Easter Teaching & Learning magazine 2016

Welcome to Philips High Teaching and Learning Magazine – March 2016

- Sharing ideas 1

with teachers!

‌And Relax!!

The Easter holidays are nearly here, two weeks of rest and relaxation await! You certainly deserve the break! This has been a busy term with lots to do!! But we have survived and can slowly start to see the sunshine of the Summer term approaching.

So, here’s to a happy Easter, lots of chocolate and a few wellearned treats!

Have an enjoyable and restful two weeks off!!

I hope you get a chance to read the magazine this month.

There are some interesting articles in here to read whilst devouring a Cream Egg or two maybe?!?

Happy reading!

Thanks,

EPl

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Contents 1) The Implications of GCSE Changes on School Accountability Page 4

2) Can I be that little bit better at‌.using cognitive science / psychology / neurology to plan learning?

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3) Revision‌. - @ASTSupportali

Page 18

4) Subject Pedagogy Development Session 3: Remembering and revising Page 30

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The Implications of GCSE Changes on School Accountability http://leadinglearner.me/2016/03/13/the-implications-of-gcse-changes-on-schoolaccountability/

POSTED BY LEADINGLEARNER ⋅ MARCH 13, 2016 ⋅ 9 COMMENTS

At the start of the week I was asked to present to a group of people from the Diocese the changes at A-levels and GCSE. The A-level changes whilst having massive implications for workload, being brought in at the same time as significant GCSEs for some inexplicable reason, are relatively easy to understand. However, the numerous changes at GCSE are of a totally different order in terms of understanding and implementation; not helped by delays in publishing syllabi.

The now compulsory PowerPoint presentation was prepared but two hours of being talked at is a tall order.

I decided the best approach would be to set the group an exercise on Attainment 8. One way of looking at potential changes to the curriculum over the coming years and the impact of the revised grading system is to calculate Attainment 8 over the next four years commencing Summer 2016. Whilst Progress 8 is going to be the new headline figure for secondary schools it is based on the Attainment 8 end point compared to the starting point; a pupil’s Key Stage 2 SATs point score and eventually their scaled score. It will take until 2021 before we have any national data that compares Attainment 8 with the scaled score being introduced in Primary Schools this year.

Calculating Attainment 8 The presentation gives a summary of the main changes but the following three graphics are required to help determine Attainment 8 from 2016 – 2019. At the bottom is a PDF document which you are welcome to download and have a go at. I’ll be using it with our Board of Directors as part of a training session and I think it might be a great exercise for a SLT Meeting so people really get into the detail of the changes facing them. Once you understand the changes more fully your decision making becomes more informed.

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Acknowledgement: Fischer Family Trust As the new GCSE 1-9 grading system is introduced, with Grade 9 being high, the pass grade is considered to be 5. This equates to the top end of the current grade C. Percentage pass rates based on the new grade 5 are likely to drop about 20% and possibly a bit more for the combined Percentage passing English & Mathematics from 2017 onwards. It’s worth realising that the EBacc pass rate will also plummet in 2017 and then further in 2018 as the EBacc subjects also move to the 1-9 scale.

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Acknowledgement: Ofqual (2014) During the changeover phase from letters to numbers, the table below shows the numerical value of each grade. High attaining students, and schools who have many of these pupils in, could see point scores rise with the converse true for middle and lower attaining pupils.

Acknowledgement: Building on Consensus (2015) SSAT(UK) The numerical value of the number grades is the number itself i.e. a GCSE grade 4 is 4.

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Download the Attainment 8 Challenge below: Calculating Attainment 8 2016-2019 – PDF Good luck with the challenge and I’ll blog out my answers (as yet unvalidated) on Sunday for you with some implications of the changes to keep an eye on.

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Can I be that little better at……using cognitive science/psychology/neurology to plan learning?

In my last post I talked about how a number of factors throughout an academic year can help inform what you plan, how you plan it, and ultimately why you would plan it that way. It took into account a lot of experience, trials, research and an underlying understanding of teaching. In this post, I look at how knowing a little bit about cognitive science, psychology and neurology can affect the way in which you plan learning. It’s always interested me how something I teach students’ one day can be forgotten only a few days later. How is it that something I was so confident was memorised (or learnt) by students seems to vanish so quickly. And that will be the underlying theme running through the posts. How can we actually (or as best as we can) get the stuff we teach learnt in a way that students will remember it for a long time to come? Now I may be speaking out of turn, but knowing how to make things 'stick' so that they can be retrieved at a later date, and methods we can plan into our lessons to do this, should at least cross our mind when putting a plan together. You may not do anything out of the ordinary, but understanding how the brain works (that is if we actually really know how it works?) could help make what we plan to do to, and how we plan to do it, be that little bit more effective. But first, here’s a summary of three background pieces of information you should be aware of:

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It’s all a bit…..chemical-ly?

