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researchEDHome 2020 Tarjinder Gill: The Holy Grail of Teaching Spelling

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Rosenshine Masterclass I Intro and Research

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Rosenshine Masterclass II Sequencing Concepts and Modelling

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Celebrate women in STEM by citing women in STEM

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What is retrieval practice? – Retrieval Practice

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Retrieval practice is a strategy in which bringing information to mind enhances and boosts learning. Deliberately recalling information forces us to pull our knowledge “out” and examine what we know.

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I've written about retrieval practice several times in other posts but here I just want to make it easy to lay out various alternative methods for the process of reviewing your students' knowledge and understanding. Before doing that, I would suggest that there are some key principles:

1. Involve everyone: Good techniques involve all students checking their knowledge, not just a few and not just one at a time as you might do when questioning.

2. Make checking accurate and easy: it should be possible for all students to find out what they got right and wrong, what they know well and where they have gaps. Every technique involves students testing their knowledge and then checking their work for accuracy and completeness. (This is not the same as giving students extended mark schemes to mark longer assessments which, for me goes beyond a simple retrieval practice activity)

3. Specify the knowledge: Where appropriate, it's better if students know the set of knowledge any retrieval will be based on, so they can study, prepare and self-check. It must be possible for students to check their own answers which has implications for the way the knowledge requirements are laid out.

4. Keep it generative: students need to explore their memory to check what they know and understand; this means removing cue-cards, prompts, scaffolds and cheat-sheets; it means closing the books and thinking for themselves.

5. Make it time efficient: The idea of each technique is that they can be used repeatedly in an efficient manner without dominating whole lessons.

6. Make it workload efficient: None of these methods involve the teacher checking the students' answers, creating unsustainable workload. A teacher might choose to check the occasional test but that's no use for routine practice.

1. Quick Fire Quiz
Everyone know this one but it can still be done well or badly: Teacher reads out the question or presents them via slides or an audio tape (eg in MFL). The questions can be spontaneously generated or prepared. Questions can be simple factual recall, mental maths or multiple choice;

All students write down their answers. Teacher reveals the answers, one by one or all at once. Students check which they got right. Swapping answers to check is an option but it can be a faff and takes away from the message that students need to be evaluating the depth of their own learning. If you've prepared this in advance, it is much more time efficient if students can see the answers all at once to check rather than wait for each to be read out.

It's important that the teacher discusses common wrong answers - which is one of the main functions. If you can do lots of confidence-building questions quickly (rather than deliberately hard ones) - you can get a great buzz of enjoyment. Knowing things is fun!
2. Paper Quiz
Everyone gets a copy of the questions and writes down answers at their own pace within a time limit. This is much less teacher-directed. It frees the teacher up to circulate and spot common errors as they emerge. It allows for a wider range of question types and makes it easier to engage in with worded questions that can be hard to read from a slide.

The checking process is much better done with pre-prepared answers rather than reading out answers one by one. Why? Because it is quicker, allows for more detail in the answers, it allows students to focus on things they got wrong and helps to build their capacity for self-assessment.
3. Silent Self-Quiz
Try this. Which ones do you know? (Answer provided)

How well can you learn these labels? (Test and then check)

In a test like this, students can generate answers and then check if they were right, silently and privately. They can repeat this multiple times. Any number of resources can be used - blanked diagrams, cue cards with answers on the back, maths questions with answers kept separately. This process keeps the outcome of the assessment with the student - the most important place! They learn what they know and don't know. You can then discuss common errors and problems. It saves a lot of time with asking questions and marking them - all of that is done mentally by the students.
4. Paired Quiz.
Here, we start using Dylan Wiliam's excellent strategy: Activating students as resources for one another. In order to maximise the extent of retrieval practice that goes on, it is fantastic to get students to quiz each other in pairs. One student has the material - questions, answers, cue cards, knowledge organiser, text - and asks the other student questions. "Test me" - it's a well-used technique and can be harnessed in lessons. Give a time limit and then get them to swap around. You get a room full of students checking their knowledge. I've seen this done in superbly well in languages where the teacher circulated to check for accent issues and common errors listening in to the multiple paired quizzing dialogues.
5. Self-Explanation
Beyond simple recall, ask students to explain something to themselves. You simply give students a few silent moments to complete a mental task. They have to generate a version of what they understand that they can either then self-check or write down or use to respond to further question. However the process of mental rehearsal is important.. making this explicit helps to train those who don't do it spontaneously.

What is the story of Henry VIII's Six Wives? Run through it... then check.
6. Demonstration and Performance
Of course LOTS of knowledge isn't simply quiz-able declarative knowledge. You can ask students to show what they know: a procedure; a technique; a routine. Have you learned it? Show me... Of course as a student shows what they can do to a teacher, they are showing themselves what they can do. This is important. Again, the intensity and frequency can be amplified by getting students to show each other in pairs rather than one-by-one with the teacher, as long as they have the tools to evaluate success. This is common in practical areas and performance areas - sport, music, art - but it also has a role in science, maths, English where the modelling process could be framed as 'teaching'. eg teaching the class how to answer a maths problem.
7. Paired or individual elaborative-interrogation
A form of quizzing that can be done in pairs or as a silent private process, is elaborative interrogation. This is where students explore their schema by answering How and Why questions.

Why does this happen? How does it work? Why does it work? Why did she say that? Why do you use that structure? Why is that the most important reason? How do you know?

If you train students to use some of these question stems and give them resources that help them to verify the answers, this makes for a deep retrieval practice exercise
8: Tell the story; rehearse the explanation
Lots of knowledge forms a narrative structure - a series of events, a process, cause and effect. So, the retrieval practice can be formed as 'telling the story' to someone else who can play the role of verifier. Any explanation can then be improved and rehearsed. You can get better at telling a story in more detail.

Here are some examples. Tell the story of a water molecule as if follows the water cycle: (with or without key words provided)

Why does the sun rise in the East?.... How good was your friend's answer? Now you have a go...

Of course this material can be used for self-explanation in the first instance.
9: Summarising
This is a useful recall process although it is less precise in terms of checking - because every summary can be different. A retrieval process can be something like:

Last week we looked at renewable energy. Summarise the main advantages and disadvantages of a wind farm: Go! .

Then show your definitive response for checking:
10. Map and Compare
This method is where you want to check students' capacity to make links. Ask them to make a memory map of the key aspects of a topic... eg: Reactions of Metals OR Themes in Hamlet OR Generating Electricity. These things can be much tighter sections of knowledge too: Types of radiation; the key events and figures in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Students then make mind-maps in a quick, memory -dump style before checking against a good resource - their knowledge organiser, exercise book or a teacher-completed version: What did you get right? What did you miss out completely?

Trial by Ordeal? What can you remember? Go.....

Further reading: Check out these documents. The summaries by @olicav are superb but also read the original papers they relate to.

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Image Credit: https://emptechgroup.com/the-internet-of-things/ I've written about retrieval practice several times in other posts but here I just want to make it easy to lay out various alternative methods for the process of reviewing your students' knowledge and understanding. Before doing that, I would suggest that there are some key principles: Involve everyone: Good techniques involve...

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Rosenshine Masterclass IV Daily Weekly Monthly Review

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Rosenshine Masterclass V Stages of Practice and Conclusion

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researchED Home 2020 Oliver Caviglioli: Dual Coding to Organise Ideas

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researchED Durrington Micheal Chiles: The Craft of Assessment (rEDLoom)

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Marking Crib Sheet & Whole Class Feedback

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Recently, I have been looking at our departments marking procedures and how best to be effective markers (obviously reducing workload is key!). I designed this crib sheet as a way to provide quicker feedback to the whole classroom rather than writing comments in each book, so reducing marking time from 2-3 hours per class to...

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In the previous two posts, we've looked at how feedback should be specific and actionable, but also designed in such a way that it can generalise to future tasks. But sometimes, you will read work with misconceptions that are too complex and deep-rooted to address in one lesson. In this case, even an apparently specific activity will not be helpful.

Let's imagine that the whole class have made some errors with apostrophes. You could give them the feedback 'correct the apostrophe errors', but that's falling into the trap of focussing on the work, not the pupil. So instead you design a short activity where they have to read five sentences and add apostrophes of omission in the right place, where the aim is to improve pupils' understanding of the apostrophe. However, this reveals yet more misconceptions, as pupils in fact start adding in apostrophes wherever there is a plural. What now?

