Spring Focus: Metacognition – students selecting and organising the whole class revision plan
Teaching and learning Gem #29: Planning the Revision Process/Logging Progress
In this gem, I will be taking you through the way in which we use the girls’ own confidence ratings to plan the revision and teaching schedule in Computer Science, as well as promoting the idea of tackling your weakest topics first.
This Friday Gem was, in part, gifted to me several years ago on a course. The Chief Examiner for Computer Science at the time (pre-Govian A-levels) claimed that it should be possible for a student to fully revise for the A-Level in a single hour, as long as the students prioritised their revision effectively. Although I never did subscribe to that timeframe, I noted that students often simply start at the beginning of the specification and waded their way through to the end, rather than targeting the trickiest topics before fatigue sets in!
First Review
After the Computer Science exam classes have finished the specification (this is usually just after Autumn Half Term), they have a single lesson where they are asked to give their gut reaction to the topics on the syllabus, in order to inform our planning of revision topics going forward.
They are provided with a grid, containing all of the spec points from the syllabus and a booklet full of revision questions which they can use as a stimulus for discussion. Working collaboratively, they discuss the specification points, look at the questions and rate their confidence on each topic (a score out of 5) by completing their column in the table:
Why it’s useful…
Taking these numerical snapshots of the students’ confidence lets the students:
Understand their areas of strengths and weakness
Discuss the topics and practice exam questions with their peers, to further their understanding
Feel more confident about the approaching assessment, as they look at more examination style questions and understand the types of questions and skills required
Find reassurance when all of their peers rate a topic with a low score
It also allows us to put the scores in a spreadsheet:
We can calculate an average student understanding for each topic
Sorting the syllabus from lowest to highest average, we plan our revision lessons to tackle those topics which the students are most concerned about first
We can also take an average per student and use this to identify anyone who needs a pep talk or who may need extra support:
Towards the End of Revision The class comes back to the table again and we repeat the process again. Students are able to see their progress, having hopefully driven all of their confidence scores higher, which should help to prove to them that their hard work has paid off.
Have you ever walked into a classroom and made an initial judgment which you can’t see to amend? Perhaps when we make initial observations, we are comparing two things and judging their similarities? If our judgments are distorted by perception, how can we be sure that our decision making is having a positive impact on teaching and learning? This is why it is so important for us to think first about why we think the way we do. Not only will this reflection allow us to consider how we come to make judgments, but also make us factor in the unknown in our decision making.
The Undoing Project – Michael Lewis
On each round of a game, 20 marbles are distributed at random among five children: Alan, Ben, Carl, Dan, and Ed. Consider the following distribution:
Type I
Type II
Alan
4
Alan
4
Ben
4
Ben
4
Carl
5
Carl
4
Dan
4
Dan
4
Ed
3
Ed
4
In many rounds of the game, will there be more results of type I or type II?[1]
If you have spent a moment looking at the above example, I wonder if you thought why you chose type I or type II. What are we doing when we make judgments? How do we take pieces of information, process them, and come to a decision or judgment?
For one or more answers, I recently read The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis in which he tracks the careers and lives of two of the greatest psychologists, Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
The above table is taken from Lewis’ book, chapter 6, The Mind’s Rules. Questions such as, ‘when/where was human judgment likely to go wrong’, ‘why do people often say that they were doing one thing when they were actually doing another’ ‘what are people doing when they judge probability’ are examples which Kahneman & Tversky try and tackle. In their paper Subjective Probability: A Judgment of Representativeness[2]Kahneman & Tversky attempt to ‘demonstrate people make predictable and systematic errors in the evaluation of uncertain events’. If nothing else this should get you thinking about thinking. Part of their approach comes from the premise that when people make judgments, they compare whatever they are judging to some model in their minds. “Our thesis is that, in many situations, an event A is judged to be more probable than an event B whenever A appears more representative than B.”[3] So, take a look again at the above example. Do you know why you chose type I or type II? If you think that the uneven distribution of type I is more likely than all the children receiving four marbles each, then think again. Just because type II “appears too lawful to be the result of a random process…”[4] it doesn’t mean it is wrong. This is something worth thinking about, “if our minds can be misled by our false stereotype of something as measurable as randomness, how much might they be misled by other, vaguer stereotypes?”[5]
Throughout the book there are questions raised about our understanding of how hard it is to know anything for sure. Kahneman himself favoured Gestalt psychology which sought to explore the mysteries of the human mind. The central question posed by Gestalt psychologists was, ‘how does the brain create meaning?’ Look at the two parallel lines below.[6] Are you really going to insist that one line is longer than the other?