In a short sweet summary, the brain creates memories or templates through the release of various chemicals in the brain. The two main ones are glutamate and dopamine. Dopamine is the chemical that as teachers we want students’ brains to be releasing to ensure what we are teaching actually sticks. It’s essential for making templates and connecting neurones to have this present in learning. But how? Well dopamine is predominantly released in two ways. One of them is stress. Although stress releases dopamine, it actually floods the brain and causes future problems. It releases other chemicals that inhibit learning and actually affect the areas concerned with memory. A more appropriate way is through reward and anticipation of reward (Curran, 2008). As a teacher this can be created by the level of challenge and the way we involve students in learning. I’ll talk about it a little later. The main message here though is that if we create a highly stressful environment for students, we shouldn’t be surprised if things don’t stay in students memories for long.

The brain has a working memory, and it’s a really important part if we want things to stick.

In essence, when students are learning in your classroom they initially use their working memory to process and filter what it is you are teaching them. The working memory however has limited space and can get very crowded very quickly. It can also get filled up with distractions or irrelevant information which is why students sometimes misunderstand or can't remember things.

"Working memory is the workspace in which thought occurs, but the space is limited, and if it gets crowded, we lose track of what we're doing and thinking fails"

(D.T.Willingham Why Don't Students Like School)

Now the working memory deals with the ‘here and now’. It’s what students use when forming an understanding as we teach them or explain something. Information resides in here as students make meanings or develop understanding. When the conditions are right, this information can then be transferred to the long term memory.

Working memory is a key player in getting information into our long term memory Daniel T. Willingham in his book Why Don’t Students Like School? explains that working memory and long term memory work hand in hand with each other. When the working memory is dealing with new information, it calls upon the long term memory for relevant background information to help make sense of it. Once the working memory has thought 8

about it, understood it and made meaning of it, there is a good chance that this information is committed to the long term memory. This is a very basic analogy and isn’t as simple as it sounds. If it were, students’ would remember a lot more than they already do. But they key message here is that information needs to be attended to in the working memory otherwise there is little chance of a lasting memory ever happening.

So how do we do this?

1 - The working memory is limited in space though so we need to consider this in our planning.

It is therefore really important in planning to ensure that when an element of learning is taking place, we don't over complicate it or create unnecessary distractions. Ensuring that the attention of the student is purely on the learning is something that should be considered when planning. Will the example you give or the task you design actually alter the students focus elsewhere and away from the topic in hand? Nuthall in his book discusses how students’ recollection of information can be affected by the type of activity we design. He states “sometimes memory for the task itself is longer lasting than the content the task was designed to teach”. Willingham also gives a great example in his book where a teacher creates a task that resulted in students creating PowerPoint presentations. Sounds normal yes? The point he raises though is many students focused on the quality of the PowerPoint (the animations, fonts, pictures) and focused very little on the content they were learning. Obviously the level of learning and what could be remembered about the topic at a later date wasn't very high. That isn't to say though that we give up using variety and being creative in lessons (because this is an important part of remembering which I will talk about later), but the suggestion is to work on the content first, refine it, learn it and plan it before putting it into a new context (a poster, presentation, leaflet). Therefore the learning in lessons, and time to create drafts, will need time carefully planned into it and come prior to starting such activities. Getting students to think about, analyse and design what goes into a presentation before they hit the computers is a consideration that should be taken on board.

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2 - Knowing things makes it easier to learn new things Ok that again is a bit simplistic but the constant theme coming through Nuthall, Willingham and the work of Bjork is that having prior knowledge helps understand new knowledge much easier (although Nuthall does go on to say that if students of different abilities have the same learning experience they will learn just as much as each other). It is though very difficult to know how much prior knowledge each individual has. In my last post I talked about the importance of knowing the prior attainment of your group and using this to inform future planning. But this is normally in the form of data and doesn’t tell you what they really know. There is the possibility of planning in pre-tests or other introductory activities but maybe we could make the initial planning that little bit simpler. One consideration is the careful planning of what is taught first and the sequences/pathways that follow. The tip is to build upon prior knowledge so logically ordering what is taught first so it snowballs and draws upon old information can easily be mapped out before starting a unit. Building upon prior knowledge and learnt information makes learning new topics easier. This is down to the fact that new knowledge retrieves and builds upon the older information to form new connections. The order doesn't have to be linear though and by using hooks, larger questions or starting with a broader concept, we can start with a wider idea which we can begin to learn about. So is there a logical order in your subject? Is there something that is vital to know first?

3 - We can make using the working memory more efficient This is more of a rationale rather than a tip. As my earlier quote from Willingham explains, if there is too much going on in the working memory, students can lose sight of what is going on and the process fails. Although there are no known ways to improve working memory, there is advice to using it more efficiently. If working memory has a limited space, crowding it with numerous pieces of information can make the learning more difficult and less likely to be remembered (as I touched upon above). A lot of new information we learn is done so by combining or linking to existing understanding or background knowledge. By making what you teach more likely to be stored in the long term memory, it is easier to retrieve it again in future when you need it and is more space efficient (for the working memory) when doing so. It therefore makes learning new information more achievable, especially when you need already learnt information (background knowledge) to do so. So planning to commit as much information as possible through these suggestions can make the learning of new information easier. Makes sense to me.