The issue here is that the apostrophe is far more complex than the previous example of pupils confusing two characters. You can address the confusion of two characters in a lesson, but addressing something like the apostrophe is far more difficult. So what can you do in this case? For me, this is when the feedback is not for the pupils, but for you! You won't be able to do much about their understanding of the apostrophe in that one lesson, but what you can do is to note this problem and work out when and where you will address it. Below, here's a different example of a whole-class feedback sheet which explicitly lets you record this kind of feedback.

It's obvious to see how the apostrophe needs more time spent on it, because the apostrophe is a notoriously complex concept. However, I think there are some apparently 'easier' concepts which actually reveal themselves to be just as complex. My favourite example of this is 'add more full stops'. On the surface this is an apparently specific and simple target which pupils can easily act on. But when you think about it a bit more, it requires all kinds of prerequisite knowledge that may be lacking, and which may take enormous amounts of time to teach. I'd argue (and have written in more depth on this here, and also see a recent post making a similar point by Paul Moss here) that in order to know where to add full stops you need to know - at the very least - what a subject is, what a verb is and what a main verb is. And I'd further argue that just to get pupils to reliably and securely identify the main verb in a typical English sentence can take hours of teaching time. If pupils are writing a lot of run-on sentences and comma splices, then there may not be much effective feedback you can give them in one lesson. The feedback here is for the curriculum, not for the pupils.

Does this mean you simply ignore the errors they've made? This is a tricky issue, because if you ignore the errors they've made, the risk is they think that they are doing everything correctly. If they keep making errors, the further risk is that these errors become habits. For me, the ideal solution is for a curriculum to be structured such that some of these more complex concepts are introduced before pupils do too much extended writing. A sequence of posts by Tom Needham here gives an example of how this might work. The Writing Revolution also provides a way of structuring such a curriculum (you can read a summary blog by Tim Roach here). Judith Hochman, quoted in the first post in this series, shows how using such a curriculum allows you to move from vague feedback like 'add more details' to specific feedback like 'use an appositive in your topic sentence' because you have already taught pupils how to use appositives and topic sentences.

Because of this, I also think it would be valuable if pupils did less extended writing. Sometimes, the things that help you get better at writing essays don't look like writing essays, just as - in my favourite ever analogy - if you want to improve at running a marathon, you don't go out and run a marathon in your first training session. The kinds of extended written tasks that need whole-class feedback should be used relatively sparingly, and combined with tasks like multiple choice questions which let you build the foundations for good essays.

However, with all these caveats, I still think whole-class feedback is a game changer. For me, the very worst-case scenario of moving from traditional written comments to WCF is that you would give feedback that is just as (in)effective as before, but in a lot less time. The best-case scenario is that it can dramatically improve your pupil's understanding of the subject, and your understanding of how they learn too. Not only that, but it feels like there is a community of teachers experimenting with whole-class feedback, sharing ideas, and improving their practice as they go along. As well as the two blogs I mentioned at the start, here are some of the blogs that I've enjoyed reading and thinking about, many of which contain excellent examples you can download.

Mr Thornton - history crib sheet

Primary Percival - primary examples

Clare Sealy - why she banned marking in her primary school, together with the school marking & feedback policy here

Jo Facer - the thought process behind whole-class feedback

Mr Bunker Edu - GCSE Language example

Rebecca Foster - KS3 English and Yr 11 Lit examples

Susan Strachan - Eduqas Lang and Lit examples

Adam Riches - avoiding whole-class feedback pitfalls

Heather Fearn - how specific comments can lead to general improvements

Harry Fletcher-Wood - how different types of error need different responses

Adam Porter - the difference between feedback for performance, and feedback for learning.
If you are interested in learning more, I am running a programme of online professional development from January - May 2023 which focusses on general assessment principles. The session on whole-class feedback is on March 13th. All sessions are free for subscribers who can register for them . The schedule is below.

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Whole-class feedback: improve the curriculum, not just the pupil

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In the previous two posts, we've looked at how feedback should be specific and actionable, but also designed in such a way that it can generalise to future tasks. But sometimes, you will read work with misconceptions that are too complex and deep-rooted to address in one lesson.

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In many of Dylan Wiliam's talks and publications he references five 'key strategies' that support the implementation of effective formative assessment. The five strategies each get a chapter in his excellent book Embedding Formative Assessment (2011) which builds on the work he developed with other colleagues in the 90s and 00s.

The five strategies were expressed as early as 2005:

1. Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions

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

3. Providing feedback that moves learners forward

4. Activating students as learning resources for one another

5. Activating students as owners of their own learning

Leahy, Lyon, Thompson and Wiliam (2005).
Very commonly, Wiliam presents these ideas in this helpful table, linking the strategies to core assessment concepts:

In my work as a consultant and teacher trainer, I give a lot of 'evidence-informed' advice to teachers. Of late, this has been influenced largely by discussions about a knowledge-rich curriculum and my reading of Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction, cognitive load theory, and various other papers linking cognitive psychology to classroom practice.

However, it occurred to me recently that most of this overlaps entirely with Wiliam's five strategies and that is what I want to explore here. To some extent, schools and teachers often feel they have have 'done AfL to death' in countless CPD sessions over the last 15 years. Time was when you couldn't get a job unless you said 'AfL' about 12 times in an interview. Sadly, my sense is that the wisdom at the heart of Wiliam's ideas about responsive teaching/formative assessment gets washed out either a) by the delusion that the strategies are already embedded in day-to-day practice or b) by the sense that this is a box ticked and people are really ready to move to the new thing. Truth be told, a lot of 'AfL' was and is a mile away from the formative assessment practice Wiliam is talking about.

Essentially, I feel that, among the important things every teacher should know, the five strategies should be there, part of the core curriculum for teacher development. Here's how I see it all connecting:
1.Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions
Wiliam says 'if you don't know where you're going, you'll never get there'. This is largely about curriculum planning. I read 'learning intentions' as meaning: what do we want all students to know and be able to do? In the detail, this means spelling out what knowledge - in all its forms - they should have and how to apply this knowledge in new contexts. It chimes perfectly with the wave of work being done around curriculum design. It also resonates with the strand of Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction around sequencing concepts, providing models and appropriate scaffolding.

It also means 'what does excellence look like?'. This connects to ideas about assessment and comparative judgement and teachers knowing the standards. Significantly, the implication from Wiliam is that in 'clarifying, understanding and sharing' - teachers, students and their peers all need to know both the knowledge requirements and the criteria for excellence in any performed task. This goes far, far beyond writing a mandatory one-line LO on the board at the start of every lesson! (Aarrghh!). It suggests a lot of very explicit exposition and discussion about the target knowledge and the features of any endeavour that constitute ever increasing degrees of success.

This, in turn, feeds into ideas about self-regulation and metacognition. Successful learners will be good at self-regulation, planning and monitoring their progress towards learning goals in a deliberate self-directed manner. Knowing the learning intentions very well is essential for that process to work.

So the links here are numerous: curriculum, knowledge, standards, self-regulation, scaffolding, modelling.
2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning
In some ways, this 'strategy' is a one-line summary of most of the rest of Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction. 'Discussions, tasks and activities' covers a lot of possibilities. At the centre of it is the idea of 'responsive teaching'. Instructional teaching has to be highly interactive so that teachers are getting feedback from their students about how well their schemas for the material in hand are forming and how fluent they are becoming retrieving and using what they've learned. The challenge for teachers is to involve as many students as possible which leads to the need for good questioning routines and good knowledge-check routines where the ratio of student involvement is high and the information received has a good diagnostic component.

Rosenshine talks about the need for checking for understanding and asking lots of questions in a probing style. Wiliam focuses on question design - including good diagnostic multiple choice questions - and the role of all-student response techniques.

Links: Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction. Shimamura's 'Generate-Evaluate' model. Ideas about retrieval practice. Nuthall's ideas about 'hidden lives' and the idea that we can't be remotely confident about learning taking place until we check - now, and again later.
3. Providing feedback that moves learners forward
Feedback is a thorny issue, woven into discussions about the use of formative and summative assessment, marking and workload, grading and the value of data as a tool to improve learner outcomes. The key in Wiliam's work is the emphasis on moving learners forward. It's this thinking that informed the ideas I expressed in this ' feedback as actions ' post.

Some of the key messages that Wiliam offers in relation to feedback that I cite very often are:

Feedback is only successful if students' learning improves - and this depends on their capacity to understand it and inclination to accept and act on it. It's got an interpersonal, motivational element that can't be brushed aside. Giving feedback isn't a purely technical, objective task - although it does have to suggest actions students can actually take rather than offering a nebulous retrospective critique.

