Gloucester
Jotters for taking notes were not always used well by some classes, as taking notes has to be a taught skill. Some teachers found it useful during teacher input as it removes the presentation focus and concentrates on the knowledge.
Retrieval practice was really useful, used every day and enjoyed by the children. They say ‘We are doing this to move this into our long term memory’. Accuracy, speed and confidence has increased.
Teachers had removed pointless displays. Walls were much less busy and everything displayed is useful and not sponsored by Twinkl any more! Working walls show the learning journey and success criteria for current concepts and skills and are a personal resource instead, focused to the lessons (eg. Word bank/knowledge organiser). Because of these, children know where to look for scaffolding and have become more independent in their learning. They are referring to the knowledge organisers themselves instead of being directed.
Silent modelling was effective especially in maths and English. One teacher tells them to make notes on the features they can see as she is modelling. They also love finding mistakes during silent modelling. It helps draw out the success criteria so they are able to begin independent tasks more confidently.
Surrey
Teachers had used knowledge organisers regularly for retrieval practice. These had helped teacher knowledge and gives consistency. They also help children to remember more.
Teachers had encouraged children to take notes in rough books or whiteboards. Handouts were given for worked examples. These strategies are easing the cognitive load. Lower achievers are still able to access the learning, without having to keep up with the slides.
One teacher asked children to make their own posters to help them remember the knowledge. They retained information more effectively.
Introducing maths retrieval of last lesson, last week, last unit, last term had resulted in children making better connections between concepts and number relationships.
Working walls allowed children to remember and retrieve, adding knowledge as the term progresses. Most teachers co-constructed a poster for revision with the children.
Kahoot quizzes were carried out by two teachers at the end of every unit which children loved and helped reinforce memory.
Prior knowledge questions at the start of lessons were varied: English tended to be about vocabulary which would improve their writing; reading was taken from Pobble 365 and maths was ‘spot the mistake’. The ‘odd one out’ was best used for science and history.
Teachers said a lot of thought needed to be put into the questions so that all children could access them. If not carefully planned they could cause more confusion and cognitive overload, especially for lower achievers.
Taunton
Silent modelling was challenging to begin with but especially useful in maths, and used for spot the mistake. How to use it in English was less clear.
Working walls were found to be beneficial for children’s learning as they know where to go to retrieve previous learning.
Low stakes quizzing was used by all for retrieval practice, sometimes using mini whiteboards for summative assessment (show me).
Children have found it beneficial to have note books.
Swansea
All teachers had used success criteria and labelling diagrams to ease the cognitive load. This had grown independence and created more focus.
All teachers had used silent modelling and were wowed by the impact! There was engagement, curiosity, a natural ink to talk partners and similarly to co-construction of the success criteria.
Three teacher had tried chunking information and using notebooks, as well as the quadrants for retrieval practice. The impact was the children were able to recall concepts which had been a difficulty.