opportunity" (2011). In other words, you're missing out when you're reminded of something up instead of trying to retrieve it from memory!

Through quizzing and retrieval practice tasks teachers can provide students with lots of powerful learning opportunities. Reminders can replace those learning opportunities. Bjork offers this advice to teachers, "Whatever answer or procedure a teacher can get a student to generate will be far better recalled at a later time than any answer provided or illustrated to the student" (Jones, 2021).

Examples of reminders in the classroom include:

Showing a video clip to the class

Revisiting and rereading a textbook or knowledge organiser

Presenting slides with information about prior learning

Reminders can be helpful, especially during the encoding stage of the learning process where students are consolidating the latest content. However, reminders should not replace a retrieval task.

Examples of retrieval practice in the classroom include:

Multiple choice or short answer quizzing

Use of mini white boards

Answering past examination questions

If students are struggling to recall information from long term memory it can be tempting for the teacher to offer the answer or solution. This significantly reduces the effectiveness of retrieval practice. Providing a cue or prompt can be beneficial-as long as there is still the element of desirable difficulty requiring students to retrieve the correct information from long term memory. Peps McCrea (2017) explains that the less assistance teachers provide students during retrieval, the greater the strengthening effect will be. It may seem counterintuitive, but not immediately reminding a student of the answer may actually have a positive effect on long-term learning!

Dimension 4 of The Model for Great Teaching (2020) focuses on activating hard thinking; after all, learning is the result of thinking hard about something. Learners can achieve this through the "generation effect"; teachers can support it by setting retrieval tasks to elicit evidence of long-term learning. Reminding students of the answer is not cued recall and, as Bjork stated, it is a missed learning opportunity. Reminders might just not be the answer!
To find out more about retrieval practice and other theories from cognitive neuroscience and psychology, you can complete the online References: Science of Learning Programme, as part of the Great Teaching Toolkit. Click to sign-up to a free trial of all of the courses featured in the Great Teaching Toolkit.
Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In M. A. Gernsbacher, R. W. Pew, L. M. Hough, & J. R. Pomerantz (Eds.), Psychology and the real world: Essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society (pp. 56-64). Worth Publishers.

Coe, R., Rauch, C. J., Kime, S., & Singleton, D. (2020). Great teaching toolkit: Evidence Review. Evidence Based Education. https://evidencebased.education/great teaching-toolkit/

Jones, K. (2021). Retrieval Practice 2: Implementing, embedding & reflecting. John Catt Educational.

McCrea, P. (2017) Memorable Teaching: Leveraging memory to build deep and durable learning in the classroom. John Catt.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When activating prior knowledge, it can be tempting to remind students of previously studied material. After all, this can be much quicker than asking questions to all members of the class, ensuring full participation, and then providing the correct answers and feedback.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The importance of effective feedback is well known and recognised amongst educators. The Education Endowment Foundation reports feedback can have a "very high impact for very low cost based on extensive evidence" (EEF, 2021). There are a variety of ways teachers can give feedback to students. This includes verbal or written comments, grades and scores, whole class feedback and the use of technology. The teacher can also monitor and guide peer assessment and self-assessment. Regardless of the mode teachers use, the key aspect to any form of feedback is how the students respond and act on it.

Dylan Wiliam has stated "the main purpose of feedback is to improve the student and not the work". A piece of work can always be improved-but more importantly, the learners needs to make meaningful progress. For example, digital software can provide a spelling and grammar checker that can improve the piece of work, but not necessarily the students' literacy skills. Wiliam also adds, "The only thing that matters with feedback is the reaction of the recipient. That's it. Feedback-no matter how well designed-that the student does not act upon is a waste of time" (Wiliam & Leahy, 2015).

The Great Teaching Toolkit: Evidence Review (2020) addresses this with Dimension 4: Activating Hard Thinking. The evidence review explains that great teachers give students actionable feedback to guide their learning. It is the collective responsibility of the teacher and student to ensure no feedback opportunity is wasted.
Actionable Feedback:
Wiliam and Siobhan Leahy (2015) are credited with the detective strategy. In this strategy, the teacher will provide feedback but the students have to act as the detective to find and fix errors in their work. Instead of a teacher pointing out which answer is incorrect, they will inform the student one of the five answers are incorrect. The student might initially be frustrated with this and would probably prefer the teacher to tell them exactly which response they need to correct! However, the detective approach encourages students to self-check and correct all five questions and find the error independently. If they fail to find the mistake, they could seek the support of a peer before returning to ask the teacher. The teacher can add further cues and prompts without telling students exactly what they should do next.

Another way for students to act on feedback is to redraft or redo their work, but again the focus must be on improving the learner, not the work. Potential mistakes students can make when redrafting is to not act on feedback; therefore the second version is very similar to the original. A redrafted piece of work should demonstrate considerate and visible improvement.

The teacher could alternatively make the feedback into an actionable task. Image a situation in which students write basic responses to a prompt. The teacher could respond with generic feedback such as "add more detail," (which may or may not be acted upon in the future). To make a more actionable form of feedback, a subsequent task could be set to extend and elaborate on the original basic statement. Students might be asked to include more specific examples and supporting details, for example. Teachers can model and show examples of detailed paragraphs in contrast to generalised and brief answers.

When students complete a quiz or test it can be tempting for them to focus on the score and grade, neglecting any comments. A problem results when students may know their score, but not find out where they were successful, unsuccessful, or where knowledge gaps remain. As a result, they may continue to make the same mistakes. To avoid this, students can make a note or keep a record of incorrect answers, so they are aware of errors and less likely to repeat them again. Students can be tasked with repeating a quiz again (in class or at home) until they are able to answer all questions correctly.

We know that learning is the product of "hard thinking," and actionable feedback is no different. Feedback which does not occupy students' thinking is feedback that will not lead to learning. In order for students to attend to, engage with, and respond to feedback, time must be provided. For the learner to understand their next steps and how they can improve, the feedback from the teacher must be clear. The teacher should also monitor the progress of the learner to ensure feedback is not being ignored or neglected, but instead acted on to improve.

Effective feedback is a powerful tool that teachers hold-actionable feedback hands that tool over to students to increase their own learning.
Key questions to reflect on:

What types of feedback do you provide to your students?

Is time provided in class for students to engage with feedback?

What opportunities are provided for students to act on that feedback?

How do you make it clear that students are engaging with feedback and therefore making progress?

References:
Coe, R., Rauch, C. J., Kime, S., & Singleton, D. (2020). Great teaching toolkit: Evidence Review. Evidence Based Education. https://evidencebased.education/great teaching-toolkit/

Education Endowment Foundation. (2021). Teacher feedback to improve pupil learning: Guidance report. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/evidence-reviews/feedback-approaches

Wiliam, Dylan., & Leahy, S. (2015). Embedding formative assessment: Practical techniques for K-12 classrooms. Learning Sciences International.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The importance of effective feedback is well known and recognised amongst educators. The Education Endowment Foundation reports feedback can have a "very high impact for very low cost based on extensive evidence" (EEF, 2021). There are a variety of ways teachers can give feedback to students.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A retrieval cue can include a visual image, key terms, a verbal prompt or anything that helps a memory to be retrieved from long term memory. McDermott and Roediger advise, "The key to good retrieval is developing effective cues, ones that will lead the rememberer back to the encoded information" (2015).

We encounter retrieval cues in many forms on a daily basis. A smell can act as a reminder of a favourite childhood meal; a song on the radio can trigger a memory from a special occasion. These are all examples of retrieval cues, but they are examples of unintentional and incidental retrieval cues.

Teachers must plan and provide intentional retrieval cues to support the act of retrieving target memories in class. Teachers directing students to recall specific memories is an example of intentional retrieval. The distinction between incidental and intentional is essential-there can be cues in a classroom environment that we do not realise prompts incidental retrieval.

Students are constantly surrounded by potential retrieval cues, but unfortunately they are not always reminded about prior learning. If that were the case, daily life would become overwhelming for everyone-we'd be constantly bombarded with memories! When a student enters a classroom, all their memories, previous experiences, and prior learning in that classroom do not automatically come to mind. The reason for this is that people often have a frame of mind that focuses on the act of recall, and this is known as 'retrieval mode' (Tulving, 1983). When a retrieval task is carried out in class, students know they will be expected to recall prior learning; they therefore unknowingly adopt retrieval mode.

Professors Robert Bjork and Jared Cooney-Horvath, both experts in memory and learning, suggest the most effective form of retrieval practice will be challenging, effortful and not involve cues or prompts (Jones, 2021). This free recall is the contrast to cued recall. However, it is important for teachers to understand when to use cued recall and when to use free recall during the learning process.

A potential problem with free recall is that younger children or novices may recall information that is generalised, vague or irrelevant without realising they are doing so. Research has shown that cued and guided recall can be more beneficial for younger learners (i.e., in primary education) and more likely to lead to retrieval success (Karpicke et al., 2016).

For younger learners, free recall is usually best when used after various retrieval tasks, such as multiple choice, short answer questions, or any form of cued recall (i.e., retrieval practice with a prompt for support). This is more likely to lead to initial retrieval success; it helps students familiarise themselves with the core content they are expected to know and learn. During a subsequent free-recall task, students' answers are more likely to be focused on curricular target memories instead of vague, generalised, or unrelated points.

Ultimately, retrieval practice will involve an element of desirable difficulty; after all, it is not always easy to recall memories from long term memory. However, if a student is failing to retrieve any information, cues can be provided to support retrieval practice and lead to retrieval success. As the learner gains expertise in the topic, we can increase the level of challenge by removing retrieval cues (just in the same way a teacher would use scaffolding in the classroom).

Here are some examples of using retrieval cues in classrooms:

Showing a blank diagram of the water cycle while students answer retrieval questions about it.

After learning about Beethoven and listening to exerts of his pieces, playing them at the start of a subsequent lesson.

When practicing word problems with students, including a copy of one that was a worked example on a previous day.

Including a memorable line from the story If You Give a Mouse a Cookie on a task about cause and effect.

Showing a picture from a school trip to a museum for a task about the ancient civilisations in the exhibit.

Asking students to list question words and reminding them of the "party invite activity" from yesterday.

While the forms of retrieval cues can vary-dependant on the task, the content, and the learners-they all serve the ultimate purpose of recalling the target memory. When carefully crafted and considered, they are another effective tool that teachers have at their disposal.

To learn more about memory and learning in a classroom, you can complete the Science of Learning Programme as part of the Great Teaching Toolkit; or download our free eBook Understanding Memory and Learning from the Evidence Based Education resource library.

References
Jones, K. (2021). Retrieval Practice 2: Implementing, embedding & reflecting. John Catt Educational.
Karpicke, J. D., Blunt, J. R., & Smith, M. A. (2016). Retrieval-based learning: Positive effects of retrieval practice in elementary school children. Frontiers in Psychology, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00350
McDermott, K. B., & Roediger, H. L. (2014). Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval). NOBA Project.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A retrieval cue can include a visual image, key terms, a verbal prompt or anything that helps a memory to be retrieved from long term memory. McDermott and Roediger advise, "The key to good retrieval is developing effective cues, ones that will lead the rememberer back to the encoded information" (2015).