The goal is to change the students' capacity to produce better work, not just to improve their work. Austin's Butterfly is wonderful - because it shows what effective feedback can achieve - but Austin has only truly benefitted if, later, he is more able to 'look like a scientist' or draw beautiful butterflies without feedback: he needs to be able to generate his own feedback and become more independent.

This links formative assessment to metacognition and self-regulation and Rosenshine's ideas about moving from guided to independent practice. If we're still reliant on external feedback to tell us if we've succeeded (SatNav style), then we've still got a long way to go. Effective learners can link their work to the success criteria and generate their own ongoing self-correcting feedback narrative.

Links: Ethic of excellence, Rosenshine guided to independent practice, self-regulation.
4. Activating students as learning resources for one another
I think this is the feature of Wiliam's five strategies that deserves more attention. All too often teachers create major bottlenecks by forcing all classroom interactions to pass through them. However, if teachers develop strong routines where students support each other's learning in a serious structured manner, then the ratio, quality and frequency of student interactions with the knowledge in hand can increase significantly. We can't have a dialogue with every student at once but they can all be involved in meaningful dialogues with each other to support the process of working out 'where the learner is' and 'how to get to where the learner is going'. This is where disciplined ' think pair share ' becomes so powerful.

Wiliam cites Slavin in showing that well-designed collaborative learning can yield significant gains - but it has to be done such that everyone is learning. There are so many ways to do this e.g students checking their partners' answers using all manner of quizzing formats and generative processes and elaborative-interrogative questions (why? how?). Pairs are probably the most efficient and effective use of this strategy - because of the ease of switching in and out of the interactions. If one person in a pair acts as the verifier for the other, using exemplars, fact sheets, mark schemes as a reference, the extent of retrieval practice and feedback can be increased hugely. Another example might be using structured dialogues for practising the use of language or rehearsing explanations and arguments. Provided that there is a strong process for evaluating students' responses for accuracy and quality, a high volume of peer-to-peer interactivity is powerful.

Links: Hattie's 'reciprocal teaching', Shimamura's 'think it, say it, teach it', Slavin's collaborative learning, Sumeracki and Weinstein on elaborative interrogative questions and retrieval practice.
5. Activating students as owners of their own learning
In all honesty, I find that implementation of the strategy behind this feel-good-phrase, often falls into the dust of 'noble intent' rather than delivering something tangible. However, it is actually highly actionable and links directly to many other ideas. 'Owning your own learning' is at the heart of strong self-regulation and metacognition: setting learning goals, planning, monitoring and evaluating success in tasks links to those goals; forming effective schemata that take account of big-picture questions and themes that inform subsequent conscious rehearsal and elaboration. However, these 'goals' are not broad brush life goals; they are learning goals - the next steps in improving writing fluency, science knowledge, confidence with maths and languages, physical fitness etc.

The point is that these characteristics of effective learning can be fostered by setting up good routines and expectations. Teachers can help students to know where they are going and where they are on the curriculum journey. This can be supported by:

giving students access to long-term topic plans, the syllabus, the wide scope overview before diving down into the details;

setting out milestones in the progress journey so that students can take their bearings and plan their own next steps through appropriate forms of practice, becoming increasingly independent.

setting out clear relational models for conceptual schema building - as per Shimamura's Relate in MARGE.

providing exemplars of performance at various levels of success up to a high/exceptional level so students can compare their own work against a scale and see for themselves where they are and what short-run learning goals might be achievable to move forward.

If a student knows for themself what they need to do in order to improve and gains the experience of being able to achieve success through applying effort to these self-determined goals, then they begin a positive upward spiral of confidence building, growth mindset-inducing, self-regulation that fuels even more success.

Links: Rosenshine: practice; Shimamura: Relate; Growth mindset; self-regulation.

To some extent I feel that the issue has been that 'AfL' or even 'formative assessment' has been too broad a term; too much of a catch-all, thereby allowing various degrees of corruption and dilution to take root. I think that it's when you get into understanding and deploying the five separate strategies that it finds form. That's the understanding of formative assessment that teachers need. It's powerful stuff, right there, where it's been for years.
Key References:
Wiliam, D., & Thompson, M. (2007). Integrating assessment with instruction: what will it take to make it work? In C. A. Dwyer (Ed.), The future of assessment: shaping teaching and learning(pp. 53-82). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Wilam, D (2011) Embedded Formative Assessment. Solution Tree Press.

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Revisiting Dylan Wiliam's Five Brilliant Formative Assessment Strategies.

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In many of Dylan Wiliam's talks and publications he references five 'key strategies' that support the implementation of effective formative assessment. The five strategies each get a chapter in his excellent book Embedding Formative Assessment (2011) which builds on the work he developed with other colleagues in the 90s and 00s.

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In February, my second book is going to be published by Oxford University Press. It's called Making Good Progress?: The future of Assessment for Learning.

It is the assessment follow-up to my first book, Seven Myths about Education, which was about education more generally. In Seven Myths about Education, I argued that a set of flawed ideas had become dominant in education even though there was little evidence to back them up. Broadly speaking, I argued that knowledge and teacher-led instruction had been given an undeserved bad reputation, and that the research evidence showed that knowledge, practice and direct instruction were more likely to lead to success than discovery and project-based learning.

The hardest questions I had to answer about the book were from people who really liked these ideas, and wanted to know how they could create an assessment system which supported them. Certain kinds of activities, lessons and assessment tasks simply didn't work with national curriculum levels. For example, discrete grammar lessons, vocabulary quizzes, multiple choice questions, and historical narratives were hard, if not impossible, to assess using national curriculum levels. Many schools required every lesson, or every few lessons, to end with an activity which gave pupils a level: e.g., at the end of this lesson, to be a level 4a, you need to have done x, to be a 5c, you need to have done y, to be a 5b, you need to have done z. This type of lesson structure had become so dominant as to feel completely natural and inevitable. But actually, it was the product of a specific set of questionable beliefs about assessment, and it imposed huge restrictions on what you could teach. In short, the assessment system was exerting a damaging influence on the curriculum, and that influence was all the more damaging for being practically invisible.

Over the last four years, in my work at Ark Schools, I have been lucky enough to have the time to think about these issues in depth, and to work on them with some great colleagues. Making Good Progress is a summary of what I have learnt in that time. It isn't a manual about one particular assessment system. But it does contain all the research and ideas I wish I had known about when I first started thinking about this. In the next seven blog posts, I will outline a few brief summaries of some of the ideas it contains. Here they are.

1. Why didn't AfL transform our schools?

2. Teaching knowledge or teaching to the test?

3. Is all practice good?

4. How can we close the knowing-doing gap?

5. What makes a good formative assessment?

6. How can we measure progress in individual lessons?

7. How do bad ideas about assessment lead to workload problems?

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Making Good Progress?: The future of Assessment for Learning - Daisy Christodoulou

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In February, my second book is going to be published by Oxford University Press. It's called Making Good Progress?: The future of Assessment for Learning. It is the assessment follow-up to my first book, Seven Myths about Education, which was about education more generally. In Seven Myths about Education, I argued that a set of...

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researchEDHome 2020 Adam Boxer: Dual Coding for Teachers Who Can’t Draw: Teacher’s Explanations

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alternatives to written marking presentation

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Kitchen Pedagogy 1:2  Ask more questions.

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Sarah Larsen has been a Geography Teacher in and around Greater London for 22 years. Prior to having her first child, she led the Geography Department in her current school. She is passionate about being research-informed and in 2018 , she was one of 13 teachers who carried out research for UCL and Ross McGill's 'Verbal Feedback Project'. She has spoken at several educational events about the merits of verbal feedback including ResearchEd Surrey and TMGeogIcons.

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‎Becoming Educated: Verbal Feedback with Sarah Larsen on Apple Podcasts

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‎Sarah Larsen has been a Geography Teacher in and around Greater London for 22 years. Prior to having her first child, she led the Geography Department in her current school. She is passionate about being research-informed and in 2018 , she was one of 13 teachers who carried out research for UCL and...

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The Feedback Pendulum: A manifesto for enhancing feedback in education with Michael Chiles  by Naylor's Natter Podcast
'Just talking to Teachers'

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The Feedback Pendulum: A manifesto for enhancing feedback in education with Michael Chiles by Naylor's Natter Podcast 'Just talking to Teachers'

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In the words of Bill Gates, 'We all need people who give us feedback. That's how we improve.' The art of giving feedback is widely recognised as one of the most powerful tools in education and equally one of the most variable aspects in the way it is applied.