4 - It will only stick if you think about it Willingham in his book talks about the importance of getting students to think about the knowledge they are paying attention to. He explains that “your memory is not a product of 10

what you want to remember or what you try to remember; it's a product of what you think about”. It is therefore important we take his tip and “review each lesson plan in terms of what the student is likely to think about”. If we are to help commit what we are teaching to students’ memory to be recalled later, we need to ensure the level of thinking is high throughout. Unfortunately, many a lesson in my early career rarely had students thinking hard about anything at all. Should I have been surprised when test scores weren't great? So the step forward (in my case using SOLO taxonomy) is to constantly check planning before hand to evaluate the quality and depth of thinking that progresses through the lesson. Am I hitting the surface and background information at the right times to build up background knowledge, and then working with it at a higher level later on to compare, evaluate, analyse and predict? Willingham also talks about the fact that it's not just the level of thinking taking place, but the making meaning of what is being thought about. Are the activities we have planned to use actually the most effective to help them understand what the information means? This involves clever task design to ensure this happens. The use of concept maps, challenge, well thought out questions and carefully planned tasks need to become part and parcel of what I do. So, if the lesson I have planned doesn't make students think, or even understand the meaning of what is being taught, then it's back to the drawing board!

5 – Pitching it right As I said earlier on, the challenge that students are faced with when learning can help improve the likelihood of longer lasting memories to be formed. Willingham talks about solving problems (in a wider sense) and engaging students in cognitive work. If students aren't actually thinking and making meaning then it won’t be learnt. He also warns that “without some attention, a lesson plan can become a long string of teacher explanations, with little opportunity for students to solve problems”. So reviewing how challenging the lesson will be is again a really important point. Have you pitched the work right? Is there too little opportunity for students’ to think and be challenged?

And then there's the neurology side (as highlighted by A. Curran). If I want to get the brain cells firing I also need to go back to the fact that the level of challenge needs to be pitched adequately in order to create an emotional response (emotion improves what is remembered). In a very (and I mean very) basic summary, to learn new things we need chemical reactions involving the release of dopamine to be present. Dopamine is normally released when a reward is present. The emotion and reward of learning, and resultant dopamine release, is essential to commit knowledge to the long term memory. It's the chemical which binds the neurones together to create memory so is essential I help (if I can) to get them firing and dopamine released. Pitching a task too easy creates no real reward. Why would it? There simply isn't a reason for that feel good feeling to happen. On the flip side, creating a task so difficult and without clear steps to achieving it students feel helpless and see it is not achievable is also not conducive (but don't make the task easier, make the thinking around it easier). Again, knowing your group and planning to push individuals to create new meanings is another sure fire way to commit information to the long

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term memory. Planning to get that dopamine release isn't going to be easy, but pitching challenge is surely the way forward.

6 – Three is the magic number In his research that focused on how students actually learned in classrooms, Nuthall found that students who were exposed to a new concept on three different occasions and in a variety of experiences, stored the information in their memories for longer. He states that:

“We discovered that a student needed to encounter, on at least three different occasions, the complete set of the information that she or he needed to understand a concept. If the information was incomplete, or not experienced on three different occasions, the student did not learn the concept.”

Now using this principle, Nuthall was able to successfully predict what students would learn/remember with an accuracy of 80-85%. An important warning though is that simple repetition will not be sufficient. The three different experiences must come in a variety of mediums and ways. Variety is therefore the key. He also stresses that one great explanation is not enough. So why three times? Well he explains that new concepts aren’t transferred from the working memory into the long term memory until enough information has been accumulated to warrant it to make the move. Students need to have sufficient understanding, knowledge of meaning and be able to link it to prior knowledge. So in planning out a topic, will students really encounter a concept a minimum of three times each in their own varied way? If not, this may also be a reason for things not sticking.

7 – If you don’t use it you lose it

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This is a saying that I have heard for many years but is not quite right. It's true that things become harder to remember as Willingham states when he says "we forget much (but not all) of what we have learned, and the forgetting is rapid". Bjork (who I will introduce in a moment) along with Curran explain that it’s not a case that previously well learnt information we haven’t thought about is simply removed from memory. They say it is not as simple as that. Obviously our long term memory doesn't have an infinite capacity (do we really even know how much it has?), but one thing is for sure, if we don’t get students to revisit things, the connections or ‘route’ to them becomes weaker and more difficult. Bjork talks about the fact that these things simply become harder to retrieve. In some of the work by Bjork, subjects struggled to remember information they had learned a long time ago. When presented with possible answers or cues, they suddenly remembered. It wasn’t that the information was lost. It was just harder to find or retrieve and the prompts help with the process. So how can we ensure that we can help students learn something so that it is accessible a long way down the line (like during the exams period?). As point 8 states, ione consideration could be ‘Practice, practice, practice’.

Interlude – Intro to Bjork I thought it might be beneficial to stop for a moment and explain a little bit about Robert Bjork. Some of what I will now talk about use slightly different terminology and I wouldn’t want to confuse examples. One of the things that has got me most excited is the work of Robert Bjork, the Cognitive Psychologist from UCLA. He poses some VERY clear considerations of how to tweak planning to improve long term memory. Much of his work is not just applicable to the planning of lessons, but is also very important to long term planning of schemes, units or whole courses.

