Interleaved Practice

Research seems to suggest that if you ask learners to do a mixture of problems after a teaching episode rather than doing lots of practice of the type of problem they have been taught about, they feel more confused and perform worse on the day, but when they are given a test a week later they drastically outperform those who stuck to the one type of problem during the original lesson (The Effects of Interleaved Practice, Taylor and Rohrer 2009).

Facing Misconceptions

Derek Miller showed learners a video about gravity and motion.  Learners judged the video to be clear and easy to understand, but the video completely failed to correct their misconceptions, and their performance in a post-video test was virtually the same as in the pre-video test..  Another group of learners were shown a video which went on to state common misconceptions, and explain why they were false.  The learners described this video as confusing, but they went on to improve by 100% their performance in the test on the topic. You can watch his description of the experiment here on YouTube.

Effective Presentations

I can’t find a link to the last bit of research, alas, so I am paraphrasing from memory.  An American who spent decades researching effective use of Powerpoint performed the following experiment.  He presented the same set of information to 2 groups using Powerpoint.  One group saw a bland, bare presentation, whilst the second group saw a flashy presentation with lots of animation and colour.  The second group enjoyed their presentation much more than the first, and felt more confident about the topic than the first.  But when tested the first group outperformed the second group significantly.

And so…

How often do you take the phrase “I’m confused” in your classroom as a negative sign?  And how often do you use learner satisfaction or ability to perform on the day as barometers of the effectiveness of your lessons?  It appears that you shouldn’t be doing either without some deeper assessment of the quality of the learning that is going on.

I guess you all know about Khan Academy.  If not: it’s one man’s collection of 2100 video lectures on maths, science, finance and more – all freely available.  In maths, it purports to provide a full progression from the basics of counting and place value up to some areas of university maths.

Bill Gates has endorsed it, whilst many educators are throwing their hands up in horror.

A heretical thought that popped into my head today.    What if young people decide one day that they want to spend all of the limited amount of time they devote to maths actually learning how to do maths instead of learning how to collaborate effectively, design bridges, play Mario Kart, be good time-keepers, produce presentations or whatever latest thing might be? And what if they then start using Khan Academy in large numbers to fulfil their needs? And what if they find that Khan Academy is actually much more useful to them than their school maths lessons in providing them with the exam passes that will open the doors to employment and/or further education?

How relevant will school maths look then?

As I look back over my 20 years of teaching, I can’t think of that many youngsters who have been motivated enough to spend time at home on maths beyond homework assignments, so it’s probably just a crazy, passing thought.

The broader purposes that we pursue as educators these days (under the banner of “A Curriculum for Excellence” in Scotland) are very noble – more than that, they address the real needs of young people growing up into a world of accelerating change.  But how good are we are getting buy-in to these broader purposes from parents, employers and the learners themselves?  Without that buy-in the project runs the risk of becoming irrelevant despite it’s worthiness – because our customers can now get what they think they need elsewhere.

Learning Together Maths with Graeme Logan

New National 4/5 Maths Qualifications with Mr Topping

• no more NABs!  Items will be on NAR and we’ll have to assemble them into unit assessments
• Nat 5 will not be Int 2.  Carving off of apps into Lifeskills Maths means that the harder stuff can permeate all 3 units better

Other random stuff that occurred to me or was said to me through the day:

• make textbook work richer by having pairs take it in turns to answer questions, explaining their thinking to their partner as they go
• use local carry-out menus for money work
• use a google docs form to perform something like a diagnostic interview with a whole class at once (pupils logged into GAE)

Quite a lot of ideas for one day.  I guess it made the early start on a Saturday morning worthwhile!

One of the pupils said “Oh – can we do that this lesson!”  The rest of the class was up for it, so we did the entire hour lesson in silence.  It was a lovely experience, and the pupils were very positive in their learning logs.

I want the students coming to my department to be aware of themselves as learners, and to be active participants in their own learning processes.  Of course every student is actively involved in their own learning – no learning would take place otherwise – but I want them all to be able to take a step back from themselves and reflect upon their own progress.  Making this reflection regular, manageable and meaningful is a challenge!  We don’t have 1-1 computing devices in class, so if we are going to use ICT we are largely going to have to use the students’ devices in the students’ time (until enough of them have smart phones!).

Moodle

Moodle offers a plethora of tools that might help here:  Class wikis, glossaries, journals, forums… the list goes on.

Glow

Wikis and blogs are in Glow now aren’t they?  Or they will be soon.

Google Apps

Google Apps include forms and shared documents.  I guess they could be used somehow.

Edubuzz blogs

I’ve used scribe post blogs in the past. They can be very effective, but are really reflections upon the group experience rather than personal self assessment.  Blogs can be made private, so we could have individual scribe post blogs.  Unmanageable perhaps?

The desktop

Students could write up learning logs as word processing documents, stored on the server.  Not appealing!  We don’t have 1-1 in class, so impractical.  They could do the same at home.  How would they share these reflections with me?

Ad-hoc tools

Wallwisher could be very effective for group reflections. Can anyone suggest other tools that would work?

Non-ICT solutions

One solution would be to have 5 minutes at the end of each lesson for students to write up learning logs by hand.  This is simple, manageable and accessible for all students.  But the activity could quickly become perfunctory.

I don’t really seem to have resolved anything here.  Moodle and pencil-and-paper seem to be the front runners.  I’d be most grateful if you could help to clarify my ponderings!

