My Diminishing Returns

“where is the challenge?”  It was the question that I got asked in the first few lesson observations I had where I was advised to include ‘challenge’ questions in pupil practice so that they could be really pushed. Ideally these would be higher-order questions from Blooms Taxonomy where pupils are to evaluate or make a decision. Why my challenge questions did not challenge anyone I was looking through some of my early resources today and I shudder when I look at questions like ‘justify if the UK should introduce a minimum price for alcohol’ thinking that this would really get pupils thinking. The problem being that it was completely worthless. With no worked examples of how to tackle this type of question and insufficient practice of the concept of indirect taxation, pupils were only able to half-guess answers. Their knowledge wasn’t secure yet and what they needed at that time was much more practice of knowledge with retrieval practice to secure this in their lon

Reading more about explicit instruction (and especially Adam Boxer’s excellent guide ) has had a significant impact on my use of concrete examples when explaining a concept.  I have blogged before on how I have tried to implement guidance on going from concrete to abstract but this takes this a step further: which concrete examples do you use.

“Pupils are responding to teacher feedback to improve their work with evidence of pupil progress.” I was the stereotypical new teacher spending evenings marking stacks of books and class time was then spent rewriting answers in a different coloured pen. These comments made it seem worthwhile though, pupils were improving thanks to my marking and DIRT. There was only one problem. Pupils were not getting any better.

There has been much more understanding around the importance of retrieval practice to strengthen the durability of knowledge in pupils long term memory but whilst a lot of books and blogs have discussed how to ember retrieval practice (be it   allow stakes quiz, self quizzing, flashcards etc) what I have found the most interesting as I’ve tried to embed this into my practice is considering what to retrieve. In a sense there is no bad knowledge to retrieve. In a well-designed curriculum, everything we teach should have significance and we want pupils to remember all of it but some knowledge is more equal than others when it comes to retrieval. Like many teachers (and a la Rosenshine) I start every lesson with 5 or 6 questions about prior learning that pupils complete with no notes. Initially, the topics these questions would be based on would be random but following some trial and error I now consider 3 areas when deciding what topics to base my retrieval on: 1. Prerequisi

Around 6 months ago, I was asked to deliver a CPD session to my school about effective revision strategies to help pupils remember, following my pupil’s ability to recall large amounts of information being noted in a SLT lesson observation. 

If learning is a change in long term learning, then planning time should be devoted to ensuring this change. In order for this change to take place first pupils need clear explanations, then they need to think deeply about a concept for it to enter their long term memory and then there needs to be regular retrieval to ensure it stays in their long term memory.

I recently watched Jo Facer’s ResearchED talk about simplifying teaching, going through some of the mistakes she made in her early teaching career and it caused me to dig out the absolute car crash of discovery-based learning that was my first ever lesson and think about what went so wrong. Let me take you back to September 2018. I have a group of enthusiastic Year 12 pupils, ready for their first experience of A-Level economics and I am going to explain the concept of scarcity and the economicproblem. If you don’t know what these concepts mean or how they link together than I’m afraid you are in trouble as I’ve certainly no intention of explaining them to you in this lesson.

The blog that has had the biggest impact on my teaching this year has undoubtedly been by Pritesh Raichura on explaining a concept by going from concrete to abstract. In simple terms, starting an explanation with an example that pupils will be able to grasp easily and then when more abstract terms are used, pupils have the anchor of this concrete example to give meaning to the abstract term. Instinctively most of us would start explaining a theory or definition and then use an example to explain it rather than the other way round. I’ve become convinced of the merits of going from abstract to concrete, I think it’s especially helpful when teaching subjects like economics and business where there are so much jargon that it can seem like we are speaking a different language.

The crisis in teacher recruitment is well known but is there a perfect storm that is leading to a disaster for economics and business departments? The recruitment crisis in Business and Economics