Bjork's work ties in with Willingham's research in a number of places. Bjork talks a lot about long term memory and the fact that what goes in there is dependent on two indices: its storage strength (SS) or its retrieval strength (RS). He talks very clearly about the importance of creating an environment where any new information is done so in a way that SS and RS is high. Designing lessons where both (or even one of them) are low, could make remembering this information very difficult. So what are these two elements and how to they link with planning?

Storage strength - 'How well learned something is'. It makes perfect sense that learning something in depth increases the chance that it will be stored in the long term memory. The better it is learnt the greater the storage strength. If it has high storage strength, it is pretty likely that it will be stored in the long term memory ready to be 'retrieved' at a later date.

Retrieval strength - 'How accessible (or retrievable) something is'. In very simple terms, retrieval strength works a little like this: The better you learn something, the higher the 13

storage strength, the higher the retrieval strength. Retrieval strength is your ability to recall, or retrieve, information at a later date. Now retrieval strength decreases over time which is why a few months or years down the line we find it difficult to remember something even though it is on the tip of your tongue. If something only has a low storage strength it will decrease quicker than something which you have learned well and ultimately has a high storage strength. Obvious to say then that if you want to remember something a long way down the road, you need to ensure what you learn is high in both SS and RS.

But what implications will this have on my teaching? How can I plan to have both of these? Well Bjork identified a number of conditions which over time increase the chances of high SS and RS - which in turn leads to information being retained for much longer. Now Bjork warns that these principles “slow down the apparent learning, but under most circumstances help long term retention, and help transfer of knowledge, from what you learnt to new situations”. He dubbed these conditions desirable difficulties. These conditions are purposely difficult and challenging to the students and assist in long term learning. Whether you see 'rapid and sustained progress' in 25 minutes is unlikely. But short term effects are not the goal here (and neither is it mine). So how does Bjork’s work tie in with the others? Let’s get back to the tips.

8 – Spacing it out (carefully mapping out practice, practice, practice).

Willingham and Bjork both have similarities in a lot of their work. Willingham talks about the need revisit work and states “It is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended practice”. It is important then that things we want to stay retrievable in the long term memory need to be engrained in it adequately. Practicing and repeated learning of a task can help make that information stick. It also makes it more accessible in the long term memory and this helps new learning and the function of the working memory more efficient. We therefore need to ensure that repeated practice is planned out throughout the year to ensure that a topic is revisited. A way to do this (as agreed by both Willingham and Bjork) is space out learning and times when we come back to a topic. As Bjork explains:

“It is common sense that when we want to learn information, we study that information multiple times. The schedules by which we space repetitions can make a huge difference, however, in how well we learn and retain information we study. The spacing effect is the

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finding that information that is presented repeatedly over spaced intervals is learned much better than information that is repeated without intervals (i.e., massed presentation).'�

In numerous studies in this field, Bjork and other researchers have found that the revisiting a topic multiple times over an extended period has a huge impact on the long term learning. Obvious hey? But do we always plan to do this? Bjork explains that by spacing out the intervals between revisiting a topic, we are encouraging the retrieval strength to decrease (The new theory of disuse - Bjork & Bjork 1992). He also promotes that we plan to have the duration between intervals increases each time as well. But why do this? Research showed that information with a high storage strength, which was allowed to lower in retrieval strength over time, actually improves the subsequent learning of it when revisited. The brain stores this information much better the second, third, forth time round and improves the retrieval strength as it goes. The act of trying to remember what we almost forget is a good thing for memory. Therefore planning to revisit topics and working out an optimal gap between revisiting it (increasing in length each time so it is almost forgotten) can have a very high effect on the long term learning of it. From a planning perspective, it is therefore vital that topics are mapped out through units and schemes, with opportunities for them to be revisited or recapped. Although this may seem time consuming to plan, or logistically a bit of a headache, the long term benefits can be far greater than simply blocking topics together (massing practice which ultimately results in very poor retention and retrieval strength) which is something we, and a lot of other schools, currently do.

9 – Interleaving Now if I spaced and revisited topics from a course using the previous idea, you might quickly realise that you would run out of available time in your curriculum. A way to ensure that spacing is done more efficiently is to weave numerous topics together throughout the year. An example of this may be linking a topic I cover at the start of the year, say gender in sport, with a topic I teach a few months later, sponsorship in sport. This process is called interleaving and requires the learner to constantly reload information from the long term memory. A more extreme version of this may be to teach gender in sport, then age in sport, then diet in sport and so on, until finally returning to recover gender in sport, age in sport......etc. As you can see, this could be logistically impossible with the time constraints of a 2 year GCSE course. At a first time of trying this very different approach it could also be perplexing for students. Instead, using the principle of spacing, combined with my initial example of interleaving, can result in a very exciting programme of study. It steps away from the blocking of topics (massing practice) and allows for retrieval and storage strength to be increased. It also allows juxtaposition of various topics and deepens understanding. Planning out the course more effectively using this principle can be easily done. The use of SOLO taxonomy in my personal lesson design also assists the achieving of this. It does require careful mapping out, but reworking schemes this way ensures SS and RS increase. A winner for long term learning.

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10 – The testing effect “Taking a test often does more than assess knowledge; tests can also provide opportunities for learning. When information is successfully retrieved from memory, its representation in memory is changed such that it becomes more recallable in the future and this improvement is often greater than the benefit resulting from additional study.”

