Dear Adam, I totally agree with you, and yesterday I published an article about our (as adults) responsibility. If you have time, I would like to know your opinion.
Spaced practice is without question an integral part of learning and there is an overwhelming body of literature and research suggesting it is not simply adventagous, but a non negotiable. I would highly recommend. Sanjay Sarma's book GRASP to anyone who wants to understanding spacing and it's necessity at each level of of the heirarchy of learning.
But why do school often fail to prioritise it or implement it well? Like all things in school I think it comes down to the preoccupation of leaders: 'measurement and accountability'.
Over 20 years of being in the profession most leaders are absolutely preoccupied with the now, even when they exclaim they are interested in the process of learning. To often they have little to no band width in truly understanding the process of learning as leaders are time poor.
Consider this. The main methods of accountability I have been subjected to are observations of between 5 and 30 minutes in one lesson, a book review (where unless I'm the head of dept Im not normally part of) and the outcomes of students in their exams. None of these accountability measures really consider the context of the 'now' beyond the superficial as the QA cycle is an unforgiving mistress.
The 'observation' is without question the tool that leaders are preoccupied with to 'understand' learning. It is often done because it's on the timetable and the leader 'had' to QA the teacher as part of the school Teaching and learning policy. How often do observers really engage with checking the curriculum to see when the knowledge being taught in the lesson they witnessed was last delivered or when it is next scheduled to be assessed? Do the observer's come back to check it has been redelivered in a timely fashion? Do they even ponder this with the member of staff at the debrief? Cynically, my head says no because it would require genuine planning and real collaborative engagement with staff. It is much easier to make a learning judgement in that moment and extrapolate (guess) from there.
Similarly, we turn to the book scrutiny. This QA tool is a favourite of leaders butt is actually worse. How often I have been in a room where a leader (often with no real understanding of the knowledge from a subject) flicks through a book and makes sweeping statements about the learning or progress of students knowledge. Firstly, this is rarely done in collaboration with the member of staff in the room to discuss what is seen on the pages and the teachers explanation of the learning sequencing that was seen. Likewise, I cannot recall any point when a leader said X was done on the 13th of, let's look for evidence of when it was seen again. Secondly, and probably most importantly a book scrutiny is an assumption that written work can be evidence of learning. As Adam has shown me in a previous meeting anyone can be fooled into believing that students are actually doing spaced practice simply by a student using a normal pen and green pen when the teacher shows the solution on the board.
Finally the outcomes of the external assessments. Granted, the summative assessments can show the outcome of spaced practice, however they do not show the process of spaced practice. There is no genuine attempt to acknowledge at an external level the progression from KS4 baseline to end of course. Likewise, the leaders of school often dismiss out of hand any argument of a students starting point at KS4 especially if it doesn't fit the narrative of 'expected' starting point. To do so would to admit that the school has not implemented a spaced practice KS3 curricula in a way that leads to genuine progress early in a child's journey at secondary school.
So what is my point?
Sadly, until school leaders change their fixation on measuring success of students (and ergo teaching quality) in moments in time spaced practice will always be seen as a nice sound bite used to keep the wolves from the door.
Yeah - hard agree on everything covered here. I find myself pondering this very topic regularly - and as a teacher I find myself dying inside in a similar way to your video. ‘You should know this by now!!!’ Thanks - makes for a thought provoking read.
Thanks for this Adam. I loved a recent blog when you said that school only need to focus on three things. Behavior, Strategies to make students pay attention and Strategies to build remembering over time. My department has just subscribed to Carousel learning and I am really looking forward to starting to use it.
One question based on my early use of Carousel with my classes. How do you respond when students have clearly googled an answer to a quiz question rather than learn the answer on the flash card?
I'm still struggling with building my own routine and I've noticed that my retrieval DoNows have morphed into something unexpected, somehow taking over my lessons, at times. Nonetheless, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I can explain.
I teach history and literature in high school and I often ask my students to retrieve relatively broad concepts or pieces of knowledge, such as "Justinian" or "The Senate in the Late Roman Empire". I want my students to answer briefly but since such questions are not quizzes, they also have to articulate a bit (let's say three to five sentences).
