Progress Update: Some colleagues share some of their ideas so far

Some colleagues have kindly agreed to share some of their work. Read here about Independent Learning and Memory Retrieval

1. One group's line of enquiry is to find ways of ensuring that students can work more independently (of the teacher) and to evaluate any impact on their learning.

Here is what Reshma, Jade and Bhavna tried.

Aim – make students more independent through a variety of ways:

·         Year 8 – prepared starters on anything to do with number (evidence - student feedback)

·         Year 12 economics – students planned and prepared presentations once they had been given a brief outline of the topic. (evidence – student work, and observation notes)

·         Year 11 – prepared starters. Now have moved on preparing and presenting entire lessons including resourcing for revision purposes (evidence – student work)

·         Year 8 – ask students to read ahead and go through examples, which they can then present in the following lesson as part of the introduction to a topic.

·         Investigational activities to promote independent thinking through questioning (evidence – student work)

·         Modelling by students

·         Student topic leaders / “student experts”

It will be interesting to find out more soon…

Interesting Reading:
What is independent learning and what are the benefits for students? from CUREE

Here is the link:
http://www.curee.co.uk/files/publication/%5Bsite-timestamp%5D/Whatisindependentlearningandwhatarethebenefits.pdf


2. Meanwhile, Hina has been experimenting with ways in which her students can retrieve and retain knowledge for longer.

Here are a few notes from Hina:

CPD: Strengthening Knowledge (Memory) Retrieval and Retention. Experiments with 'Cheat sheets'

I have started to use a strategy called 'Collective Memory' and another where students create ‘cheat sheets’. I focused on years 9 and 10.  Here I will write about 'cheat sheets'.
To experiment with the use of cheat sheets, I asked year 9 and 10 students to prepare a topic cheat sheet (A4 size, single-sided) on Statistics ahead of a test.  The following week, I arranged a test for the students for which they were allowed to use a cheat sheet.

First 20 minutes students were asked to write in their test without their cheat sheet; for rest of the time I allowed them to use the cheat sheet and complete the test. At the end of the lesson, I asked students to provide their views on the use of their cheat sheets.

Here are some of the responses students have provided:

“I think it’s a good idea and they help made me think and remember. It’s good to condense information. I can see how it has really helped me.”

“The support has helped me.”

“I think the cheat sheet was helpful, but if I had added more things that were my weaknesses, it would have helped me more."

“Yes, it has helped, due to me making so many minor mistakes and has cost me many marks.”

From these responses, we can notice that cheat sheets are helping the students to consolidate their knowledge before the test and the simple act of memory retrieval strengthens their learning long term. Having access to the cheat sheets makes the students aware of the gaps in their learning and immediately help them correct these gaps. It also allows the teacher to see where the gaps are and plan subsequent work accordingly.

Students can use them for revision as all key points are written by them in their own style. What they also learnt was that they had omitted to include key information and some wanted to redraft their sheet. Some also realised that what they thought they knew (and therefore did not include on the sheet) was actually far from secure.

From the comments above, I can infer that students are not used to producing cheat sheets to help them remember key points on their topic/s. They need more training on creating and using cheat sheets.

We know that "Whatever students think about is what they will remember… memory is the residue of thought."(Daniel Willingham) and we should therefore encourage them to manipulate / summarise / condense / rephrase their topic content themselves.

Following this experiment and its response, I am planning to train year 9 and10 students to prepare cheat sheets for revision so they can get more benefit from them. I am also planning to test the use of cheat sheets with year 7.

Of course, we cannot allow students to use their sheets in all their tests but the experiment was interesting and I am looking at ways of developing this line of enquiry.

Interesting reading:

This blog by Maths teacher Kris Boulton: ...to the real
Why is it that students always seem to understand but then never remember?
Then this series of posts: Does memorisation get in the way of learning (parts 1- 4)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

This article by Daniel Willingham: What will improve a student's memory?
(link to the pdf)