If perception has the power to overwhelm reality in such a simple case, how much power might it have in a more complicated one?
For those of you of a more medical persuasion you may prefer Chapter 8 which tracks the impact Kahneman & Tversky had on Dr. Don Redelmeier, an internist-researcher. Working at Sunnybrook, Canada’s largest trauma centre he says, “You need to be so careful when there is one simple diagnosis that instantly pops into your mind that beautifully explains everything all at once. That’s when you need to stop and check your thinking.”[7] This is not to say that the first thing that comes into our mind is wrong, but because it was in our mind, we become more certain of it. How costly may this be in school life? This I think is highlighted in an example of a maths problems in which we can check our answers to see if we have erred. In comparison to education it highlights an interesting thought. “…If we are fallible in algebra, where the answers are clear, how much more fallible must we be in a world where the answers are much less clear?”[8] This is certainly a book to read from cover to cover even if it doesn’t give you all the answers why we should be careful to think about thinking.
With ‘slowing down’ a key part of our wellbeing strategy of ‘Strong Body, Strong Mind’, our Director of Studies, Suzy Pett, looks at why slowing down is fundamental from an educational perspective, too.
So often, the watch words of classroom teaching are ‘pace’ and ‘rapid progress’. I’m used to scribbling down these words during lesson observations, with a reassuring sense that I’m seeing a good thing going on. And I am. We want lessons to be buzzy, with students energised and on their toes. We want them to make quick gains in their studies. But is it more complex than this?
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that ‘slow and deep’ should be the mantra for great teaching and learning. I’m not suggesting that lessons become sluggish. But, we need to jettison the idea that progress can happen before our very eyes. And, with our young people acclimatised to instant online communication, now more than ever do we need our classrooms – virtual or otherwise – to be havens of slow learning and deep thinking. Not only is this a respite from an increasingly frenetic world, but it is how students develop the neural networks to think in a deeply critical and divergent way.
What I love most in in the classroom is witnessing the unfurling of students’ ideas. This takes time. I’m not looking for instant answers or quick, superficial responses. I cherish the eeking out of a thought from an uncertain learner, or hearing a daring student unpack the bold logic of her response. Unlike social media, the classroom is not awash with snappy soundbites, but with slow, deep questioning and considered voices. As much as pacey Q&A might get the learning off to a roaring start, lessons should also be filled with gaps, pauses and waiting. You wouldn’t rush the punch line of a joke. So, it’s the silence after posing a question that has the impact: it gifts the students the time for deep thinking. In lessons, we don’t rattle along the tracks; we stop, turn around and change direction. We revisit ideas, and circle back on what needs further exploration. This journey might feel slower, but learning isn’t like a train timetable.
But what does cognitive science say about slow learning? Studies show that learning deeply means learning slowly.[1] I’m as guilty as anyone at feeling buoyed by a gleaming set of student essays about the poem I have just taught. But don’t be duped by this fools’ gold. Immediate mastery is an illusion. Quick-gained success only has short term benefits. Instead, learning that lasts is slow in the making. It requires spaced practice, regularly returning to that learning at later intervals. The struggle of recalling half-forgotten ideas from the murky depths of our brains helps them stick in the long-term memory. But this happens over time and there is no shortcut.
Interleaving topics also helps with this slow learning. Rather than ploughing through a block of learning, carefully weaving in different but complimentary topics does wonders. The cognitive dissonance created as students toggle between them increases their conceptual understanding. By learning these topics aside each other, students’ brains are working out the nuances of their similarities and differences. The friction – or ease – with which they make connections allows learners to arrange their thoughts into a more complex and broad network of ideas. It will feel slower and harder, but it will be worth it for the more flexible connections of knowledge in the brain. It is with flexible neural networks that our students can problem solve, be creative, and make cognitive leaps as new ideas come together for a ‘eureka’ moment.