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the feedback pendulum: a manifesto for enhancing feedback in education

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education/decision making & problem solving

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education / decision-making & problem solving

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education/decision making & problem solving

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The Feedback Pendulum: A manifesto for enhancing feedback in education

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Buy The Feedback Pendulum: A manifesto for enhancing feedback in education by Michael Chiles (ISBN: 9781913622190) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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Kitchen Pedagogy 1:1 You Establish What You Establish

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Kitchen Pedagogy 3.1 Five things to do more of.

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Kitchen Pedagogy 2:1 Memory vs Performance

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Implementing, Embedding & Reflecting on Retrieval Practice

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Kate Jones is Head of History at The British School Al Khubairat (BSAK) in Abu Dhabi,United Arab Emirates. Originally from Wrexham in North Wales, Kate taught in the UK for six years at Elfed High School before relocating to the UAE in 2016.
Kate is also a Lead Practitioner specialising in teaching and learning and provides regular training for educators and leaders both in the UK and internationally. Author of Love To Teach (2018) and Retrieval Practice (2019).

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embedding & reflecting on retrieval practice with kate jones

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‎Becoming Educated: Implementing, Embedding & Reflecting on Retrieval Practice with Kate Jones on Apple Podcasts

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‎Kate Jones is Head of History at The British School Al Khubairat (BSAK) in Abu Dhabi,United Arab Emirates. Originally from Wrexham in North Wales, Kate taught in the UK for six years at Elfed High School before relocating to the UAE in 2016. Kate is also a Lead Practitioner specialising in teaching...

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retrieval practice: research & resources for every classroom

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education & languages / education teaching

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education / teaching methods & materials / general

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education & languages / education teaching

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education/teaching methods & materials - general

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teaching skills; teaching techniques; teaching books

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education / teaching methods & materials / general

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education/teaching methods & materials - general

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Retrieval Practice: Research & Resources for every classroom

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Buy Retrieval Practice: Research & Resources for every classroom by Kate Jones (ISBN: 9781912906581) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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education & languages / education teaching

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education / teacher training & certification

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education / teaching methods & materials / general

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education & languages / education teaching

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education/teaching methods & materials - general

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
teaching skills; teaching techniques; teaching books

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education / teacher training & certification

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education / teaching methods & materials / general

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education/teaching methods & materials - general

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Retrieval Practice 2: Implementing, embedding & reflecting

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Buy Retrieval Practice 2: Implementing, embedding & reflecting by Kate Jones (ISBN: 9781913622411) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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This should simplify things.... 🙂

Just last month I finally completed and published The Coach's Guide to Teaching; this month I'm wrapping up the manuscript to the new 3.0 version of Teach Like a Champion.

One of its themes of 3.0 is making clearer and more extensive connections to research so one thing the two books will have in common is discussion of the importance of forgetting-Retrieval Practice is a new technique in 3.0 and the role of forgetting for athletes is the subject of chapter 2 in CGT.

As a result, both books discuss the 'Forgetting Curve,' the graph describing how learners forget things over time and how retrieval practice can arrest this process.

The original Forgetting Curve was derived in the 1880s by the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus and plotted the actual rate at which he was able to remember a series of nonsense syllables after learning them. The general shape of the curve is broadly accepted by cognitive psychologists. But since your students aren't learning nonsense syllables, the rate at which they forget what they have learned after they learned it is less clear. So what the Forgetting curve tells us that:

as soon as you learn something, you begin forgetting it almost immediately.

the rate of forgetting is often shockingly high; a few hours after learning something, people routinely remember only a small fraction of it.

each time you practice recalling what you know, the rate and amount of forgetting is reduced somewhat.

retrieving something back into working memory slows the rate of forgetting, but how and when the retrieval happens is important.

But a Forgetting Curve cannot tell you exactly what the rate of retention will be for your students generally or for a specific student at time A or time B for a specific topic you've taught. There are individual differences and factors in the learning environment, like how much attention students are paying and how new to students the information is/ There are differences in content too: abstract and complex ideas; simpler and more concrete.

So the curve in is also theoretical or hypothetical in any specific case.

And it also leaves open what the magic number of times students have to engage something to learn it. Graham Nuthall's Hidden Lives of Learners proposes that whether a student was exposed to content three times can predict with 80-85% accuracy whether they successfully learned it.

Anyway, the Forgetting Curve is a highly useful and also imperfect tool but one educators should know. That said it's actually complex to read one the first time you encounter it and I get questions from educators about it all the time. So as part of TLAC 3.0 i am toying with the idea of an annotated Forgetting Curve... one with descriptions build in so it's more portable and how to read it is more readily apparent. Here's a draft in case it's useful first the annotated curve:

And then a clean version:

I've temporarily adapted both from a drawing of it the amazing Oliver Caviglioli made for CGT. Hope its useful!

Forgetting Curve, retrieval practice

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An Annotated Forgetting Curve - Teach Like a Champion

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Just last month I finally completed and published The Coach's Guide to Teaching; this month I'm wrapping up the manuscript to the new 3.0 version of Teach Like a Champion. One of its themes of 3.0 is making clearer and more extensive connections to research so one thing the two books will have in common is...

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Dual Coding and Learning Styles — The Learning Scientists

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Dual coding and learning styles sound similar, but are not quite the same thing. While dual coding has scientific evidence backing its use, learning styles has been repeatedly tested and shown not to improve learning. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post ( see here ), I have been working …

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It can be argued that Dual Coding is a teaching and learning strategy that teachers have been using for years and years. Yet the term and the discussion around this approach has only become widespread in recent years (despite the work of Allan Paivio with his dual coding theory dating back to 1971 and he states that dual coding has its roots in the practical use of imagery as a memory aid 2500 years ago!). There are now lots of videos, blog posts, podcasts and presentations shared by educators about how dual coding can be used effectively in the classroom.
The video below is a brief yet useful introduction to dual coding.
For anyone unfamiliar with the term dual coding the Learning Scientists, a group of cognitive psychological scientists interested in research on education, define dual coding as:

" The process of combining verbal materials with visual materials. There are many ways to visually represent material, such as with infographics, timelines, cartoon strips, diagrams, and graphic organizers. When you have the same information in two formats - words and visuals - it gives you two ways of remembering the information later on. Combining these visuals with words is an effective way to study."

The work of the Learning Scientists is a great starting point for teachers as their website contains a wide range of materials and resources to share with pupils and parents too. Dual coding is one of the six study strategies that they promote. To read more about another effective strategy you can read my retrieval practice post here. You can download free materials, as shown below, from the website - www.learningscientists.org.

Dual coding is sometimes referred to as 'multimedia learning' (or 'multimedia cognition' in research papers) because the material used and represented can be in multiple forms.

The work of Oliver Caviglioli, former Headteacher turned information designer, has also been incredibly helpful, informative and insightful in regards to dual coding. I was very excited to finally meet him in person recently at ResearchEd Dubai and listen to him explore and explain the power of dual coding for learning. There is a wealth of information, useful visual resources ( as shown below) and a great video explanation and discussion about dual coding that can all be found on his website www.olicav.com

Like all educational research, dual coding has teachers (including myself) asking - what does this look like in the classroom? I have included a range of examples below of my students' work (mainly in history but other examples are included from politics and social studies) using the dual coding strategy - combing written text and visual images. Dual coding can also be used to improve teacher explanation in the classroom which is discussed below with several books, blogs and recommended articles.

Timelines

Timelines are obviously an activity that work well with the study of chronology in history and politics. Timelines can also be used in other subjects, for example, I have seen impressive timelines used in English Literature and Drama illustrating the chronological order of events of a plot using both visuals and text.

Comic/Cartoon Strips/Storyboards

I have blogged previously about how I use this technique in my classroom, you can read that post here. Comic strips can be used as a form of timeline or to demonstrate a sequence, story, events, etc.

Note-taking & revision

Other examples from my classroom ...

Reflection

I still have a lot to learn about dual coding. Whilst it may seem a simple strategy there is more to it than combining writing and drawing. The more I read the more I learn about the complexities of the different channels connected to memory and how dual coding can lead to cognitive overload and how there are ways to ensure clarity and improve effectiveness ( I share the links that explore these below).

My students also need to persevere with dual coding too. There is a misconception that dual coding means you have to be a good artist but that isn't true. Also, some students would rather just make written notes and others have spent far too long on the visuals. One of my students said it was a stressful strategy because she is a perfectionist and wanted her notes and illustrations to be beautiful but also informative. We discussed that this was a learning strategy in the same way retrieval practice is, not an assessment judging her illustrations and notes- far from it! Some students have fully embraced this study strategy whereas others don't like it. This isn't about "learning styles" but simply personal preferences. Students don't always enjoy retrieval practice either and whilst I want to promote a love of learning it's important to recognise the reality that learning can be challenging and difficult at times too.