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
A Summary of Evidence Based Formative Assessment Strategies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black originally defined formative assessment as: "encompassing all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged" (Black and Wiliam 1998). Formative assessment strategies are central to effective and responsive teaching and learning. They are also linked to the different stages of the learning process in addition to curriculum planning, design and delivery.

Formative assessment involves a range of evidence-informed strategies used in the classroom across the curriculum with learners of different ages, and can be applied across all subjects. Formative assessment can help the teacher and student understand what needs to be learned and how this can be achieved. A teacher can use a range of strategies to support their students to make progress, and the learner can embrace formative assessment strategies to monitor and reflect on their own progress and act on feedback provided by the teacher and/or their peers.

Dylan Wiliam and Siobhan Leahy have written extensively about five key formative assessment strategies (Embedded Formative Assessment, 2011). The five strategies promoted by Wiliam and Leahy are:

1. Clarifying, sharing and understanding learning intentions and success criteria

2. Engineering effective discussions, tasks, and activities that elicit evidence of learning

3. Providing feedback that moves learners forward

4. Activating students as learning resources for one another

5. Activating students as owners of their own learning.

For each of these strategies a range of techniques can be deployed in the classroom. Formative assessment strategies take place during the learning process in contrast to summative assessment that focuses on a final and high stakes exam or test. The aim of these strategies is to continually help students make progress and develop.

As with all approaches in education, these strategies can either be implemented effectively, badly or by becoming ' lethal mutations'. In such situations, evidence-based strategies are rushed, misunderstood or misapplied to the point of no longer resembling the original research or desired outcome.

In order to avoid misconceptions and mutations, teachers and school leaders need to carefully consider the evidence base and select formative assessment strategies and techniques suitable for their context. This must be followed by considered and meaningful review and reflection.

To find out more about formative assessment strategies in the classroom, for effective teaching and learning, you can sign up to our upcoming webinar here or, if you are based in the United Arab Emirates, you can sign up for the in person workshop in Dubai here. The webinar and workshop will be led by Kate Jones, Senior Associate for Teaching and Learning and author or Wiliam and Leahy's Five Formative Assessment Strategies: In Action (2021).

References:

Black, P., & William, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5, 7-74. doi:10.1080/0969595980050102

Embedding Formative Assessment. Practical Techniques for the Classroom. Dylan Wiliam and Siobhan Leahy. (2011).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Summary of Evidence Based Formative Assessment Strategies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black originally defined formative assessment as: "encompassing all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged" (Black and Wiliam 1998). Formative assessment strategies are central to effective and responsive teaching and learning.

# data[].attributes.headline
The ‘Five a day’ principled - Scaffolding

# data[].attributes.subject
The ‘Five a day’ principled - Scaffolding

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As we should all now be aware, there are no external audiences interested in schools' internal data. If we're going to go to the trouble of getting students to sit formal assessments on which we will collect data, we should be very clear about the purpose both of the assessments and the data they produce.

# data[].attributes.headline
How do we know pupils are making progress?

# data[].attributes.subject
How do we know pupils are making progress?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In Part 1 of this series I set out the problems with making predictions about students' progress by drawing a 'flight path' between KS2 and KS4, then, in Part 2, I explained how thinking about the curriculum as a progression model is essential in making judgments about whether students are making progress. In this post we will turn our attention to issues of assessment. NB. This might feel a bit technical at times, but please know that I'm trying hard to explain complex ideas as simply as I'm able.

It's important to note that assessment can have a range of purposes. You might want to help students consolidate their knowledge of a concept; diagnose what they already know before commencing a sequence of instruction; seeking to discriminate between students' relative grasp of the concepts covered; or intending to make a summative statement about how well a student has learned a topic. Each of these various purposes have their uses but here I intend only to focus on issues of measurement and inference. That is, how we can use assessment to determine students' progress through the curriculum and what we can reasonably say they know and can do at a particular point in time.

As we saw in Part 1, too many schools rely on a flawed model of progression based on cohort level estimates of what grade a student is most likely to achieve in their GCSEs based on their performance in maths and English at KS2. This might estimate, for instance, that a students who achieves x in their SATs has a 34% chance of attaining y. Although this estimation clearly implies that a students has a 66% probability of ending up with some other grade, y, having the highest probability, is given as that student's target grade and line is drawn between their KS2 performance and this spurious target grade. Assessment then becomes the dark art of trying to determine whether this student is where the 'flight path' predicts they should be.

There are several problems with this, but perhaps the biggest is that we fail to take into account the difficulty of the test. Typically, we just see as a test as a mechanism for measuring students' ability or level of development and fail to understand that getting 50% in a harder test might actually be better than getting 70% in an easier test. But we should also understand that if one student gets 70% and another gets 35% on the same test, that does not mean the first student has done twice as well as the second student. It should be obvious that getting less than 35% is far easier than getting more than 35% and, if a test is well designed, items will get progressively more difficult so as to better measure individual students' performance. If all students get 100% then the test is useless: you have no idea of students' progress and can say nothing about their attainment. The same would, of course, be true if every student failed to get any marks at all. Ideally, a test will attempt to assess a spread of ability in order to see if the students with the most ability (or those who have developed the most) are able to answer harder items but will also allow us to measure the progress of the least able (or those students who have shown the least development) by having a wide enough spread of easier to answer questions.The big question is, how do we know which are the most difficult question? The answer is surprisingly simple: you have to analyse students' attainment at the level of items to see which questions they go right and which they got wrong.

Let's start by looking at a typical data summary in Table 1:

Here we can see the performance of 8 students (A - H) in a test of 9 items (a - i). By totting up how many items each student answered correctly we can see that Student E did best with 8 correct answers and student H did worst with no correct answers. In order to find a signal amidst this noise it helps to reorder the test data in a scalogram:

By looking at this we can now see that students found item c the easiest, with 8 correct answers and item i the hardest with no correct answers. We also establish that we can learn very little from Student H's test performance from this data set alone. It may be that they were unable to answer any of the questions but, equally, it could be that they couldn't be bothered, we just can't tell. Back in the real world we might have all sorts of relevant knowledge about H, but none of that helps us to work out anything about item difficulty, so the best bet is to exclude H's results from our analysis. Likewise, there's little we can learn about the difficulty of item i. It could be that the questions so was tricky that none of the students were able to answer it, but it could also be that it represents part of the curriculum that has not yet been covered. If the same question was asked after a relevant teaching sequence, we might find that some, or all, of the students were able to answer it correctly, so again, we ought to exclude it from our analysis.

Having excluded student H and item i, Table 3 allows to think about not only how each student has performed, but also to think about which items they got wrong. As with the previous scalogram, we learn little from examining the performance of student E or by looking at who answered item c correctly, but beyond that, a general pattern begins to emerge. We can say, with some confidence that items g, e and h are more difficult than items a, b, d or f. We can also claim that students E, F and B are, at least on the topic covered by this assessment, more able than D, A, G or C. (Obviously, the sample in this made up data is far too small to actually make any such claims with much degree of confidence, but the greater the number of students and the more test items answered, our confidence can grow.)

What can be particularly interesting is to ponder the anomalies. Few students will demonstrate the predictable test performance of student G who's manage to get the 4 easiest questions right, but failed to answer the 4 hardest questions. Students will regularly deviate from predictable patterns, but this gives us the opportunity to think about why. The fact that C got a wrong is not that great a surprise; we should, perhaps be more interested that they got b right. As we'll see, the likelihood of a student getting any answer right is probabilistic. What's more interesting is that A got item h correct, and that B got b wrong. Also, student D's performance is interesting: why did they fail to answer items b and d when they were able to answer item e? This might be explained by absence or inattention, or it could be that they've failed to master a foundational concept that other students of similar ability have no trouble with. It's even more interesting to consider why both D and B got item b wrong. Could this perhaps tell us that there's something flawed in the way this particular item is posed? For instance, if this were a maths test, maybe item b is a badly expressed word problem that has confused students despite being conceptually straightforward? Asking the question allows us to go back to our test and see if the problem is with the item (in which case we should reword or remove it from future tests) or with the students' understanding (in which case we should consider how to adapt our teaching.) Thinking in this way is a relatively quick and easy way to improve the reliability of our assessments and the validity of the inferences we can draw about students' attainment. But what about progress? How can we tell if students are mastering the curriculum?

A single assessment tell you nothing about progress. To make any kind of meaningful statement about students' journey through the curriculum we need to be able to calculate their performance from test to test. And to do this we need to consider the relative merits of the number systems that are available to us. Back in 1946, psychologist Stanley Stevens proposed four scales of measurement which he called nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio.

Nominal measurement is simply a means of determining whether a thing is a member of a group. Nominal measurement would include dividing students into boys and girls and pupil premium and non pupil premium. All we're able to calculate is the most frequently occurring type. Ordinal measurement allows us to compare two things and judge which is x > y? (none/some/more/all). This is how judging using a comparative judgement algorithm works (more on that later). Interval measure allow us to work out where something is along a scale and establish the degree of difference between x and y. For instance, the Celsius temperature scale is divided into regular intervals between the freezing point of water (0°C) and its boiling point (100°C.) However, ratios are not meaningful as the zero point of the scale is arbitrary so that it's impossible to state that 40°C is twice as hot as 20°C. By the same token, neither is it possible to say that a student who scores 60% in a test has done twice as well as a students who scores 30%.

It's only with a ratio scale are the differences between measurements be meaningful. For example, it we want to know whether one object is twice as hot as another we need to measure temperature using the Kelvin scale which as a meaningful zero point. The point of a ratio scale is to be able to measure performance on two different test but to convert the two different scales of item difficulty into one scale where the difference between performance is on the same scale.

The bottom line is this: if you're not using a ratio scale you cannot make meaningful or defensible claims about students progress or attainment. We can see the problem by analysing the performance of 5 made up students on two different texts

All five students took a test in October and then a second test two months later. When we subtract the first test score from the second we can see how much progress each individual student has made. Although Eve is clearly out performing her classmates by a considerable margin, all have seen their scores increase so we can be quietly confident that all have made progress. But what happens if we turn the students' raw marks into percentages?

Now it looks like only Eve has made progress and that everyone else is in free fall, with Diana and Freddie in need of urgent intervention. If we convert these percentages into standardised scores, things become even more confusing:

Now it looks like Eve is the only student not making progress! And Freddie, who moments ago was a real cause for concern is actually going great guns. This illustrates exactly why most school data is garbage. The only meaningful bit - the items students got wrong on a test - is completely lost in our efforts to work out who's on track and who isn't. It's only when we put both assessments on the same scale that subtracting test scores to show progress becomes meaningful. Here is the same data again, this time converted into a fundamental measurement:

Now we can finally see how much actual progress has been made from the first assessment to the second. Eve really is doing brilliantly and everyone else has made some progress. MAybe we should be concerned about the relatively slow pace of progress shown by Freddie and Adam, but, as long as we keep an eye on them over the coming months, there's probably no need for immediate concern.