Being asked to retrieve information alters your memory so information becomes more recallable in the future. Bjork identified testing as a method that can help make this happen. This isn't testing purely for assessment though, although it can serve both purposes if needed. The process of testing allows the connections towards that piece of information to strengthen, and therefore be easier to access than other methods. It can be done in a number of ways. Here are three which I will be planning to use over the year:

If we start in a logical order, Bjork found that testing prior to a topic or unit can has an improved resulting effect to long term learning. This is an easy enough task to put in place and can be planned for at the start of any new topic. “Although pretest performance is poor (because students have not been exposed to the relevant information prior to testing), pretests appear to be beneficial for subsequent learning (e.g., Kornell, Hays, & R. A. Bjork, 2009).” It in itself provides cues for the then to be learnt information which makes it more learnable.

Using testing within lessons is also an effective method to increase long term learning. As stated earlier, the process forces the brain to retrieve information from long term memory and can make future retrieval quicker. It's effect can be very powerful (in one study students remembered 61% of information from repeated testing compared to 40% from repeated study - Henry L. Roediger, III, and Jeffrey D. Karpicke). Adding tests as a starter, mid lesson activity or even plenary are very easy to organise and implement. But what type of tests are best? Although there are no sure fire answers, Bjork found the use of multiple choice tests to have a higher effect. As Bjork explains “Little and E. L. Bjork (2010) argue that when students do not know the answer to a multiple-choice question, they may try to retrieve information pertaining to why the other answers are incorrect in order to reject them and choose the correct answer. It is this type of processing leads to the spontaneous recall of information pertaining to those incorrect alternatives, thus leading the multiple-choice test to serve as a learning event for both the tested and untested information.” Therefore the use of multiple choice and working out the various options, helps improve the retrieval strength and subsequent long term retention.

Finally, Bjork identified that using tests and quizzes with students and their peers is a much better way of ingraining information to the long term memory than simply hitting the books. I personally have already found this an outstanding revision tool as explained in an

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earlier post here. Using testing as a desirable difficulty in the revision season can again increase retrieval strength.

11 - Final consideration: Mnemonics and other ‘tricks’ can help

Something we covered with students in our Learning to Learn course where simple memory tricks to help students remember information. Now if there is information to be learnt, which requires little thought or seem meaningless together, a way to remember them is to use mnemonics or acronyms. Because these pieces of information need to simply ‘be known’ in order to progress onto future learning, the use of these strategies can be very helpful in these instances. So as Willingham explains, we shouldn’t be afraid to use them when suitable. The same can be said for approaches like chunking. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a method by memorising information by grouping things by association. An example might be by remembering all of the fruit, then the stationary, and then the sports equipment from a long list of words. The working memory works better when it isn’t overloaded. By chunking numerous topics, this counts as one piece of information in the working memory, not several individual pieces. It therefore makes for an effective, and efficient, quick little method to share in class.

If we believe what these principles say, by focusing on the way we plan in a slightly different way, we could be improving the chances that students learn information for the long run. Hopefully these methods allow students retention rates to improve, rather then being forgotten only a few days, weeks or months later.

Links and further reading:

The Hidden Lives of Learners - Graham Nuthall Why Don't Students Like School - Daniel T. Willingham 17

The Little Book of Big Stuff About the Brain - Andrew Curran Applying Cognitive Psychology to Enhance Educational Practice - Robert Bjork Deliberately Difficult - Why It's better to make learning harder - David Didau Everything you thought you knew about learning is wrong - Garth Sundem Effective Exam Revision - 'Drill Baby Drill!' - Alex Quigley Why is it that students seem to understand but then never remember? - Kris Boulton Ooh, and I've just found this: http://www.learningspy.co.uk/training/wellington-education-festival/ - David Didau presentation

http://reflectionsofmyteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/can-i-be-that-little-betteratusing.html ***********

Revision… – @ASTSupportaali I have started to collate really useful blogs about revision… scroll down to read them!

Also- here is my toolkit post about all of us sharing our revision ideas…

And, here is a 15 minute training session I provided for some PGCE students.

I am no expert! I am not basing these ideas of MINE on research/theories (that I have read) but on the students that I have taught and the outcomes they have achieved. If you disagree, please do comment with how I can better my practice for the students I am responsible for.

Exam season- again!: Time to wrap up our delivery of content, vital information, key facts, formulae, dates, people and so on. It is now time to focus (again/more) on ensuring students 18

knoweverything and anything they will need in order to secure an excellent grade in the exam.

A-C grades are not the only grade our students need to achieve to be successful.

Ensure your students know what their personal targets are?

By definition revision is about updating, revamping, reworking, redrafting, rewritingand so on… It is important to note revision is not LEARNING from scratch.

Therefore, the following information and ideas I will be presenting will work best, when learning has already taken place.

I believe revision is a very personal process. I do not believe generally that one hat fits all. There are many factors to consider in order ensure revision is effective; (This is not a definitive list!).