Amidst the complexity of the 21st century, these skills are at a premium. With a surfeit of information bombarding us and our students from digital pop-ups, social media and 24 hour news, the danger is we seek the quick, easy-to-process sources.[2] This is a cognitive and cultural short circuit, with far reaching consequences for the individual’s capacity for critical thinking. With the continual rapid intake of ideas, the fear is a rudderlessness of thought for our young people.[3]
And yet, peek inside our classrooms, and you will see the antidote to this in our deep, slow teaching and learning.
Sources: [1] David Epstein, Range (London: Macmillan, 2019), p. 97.
[2] Maryanne Wolf, Reader, Come Home (New York: HarperCollins, 2018), p. 12.
Spring Focus: Metacognition – students driving their own learning through reflection
Teaching and learning Gem #28 – exam/assessment wrapper
Lots of us are promoting metacognition in the self-reflective reviews we are setting for students following the Spring Assessments. By reflecting on their own performance, we are encouraging students to think about their skills/understanding and become self-regulated learners.
I’m aware that for self-reflection to work, students need to take it seriously, realise its impact rather than pay lip-service to it. We can help them do this in the way we approach this sort of task. Additionally, the first minute of this videois great at helping students realise that self-reflection is an important part of life for all sorts of people: it’s not just something that happens in the classroom.
Right now, there is lots of great practice going on around the school, so I thought I’d share five different approaches from five departments to give a flavour:
Flipgrid for powerful, verbal self-reflection (Claire Baty)
Claire used Flipgrid as a way for students to send her a video of their self-reflection. This was quick to set up and powerful in its impact. Using a moderated Flpgrid board meant that students couldn’t see each other’s video reflections, so it felt like a personal one-to-one discussion with their teacher. Claire could then easily video a response back to the student using the platform. Claire says, “I am convinced that verbalising their self-reflection helps students to clarify their ideas and take on board their own advice more readily. I think they give more thought to something they have to say out loud than they would if I’d just asked them to jot down their ideas on OneNote.” Here were her instructions posted on Flipgrid.
NB: on a technical note, if you set up a moderated board and then want students to rewatch their video submission and see any video feedback from the teacher, they need to go to my.flipgrid.com Watch out for a video about this from Claire.
Redrafting with students noting why they are redrafting (Judith Parker)
Giving students the time to redraft is an invaluable metacognitive process. This is a slow/deep activity and cannot be rattled off quickly – it’s worth the lesson or homework time in gold. Judith asked students to engage with their assessment responses and think carefully about how to improve their own work. She increased the metacognitive challenge by asking student to note down why they have chosen to redraft a particular section. Making their thought processes clear to themselves helps them drive their own learning.
Students categorising the questions into skill type and reviewing their performance in these different skills (Clare Roper)
This is one part of a self-reflection worksheet that students complete on OneNote. By identifying and categorising the skills in each question, Clare is asking students to think in a structured way about strengths and to identify for themselves next steps in their learning. Spotting patterns in their performance makes clear to students how to approach further learning, and helps them see the sorts of skills they need to employ in future assessments/tests.
Microsoft Forms for targeted reflection on specific skills/questions (SuzyPett)
A questionnaire of focussed, self-reflection questions can be created using Microsoft Forms. Of course, these questions could easily be completed by students in OneNote, too.
And here is another exampleof a self-review for students at KS3 (Steph Harel)
I really like this metacognitive question on the below worksheet, “If you could go back in time before the assessment due date, what advice would you give yourself.” Encouraging a ‘self-dialogue’ is really valuable: the more students can ‘talk’ to themselves about what they are doing, the better.
