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Chartered College of Teaching: Checking for understanding

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Chartered College of Teaching: Checking for understanding

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Chartered College of Teaching: Multiple-choice hinge questions

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Chartered College of Teaching: Multiple-choice hinge questions

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Charted College of Teaching: Mini whiteboards

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Charted College of Teaching: Mini whiteboards

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EEF Blog on Prior Knowledge and Pupil Misconceptions

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EEF Blog on Prior Knowledge and Pupil Misconceptions

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To answer this question, we must delve a little further into how knowledge is arranged in the mind.

Meaningful mental models

One crucial theory that has emerged from cognitive science research is that humans develop and store information in their long-term memory, and that this is done by categorising knowledge into mental models (also known as ​'schemata') [2].

The shape and structure of these models varies depending upon the level of knowledge the learner has within a specific subject domain. For example, a KS2 pupil studying osmosis for the first time will have a much smaller and simpler mental model to that of their biology teacher with a science degree in Biomedical Sciences.

As experts in their subjects, teachers can help develop the depth and complexity of pupils' mental models. One important way teachers can assist the learning and organisation of information is to adjust their teaching according to the prior knowledge of their pupils. Teachers might:

Add new information to address alack of prior knowledge;

Fill in gaps of incomplete prior knowledge; or

Correct misconceptions of existing but incorrect prior knowledge [3].

Most teachers will tell you that the third of these activities is by far the most challenging. In the first two contexts, the teacher is addressing a lack of knowledge, carefully sequencing content so that foundational concepts and information are fully embedded before moving on to more complex ideas.

The correction of misconceptions is much more difficult. Individual pupils' incorrect assumptions, ideas and categorisations can form from their full range of life experiences - including those that happen outside the school gates.

Misconceptions can also become ingrained in pupils' long-term memory, meaning mental models may include, or even be built upon, falsehoods. For example, in history, a pupil may have a shaky understanding of the War of the Roses, perceiving Richard III as an irredeemable villain because they have watched a witty parody on Horrible Histories.

Managing Misconceptions

Despite the challenge, effective teachers make a habit of managing pupil misconceptions. In the ECF, it states the value of ​'structuring tasks and questions to enable the identification of knowledge gaps and misconceptions'. As Dr Niki Kaiser exemplifies here, the isolation and correction of misconceptions is a crucial part of a teacher's daily practice

Anticipating misconceptions: When planning to introduce a new idea or concept, teachers use their combined knowledge both of curriculum content and their pupils to pre-empt what the class may find challenging, and how misunderstandings might arise [4].

Teachers might ask themselves:

What other information have pupils previously learnt that the new idea/​concept follows on from?

How will pupils who lack the necessary prior knowledge interpret the new information?

How have pupils responded to the teaching of this idea/​concept in the past? What misconceptions often arise in this lesson or topic?

Teaching correct conceptions: Effective teacher instruction can help to reduce the chances of misconceptions forming in the first place. Teaching content in manageable steps and providing guided opportunities for pupils to apply what they learn can increase the likelihood that new information is received and processed correctly [5]. Similarly, by narrating their own thought processes, teachers can model how expert learners make sense of and apply new information to tasks, reducing the chances of new knowledge being wrongly applied [6].

Addressing emerging misconceptions: Once new knowledge has been taught, teachers can use assessment to gain insights into how well their pupils have understood and unearth specific misconceptions (see 5 methods for doing this in maths, as explained by Simon Cox). Teachers can then provide feedback to address pupil errors. Evidence suggests that this is most likely to be effective when the feedback provided gives a clear explanation of the nature of the misconception [7]

Children and young people bring such a broad range of experiences and preconceptions with them to the classroom. Teachers can never fully predict or comprehend the multitude of ways in which new information is received, and so, probing pupils' prior knowledge and addressing their misconceptions is essential.

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the early career framework (or ‘ecf’) is the evidence base which underpins a new entitlement to a structured 2-year package of high-quality professional development for early career teachers. it sets out what early career teachers should be entitled to learn about and learn how to do when entering the teaching profession. this blog from research and policy manager harry madgwick builds on the contents of the ecf to explore how teachers can approach making use of prior knowledge to head off pupil misconceptions. what does it mean to ‘know’ a historical period

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or the process of osmosis in science? teachers can teach the curriculum with confidence without grappling with wider questions of ‘knowledge’

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but the debates about ‘knowledge-rich’ curricula

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offer useful ground to carefully consider the role of ‘knowledge’ in teaching and learning. the primacy of prior knowledge knowledge

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is one of the most crucial factors influencing a person’s ability to learn [1]. when pupils are introduced to new ideas and concepts

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they try to make sense of them by relating back to what they already know. the ability to recall previously learnt facts from memory assists the acquisition of new knowledge

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allowing pupils to connect more complex ideas with their existing understanding. the weaker prior knowledge is

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the more likely pupils are to develop misconceptions but how can we ensure that pupils acquire knowledge in a way that allows them to make appropriate connections between words

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and information?   on how pupils learn and subject and curriculum

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the early career framework states that:  prior knowledge plays an important role in how pupils learn; committing some key facts to their long-term memory is likely to help pupils learn more complex ideas.  long-term memory can be considered as a store of knowledge that changes as pupils learn by integrating new ideas with existing knowledge.  where prior knowledge is weak

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pupils are more likely to develop misconceptions

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particularly if new ideas are introduced too quickly.  anticipating common misconceptions within particular subjects is also an important aspect of curricular knowledge; working closely with colleagues to develop an understanding of likely misconceptions is valuable.  in all subject areas

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pupils learn new ideas by linking those ideas to existing knowledge

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organising this knowledge into increasingly complex mental models (or “schemata”); carefully sequencing teaching to facilitate this process is important.   to answer this question

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we must delve a little further into how knowledge is arranged in the mind. meaningful mental models one crucial theory that has emerged from cognitive science research is that humans develop and store information in their long-term memory

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and that this is done by categorising knowledge into mental models (also known as ‘schemata’) [2]. the shape and structure of these models varies depending upon the level of knowledge the learner has within a specific subject domain. for example

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a ks2 pupil studying osmosis for the first time will have a much smaller and simpler mental model to that of their biology teacher with a science degree in biomedical sciences. as experts in their subjects

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teachers can help develop the depth and complexity of pupils’ mental models. one important way teachers can assist the learning and organisation of information is to adjust their teaching according to the prior knowledge of their pupils. teachers might:  add new information to address alack of prior knowledge; fill in gaps of incomplete prior knowledge; or  correct misconceptions of existing but incorrect prior knowledge [3].  most teachers will tell you that the third of these activities is by far the most challenging. in the first two contexts

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the teacher is addressing a lack of knowledge

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carefully sequencing content so that foundational concepts and information are fully embedded before moving on to more complex ideas. the correction of misconceptions is much more difficult. individual pupils’ incor

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EEF Blog: ECF- Exploring the Evidence: Prior knowledge and Pupil...

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To answer this question, we must delve a little further into how knowledge is arranged in the mind. Meaningful mental models One crucial theory that has emerged from cognitive science research is that humans develop and store information in their long-term memory, and that this is done by categorising knowledge into mental models (also known as ​'schemata') [2].

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Despite careful planning and checks for understanding during the lesson, students' work will include slips, mistakes and misconceptions. Each student will have adopted different interpretations of the task, misspelled different words and reached a different point in a journey towards excellence. When we come to provide feedback, what will help?

Our feedback will reflect the nature of gaps in student learning. An error may reflect one of several underlying causes:

"It could be a slip - that is, a careless procedural mistake; or a misconception, some persistent conceptual or procedural confusion (or naive view); or a lack of understanding in the form of a missing bit of conceptual or procedural knowledge, without any persistent misconception. Each of these causes implies a different instructional action, from minimal feedback (for the slip), to reteaching (for the lack of understanding), to the significant investment required to engineer a deeper cognitive shift (for the misconception) (Bennett, 2011, p.17)."

Before deciding how to convey feedback to students, we need to identify what we want them to change. This is demonstrated by an experiment in which a school adopted comment-only marking (removing grades from students' work), in line with the evidence. Students who received comments seemed to make less progress than those who received grades, contrary to the evidence: the authors concluded that giving comments has no effect: it is the nature of the comment which matters (Smith and Gorard, 2005). First we have to identify what we hope to achieve, only then can we choose an effective way to convey this.

We can clarify our goals by thinking about feedback as targeting different levels of change. These levels range from making changes to the specific task to changing the student's approach to learning. Several reviewers have created different frameworks: the framework below incorporates the work of Hattie and Timperley (2007), Kluger and DeNisi (1996) and Pryor and Crossouard (2010, p.270).

This is a way to think about where our feedback is targeted, not a suggestion that specific feedback is good and general bad (or vice versa): we are likely to want students to make changes at every level at some stage. Feedback's effect lies in helping students to focus on a particular level (Hattie and Timperley, 2007; Kluger and DeNisi, 1996). It helps therefore, to be clear about the different levels, their merits and their disadvantages.

1) Improving the task

We may want students to improve their responses to the current task. Teachers focus most frequently on helping students improve a specific piece of work by suggesting corrections or stating whether an answer is right (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). We might suggest:

"Try that again, but this time hold your head up throughout the movement."

"Rewrite your answer to question 3 removing the brackets at step 2."

"Paragraph 3 needs more evidence."

"There is a problem with your answer to question 4."

(The examples above, and throughout, work from what might be said to lower-attaining students, who will benefit from more directive feedback, to higher-attaining students, who nay benefit from and think more about less directive feedback).

This can help students improve the current task, but its effects are limited: students are unlikely to be able to transfer what they learn about one task to another (Hattie and Timperley, 2007; Kluger and DeNisi, 1996; Shute, 2008): people struggle to recognise that they can use the solution to one problem to solve an analogous problem, unless they receive a hint to do so (Gick and Holyoak, 1980). Task feedback may also interfere with students' concentration if they are conducting elaborate tasks, learning complex tasks or seeking to follow rules (Kluger and DeNisi, 1996). We may therefore consider giving more general feedback.

2) Deepening understanding of the subject

We may want to help students deepen their understanding of learning and performing in the subject. Feedback on more general approaches to the subject may help students to identify and correct errors, use better strategies and process learning more deeply: this should lead to deeper understanding and better transfer to new tasks (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). We might therefore give feedback applicable to a range of tasks, such as:

"Always underline key words in the question, then write a plan linked to them."

"Look back at the original question after each step, to check you are on track."

"Reframe the problem as a diagram."

"Once you've completed a design, go back to the brief and see if you've met the goals."

"What do we always do first when we identify a problem with our work?"

This should help students to understand underlying features of success in the subject; without specific prompts however, students may struggle to apply these features to the current tasks.

We may also help students understand the subject itself, and the learner's role within the subject. We may help students to adopt disciplinary habits, or recognise what being a great scientists requires, by highlighting features of good mathematical thinking, scientific reasoning or historical questions:

"A good mathematician always checks their working."

"We've discussed how a historian develops their argument from many case studies: how would you structure an argument which draws on all the examples we've discussed today."

"Great artists steal."

"The questions you're asking are the kind which professors of English write whole books debating - so it's good to explore both sides of the answer before reaching a conclusion."

Again, students may need prompts to apply these general ideas to specific tasks.

3) Improving self-regulation

We may want students to improve their understanding of how they learn. First, this means helping students self-monitor, recognising how well they are doing, what they know, and what is working; then it means helping them self-manage, planning and adapting in response to their self-monitoring (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). For example, one experiment which focused on self-monitoring and self-management increased students' accuracy in assessing their current knowledge and helped them gain higher grades; this proved particularly powerful for lower-attaining students (Casselman and Atwood, 2017). We may help students to identify their current knowledge, skill and learning gaps - self-monitoring - and to think about how they can respond - self-managing:

"How did how well you did differ from what you expected?"

"What do you need to study more to improve in this area?"

"Which strategies that you used today worked well? Why?"

"What will you do differently during tomorrow's practice session?"

Self-monitoring and self-management helps; if it blends into feedback about students directly however, it can have negative effects.

4) Self-evaluation

Feedback about students themselves is less effective than feedback focused on the task, subject or self-regulation (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). If students receive feedback about themselves combined with feedback about the task, they are likely to focus on themselves, which will distract them from improving their work (Kluger and DeNisi,1996). Students like praise, and it may help boost self-efficacy, but most reviews find it has little or no positive effect on student learning (because it offers no useful information about how to improve). Even if praise increases motivation briefly, students may then become dependent on it to keep learning: removing feedback later may then have a negative effect (Kluger and DeNisi, 1996). So feedback aimed at students directly is likely to distract them from improvement, such as:

"You are a good/bad/indifferent student."

"You always come up with excellent answers."

"You've tried very hard at this."

We can focus on helping students improve their work, rather than offering praise or personal criticism.

Moving between levels

More powerful than feedback focused on any one level may be feedback which links different levels. Feedback at any one level will be insufficient for success; too much feedback at any one level may detract from performance (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). Students may struggle to apply specific feedback to new tasks; they may struggle to apply general feedback to specific tasks. We may therefore offer feedback which links levels, helping students to recognise how feedback about one task may apply to others, or how they can self-monitor better, based on a deeper understanding of the subject. There seems to be a "powerful interactive effect" between feedback to improve specific tasks and feedback to improve strategies, processes or self-regulation (Hattie and Timperley, 2007, pp.90, 93). We can therefore help students improve immediately and adopt useful strategies by linking feedback about specific tasks with feedback which develops a deeper understanding of the subject and self-regulation. The examples below show how feedback focused on one level can be combined with feedback at other levels:

We may not write such lengthy feedback: lengthy feedback is burdensome for teachers and makes it harder for students to understand and respond; the important thing is to remain conscious of opportunities to help students link feedback on one level with other levels, whether in written feedback, verbal comments, or whole-class teaching.