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Time/Time/Rest

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Environment/Organisation

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Motivation

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Time- 1: Picking the right time of day to revise is vital. Knowing when one feels most active and alert is crucial in ensuring the brain functions the best. I liken myself to an OWL or a vampire! I love staying up late to study/write/prepare. I would much rather a lay in then getting up early to revise. `Ensure your students know what time of day they are most active?’ Let them build on this, if they get up later, they would get to bed later, so in theory they will have the same amount of time in a day.

Time- 2: Knowing how much time to spend on revision is also vital! We must be realistic, students do have OTHER things to do. We need to accept that. Therefore, creating a reasonable, valid, achievable timetable is essential. This might sound easy to us; i.e telling students to write a timetable, however, I have always found it time well spent getting students to do this in class with a template provided.

I always ask my students to write down their essential ‘other‘ tasks in a day, then their non-essentials. Next to these, I ask them to place a count of how long they

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spend on these. I ask them to then tally up the amount of time they spend on these in total. This is usually enough of an eye opener for students!

Rest: The brain is like a muscle, we can not expect our students to revise all day and night.

When we workout, our muscles need a rest. However, I do not feel we should be prescriptive with the amount of time we tell our students to revise for and when to take a rest. I personally feel we all have different thresholds and it should be down to the student to decide.

The message however is clear, take regular breaks to refresh and rest your mind.

Do not get ‘junked‘ up with sweets/sugar/caffeine. Eating properly is important, but eating what you like/enjoy is also vital. Otherwise, in my opinion revision gets linked to horrible tastes?! It does get boring, it does get mundane, eyes do get fuzzy, so being able to intersperse these feelings with a little bit of chocolate cake isn’t too bad!? :) @ActionJackson shared this rule with my students… work, work, work play rest.

3- 1- 1.

See the video here for more info!

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Environment/Motivation: Students must be able to work in an adequate environment. Sometimes, some students homes can not provide this. Research for your students their local library opening times, the facilities they have there. What bus stop is nearest? Find out other places students can study?

Can you lend your students and exam desk to work on that can folded away. It is important to de-clutter and focus.

Motivation to be successful this isn’t for a revision post‌ See my last post regarding this!

How does it all work: In order for information to remain in our long-term memory, we must understandit, we must link it to already acquired knowledge and then 22

attach meaning to it. Ultimately, we want to then apply it to examination questions. (…Think SOLO?) Therefore all revision sessions/games/lessons should take on board those concepts.

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understanding– do the students know exactly what this concept/idea/topic means? Can they explain it to others?

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Linking to knowledge- can the students link the information to other ideas, areas, concepts?

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meaning– do the students know the reasoning behind the learning?

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applying– will the students be able to applying their knowledge and meaning to the exam?

Do your revision sessions allow for those processes to take place? (Naturally you would hope so, as the above is also applicable to ‘normal’ lessons!)

Often, I worry that revision games become exactly that. A game. The focus on understanding, or linking is lost through the ‘fun’ nature of the game and the objective of winning becomes more important than the learning that should be taking place.

Here are some revision station games/ideas I use. Click HERE. I have listed under each activity what the focus is. I have also come to realise some students do not like doing a variety of tasks as they know what works well for them.

Only believe this feeling/confidence from the students if they have proven this.

Meaning, have they achieved good grades previously? Therefore does their style of

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revision work? Ask them to talk through it with you; how did they revise, what did they do, how did they ensure they achieved a good grade? If they answer well, then allow them to the independent to choose their method of revision. This will motivate them too.

Spice of life: Revision to me is also ensuring that students know about a variety of ways they can revise. I often go on and on and on about the importance of taking information and linking it to your knowledge, transforming the information to help understand it and applying it to examination questions.

Reading and highlighting notes is the pre-cursor to revision, those are the tasks that are carried out in lessons or completed at home. All students revision notes should already be annotated/highlighted BEFORE revision begins? Those elements are learning. Therefore, hand out revision guides well in advance, give your personally created booklet of advice before the holidays, before the course may have even finished.

A great way of ensuring students do not become too complacent, thinking they understand information because they have simply over familiarised themselves with it by reading it constantly, is to apply the magenta principles to text/information.

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Students should aim to do one of the above to the information they must learn/understand. This will help link to knowledge, show meaning and apply to examination questions‌ Options: I have compiled a list of over 40 different ways to revise here. (Some are for revision sessions/methods for teachers, some are revision methods/ideas for students.) Share these with your colleagues? Students? Parents? Use the hashtag #RevisionIdeas15 to search out great posts by other teachers.

Show students there is a multitude of ways to revise, but make sure they are sticking to the core principles.

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Some top tips: (In no particular order!)

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Download and share this literacy/command word wheel. This helps break down for students exactly what each question is asking the student to do. Understanding the subtle differences is paramount.

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Revision should be on ongoing process checking for understanding throughout the course, (marking and feedback,) Know your students understand the meaning and are able to apply concepts in exams. I have always shown exam past papers and mark schemes to students from the very first week of my lessons. I have ensured students are familiar with the layout, the way the questions appear, the style of the questions. I have ensured students read examiner reports, know where to download past papers. Check out my GCSE RE blog- www.cheneyre.edublogs.org where I have shared this info.

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Content Dependent Learning- try this really useful idea by Sir Tim Brighouse.

Clickhere. Includes a 2 minute video presentation explaining this concept.