I have noticed an improvement with effort and concentration when students are using dual coding in the classroom. A lot of students are really pleased with their outcomes and this strategy does provide the students with an opportunity to be very creative too.

Dual coding can be used at different stages of the learning process, for example, it can be used to record new information or as a retrieval practice strategy writing and drawing relevant information and images from memory.

Recommended Reading

If you are keen to learn more about educational research, cognitive psychology and how this can be applied in the classroom then I can highly recommend the book Understanding How We Learn: A Visual Guide. The Learning Scientists Yana Weinstein and Megan Sumeracki have teamed together with Oliver Caviglioli. Firstly, the book is a great example of how complex and perhaps difficult concepts and content can be made easier to understand when supported and combined with relevant visuals. The book builds on the work of the Learning Scientists in much more depth and detail. It is also very well referenced. There are tips for teachers, tips for students and tips for parents. I also liked the glossary of key terminology too. This book isn't specific to dual coding but learning in general, as dual coding is just one example of a research-based method that helps students learn.

You can also order the new book, soon to be published, by Oliver Caviglioli and John Catt Publishing entitled Dual Coding With Teachers I have already pre-ordered this book and I am looking forward to reading it as there is a wide range of contributors featured as well as the words of wisdom from Caviglioli.

To find out more about dual coding there are a vast amount of useful, interesting and insightful blog posts available to read online that I have listed below.

A great introduction for teachers to dual coding, with a clear explanation focusing on dual coding and memory, is a blog post by Rufus Johnstone that you can read here. This post was a reflection on a presentation Rufus delivered to his colleagues about dual coding and the implications this has on learning. I found this very helpful with references to Caviglioli, Daniel T Willingham, Nick Rose and David Didau, explaining how this strategy supports learning/memory in a clear and concise way. Read and share it with your colleagues.

The example of dual coding above was taken from a blog post by one of my favourite educational bloggers Blake Harvard. In this blog post, US blogger and teacher Harvard reflects on introducing dual coding and its application in the classroom with his students. I like how Harvard introduces a new strategy, communicates with other educators to seek feedback then reflects on this. You can read the interesting post here.

Head of Geography and author Mark Enser has written a very useful article for the TES entitled Why every teacher should be using dual coding in the classroom. This article provides some do's and don'ts from a teacher who has embraced this strategy in his classroom and is clearly very knowledgable about dual coding.

I have already praised and shared the work of the Learning Scientists but another blog I discovered by Learning Scientist Megan Sumeracki was Dual Coding: Can there be too much of a good thing? In this blog post, Sumeracki states "if a student experiences cognitive overload trying to process all of the information in a meaningful way then dual coding can harm learning". However, Sumeracki does provide solutions and advice as to how to tackle this which are very helpful and practical.

A post I recently discovered on Twitter was written by History Teacher and author Chris Runeckles. I liked the examples and practical tips included in this post as to how dual coding can support and enhance teacher explanation, which Rufus also discussed in his blog too. Runeckles writes about the importance of explaining over images rather than teacher talk over written content which I know for many years I was guilty of! Runckles writes about how teachers can consider dual coding in their lesson planning and how this can help the teacher to reflect and consider which content can be cut from presentations and explanations. You can read Explaining through dual coding here.

Another excellent blog post that explains the importance and impact of using visuals in the classroom can be read here - which urges teachers to think about using more visuals in their classroom instruction.

I am a regular reader of the blog posts written by Tom Johns and this post does exactly what the title states - 20 ideas & strategies for Student Led Dual Coding. These ideas can be applied across the curriculum they are not subject specific to science. Some of the ideas shared in the post you may already be familiar with such as mindmaps, diagrams, Pictionary and Venn diagrams. Other strategies could be new to you, to try in your classroom or share with your students. In addition to the ideas Tom also shares a link to 14 research papers on dual coding for anyone really interested in this field - I am still making my way through the research but it does make for some educational reading.

Finally, another blog written by a classroom teacher that I enjoyed reading was written by teacher Ian Taylor entitled Dual Coding - A Concrete Example that you can read here. This blog is particularly useful for science teachers as it explores dual coding in that subject-specific domain.

Moving forward I will continue to learn more about dual coding and reflect on my classroom practice using this strategy. I also want to be able to make sketch notes with written text and visuals when I attend conferences and listen to presentations. I often take photos of slides as an audience member, I may tweet or share the image but I rarely go back through my camera roll to view the photos as I perhaps would revisit if I made notes with visuals. Dual coding will also make the presentation content more memorable for me too.

Below is the sketch by Caviglioli when he attended my recent session at ResearchEd Dubai. During another presentation, I was sat next to him and it was amazing to watch him do this live! I won't ever be the next Oliver Caviglioli but he has inspired me to try this now myself.

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Examples of Dual Coding in the classroom

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It can be argued that Dual Coding is a teaching and learning strategy that teachers have been using for years and years. Yet the term and the discussion around this approach has only become widespr...

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Rebooting behaviour after lockdown

Advice to schools reopening in the age of COVID-19

No one would have believed in the last term of 2019 that a microscopic enemy was gathering speed against us. 'With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter,' as H G Wells said. Suddenly, a meteor landed in our schools and abruptly playground sounds - almost - ceased.

All schools suddenly became special schools, serving the children of key workers, the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. Almost every student in the UK was sent home on what was effectively a fixed-term exclusion. Even the default model of the physical classroom experience was replaced by emergency remote learning. The effects of this earthquake will be impossible to understand fully for years.

And now, or at some point in the future, schools will be thinking about opening their gates wider to more groups of pupils. Whenever that is, and in what sequence, is for others to decide. But whatever the shape and timing of this awakening, schools will need to face and meet the challenge it presents, as they have done so capably throughout this upheaval. If character is revealed by crisis then the education sector has demonstrated heroic levels of fortitude, compassion, and perspicacity in one of its darkest hours.

Better behaviour is the beginning of everything

Good behaviour is the core mission for every school, whatever age or stage. Get behaviour right and everything else is possible. It is the beginning of safety, equity, dignity, curriculum, opportunity and learning, not an afterthought or something that only matters when students misbehave. And now, with more students returning after a long furlough at home, behaviour will matter more than ever. Here are five reasons why:

Students may have partially or entirely lost the habits that enable them to flourish as learners and as member of the school community. This will matter more for some than others. Students from socially privileged backgrounds may be able to cope better with uncertainty, anxiety and change more than students who have more fragile, vulnerable or chaotic circumstances.

Staff may also be a little rusty, and uncertain. This is perfectly natural. They will have been coping with a variety of new and anxious normalities- teaching their own children at home, setting remote work, working in schools in emergency circumstances, worrying about health, family, bills. What was once normal may not feel so normal anymore.

Students will have to observe far higher standards of respiratory and tactile hygiene than ever before. Social distancing in the sense of portable 2m bubbles of exclusion will be impossible; everyone who works in a school knows that. So the only way to even partially compensate for that is to generate entirely new behavioural norms of conduct. For schools that already struggle with behaviour issues, the requirement to make and maintain even higher standards than before becomes a greater problem. Even for schools with excellent standards of behaviour, we will be asking for students to deconstruct many of their natural or habitual reactions (like hugging, touching their faces, shaking hands, going to the toilet in pairs etc.) and replace them with new ones that may feel awkward and synthetic.

Many students - especially young children - will already have hygiene habits that we would probably describe as less than ideal, that become dangerous in the current climate. Not washing hands, picking noses, fingers in mouths, sharing juice boxes (or -sadly - cigarettes, for older students), or spitting, these are difficult things to unlearn.

Staff, too will have to observe not only this type of virological etiquette but also be expected to train and maintain these behaviours in others. For staff members who feel that their behaviour management skills aren't yet secure, this is a challenge. Even for staff who do feel secure in these skills, it will mean a raising of expectations beyond what is normally expected.

These are all huge challenges, and ones that seem unique to this crisis. But teachers and schools have managed behaviour for as long as we have had children to teach. I would like to share some advice for school leaders and classroom teachers based on my experience of many schools in the UK and abroad. Schools that have worked hard to build fantastic cultures where children and staff work in a safe, calm, and orderly environment where everyone is treated with dignity.

Doing this is no easy feat, and requires focus, strategy, heart and brains, sustained over a period of time. Rather than ask every school to reinvent this wheel simultaneously, here is my list of ten ideas about how schools manage it.