Conclusion

Feedback is hard to get right: if we are intentional about the level of change we are targeting, and make links between one level and the next, it is far more likely to be effective.

This is a draft excerpt from the Responsive Teaching: Cognitive Science and Formative Assessment in Practice.

What should I read next?

Guiding improvement without giving individual feedback: ways to plan feedback for the whole class.

The evidence on feeedback: a decision tree: a summary of some of the evidence on ways to deliver feedback.

What if you marked every book every lesson? (Not because you should, but because this post exemplifies targeted, brief marking).

Bibliography

Bennett, R. (2011). Formative assessment: a critical review. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 18(1), pp.5-25.

Casselman, B. and Atwood, C. (2017). Improving General Chemistry Course Performance through Online Homework-Based Metacognitive Training. Journal of Chemical Education. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.7b00298
Gick, M. and Holyoak, K. (1980). Analogical problem solving. Cognitive Psychology, 12(3), pp.306-355. Hattie, J. and Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), pp.81-112. Kluger, A. and 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), pp.254-284. Pryor, J. and Crossouard, B. (2010). Challenging formative assessment: disciplinary spaces and identities. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35(3), pp.265-276. Shute, V. (2008). Focus on Formative Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 78(1), pp.153-189. Smith, E. and Gorard, S. (2005). 'They don't give us our marks': the role of formative feedback in student progress. Assessment in Education 12(1), pp. 21-38.

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What kind of feedback moves students on?

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Despite careful planning and checks for understanding during the lesson, students' work will include slips, mistakes and misconceptions. Each student will have adopted different interpretations of the task, misspelled different words and reached a different point in a journey towards excellence. When we come to provide feedback, what will help?

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Weekly Round-Up by Durrington Research School

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Weekly Round-Up by Durrington Research School

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Videos by Learning Scientists for STUDENTS

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Videos by Learning Scientists for STUDENTS

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The videos below were design to grab students' attention and very quickly teach them about the strategies in a fun way. These videos may not be the most suitable for the classroom because of their speed.

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Download Our Free Resources – Retrieval Practice

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In our free resources, written by cognitive scientists, we condense research on teaching strategies, why they enhance learning, and how to implement them in the classroom.

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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

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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.

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It's a universal process in education-so universal that we regularly fail to appreciate its complexity. Here's how it goes: (1) A teacher looks at a piece of student work; (2) The teacher writes something on the work (sometimes a grade, sometimes a score, sometimes a comment); and (3) Later, the student looks at what the teacher has written.

Of course, the idea is that what the teacher has written on the student's work improves the student's learning. But as many studies have shown, students often learn less when teachers provide feedback than they do when the teacher writes nothing (Kluger &amp; DeNisi, 1996). The apparently simple process of looking at student work and then giving useful feedback turns out to be much more difficult than most people imagine. We could make the whole process considerably more effective by understanding one central idea: The only important thing about feedback is what students do with it.

Keeping Purpose in Mind

In psychology and education, it is common to define feedback as any actions taken by an external agent to provide individuals with information regarding some aspect of their performance. At its simplest, therefore, feedback might identify the quality of the work, as happens when a typing teacher tells a student that his typing speed is 45 words per minute. More helpfully, the feedback might indicate the gap between the current performance and the desired performance-for example, by also telling the student that his target speed is 50 words per minute. More helpfully still, the teacher might tell the student that his typing speed will increase if he uses only his thumb to depress the space bar. In other words, the best feedback provides information not just about current performance, but also about how to improve future performance.

In the typing example above, and in most sports coaching, this point is obvious. When a coach gives a softball pitcher feedback on her pitching action, it's clear that the purpose of the feedback is to help the player improve her pitches. This is also true in many school subjects. For example, a visual arts teacher might give a student advice on how to develop a piece of sculpture or a painting, and a language arts teacher might give feedback on the draft of a story so the next draft is better.

In general, however (and this is what makes feedback so challenging), the main purpose of feedback is to improve the student's ability to perform tasks he or she has not yet attempted. If the language arts teacher advises the student that his story would be improved by swapping around the third and fourth paragraphs, the student can do this, but he will learn little. The intellectual heavy lifting has been done by the teacher, not the student. Similarly, if a math teacher corrects a student's arithmetic errors, there's nothing left for the student to do but note how many of her calculations were incorrect. It's easy to see why such forms of feedback are unlikely to be effective. And if we don't keep the purpose of feedback in mind, the same problems may also crop up in more subtle ways.

For example, many school districts allow students to revise assessed pieces of work and resubmit them for a higher grade after receiving feedback from teachers. Such a system can create incentives for students to turn in poor-quality work, wait for the teacher to tell them how to improve it, and then just follow the instructions. The feedback has improved the work, but the student has probably not learned much from the process.

The real issue is purpose. Why are we looking at student work in the first place? Sometimes we do want to focus on improving the existing work. For instance, when I'm reading a final thesis draft from one of my PhD students before it goes to the bookbinder, it would be rather perverse for me to just tell the student that I saw a typographical error in one of the equations on page 36. It's possible that the student would learn something by checking the equations on page 36 and locating the error herself, but given this particular context, it would be far more sensible for me to tell the student what the error was.

Most of the time, however, the student work we're looking at is not important in and of itself, but rather for what it can tell us about students-what they can do now, what they might be able to do in the future, or what they need to do next. Looking at student work is essentially an assessment process. We give our students tasks, and from their responses we draw conclusions about the students and their learning needs.

When we realize that most of the time the focus of feedback should be on changing the student rather than changing the work, we can give much more purposeful feedback. If our feedback doesn't change the student in some way, it has probably been a waste of time.

Giving Feedback They Can Use

There's an old joke about a driver lost in a remote region, trying to find a way to get to the city. Eventually, he asks a local about how to get there. The local replies, "Well, if I were you, I wouldn't start from here." It's a joke because we can see that this is not a particularly helpful thing to say. The driver has no other choice but to start from where he is.

Yet, we do this to our students all the time. We say things like, "You should be able to do this. You're in 5th grade"-which, when you think about it, is not helpful. The crucial insight here was captured by David Ausubel (1968) many years ago:

The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach ... accordingly. (p. vi)

In other words, we need to start from where the learner is, not where we would like the learner to be. We need to use the information we obtain from looking at the student's work-even through that information may be less than perfect-and give feedback that will move the student's learning forward. Here are a few suggestions about how teachers might do this.

Assign Tasks That Illuminate Students' Thinking

Sometimes, we just want to know whether students can do something. In such situations, it's perfectly appropriate to give them a task that simply tells us whether they can do it or not. However, most of the time, we want to know more than that. We want to know how we can help them get better, and this requires that we carefully design tasks to illuminate each student's thinking.

In language arts and social studies, most tasks are so open that we almost always learn something about a student's thinking by looking at his or her work. For example, even that traditional essay so hated by students returning from vacation, "What I did on my holidays," will provide insights into a student's writing capabilities. In social studies, in responding to a question such as "Why did the Union army want to capture Atlanta?" students are likely to reveal the extent of their understanding of Atlanta as a transportation and logistics hub. However, in math and science, looking at students' work often tells us only that they didn't do it very well and they need to do it again, but better. Designing tasks that, in Ritchhart and Perkins's (2008) phrase, "make thinking visible" takes time, but front-loading the work in this way makes it much more likely that we'll provide useful feedback.

For example, the question below probes students' understanding of the arithmetic mean of a set of numbers. However, rather than asking students to calculate the mean of a set of numbers, as most standardized tests do, the question explores whether the students really understand the concept of the mean:

What can you say about the means of the following two sets of numbers:

Many students choose option (c), which is, of course, incorrect. It takes authentic understanding of the definition of the mean to realize that there is no discretion about whether to count the zero. The only correct response is option (b).

Similarly, in science, the following question helps teachers figure out whether students understand the important distinction between climate change in general and the specific issues related to the depletion of the ozone layer through the use of chlorofluorocarbons.

What can we do to preserve the ozone layer?

What's particularly interesting about this question is that option (e) may look like a fifth option included just to increase the number of choices, but in fact it's the only correct response.

To be sure, no matter how carefully or deeply you probe, you can never make thinking wholly visible. Sometimes you're going to get it wrong. But at least by trying to get a handle on the student's thinking, you're giving yourself the chance to get it right more often than not. Major league hitters are happy getting things right three times out of ten. Don't beat yourself up.

Make Feedback into Detective Work

One way of making sure that students actively use feedback is to make responding to the feedback a task in itself. In other words, make feedback into detective work.

In a previous article in Educational Leadership (Wiliam, 2012), I mentioned Charlotte Kerrigan, a language arts teacher who sometimes responds to her students' essays by writing her comments on strips of paper. She then gives each group of four students their four essays, along with the four strips of paper. The group's task is to figure out which comments apply to which essays.

Or consider a math teacher who provides feedback on 20 solved equations. Rather than telling the student which equations are incorrect, the teacher can instead say, "Five of these are incorrect. Find them and fix them."

The same basic principle can be applied to any school subject. For example, in social studies, if a student has included the Emancipation Proclamation as one of the causes of the U.S. Civil War, instead of telling the student that the Proclamation was issued in the second year of the war, the teacher could point out that one of the causes he has mentioned can't be a cause because it occurred after the start of the war, and ask the student to sort this out.

Such practices ensure that students, the recipients of feedback, do as much work as the teacher who provides the feedback. Making feedback into detective work encourages students to look at the feedback more closely and to think about their original work more analytically.

Build Students' Capacity for Self-Assessment

The amount of feedback we can give our students is limited. In the longer term, the most productive strategy is to develop our students' ability to give themselves feedback. With adults, we do this intuitively. Whenever I observe a lesson by a student teacher, the first question the teacher asks me is, "How did I do?" My response-and the response of most administrators I know-is, "How do you think you did?" If the teacher knows what he or she did well and what still requires work, then my feedback is irrelevant. More important, teachers who can critique their own performance can improve when nobody is observing them.

In my work with music teachers, I've seen the importance of self-feedback. Instrumental music teachers commonly get only 20 to 30 minutes each week with a student. But these teachers realize that most of the progress a student makes in playing a musical instrument happens when the student practices at home. A student could improve his or her performance very little in 30 minutes a week. Therefore, many instrumental music teachers spend most of their instructional session ensuring that students have the skills to practice productively-which requires that students can evaluate how well they've performed and make adjustments accordingly. Contrast this approach with most content-area teaching in schools, where teachers seem to believe that students make most of their progress when the teacher is present, with homework as a kind of optional add-on.

It's important, therefore, to develop students' capacity for self-assessment. At the same time, we need to remember that it can be emotionally challenging to assess one's own work, Therefore, I recommend starting with samples of anonymous student work, and asking students to describe what feedback they would give the creator of the work. After that, students can move on to the work of actual peers, and finally, to self-assessment.

To start with, a simple approach, sometimes called "plus, minus, interesting," is all that is needed. At the end of a task, ask students to identify something they found easy about the task, something they found challenging or difficult, and something they found interesting. Such reflection develops language skills and helps the students become clear about what areas they need to work on.

With any task that has a qualitative element rather than just being correct or incorrect, students can be asked to identify what they would do differently if they did the task again. In science, for instance, students might be prompted to think about what they would change to improve a science experiment they conducted. In mathematics, students might be asked how they might report the result of a mathematical investigation differently. Sometimes it's appropriate to ask students to make the changes they have identified, such as redrafting a literary essay in language arts. Sometimes, however, it's useful to tell students in advance that they won't have to make the improvements they've identified, so they don't have an incentive to say that the work is fine as it is.

The purpose of this exercise is to develop the student's own critical eye. Once a student has that, feedback from others becomes less and less necessary.

A Trusting Relationship for Feedback

In the end, it all comes down to the relationship between the teacher and the student. To give effective feedback, the teacher needs to know the student-to understand what feedback the student needs right now. And to receive feedback in a meaningful way, the student needs to trust the teacher-to believe that the teacher knows what he or she is talking about and has the student's best interests at heart. Without this trust, the student is unlikely to invest the time and effort needed to absorb and use the feedback.

The only thing that matters is what the student does with the feedback. If the feedback you're giving your students is producing more of what you want, it's probably good feedback. But if your feedback is getting you less of what you want, it probably needs to change.

Finally, talk to your students. Ask them, "How are you using the feedback I'm giving to help you learn better?" If they can give you a good answer to that question, then your feedback is probably effective. And if they can't, ask them what they would find useful. After all, they're the clients.

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Feedback is only successful if students use it to improve their performance.

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EEF Podcast: Cognitive Science in the Classroom

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EEF Podcast: Cognitive Science in the Classroom

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Regular host Alex Quigley is joined by assistant headteacher and literacy specialist Caroline Bilton, in discussion with:

Dr Thomas Perry, lead author on the EEF's recent ​'Cognitive Science in the Classroom' evidence review, educational researcher and lecturer at the University of Birmingham (Start - 28:09); and

Mark Miller, Head of Bradford Research School at Dixons Academies. (28:09 - End).

For quick and easy access to future episodes, search for ​'Evidence into Action' in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts and make sure you subscribe there.

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regular host alex quigley is joined by assistant headteacher and literacy specialist caroline bilton

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lead author on the eef’s recent ‘cognitive science in the classroom’ evidence review

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educational researcher and lecturer at the university of birmingham (start – 28:09); and mark miller

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head of bradford research school at dixons academies. (28:09 – end). for quick and easy access to future episodes

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search for 'evidence into action' in apple podcasts

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or google podcasts and make sure you subscribe there.