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Create podcasts/videos/information throughout the course. Click here and here for some ideas.

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Remind students how long they have until their exam. Remind students how many lessons they have, how many school days they have, how many hours this totals up to. I do this often. At the start of a lesson, I may just simply put a countdown timer up on the board as they enter…

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Running revision sessions is excellent; however ask the students BEFORE hand what they want to revise, add a Padlet to an email? To your class blog? Ask students to fill

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in a piece of paper…however you do it, ask students to tell you what they need most help UNDERSTANDING, knowing the MEANING of and how to APPLY.

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Involve students in the revision process as much as possible. Get them to create the revision guides for the year below, ask them to run the sessions. See here for a student based lesson. Get the students to create google drive revision questionnaires on a topic each. Get the students to then complete each others quizzes. Click here for an example.

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Ask students to tweet (run a subject twitter account for themselves. The teacher doesn’t need to get involved.) Get students to create a Facebook group? Teacher could set up an Edmodo page. Students should email (maybe more like FaceTime/Skype/snapchat/bbm) each other to remind each other to revise. incentivize the motivation!

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Practice…practice…practice… in the real conditions in the real environment. Give students past papers, photocopied and stapled as they would in the real exam. Get students to write in the examination booklets. Get them used to it. Familiar with the obstacle.

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Collective approach to revision; Ask subject leaders to coordinate their approaches.

Check teachers are giving the same/similar message? Check what the revision catch up schedules are of other subjects. Ensure they do not clash. Here at my school we

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have a designated day for Eng, Maths, Science. To help alleviate the problem of students having to chose which subject they will miss. 

Link examination grades with outcomes. Why would it benefit the student to do well in your exam. Why is it important? What is the end goal?

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Use Youtube/Websites/APPs- videos (We have a revision channel on our school Youtube channel) and online quizzes (Such as Getrevising.co.uk or tutor2u.com) can be an essential ‘extra’ to revision. Don’t forget the core websites- such as Mymaths.com SamLearning BBC Bitesize and so on.

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Posts such as these can really help focus students on examination questions;Revision Mats, Concentric Squares/ Rotation Squares/ Overlays. Check outbit.ly/agilitytoolkit for many more.

I do not have all the answers… I imagine this post will be constantly edited/updated when I remember more ideas! @ASTSupportaali Top blogs about revision:

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By @Chrishildrew here

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By @Shaun_Allison here

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By @HuntingEnglish here

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By @AndyPhillipDay here

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By @JamieDavies here

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By @Turnfordblog here

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By @TFI_Teach here

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By @RobGeog here

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By @Candidagould here 29

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Subject Pedagogy Development Session 3: Remembering and revising Posted on March 9, 2016by classteaching

During our INSET day today, Andy Tharby led our third Subject Pedagogy Development Session, focusing on memory – how we should be using what we know about memory, to support revision.

Andy started by telling us about degus – a rodent shown above. Having recently bought his son a hamster, Andy was reading some information about them and came across the degu. As he had never heard of them before, he turned to Google – where he found the following: Like some other herbivores such as rabbits, they perform coprophagy (faecalreingestion) so as to extract more nutrition from their diet.

‘Why remember stuff when we have Google?’

Well this example illustrates that perfectly. Whilst Google may have given you part of the answer, if you didn’t know what ‘faecal’ and ‘reingestion’ meant, it probably wouldn’t mean much (which might be a good thing!) So we need to know things, and in order to know things, we need to remember them. We can’t just rely on Google.

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Andy then asked us if anyone recognised the picture above. Only one person in the whole staff did – history teacher Jack Tyler. Jack informed us that it was in fact Quaker philanthropist and penal reformer Elizabeth Fry and that the picture was taken from a five pound note. Now, we all see five pound notes a lot, so why didn’t more people know the answer? Very simply, because we don’t think about it. To remember things, we need to think about them.

Why is memory important?

1. New 100% terminal exams/GCSEs are in the pipeline, so we need to be preparing students for remembering lots of things.

2. Lots of factual knowledge are needed to perform a skill.

3. Curiosity – once we know something, we want to find out more.

4. Creativity relies on us being able to bring together lots of bits of knowledge and then doing something with it 5. Not a return to rote learning and drill-and-kill.

Two important types of memory Declarative memory – memory for repeatedly encountered facts and data e.g. square root of 25; spelling words; capitals of countries; labelling the parts of a cell.

Procedural memory – memory for sequences of events, processes and routines. This is particularly important for more practical subjects such as PE, drama, dance and art.

In reality, most of the subjects we teach involve a combination of declarative memory and procedural memory.

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Herman Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist who looked at memory and forgetting in the 19th century. Ebbinghaus made up a large number of ‘nonsense syllables’ and then tried to recall them, at set periods of time. As can be seen from the graph, after 19 minutes he had forgotten about 40% of them, and after 2 days about 75% of them. This has shocking implications for our students. After just an hour after your lesson that you have lovingly prepared, they will probably have forgotten about half of it…and then about 75% of it after 2 days!

All is not lost though! Further experimentation revealed that if the new information is reviewed, after the initial exposure, the rate of forgetting slows down. If the spacing between these reviews is increased, this appears to support memory and reduce ‘forgetting’. So, the simple message here is that once we have taught something, if students are going to remember it, we need to keep coming back to it.