It often happens that my students show gaps and I re-teach what has been lost. While I also die inside when this happens, I also think that this is -to some extent!- quite a normal outcome of a retrieval activity, since forgetting there must be, if the retrieval is to be effective.
In addition to that, open-ended answers tend to bring other concepts or ideas into the discussion. You ask about Justinian, but the students -and correctly so- also mention, say, Christian orthodoxy (as it is indeed linked to Justinian's reign). This means that more gaps or misconceptions can suddenly pop up, and I think that no gap or misconception can be left without correction.
It's no surprise that my lessons can sometimes be swallowed whole by these overgrown DoNows, but what is the purpose of moving on if my students still have gaps?
Homework helps me with this, anyway. My standard assignment is for students to read a text and transform it into a concept map, which they can then use for an oral presentation on the topic. I expect my students to have difficulties, so we discuss what they found in their autonomous reading until they reach a full understanding.
This also means that I can postpone the discussion to the next lesson, if there is no time left after the over-stretched DoNows. This isn't always a perfect balance, and I'm working on taking back control of my DoNows, but I hardly ever feel I've wasted my students' time in such over-extended retrievals.
(I'm Didattica Von Moltke on X)
PS: I used Gemini to check my grammar, but Gemini is also sort of insisting to start a conversation about what I'm saying. BTW, it found my reasoning excellent.
Testing longer term memory:: Isn’t that what summative assessments are for? And - terribly out of favour! - end of semester/ end of year examinations ?
The gap between those students who understand the benefit of homework as part of their learning process and those who "grind through" is going to widen as more of the later group offload their thinking to AI. Schools need to consider how they encourage students to value the effort required for proper retrieval when unsupervised.
Dear Adam, I totally agree with you, and yesterday I published an article about our (as adults) responsibility. If you have time, I would like to know your opinion.
https://open.substack.com/pub/boordi/p/mutagenic-chickens-why-adults-are?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Spaced practice is without question an integral part of learning and there is an overwhelming body of literature and research suggesting it is not simply adventagous, but a non negotiable. I would highly recommend. Sanjay Sarma's book GRASP to anyone who wants to understanding spacing and it's necessity at each level of of the heirarchy of learning.
But why do school often fail to prioritise it or implement it well? Like all things in school I think it comes down to the preoccupation of leaders: 'measurement and accountability'.
Over 20 years of being in the profession most leaders are absolutely preoccupied with the now, even when they exclaim they are interested in the process of learning. To often they have little to no band width in truly understanding the process of learning as leaders are time poor.
Consider this. The main methods of accountability I have been subjected to are observations of between 5 and 30 minutes in one lesson, a book review (where unless I'm the head of dept Im not normally part of) and the outcomes of students in their exams. None of these accountability measures really consider the context of the 'now' beyond the superficial as the QA cycle is an unforgiving mistress.
The 'observation' is without question the tool that leaders are preoccupied with to 'understand' learning. It is often done because it's on the timetable and the leader 'had' to QA the teacher as part of the school Teaching and learning policy. How often do observers really engage with checking the curriculum to see when the knowledge being taught in the lesson they witnessed was last delivered or when it is next scheduled to be assessed? Do the observer's come back to check it has been redelivered in a timely fashion? Do they even ponder this with the member of staff at the debrief? Cynically, my head says no because it would require genuine planning and real collaborative engagement with staff. It is much easier to make a learning judgement in that moment and extrapolate (guess) from there.
Similarly, we turn to the book scrutiny. This QA tool is a favourite of leaders butt is actually worse. How often I have been in a room where a leader (often with no real understanding of the knowledge from a subject) flicks through a book and makes sweeping statements about the learning or progress of students knowledge. Firstly, this is rarely done in collaboration with the member of staff in the room to discuss what is seen on the pages and the teachers explanation of the learning sequencing that was seen. Likewise, I cannot recall any point when a leader said X was done on the 13th of, let's look for evidence of when it was seen again. Secondly, and probably most importantly a book scrutiny is an assumption that written work can be evidence of learning. As Adam has shown me in a previous meeting anyone can be fooled into believing that students are actually doing spaced practice simply by a student using a normal pen and green pen when the teacher shows the solution on the board.