Autumn Focus: Metacognition – students driving their own learning through reflection
Teaching and learning Gem #27 – start of term reflection on prior learning
This comes from Mary and Yvonne in Chemistry, who used digital RAG forms at the start of this term to help students reflect on their learning. This is such a great method to develop metacognition. Whilst we have done a Friday Gem on RAG forms before, I thought it would be useful to share how colleagues are using them to great effect with the current T&L focus.
In creating the Microsoft Form, Mary and Yvonne used statements from the specification to break down the topic (great for helping students’ mental schema about the topic)
They asked the students to complete the form after a holiday, allowing students to realise what has stuck in the long-term memory, and what has not.
This drew the students’ attention to the nature of memory, and the need for regular, spaced practice.
In rating their knowledge Red, Amber, Green, students were having to recall ideas and concepts and reflect on their own confidence.
As well as being a great metacognitive task for students, it also allowed for Mary and Yvonne to get really quick feedback about the class at a snapshot, but they could also zoom into the detail to see the confidence of individuals.
It has helped them plan for revision/interleaving/revisiting areas.
What did the students think of this?
“The girls said they found it really useful. They particularly liked it at the end of a topic with the spec statements as it really helped breakdown the content of the units and identify what they felt uncertain about when they had time to think about it. They advised me that they want me to do more and definitely at the end of units.”
Autumn Focus: Metacognition – students driving their own learning through reflection
Teaching and learning Gem #26 – using Teams conversation space for student self-reflection and visible improvement on prior learning
This Friday Gem comes from Andrea Croucher, Claire Baty and Suzy Pett, who all tried out this idea with their classes over the past two weeks.
Students start a ‘New Conversation’ in the general channel, writing down what they already know about a topic/answering a question.
At the end of the lesson – or a later lesson – students review and reflect on what they have written. They hit ‘reply’ and directly below their first comment they write a new comment, either thinking about how their learning has progressed, or improving upon their original answer.
You could use star emojis for students to rate how much their learning/understanding has developed.
This is effective because is because students are thinking explicitly about their learning:
Recalling prior knowledge is an important metacognitive skill.
Students evaluating their original understanding at a later point makes it clear to them what new learning has happened.
Students having a conversation with themselves allows them visibly to see their progress.
Thinking about what they still don’t understand or what they want to follow up allows them to drive their own learning and understand themselves better as learners.
Example from Andrea’s Year 10 RS lesson about Jewish beliefs and the nature of God. Students responded to an initial starter question. Then, next lesson, they reviewed what they had put and added to it with their new learning:
Example from Suzy’s lesson. Year 12 English students wrote down their initial understanding of what modernism means, and then after completing an independent project, reflected on how much their understanding had developed using star emojis. They thought about what they found particularly interesting, and what they would like to pursue further:
Example from Claire’s Year 8 French class. They wrote a sentence about where they live as a starter, and then improved at the end of the lesson:
Alys Lloyd, a Maths Teacher at Wimbledon High School, looks at society’s attitude towards Maths, what makes a good mathematician, and how you can compare the retaining of mathematics knowledge to that of languages.
Teachers do have social lives, although to our students this might be a shocking idea. A teacher being spotted outside of school, in the supermarket for example, can send some students into a flat spin. So the idea of a teacher being at a party might be difficult to imagine, but I can assure you, it does happen!
At parties and in social situations with people who don’t know me, I have found that my job can, unfortunately, put a bit of dampener on things. A typical conversation opener is to ask what someone does for a living. The most common response to my saying that I’m a Maths teacher is “oh, wow” then something along the lines of “I was never any good at Maths in school.” Then the person I was talking to politely excuses themselves. I now tend to dodge that kind of question and stick to safer topics.
Why is it socially acceptable to say you are bad at Maths? I doubt that so many people would be so upfront saying that they can’t read… So why does Maths get such bad press?
My Theory
Mathematics is a very black and white subject, with normally only one right answer, although there may be lots of different ways to get there. Many people have been put off Maths because in the past they have got stuck, had a negative experience and not known how to get to the correct solution.