This all probably sounds fiendishly complex, and to do properly does require some arcane looking equations. Happily, there's some free software you can use to estimate item difficulty and convert assessments onto the same scale. However, the principle is relatively straightforward. What we need to do is to anchor the measurement of students' performance in a second test by including some items from a previous test. So, once you've conducted item level analysis on one test, you need to give some of the those questions with known difficulty levels to students again in the second test. By then comparing how they did on these anchor questions as compared to the new ones, we can get a better sense of the relative difficulty of our second test as compared to our first.

And its the use of anchoring that gives aggregated comparative judgement algorithms like No More Marking their power. In the case of comparative judgement, judges are comparing their subjective view of whether one piece of work is better than another. After a sufficient number of judgements, students' work is placed in a rank order, but behind the scenes it's placed on a scale from, say 5 to -5. Then, if the same students complete a second assessment, pieces from the first judgement session, which already have an established value, are resubmitted for comparison alongside the new pieces. In this way it become possible to make meaningful statements about progress at the level of cohorts and individuals.

You should know that all this merely scratches the surface. If you want to know more I can recommend Trevor Fox and Christine Bond's book Applying the Rasch Model, and I would also point you in the direction of Evidence Based Education's Assessment Lead Programme. Also, if you get the chance you really should try to see Deep Ghataura give his presentation at a researchED near you.
Coda: what about Ofsted?
There's just one final point to make before we turn our thoughts to what teachers should do based on the assessment data they collect, and that's to return to the point made in Part 1 about Ofsted's decision that "inspectors will not look at school's internal progress and attainment data." I think I understand why they've said this, but I also think they're wrong. Obviously, the overwhelming majority of data collected by schools is worthless and should rightly be condemned. However, what if schools are collecting good quality data and are able to make meaningful and accurate claims and students' attainment and progress? Should this be ignored also? Making a judgement about the quality of a school's curriculum and the education it provides is hard enough but if inspectors deliberately ignore relevant and useful data, the job becomes impossible.

My suggestion is that schools should be allowed, perhaps even encouraged, to explain why they've collected the data they want to show inspectors. They should be able to answer basic questions about how they know it's reliable and accurate and how they've gone about using it to make valid inferences. If a school leader can explain how they have taken action which depended on data analysis which has led to unambiguous benefits for students, then I think we should do them the courtesy of having a look at what that data is. The counterweight to this is to say that if a school presents inspector with anything based on a flight path model then should have their judgement for leadership and management automatically downgraded!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How do we know pupils are making progress? Part 3: Assessment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In Part 1 of this series I set out the problems with making predictions about students' progress by drawing a 'flight path' between KS2 and KS4, then, in Part 2, I explained how thinking about the curriculum as a progression model is essential in making judgments about whether students are making progress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
These assessments increase student accountability and provide a way to personalize learning without a lot of extra time and effort.

Student-designed assessments and personalized learning are two popular trends in education that often come across as complicated and overwhelming for many educators. These practices are difficult to figure out how to begin, but there are practical ways to incorporate them without requiring a lot of additional prep time through a focus on simple student-designed assessments.

Student-designed assessments are where students have a say in how they will be assessed and/or what will be on their assessment. In this case, simplified student-designed assessments are those that do not require any additional technology nor in-depth planning on the part of the teacher. Instead, these assessments are created in 15-20 minute chunks in the class period and do not require the use of new platforms, technology, or complicated steps.

There are three useful and practical methods I use on a regular basis in my classes that are effective, no matter the students' level or age, and are applied across different content areas.

3 Means of Student-Designed Assessments

1. Pick and choose. This is good for the class or teacher who is new to this concept. As you approach an upcoming assessment, give students a series of practice questions (or tasks). Have groups identify a few questions that they feel everyone should be able to do (the "baseline questions") and others that would be a challenge-but doable (the "challenging"). Then, quickly scan what they chose and compare it to what is already on the assessment or what is planned.

Do the students seem to understand what they should know? If yes, then the assessment could go well. If not, perhaps some re-teaching or extra review would be necessary.

2. Create a question/task. This is similar to the task above, but with more creativity. Have students think of a topic that you have been studying. In small groups or pairs, students actually generate a few questions, prompts, or tasks in the same categories mentioned above: baseline and challenging. They can submit this to you through small groups or as part of a whole-class meeting. You can use these to generate your questions for the assessment.

What universally surprises educators with this approach is that students can identify what they all should know and recognize doable challenges as appropriate assessment questions. When they take the assessment, there is a stronger sense of accountability-since they had a part in generating it. I have found that, as a result, they will give very thoughtful and engaged answers.

3. Rubric descriptors. This one can be tricky to do with some classes, and I would suggest doing this after you have done one of the activities above. You give groups a blank rubric for an upcoming performance-based assessment. Have students come up with bullet point items of what "meets expectations" looks like. Then, as a class, you discuss those, and you can generate a descriptor for that section of the rubric together.

Depending on the class' ability to focus, you then fill in the other sections of the rubric. When students actually do the task (where they will be graded on the rubric), there's a stronger sense of what they should be able to do since they created the expectations.

Benefits and Challenges

There are some obvious benefits to incorporating simple student-designed assessments into your pedagogical practice.

Ownership. While you obviously may need to gently nudge students to appropriate questions or rubric descriptors, this allows students to feel that they have a voice in the process.

Demonstration of knowledge. Creating an assessment allows students to show what they understand and is an assessment in and of itself. Even if students are identifying potential questions, they are still showing that they understand what's relevant to the topic of study, and this requires critical reflective skills.

Time efficiency. Making assessments can be time-consuming, as is re-teaching content when students do not perform well on assessments. Therefore, taking any steps at the onset to mitigate either of these outcomes can be beneficial for teacher and student alike.

There are also obvious challenges to implementing this into a classroom, but the good news is that these can be overcome.

Knowledge of content area. Students may feel that they are unable to generate questions for an upcoming assessment due to their lack of knowledge about the content area. However, with guidance from classmates, most students should be able to at the very least identify questions or tasks that they should be able to do.

Lack of curriculum control. Some educators don't have a lot of control over what will be on an assessment, so letting students design the assessments is challenging. However, the process discussed here could then be used as a way to review topics that will be assessed and you can reinforce those critical topics through discussion.

Tips for Implementation

Interested in giving this a try? Here are my best suggestions for incorporating student-designed assessments in your classroom on a regular basis.

Start small. For many educators, the first option of picking and choosing questions is the easiest.

Be concise. This does not need to be an extensive classroom activity. Allot 15-20 minutes maximum for the activity, and move on with the rest of the instruction.

Use the questions. If you want to create buy-in and ownership in the process, the students need to see that their feedback is useful.

Make it timely. Do this enough in advance to address any confusion or be willing to adjust the date of the assessment.

In conclusion, a more personalized learning (and assessment) experience does not need to be complicated nor stressful. As educators, it can be difficult to relinquish some of the control that we have in the classroom. However, perhaps sharing some of this control with our students can lead to a more personalized and engaged experience.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These assessments increase student accountability and provide a way to personalize learning without a lot of extra time and effort. Student-designed assessments and personalized learning are two popular trends in education that often come across as complicated and overwhelming for many educators.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Our capacity to misunderstand complex ideas leads, inexorably, to the lethal mutation of those ides. In my last post I set out why the apparently simple and obvious notion of 'using the curriculum as a progression model' often goes wrong but I underplayed some key points about the use of numbers. Tucked away in that post are two ideas that need some amplification and explanation.

Firstly, in relation to the way in which summative assessments are scored:

I should note that the key assumption underpinning this assessment model is not that tests should discriminate between students so we can place them in rank orders and assign summative statements of progression. Instead, in order to ensure progression through the curriculum, these tests should be primarily seen as statements of competence, that students have mastered the content sufficiently well to progress.

If we using the curriculum as our progression model all we need to know is, how well students have learned this aspect of the curriculum. Whilst the purpose of a GCSE exam is to say how well students have performed relative to one another, the purpose of a test attempting to assess how much of the curriculum has been learned should not be interested in discriminating between students. Ideally, if the curriculum is perfectly specified and taught, all students would get close to 100%. Clearly, we'll never come near this state of perfection so if we achieve average scores of about 80% we should be well satisfied that we are specifying and teaching incredibly well.

Over the long term, if students fail to meet a threshold of confidence the assumption should be that there is a fault either with the design of the curriculum or in its teaching. In the short term, if a minority of students fail to reach the threshold this leaves us with the 2 sigma problem Benjamin Bloom failed to solve: how can we scale the time and resources required for all students to be successful? The best I'm currently able to suggest is that we need to have specified and sequenced our curriculum to focus heavily on the most crucial concepts within subject disciplines and to ensure these at least are mastered. If our guiding assumption was that any test score below 80% highlighted some fault in specification or instruction, this could transform the educational experiences of our most disadvantaged students.
We can't measure progress, only performance
The second point made in the previous post that I want to return to was on what we should avoid doing with numbers:

What we can't do is compare the percentage a students gets in Term 1 with one achieved in Term 6 and attempt to draw a line between them indicating progress. This would assume that the second test was objectively more difficult and that if the numbers go up, then progress is being made. We may believe this to be true but it's very rare to find schools that have put the effort into calculating the difficulty of test questions required to make this a defensible claim.

The key to using numbers sensibly in this model is to only to compare across space (laterally) and not across time (longitudinally). What I mean by this is that it makes perfect sense to compare how different students, classes or cohorts have performed on the same assessment, but not to compare the results of different assessments.

In order to explain what I mean, I need to take you back to Becky Allen's 2018 blog, What if we cannot measure pupil progress? In it she said,

When we use ... tests to measure relative progress, we often look to see whether a student has moved up (good) or down (bad) the bell curve. On the face of it this looks like they've made good progress, and learnt more than similar students over the course of the year. However [the test] is a noisy measure of what they knew at the start [and] the end of the year. Neither test is reliable enough to say if this individual pupil's progress is actually better or worse than should be expected, given their starting point.

Tests are very useful for assessing how well students have learning particular curriculum content but cannot be used to measure the rate at which students are progressing towards better future test performance. Just because a student has learned a lot about, say, the Norman Invasion or Buddhism, we cannot claim that they will do equally well (or better) on a test of the Tudors or Hinduism. And if they do less well on a subsequent test we cannot claim that students are making negative progress. What we can - and should - perceive is that they don't know some aspects of the curriculum as well as others, and intervene accordingly.

This is what I meant about lateral rather than longitudinal comparison. It's not only possible but desirable to compare how different students perform on same assessment. If my class performs much worse than yours on the same assessment could infer either that students in your class are, on average, clever than those in mine, or that you have taught the curriculum better. While the first inference may be true, it is not useful. 'Top sets' are routinely filled with students from more affluent backgrounds who are often successful despite rather than because of the choices we make. Rather than worrying about ability, We might do better to track indices of social disadvantage: if our more disadvantaged students are doing well we can be reasonably sure this is due to how well we've specified and taught the curriculum. It might be useful to only use these pupils when analysing test data.

