Many teachers and researchers believe (and I agree) that this is more useful for students than abstract mark schemes that may ask for ‘perceptive comments’ or ‘pertinent examples’ without any indication of what the difference between ‘confident’ and ‘perceptive’ actually is. Teachers recognise the power of models and regularly break them down for students to show the ingredients needed for success, making learning concrete. We should be reminding students of ‘desirable difficulties’ when training them to revise this way, as it will feel harder than studying one topic at a time, but it is more beneficial in the long-term! Students should also be encouraged to study topics or ideas in different orders and to make links as they switch in order to strengthen understanding and memory. Often confused with spacing, interleaving is switching between topics or ideas. Read more about how to make teaching and learning more memorable. For example, asking why two characters or authors are alike, or getting students to consider a time of huge change or conflict in their lives to imagine how a particular character felt can make concepts easier to understand and more memorable. Encouraging students to do the same is powerful. Teachers are great at using analogies in order to explain concepts and make them concrete for our students. This is what elaboration is all about: creating links between different ideas, asking how they are similar and different and applying their knowledge to their own memories and experiences.Įssentially, it is about making connections. In Ofsted’s new framework, they state that teaching should be designed to ‘help learners integrate new knowledge into larger concepts’. One way to encourage this through our teaching is to teach one topic while setting revision homework on something previously studied. Teachers and students should allow some time to pass before revising a lesson’s content – and ensure they are reviewing older topics too. The first important part of spacing is little and often, not cramming, as this is what some students will revert to if left to their own devices. This is an uncomfortable one for students I think because it involves allowing themselves to forget! You may want to take step one out at some point! 2. (iv) Fill in any gaps in a different colour. (iii) Check your answers against the material (ii) Cover it up and write down everything you remember When modelling, I break it down into these steps: I model this regularly for students and we have a go at it in class together before I set it as homework. When I do retrieval quizzes with my classes, I always say “it’s important you don’t look back in your books as that’s just copying which isn’t learning.”Īn important part of retrieval practice is checking the accuracy or level of detail students have produced against notes afterwards. Retrieval practice is recalling information without any prompts. Below, I will summarise each of the six ways I use them to help students remember the huge amount of content required for their exams. Keeping this in mind, I was interested to read The Learning Scientists blog about the six most effective study methods which I feel we must share with students through regularly modelling how to use them. Higher-ability students may well find their own way but those who need it most: the middle-lower end students are likely to just give up.
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