1. Define what you mean by good behaviour

There is an opportunity here for schools to re-evaluate what they actually want their behaviour to look like. Many schools implicitly assume that everyone already knows what good behaviour is, that students know how to do it, and staff know how to maintain it. There is an assumption that we don't need to define it.

But this is the beginning of many errors. There is no consensus. Students have very different ideas and habits of how to behave. Staff do too. Teacher and leaders who assume everyone telepathically agrees on the behaviour standards will be continuously surprised by the reality of the matter.

Teachers should define what behaviour they think is ideal in their classrooms; leaders, in their schools. Be concrete. Vagueness is the enemy here. If you are vague, you'll barely be aware of when behaviour goes wrong; and students will not grasp what is expected of them. What does fantastic behaviour actually look like in a test, lining up for lunch, starting the lesson, carpet time? And so on.

If we do not do this, we condemn students who have not understood to remain so, and advantage those who already do. Before schools return, leaders and teachers should use the time to consider what their behaviour standards actually are, instead of leaving it to chance.

Areas where this will especially matter, of course, will be: travelling through school; lunchtime queuing and dining; entry and exit to classrooms and school; classroom conduct; toilet etiquette; assemblies; practical subjects; number limits everywhere; outlining safe spacing where 2m distancing is possible and defining behaviour when it is not, along with dozens of other areas. Every school's circumstances are different, and staff need to carefully think about pinch points, waiting areas, corridor sweeps, truancy, absences, registers, bottlenecks, and a hundred other issues that will be specific to their geography, layout, student groups, footprint and resources.

2. Good behaviour must be taught, not told.

A common mistake many schools and teachers make it to wait for misbehaviour to occur, then react to it, often simply. This is like waiting for a fire to catch before dousing it. The best teachers and schools actively teach the behaviour they want to see, as if it were a curriculum. Do you want students to be kind, or work hard, or listen hard in assemblies? Teach them to do so, don't just tell them. If you tell people they may misunderstand. They may not care. They may disagree. They may find it hard. But if you teach them what these things mean, they will understand. If you provide examples for them, they will grasp what it means in their lives. If you demonstrate the behaviour, you let them see that you value it. If you explain the behaviour, they understand why it matters. If you tell them their behaviour matters because they matter and so does everyone else, then they feel valued and are more likely to value the norms you describe.

3. Build routines, habits and norms.

All staff dealing with students must consider these questions:

a) What behaviour do I want them to think is normal? Then, tell them what it is and teach them what normal means in many circumstances. Don't let them define normal behaviour. Challenge them when it is not met. Show them how to do it. Correct them every time they can't or won't do it. Never let it slide. Define the new normal by bringing it to life.

b) What habits do I want them to develop? If I want them to be punctual, clarify what punctuality means. Insist upon it. The more a behaviour is demanded, and challenged by its absence, the more practice students get performing it, until it starts to feel habitual. We seek, ultimately, to change their behaviour habits, not just their behaviour.

c) What routines do they need to learn in order to succeed as learners and human beings? This is crucial. In order for it to be as easy as possible to behave, students should be taught the specific sequences of behaviour they are expected to demonstrate. Some students find these hard to remember; some are not used to behaving the way school expects (e.g. waiting their turn, sharing, queueing, clearing their table, putting hands up, listening) so teach the routines that make things easier for everyone, check their understanding, get them to practice the routines, and crucially, do so constantly until you are satisfied everyone understands and can do them.

4. Don't wait for pupils to misbehave- be proactive.

The techniques described form the core of good behaviour teaching. They are proactive, and they are a support and scaffold to good behaviour. They are particularly important for many students who would be more at risk of sanction or exclusion due to insecure behavioural habits. They help to create conditions where good behaviour is more likely and bad behaviour less likely. They pre-empt misbehaviour, defuse and diminish the risk of escalation, and teach children social habits that are portable far beyond the school gates.

5. Make boundaries meaningful.

Students need to know that deliberately misbehaving will result in consequences; the school must develop immediate/ fast responses. When behaviour is poor, or fails to meet the standard, it must be challenged. Student need to know a line has been crossed. These lines can be managed by many means. Mild sanctions can act as a deterrent but only if consistently and fairly applied, and when there is a high expectation that they will occur. Rewards too can have a small, short-term motivating effect. Both sanctions and rewards are an essential part of any school's system, otherwise some students will feel there are no boundaries. They also set a clear expectation on the student body that certain behaviours will not be tolerated, and some will be celebrated. By themselves they are insufficient for all students at all times, as any one technique is. Other consequences, such as pastoral conversations, reteaching behaviour, therapeutic approaches, etc. must also be part of the whole school repertoire. Consequence systems, in order to be highly effective, need to be as consistent as possible throughout the entire school.

Most consequence systems fail because they are inconsistently applied by individual teachers, or across a school community.

6. Rewrite your behaviour policy and consequences to reflect the current circumstances.

In these times of heightened risk to our health, it is important that students (and staff) are made aware that unhygienic behaviour has to be reclassified from a misdemeanour to something much more serious. Public-facing staff have lost their lives by spitting assaults and disease transmission. Students must be explicitly told that the consequences for behaviour that threatens distancing measures, respiratory or tactile hygiene, are very serious indeed. And malicious, deliberate acts of transmission (eg spitting, coughing) must be treated with the greatest seriousness.

While it would be inappropriate to detail precise tariffs for every school circumstance, any student caught deliberately breaking such rules should receive serious and possibly severe consequences: immediate fixed term exclusions, parental meetings, in-school isolation etc. Schools should also, in the most extreme cases consider the use of reporting matters to the police. The point isn't that we want to see such reactions; but as ever with any sanction, the sincere and authentic execution of it conveys a clear message to the student body about what behaviour is tolerated and what is not. This is, quite literally, a matter of life and death for some, and especially adults. These are not normal times.

A big mistake many schools make is to believe that you can change student behaviour simply by telling them. Similarly it is a mistake to believe that staff will instantly know what to do if you tell them once. Teach- don't tell- the behaviour staff need too. Leaders need to spend time with staff before students, and front load their professional development so that they both understand and know how to implement the new routines and are able to teach it to children. Old, whole-school standards should be reinforced alongside new expectations, because if we assume that staff already understand the rules perfectly then we risk papering over misunderstandings.

8. Implementation is everything.

New norms and standards can be taught, but unless someone monitors and maintains these standards, they quickly wither. Even the most diligent of pupils and staff tend to lose habits unless they are reinforced. Some will hardly need this, and for others it is vital. If you lead a school or a classroom, maintaining routines is the glue that keeps standards high. So build a monitoring schedule. When will you check that standards are being met? What will you do in response? Reteach? Reprimand? Remind? How will you record it so that you have a sense of how behaviour is going?

9. Reboot your expectations constantly.

Behaviour needs to be a state of constant re-creation. Staff need to repeat the expectations constantly, and in unison throughout the school day with all children. Positive cultures are immersive. Students- and staff- need to see the norms as frequently as possible. This means a) continually, on a day-to-day basis. They should be modelled, explained, mentioned, pointed out, demonstrated and insisted upon and b) Formally in a targeted way. This means though periodic reboots of the expectations, standards and behaviours needed for students and staff to flourish. For students this might mean once a term in a period of formal re-instruction like a morning or day. For staff this might mean planned CPD for all staff- especially new, but including everyone. We imbed culture by repetition, and if we expect people to remember it forever without reinforcement then we guarantee that standards will slide.

10. High expectations means high support.

Everyone, form staff to students, have been through difficult times. All have seen their routines turned upside down. Some will have had relatively happy circumstances spending time with family, others will have suffered trials, and some tragedy. This is why a proactive approach to behaviour is even more vital now. When behaviour is taught, people understand what they need to do, and can do it better. But asking more of people without helping them build the skills they need to do it is to invite disaster and difficulty. The higher the expectations- and they must be higher now- the higher the support required to achieve them. Staff training, calm student induction, checking for understanding, consistent repetition of norms, demonstrated and corrected where necessary, these are the foundation of good behaviour.

Finally remember: all rules have exceptions.

Routines, norms, and consistency are how cultures are built. As an approach, it is a rising tide that lifts all ships. The most vulnerable or challenging students often need structure more than other children, who may have been living in a challenging, turbulent or unstructured environment. If students feel that they are valued, that they matter, and that their behaviour matters, they are far more likely to turn up and try. This is not only consistent with having high expectations, it is intrinsic to them.