Longitudinal comparison, or attempting to measure progress, is fraught with error. Even if we don't make the lamentably common mistake of assessing students ability to do thing we haven't actually taught them, the test students sit will only sample from the domain of what they were taught. How students perform in that test give us some sense of how well an individual student has learned the curriculum relative to their peers but it's only by establishing a scalogram of student performance vs item difficulty that we will get a sense of what individual test score might mean. As I said in this post,

Typically, we just see a test as a mechanism for measuring students' ability, or level of development, and fail to understand that getting 50% in a harder test might actually be better than getting 70% in an easier test. But we should also understand that if one student gets 70% and another gets 35% on the same test, that does not mean the first student has done twice as well as the second student. It should be obvious that getting less than 35% is far easier than getting more than 35% and, if a test is well designed, items will get progressively more difficult so as to better measure individual students' performance.

Here's an example of a scalogram that compares students' performance against item difficulty:

I should explain that item difficulty is established by working out which questions students answer correctly; the more students answer an item correctly, the easier that item is, and the fewer students answer an item, the harder it is. So, we can see in the table above that although students A, D, and G all achieved the same test score, Student D was able to answer more difficult questions than Students A and G.* One explanation could be that Student D had not been present in class when some of the content most students found easy to answer was taught. Or, similarly, it could be that Student G missed some of the later curriculum content. Either way, the test score tells us relatively little about these students' ability to make future progress but quite a lot about what they have learned to date. It ought to be clear that we should not intervene with these three students in the same ways. And, I hope, it ought to be equally obvious why drawing a line between performance in two different tests is likely to tell us little of any use about students' progress.

*

I hope this additional explanation makes sense and proves useful. If you have further questions or would like to point out errors in my thinking I'd be most grateful to hear from you.

* There's a discussion to be had here about whether the marks awarded to an item should only be decided after a test has been taken and item difficulty is established. By marking each question equally we are likely to obscure students' actual performance.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why using the curriculum as your progression model is incompatible with 'measuring progress'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our capacity to misunderstand complex ideas leads, inexorably, to the lethal mutation of those ides. In my last post I set out why the apparently simple and obvious notion of 'using the curriculum as a progression model' often goes wrong but I underplayed some key points about the use of numbers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teachers use an understanding of how we learn to ensure that their curriculum is planned effectively. Below you can read about the key elements of the science of learning to help you develop a clearer understanding of how teachers plan what knowledge is going to be taught, and how it will be

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
One education reform could transform social mobility

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The new social mobility commission chair should lobby for one reform that would deliver real change and silence her critics, writes Mike Ion

The new social mobility commission chair should lobby for one reform that would deliver real change and silence her critics, writes Mike Ion

MIKE ION
education director, Avanti Schools Trust

9 Jan 2022, 9:00

The appointment of Katharine Birbalsingh as chair of the social mobility commission has received a mixed response from the profession and media commentators alike. I have never met Ms Birbalsingh but, like others, I follow her on Twitter and have observed the rise of Michaela Community School with interest. She is clearly an able, passionate and committed professional and I wish her well in her new and important role.

My hope is that she will apply her trademark boldness to some of the structural challenges that have impeded social mobility in England for decades. In education, one of the most notable is the issue of school admissions. Year after year, we see evidence of schools failing to give priority to children in care; using supplementary forms asking for personal details about the applicants' parents; requesting 'contributions' to the school fund; asking for birth and marriage certificates, and using 'subjective tests' to select pupils.

Why does it matter? For those who want to see an increase in the levels of social mobility, for those who care about enhancing the life chances of all our nation's young people and realising our full potential as a society, infringements of the admissions code make for depressing reading. Britain, or rather England, remains almost unique among OECD countries in the degree to which the allocation of a secondary school place determines a child's future life chances. That's why school 'choices', rather than house prices, dominate discussions at Islington dinner tables.

Nationally, the angst of middle-class parents as their children get to secondary school age has reached epidemic proportions. One consequence is that every year children from many of the nation's poorest households are routinely allocated to schools that parents with 'higher aspirations' are determined to avoid.

Secondary admission policies are the secret scandal of our system

How much is really down to aspiration and how much to privilege and access remains an interesting question, but the fact remains that secondary school admission policies are the secret scandal of our education system. Trapped by the rhetoric of parental choice stoking improvement through competition, locked in by a league table agenda of what constitutes a 'good' school, and unwilling to confront the evidence about selective admissions policies, ministers of all political colours have allowed the line on admissions to drift in a direction that works against every other strand of government policy.

The current admission practice in many of England's secondary schools is helping to institutionalise inequality in the nation as a whole. Unfair admissions procedures only intensify social, cultural and ethnic divisions. They foster delusions about consumer choice and reinforce outdated perceptions of quality in education.

The outcome of such covert selection practice is to produce an educational apartheid that creates vast ghettoes of underachievement which then suck in vast amounts of public money to compensate for structural inequality. They hold back overall levels of achievement. Our divisive secondary school system is working against our objective of increasing post-16 staying-on rates and widening participation in universities.

So I urge you, Ms Birbalsingh: use your new position and bully pulpit to address one of the main factors that restricts social mobility in this country. For example, the code of practice on school admissions already excludes selection by ability as an admissions criterion to all primary schools. So how about lobbying for that to be extended to include secondary schools?

A policy focused on undoing the worst effects of supposed parental choice would throw open hundreds of thousands of places in good secondary schools to parents who have previously been excluded from applying. The winners would far outnumber those who would be anxious about loss of privilege, and there can be no question that it would contribute to a more equal and less divided nation.

What a legacy that would be for the nation and its children. And what a way to silence your critics.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
One education reform could transform social mobility

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The new social mobility commission chair should lobby for one reform that would deliver real change and silence her critics, writes Mike Ion The new social mobility commission chair should lobby for one reform that would deliver real change and silence her critics, writes Mike Ion MIKE ION education director, Avanti Schools Trust 9 Jan 2022, 9:00 The appointment of Katharine Birbalsingh as chair of the social mobility commission has received a mixed response from the profession and media commentators alike.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Policy that pursues privilege is a barrier to social mobility

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There are more important divisions to heal in and through state education than the top tier's upward mobility into privileged positions, writes Mike Ion

There are more important divisions to heal in and through state education than the top tier's upward mobility into privileged positions, writes Mike Ion

Mike Ion
Education director, Avanti Schools Trust

2 Sep 2022, 5:00

In 2022 Britain remains a deeply divided nation. Those divisions take many forms: class, income, gender, race and education. In England in particular, substantial inequalities in educational attainment are linked to social disadvantage and place - as demonstrated again this year by GCSE and A level results. This increasing attainment gap between disadvantaged and better-off pupils is only the visible part of a problem that starts in the early years and widens during a child's schooling, with predictable, detrimental consequences for social mobility.

As one previous social mobility tsar, Alan Milburn was fond of pointing out, for decades state school children have not been reaching the highest levels in influential professions. It may well be an old-fashioned view, but I strongly believe that parents who espouse views about fairness, justice and redistribution but opt out of the state sector and send their children to private, fee-paying schools are choosing to become part of the problem, rather than seeking to be part of the solution.

It is a sad fact that those who already have influence, those who already have a 'voice' in our society, have such a high stake in the current order that they - even if only subconsciously - work to protect it. The uncomfortable truth is that when middle-class parents abandon the state sector in favour of the private, it is conservative and not progressive politics that triumphs.

It is in fact a systemic problem we face as a nation that, in the pursuit of privilege, many well-off (and not so well-off) parents will do whatever it takes to ensure their child starts the race for future success and prosperity further down the track than other children. Of course, it is not unreasonable that any parent should want their child to do as well at school and in life as they have done themselves - or indeed better. We live in a free society, and if some parents choose to secure advantage and privilege by sending their children to elite schools then there is little the state can do about it.

Policy should focus on regional disparities and disadvantage

British public schools have always been a production line for the class system. They employ some of the best-qualified teachers, with as many as two-thirds educated in the top 20 British universities. They can - and do - raise their fees steadily, select their pupils, have a growing endowment income from their benefactors and host some of the most impressive sporting and extra-curricular activities. And they are not lacking in recruits from a middle class obsessed by perceived educational and social advantage.

But perhaps healing the class divide is a bridge too far for education. Instead of the focus we've seen on emulating the culture and results of public schools in 'model' schools and trusts, policy should be focusing on ironing out other rifts that are evident across our state system - especially regional disparities and the pernicious effects of disadvantage.

To that end, we have examples of what might work. We could roll out a national programme to build on the successes of previous efforts like the London Challenge and the National Challenge. London remains way ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to the education of disadvantaged children, despite the fact that it has the highest levels of childhood deprivation in England.

As a result of the London Challenge the capital's schools benefited from visionary leadership, greater resourcing, a stock of quality teachers, excellent professional development, a diverse school population, strong school partnerships and better access to cultural opportunities.

There's no reason that success couldn't be repeated in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool or indeed Cornwall. As a nation we are at our best when at our boldest. A series of new national and regional challenges supported by greater resources targeted at where the need is greatest can and will deliver on education's promise to unlock every young person's potential.

Some will ask whether we can afford it. The answer is yes, and can we afford not to?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Policy that pursues privilege is a barrier to social mobility

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There are more important divisions to heal in and through state education than the top tier's upward mobility into privileged positions, writes Mike Ion There are more important divisions to heal in and through state education than the top tier's upward mobility into privileged positions, writes Mike Ion Mike Ion Education director, Avanti Schools Trust 2 Sep 2022, 5:00 In 2022 Britain remains a deeply divided nation.

# data[].attributes.headline
Willingham’s Simple Model of Memory (2009)

# data[].attributes.subject
Willingham’s Simple Model of Memory (2009)

# data[].attributes.headline
Curriculum Design for Middle Leaders - Session 1

# data[].attributes.subject
Curriculum Design for Middle Leaders - Session 1

# data[].attributes.body
How cognitive science supports effective curriculum design. Slides attached.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Educational Leadership - Reflections on how to develop the profession

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you have ever wondered what a high-quality strategy for Trust wide CPD looks like, then I urge you to make a brew, take a seat and spend the next ten minutes reading and discovering the joys of what the Avanti Schools Trust set out (and in my humble opinion achieve) through their provision of training for their body of staff.

As with many professionals within our sector, It is all too clear to me that what should sit at the heart of educational practice is the nourishment and ambition to develop school staff, regardless of expertise. Whether you are of the newer generation of teachers that have taken the courage to join a profession that seemingly lacks the gravitas It once did, or are a veteran looking to hone insights - Avanti will provide you with opportunities with no bounds.

First and foremost - I cannot write this article without recognising the mastermind who has orchestrated this massive achievement in educational leadership, Rebecca Underwood. Rebecca's role is to oversee and deliver on the Trust's aims to create a culture of continual learning and professional development - not just in a single school - but across them all. She is central to this process, creating an institution of professional learning for this very purpose.

I cannot stress enough the importance of Rebecca's work here - the creation of this institution hugely benefits thousands of students, raising the quality of education for those lucky enough to be part of the Trust.

It says volumes that the Trust have appointed her exclusively to develop such a program of professional development, and in all honesty is the first time I have encountered such an employee within a Trust - why aren't other Trusts doing this?