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New episode of 'Evidence into Action' - 'Cognitive Science in the...

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Regular host Alex Quigley is joined by assistant headteacher and literacy specialist Caroline Bilton, in discussion with: Dr Thomas Perry, lead author on the EEF's recent ​'Cognitive Science in the Classroom' evidence review, educational researcher and lecturer at the University of Birmingham (Start - 28:09); and Mark Miller, Head of Bradford Research School at Dixons Academies.

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TES Podcast: What research tells us about revision technique

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TES Podcast: What research tells us about revision technique

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gcses: what research tells us about revision technique

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‎Tes Podagogy: GCSEs: What research tells us about revision technique on Apple Podcasts

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Tes Podagogy is back with a new season and this week, we return to a 2019 episode with expert John Dunlosky to find out what works - and what doesn't - when it comes to revision.

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The Confident Teacher is a blog by teacher and author, Alex Quigley (@HuntingEnglish), that shares ideas and evidence about education, teaching and learning. Alex Quigley

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Though seemingly 'natural', writing proves devilishly difficult for far too many school pupils and closing this gap can have a lasting impact on their academic and life success. This article by Alex Quigley introduces 7 steps to improve children's writing that feature throughout his latest book Closing the Writing Gap.

1. Train teachers in the art and science of writing

Writing is the neglected 'r' in schools. As a result, teachers can lack confidence in teaching writing - especially when it comes to supporting struggling writers. Given writing is so central to school success, it has to be a priority for professional development. Schools can unlock the complexity of the writing process for their pupils and when writing becomes a school improvement priority, we begin to zero in on the knowledge and skills for better writing, and focus on improving pupils' outcomes.

2. Take advantage of talk and the rhetorical roots of writing

Teachers have been grappling with how to teach writing for thousands of years. Happily, it means that when we dig into the annals of history we can find insights for how to teach writing today. Indeed, we can stop focusing on electronic tablets and the future for solutions and instead turn back to the wax tablets of the ancient Romans for some answers! The Romans expanded their empire in part because of their ability to write and communicate with success. They perfected the art of rhetoric - those essential repetitions and rhythms of language that can imbue writing with power (do you know your anaphora from your anastrophe?).

3. Explicitly teach and model the stages of the writing process

Every teacher understands the power of planning and the necessity to edit and revise your writing for success. And yet, the nuances of teaching the writing process can quickly trip up teachers and pupils can resist the practice too (what pupils really want to plan and carefully edit errors in their writing?). It is crucial that we perfect the precise details of the writing process. For example, teachers (and pupils) need to understand the differences between 'editing' and 'revising' your writing. Editing describes the focus on error detection, such as spelling, grammar and accurate sentences. Revising is crucially different, as it describes making changes to the quality and content of your writing so that it meets the expectations of your audience. Pupils need to not just enact a cursory edit, or neaten up their handwriting; they need to craft and revise their writing with deliberate intent.

Free Practical Strategies Chapter

Where do we start with practical strategies for teaching writing? The secret to a practical, and pragmatic, approach to teaching writing is to seize the countless small opportunities to integrate it into our existing practice.
This free chapter is taken from Closing the Writing Gap and includes a range of practical strategies for teaching writing that can be applied in the classroom at all key stages and phases.

Get Free Chapter

4. Offer pupils the gift of grammar, so that they can make informed writing choices

Is there a topic that can inspire more arguments and muddled thinking about writing than grammar? Once more, the issue rests with teacher knowledge and confidence in the teaching of grammar for writing. We can turn the clock back to dry grammar drills, but they are unlikely to improve writing. Instead, we can take an evidence-informed approach, such as promoting the LEAD approach (Link between grammar and writing; Explain grammar through examples; Authentic texts are explored; Discussion about grammar choices is undertaken), as developed by Professor Debra Myhill and colleagues. With a little more focus on grammar, we can make visible the seemingly hidden patterns of the academic writing that is so common in every classroom.

5. Concentrate on crafting great sentences

The game of writing is infinitely, and brilliantly, complex. And so, the shrinking down of that complexity to crafting sentences shouldn't work...but it does. Our pupils can be overloaded when writing paragraphs and full texts, so honing in on playing with sentence variations can help develop the style and substance of their writing in a more manageable way. Take 'sentence expanding'. This singular strategy to add words, phrases and clauses to sentences, can make for better writing in history (encouraging pupils to show off more of their knowledge), or in English, by expanding upon stylish details (such as adding in sensual descriptions to narrative writing). Let's then make a start by looking at shrinking, combining, expanding, and signposting great sentences.

6. Prioritise disciplinary writing

How do you write like a geographer? An artist? A historian? A scientist? Too often we try and teach writing like it is one monolithic entity, when in reality it is a changing, complex thing that subtly shifts in art annotation to history essays, writing poetry, or the writing up of an experiment. For too many pupils, the changing nature of writing in the different subject disciplines catches them out. We need to help pupils, from early on in primary school, to begin recognising the different language we use across the different subjects and begin to write in those specialist ways too. When we have a close focus on the language of science, for example, we can then characterise the specialist writing moves to teach.

7. Plan for focused feedback and assess writing excellence

Teachers are routinely overburdened by marking. Giving feedback on lots of quality writing practice invariably leads to more work for already busy teachers. As a result, we need to focus on feedback that is meaningful but manageable. Teachers need to be supported to use a range of manageable diagnostic assessments and to reduce the number of extended writing assessments. We return to where we began: training teachers in the dazzlingly brilliant art and science of writing.

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Though seemingly 'natural', writing proves devilishly difficult for far too many school pupils and closing this gap can have a lasting impact on their academic and life success. This article by Alex Quigley introduces 7 steps to improve children's writing that feature throughout his latest book Closing the Writing Gap.　　 Writing is the neglected 'r' in schools.

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Case Study by Durrington Research School

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Case Study by Durrington Research School

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In my travels to various schools, one of the variables that I'm struck by is the emphasis placed on reading. I included this description of the range in a previous post on seven variables between schools:

From extensive reading across subjects, quality texts, established reading routines/norms; high daily volume

To: Reading volume thin, class reading rare outside English except question papers and worksheets. Textbooks rare

It's uncontroversial - uncontested - that reading fluency is a key component in students' wider learning capacity and confidence and yet it is actually possible for some students to go through a school day or week without doing very much reading at all. How does that happen? It's a combination of factors:

most information in most lessons is presented by the teacher via powerpoints and verbal explanations - so there's no reading to be done beyond engaging with what is on the screen. This is absolutely dominant in some settings.

reading is collective so the texts are being read in the class - by the teacher or a series of student readers - but students do not necessarily have to read along and are predominantly engaging with the content by listening rather than reading.

individual reading opportunities are not accountable - ie reading material is given and reading is expected but it is possible not to actually read. Students can sit with a book or sheet in front of them and not read.. they just wait until the time is up and wing it, picking up on what is being said without having actually made sense of the text themselves. (I find that adults do this too in sessions where they are asked to read a passage to discuss).

there is reading to be done but really only in the form of questions for writing tasks, rather than extended prose to be read and understood - except of course in English lessons. In some contexts, in many subjects reading the questions is the only reading students actually have to do.

With these things in mind I would say it is a big win for schools to look at this area, aiming to make reading a significant feature in the daily curriculum diet, not an add-on or an ad hoc element that is strongly dependent on individual teacher preferences. It's probably a better way to expend curriculum design energy than many other fiddles and tweaks in a curriculum sequence. Here are five ways to weave reading into the curriculum:

1. Present information via text rather than powerpoint

Simple eh?! But it needs to be done! It's important to be conscious that unless you actively decide to present information via reading text, students will be relying on your presentation materials to engage with the ideas. They won't be developing their capacity to read for meaning, to rehearse reading strategies - like scanning - or reinforcing their skills in reading the specific text formats from articles to textbooks or even summarised revision resources that they'll need to access in any independent study scenario.

I've seen too many lessons where the teacher powerpoint - with its amateurish graphics and dodgy font selection - has been a depressingly poor way to encounter ideas, especially from the back of the room. The absence of text (with or without images) for students to read themselves puts them at the mercy of a teacher's presentation flow; words are spoken or clicked through all too rapidly, they can seem transient and hard to grasp and there's no chance to practise reading for meaning.

Review your powerpoint addiction! Where could you switch and mix things up so that students are given text to read instead? Then do it! Make the switch; take pride in how much you make your students read. Make it a badge of honour; make it 'the way we do things here'.

2. Buy textbooks or prepare workbooks with embedded reading activities

To make planning easy, source or create resources that embed the reading material well in advance. This ensures the materials are relevant to your curriculum, of high quality and makes lesson planning more about how you engage with the reading and weave it into an instructional teaching sequence rather than seeking out bits of text in a piecemeal fashion.

Textbook selection will be a key factor - it's so great when you have a textbook you know and trust and can distribute responsively during lessons, knowing you can use it as a platform for exploring ideas in class. Textbooks are still dismissed way too readily for my liking - look again! Keep searching. There is no ideal but there are plenty of good ones.

Alternatively - or in addition - make it part of your planning to construct booklets with embedded reading opportunities. Where this is in place, the extent of reading and teachers' confidence with reading routines shoots up. The KS2 booklets from Reach Academy Feltham are superb examples of this excellent approach:

Alongside the text there are images, key definitions, comprehension and extended writing tasks. If you were to teach these units, you have a rich resource to hand and every child has this in front of them. It's just far superior to many powerpoint-driven alternatives.

3. Develop accountable reading routines

An important challenge to recognise and to tackle is the fact that many students can appear to be reading without actually doing it. They even kid themselves, mentally drifting, eyes gazing at words on a page without actually engaging with the meaning. Some level of accountability is often necessary to push students over this mental hurdle - they need to expect to have to do something meaningful with the content of the text to force them to make the mental effort needed to get properly stuck in. This is true of adults as well as children; switching into reading mode is effortful and we need motivation to do so.

Accountable reading at a simple level means anticipating that the content of the text will provide answers to questions that will follow. There are lots of variations around this:

unseen questions: reading first, then looking at some questions. This encourages reading of the full text without skimming

search questions: using a text to find answers to specific questions: This helps develop scanning techniques

summarising: this develops 'reading for gist' which can be important for longer pieces.

If students have to undertake a combination of these questions then the reading has purpose and, as with everything in teaching, if used routinely, students form habits around the whole process. Planned well, if students can answer the questions it means they've done the reading. They learn that this will happen; no short-cuts. The tragedy is that this experience is so rare for some students that they are almost affronted when the teacher dishes out the reading material.

4. Develop oral or echo reading routines to boost fluency

An idea I've picked up recently - explored variously by Alex Quigley and Christopher Such - that I've seen done well and tried out myself to good effect, is the practice of getting students to read back a text that has been read to them. The process is this:

The teacher reads a short section of text aloud, explaining words and concepts as needed.

Students in pairs then read the same text back to each other, simultaneously, perhaps alternating lines or paragraphs or each repeating the same text again.

The value of this is:

The reading of the text is be modelled explicitly first - the teacher shows how key words sound and can emphasis meaning as well as model the prosody of reading - the rhythm, flow, intonation - and the pronunciation.

Then every student gets to read the text themselves. They are not merely following the text with a finger or mentally, they are not just hearing it being read. They all doing the reading, following the version modelled by the teacher.

Because the text is read at least twice, there are more opportunities for meanings to be explored in each student's mind.. there is repetition and reinforcement.

If you want to be certain every student has read the text, this is the way to do it. It can be noisy but routines around reading quietly to your partner can be established. As student habits around accountable independent reading develop, you can do less of it orally in this way. It's a kind of collective scaffold that makes reading explicitly a shared learning activity.

5. Set accountable reading tasks for homework.

Finally, harness the time students have between lessons to extend their reading. I meet an awful lot of students who tell me that they only read at school and they are not given reading to do for homework. It's a wasted opportunity. Usually students don't read at home because they either don't know what to read or there is no purpose to the reading - because, as above, the teacher will explain it all anyway.

The trick is to weave the accountability in. Set a task to read a text - obviously that needs to be a text students can take home! Embedded in that task should be the anticipation that students will need to process the meaning in the text in order to complete a task - either as part of the homework or on returning to class. Doing this routinely as part of a healthy diet of homework (see Mode A: Mode B Homework ) makes it normal and forms habits and expectations. There's no point saying 'there's no point, they just won't do it'. Of course they won't if you don't try or if you don't really expect it. You need to truly demand it of students - they have to do the reading and then be accountable by completing related tasks. A useful form of task would be making notes - so the note making needs to be modelled and checked - or writing a summary in class.

I've seen this done superbly well.

Teacher sets a reading task for homework e.g. 2-3 sides of an article, a textbook section or a book chapter

In class, teacher asks students to summarise the key ideas in the text or answer some substantial knowledge check questions based on the text as a starter activity.

Students then share answers and the teacher probes and checks for understanding.

Students who didn't do the reading are immediately exposed and they learn that it pays to make the effort next time. As with all homework it pays not to succumb to the lowest common denominator response; you focus on those students who engage, normalise that and bring the others up to the standard of the best.

Above all, just make it a goal to create a classroom culture and a curriculum diet where reading is prominent and significant.

Here's a superb one-pager of this post made by David Goodwin. You can download the pdf below.

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Five Ways To: Weave Reading into the Curriculum

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In my travels to various schools, one of the variables that I'm struck by is the emphasis placed on reading. I included this description of the range in a previous post on seven variables between schools: From extensive reading across subjects, quality texts, established reading routines/norms; high daily volumeTo: Reading volume thin, class reading rare outside...