This may have been because the teaching was poor, or the methods they were taught to use didn’t make sense to them, or they didn’t speak up in class so didn’t get help. I believe that by far the most common reason is that they take getting stuck personally. They believe that they didn’t get the right answer because they themselves are bad at Maths. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is something that just happened in the past; it still happens, and I see it happening with the highly achieving girls at WHS. They are not used to getting things wrong, finding something difficult, having to struggle, and they take it personally – they internalise this as a failure: they are bad at Maths.
Which leads us to the question: what makes someone ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at Maths? Who is someone who is ‘good’ at Maths? A Lecturer or Professor of Mathematics? A Maths teacher? Or someone who simply enjoys doing Maths? Is it about who you are comparing yourself to? As a Maths teacher, my level of mathematics is low compared to a Mathematics Professor. Being good at mental arithmetic is not the same as being good at Maths; possibly conversely in fact – professional Mathematicians are notoriously bad at mental arithmetic, as are some Maths teachers!
So, for people who say: “I’m bad at Maths”, they may think that those people who are ‘good’ at Maths never get stuck; never struggle to get to the answer. But I can assure you, that is not the case. I am a Maths teacher and I get stuck on Maths problems. I definitely don’t always immediately know how to get to the answer.
I believe the difference in how you feel about Maths is about what you do when you get stuck, because we ALL get stuck. Being stuck isn’t bad – it’s part of the process. It is a way of forming new connections in the brain; it’s a part of learning.
When I get stuck on a problem I don’t take it personally; I don’t take it as a reflection of my mathematical ability; I think of it as a challenge, a conundrum to be figured out, a puzzle to be solved. If I can’t find a solution quickly, I stop and try to think about it differently. Could it be thought about in another way? Can I visualise it by drawing a sketch or diagram? Is there an alternative approach or method I haven’t tried? Have I used all the information I have available? These are very important problem-solving skills and have lots of relevance to everyday life.
Above: Thinking, via Pexels
Use it or lose it
Mathematics in many ways can be considered its own language. When learning languages, you start with basics: hello, please, thank you, and a few important sentences (dos cervezas, por favor); and build up to be able to communicate fluidly. If you have ever tried to learn a language seriously, you will know that it is not a smooth process. You go through phases of thinking you’re doing great, then you feel like you plateau – you realise that there is a whole verb tense you had no idea existed, that you now need to learn.
Maths is similar. You need to know the basics: numbers, patterns, arithmetic, and a few important ideas like algebra; and you build up to some quite complicated Maths like calculus, proof, complex numbers. With Maths numbers and algebra are the words, and rules like BIDMAS are the grammar. They are a means to the same end as languages – to communicate effectively.
One aspect of learning a language (or learning a musical instrument) is that if you don’t practise it regularly, you start to lose the gains you had made; it becomes more difficult, and eventually you forget. I firmly believe – that like a language – if you don’t use Maths, if you don’t practise it regularly, you start to lose it.
For me, this explains why parents can struggle to remember how to do school-level Maths with their children, even if they found it easy when they were young – they haven’t practised it in years. It can seem like an alien language – it’s hard to pick something up again when you have had such a long gap.
Yet even if you, yourself, haven’t used Maths in years, you are constantly using things that have been programmed by someone using Mathematics. Maths underpins everything ‘modern’ around us: the computer at which I am typing this article, the smartphone in your pocket; it keeps planes in the air and stops them crashing into each other; it’s in our buildings, in our clothes; Maths is fundamental to our modern style of living.
We want to encourage our children to feel it is socially unacceptable to be bad at Maths. We want them to be the ones solving the problems of the future, and part of this will certainly require mathematics.
So, what’s the take-home message? I’d like to think it’s this: in Maths, as in life, we all get stuck, but the people who succeed are the ones who don’t give up. And if you are lucky enough to meet a Maths teacher at a party, please be nice!
Autumn Focus: Metacognition – students driving their own learning through reflection
Teaching and learning Gem #25 – harnessing the self-reflection of Motivational Maps and R&R
This Friday Gem comes from Clare Duncan
One clear example of student self-reflection is their termly Review and Reflection session, and none more so than this year with our holistic approach. Using the Motivational Maps tool, students completed a series of questions which generated a report detailing their top motivators. They reflected on what these motivators meant to them and how they could harness them to develop strategies for success in every aspect of school life: academics, co-curricular and friendships. These thoughts were captured during R&R and their report has been transferred to their profile page on Firefly.