Personally, I relish the fact that Avanti's approach to CPD is one that values the autonomy of the individual. Having a choice of seven - that's right - seven pathways to commit your professional journey to is like nothing I have ever experienced in education thus far. For me, it was like being Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory - I couldn't decide where to go as each pathway looked as good if not better than the previous! Luckily for me, I have colleagues that would prevent my falling in the river of development and clogging the outflow pipe of academic reflection...

The pathway I eventually settled on was Pathway 4 - Walkthru's & Instructional Coaching. This is an area where I have some experience but wanted to develop further - especially being that I not only will be accountable for this aspect of Avanti Grange's development plan, but also my intentions to write a dissertation on the very topic. Yesterday's session introduced me to a lead researcher in this field, Steve Farndon from the Ambition Institute, someone I know I will learn a great deal from in the next few years.

Despite the fact I have committed to this pathway though, I can still benefit from the wealth of expertise the institution offers. All sessions are recorded and available to review posthumously, the session resources and readings are available to read at our leisure and if you were to reach out and connect with the multiple networks within the Trust, you could always discuss the CPD with those that attended.

What's more - and yes... there is more - the inset day featured keynote speakers that intrigued, inspired and ignited a professional curiosity that seemed to swathe the day in provoking thought.

Listening to Sir David Carter's views on Trust Leadership and his ten guiding principles for Trust leaders was uplifting. He spoke of the need to develop culture, community and capacity in our schools as well as other areas of leadership. His speech formed a compelling argument for the need to develop Academy Trusts. If there were any luddites within the 250 strong audience, I challenge them to convince me on the worth of not forming or becoming a part of an academy after listening to his wisdom on the subject.

The creme de la creme of the day though was Mary Myat's lecture on Curriculum design and leadership. It has been a while since my views on education have been challenged to an extent that it has forced me to reconsider what I deem to be a robust curriculum. She spoke with credibility, capability and a confidence that certainly left me awestruck. At times, I struggled to keep up with the research she was referencing, but found her views on reading in the classroom absolutely fascinating. This will be an area I will revisit in discussion with my colleagues for sure.

So... to sum up my second taste of inset within the Avanti Schools Trust:

I felt empowered to choose a pathway to suit my professional journey

I had engaged with like minded individuals discussing strategy toward my delivery of instructional coaching at Avanti Grange

I made a new contact with another educational researcher whom I look forward to collaborating with in the futureI gained insight into Trust leadership from Sir David Carter

I was awestruck by Mary Myat's approach to curriculum design

Oh... and I still had time for a decent catch up and line management meeting Rhys Jones - reflecting on our achievements for the past 6 weeks, discussing targets for the following half term and generally having a great time catching up.

All in all - I would say a day of inset well spent!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Educational Leadership - Reflections on how to develop the profession

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Seriously Impressive Professional Development Program - The Avanti Way If you have ever wondered what a high-quality strategy for Trust wide CPD looks like, then I urge you to make a brew, take a seat and spend the next ten minutes reading and discovering the joys of what the Avanti Schools Trust se

# data[].attributes.headline
The Avanti Way to more inclusive behaviour management

# data[].attributes.subject
The Avanti Way to more inclusive behaviour management

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Questioning is an element of great teaching that serves multiple purposes. Good questions and prompts offer pedagogical benefits, for both teachers and students. In this blog article, we offer a brief explanation of why teachers use questioning, as well as some effective strategies to exemplify what it looks like.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Supporting students’ mental health and wellbeing through everyday interactions in school settings | Training | Anna Freud Centre

# data[].attributes.headline
Anna Freud - supporting students’ mental health and well-being 

# data[].attributes.subject
Anna Freud - supporting students’ mental health and well-being 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Promote, deliver, and design high-quality learning opportunities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Lethal mutations in education and how to prevent them

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article was co-authored by Kate Jones, Senior Associate for Teaching and Learning here at EBE, and Dylan Wiliam, who sits on our Advisory Board.
The term 'lethal mutation', coined by Ed Haertel (Brown and Campione, 1996), has become well-known amongst educators, especially those who adopt evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning. In previous work, one of us (DW) has stressed that teachers need a degree of autonomy to adapt evidence-informed practices and techniques to fit within their unique classroom context. The danger here, of course, is that if teachers do not understand the principles behind such practices, they may modify ideas and techniques to such an extent that they are so far removed from the original concept or suggestion that it is no longer effective, or even counter-productive-a lethal mutation.

One prevalent example of a lethal mutation in education is the requirement that each lesson must begin with teachers posting learning intentions that students then copy into their books. While the teacher needs to be clear about what learning the lesson is intended to generate, it is often more appropriate to begin with a thought-provoking question (Wiliam & Leahy, 2015).

Another example is the use of retrieval practice-the act of recalling something previously learned from long-term memory. The benefits of retrieval practice for long-term learning are among the most secure findings in educational psychology (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014), so it is not surprising that many schools have enthusiastically embraced retrieval practice. However, in some cases, this has led to teachers being required to use some form of retrieval practice in every lesson, whatever the material being taught, and whatever the age of the students. Any evidence-informed strategy or technique is potentially vulnerable to the curse of lethal mutations, so how can this be prevented? Here are our suggestions.

Teachers need to understand the research supporting evidence-based practices. To make things work in their own classrooms, teachers need to modify and adapt suggestions. Without an understanding of the research behind the practices, teachers may modify the techniques in ways that reduce their effectiveness. For example, providing diagrams and text allows students multiple ways of making sense of the material being presented-what is sometimes called dual coding-but if the text and the diagram convey the same information, this may increase the complexity of the task for the student, leading to less learning. In the same way, adding images and illustrations to lesson slides may increase engagement, but may make learning more difficult by distracting students from what they need to be focusing on.

How best to support teachers in using research in their classrooms is far from straightforward, but one crucial element is the realisation that putting research into practice entails much more than just following a set of instructions-it is a fundamentally creative act. In particular, as Nonaka and Takeuchi (1996) point out in their book The Knowledge-Creating Company, if expertise involves tacit as well as explicit knowledge-as it clearly does in teaching-then professional learning is best supported through a cycle of sharing experience, dialogue, networking, and learning by doing.

To this end, professional learning communities can help to ensure that school leaders at all levels and classroom teachers understand the evidence behind the practices they are adopting. This can help ensure that the adaptations that will inevitably be necessary to make new ideas work in different classrooms are made in ways that do not reduce their effectiveness, and thus minimising the likelihood of "lethal mutations".

Don't rush to embed evidence-based practices. Leaders and teachers can, understandably, be anxious to implement a strategy or technique as quickly as possible, either out of the desire to improve student outcomes as soon as possible or as a response to external pressures, such as school inspectors. Typically, however, the kinds of changes that research suggests will be effective take time to implement. Teachers need time to plan, to decide which topics, and which groups, are likely to benefit from the approach. If there is a specific focus on a classroom strategy, such as questioning, teachers will need time both to develop good questions, and to improve how these questions are used, such as increasing wait-time.

As well as spending time planning, before new ideas are introduced, minimising the likelihood of lethal mutations also requires time afterwards, to reflect on whether the implementation was faithful to the original research; the support of trusted peers is particularly helpful here. Professional instinct and judgment are vital, but we all sometimes need help to see things from a different perspective.

Context over consistency. Evidence-informed approaches and strategies have similarities across different contexts but the context of learning-school, age range and subject-differ, and those differences cannot be ignored. Whole-school approaches and routines are important-consistency is a key component of creating an evidence-informed culture-but context also means that things that might be appropriate in one context are counter-productive in another.

For example, beginning a lesson with a retrieval practice task can be a well-structured approach to start a lesson, retrieving prior knowledge before progressing to new material. However, in a Food and Nutrition practical lesson, time is particularly of the essence. Common sense would suggest students begin their preparation for the practical task and instead complete a retrieval task at a later point when the food is being prepared in the oven. During a practical PE lesson, after the initial physical warm-up students can take part in verbal recall at various points in the lesson, instructed and monitored by the teacher.

Similar considerations apply to strategies like interleaved practice-where a single study session includes different topics (e.g., biology, chemistry and physics). Interleaving is beneficial because students are required to retrieve things from memory, thus strengthening those memories, and retrieval practice has a bigger impact when retrieval is difficult. However, what this means in practice is far from clear. Verbal and conceptual material may fade at different rates, so judging when it is best to ask students to retrieve will always require professional judgement, and considerable planning will be required to establish how this can best be done.

What we need, therefore, is to establish a middle ground between "anything goes" and what Ralph Waldo Emerson called "foolish consistency". No school should seek uniformity of practice across the entire school, but by creating professional learning communities, where teachers can discuss which ideas are, and are not, relevant for their practice, we can create what we might call "principled departure from uniformity".

Finally, it is important to add what a lethal mutation, as described by Haertel, is not. A lethal mutation doesn't refer to practices that are not supported by robust research and concrete evidence. The use of 'learning styles', designing lessons to accommodate the individual preferences of learners, is not a lethal mutation. The belief that students learn better via their preferred learning style is not supported by evidence and is more akin to a myth than mutation. A lethal mutation is an idea or a practice that is prompted by sound scientific evidence, but is implemented in a way that reduces, or even completely negates, its effectiveness. Lethal mutations can be reversed over time with reflection, effort and change but prevention truly is better than a cure.

References

Brown, A. L., & Campione, J. C. (1996). Psychological theory and the design of innovative learning environments: On procedures, principles, and systems. In L. Schauble & R. Glaser (Eds.), Innovations in learning: New environments for education (pp. 289-325). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Brown, P. C., Roediger III, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Nonaka, I., & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Wiliam, D., & Leahy, S. (2015). Embedding formative assessment: Practical techniques for K-12 classrooms. West Palm Beach, FL: Learning Sciences International.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lethal mutations in education and how to prevent them

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This article was co-authored by Kate Jones, Senior Associate for Teaching and Learning here at EBE, and Dylan Wiliam, who sits on our Advisory Board. The term 'lethal mutation', coined by Ed Haertel (Brown and Campione, 1996), has become well-known amongst educators, especially those who adopt evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This course provides an evidence-based overview of how and why a supportive environment helps both teachers and students, and what great teachers do to create it. You will explore how these principles can be applied in the classroom, before practising selecting and adapting individual teaching strategies for different contexts to prepare for the next steps of your personalised professional development.

Great teachers create a climate of high expectations in which they show respect and sensitivity towards the individual needs, emotions, culture and beliefs of their students. That respect should also be reciprocated: great teachers behave in ways that promote student respect for the integrity and authority of the teacher.

Classrooms where students respect and pay attention to each other's thoughts, and feel safe to express their own thoughts, are more productive for learning. Where students cooperate with each other effectively, they are able to benefit from learning interactions with their peers. Students who are motivated to study, learn, engage and succeed are more likely to do so, and feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness can help to promote learning.

In this course, you'll learn about creating a supporting environment for three classroom goals:

1. to promote a positive climate for learning;

2. to promote students' motivation to learn; and

3. to create a climate of high expectations in which learners feel confident to 'have a go'.