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Alex Quigley: Modelling Writing Approaches

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Alex Quigley: Modelling Writing Approaches

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Cognitive Science In the Classroom - Interleaving with Jade Pearce

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Alex Quigley: Grammar moves for academic writing

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Alex Quigley: Grammar moves for academic writing

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There are few topics in education - indeed, English life - that inspire fear, loathing and unfulfilled expectations quite like the subject of grammar.

Researchers are quick to challenge notions of 'standard English' and how grammar is being taught in primary school, or the tyranny of tests. Sadly, amidst these loud debates, too many teachers muddle along quietly and with little confidence about how to teach grammar to improve pupils' writing.

My own 'grammar gap' began in school and extended to my teacher training (being trained to teach the English language no less). The harsh baptism of teaching A level English meant that I had to teach myself grammar. I was spectacularly undertrained to support struggling writers. What chance a busy religious education teacher largely untrained in the many 'moves' of academic writing?

Almost universally, teachers lack confidence in teaching grammar and explaining the effects of grammatical choices. With a little support, we could improve annotations in art, essays in history, arguments in RE, experiment write-ups in science, and much more. Even when teachers have a good knowledge of grammar, they can lack confidence in teaching it. It is a frustrating tale of innumerable missed opportunities.

We are left asking: are teachers in both primary and secondary schools suffering from a crippling lack of confidence when it comes to teaching grammar?

A very short history of grammar teaching

Criticisms attending grammar teaching come from all angles. The more formal teaching of grammar has its roots in early grammar schools, centuries ago. At regular intervals since, grammar teaching has been routinely criticised as an ineffectual 'confining cage' that produces ' square cucumbers ' and not skilled writers.

Back in the 1960s, when grammar teaching plummeted out of fashion, it was challenged and described as having a 'harmful effect on the improvement of writing' and simply being a waste of time.

After some decades in the wilderness, more formal grammar testing has seen a slow renaissance. In 2013, the new year 6 grammar test (the EGPS - English Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling) was created and how to teach and test grammar, and pupils' writing, has again lurched back into the limelight.

Arguments about 'correct grammar' and fierce arguments about the relevance of 'fronted adverbials' have generated lots of heat and headlines, but too little light and guidance for busy teachers grappling with their own grammar gap.

Closing the gap...And the 'Top 10 Grammar Moves for Academic Writing'

The real problem with the teaching of grammar is not a single test with a few debatable terms, but instead the dearth of support offered to teachers, so that they can teach grammar effectively and consistently, across both primary and secondary schools.

When teachers are supported to have a more confident understanding of grammar - with meaningful and well- targeted terminology - we can in turn help pupils to better notice, describe, and practise the moves of successful writers.

For example, noticing how a writer uses adverbs for explanations in food and nutrition can lead to meaningful practice in writing fitting instructions for preparing food (should they stir 'quickly' or 'slowly'?). Additionally, in music, Italianate adverbs like adagio and pianissimo offer precise instructions on how to play an instrument.

We can help teachers by identifying the common grammar moves for academic writing. My ' Top 10 Grammar Moves for Academic Writing ' (download it free from my RESOURCES page ). is a starting point for supporting teachers to teach grammar meaningfully to improve pupils' writing:

For teachers, parents, and even grammar pedants, such terminology shouldn't simply trigger arguments, they should be the start of a discussion about how to teach grammar and writing with success. We can then work on how to integrate teaching these moves in ways that a sensitive to pupils' writing development and the subject specific academic writing (the 'passive voice' in science; 'tentative language' in history; 'additional appositives' in art; shrunken verb phrases in geography in art, and much more) that becomes so key to exam success and much more.

With sustained training and support, we can help every teacher to close the grammar gap in their classroom, as well as attend to their own.

Read the book! If you are interested in reading about teaching grammar and much more, you can buy my new bestselling book:

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There are few topics in education - indeed, English life - that inspire fear, loathing and unfulfilled expectations quite like the subject of grammar. Researchers are quick to challenge notions of 'standard English' and how grammar is being taught in primary school, or the tyranny of tests.

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Becoming Educated Podcast: Closing the Reading Gap

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Becoming Educated Podcast: Closing the Reading Gap

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This week I am joined by Alex Quigley. Alex is a former English teacher and school leader, of over 15 years standing, who now works for the Education Endowment Foundation, supporting teachers to access research evidence. He can be found on twitter @AlexJQuigley and blogs at www.theconfidentteacher.com
He is the author of 'The Confident Teacher', 'Closing the Vocabulary Gap' and 'Closing the Reading Gap'.
In this episode Alex & I explore the vital importance of reading in our schools and Alex clearly articulates why it should be the number one school improvement priority.
In this episode we discuss the following and so much more:
The history of reading and writing systems and why they are important for us to know about.
What the science of reading tells us on how we should teach reading.
How teachers can develop reading comprehension in their classrooms.
Academic and disciplinary reading and how they are different within each subject discipline.
Discussing the topic of reading with Alex has served to sharpen my own thinking and I came away with so many notes to unpick.
Get involved and share widely.
Keep the conversation going using #becomingeducated and tagging me @dnleslie
If you have time I would love for you to review Becoming Educated and share what you love about the podcast.
You can support the podcast by buying me a coffee here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dnleslie
This episode is sponsored by UpLearn:
Up Learn is an online, curriculum-learning resource for A Levels that helps teachers improve educational outcomes amongst students, whilst reducing their own workloads.
Developed by an experienced team of educators, Up Learn courses contain high-quality videos, quizzes and exam preparation material.
Teachers direct students to certain sections of Up Learn as homework, facilitating flipped learning, consolidation of classroom material and independent learning.
97% of students who complete an Up Learn course achieve A*/A, with many starting from D's and U's. What could yours achieve?
Find out by booking a demo today at uplearn.co.uk, and be sure to quote Becoming Educated for a 10% discount.

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closing the reading gap with alex quigley

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‎Becoming Educated: Closing the Reading Gap with Alex Quigley on Apple Podcasts

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This week I am joined by Alex Quigley. Alex is a former English teacher and school leader, of over 15 years standing, who now works for the Education Endowment Foundation, supporting teachers to access research evidence. He can be found on twitter @AlexJQuigley and blogs at www.theconfidentteacher.c...

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Blog by Matt Bromley on Adaptive Teaching explained

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Blog by Matt Bromley on Adaptive Teaching explained

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Adaptive teaching explained: What, why and how?

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The PISA research says that ‘adaptive instruction’ is one of the approaches most positively correlated with student performance. Matt Bromley looks at what adaptive teaching entails and how to deliver it

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Assess, adjust, adapt – what does adaptive teaching mean to you?

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The EEF is an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement.

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EEF Blog on moving from 'differentiation' to 'adaptive teaching'

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EEF Blog on moving from 'differentiation' to 'adaptive teaching'

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Over the past few years, ​differentiation' has become an increasingly unpopular term in teaching. Most likely, it was an unintended consequence of an accountability system that incentivised teachers to ​'prove' they were differentiating by generating multiple worksheets or by organising mini-lessons for different groups.

In a helpful document entitled, ​' Differentiation - Why and How?', NASEN capture some of the problems:

The possible danger behind this is that it may lead to a lowering of expectations, particularly when in-class groupings are permanent e.g. ​the bottom group' receives a different task to everyone else, regardless of the particular needs or aptitudes of the pupils in this area of learning. The provision of ​'unnecessarily elaborate' approaches is not considered to support the learning and progress for the majority of pupils; this means that, for example, the practice of providing three levels of task for every lesson, with different worksheets etc, would not be appropriate. [1]NASEN also remind us that there will still be pupils with SEND who need and benefit from different resources, teaching materials and strategies to access their learning.

Is it time for ​'adaptive teaching' to replace differentiation?

If ​'differentiation' comes with too much baggage, it may be timely to move forward with new terminology and ideas. The term ​'adaptive teaching', especially as set out in the Early Career Framework, resets our expectations about what it means to differentiate, and it offers a more helpful and practical model.

For a start, it is what you think it is: being responsive to information about learning, then adjusting teaching to better match pupil need. In that respect, it's a helpful term that does what it says on the tin. As with anything in education that sounds like common sense, though, we need to explore the nuance if we want to build a shared understanding of exactly what this looks like in the classroom.

The Early Career Framework is certainly a good starting point (I won't reproduce it in full here, but I recommend reading Standard 5). It breaks the term ​'adaptive teaching' into more concrete recommendations for teaching. For example:

Provide opportunity for all pupils to experience success by:

Adapting lessons, whilst maintaining high expectations for all, so that all pupils have the opportunity to meet expectations.

Balancing input of new content so that pupils master important concepts.

Making effective use of teaching assistants.

But even this requires further unpacking. The third bullet point alone is the topic of an entire EEF guidance report: ​'Making Best Use of Teaching Assistants'! And there are other questions we might ask about this section. How exactly do we adapt lessons? What sort of adaptations are we talking about? What is the right balance of new content to mastery of existing concepts?

How are schools and Trusts tackling ​'adaptive teaching'?

School leaders play a vital role in helping staff achieve precision around exactly what particular practices, like ​'adaptive teaching' involve in classrooms and across the school (their ​'active ingredients').

It isn't as simple as saying, ​'Here's what adaptive teaching means: now use it.' Instead, we have to build shared understanding over time. What does it mean in our context? What does it mean in maths or PE lessons? Clearly, adaptive teaching places a great emphasis on formative assessment, so are our assessments well designed to produce information that guides instruction?

In my trust - Education South West - we've tried to commit the time to developing exactly this kind of shared understanding. We've shared the evidence, drafted definitions, sought feedback on them and have taken steps to develop a model to help teachers think about adaptive teaching in more concrete terms.

See our shared resource on adaptive teaching here:

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‘differentiation’ has become an increasingly unpopular term in teaching. most likely

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it was an unintended consequence of an accountability system that incentivised teachers to ‘prove’ they were differentiating by generating multiple worksheets or by organising mini-lessons for different groups.  in a helpful document entitled

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nasen capture some of the problems: the possible danger behind this is that it may lead to a lowering of expectations

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particularly when in-class groupings are permanent e.g. 'the bottom group' receives a different task to everyone else

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regardless of the particular needs or aptitudes of the pupils in this area of learning. the provision of 'unnecessarily elaborate' approaches is not considered to support the learning and progress for the majority of pupils; this means that

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the practice of providing three levels of task for every lesson

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would not be appropriate. [1]   nasen also remind us that there will still be pupils with send who need and benefit from different resources

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teaching materials and strategies to access their learning.  is it time for ‘adaptive teaching’ to replace differentiation?  if ‘differentiation’ comes with too much baggage

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it may be timely to move forward with new terminology and ideas. the term ‘adaptive teaching’

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especially as set out in the early career framework

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resets our expectations about what it means to differentiate

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and it offers a more helpful and practical model.  for a start

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it is what you think it is: being responsive to information about learning

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then adjusting teaching to better match pupil need. in that respect

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it’s a helpful term that does what it says on the tin. as with anything in education that sounds like common sense

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we need to explore the nuance if we want to build a shared understanding of exactly what this looks like in the classroom.  the early career framework is certainly a good starting point (i won’t reproduce it in full here

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but i recommend reading standard 5). it breaks the term ‘adaptive teaching’ into more concrete recommendations for teaching. for example:  provide opportunity for all pupils to experience success by:  adapting lessons

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whilst maintaining high expectations for all

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so that all pupils have the opportunity to meet expectations. balancing input of new content so that pupils master important concepts. making effective use of teaching assistants.  but even this requires further unpacking. the third bullet point alone is the topic of an entire eef guidance report : ‘making best use of teaching assistants’! and there are other questions we might ask about this section. how exactly do we adapt lessons? what sort of adaptations are we talking about? what is the right balance of new content to mastery of existing concepts?  how are schools and trusts tackling ‘adaptive teaching’?  school leaders play a vital role in helping staff achieve precision around exactly what particular practices

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like ‘adaptive teaching’ involve in classrooms and across the school (their ‘active ingredients’).  it isn’t as simple as saying

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‘here’s what adaptive teaching means: now use it.’ instead

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we have to build shared understanding over time. what does it mean in our context? what does it mean in maths or pe lessons? clearly

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adaptive teaching places a great emphasis on formative assessment

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so are our assessments well designed to produce information that guides instruction?  in my trust – education south west – we’ve tried to commit the time to developing exactly this kind of shared understanding. we’ve shared the evidence

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sought feedback on them and have taken steps to develop a model to help teachers think about adaptive teaching in more concrete terms. see our shared resource on adaptive teaching here:      is this the final outcome? definitely not. the model presents a generic view of some elements of adaptive teaching. its primary purpose is to help teachers understand what adaptive teaching looks like

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Moving from 'differentiation' to 'adaptive teaching'

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What does adaptive teaching mean for Education South West?

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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.

