education

1. This Issue
‘Making Learning Stick’
Effective revision techniques
Making Learning Stick
Thursday 3rd March

2. No cheating!

4. Making Learning Stick

5. Aims of the session- ‘Making Learning Stick’
• To explore how we make students think about material
• To provide practical strategies to take back to classrooms
• To consider schemes of learning and support departments with
medium/long term planning
• To consider revision strategies being used to support students
• To generate discussions and share ideas

6. Making Learning Stick
Part 1
Strategy 1: Interleaving
Strategy 2: Spaced retrieval practice
Strategy 3: Embedding Learning
Part 2
Revision ideas

7. ‘Memory is the residue of thought.’
‘Teachers must plan lessons and
assessments that make students
think and pay attention.’
‘People are naturally curious, but we are
not naturally good thinkers; unless the
cognitive conditions are right, we will
avoid thinking.’
How do we really make
students think about material?

8. Learning v Performance
‘The most effective teacher is the teacher who focuses
on embedding knowledge – the teacher who knows
when and how to move students from
surface learning, to deep learning.’
Andy Tharby (2015)

9. Strategy 1: Interleaving

11. Interleaving
skills rather than
topics

12. Revision Idea- for teachers and students

13. Benefits
• Opportunity to return to content more regularly
• Potentially promotes better retention
• Opportunity to assess the same skills in different contexts
• Can lead to improved exam performance

14. Students using interleaved practice performed worse than their counterparts using block
practice during the practice session but performed better when tested at a later date.
Dunlosky et al (2013)

15. Idea 1
Interleave different topics/ novels/ periods/ exam papers throughout your scheme of learning.
Idea 2
Interleave within a lesson. Teach a particular topic, break and cover something else, come back
to the topic that you covered at the start of the lesson.
Idea 3
Tell students, you MUST use knowledge of this topic and ALSO topic X in your responses/
answers this lesson.
Idea 4
Through feedback. Students to look back at the feedback they received on a previous piece of
work and apply advice and what they learned from the feedback to the current work, even in a
different topic, particularly if a skill is similar.
Interleaving

16. Strategy 1: Interleaving
How much of this already
happens in your
lessons/department?
How could you incorporate
this into your department/
lessons/revision
programme?

17. Strategy 2: Spaced retrieval practice

18. Strategy 2: Spaced retrieval practice
‘Going back over stuff’

19. •The reviews force
retrieval.
•Retrieval creates
learning and embeds
in the long term
memory.
•It also enables
students to practise
pulling information
into their working
memory.
The Ebbinghaus Curve

20. Spaced retrieval practice

21. Idea 1
Pre-test, re-test, final test. Give students a test before they have even started learning the topic/ unit. This helps
frame the learning, which enables them to learn better, and then continue to test in order to embed the learning/
knowledge in memory.
Idea 2- Rewind Tests
Start your lesson by testing material from the previous lesson or the previous topic, or even a topic from last year.
(Tests can be in the form of true/ false, pub quiz, multiple choice, mind-mapping, fill in the gaps, exam questions,
definitions. Basically anything that requires retrieval from memory rather than using resources)
Idea 3
Ask students to complete mind-maps on previous topics, without using their books. They are forced to retrieve
what they know and identify gaps in their knowledge for themselves. This conscious awareness of what they know
and don’t know will help learning stick, and will force them to revise what they don’t know.
Idea 4
Students could produce a test with answers for a previous topic, without using any books or resources. They can
then use books to check their questions and answers for accuracy once they have finished.

22. Idea 5
Drop in tests without revision and preparation time. This could be of a topic that was studied months ago. The
need to retrieve the information from long term into working memory is what locks it in the long term memory.
Idea 6
Cumulative exams and quizzes. These test a mixture of what’s currently learned and what’s been learned
previously. This combines spacing and interleaving and encourages hard thinking.
Idea 7
Think about how you introduce any tests. Talk through the science behind testing and the evidence with students.
Encourage that this is an effective means of learning, and is not a chore! If they believe, their independent study
will be more effective.
Idea 8
The Cornell System. During tasks and note taking in lessons, students draw a column at one side of their page
where they enter key terms or questions along the way. They can then test themselves at a later date by covering
the bulk of their work and leaving themselves with key terms to explain and define and questions to answer.
Idea 9
When students complete a test or exam after each question they give a score out of 5 to show how confident they
were that they knew the answer. This is useful for you and them to know how much they think they know in
comparison with what they do know.