You'll learn how relationships of trust and respect between students and teachers, and among students, are at the heart of a supportive classroom environment. In this way, students are motivated, supported and challenged, and have a positive attitude towards their learning.

Over the first six weeks of this course, you'll explore the evidence on creating a supportive environment, learning how teachers use strategies such as scripting and communicating clear expectations of behaviour to create promote positive teacher-student and student-student relationships. You'll learn how teachers can support students with individual needs within the wider class and how be respectful towards - and responsive to - the cultural identities of students in your teaching. You'll explore how to promote student motivation to study, learn, engage and succeed and how to create a climate of high expectations, where students are encouraged to have a go through the use of effective feedback.

In the final two weeks, once you have thought hard about the theories and principles behind creating a supportive environment, you'll move on to practise the act of selecting and adapting strategies for use in the classroom, based on your growing knowledge.

We use cookies on this website. By using this website, you consent to this use as described in our Privacy Policy Accept

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This course provides an evidence-based overview of how and why a supportive environment helps both teachers and students, and what great teachers do to create it. You will explore how these principles can be applied in the classroom, before practising selecting and adapting individual teaching strategies for different contexts to prepare for the next steps of your personalised professional development.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This course provides an evidence-based overview of why and how effective explaining helps students learn, and what great teachers do to use it effectively. You will explore how these principles can be applied in the classroom, before practising selecting and adapting individual teaching strategies for different contexts to prepare for the next steps of your personalised professional development.

Presenting great explanations is not just a generic skill, like being a good communicator: it depends on a detailed knowledge of the content and ideas being explained and how they are learnt. All teachers present new content and ideas to students, but the best presentations have concise, appropriate, engaging explanations that are just right for the students: neither too short nor too long; neither too complex nor too simple. Effective explanations help students to develop fluent and flexible networks of knowledge.

If your students have a good store of well-structured knowledge, and fluent, automated skills, absorbing new ideas and procedures will be much easier for them. In the same way that gardeners prepare the soil before sowing seeds, great teachers prepare their students for new ideas by ensuring their existing knowledge is well-connected, fluent and accessible. In this course, you'll learn about using explaining for three classroom goals:

1. to prepare your students to learn something new;

2. to present new content and ideas to your students; and

3. to connect new ideas to prior knowledge.

You'll learn about the value of paying attention to the cognitive load of material presented to your students, and you'll see how taking small steps, such as limiting the number and complexity of new pieces of information students encounter, can support learning, as well as how including different forms of examples can be incredibly powerful.

Over the first six weeks of this course, you'll explore the evidence on effective explaining, learning how to help your students focus attention and manage their cognitive load by removing redundant information, and by using strategies such as signalling and segmenting. You'll also explore questioning strategies for checking prior knowledge is accurate, available and accessible, how incorporating worked examples, completion problems and stories can help your students connect new ideas to what they already know, and see how strategies such as concept mapping and self-explanation can support learning.

In the final two weeks, once you have thought hard about the principles underpinning effective explanations, you'll move on to practise the act of selecting and adapting strategies for use in the classroom, based on your growing knowledge.

We use cookies on this website. By using this website, you consent to this use as described in our Privacy Policy Accept

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This course provides an evidence-based overview of why and how effective explaining helps students learn, and what great teachers do to use it effectively. You will explore how these principles can be applied in the classroom, before practising selecting and adapting individual teaching strategies for different contexts to prepare for the next steps of your personalised professional development.

# data[].attributes.headline
Feedback and the dangers of praise - EEF

# data[].attributes.subject
Feedback and the dangers of praise - EEF

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Within the Model for Great Teaching, Element 4.4 Interacting underscores the importance of effective feedback-both feedback to teachers (to inform their decisions) and feedback to students (that helps them learn) (Coe et al., 2020). In fact, we've written extensively about feedback in the past. (Be sure to check out our eBook on effective feedback and blogs about the conditions and purposes of feedback!) Given this, what are some non-examples of effective feedback? That is, what are instances of feedback that we might regularly see that are actually ineffective-or even counter-effective?

Hattie and Timperley (2007) defined four "levels" of feedback that teachers employ:

1. Feedback about the task

2. Feedback about the processing of the task

3. Feedback about the learner's self-regulation

4. Feedback about the self

The first three are generally the most effective. They focus the learner's attention on their work and-directly or indirectly-provide information about the response (e.g., is it right/wrong, how could it be done better, prompts or cues, future considerations, etc.).

However, the fourth type, feedback about the self, is generally both the least effective and most often employed by teachers (Hattie & Tiperley, 2007; Kluger & DeNisis, 1996; Shute, 2008). This is feedback that is directed to the learner themself, rather than their work, responses, or thinking; in a classroom it usually takes the form of praise. (Theoretically, it could also be a negative comment; but we'd certainly like to think 21 st century teachers refrain from insulting their students!)

This praise probably looks familiar; it may be comments like:

You're so smart!

Clever girl.

You're a natural at this.

While these seem like nice comments, they can be counter-effective to learning. They do not provide any specific information about why the work warrants such praise. These comments also undermine a "growth-mindset" (e.g., Dweck, 2000)-such feedback suggests that learners just are smart. It's saying that if a student learned something, it's not a result of "hard thinking," but instead a student's fixed "ability."

However, we know this is not how learning works. Learning is the product of hard thinking; it is reliant on prior knowledge and building mental models. Through time and practice, we gain expertise in a concept.

So what can we, as teachers, do to avoid less effective feedback?

A simple and effective approach can be to avoid feedback at the level of the learner's self. It's perfectly possible to be encouraging while providing feedback that supports learning. Comments like "I can tell you checked your arithmetic!", or "You've created a very strong thesis statement for your essay!" provide positive reinforcement, while also communicating information about the task, process, or self-regulation.

Second, we can acknowledge that there may be instances where we do want to praise our students. In such cases, we can make the focus of the feedback about aspects of our students that they feel they have control over. "You're really good at asking questions when you don't understand!", or "You're attentive to detail!" each -but crucially the student has agency over those traits highlighted in the feedback.

Finally, in instances when we determine praise is appropriate, we can also link it to additional more-effective feedback. Such feedback, which incorporates multiple levels of feedback, can be very effective (Shute, 2008). For example:

"You're a great student because you always check your work." (Feedback about the self & feedback about the process)

"I saw you looked up the word you didn't know; this is something good readers do all the time!" (Feedback about the process & implied feedback about the self)

"You have developed a good understanding of this topic-I can tell because you got all the hardest questions right!" (Feedback about the self & feedback about the task)

We know how powerful a tool effective feedback can be for student learning (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). While it can be tempting to provide praise to our students, we have tools to be more effective in this interaction-without sacrificing the encouragement and positivity that are the hallmark of many effective teachers.
This blog highlights material from the "Interacting" course of References The Great Teaching Toolkit. You can sample lessons from our "Interacting" course here.
Coe, R., Rauch, C.J., Kime, S., & Singleton, D. (2020). Great teaching toolkit: Evidence Review.

Dweck, C. S. (2000). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Psychology Press.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487

Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254.

Shute, V. J. (2008). Focus on Formative Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 78(1), 153-189. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654307313795

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Within the Model for Great Teaching , Element 4.4 Interacting underscores the importance of effective feedback-both feedback to teachers (to inform their decisions) and feedback to students (that helps them learn) (Coe et al., 2020). In fact, we've written extensively about feedback in the past.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Focusing on the Journey: The Right Way to Assess Students | Formative Blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If your car gets a flat tire, do you throw up your hands in the air, kick the side of the car, and then scream at the tire for being flat? Believe it or not, your reaction here ties into the ways we continue to think about student assessments today.

The hope is, you might confront that tire situation by pausing, evaluating the problem, and then acting accordingly. That's the approach I took when I was a high-school language-arts teacher in New Jersey. We had a standardized test called the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) which we administered to juniors as part of their graduation requirements. I could have gotten upset at the weight the HSPA held in influencing my students' future. Instead, I began to think about how I could repurpose and reframe this daunting test so that students might perceive it as a jumping-off point: something that could support their journey beyond high school as opposed to an obligation they had to pass.

For example, the HSPA's picture prompt asked for an imaginative, three-paragraph essay based on - you guessed it! - a picture. Rather than supply an image of my own choosing, I gave students the autonomy to pick one from their cell phones. This method allowed for open, rich dialogue between my students and me. Through this relatively simple action of selecting an image, students could explain the why behind their choices.

After that step, I challenged my students to then explain themselves. Together, we developed dynamite hooks to engage an audience as you might in a job application; my students took their most valuable traits and turned them into the kinds of one liners that could appear on their future resumes. In doing so, we not only addressed the curriculum, but we covered a more critical skill that my students took ownership over. Writing these hooks helped them communicate their strengths in a way that could benefit them later in life.

Finally, we paired off to take turns telling our stories and practicing active listening. Not only did students get a chance to articulate their experiences before a larger audience, but they were also able to give and receive feedback. Taken together, all of these steps shifted focus to the journey, rather than to the test. Furthermore, they enabled me to work toward equipping students with the skills and mindsets they would need to navigate our changing world.

The end result? My students achieved 92% proficiency on the HSPA. While this score was a win, the most rewarding experience was watching them grow through guided learning. We focused on interpersonal skills like communication, active listening, and critical thinking: skills they carry with them beyond the test.

But let's return to that flat-tire metaphor for a second. What happens if you yell at the problem in the hopes it magically fixes itself? Nothing - you'll stay on the side of the road, trapped. And that's my fear with regard to how many educators handle assessments. We assess the same way we have for the last century, but we expect to get different results. We value the end result - the test itself - more than the lessons students learned on the way to that destination, and so we never move the needle in terms of true student engagement. We're trapped, so to speak.

Alvin Toffler, futurist and author of Future Shock, put it best when he remarked that "the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." We should prioritize the incremental steps during the journey, where students are inspired to become architects of their own instructional development. Yet we still hold onto summative and standardized tests as both the mechanism and ultimate assessor for measuring accountability, skills, and gaps in learning.

Let's take a step back. Lower our voices when eyeballing that flat tire. Assess the situation honestly. Let's not forget that learning is a lifelong adventure. It extends beyond any one assessment. It's a journey, not a destination. To make the most of it, we must invest in instructional technology that marries instruction and assessment so all participants - trust leaders, teachers, and students - have the freedom to learn, unlearn, and relearn. To focus on the journey.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Focusing on the Journey: The Right Way to Assess Students | Formative Blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If your car gets a flat tire, do you throw up your hands in the air, kick the side of the car, and then scream at the tire for being flat? Believe it or not, your reaction here ties into the ways we continue to think about student assessments today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Scaffolding - more than just a worksheet

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Effective scaffolding

Scaffolding was put up on the side of my house just before the start of the pandemic, staying there for months while much of the country locked down (requiring daily reminders to my son not to climb up it). The scaffolding ended up being in place far longer than it should have been.

Likewise, in my Year 11 teaching last term, I found myself over-supporting a pupil with Developmental Language Disorder.