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effective scaffolding  scaffolding was put up on the side of my house just before the start of the pandemic

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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

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i found myself over-supporting a pupil with developmental language disorder. i provided an additional scaffold for extended writing tasks

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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

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and assisting him like this throughout the year

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i should have considered the steps towards independence

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appropriate to his learning needs and to the progress he was making.  this might have meant giving him a partially completed writing frame

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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

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which is then removed when no longer needed. for teachers

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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’

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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

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scaffolding can be a term used to describe:  - a visual scaffold

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such as a task planner. - a verbal scaffold

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such as a teacher correcting a misconception at a pupil’s desk. - a written scaffold

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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

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becoming a fundamental part of high-quality teaching

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rather than an add-on.  teacher workload  with a shift to adaptive teaching within the early career framework

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notions of teachers planning three different lessons

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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

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or become embedded within planning rather than feeling like an ‘add-on’.  in terms of the impact on teacher workload

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it is more manageable to think of scaffolding as a verbal reteach

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or a visual provided at the whole-class level

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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

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we can consider the range of scaffolds available and ask ourselves questions around how we reduce them. with these tweaks

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we can bring our adaptive teaching practice closer to the evidence around what works for all pupils

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including those with send.    the 'five-a-day' principle - scaffolding

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EEF blog: Scaffolding - more than just a worksheet

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What is scaffolding, what it is not, and how can teachers use scaffolds to boost pupil progress

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(You can download this list as a PDF here: High-quality teaching for pupils with SEND)

It will be helpful to ask your SENCo for advice if you are unsure about particular SEND strategies linked to specific needs. Talk to teachers who have worked with certain pupils previously. Using these strategies to deploy teaching assistants to supplement what you do as the teacher, not simply replace your instruction, would be a best bet.

Nothing new here? Excellent... High-quality teaching for pupils with SEND is good teaching for all.

This phrase trips off the tongue but it is sometimes difficult to define how it looks in school. Every teacher must find what works in their classrooms, for their teaching and their pupils. Do teachers in your school have a repertoire they can draw on? Is training required to add in additional strategies?

Weaving in these specific approaches enables us to deftly adapt our teaching, bringing out strategies at appropriate times, well-matched to content and individual needs

Having a sharp, well-defined repertoire of approaches will help ensure high expectations for all are maintained, next steps are well-informed and pupils with SEND thrive

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how can schools best support learning for pupils with send in the unpredictable year ahead? that's the question our learning behaviours specialist

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kirsten mould - who also works at mary webb school and science college in shropshire as head of personalised learning/transition and senco - addresses here

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proposing five evidence-based strategies that can help...   pupils with special education needs and disabilities (send) are rightly at the forefront of our planning for the new academic year. refreshing our repertoire of high-quality teaching with colleagues is something i am thinking about as we plan for the full return of pupils at my school.  having a sharp

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well-defined repertoire of approaches will help ensure high expectations for all are maintained

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next steps are well-informed and pupils with send thrive.  the eef’s guidance report on special educational needs in mainstream schools aims to support schools in evaluating and developing their provision

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using the evidence base as a starting point to inform practice. knowing our pupils is an important thread within the evidence on improving behaviour

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but also in supporting pupils with send so

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how can we best adapt what we plan and do in the classroom? the eef evidence review underpinning this guidance report found strong evidence that high-quality teaching for pupils with send is firmly based on strategies that will already be in the repertoire of every mainstream teacher

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or can be relatively easily added to it the five strategies outlined here were identified as having relatively strong evidence for their effectiveness in supporting pupils with send:  1. scaffolding what is it? ‘scaffolding’ is a metaphor for temporary support that is removed when it is no longer required. initially

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a teacher would provide enough support so that pupils can successfully complete tasks that they could not do independently. this requires effective assessment to gain a precise understanding of the pupil’s current capabilities. examples:  support could be visual

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sentence starters can all be useful.  reminders of what equipment is needed for each lesson and classroom routines can be useful.  scaffolding discussion of texts: promoting prediction

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clarification and summarising  2. explicit instruction what is it? explicit instruction refers to a range of teacher-led approaches

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focused on teacher demonstration followed by guided practice and independent practice. explicit instruction is not just “teaching by telling” or “transmission teaching” one popular approach to explicit instruction is rosenshine’s ‘principles of instruction’. examples:  worked examples with the teacher modelling self-regulation and thought processes is helpful. a teacher might teach a pupil a strategy for summarising a paragraph by initially ‘thinking aloud’ while identifying the topic of the paragraph to model this process to the pupil. they would then give the pupil the opportunity to practise this skill. using visual aids and concrete examples promotes discussion and links in learning.  3. cognitive and metacognitive strategies what is it? cognitive strategies are skills like memorisation techniques or subject specific strategies like methods to solve problems in maths. metacognitive strategies help pupils plan

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monitor and evaluate their learning examples:  chunking the task will support pupils with send - this may be through provision of checklists

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instructions on a whiteboard or providing one question at a time. this helps reduce distractions to avoid overloading working memory.  prompt sheets that help pupils to evaluate their progress

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with ideas for further support.  4. flexible grouping what is it? flexible grouping describes when pupils are allocated to smaller groups based on the individual needs that they currently share with other pupils. such groups can be formed for an explicit purpose and disbanded when that purpose is met examples:  allocating temporar

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EEF Blog: Five evidence-based strategies to support high-quality...

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The EEF is an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement.

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EEF Blog on making best use of Teaching Assistants

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EEF Blog on making best use of Teaching Assistants

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while the number of teachers in mainstream schools in england has remained relatively steady over the last decade or so

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the number of full-time equivalent tas has more than trebled since 2000: from 79

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700. teaching assistants comprise over a quarter of the workforce in mainstream schools in england: 35% of the primary workforce

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and 14% of the secondary school workforce. the number of full-time equivalent tas has more than trebled since 2000: from 79

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there are currently more tas in english nursery and primary schools than teachers: 273

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900.1 about 7% of tas in state-funded schools have higher-level teaching assistant (hlta) status. a key reason for increasing the number of tas was to help deal with problems with teacher workloads. in 2003

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the government introduced the national agreement to help raise pupil standards and tackle excessive teacher workload

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in large part via new and expanded support roles and responsibilities for tas and other support staff. the growth in the numbers of tas has also been driven by the push for greater inclusion of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (send) into mainstream schools

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with tas often providing the key means by which inclusion is facilitated. given that sen pupils and low-attaining pupils are more likely to claim free school meals (fsm)1. tas also work more closely with pupils from low-income backgrounds. indeed

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expenditure on tas is one of the most common uses of the pupil premium in primary schools

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a government initiative that assigns funding to schools in proportion to the number of pupils on fsm. a combination of these factors means that schools now spend approximately £4.4 billion each year on tas

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corresponding to 13% of the education budget. this presents an excellent opportunity for improvements in practice

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with such a large and already committed resource in place. the recommendations in this guidance recognise the fact that schools are operating within already tight budgets; however

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noticeable improvements in pupil outcomes can be made through the thoughtful use of existing resources

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Guidance to help primary and secondary schools make the best use of TAs

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SecEd Podcast: Effective teaching for SEN

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SecEd Podcast: Effective teaching for SEN

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The SecEd Podcast: Effective teaching for SEN

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In this episode, we consider what effective teaching for SEN students looks like in the mainstream secondary school classroom, offering practical advice for teachers and school leaders on pedagogy, interventions, the graduated approach among many other areas

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Seven-step model from EEF (Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning) Guidance Report

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Seven-step model from EEF (Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning) Guidance Report

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EEF: FAME approach to maximise effective use of worked examples

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EEF: FAME approach to maximise effective use of worked examples

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Journal article by Richard Clark et al. 

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Journal article by Richard Clark et al. 

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Blog by Andy Tharby on 'Everyday Modelling'

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Blog by Andy Tharby on 'Everyday Modelling'

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Blog by Tom Sherrington (accompanies 'Five Ways' booklet)

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Blog by Tom Sherrington (accompanies 'Five Ways' booklet)

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Five Ways to Secure Progress Through Modelling

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A central feature of an instructional teaching process is for a teacher to show their students how to do something so that they can then do it themselves. This applies to countless elements of lear…

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Video: Worked examples, faded examples and self-explanation

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Video: Worked examples, faded examples and self-explanation

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Generic Lesson Plan (more than I, We, You!)

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Generic Lesson Plan (more than I, We, You!)

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Video: Effective Revision (Folding Frenzy)

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Video: Effective Revision (Folding Frenzy)

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Journal article by John Dunlosky et al. 

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Journal article by John Dunlosky et al. 

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Blog by Tom Sherrington (accompanies 'Five Ways' booklet)

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Blog by Tom Sherrington (accompanies 'Five Ways' booklet)

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In Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction, he stresses the vital importance of Checking for Understanding. I explore this in some detail in this post: Check for Understanding... why it matters and how to do it. In Volume 1 of Walkthrus we cover the general method, emphasising the need to ask students what they've understood, not if they've understood, engaging two or more of them in short probing dialogues.

However, it always pays to re-read Rosenshine's paper, beyond the headings. In the detail, he suggests several other specific ways that effective teachers were found to check for understanding. Developing this repertoire of methods for different situations, switching between them in planned and spontaneous moments, can make teaching highly responsive, adapting to the feedback students are giving through their responses. This works particularly well in conjunction with Cold Calling, so that all students form stronger habits around focusing their attention, in readiness to share their understanding if and when they're asked.

Here are five ways:

Summarise the story so far:

Whether reading a story or text or giving an explanation of any kind, stop at key moments to ask a student to summarise what they've understood so far. This prevents you from the delusion that it's all somehow just 'going in'. You stop to check! Also, summarising is a good thinking process for the students who are asked.

Ok let's stop there. Yousef, summarise the scene for us. What's been happening?

Right, so that's what the historian's analysis was. Amy, could you summarise the key points of her argument?

So, that's how a valley is formed. Let's try to summarise the main steps? ...Jenny, have a go.

Repeat instructions

This seems so obvious but it's not absolutely routine for everyone and it makes a big difference - saving time compared to having to interrupt and redirect confused students later on. Whenever you've given instructions for a task, an activity, some homework.... get a couple of people to repeat them back to you to check that they understood the details:

So, that's the homework everyone. Robert, let me check.. what do you think I've asked everyone to do?

Before you all get going, Taylor, run through the procedure for me. What do you have to do?.

Agree or disagree

This has two useful applications. One is to help students to form their own opinions - allowing them scope to agree or disagree. The other is as a way to secure attention when other students are talking - a soft check for listening and engagement as well as for understanding. Embedded in this is the follow-on 'and why?' Students should give their reasons.

Michael has made a really interesting point there..... Samantha, do you agree or disagree with him? (She has to have been listening to answer). Ok. Why do you think that?

Looking at those statements, I would say two are true and one is false.... Do you agree or disagree.... Ashley? And why is that?

Think aloud as you plan

This takes time to embed as a normal routine - because students are largely used to thinking privately - in the hidden way we all do. Promoting metacognitive talk is a powerful approach in general and normalising 'thinking aloud' can help to explore students' thought processes as they work out how they'll approach a task. It's a great check for understanding:

Let's look at the problem. It's not a simple one-step process. Aleisha, talk it through for me. How would you go about solving it?

Before we crack on with the composition, let's plan what we're going to do. ...OK, Toni, let's hear your thoughts. Talk through your ideas for the piece and how you'll organise them.

Explain or defend your position

When student express opinions or give an analysis, it's helpful to check that they understand the underlying concepts rather than having learned stock responses without a supporting schema. So, when students make an initial response, probe further, asking them to explain key points or to defend their position, perhaps with a counterargument as a reference:

Most of you have selected answer A. Joseph, why did you pick A? Why not B?

Interesting Anwar. The rate is increasing more gradually but why would that be?

35%? Are you sure Michael?

That's one way to say it Daisy but is it the best way?

Here's 10 minute Kitchen Pedagogy video exploring these ideas...

David Goodwin's superb one-page summary of this post is here. Download it below.

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Five Ways. A series of short posts summarising some everyday classroom practices. In Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction, he stresses the vital importance of Checking for Understanding. I explore this in some detail in this post: Check for Understanding... why it matters and how to do it.

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Blog by Jack Tavassoly-Marsh (Durrington Research School)

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Blog by Jack Tavassoly-Marsh (Durrington Research School)

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Responsive teaching is something that we all aspire to be doing in our lessons, acting upon the information we are gathering from our students to ensure that the content that is taught is understood and able to be applied (learnt) and thus the teaching:learning gap is as small as possible. However, it is important to recognise that there will always be a gap between what is taught by experts and learnt by students. The goal is ensuring that gap is as small as possible, and that the attainment gap within the class isn't widened through the process.

One of the most important things a teacher can do to be responsive is to check whole-class understanding through asking questions. Indeed, in Rosenshine's ​' Principles of Instruction' one of the principles is to ​ask a large number of questions and check the responses of all students'. Tom Sherrington in his researchED National Conference presentation supported the need to check for whole-class understanding through reminding us that it is ​'impossible to know what all students are thinking' and therefore through posing questions it can provide a window to that thinking. When you are asking a student a question, it requires them to think. When students are giving their answer, they are having to showcase their understanding and ability to recall the information and apply it in the correct format. Student answers give the teacher immediate feedback on what students know and understand, and what they don't. Being responsive, a teacher is then able to take student answers and act upon them with praise, probing for further understanding or providing cues to encourage students that aren't as confident, so that the content is clearly understood before moving on. Asking questions is a vital part of responsive teaching practice. Strategically planning the questions in advance, so that they tease out the understanding at key points within lessons, and more importantly the curriculum is vital to ensure that whole-class understanding is sufficient in order to move on within a sequential curriculum.

However, how do you ensure that all students are thinking when you ask questions? One effective questioning approach is through using the ​Cold Call' strategy, which ensures that through using a student's name at the end of the question, after a pause, you are making all students think about the question as they don't know who will be chosen by the teacher. Whilst this strategy is incredibly useful at getting students to think hard and to remain cognitively active in lessons, I do think it can have some drawbacks with checking for whole-class understanding. When you ask questions, some students will only think of partial answers, and some will not think of any answers at all. Through using ​Cold Call' to check understanding, it is worthwhile thinking about the percentage of the students in the class that have been checked? If students aren't ​Cold Called' then you wouldn't find out their level of understanding until a later point, a point that perhaps is too late and that a misconception has been cemented. A point that perhaps meant that the teaching:learning gap is now wider than it should be. By checking others' answers through using phrases such as ​'Who also got that correct?' the teacher is relying on students providing them with factual information. Without checking, how does the teacher know this to be correct?