Finally the outcomes of the external assessments. Granted, the summative assessments can show the outcome of spaced practice, however they do not show the process of spaced practice. There is no genuine attempt to acknowledge at an external level the progression from KS4 baseline to end of course. Likewise, the leaders of school often dismiss out of hand any argument of a students starting point at KS4 especially if it doesn't fit the narrative of 'expected' starting point. To do so would to admit that the school has not implemented a spaced practice KS3 curricula in a way that leads to genuine progress early in a child's journey at secondary school.
So what is my point?
Sadly, until school leaders change their fixation on measuring success of students (and ergo teaching quality) in moments in time spaced practice will always be seen as a nice sound bite used to keep the wolves from the door.
Yeah - hard agree on everything covered here. I find myself pondering this very topic regularly - and as a teacher I find myself dying inside in a similar way to your video. ‘You should know this by now!!!’ Thanks - makes for a thought provoking read.
Thanks for this Adam. I loved a recent blog when you said that school only need to focus on three things. Behavior, Strategies to make students pay attention and Strategies to build remembering over time. My department has just subscribed to Carousel learning and I am really looking forward to starting to use it.
Ah that's great to hear! Keep me posted?
Hi Adam
One question based on my early use of Carousel with my classes. How do you respond when students have clearly googled an answer to a quiz question rather than learn the answer on the flash card?
great question! this may help
https://www.carousel-learning.com/resources/blog/the-homework-phonecall-you-need-to-make
also check out my blog post The Greatest Do Now Ever. The main thing is to triangulate data
I'm still struggling with building my own routine and I've noticed that my retrieval DoNows have morphed into something unexpected, somehow taking over my lessons, at times. Nonetheless, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I can explain.
I teach history and literature in high school and I often ask my students to retrieve relatively broad concepts or pieces of knowledge, such as "Justinian" or "The Senate in the Late Roman Empire". I want my students to answer briefly but since such questions are not quizzes, they also have to articulate a bit (let's say three to five sentences).
It often happens that my students show gaps and I re-teach what has been lost. While I also die inside when this happens, I also think that this is -to some extent!- quite a normal outcome of a retrieval activity, since forgetting there must be, if the retrieval is to be effective.
In addition to that, open-ended answers tend to bring other concepts or ideas into the discussion. You ask about Justinian, but the students -and correctly so- also mention, say, Christian orthodoxy (as it is indeed linked to Justinian's reign). This means that more gaps or misconceptions can suddenly pop up, and I think that no gap or misconception can be left without correction.
It's no surprise that my lessons can sometimes be swallowed whole by these overgrown DoNows, but what is the purpose of moving on if my students still have gaps?
Homework helps me with this, anyway. My standard assignment is for students to read a text and transform it into a concept map, which they can then use for an oral presentation on the topic. I expect my students to have difficulties, so we discuss what they found in their autonomous reading until they reach a full understanding.
This also means that I can postpone the discussion to the next lesson, if there is no time left after the over-stretched DoNows. This isn't always a perfect balance, and I'm working on taking back control of my DoNows, but I hardly ever feel I've wasted my students' time in such over-extended retrievals.
(I'm Didattica Von Moltke on X)
PS: I used Gemini to check my grammar, but Gemini is also sort of insisting to start a conversation about what I'm saying. BTW, it found my reasoning excellent.
The blank do nows hit hard. How deep is the memory gap?
Testing longer term memory:: Isn’t that what summative assessments are for? And - terribly out of favour! - end of semester/ end of year examinations ?
yes, that *assesses* the long term memory, but it doesn't *strengthen* it. For that you need frequent retrieval practice!
Ha marvelous analogy! Let me know if there's anything I can do to help
The gap between those students who understand the benefit of homework as part of their learning process and those who "grind through" is going to widen as more of the later group offload their thinking to AI. Schools need to consider how they encourage students to value the effort required for proper retrieval when unsupervised.