I provided an additional scaffold for extended writing tasks, without thinking enough about how to remove the support as and when it was no longer needed. While I was taking a completed writing frame to his desk, and assisting him like this throughout the year, I should have considered the steps towards independence, appropriate to his learning needs and to the progress he was making.

This might have meant giving him a partially completed writing frame, or asking him good questions so that he could complete it himself. Such an approach can increase the challenge for him and gives him the clear message that his need for additional support had reduced over time.

The point of scaffolding - whether on a house or in a classroom - is that it provides the support required, which is then removed when no longer needed. For teachers, how and when we remove our classroom scaffolds is a vital part of effective practice for pupils.

What does the EEF define as ​'scaffolding'?

The EEF defines scaffolding as ​'a metaphor for temporary support that is removed when it is no longer required', providing ​'enough support so that pupils can successfully complete tasks that they could not yet do independently'.

Rather than requiring teachers to be creating different worksheets for pupils with different needs, scaffolding can be a term used to describe:

- A visual scaffold, such as a task planner.
- A verbal scaffold, such as a teacher correcting a misconception at a pupil's desk.
- A written scaffold, such as a writing frame.

This scaffolding tool from the EEF can help teachers to consider what effective scaffolding looks like and what it might mean for them in their classroom. It can support teachers to consider when and how scaffolds might be implemented for everyone, becoming a fundamental part of high-quality teaching, rather than an add-on.

Teacher workload

With a shift to adaptive teaching within the Early Career Framework, notions of teachers planning three different lessons, each with their own resources, for pupils with different needs have rightly been challenged. This unnecessary burden on teacher workload can be harmful to teachers' wellbeing and - at worst - can cap expectations of pupils.

Using appropriate scaffolds can work well as a key facet of ​'adaptive teaching'. Scaffolds can often be created live, or become embedded within planning rather than feeling like an ​'add-on'.

In terms of the impact on teacher workload, it is more manageable to think of scaffolding as a verbal reteach, or a visual provided at the whole-class level, rather than always requiring additional planning and resourcing.

Scaffolding is more than just a worksheet. It is already part of most teachers' practice - or can be relatively easily added. In harnessing the full power of this strategy, we can consider the range of scaffolds available and ask ourselves questions around how we reduce them. With these tweaks, we can bring our adaptive teaching practice closer to the evidence around what works for all pupils, including those with SEND.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
effective scaffolding  scaffolding was put up on the side of my house just before the start of the pandemic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
staying there for months while much of the country locked down (requiring daily reminders to my son not to climb up it). the scaffolding ended up being in place far longer than it should have been.  likewise

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
i found myself over-supporting a pupil with developmental language disorder. i provided an additional scaffold for extended writing tasks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
without thinking enough about how to remove the support as and when it was no longer needed. while i was taking a completed writing frame to his desk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
and assisting him like this throughout the year

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
i should have considered the steps towards independence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
appropriate to his learning needs and to the progress he was making.  this might have meant giving him a partially completed writing frame

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
or asking him good questions so that he could complete it himself. such an approach can increase the challenge for him and gives him the clear message that his need for additional support had reduced over time.  the point of scaffolding – whether on a house or in a classroom – is that it provides the support required

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
which is then removed when no longer needed. for teachers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
how and when we remove our classroom scaffolds is a vital part of effective practice for pupils.  what does the eef define as ‘scaffolding’?  the eef defines scaffolding as ‘a metaphor for temporary support that is removed when it is no longer required’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
providing ‘enough support so that pupils can successfully complete tasks that they could not yet do independently’.  rather than requiring teachers to be creating different worksheets for pupils with different needs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
scaffolding can be a term used to describe:  - a visual scaffold

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
such as a task planner. - a verbal scaffold

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
such as a teacher correcting a misconception at a pupil’s desk. - a written scaffold

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
such as a writing frame.  this scaffolding tool from the eef can help teachers to consider what effective scaffolding looks like and what it might mean for them in their classroom. it can support teachers to consider when and how scaffolds might be implemented for everyone

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
becoming a fundamental part of high-quality teaching

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
rather than an add-on.  teacher workload  with a shift to adaptive teaching within the early career framework

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
notions of teachers planning three different lessons

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
for pupils with different needs have rightly been challenged. this unnecessary burden on teacher workload can be harmful to teachers’ wellbeing and – at worst – can cap expectations of pupils.  using appropriate scaffolds can work well as a key facet of ‘adaptive teaching’. scaffolds can often be created live

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
or become embedded within planning rather than feeling like an ‘add-on’.  in terms of the impact on teacher workload

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
it is more manageable to think of scaffolding as a verbal reteach

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
or a visual provided at the whole-class level

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
rather than always requiring additional planning and resourcing.  scaffolding is more than just a worksheet. it is already part of most teachers’ practice – or can be relatively easily added. in harnessing the full power of this strategy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
we can consider the range of scaffolds available and ask ourselves questions around how we reduce them. with these tweaks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
we can bring our adaptive teaching practice closer to the evidence around what works for all pupils

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
including those with send.    the 'five-a-day' principle - scaffolding

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
EEF blog: Scaffolding - more than just a worksheet

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What is scaffolding, what it is not, and how can teachers use scaffolds to boost pupil progress

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
6 questions Rosenshine suggested you ask your students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Arguably one of the most powerful and effective elements of Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction is the importance of asking questions. But are some types of questions better than others? Let ' s take a quick look at Rosenshine's principles before highlighting 6 questions he recommends we use in the classroom to help students think more deeply...
Read our complete guide to Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction...
What are Rosenshine ' s Principles of Instruction?

Rosenshine ' s 10 Principles of Instruction come from three research areas:

Cognitive science

Classroom practices

Cognitive support

These principles aim to address how people learn and acquire new information as well as how teachers can implement effective classroom strategies. Currently, these principles are becoming increasingly popular in education - and with good reason: they are offering a much-needed bridge between research and practice.

Rosenshine's third Principle of Instruction in particular is all about asking a high quantity of high-quality questions. As learning itself cannot be directly observed, asking questions can help you check your students ' understanding.

What types of questions should you use in your lesson?

There are different types of questions that students generally get asked within their lessons. These include both factual and process questions.

Factual questions

These types of questions require fact-based answers. For example, it could be specific questions about the material that was just taught or more broad questions such as asking a student to summarise the content.

Using factual questions allow you to use retrieval practice, which is the process of generating an answer to a question. One benefit of doing this is that recalling previously-learnt knowledge can create stronger memory traces, making it more likely to be transferred into your students ' long-term memory.

Process questions

Process questions allow students to explain the process they used to answer the question that was given to them. These types of questions can be used to help your students self-reflect and develop their metacognitive skills. Developing these skills are not only useful for their academic performance but will help them become independent learners, be more resilient and develop more grit.

Do these questions work?

In a previous study, teachers were either trained to use more factual and process questions or did not receive any training before teaching students new material. Researchers found that students whose teachers received the training had much higher scores on the test than those who did not. Therefore, it seems that using these two types of questions can help your students gain more from the lesson.

What are Rosenshine ' s suggested questions?

To help build on this, Rosenshine listed several questions that he thinks can help develop student learning. These include: in his seminal paper ,
1. What is the main idea of ...?

This is a type of factual question. By implementing this question in the lesson, it can promote retrieval practice. It would be helpful to use this question after teaching new material, as it will allow students to consolidate their learning and check their understanding.

2. What are the strengths and weaknesses of ...?

This type of question will allow your students to evaluate a topic. It can help encourage deeper thought into the material, which would help them learn the topic better.

3. How does this tie in with what we have learnt before?

Using this question in your classroom will encourage students to make connections between the two topics, helping them remember the material better.

4. Which one is the best ... and why?

You can use this type of question when comparing two different things, as it would encourage your students to be inquisitive. For example, it can be used when learning about different types of energy sources.

The addition of " why " to the question helps your students engage more deeply with the topic and elaborate on their answers. It can also allow the students to explain the process they used to answer the original question.

5. Do you agree or disagree with this statement: ...?

This question encourages group work and helps prompt a discussion about the statement. In turn, it can improve your students ' overall learning experience as well as their ability to overcome conflict.

6. What do you still not understand about ...?

Asking this question helps you establish how well the class engaged with the material and what is missing in their knowledge. It also makes it much easier to fill any gaps they may have in their knowledge. This also develops their ability to self-reflect, which can help improve their grades.

Final Thoughts

It may sound simple to ask a lot of questions during your lessons, but asking the right ones can help your students engage more with their learning. Using Rosenshine ' s suggested questions allows you to understand how well your class has engaged with the material, prompt the use of retrieval practice and help develop your students ' metacognitive skills.

To learn more about Rosenshine ' s Principles and how to use them in the classroom, why not book our Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction CPD workshop?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 questions Rosenshine suggested you ask your students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asking your students good questions is a great way to help them think more deeply about their learning, and for you to gauge their understanding.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Ten Ways to Use Retrieval Practice in the Classroom (Opinion)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The new question-of-the-week is:
How and why do you practice retrieval practice in your classroom?
The strategy of retrieval practice has been shown by research to be an extremely effective teaching and learning strategy time and time again. Today's post will explore what it is and what are the different ways it can look like in the classroom.

Today's contributors are Blake Harvard, Vivian Micolta Simmons, Luiza Mureseanu, Dr. Donna Wilson, and Diane Dahl. Blake, Vivian, and Luiza were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

I've used retrieval practice in a number of ways. I'd like to highlight two here.

In my long-term English-language-learner support class, we began a regular retrieval practice warm-up-after we studied the research behind it. Each student had a "Retrieval Practice Notebook." When they first came to class, they wrote what they thought had been the most important thing they had learned the previous day in each of their classes. That was followed by partner and classwide sharing. Not only did that help individual student learning, it also was an excellent way to help "catch-up" a student who had been absent since they all had the same classes.

In my history class, every unit test includes a blank sheet at the end. There, students can write anything else they remember learning during the unit. I often find that the insights students share on that sheet to be a better gauge of higher-level learning and thinking than their responses to the specific questions on the test!

'The Brain Dump'
Blake Harvard is an AP Psychology teacher at James Clemens High School in Madison, Ala. His blog focuses on the application of cognitive psychology in the classroom. You can find Blake on Twitter at @effortfuleduktr.
I use retrieval practice quite often in my classroom. Anytime I want my students to assess their learning, I want them attempting to retrieve that information from memory. Over a century of research suggests that retrieval of memory produces better long-term retention of material than simple restudy of material (rereading notes or highlighting information).

The most important aspect of retrieval practice is students are attempting to access the information from their memory and are not provided any assistance or cues while completing the assessment. I tell my students that retrieval practice is the truest way to know what they know and what they don't know, provided they don't use any notes or peers for assistance. Without assessment using retrieval practice, teachers and students are making assumptions about the knowledge students possess.

