In the first Teaching & Learning twilight session, we shared the following presentation on Memory. Staff are now in the process of deciding which focus they want to look at for the rest of the year in their TLCs (Teacher Learning Communities), from the use of Knowledge Organisers to aid content and support home learning; Quizzing and retrieval, and improving our explanations. Below is the presentation on Memory from the session.

Click here to view the PowerPoint

Knowledge Organisers

Joe Kirby from Michaela School in London on knowledge organisers:

https://pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/2015/03/28/knowledge-organisers/

How to make a knowledge organiser from ‘Mr Histoire’ via his invaluable history blog:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-9bIMRtGN1cfmF3UjNhd2FHUkVIanNLWkJyNWw2dWx1ZC1ReFVjRWpVOFp4R0s4YTdhV2s

https://mrhistoire.com/2017/01/25/createkos/

How to use a KO:

https://mrhistoire.com/2017/01/19/kos/

Using knowledge organisers – with examples from South Bromsgrove High School:

https://southbromsgrovehistory.com/2017/03/22/knowledge-organisers/

Lots of examples of KOs in most subjects from the Inspiration Trust:

http://www.inspirationtrust.org/page/?pid=774

Quizzing & Flashcards

Amazingly, here is a link to the whole book ‘Make It Stick – the science of successful learning’. In it, are the fundamental ideas behind the reasons why students can remember some things but not others; why most things we have assumed about revision and retention are wrong, and what strategies work best in the classroom:

https://www.scribd.com/doc/240645966/Make-It-Stick-the-Science-of-Successful-Learning

A very useful summary of ‘Make It Stick’ in a blog by Debbie Morrison:

https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/make-your-teaching-stick-with-ideas-from-make-it-stick-the-science-of-successful-learning/

Another very good summary of the book, this time by Jennifer Gonzalez; this one also includes an interview with one of the authors, Peter Brown. Later down the article she also references some other walk-throughs of retrieval practice and some of her own video reflections:

https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/stick/

Joe Kirby on Michaela school’s 5 year revision plan:

https://pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/2015/05/03/a-5-year-revision-plan/

Flashcards

Chapter 5 of ‘Make It Stick’ specifically looks at why flashcards are useful in memory retrieval and quizzing.

‘The Top 3 reasons flashcards are so effective’, a short and clear blog by Andrew Cohen:

https://www.brainscape.com/blog/2011/04/reasons-why-flashcards-are-so-effective/

Multiple choice quizzes

Daisy Cristodoulou is the author of ‘Making Good Progress’. Her blog looks in some detail into multiple choice quizzing and how they can promote higher order thinking in a relatively easy way to set up.

Part 1:

https://thewingtoheaven.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/closed-questions-and-higher-order-thinking/

Part 2:

https://thewingtoheaven.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/multiple-choice-questions-part-two/

Joe Kirby again, reflecting on multiple choice questions after reading Daisy’s blog:

https://pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/whymcqs/

An interesting interview between Mr Barton (of the Mr Barton Maths blog) with Daisy Cristodoulou about the use of multiple choice quizzes in relation to maths:

http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/daisy-christodoulou-assessment-multiple-choice-questions-7-myths-about-education/

Explanations

Improving the quality of your explanations

Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby explore this in their excellent Bible for teaching “Making Every Lesson Count”, and we now have it as one of our six key areas in our ‘What Expert Teaching Look Like’ in staff planners and also featured in our lesson observation forms.

This blog by Shaun explores in summary what he goes into deeper detail into in the book:

https://classteaching.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/making-explanations-stick/

At Durrington High School where Shaun is Deputy Head a number of staff have focused on improved explanations in their teaching and have either spoken about it or blogged about it. Here is a list of references to real teaching that focuses on the art of explanation:

https://classteaching.wordpress.com/tag/explanation/