As Dan Willingham has stated, ​'Memory is the residue of thought' it is therefore imperative to check what all students are thinking so that what is thought about is correct. We don't want misconceptions to be committed to memory. How can we therefore check the thinking of the whole class at the same time, to check understanding, whether that be full answers, partial answers, educated guesses, or no answer at all, and know how to respond to the information received from all students, knowing when is the right time to move on. For me, the best bang for your buck when it comes to whole class understanding, and to do the very job intended above, is to use mini-whiteboards. Getting all students to write down an answer to a question is incredibly powerful, and Bruce Robertson sums this up perfectly below:

​Students don't have to write down much - just a few words - but doing so gets them to think about their answer. It minimises the chance of students disengaging to think about something they watched on YouTube last night while they rely on a few of their keener peers to do the thinking instead. It also makes them commit to their answer - what they have written down will be what they were thinking. Putting it in writing removes the ambiguity - they've committed to what they wanted to say. Powerfully, it also lets you, as their teacher, check that they had thought of an answer, including whether or not it was the correct one. ​'I don't know' would be an appropriate answer, because this gives you information about what they do or don't know.' - Bruce Robertson

Using mini-whiteboards therefore is a solution to checking for whole-class understanding, but using them in lessons often frightens teachers with the potential for off-task behaviour, the disruption of the flow of the lesson and therefore it is pivotal that routines around mini-whiteboard use are explicitly taught to students and practised until perfected. This will allow mini-whiteboard questioning to add real value to your checking for whole-class understanding in lessons, without causing disruption and allow you to be more responsive in lessons. To get the best out of using them I would think about the following routines:

1. How and when do mini-whiteboards, pens and rubbers get handed out so not to lose learning time? (Do students have a planner with one built in? Does the teacher have individual packs with a whiteboard, pen and rubber?

2. How do you ensure that students don't copy each other's answers?

3. How do you ensure that all students reveal their answers at the same time so you see their thinking and not someone else's that they have followed or copied?

4. Have a routine to ensure that all students answer, even if they are unsure.

With regards to these routines:

1. If you aren't able to have individual packs, handing out whiteboard pens and rubbers at the door as part of our Strong Start routine works well. This works as our students have a mini-whiteboard at the back of their planner.

2. Always ask students to write their answers and turn the mini-whiteboard straight over to stop any wandering eyes

. Ask for all students to reveal their answers with a simple, 3, 2, 1 and ​'Show Me'.

4. To encourage students to showcase what they're thinking, explaining the need to state whether the answer is a guess (adding a ​'G' in brackets after the answer) or whether they haven't a clue (adding a ? on the mini-whiteboard) allows students to see that providing honesty allows the teacher to respond to what they do and don't know and support and guide them further.

With any routine in the classroom, these take practice, reflection and further refinement, but once mastered they enable mini-whiteboards to be used frequently without any disruption to the flow of questioning in lessons, whilst more importantly providing the immediate feedback on how ALL students are grasping the content. If you have Teach Like a Champion 3.0, do check out the clip that shows Dani Quinn using mini-whiteboards as a strong exemplar.

Another benefit of using mini-whiteboards to get all students to answer questions is that the writing of the answer can normally take between 5 to 10 seconds, providing thinking time or ​wait time'. In Kathleen Cotton's paper on ​' Classroom Questioning' the average ​'wait time' for teachers when asking questions is on average, one second or less. When checking for whole-class understanding it is key for us as teachers to provide time for students to be able to show us just that, what they know.

For further blogs written by teachers on using mini-whiteboards in lessons to check whole-class understanding you'd do well to start with these three:

Show Call: Using Mini-Whiteboards in Maths - Naveen Rizvi

The Capital of Australia - the power of Show-Me boards - Bruce Robertson

Show Me: Maximising the Use of Mini-Whiteboards in Lessons - Phil Stock

By Jack Tavassoly-Marsh
If you are interested in exploring how the evidence from cognitive science can be used to support our teaching, take a look at our training programme that is focused on this.

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Responsive teaching is something that we all aspire to be doing in our lessons, acting upon the information we are gathering from our students to ensure that the content that is taught is understood and able to be applied (learnt) and thus the teaching:learning gap is as small as possible.

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Blog by Adam Riches on tackling misconceptions

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Blog by Adam Riches on tackling misconceptions

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Time is something that teachers are notoriously hard-pressed for. Besides preparing for lessons, one of the most time-consuming tasks that teachers face is checking whether students have understood what they have learnt.

That may take the form of marking, but even just reading students' responses can eat into PPA or even your own non-directed time - something none of us need.

Creating time is an impossibility, but what we can do is ensure that we are spending our time in lessons as effectively as possible to help reduce the burden of checking for understanding when we are outside of lessons.

Interestingly, Irons (2008) has highlighted the shortcomings of delayed feedback, drawing into question how traditional marking practices may be ineffectual for both students and teacher alike.

Addressing misconceptions right there and then in lessons has a number of benefits for the students as well as saving time for teachers.

For students, the best time to get feedback on what they are doing is while they are doing it.
Zhang et al (2016) looked into the effectiveness of immediate feedback and their results revealed that learners' memories performed significantly better when immediate feedback had been given.

It is no secret that I am all about live marking and addressing misconceptions and I have written about this before in SecEd (Riches, 2017).

The thing is, you need to be able to track the misconceptions before you can intervene, and sometimes taking some time to watch a task unfold can lead to real insight into how much students have learned.

The power of movement

In the classroom, if you are static, you have a limited field of vision to understand how well your students are getting on and what they are getting stuck on. During tasks, no matter how small, get up, get around, circulate and check what the class is doing - and if needs-be react to the learning.

By moving around the classroom, you get a much better picture of what is happening. I am not saying move for the sake of it - quite the opposite, make your movements intentional. Plan your routes dependent on need. If you know a student struggles with extended writing, ensure they are your first port of call for that type of task.

Avoid becoming barricaded behind your desk, it only serves to detach you from the class and the reality of what is happening. If you can, get rid of it all together (personal preference) as it will give you more space to circulate.

Not only does effective and efficient circulation allow for you to check understanding, it is a helpful behaviour management technique as it gives you the scope to keep students on task and stop them from becoming disengaged.

Planning what to look for

Circulation and movement is all good and well, but unless your movement serves a purpose, you will be doing little more than adding to your daily step count and adding to the students' extraneous load.

While you are moving around the class, you need to know what you are looking for. Are you looking for errors or misconceptions? How do you know what might come up? Do you have any success criteria for the whole class? Considering these types of questions before you circulate will make your journey around the classroom more purposeful.

Going into a lesson with a preconceived idea of which misconceptions might occur is a good way to ensure that students get the support they need to circumnavigate potential learning hurdles.

This approach also serves as a great subject knowledge-check for you as the teacher - do you know what they might get stuck on? By just considering what the misconceptions might be, you will be able to check for understanding more efficiently.

Making a record

Once you have highlighted a misconception (either from teaching or from the learning) it is a good idea to note it down. You might do this each week, each lesson, each unit, but making a simple record can help you to identify patterns in learning (and misconceptions) and so help you to address them more and more effectively.

And no, you will not remember - just because we as teachers understand cognitive load theory, does not make us exempt from the impact of extraneous load (and in the classroom we have a lot of that).

So it might sound rudimentary, but noting down the misconceptions from each lesson is a good way to inform your checking for understanding the next time you teach that topic and perhaps to eradicate the misconception altogether. By noting down the misconceptions, you are able to track how these change across a unit of work or how effective your attempts to address the misconception have been.

Using what you find

Effectively tracking misconceptions in class ultimately saves you the time that you would normally spend trawling through books outside of lessons (and outside of the context of the teaching).

What you do not want to fall into the trap of doing is identifying misconceptions, noting them down and then doing nothing about it and going through the students' books anyway!

Highlighting misconceptions means you are empowered to intervene before the misconception becomes embedded, saving you further teaching time. So how might you intervene? You could:

Reteach a section of the lesson to consolidate learning.

Give live feedback to the class to help them overcome the misconception.

Put interventions in place for those individuals who are struggling - more modelling, scaffolding, etc.

Adapt your approaches for the next phase of learning.

Provide whole-class feedback.

These are just a few things that will allow you to intervene instantly and have a larger impact on learning and progress.

Conclusion

Tracking misconceptions in class can have a huge impact on your workload and all you are really doing is making the most of the time when you are already teaching - it makes sense.

Have a think about what you are doing next time your students are working and consider if you could save yourself some time by checking for understanding.

Adam Riches is a senior leader for teaching and learning, a Specialist Leader in Education and author the upcoming book, Teach Smarter. Follow him on Twitter @TeachMrRiches. This series will continue in February. Read his previous articles for SecEd at http://bit.ly/2DhTAJu

Further information & resources

Enhancing Learning Through Formative Assessment, Irons, Routledge, 2008.

The effects of feedback on memory strategies of younger and older adults, Zhang et al, PLoS ONE, December 2016: http://bit.ly/38kDev3

In-class marking and feedback, Riches, SecEd, November 2017: http://bit.ly/2DtkzlE

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Time is our most precious commodity and it is often in short supply. In this five-part series, Adam Riches looks at how we can change common practices to help save time and improve teaching and learning. Part one focuses on checking student understanding

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Every teacher I've ever met knows that no lesson plan survives the first contact with real students. And yet most teachers plan their lessons as though they're going to go perfectly. They plan them on the basis of assumptions they know to be false.

I'd like to suggest a small but powerful modification: Because lessons never go according to plan, teachers should build plan B into plan A. This involves designing a lesson with a "hinge" somewhere in the middle and using specific kinds of questions-what I call hinge questions -to quickly assess students' understanding of a concept before moving on.

The Rationale Behind the Hinge

When planning a lesson, the teacher identifies a particular concept that will be important for students to understand before moving on to other parts of the lesson. Of course, there are many such points in a lesson, but at least to start, choose one point somewhere in the middle of the lesson. At this hinge, the teacher asks a hinge question to check that the class has understood this key point of the lesson and gets a response from every single student. Depending on those responses, the teacher either moves on or goes back to review the material.

There's nothing new in this idea, but it turns out that it's rather difficult to do well. Here are some principles that teachers may find useful in designing effective hinge questions.

PRINCIPLE 1. Get a response from every student.

Teachers have always used questions to judge the level of a class's understanding before making a decision about whether to move on, but getting evidence about the whole class is difficult. For example, if a teacher wants to check whether students can recognize adverbs, he or she could ask the students to identify the adverb in a sentence like this: The boy ran quickly across the street. Teachers often ask students for a choral response (Hunter, 1982). However, that makes it difficult to tell who is responding correctly and who is just miming convincingly. In other words, the teacher doesn't have good evidence about who has and hasn't understood.

The teacher could, of course, ask each student in turn, but this takes a considerable amount of time, and students are likely to be influenced by the responses of other, higher-achieving students. One way to avoid this is to have all students respond at the same time by using finger voting. The teacher might ask students to identify the adverb in this sentence:

Figure

Students can hold up one finger for A, two fingers for B, and so on, to indicate their choice. One of the important features of finger voting, or using ABCD cards, is that if a student hasn't made a choice, it's obvious to the teacher.

PRINCIPLE 2. Do a quick check on understanding, instead of engaging in extended discussions.

When teachers first start using hinge questions, they often find it difficult to interpret student responses; they're not sure whether a correct answer means that the students have truly understood. Although they might think that they could just ask each student to explain his or her answer, they actually never do this because, in a class of 30 students, it would simply take too long.

For the question to work as a quick check on understanding, it shouldn't take up a lot of time. Teachers should design the question so that it takes students no more than two minutes to respond, and they should be able to collect and interpret all the student responses in 30 seconds or less. This can be achieved through using finger voting; ABCD cards; dry-erase boards; or digital technologies, such as electronic voting systems or smartphones. The technology used is far less important than the quality of the question.

PRINCIPLE 3. On the basis of student responses, decide whether to go forward or back.

Having to make such a quick decision about student understanding seems challenging at first, but that's largely because we educators are used to a process called data-driven decision making. We collect the data and then figure out what we're going to do with the information-and that can take time.

With a hinge question, the process is more like decision-driven data collection. The teacher doesn't need a lot of time to decide what to do with the data collected because the decision has already been identified. It's simple-either to go on or go back. The teacher collects just enough just-in-time data to make that decision.

If the responses indicate that most students have understood well enough the matter at hand, the teacher may go on, although he or she may arrange to talk to some students individually at a later point. If the responses indicate that few students have understood, the teacher is likely to review the material, perhaps dealing specifically with misconceptions revealed by the student responses.

When there are similar numbers of correct and incorrect responses, the teacher may either arrange for students to discuss their responses with their neighbors or conduct a whole-class discussion. Because the teacher knows who has answered correctly and incorrectly, he or she can draw certain students into the discussion at certain times, leading to better organized and more coherent classroom discussions. For example, the teacher might first ask a few of the students who thought A was the correct response for the reason for their choice, and then ask some of those who chose B for their reasons, and so on.

Some people point out that you can't conclude much from a single question. Those who construct tests note that you typically need at least 30 questions to get a reasonably reliable score for a student. This is true, and it would be a valid criticism of the idea of a single hinge question- if teachers were going to make high-stakes decisions on the basis of students' responses.

But the decision here is not high-stakes. More important, the teacher is trying to make a decision about the needs of the whole group, not of individual students. If the response of a student to a 30-item test provides a reasonable basis for drawing conclusions about that student, then the responses of 30 students to a single question probably provide a reasonable basis for drawing conclusions about that class.