Retrieval practice can be easy and simple to implement in the classroom, and it takes on many forms: answering multiple-choice or matching questions, written essay response, class discussion, and/or a project that requires subject knowledge to complete. Here are a couple of my favorite go-to activities:

The Brain Dump - Students use either pencil/paper or word processor to write down any and all information they can about a particular subject or concept. They should not use any assistance while completing this. If they know it well enough, they should be able to write it down. Anything they cannot write without assistance needs to be looked at again by students. I frequently use brain dumps to begin class, giving students 5-10 minutes to write everything down. Then, students turn to partners and tell what information they wrote and find out what their partner wrote down. Finally, this turns into a whole-class discussion of that major idea or concept that was originally presented. This activity is especially useful when implemented after a significant period of time between information presentation and brain-dump assessment (the spacing effect).

'Flashcards & visuals'
Vivian Micolta Simmons was born in Colombia and has been in the U.S. for seven years. She has been a teacher for 14 years and is currently working as a ESL/DLI lead teacher for the Iredell-Statesville schools in N.C:
There are three main processes involved in human memory: encoding, storage, and recalling (retrieval). As teachers, we are continually seeking ways to help our students learn new information and remember it to create meaningful new memories and make them a part of their long-term learning.

Retrieval practice is an effective way to help students remember something they have previously learned to make new connections and boost learning. I think this is a great way to start a class and "break the ice." There is nothing more meaningful than creating stronger memories while learning. Examples of retrieval practices that I have used in class include concept maps and graphic organizers-individually and in groups-which will involve students with the lesson and concepts taught, flashcards and visuals, writing prompts, and practice activities like songs.

When I talk about songs, I think about sites like Flocabulary, where concepts are taught with catchy rap songs. These are a fun way to introduce a lesson or as a warm-up for a follow-up session.

When I think about teaching and learning, and explicitly recalling information, I often like to revisit a quote attributed to various people: "tell me, and I forget, teach me, and I may remember, involve me, and I will understand."

Working With ELLs
Luiza Mureseanu is an instructional resource teacher-K-12, for ESL/ELD programs, in the Peel District School Board, Ontario, with over 17 years of teaching middle and high school students in Canada and Romania.
Retrieval practice is an excellent method I like to use in various domains of teaching language, but I use it particularly for building up fluency and oral-language skills. It works well with all ELLs on various levels of language acquisition because it is flexible and easy to adapt.

For example, students have a few familiar topics they use every week for short speaking activities that takes 15 to 20 minutes of class time. For example, every Monday, students are expected to talk about their weekend. They all have to respond to the same prompt/question in about two minutes. The question is very open-ended: How did you spend your weekend? Tell me something interesting about your weekend. They take turns to answer and build fluency. Each session will have a different focus on the words they need to retrieve, revisit, and retain.

One time they might select all action words (verbs) and build lists and banks of words. They will use the selected words to learn more about vocabulary, tenses, differences between regular and irregular verbs, spelling. Once this task is completed, they can focus on another bank of words, nouns and adjectives, and focus on descriptive language.

Teaching Students The 'Why' Behind It

Dr. Donna Wilson is a psychologist and author of 20 books, including Developing Growth Mindsets, Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains, and Five Big Ideas for Effective Teaching (2nd Edition). Dr. Wilson can be reached at donna@brainsmart.org; visit her website at www.brainsmart.org.
Diane Dahl has been a teacher for 13 years, having taught grades 2-4 throughout her career. Mrs. Dahl currently teaches 3rd and 4th grade GT-ELAR/SS in Lovejoy ISD in Fairview, Texas. Follow her on Twitter at @DahlD, and visit her website at www.fortheloveofteaching.net:
Exciting new research conducted over the past decade places retrieval practice squarely within a group of powerful learning and memory strategies that can help to transform student achievement! Simply put, retrieval practice is the act of trying to recall information without having it in front of you.

Traditionally, teachers have worked long and hard to download lots of information into young brains-that is, to teach so that students encode knowledge into long-term memory with tools such as lecture and review sheets. In the past, it has been said that when such methods were used, teachers often learned more than the students because they were working hard while students were passive recipients of knowledge.

Now we know that retrieval practice works as a way for students to actively work their brains, enhance knowledge, and access what they have learned. In other words, retrieval practice helps students to bring information front of mind as a way to boost learning. When information is deliberately recalled, students learn to pull out knowledge and see what they know.

Active retrieval practice is most effective when students understand the "why" behind it. Mrs. Dahl uses various methods to teach students how the brain learns and connects new knowledge to existing knowledge. Once learners have a grasp on the concept, Mrs. Dahl shows students a city map and asks them to focus on a two-block section. They spend considerable time discussing street names and landmarks. Finally, Mrs. Dahl puts the map away, and students are asked to work together to write down how to get to the area on the map. Students are inevitably flummoxed and point out that they were only able to study a small section of the map. That's when Mrs. Dahl has them!

Comparing a road map to connections in the brain, kids discover that studying only a small section of a map is just like reinforcing a small section of neurons in the brain. It doesn't matter how well you were able to recall the small square of map/neurons if you don't know how to access it. This is often a watershed moment for learners and revolutionizes how they look at learning and studying. Foundational retrieval practice reinforces the "why" behind the practice and becomes part of the language of the classroom.

Educators can boost learning and help recall by leveraging short, informal preteach quizzes combined with meaningful interaction of content. For example, Mrs. Dahl's 4th grade study of events leading up to the Mexican-American War begins with a three-question quiz. The first question is on connected content students already know, while the last two are based on content to be learned. Since brains are primed to learn after a mistake, students tune in to see if their answers were correct and thus are more likely to remember the information. Once the content has been presented, collaborative groups apply their new understanding to analyze the ethics of events leading up to the war from the points of view of both Mexico and the United States. This activity purposefully stretches students' thinking in a meaningful way and boosts their future retrieval of knowledge. Success is evident by the informal questioning of kids as they enter class the next day and their application of what they learned in future projects.

Thanks to Blake, Vivian, Luiza, Donna, and Diane for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all Ed Week articles, has been changed by the new redesign-new ones won't be available until February). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first nine years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ten Ways to Use Retrieval Practice in the Classroom (Opinion)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The new question-of-the-week is: How and why do you practice retrieval practice in your classroom? The strategy of retrieval practice has been shown by research to be an extremely effective teaching and learning strategy time and time again. Today's post will explore what it is and what are the different ways it can look like in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.headline
World Economic Forum - Top 10 skills of 2025

# data[].attributes.subject
World Economic Forum - Top 10 skills of 2025

# data[].attributes.headline
Connecting curriculum and assessment - EEF

# data[].attributes.subject
Connecting curriculum and assessment - EEF

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Improving our use of assessment often means deepening our understanding of the curriculum.

If you teach, you assess; assessment is part of teaching. But what do you assess? And how? And when?

The four steps below will help you align your curriculum, your teaching and the assessment processes you use. And that begins with understanding your curriculum.

Step 1: Understand your curriculum intimately

As a teacher, you can improve your teaching by improving your assessment practice, not (as Dylan Wiliam has so concisely put it) because you're not good enough, but because you - like any teacher - can always be better.

What is a curriculum?

Christine Counsell - one of the foremost thinkers in the UK on matters of curriculum - wrote on her blog about the curriculum as "content structured as narrative over time". This wonderfully captivating idea has held my interest ever since I read it, and any reader or film fan will understand what she means: the content matters, but so does the order in which it is encountered. The endings of Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad make very little sense to anyone who hasn't read or watched what comes before! Similarly, some of Wordsworth's poetry makes little sense if you don't know the context of social reform at the time, and the growing calls for rights to individual freedoms of thought and expression. Content - structured as narrative over time - is a helpful way of thinking about the concept of curriculum.

Who's in charge: the curriculum or the test?

One common factor in teaching and assessment decisions has, for a long time, been the high-stakes end-of-course exam. It's hard not to be drawn to 'teaching to the test', because the outcomes of those tests matter to our students and to our schools. But one of the consequences of this can be a narrowing of the curriculum; those high-stakes tests can only ever sample and assess small areas from the whole curriculum, because that's what they're designed to do.

Narrowing of the curriculum reduces the equity of education offered in our classrooms; our students have a restricted educational experience. One way of combatting this is to have - and for teachers to understand intimately - a detailed and robust curriculum. Replacing vague descriptions of the content our students should learn with a clear and concise narrative is at the heart of a move away from the high-stakes test as the ultimate arbiter of what and when we teach, something that both Cambridge Assessment's Tim Oates and No More Marking's Daisy Christodoulou have asserted.

Step 2: Turn abstract curriculum concepts into the concrete learning constructs

Many curriculum documents contain statements written as abstractions. ' Develop algebraic fluency' is one such abstraction which is really hard to define unless you truly understand this aspect of mathematics; ' Select vocabulary judiciously ' is another which gets language teachers the world over arguing. Here are some examples of other curriculum constructs:

Multiply two-digit numbers together

Understands hyperbole and uses it to create effect in original writing

Apply the concept of equality to evaluate two democratic systems of government

So that our students can access, develop and master the content in their curriculum, we need both a more detailed and concrete understanding of the narrative of curriculum content, and of what students would know, understand and be able to do along the learning journey, and upon reaching their destination.

We need to 'operationalise' curriculum statements - to make them meaningful and comprehensible by placing them in their domain-specific structure and setting out a clear narrative. When we do this, we create what are known in the language of assessment as constructs - the clearly-defined and understood targets of our assessment practices, the jigsaw pieces of our curriculum selected for assessment.

And that structure should be based on the domain-specific learning progressions, or the 'content as narrative over time' as Christine Counsell might consider it (for example, 'fluency in mental arithmetic' is a construct which requires addition and subtraction as a foundation, and progresses to the more complex skills of multiplication and division long before content associated directly with algebra is introduced).

Curriculum constructs are not isolated units of knowledge, understanding or skill. As we learn, we integrate new information with our prior knowledge, reshaping our long-term memories; in doing so, we have to recognise that curriculum constructs are steps along a much longer learning progression. When we assess, we try to estimate where on that continuum our students currently are, and where they should move to next.

Step 3: select assessment questions and tasks which target the constructs you have identified

The only way to know which jigsaw pieces students have when they come to your classroom is to assess them in some way.

The only way to know if students have put more pieces into the puzzle after you've taught them is to assess them.

But each time you assess, you're only able to take one quick glance at that bigger puzzle your students are assembling, so it's worth remembering that taking "multiple inadequate glances" (in the words of Prof Rob Coe) will help you make that picture more visible.

Step 4: treat assessment as a process of teaching, not an isolated event

Keep revisiting, keep asking questions and setting tasks designed both to help students retrieve information and to provide you with the information needed to make your next steps decisions. Avoid seeing assessment as the thing that you do at the end of a teaching sequence, viewing it instead as an ongoing process to support teaching and learning.
Understanding how a curriculum is built of its component parts, and how to assess your students' mastery of them are key features of our Assessment Lead Programme. Try a free sample of the Programme here!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Improving our use of assessment often means deepening our understanding of the curriculum. If you teach, you assess; assessment is part of teaching. But what do you assess? And how? And when? The four steps below will help you align your curriculum, your teaching and the assessment processes you use.

# data[].attributes.headline
Curriculum Design for Middle Leaders - Session 2

# data[].attributes.subject
Curriculum Design for Middle Leaders - Session 2

# data[].attributes.body
The 6 core principles of effective curriculum design