But schools must be aware that students with the most challenging behaviour sometimes - but not always - need even more than these factors. They may need a more targeted approach, pastoral support, therapeutic strategies, and so on. They may need complex programs of support that involves work inside or outside the classrooms, multi-agency approaches etc. Not all students will need this. Some students with typically mainstream behaviour will need more support than before due to their circumstances (e.g. bereavement or anxiety) and some will thrive and surprise us with their resilience. We should not assume that students are returning to school traumatised, and equally nor should we assume they are fine. Whole school approaches that assume all children are anxious and confused may have a negative effect. Be alert for signs of difficulty and let all students know that discrete pastoral support is available. Remember that a calm, safe, structured school culture is one of the best ways to reduce anxiety and promote good mental health. Students need to see adults being positive, hopeful and in control of themselves- whether we feel it or not.

There is an opportunity, even in this dark time, to relaunch into the future in a way that makes it as likely as possible that children- and staff- will work together again in a calm, safe environment where everyone can flourish in dignity with one another. I cannot say it will be easy because it won't be, for anyone. But it will be worthwhile, as everything that matters is.

I live in the certain hope that we will see each other again in better times and hold our families and friends once more.

NB: To be clear, these views are my own, and do not represent any official guidance of any kind. This post has been summarised and designed into a one sheet pdf that people are very welcome to share for free if they find it useful.

Thank you to the excellent Oliver Caviglioli for his assistance with this.

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Rebooting behaviour after lockdown- Advice to schools reopening in the age of COVID-19

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Rebooting behaviour after lockdown Advice to schools reopening in the age of COVID-19 No one would have believed in the last term of 2019 that a microscopic enemy was gathering speed against us. 'With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter,' as H G Wells said.

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Behaviour Management: A Bill Rogers Top 10

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Behaviour Management: A Bill Rogers Top 10

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Behaviour Management: A Bill Rogers Top 10

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Behaviour Management Strategies from Bill Rogers Without doubt the greatest personal challenge I’ve faced as a teacher was moving from the Sixth Form college in Wigan where I started teaching…

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Do teacher-student relations affect students’ wellbeing at school?

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Do teacher-student relations affect students’ wellbeing at school?

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EEF Managing behaviour and building habits

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EEF Managing behaviour and building habits

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'Evidence into Action' - EEF podcast returns with new episode on 'Managing behaviour and building habits'

Today, the EEF has published the second episode of our monthly podcast, ' Evidence into Action ', focusing on 'Managing behaviour and building habits'.

In this instalment, host Alex Quigley investigates the evidence on supporting pupils to form effective learning behaviours -both in-school and at home- with our panel of experts:

Kirsten Mould, EEF learning Behaviours specialist and current secondary school SENCo, explains how positive behaviours and routines underpin successful learning, in and out of the classroom (Start - 13:03);

Harry Fletcher-Wood, author, researcher and associate dean at Ambition Institute, highlights the importance of embedding habits in sustaining pupils' engagement with their learning; (13:03 - 29:18); and

Jenny Thompson, principal of Dixons Trinity Academy in Bradford and behaviour advisor to the Department of Education, discusses the way in which shared language and culture set standards for behaviour within her school's community. (29:18 - 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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'Evidence into Action' - EEF podcast returns with new episode on 'Managing behaviour and building habits' | News

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Today, the EEF has published the second episode of our monthly podcast, ' Evidence into Action ', focusing on 'Managing behaviour and building habits'.

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Running the Room: The Teacher's Guide to Behaviour

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Buy Running the Room: The Teacher's Guide to Behaviour by Tom Bennett (ISBN: 9781913622145) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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Kitchen Pedagogy 2.6 Responsive questioning

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In my Learning Rainforest and Evidence-informed practice CPD sessions, a core element is a focus on the power of questioning. In my view, good in-house CPD and feedback from lesson observation should put teachers' capacity and confidence with questioning at the centre. In my experience, great questioning is the hallmark of a really effective teacher and sits right at the top of the list for things teachers can and should improve. It's far far more important to support teachers with questioning than, for example, to fuss about the quality of their marking or accuracy of their data entry.

As I've explored elsewhere, there is good evidence for the role questioning plays in securing strong outcomes. It's the frontline of formative assessment and the key tool in responsive teaching. Teachers need feedback to them from multiple students in order to gauge how successful they have been in securing learning from their teaching. As Rosenshine explains, effective teachers ask more questions from more students in greater depth, checking for understanding, involving all learners and exploring thinking processes and misconceptions as well as correct answers.

See: Rosenshine Exploring Barak Rosenshine's seminal Principles of Instruction: Why it is THE must-read for all teachers.

See: Teaching Fundamentals Teaching Fundamentals: Checking for Recall and Understanding

Based on my reading and work with teachers over the years, I have found a particular repertoire of questioning strategies useful for teachers to work on and this is the list I usually work through in my training.

In combination, these seven strategies unlock the full power of questioning, each working on a different principle. The idea is to work on one or two with deliberate practice until they form a set of organic, default modes for engaging in responsive teaching.

Cold Calling: (Based on Lemov, TLAC)

Principle: All students should be involved in engaging with the teacher-student dialogue with time to think, and not be allowed to hide, dominate or be overlooked.

Practice: No hands up. Teachers ask questions and then select students to respond based on their knowledge of the class, avoiding the pitfalls of hands-up or calling out. This is an inclusive process that conspicuously involves all students, front, back, in the corners, shy, confident.. everyone. It's not a one-off strategy; it needs to be the default mode for most questions; absolutely routine.

No Opt-Out: (Based on Lemov, TLAC)

Principle: Students should feel safe in answering when unsure but, if they don't know or get things wrong, they should be given the opportunity to gain confidence by consolidating correct or secure answers. Also, students should not be allowed to opt out by saying 'I don't know'.

Practice: If a student or several students get an answer completely or partially wrong or they say they don't know, move to other students or provide the correct answer. But then go back to all those students who made errors or couldn't answer giving them a chance to now say the right answer. This gives them an opportunity for practice but if done routinely, it also means that students soon learn there is no value if offering 'I don't know' as a defence, in the hope of being left alone!

Checking for Understanding:

Principle: Teachers should not assume that knowledge aired and shared in the public space of the classroom has been absorbed; learned, by any individual. It's necessary to check for understanding from students to determine whether they understood what you meant? Do they now have the level of understanding you are aiming at?

Practice: After any exposition or question exchange with a particular student, ask a number of other students to relay back what they have understood. Even if they are answering a question that someone else has already answered, it's valuable for others to be given a chance to offer their version, showing what they have understood and, in so doing, giving the teacher feedback about how successful the teaching has been. It's especially powerful to ask multiple students, often yielding various different responses which throw up subtle points for further teaching.

Probing:

Principle: In order to explore a student's schema in any depth, you need to ask them several questions; asking several students one question each provides shallow responses compared to when each student has to provided multiple responses.

Practice: Make it the default that, in any given exchange, you are asking each student, 3,4,5 questions before moving on, probing for understanding, checking for misconceptions, adding extra challenge, providing scaffolding to engineer success. See Probing.
Great Lessons 1: Probing
Say it again, better:

Principle: It's normal for first responses to be half-formed as students think aloud and formulate ideas. A second opportunity to respond allows them to finesse their answers, adding depth, accuracy and sophistication. It's important not to inhibit students when they are unsure; it's also important not to allow them to assume mediocre answers are good enough.

Practice: When students offer a short, half-formed of partially incorrect answers, say, 'thanks, that's great....now say it again better. Try again but make sure you add in X and link it to idea Y' giving them an immediate opportunity to give an improved response.

Think, Pair, Share:

Principle: In pairs, all students have space to think, to air their initial thoughts, to confess their lack of knowledge and to prepare to give good answers, to rehearse. They are all involved and subsequent discussions then have lots of material to explore. It prevents 'blood out of stone' silences inhibiting discussion and it prevents 'forest of hands' or calling out cultures taking hold.

Practice: Give the class a specific time-cued task - e.g. to decide on four main points in order of importance, in three minutes - get them all talking in pairs and then, on time, bring them back together with a signal. Then engage in probing, cold call questioning asking them to report back what their three points were.
The 'Washing Hands' of Learning: Think Pair Share
Whole-Class Response:

Principle: Sometimes is useful or even essential to get a response from every single student at the same time. This provides quick feedback to you as the teacher about the success of the relevant teaching and learning exchanges, identifies individuals who need further input and can help direct subsequent questions or exercises as you respond to the feedback you gain.