23. Strategy 2: Spaced
retrieval practice
How much of this already
happens in your
lessons/department?
How could you incorporate
this into your department/
lessons/revision
programme?

24. Strategy 3: Embedding Learning

25. Learning v Performance
‘The most effective teacher is the teacher who focuses
on embedding knowledge – the teacher who knows
when and how to move students from
surface learning, to deep learning.’
Andy Tharby (2015)

26. The bigger picture
• “Framing the Learning.” (Rutherford 2005)
In simplest terms, framing the learning means that the
teacher provides a framework or context for the future
learning that will take place by letting students know what
they will learn, how they will go about learning it, and how
they and their teacher will know that they have
successfully mastered what they were supposed to learn.
• Research shows that content is learned and
remembered better if students understand the
point of what they are learning. Make it clear
to them how each topic fits in to the bigger
picture.
• Making as many links as possible between your
different topics will enable students to fit the
learning into the bigger picture, and this aids
memory.

27. • ‘Learning requires repetition.’
(Carpenter 2014)
• ‘Students need to encounter on at
least three occasions, the complete
set of the information.’ ‘If the
information was incomplete or not
experienced on three occasions, the
students didn’t fully learn the
concept.’ (Nuthall, The Hidden lives
of Learners.) In 85% of students
tested as part of the research, this
was the case.
• ‘To avoid forgetting, we need to
overlearn.’ (Willingham 2008)
• Caveat: Misconceptions and wrong
answers are remembered if they are
made 3 times.
The Power of Three

28. Idea 1
Introduce key words/ concepts at the start of the topic/ unit. This could be through using a glossary, test, key
words list, exam question. You will then revisit when you get to that point in the topic. And then again during
plenary and revision.
Idea 2
Use modelling and exemplar answers frequently. Not only does this help teach skills and application, it exposes
the students to the material an additional time.
Idea 3
Plan three different tasks in a lesson to ensure that students are exposed three times to the material but have to
think about it in three different ways. E.g. teacher explanation, questioning, source, reading, exam question,
mind-map, paired discussion, written work. Ensure that they have understood correctly each of the three
times.
Idea 4
Ask students to summarise their own piece of work in a different way, this could be a good feedback task or
extension task. E.g. Say it differently. Present it differently. This makes them revisit and consolidate and think
hard / differently about the topic.
Embedding learning

29. Idea 5
When questioning a group, ask the same question in a range of different ways, a number of
different times. Press students to link to other facts/ parts of the topic so that there is exposure to
those topics also. Repetition of the subject content will reinforce memory.
Idea 6
Use sets of hexagons (http://pamhook.com/solo-apps/hexagon-generator/) with key facts and
vocab from the whole course. Students have to tessellate like a honeycomb. They are forced to
find and make links across the topics and explain them. This hard thinking will help embed the
learning. Evidence says that the more complex links, the better the understanding.
Idea 7
Tell students that they typically need to study for 20% longer again once they have learned
something to truly remember it. When revising, they should also test themselves until they
NEVER get it wrong or miss things rather than stopping once they get it correct.
Idea 8
Think carefully about the tasks set. If you ask students to learn about X but through the medium of
Y. e.g. learn about oxbow lakes by writing a newspaper article, much of what they will be thinking
about is the article then some of the learning or thinking might be lost.

30. Strategy 3:
Mastery learning/
embedding
How much of this
already happens in
your
lessons/department?
How could you
incorporate this in
your department/
lessons?

31. Break- 10 minutes
Discussion with other departments
What are other departments doing to ‘make learning stick’?
What revision strategies have other departments implemented?

32. Exam Preparation
How are we preparing students for the
forthcoming exams?

33. Modelling/teaching of examination room meta-cognition and self-
regulation
Teach the students how to think about their own learning more explicitly.
Or put simply…what should they be thinking from the moment they open the paper.
Set aside 5 minutes at the start of the exam/past paper in which the students aren’t
allowed to answer the questions. Instead they go through the paper from start to
finish thinking about what they need to do at what point.