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Easier said than done, with our content heavy exam specifications and limited time! The work of John Dunlosky may provide us with a way forward:

John Dunlosky et al, Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology, Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14(1) (2013): 4–58.

It appears that two techniques seem to be particularly effective – practice testing and distributed practice. Regular quizzing provides the opportunity for practice testing and by distributed practice, we mean spacing topics out and coming back to them.

Classroom Strategies 1. Regular low-stakes quizzes/tests. (“Using our memory improves our memory.”) By low stakes, we mean not asking students to tell us their scores – that is for them to know. By keeping it low stakes, we reduce anxiety and this has been shown to be more effective. It’s important that these quizzes/tests cover content that was covered not just in the last lesson, but also last week and last month – and if they perform poorly, get them to do it again.

2. Train students how to self-quiz – flashcards are very useful for this. The ‘Chegg Flashcards App‘ is great for this – as are Quizlet and Memrise.

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3. Elaborate interrogation – asking ‘why’ something is true. So develop your questioning, and their responses, by asking students ‘why?’ in response to their original answer to your question.

4. Start lessons with a review of previous learning, by using a quiz/ discussion or stimulus material e.g. a picture/diagram from the previous lesson, or a sentence starter, for them to finish, that summarises the previous lesson.

5. Build ‘pause’ lessons/revision lessons into curriculum/homework/assessment. A pause lesson is when no new material is taught, but the lesson is used to review previous material, go back over work they have struggled with etc. Our geography team have been thinking about this – read more here.

6. Mnemonics for difficult-to-remember material – i.e. acronyms, acrostics, rhymes, visuals etc. – for example Richard of York gave battle in vain, for the colours of the spectrum.

7. Overlearning – we usually think we remember more than we do, so avoid this by encouraging students to keep going over material, even of they think they have it.

The first diagram summarises what we normally do in secondary schools i.e. teach the curriculum and then revise like mad, in the few weeks leading up to the exams. This does not align with what cognitive science tells us work, in terms of memory. A better approach is the second diagram – blend revision strategies in, throughout the whole curriculum, using some of the strategies described above.

This was the challenge for our subject teams today. Below is a sample of some of the planned actions, from different subject areas: Geography How the new YouTube channel can be used as a revision aid for students to review material at home. Link here.

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Devising and using trigger words to act as memory cues for longer answer questions. For example: The Yalta Conference Feb 1945 Task: For each word write down everything you can recall about it’s relevance to the above topic 1.Japan 2.Divide 3.Elections 4.Sphere 5.Poland Business/ICT/Computing

We are going to use more regular quizzing, using past papers across the department.

We are going to look at ways to introduce Pause lessons with Y10s this year and next year so that theory and coursework is more evenly spread across the year and there aren’t periods of time with no focus on either element of the course.

Maths

Revision lessons on several old topics followed by booklets with questions from all of those topics, mixed up so students have to remember what to do for each different type of question. Spent some time developing resources for use with year 11 sets eg pop quizzes, revision lessons, etc Developing resources to be added to scheme of work to build in revision throughout year groups.

Resources to cover different year groups and abilities, available for use by whole dept.

MFL We started off in languages with some discussions of how to support Year 11. We already do regular vocab starters/low-stakes vocab tests at the beginning. We are going to start getting students to make their own quizzes based on words seen in class (using their exercise books) and then swapping with a partner. We also talked about making words ‘memorable’ by linking them to funny ideas images – e.g. hacer de canguro (to do babysitting) literally means “to do kangaroo”. By linking this phrase to a picture, this will hopefully make it stick!

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We are also going to do pause lessons starting in Year 10 and looked at places in the scheme of work where these would fit in. After some disagreement (!), we agreed on the following topics for the first term of Year 10: * higher numbers/dates *telling the time *prepositions of place * directions *question words Many of our students will not have seen these since Year 8 so it makes sense to revisit them here. From our experience, Year 11 often fall down on these areas and we have to cram in a revision session on these topics before the exams. Hopefully this way will be better!

PE We looked at planning ‘Low stakes quizzes’ as well as flash cards.

We split into three group to design quizzes and flash cards for both GCSE PE and GCSE Dance.

By the end of the session we had created 5 quizzes bases upon what year 11 were moving onto in two weeks’ time as well and 5 quizzes for ‘diet’ which is what year 10 are currently looking at. Lizzie and I also created a variety of differentiated quizzes for 5 different topics within GCSE Dance. All quizzes will be used as starter activities within the next few weeks.

The other group created around 30 flash cards based upon diet and organisation and we will be using these cards within theory lesson for revision.

We will be using a ‘pause’ lesson for students to create own quizzes and flashcard and will be looking at how we can implement ‘pause’ lessons into the course.

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We created a list of over 200 quiz questions to support memory/revision of A Christmas Carol. In Y10/Y11.

Drama & Music Quiz sheets – To stick in question sheet for them to answer straight onto so that they have a record of the questions.

Flashcards – printed as a booklet so they don’t get lost https://classteaching.wordpress.com/2016/03/09/subject-pedagogy-developmentsession-3-remembering-and-revising/

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