HGIOS 4, 2.3 Learning, teaching and assessment

Learners’ experiences are appropriately challenging and enjoyable and well matched to their needs and interests.

How can you ensure ALL learners are challenged in your lessons?

Think about it:

Let’s make thinking visible

What’s in a question, you ask? Everything. It is a way of evoking stimulating response or stultifying inquiry. It is, in essence, the very core of teaching. (John Dewey, 1933)

Sometimes less is more!

• Ask fewer questions.
• Ask questions that are worth asking.
• Ask yourself would pupils be any worse off if I didn’t ask this question?

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Time to enter the Matrix!

Journey to deeper thinking

Research shows…

Three areas that are necessary for pupil learning:

1. time to respond (wait time)

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1. a norm of participation

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1. questions that require effortful retrieval.

Wait Time

• Prompt thinking skills: ‘You might need to consider the work we did on…’/’Try connecting this to…’

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• Make it transparent: ‘This is a tricky one, so I’m giving you 30 seconds to think about it.’/ ‘This task is more challenging so I am going to give you x minutes more.’

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• Give real think time: silence is expected.

(‘Teach Like a Champion’, Doug Lemov, 2021)

Think-Pair-Share (and Square?)

(Tom Sherrington, 2022)

‘Cold calling as a routine is the most effective way to maximise thinking during dynamic, responsive question and answer exchanges.’

(Tom Sherrington, 2021)

Effective Use of Multiple Choice Questions

Elaboration Task

Can you tell me why the other options are incorrect?

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Can you add anything to the correct answer?

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What else do you know about…?

e) I don’t know yet.

What’s the Question?

42

voltage

collectivist

inventory control

respiration

Robert Bruce

dramatic irony

⅗

tengo que decir que prefiero la cocina de mi madre.

Let’s have a ‘quescussion’!

Question Continuum

Complexity: How far the question deepens understanding & complex thinking.

Interest level: How likely the question is to inspire new thinking & possibilities.

‘You’re my wonderwall!’

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

‘Feedback ought to be more like a medical than a post-mortem.’

(Douglas B Reeves, 2008)

Feedback moves learning forward

Three purposes of feedback:

1. To help pupils understand how they are doing
2. To highlight ways they could improve
3. To motivate and encourage.

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Practice

Feedback

What are the problems you have come up against when creating and/or delivering feedback?

Why is marking problematic?

• It is time-consuming.
• Workload can be massive.
• Expectations can be high 🡪 unrealistic.
• Accountability pressure often placed on work scrutiny, where marking can become the focus.

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BUT it is also:

• largely wasted.
• not acted upon.
• not necessarily securing improved learning outcomes.

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Helpful or unhelpful?

• Add more detail.
• WAFFLE!!!!
• Make a more sophisticated argument.
• Disappointing conclusion.
• Get the tenses right.
• Be more precise in your use of language.
• Careless!

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Regularly check for understanding

• Learners need to be challenged to prove their understanding.

Stop asking, ‘Do you all understand?’

Start asking, ‘What do you understand?’ (Professor Jonathan Firth, 2022)

• Show-Me boards as a top tool for checking understanding:
• Make all pupils think.
• Make all pupils commit to a specific answer.
• Make all pupils’ learning visible.

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Active Feedback

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Feedback (Allison and Tharby, 2015)

Substitute - what could you change in order to improve?

Take away - what info is unnecessary and could be removed?

Add - What could you add in order to improve?

Rearrange - How might the order of ideas be improved?

Top Tips

• Discuss the purpose of feedback
• Model the use of feedback
• Chunk feedback
• Provide time to respond
• Monitor its use

Recommended Reading

• Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)
• Teacherhead.com (Tom Sherrington)
• lovetoteach87.com - Kate Jones (for retrieval practice)