34. Marginal Gains?
Time management; encourages
students to work ‘to time’ and save
some to plan and check. Should avoid
spending too much time on one
question and know which to prioritise
(QWC)
Plan of action; take some time out to
look over the paper, they know what
to expect and what not to expect
(4/8)
Reinforce key messages; Plan!

35. Identify a focus; What is the question asking
(easy to confuse this with LA)
Identify nuances of the Q; this is about
Janice NOT Harriet
Annotate with acronyms; save time later so
they can develop depth and detail
Identify command verbs; e.g. ‘name’ means
just that…no need to waste time explaining
Identify mark allocation; identify & explain
two… (6) = 1 +2 twice!
Reinforce key messages; Link! Link! Link!

36. Benefits:
•Students feel more confident, because they feel ‘in control’ of the paper. Ownership!
•A reduction in the number of silly mistakes that students are making.
•It’s a great example of marginal gains – making lots of small improvements to make a big difference to overall exam
performance.
•Students are encouraged to discuss with their peers what they are thinking about when tackling particular questions –
this stimulates further thinking.
•Less waffle – students write concise answers that get straight to the point. This is especially true of A*A students.
•Answers have a logical structure.
•Students should score an appropriate number of marks per question and not missing simple marks.
•Less time wasted = less rushing to get it finished!
•It’s a break from content led revision.

37. A reduction in the number of silly mistakes that
students are making.
Reduces confusion over the focus of the question.
It’s a great example of marginal gains – making lots of
small improvements to make a big difference to
overall exam performance.
Planning answers & checklist; students take a lot of convincing that
planning is necessary. I told them a checklist for the QWC q. was
essential, they didn’t do it. I marked to a checklist, they still did not
do it, I gave them a plan in the form of a checklist…
Less waffle – students write concise answers that get
straight to the point.
The are planning, this means they are better able to structure their
answers logically.
They have taken the time to plan therefore are able to think about
the order the write it in.
Answers have a logical structure.

40. I couldn't agree more!
As a sociology teacher I have to strike the balance between 'the stuff they have to
learn' and 'the skills they have to demonstrate', and it's a difficult balance to get
right. I also have to communicate that message to the students. Without a secure
knowledge-base, how can the students demonstrate the skills of analysis and
application effectively?
"Critics would argue that a knowledge-led approach detracts away
from deep learning, problem-solving based teaching strategies. I see it
as a false dichotomy; students need both- they can’t solve problems
until they have the prerequisite knowledge required to solve them.“
Knowledge Organisers
All students have to be able to solve a
problem whether the subject is problem-
based or whether the problem is how to
achieve marks in an exam.
How do I show the examiner…?

41. Essential you must know/be able to
say/do this. (E/D/maybe C)
Key points to develop your answers
and demonstrate the assessed skills.
(C/B)
Top level stuff! Will help you to compete
with other candidates and gain top marks

42. Quick & easy to prepare tests/revision; simply blank out words or leave space for written work the print on A3. Hand out a few lessons
later.

43. Links to examples…
• https://classteaching.wordpress.com/2015/05/24/knowledge-
organisers-in-science/
• http://www.greatmathsteachingideas.com/2016/01/17/knowl
edge-organisers-better-than-learning-objectives-and-great-for-
building-retention/

44. Contents pages
“The best revision guide is a well-organised exercise book or folder”
Shaun Allison

46. Benefits
• It gives students a much greater sense of pride and ownership over
their work.
• It helps them to organise their work – making revision easier.
• It makes them review their work and think about it – because they
have had to summarise each lesson. This in itself is great revision.
• It encourages them to discuss their work.
• As they are given new books for each topic, they have a fresh start –
this seems to ‘revitalise’ them and kick-start a renewed focus on
presentation (possible cost implication here – but buy thinner
books!)
• Students can put a number beside each topic on their contents page
to rate their understanding of each topic.

47. www.quizlet.com

48. www.memrise.com

51. Revision
strategies:
How could you
incorporate these
into your
department/
lessons?
What other
revision strategies
do you use?

52. • Look at your schemes of learning, how could you introduce/
incorporate interleaving or spacing?
• Think about a lesson you are teaching tomorrow. Will you give the
students ample time to master/ embed the learning before moving
on? How will you know? What could you do differently?
• Think about how you are going to structure your revision sessions as
we approach the exams.