1. help students  to reflect upon their own learning
2. help them  to discuss their learning with each other and with me at any time
3. help them  to gather evidence of their own learning
4. help them to learn collaboratively
5. help them to self-assess their progress, and peer assess each other’s
6. provide them with alternative resources to “close the gap” if they have not mastered learning objectives
7. provide parents/carers with information about their children’s learning
8. provide me with tools to manage assessment data
9. save money!

Along with this list of potential benefits, I have a list of possible tools to deliver the benefits:

• Moodle
• Glow
• Google Apps
• Edubuzz blogs
• desktop applications and the school server
• ad-hoc use of Web 2.0 tools (Wallwisher, Posterous, Twitter etc.)
• Non-ICT approaches

I’m going to work my way through the first list in subsequent blog posts, considering the best solution for each (whilst at the same time thinking about the whole package). Please let me know if you think I’ve missed any important potential benefits, or important tools. Also please let me know if you have been through a similar thought process and have any conclusions to share.

This may take a while – don’t expect a new post in this series every day – and I may give up on the series if I feel that I’ve reached a decision already.

Imagine that it is a year from now. You are leaving the classroom, and as you go, I have a tear in my eye and say “you were the best class ever”. What kind of things do you think you would have to do, individually and as a group, in order to make that happen? And as you leave, you say to me “thank you Mr Jones – you were the best teacher ever.” What kind of things would I have to do to make that happen?

A year ago, as usual, this led to the class coming up with an excellent set of class rules, and a clear list of their expectations of me as a teacher.  The pupils all signed their list, and I signed mine (once I had negotiated away items like “no homework”!)

Now things don’t always pan out the way I would hope, but today, as the class left the room for the last time, I must confess that there was a lump in my throat, and I was able to tell them honestly that they were the best class ever.  They have been a superb learning community.  They have supported each other, never slagged each other off, developed a clear sense of themselves as learners, taken on responsibility for their own learning and been brilliant fun. It was this class did the Counting Cogs investigation, and chose their own method of assessment.  It was Harriet from this class that spoke with me to a journalist (Douglas Blane) from TESS.

I was discussing them with a colleague at the end of the day.  I said that I felt very pleased with the job I had done with them, despite the fact that I knew that most of the success of the class had been down to the youngsters themselves, and that they would have been a great class for anyone.  ”That may be true to some extent” said my colleague, “but at least you know that you did not squander that opportunity.”  I do, and feel good about that.  But I’m going to miss them.

I plan to use this task as an introduction to multiples, factors and primes in our new  CfE course, so I was really using my S2 class as guinea pigs!

The task was genuinely rich: the pupils came up with many conjectures which I had not predicted. Here are some snippets of the artifacts they produced:

I was particularly pleased to be able to discuss the “failed attempt” and convince the students that it wasn’t really a failure at all. It was really a great bit of evidence of the scientific method in practice. They could have improved their recording by showing how they found out that it wasn’t true (by making a prediction based on the conjecture, then finding that it didn’t work).

The pupils were using words like multiple, factor and prime without any prompting from me to do so. I think this task would work very well as an introduction to these concepts.

I put the class into groups of two and threes, handed them out the envelopes and said “this is an assessment activity – show me what you have learned in this topic”.

The pupils struggled initially with the open nature of the task.  Several asked “what are we supposed to do?” to which I replied “show me what you have learned about straight lines.”  “This is weird” said one of the pupils!

I did not say that they had to make a poster, but the resources to do so were available unobtrusively at the front of the room.  Once one group asked if they could make a poster, and I said that they could if they wanted, the idea took off across the room and they all ended up doing so.

Despite my assertions to the contrary, most of the class seemed to believe initially that there was a “right answer” towards which they were heading, and one group of boys said “we’ve finished” once they had gathered the resources into groups and stuck them onto a poster.  I asked if they felt that they had had the opportunity to demonstrate everything that they had learned about straight lines, and they said yes [slightly worrying since we spent some time working on mathematical modelling with straight lines!].

For me the most valuable element of this activity is the discussions that take place between pupils, and between me and the pupils.  Pupils have the time to talk to each other about their learning, and these conversations can clear up lots of wee misunderstandings.  I am also able to ask interesting questions, and pupils have the time to think about them.  I asked one pair of girls, who were busy gathering bits of card into groups: “why does this graph belong with the equation y=6-x?”  They answered in terms of gradients and y-intercepts, but were also, when pushed, able to explain that the line represents all the places on the diagram where the equation is true.”  I asked if this was the only place they could put (3,3) then left to talk to another group.  This is the poster they produced:

At the end of the lesson we discussed the activity.  The pupils were all very positive about it.  One of the boys who had declared “we’re finished” said that he would have liked to have had more blank graphs to fill out.  I finished by saying “I know this was an assessment activity, but does anyone feel that they have learned some more about straight lines during this lesson?”  80% of the class put their hands up.

Two of my department came in during the lesson to join in with the task of questioning the pupils.  At the end of the day we had a chat with two more members of the department about how we might improve the activity.   We thought we would try to make the resources reusable (laminated perhaps so pupils can write on them with dry-wipe pens), or maybe make it into an electronic activity by having the resources as objects on a drawing.  We would also change the cards to make the task more open-ended.  At the moment they fit together too neatly, so it does seem as though there is one right answer.

How do we square that with a system that has all S4-S6 pupils abandoning any pretence of learning from Easter until the beginning of June in order to prepare for and sit the SQA exams?

I don’t see anything in the documentation about the senior phase that suggests that anyone is planning to deviate from this age-old model of qualification by exam.

Nor do I have any alternatives to offer!

That is all.