Thinking & Teaching

 Memory is the residue of thought I have read this so often and always completely agreed (can't remember who said it- Willingham maybe? David or Daniel? Was it even D?)  Memorable learning events are a hook into the residue of thought though. I have read a lot that has said swiss rolls for fractions aren't any good, puppets for Romeo and Juliet aren't any good - and I agree that these events may not lead to learning - but they can be a trigger.  These days, we're all up with triggers (remembering or re-experiencing something similar which loops our brains back to that time). Maybe this is the same for learning? Hindsight is a wonderful thing; looking back can help us to understand the present. So a memorable learning event could help learning in the present.  We read our first proper knowledge organiser this week and I asked children to highlight everything they already knew. I worried that they might highlight everything (feature detective highlighting in English re...

 I have now started to put together a document which identifies potential gaps in learning from lockdowns (1 and 2) for my current year group. I am really lucky that I was a Year 4 teacher during the first lockdown, as I know what we should have taught and what remote learning we provided. I also know what the uptake on the remote learning was for my class. I realise now that this is all quite late in the game, we should have done this in September - but who has been through this before? Who felt confident about going back to school? What needed to be done? And how? It's in hindsight, and a nudge from Ofsted, that we need to properly address gaps - not just be aware of the gaps.  In my meeting with Ofsted I kept repeating how much I knew about this cohort's missed learning because I had been in that year group - I know, I tell my Year 5 colleagues, we have a good picture. But, quite rightly, Ofsted asked how anyone else knew this about their year group. Especially those teache...

Over Easter I've spent a bit more time tweaking the knowledge organisers. I've now added a box names 'Learning Recycling' (using the green recycling symbol) which makes a link to prior learning. This could be to the last part of the same unit, for example referring back to learning within the same year groups - spring term's science lessons on canines and molars and making the link to the new learning on food chains -  or referring back to a different year group's learning, eg. food chains now that we're learning about life cycles in Year 5.  The examples I've made so far link to individual topics or themes, but you could include reviewing light on a Year 5 KO even though this topic doesn't come up in Year 5. Maybe there could be a pit stop for all the science that is taught in Year 4 and 6, but not specified in year 5? A mini review in between when it is explicitly taught so that it isn't forgotten. Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve shows that r...

We've just had our section 8 visit from Ofsted and one major point of feedback asked us how our curriculum helped children to know more and remember more. This is now a big focus for my school, one which I hope to be an instrumental part of in bringing in change and improvements.  Myself and two other wider curriculum subject leaders met with Ofsted, an experience from which I learned a lot and has fired me up with all sorts of plans and ideas. We were expecting a visit from Ofsted and so had prepared to answer questions about remote learning, how we were identifying learning gaps and what we were intending to do about it as a result. What I hadn't been prepared for was a full on pedagogical discussion where we justified how we were using principles from cognitive science to underpin learning in our curriculum - I'm sure other schools are doing just this, it just wasn't something my school has really thought about. In my nervous over-excited waffle I managed to mention ...