PRINCIPLE 4. Design hinge questions that elicit the right response for the right reason.

Hinge Questions with Distractors

When teachers make a judgment about whether students have understood something, they can make either of two mistakes: They can conclude that students haven't understood something when, in fact, they have, or they can conclude that students have understood something when, in fact, they haven't. These two kinds of mistakes differ greatly in their ramifications. Assuming students do know something when they actually don't (a false positive in researchers' jargon) is far more serious than assuming they don't know something when, in fact, they do (a false negative).

We have to take great care in designing hinge questions so students don't get the correct answer for the wrong reason. This is perhaps the most important property of a good question. After all, if students with the right thinking and those with the wrong thinking can answer a question in the same way, it's not very valuable as a diagnostic tool. The aim is always to have students with the right thinking and students with the wrong thinking give different answers.

The following question about measurement in science, from Stanford University science education professor Jonathan Osborne (2011), illustrates how we can do this:

1. Two or three measurements are always enough.

2. If she is accurate, she only needs to measure once.

3. She should go on taking measurements until she knows how much they vary.

4. She should go on taking measurements until she gets two or more the same.

This question has a single correct response (it's D), and so students have a 20 percent chance of answering the question correctly. Obviously, in a class of 30, six students would likely guess the correct response. But this question is so well designed that students who don't understand the main point are highly unlikely to get the correct answer. The incorrect responses-what test developers call distractors -are so plausible that they're attractive to students with incomplete understandings.

One of the best ways to develop such questions is to start from the partial or incomplete understandings that students have and generate questions that help identify which students have which misconceptions. The aim is to create what Philip Sadler (1998) calls distractor-driven assessments.

People with deep knowledge of a subject, but little knowledge of teaching it to school-age students, often find it difficult to generate good distractors. They know the subject, but they don't know the difficulties that students have with it. This latter kind of knowledge-what Lee Shulman (1986) called pedagogical content knowledge and Deborah Ball and colleagues call knowledge for teaching (Hill, Rowan, &amp; Ball, 2005)-is developed only through sustained experience working with students.

I suggested earlier that we could check whether students know what an adverb is by asking them to identify the adverb in the following sentence: The boy ran quickly across the street. However, students with an incorrect understanding can still answer the question correctly. Many students believe that an adverb usually follows the verb, so they may identify quickly as an adverb simply because it follows the verb ran. Offering an alternative version of the sentence, with the adverb moved to the end, will likely be more effective:

Figure

Students who believe that an adverb typically comes immediately after the verb will now give a different response than those with a correct understanding.

Hinge Questions with Multiple Correct Responses

Another way of making it less likely that students get the right response to a question for the wrong reason is by offering multiple correct options. When a question has multiple correct answers, the chances of a student getting the correct response by guessing drop markedly.

For example, the teacher might ask a class to identify all adverbs in the following sentence:

Figure

If students aren't told how many of the options are correct, then there are 32 possible responses. (Students have to make a separate choice about the correctness of each of the five options, so there are 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 combinations.) Students are far less likely to guess the correct answer when faced with 32 possible choices as opposed to the one-in-five chance that the single correct response offered.

Of course, no matter how carefully designed the question, it may not always work. I posted the question above to a group of students, and one student who seemed to understand what adverbs were thought the sentence had only one- unsuccessfully. I asked him whether well was an adverb, and he said it wasn't because "Fred might have been sick yesterday."

No matter how well we design our questions, students will sometimes get them right for the wrong reasons and get them wrong for the right reasons. It's important to be sensitive to such possibilities.

Multiple correct answers also enable teachers to build a degree of challenge into their questions to stretch higher-achieving students. For example, a mathematics teacher asked a class of 7th graders to find the area of the following semicircle:

Figure

The students were given the following options from which to choose:

Figure

The first two options correspond to well-known student errors, whereas the last three are all correct. However, it's far more challenging for students to recognize that D is correct than to recognize that options C and E are correct. As long as the easiest options represent the minimum level of achievement needed to move on, then a single question can give the teacher the information he or she needs to make that decision as well as keep the highest-achieving students on their toes.

Well Worth the Time

Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) have pointed out, "The aim of all instruction is to alter long-term memory. If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned" (p. 77). Now, the fact that students know something today doesn't mean they'll know it next week, but if they don't know it today, it's highly unlikely they'll know it next week. That's why checking for understanding in a planned way, by using hinge questions, is so valuable.

Every day, teachers typically make dozens of decisions about what to do next in group instruction, and it's simply not possible to plan a hinge question for each decision. But by planning at least a few questions carefully, teachers can get better-quality evidence about what their students can and can't do in time to do something about it.

Designing good hinge questions is usually harder than teachers imagine. I've found that groups of teachers typically take more than an hour to design one good question. But the benefits of doing so are huge. It means that you can find out what's going wrong with students' learning when they're right in front of you and that you can put the whole class's learning back on track right away. If you don't have this opportunity, then you'll have to wait until you grade their work. And then, long after the students have left the classroom, you'll have to try to get their learning back on track, in writing, one student at a time.

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Every teacher I've ever met knows that no lesson plan survives the first contact with real students. And yet most teachers plan their lessons as though they're going to go perfectly. They plan them on the basis of assumptions they know to be false.

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Evdience Based Education: Blog by Ourania Ventista on multiple-choice questions

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Evdience Based Education: Blog by Ourania Ventista on multiple-choice questions

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Multiple-choice questions are a common type of assessment used by teachers in many different subjects. Some educators do not use them, because they judge them as poor-quality assessments; others use them regularly in their everyday practice. I am writing this blog to argue that, since multiple-choice questions are used often in schools, they should be taken seriously, and also to explain why the two main arguments against the use of multiple-choice questions are not convincing.

To begin with, multiple-choice assessments have benefits that other types of assessments do not have. This does not mean that they are a panacea, however, and limitations do exist. But, despite these limitations, multiple-choice questions can provide reliable and valid results for specific assessment purposes. To be more specific, the tests of multiple-choice questions are more reliable compared to other types of tests (Burton et al., 1991). First, multiple-choice questions are objectively scored. In other tests, like essays, there can be disagreement between the people marking the test (raters), which can increase the measurement error and lead to low inter-rater reliability. Moreover, a multiple-choice question does not take much time to answer and, therefore, a student can answer many multiple-choice questions in the same time that (s)he could reply to a few open-ended questions or a single essay (Zimmaro, 2010). This enables the assessments to include more questions on the topic. Consequently, there is a broader coverage of the examined subject and therefore more representative results about the knowledge of the student (Burton et al., 1991). Furthermore, multiple-choice questions are not time-consuming to mark, and finally, they can focus on a specific topic. This narrower focus can help teachers identify a specific misconception based on an alternative that a student chose. To summarise, multiple-choice assessments can facilitate learning and inform reliable and valid judgments.

On the other hand, one of the main criticisms of multiple-choice questions is their susceptibility to guessing. Nevertheless, it is significantly unlikely that a student will get many questions correct just through pure luck. For example, in a multiple-choice assessment with questions which have four alternatives, it is plausible that a student will get 1 or 2 questions right by pure luck.

However, as the number of questions increases, the possibility of a student getting a high mark by pure luck alone decreases. These possibilities do not apply though, if the student has partial knowledge. Partial knowledge helps the student to possibly exclude some of the alternatives. Nevertheless, when referring to just luck, it is unlikely that guessing can significantly distort the overall results of a test longer than 20 questions. Multiple-choice items have also been heavily criticised, because they are commonly used for the testing of factual knowledge and lower thinking skills (Tarrant et al., 2006; Zimmaro, 2010). However, well-constructed multiple-choice questions can also evaluate higher-order thinking skills, such as application of knowledge, synthesis and analysis. For this to happen, multiple-choice items should be written appropriately.

As a result, it could be said that an investment in the writing of effective multiple-choice questions can positively increase their value for learning. This investment is necessary, because good multiple-choice questions are difficult to construct (Burton et al., 1991), and their construction is time-consuming (Zimmaro, 2010). Downing (2006) argued that:

Effective item writers are trained, not born. [...] Without specific training, most novice item writers tend to create poor-quality, flawed, low-cognitive-level test questions that test unimportant or trivial content. Although item writers should be experts in their disciplines, there is no reason to believe that their subject matter expertise generalises to effective item writing expertise [...] it is often helpful and important to provide specific instruction using an item writer's guide, paired with a hands-on training workshop (p.11)

This is exactly what we aim to achieve at Evidence Based Education. We provide the guidelines for writing effective assessments, and we give the opportunity to the teachers to apply this knowledge during our carefully planned workshops. As Head of Assessment, I support multiple-choice assessments as a useful tool for formative assessment in the classroom if used for an appropriate purpose and designed properly. For this reason, I read, gathered and evaluated different guidelines for effective question writing from different sources (such as Haladyna's guidelines).

For the effective design of questions, we have created a guide with instructions for teachers of all subjects. In this guide, we also included a 'Guidelines Checklist', which includes, for example: 'The question is related to a clear learning objective', 'The question is meaningful and examines an important content', 'The question does not use unnecessarily hard vocabulary'.

The guide and checklist form part of our Assessment Lead Training in its various forms. You can find more information about this on the Assessment Academy website, and by joining us at our free event on Wednesday 21st June, featuring Tim Oates' keynote: The future of assessment.
References
Burton, S.J., Sudweeks, R.R., Merrill, P.G. & Wood, B. (1991). How to Prepare Better Multiple-Choice Test Items: Guidelines for University Faculty. Brigham Young University Testing Services and The Department of Instructional Science.

Downing, S. M. (2006). Twelve steps for effective test development. In Downing, S.M. & Haladyna, T.M. (ed.), Handbook of test development (pp.3-25), London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Haladyna, T.M. (1994). Developing and Validating Multiple-Choice Test Items. Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Tarrant, M., Ware, J., & Mohammed, A. M. (2009). An assessment of functioning and non-functioning distractors in multiple-choice questions: a descriptive analysis. BMC Medical Education, 9(1), 40.

Zimmaro, D.M. (2010). Writing Good Multiple-choice Exams. Center for Teaching and Learning.

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Time to increase the quality of the multiple-choice questions you use! - Evidence Based Education

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Multiple-choice questions are a common type of assessment used by teachers in many different subjects. Some educators do not use them, because they judge them as poor-quality assessments; others use them regularly in their everyday practice. I am writing this blog to argue that, since multiple-choice questions are used often in schools, they should be ...

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Blog by Harry Fletcher-Wood on Hinge Questions

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Blog by Harry Fletcher-Wood on Hinge Questions

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Do they understand this well enough to move on? Introducing hinge questions

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What happens when you use hinge questions to check student understanding? What is a hinge question? A check for understanding at a ‘hinge-point’ in a lesson, so-called because of two i…

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Podcast: Dylan Wiliam on Effective Questioning

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Podcast: Dylan Wiliam on Effective Questioning

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Podcast Special: Dylan Wiliam On Effective Questioning In The Classroom by Teacher Magazine (ACER)

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Our guest today is Dylan Wiliam – Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at University College London. He’s a former school teacher, over the last 15 years his academic career has been focused on the use of assessment to support learning, and he now works with teachers all over the world on developing formative assessment practice. 

We caught up with him in Melbourne to talk about effective questioning in the classroom. Over the next 20 minutes, he’ll be explaining what’s wrong with the traditional teacher approach of ‘I’ll ask a question and you put your hands up to answer’, sharing a classroom display technique called ‘the parking lot’, and describing how to plan your lesson around checkpoints that he calls ‘hinge questions’.

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Booklet by Tom Sherrington and David Goodwin

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Booklet by Tom Sherrington and David Goodwin

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EEF Podcast: Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning

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EEF Podcast: Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning

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In this latest episode, our expert panel examine the recommendations from our recently published Feedback guidance report and explore the implications for teaching practice.

Regular host Alex Quigley is joined by Joe Collin, EEF programmes manager, in discussion with:

our team of content specialists, assistant headteacher and EEF literacy specialist Caroline Bilton, secondary school chemistry teacher and EEF science specialist Dr Niki Kaiser, and secondary school maths teacher and EEF maths specialist Simon Cox; (Start - 21:44);

Clare Christie, primary school maths teacher and Specialist Leader of Education; (21:44 - 39:41); and

Corinne Settle, Senior Education Lead at SSAT. (39:41 - End)

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Evidence into Action - Ep 6: Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning

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In this latest episode, our expert panel examine the recommendations from our recently published Feedback guidance report and explore the implications for teaching practice.

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2022-2023 Inset (includes feedback strategies used in different subjects)

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2022-2023 Inset (includes feedback strategies used in different subjects)

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If it was as simple as 1−2−3 then every teacher would have it sussed, but there is more to learn and understand if we are to have a properly shared understanding of metacognition in staffrooms and classrooms around the country.

For my students, returning to the weeks ahead, I want them to plan their revision schedule, get organised with resources and prioritise what they revise and when.

I want them to monitor their success, revisiting topics, checking their understanding, ​'spacing' and ​'interleaving' their study, and asking me if they get stuck.

I want them to evaluate whether the knowledge is sticking and deciding if their revision techniques are effective in doing the job.