Practice: My preference is for using whiteboards over any technology: they are cheap and quick and allow for responses to multiple-choice questions as well as practice sentences, calculations, diagrams - a full range. You set the question, give some response time and then, on cue ....3,2,1 Show Me.... Students all show their answers at once. A simple A, B, C, D = 1,2,3,4 show of fingers also works very well for multiple-choice. It's vital to engage with the responses. and then to adjust your teaching accordingly, consolidating, re-explaining or moving on as appropriate.
THE Number 1 Bit of Classroom Kit: Mini-whiteboards
There are obviously other strategies too but I find that this set gives teachers all they need to engage in highly effective responsive teaching. It's a case of practising each form of questioning deliberately and building up an ever improving default-mode repertoire over time.

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Great Teaching: The Power of Questioning

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In my Learning Rainforest and Evidence-informed practice CPD sessions, a core element is a focus on the power of questioning. In my view, good in-house CPD and feedback from lesson observation should put teachers' capacity and confidence with questioning at the centre. In my experience, great questioning is the hallmark of a really effective teacher...

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‎From page to practice: Episode 9 - Dual Coding with Teachers on Apple Podcasts

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‎Show From page to practice, Ep Episode 9 - Dual Coding with Teachers - 19 Jan 2020

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Mark Enser is a Geography teacher, author, D&D enthusiast and a prolific tweeter. He has also written the book Teach Like Nobody's Watching (TLNW) which I have recently read. I really enjoyed reading this and I felt that there's so much good stuff in there I had to take notes. Given that I then had a pile of notes, I felt that the best way to process them is for me to share them with all of you. This blog is by no means exhaustive and it's a long way from a review. Instead, I want to lay before you my response and how I think it's going to change the way I teach.

TLNW is billed as 'The Essential Guide to effective and efficient teaching'. It slowly zooms out from features of individual lessons into curriculum and then a wider school approach. Being a classroom teacher with some middle leadership duties that focus on learning and teaching. For this blog I've largely focused on the 'lesson' portion of the book, which Enser breaks down into Recap, Input, Application and Feedback.

Lesson:

Firstly recap. Enser encourages us to 'recapitulate' and tap into the human desire for narrative. How does what we learned before link to what we are learning today? Where is today's learning taking us tomorrow? More importantly, he stresses the importance of retrieval for learning information. By taking advantage of the spacing effect we can encourage our students to bring information from their long term memory into their working memory. When we retrieve information in this fashion we strengthen the ability to recall and so the likelihood of our students being able to recall that knowledge in future is increased - they are learning. If we are clever about it, we can increase the amount of time between recall opportunities, further building on the recall of information - they learn it 'better'. Enser offers a range of techniques for encouraging retrieval, and for me the most useful idea is that of making sure that all homework is not simply a repeat of the work covered that day, where the information will be fresh in mind and their notes to hand, but rather making all homework retrieval. From my own experience in science, seneca and other online learning platforms make this very easy from the teacher's perspective. Once you've selected appropriate activities these platforms mark and analyse the results for you. As a teacher it's then very easy to present whole class feedback - more on that later.

The second phase is input. This section is full of what I like to hope is now fairly standard stuff: Consideration of the limitations of working memory, direct instruction and the exploitation of dual coding theory, before moving on to the use of strong narrative structure, cold call questioning and suggesting a range of high quality non-teacher input. I had already begun to incorporate a lot of this material into my teaching, but for a new teacher, or someone just exploring how to incorporate Cog Sci into their teaching this is an excellent starting point. My main takeaway is the idea that the most effective teaching has clear, concise and unambiguous explanations. We, as teachers, are the experts in the room and so our role is to present the information to the students. Leaving them to figure it out for themselves, or 'discover' the knowledge is a really good way of embedding misconceptions or giving the pupils gaps in their understanding, not a very efficient way to teach. A thing that I would add is that we as teachers are not doing dual coding with our lesson, but are aiming to create resources that facilitate the students dual coding. That is to say if our resources are good they have a simple, strong visual element around which we can talk or present written notes. By activating these two different input streams students are able to dual code information.

This brings us to application. This is where the dread word 'differentiation' comes in. Tasks should be aimed at the most able students in the group and then ALL of the students offered tailored support to get there. This doesn't mean different students working on different tasks with different end points. It's not precisely in the book, but my personal mission is to end the practice of 'levelled learning objectives' once and for all. Bronze, silver and gold objectives have had their time, and now they can go. By telling students this information is for some of you and that information is for the brightest of you, it automatically caps your expectations. In my lessons I expect all children to learn all of the information. If they don't, I need to help them get there. If I can't, I need to find a way to do it. That's the heart of teaching. All students, all the information, all of the time.

Returning to TLNW, a second aspect of good application is that the students are thinking hard and concentrating on their work. This seems obvious, but at this point in the lesson they need to be practising new techniques by getting the answers to tasks perfectly correct. If not, you run the risk of them embedding misconceptions. To help with this, pupils ought to be focussed. Behaviour here is key. Conversation and discussion can be useful some of the time, but most of the time you want silent or near silent focus for this part. Now whether that looks like silence or not is debatable, but ultimately Enser recommends 'Studious Calm'. A great comment for me was the idea that when students ask a question in this phase, it's important to first ask them to think about it, use their own notes and resources etc., but then answer the question! I was trained with the maxim 'every time you tell a student something, you deprive them of the opportunity to learn it on their own' with the implication being that self learning was more effective. Enser refutes this. If they need you to clarify and they have genuinely thought about it, help them. There is also a great section that discusses VAK learning styles. I'll leave that up to you to read yourselves, but suffice it to say it is not a recommended technique.

Finally, feedback. From my own experience, individual book marking is so often a performative thing - the antithesis of the message in TLNW. The very notion of a 'verbal feedback given' mark or stamp makes me want to vomit. It's a waste of time, and only there to fulfil a box ticking exercise. It adds cognitive load to teachers who are doing an already cognitively demanding task as they interact with students. Enser too, states that 'The problem with marking is that we do it because we are worried about who might be watching. . .This outlook isn't leading to effective or efficient practice'. In this part of the book Enser offers a variety of strategies for delivering effective feedback in a way that is efficient for the teacher and based on sound principles. Again the key theme here is to get the kids working harder than the teacher. Marking and feedback are incredibly important, and also very powerful for improving student outcomes, but there are easier ways to do it than multicoloured dialogic evidence in exercise books.

The rest of the book is full of great stuff. As I mentioned before, I wanted to focus on the stuff we do in lessons as class teachers, but I did take some stuff from the other sections that I want to incorporate into my practice.

Curriculum:

Enser looks at curriculum on two levels. He considers curriculum in terms of programme of study - the order of topics and lessons including how they are interleaved and interwoven. Having just written a KS4 programme of study for chemistry, I've used this concept extensively to ensure that explicit links are drawn between concepts and that key ideas are revisited at various points throughout our 3 year course. Enser also writes about super-curriculum. Super-curriculum is a term that I have usually heard about in terms of cultural capital or hinterland. This goes beyond what is used in the classroom and is about a whole school approach to enrichment and serving wider curriculum experiences to kids at school than the classroom can necessarily provide.

Assesment:

This section led to my biggest take away. I have always been aware that giving grades to tests is flawed due to the impossibility of trying to make a topic test or similar of equal range, scope and difficulty as a full GCSE paper. Enser instead suggests the use of ranking and comparative judgement. While there is some debate around sharing whole class rankings with students, for teachers, this intuitively seems a more reasonable way of understanding the performance of pupils. Sadly, due to COVID, I haven't been able to try this in the classroom.

Overall, this book is a fantastic resource for any teacher who has been trained to a 'performative practice'. For me it has given me the absolute confidence to teach in a way that research says will work. It has inspired me to rethink the way that I teach and to strip away anything that doesn't actually support the children that I teach. My absolute favourite message is that on the whole teachers, as with the rest of humanity, intuitively know what they are doing and that the only reason they deviate from what works is to provide evidence for outside observers. I can only add that if that's not enough reason to change, you probably never will.

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What I Learned From: - Teach Like Nobody's Watching by Mark Enser

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Mark Enser is a Geography teacher, author, D&D enthusiast and a prolific tweeter. He has also written the book Teach Like Nobody's Watching (TLNW) which I have recently read. I really enjoyed reading this and I felt that there's so much good stuff in there I had to take notes.

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Spaced Retrieval Practice - ResearchEd Surrey 2020

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‎From page to practice: Episode 8 - The Science of Learning on Apple Podcasts

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‎Show From page to practice, Ep Episode 8 - The Science of Learning - 4 Jan 2020