So how can we use these in our T&L to encourage students to take control of their learning and reflect on their progress?
Well, each student reflection was captured in a report on Firefly. If there is a student in your class who you feel is not connecting with your subject, why not look at their self-reflection and discuss with them their motivators: together, plan how the student can use those motivators to drive their progress in your subject.
By way of an example:
Take Ceri, her top motivator is a Director: she has a need for power and influence. Here is her reflection:
I am struggling with finding my feet in class and in the Sixth Form. This is particularly true in Politics and English as I feel that the more confident girls always speak over me and when I do say something; they challenge what I’ve said and I am unable to speak up or share my opinions.
Through Ceri articulating this, you and she can discuss and plan an approach to her having a voice. For example, giving her a lead role in an initiative, you will be addressing her motivational need. This is a great way of using a student’s self-refection to help them to flourish in your subject.
This Friday Gem comes from Steph Harel, who I saw use this sort of questioning in a lesson I observed.
She frequently asked questions that encouraged students to develop their own engagement with the learning, helping them think about the broader context of their learning, but also about what that learning means for them from an individual, personal, ethical as well as academic perspective.
I found these three questions from Steph particularly effective. They can be answered from different perspectives: personal/ethical/academic:
“Why do we care about…?”
“Are you surprised by…?”
“Why does it matter…?”
This sort of questioning is effective because:
It develops a student’s personal connection with topics: what do these topics mean to them as individuals. The learning resonates with them as thinking, feeling humans?
It encourages students to interrogate their reactions to new ideas: great for metacognition.
It helps the teacher build strong a strong rapport with the class, getting to know their students’ personal perspectives.
Linking the academic work to a personal response will help the learning be contextualised for the individual. It will thus build it into a schema/network so it sticks in the long-term memory.
It prompts debate and encourages student’s to raise their voice…if this is their opinion, they are less worried about being right or wrong.
George Cook, Head of Hockey at WHS, explores ideas from The Culture Code (Daniel Coyle) and Radical Candor (Kim Scott). These books show that it is less about the questions we ask, and more about the environment we create that enables us to ask them. Culture is everything.
Questioning is a hot topic in the world of education. What type of questioning do you use? What type of questioning should you be using?
There is no doubt that questioning allows us, as the teacher, to identify areas of strength and weakness in our classes. It gives opportunity to really challenge the most gifted, stretching and pushing the limits of their understanding. It is a great tool because in the same breath we can use questioning to give great confidence to those who are unsure or perhaps, normally, quieter and more reserved in lessons.
However, according to the two books listed above, the type of question you use and who you ask it to, is irrelevant if the environment we create is not quite right.
The Culture Code examines many high performing groups ranging from high end military task forces and airline pilots, to successful start-up companies as well as big hitters like Google. On the face of it, none of these groups have much in common. Apart from the culture they have developed, built on honest two-way communication and trust.
It was found that regular small snippets of communication within these high functioning groups allowed them to not only know each other better, but made sure they stayed on track throughout the task at hand to complete it in the most accurate and efficient way possible. The opposite of this in a classroom situation would be to wait for over an hour into a lesson before catching a pupil off guard with a challenging question to answer in front of their peers. Small and frequent two-way communication is much more effective.
Radical Candor states that if we are to have open and honest communication in our groups and teams then we must instil two key elements first. Firstly, care personally about all those in your class, and show it! As teachers we do this more often than we might expect and can be as simple as asking a pupil how their weekend was etc. The second element is to challenge directly. Challenge the beliefs of pupils directly, but also actively encourage them to do the same to us as this is more likely to build trusting relationships where more in depth and honest discussions and conversations can be had.
If we can take these lessons and implement them into our classroom and practical teaching, then we are far more likely to have open and lively debate and discussion that includes all members of the group and not just those that feel confident in the subject area. This is why I think the culture we build around questioning is equally important as the type of questions we use.