Though I may orchestrate and guide many facets of their revision, real success will be my students self-regulating and taking control of their own learning. As an end goal, at secondary school, I am aiming to support successful independent learning

Of course, metacognition and self-regulation goes far beyond just examination preparation. The guidance coheres a fuller understanding of the research evidence, covering recommendations about explicit teaching of planning, monitoring and evaluation; teachers modelling their own thinking; setting an appropriate level of challenge; developing metacognitive talk in the classroom, and much more

Why making sense of metacognition matters

What is so striking about the guidance report findings is that although we know that our pupils will develop strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning naturally, we need to be more explicit in how we teach to develop such crucial metacognitive knowledge and understanding. First, teachers must understand what me mean by metacognition

The benefits are clear. For disadvantaged learners in particular, this summary of international evidence suggests that ​'metacognition and self-regulation' as a high impact and low cost approach to improving attainment

Though I have always known about metacognition (previously a vague understanding in truth), this new guidance helps create a useful platform to understand not just metacognition and self-regulation, but how our pupils best learn.

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english teacher and director of huntington research school

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explores how schools can use the latest eef guidance report

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'metacognition and self-regulated learning'... in a couple of weeks

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year 6 pupils will be sitting down to sats examinations and in secondary schools

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a level and gcse exams will start in earnest. teachers everywhere are concentrating upon supporting our pupils to do their very best in challenging circumstances. every teacher knows that the seeds of examination success are sown far in advance of the frenzied exam run-in. like flowers in bloom

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all the hard work is done preparing the ground months

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we have to grapple with helping pupils learn in the long-term

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whilst helping them to make good decisions now – the final weeks before exams – and under the pressure of the exam hall of course

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we have to teach the vital knowledge and understanding of our subject domains

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we should also train our pupils to better plan

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so that when face situations like sitting down and staring at a blank exam paper

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they can apply their learning with success. what proves a timely help for teachers is the well-known

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but less well understood concept of: ‘metacognition and self-regulation’ the ‘metacognition and self-regulation’ strand of the sutton trust-eef teaching and learning toolkit has been accessed over 120

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there is a hunger to know more about metacognition than the well-used

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definition of it as ‘thinking about thinking’. the eef's new ‘metacognition and self-regulated learning: guidance report’ aims to make the research evidence on metacognition accessible and understood

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as well as offering solutions to age-old problems like helping our pupils to prepare for exams

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along with tackling an array of learning challenges

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in the classroom and beyond.   so what is metacognition anyway? if we take the aforementioned examination season scenario

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the guidance offers lots of accessible research evidence to better guide our practice. it shows how metacognition can helpfully be distilled down to three key steps in all learning: “it is about planning how to undertake a task

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then cognitively undertaking that activity

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while monitoring the strategy to check progress

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then evaluating the overall success.” take a look at this hypothetical example taken from the guidance report of john undertaking a maths question to answer:  cognition2.png  if it was as simple as 1-2-3 then every teacher would have it sussed

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but there is more to learn and understand if we are to have a properly shared understanding of metacognition in staffrooms and classrooms around the country.  for my students

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i want them to plan their revision schedule

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get organised with resources and prioritise what they revise and when.  i want them to monitor their success

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‘spacing’ and ‘interleaving’ their study

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and asking me if they get stuck.  i want them to evaluate whether the knowledge is sticking and deciding if their revision techniques are effective in doing the job.  though i may orchestrate and guide many facets of their revision

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real success will be my students self-regulating and taking control of their own learning. as an end goal

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i am aiming to support successful independent learning of course

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metacognition and self-regulation goes far beyond just examination preparation. the guidance coheres a fuller understanding of the research evidence

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covering recommendations about explicit teaching of planning

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monitoring and evaluation; teachers modelling their own thinking; setting an appropriate level of challenge; developing metacognitive talk in the classroom

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and much more why making sense of metacognition matters what is so striking about the guidance report findings is that although we know that our pupils will develop strategies to plan

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monitor and evaluate their learning naturally

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Alex Quigley, English teacher the Director of Huntington Research School, explores how schools can use the latest guidance report from the EEF.

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Paper published by Elaine Blakey and Shelia Spence

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Paper published by Elaine Blakey and Shelia Spence

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Article written by Alex Quigley and Eleanor Stringer

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Article written by Alex Quigley and Eleanor Stringer

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Amy's geography teacher has asked the class to prepare a short presentation about rainforest ecosystems. To plan this, Amy reflects on how she learned best on the last topic - using the school textbooks - and decides to read the relevant chapter before drafting her presentation points. However, when reading it, she decides that the chapter isn't explained clearly enough to improve her understanding. She starts to panic, as she was relying on this. Then Amy remembers a geography website her teacher mentioned. She adapts her strategy and searches the website. This provides a more useful overview, and she uses the information to summarise some interesting facts. She reflects on the experience and decides that next time she will gather a range of resources before starting to research a topic, rather than relying on one source.

This short anecdote about Amy provides a familiar scene of schoolchildren grappling with their homework each evening in homes across England. When you dig beneath the surface of Amy's actions, you begin to consider how she thinks hard about her learning. Here, she is proving to be a successful learner, having internalised some effective strategies for planning, monitoring and evaluating her geography learning.

Most often, such learner behaviours are hidden in plain sight. Students like Amy go on to prove a success in geography and beyond, whereas some of Amy's peers simply flounder and fall away over time. Some teachers cultivate and nurture the metacognitive strategies used by Amy, explicitly naming them, guiding practice and promoting them daily, but many teachers do not do this so explicitly, so pupils may not develop the most effective strategies over time.

It becomes useful then to better define the key characteristics of effective learners, using well understood terms to underpin our practice in schools. The Amy example is a concrete example of ( metacognition and self-regulation. The Sutton Trust-Education Endowment Foundation's Teaching and Learning Toolkit Education Endowment Foundation, 2018) suggests that it is one of the most effective approaches for improving pupils' attainment outcomes. So, how can teachers be helped to understand the terms? And how can the skills be developed and supported in the classroom?

Guiding teacher understanding of metacognition

Ask a staffroom full of teachers for a definition of metacognition and you will likely receive the familiar stock answer: 'thinking about thinking'. The problem here is that such a definition is vague and slippery. It certainly does not help a Year 5 teacher on a wet Wednesday afternoon, or a Year 11 maths teacher tackling trigonometry after break-time! Other definitions, such as 'learning to learn', are equally vague and can actually promote the misconception that metacognition is a generic skill that is not bound to subject knowledge - that we are not actually thinking about something.

There is a wealth of evidence to better understand metacognition so that teachers of every key phase, key stage and subject can support learners like Amy to thrive in and out of the classroom (e.g. (Dignath and Büttner, 2008)). If we can better define metacognition, we can go on to make it concrete for teachers and pupils, whilst dispelling some common misconceptions about what metacognition is, and what it isn't.

Metacognition is a part of self-regulation: those self-directive processes that direct our learning. As shown in the example of Amy, it requires:

Knowledge of yourself as a learner (such as how Amy considers how she had performed successfully on her previous topic)

Knowledge of appropriate strategies (such as how Amy drafts her presentation points and searches the internet)

Knowledge of the task (such as how Amy knows that such a presentation requires the essential information offered by the textbook).

An effective learner will monitor their knowledge and cognitive processes, and use this understanding to make judgements about how to direct their efforts. Let's take the following example. Try this straightforward mathematics multiplication: 155 x 3. You may find it easy, but you will still draw upon some tried-and-tested strategies based on your maths knowledge, and you will have a good sense of whether your answer is correct. Now, how about 145,343,233 x 3? Here, you need to reflect a little bit more. You may know that you have too limited an array of mathematical strategies for this challenge. You may be rapidly searching for a calculator, at least to check your answer. It is in those moments when you are selecting the best strategy that you are behaving metacognitively.

What we learn is that cognitive processes are controlled and adapted constantly. We are always making decisions about our learning in the moment. These decisions happen intuitively but, with explicit teaching and Progressively introducing students to new concepts to suppor... scaffolding More , they can be better and more habitually enacted by pupils.

A visual model here is useful, as shown in Figure 1 (adapted from (Nelson and Narens, 1990).

This not a one-off process of discrete steps, but an ongoing cycle. As you progress through the task, you update your metacognitive knowledge (of yourself, your strategies and tasks), as well as updating your subject knowledge (in this example, Amy is learning about rainforest ecosystems, as well as learning about the best research strategies).

The cycle of ' plan, monitor, evaluate' and the different aspects of metacognitive knowledge ( learner, strategies, task) are recurrent triplicates that are helpful in making the understanding of metacognition concrete for teachers.

Teachers can then consider these when setting learning tasks and supporting pupils to complete them. In an expert learner (as most teachers are), these processes are unconscious and automatic. In novice learners, however, it can be valuable to make them explicit. For students like Amy, and for teachers, defining and better understanding metacognition can prove a crucial support factor for success in school.

Dispelling metacognition misconceptions

One of the important ways for teachers to better understand metacognition and to teach pupils such strategies is to first dispel some common misconceptions about metacognition.

Misconception 1: Metacognition is a general skill that should be taught separately from subject knowledge

This is perhaps the most common misconception about metacognition. The clue is in the word: without cognition, there is no metacognition. Contrary to the misconception, metacognition is specific to the task and subject, and stronger where learners have a strong grounding in subject knowledge. It is, for example, very hard to have knowledge about how one can learn, such as through applying different strategies, in a subject without solid knowledge of subject-specific content and skills. For example, Amy must have a sound knowledge of the rainforest and its various levels, alongside the notion of an ecosystem, for her to decide the relevant evidence required from her textbook.

Therefore, teaching and practising metacognitive strategies must be done alongside subject content.Generic 'learning to learn' or 'thinking skills' lessons may be able to impart some useful overarching idea, but pupils can struggle to The processes of applying learning to new situations More generic approaches to specific subject domains. Self-regulated learning and metacognition have been found to be quite context-dependent, so how you best plan in Key Stage 2 art may have significant differences to planning strategies in Key Stage 4 maths. This does not, however, mean that metacognitive knowledge and skills will automatically develop through content knowledge teaching.

Misconception 2: Metacognition represents 'higher order' thinking and is therefore more important than mere cognition or subject knowledge

We know that metacognition is the knowledge of cognition and the strategies to regulate and control it. However, it would be a mistake to see metacognition as somehow 'higher order', hierarchically, and therefore more important than cognition (as Bloom's taxonomy is sometimes misinterpreted as being a hierarchy that privileges 'evaluation' over 'knowledge'). As has been pointed out, it is very hard to have knowledge about how competent you are in a given subject domain, or how best you can learn, without solid subject knowledge (Pressley et al., 2006).

For example, a student can use metacognitive planning strategies when drafting a GCSE essay about Shakespeare. But without knowledge of Shakespeare's plays, language and the relevant social context, the essay will not be successful.

Metacognition and cognition then display a complex interplay as our pupils learn. We should look to develop both concurrently and not create false hierarchies where they do not exist.

Misconception 3: Metacognition is only developed in older pupils

A common misconception with regard to metacognitive knowledge and skills is that they are only developed effectively in mature young adults and not young children. We know from research that children as young as three have been shown to be able to engage in a wide range of metacognitive and self-regulatory behaviours, such as opting out of tasks based on their understanding of the ease of the task and the level of uncertainty (Whitebread et al., 2009). They also show greater accuracy on tasks that they accept to do than on tasks they don't (Bernard et al., 2015).

There is clear evidence that the level of security and self-knowledge remains rather inaccurate until about eight years of age, with children being overoptimistic about their levels of knowledge (Clark and Dumas, 2016), but the overall trend suggests that forms of metacognition emerge early on in the lifespan.Ultimately, although older children do typically exhibit a broader repertoire of metacognitive strategies, younger children do generally demonstrate metacognitive knowledge, even at a very early age.

Metacognition in the classroom

All pupils develop metacognitive knowledge and skills in their time at school. And yet, some are more adept at doing this than others. They go on to make countless actions and decisions about their learning - many of which the teacher has little control over.

Recommendations from the evidence would suggest that teachers can be much more deliberate about teaching metacognitive awareness in the crucible of the classroom. A familiar example is 'shared writing', where the expert teacher (such as Amy's geography teacher) undertakes a written task. As she walks through an explanation of a jungle ecosystem, she verbalises the questions a geographer would ask of themselves, such as ' How many levels are there in the jungle ecosystem?' and ' How could I organise that clearly in my writing?'

As well as modelling and scaffolding explicit strategies, cultivating metacognitive talk between students can improve outcomes. For example, the 'dialogic teaching', as devised by Robin Alexander (2017), emphasises dialogue through which pupils learn to reason, discuss, argue and explain. A key element of the dialogic approach is to encourage greater quality of teacher talk, by going beyond the closed teacher question - pupil response - teacher feedback sequence. Importantly, in this and other successful interventions, dialogue needs to be purposeful and not just conversation, with teachers using questions to elicit further thought.

What an evidence-based understanding of metacognition offers us is a shared language with which to describe, define and teach effective learning. By improving their own understanding, teachers will be better able to support pupils to develop their metacognitive skills and knowledge. When we train our students to plan, monitor and evaluate, with conscious awareness within a given subject discipline, we offer them the knowledge and strategies to succeed, not only in the classroom but far beyond the school gates too.
This article is based on an EEF-commissioned evidence review examining these questions, drawing upon the expertise of Professor Daniel Muijs and Dr Christian Bokhove. A guidance report on metacognition and self-regulated learning for teachers and leaders was published by the EEF in April.
References

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Amy's geography teacher has asked the class to prepare a short presentation about rainforest ecosystems. To plan this, Amy reflects on how she learned best on the last topic - using the school textbooks - and decides to read the relevant chapter before drafting her presentation points.

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Metacognition, self-regulation and self-regulated learning: what's the difference?

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In 2018, the Education Endowment Foundation published some guidance for schools on Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning, which we are told provides 'high impact for very low cost, based on extensive evidence' (p. 4). Naturally, schools are keen to put these impactful ideas into practice. However, teachers are not always clear about what 'metacognition and self-regulated [...]

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