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Teaching and learning Gem #30: Computer Science Practical Work and Metacognition

Spring Focus: Metacognition – Computer Science Skills

In this gem, I will be looking at the thinking skills that are taught as part of the Computer Science Curriculum and the ways in which they are taught. I hope that by sharing our ideas, we can start to think of problem solving as a set of skills involved across a range of subjects.
Metacognition skills are key to the study of computer programming. When encountering a new task, novice computer programmers are likely to concentrate on the superficial details of the problem, failing to break it down into manageable sub tasks and trying to solve the whole problem in one go. We often see this in our lessons and I’d be really interested to hear if any other colleagues encounter similar issues or use similar skills in their subjects.

Metacognition Skill 1: Decomposition
Decomposition is the process of breaking a large problem down into progressively smaller “chunks”, making it easier to solve. By the time they complete the GCSE course, students should be comfortable with these steps. In order to promote this at GCSE, students develop this skill in three ways:

Computer Science

At the start of the course:

 After introducing the concept of decomposition, students are asked to create an overview of the parts of their favourite board game. This gets them to take an algorithm (set of steps, as defined by the rules) and gets them to think about them in a different way.
Computer Science Further on in their learning, the class will be asked to attempt a decomposition diagram, working collaboratively to spot the key components of the problem. This work is not marked, nor do they have to follow a set format; it simply acts as their plan for the task.
Computer Science

Finally, at the end of a project, the class is given a solution prepared by the teacher. Their task is then to reverse-engineer the decomposition diagram, so that they can follow the thought process used and begin to do it by themselves in the future.

Metacognition Skill 2: Abstraction

Abstraction is the skill of removing unnecessary detail, allowing the programmer to focus on the important parts of the problem. A famous example of this is tube map, where Harry Beck realised that the geographical positions of the tube stations was unimportant; his map focused more on the order of stations and highlighting interchanges, using approximate locations (click here for a geographically accurate tube map and see how much hared it is to follow).

In this activity, students are paired, with one partner blindfolded. The partner who can see is given a photograph (of a bird, for example) and has to get the blindfolded “artist” to recreate the picture as accurately as possible. The results are often comical, occasionally hilarious and always excite some sort of comment. After a couple of iterations, the class is asked to reflect and discuss how they made it easier to describe the image to their partner. Many of them will respond with ideas such as “I told her to draw a circle the size of a 10p” and this can lead us in to the concept.

Metacognition Skill 3: Mental Mapping

In creating larger software projects, it’s important to consider how users will interact with the solution; the user will create a mental map of software, giving them an idea of where they are, where they need to go and the way back to the beginning. The class are asked to close their eyes and count the number of windows in their house (some of the numbers shocked me when I first asked this in a private school). After asking for their responses and writing them on the board, they are asked to forget about the number and to describe the process they went through. Were they inside or outside? Which room did they start in if they were inside? Did they fly around the outside? This allows us to explore the idea that they have a mental model or map of their house in their heads. This can be broadened out into directions to their nearest train station or supermarket. Then we look at the steps involved in performing everyday computer tasks, such as writing a letter in Word. Using these examples, the students then design their solution.

Why these ideas are Useful…

  • By introducing the skill in a non-technical and familiar situation to begin with, we can avoid overwhelming the pupils with new terminology
  • Instead of this being something new that the students feel they have to acquire, we can give them the idea that these are skills that they already possess and with practice can develop
  • It allows them to develop their confidence in the face of unknown problems and to draw out the similarities between tasks
  • Although these are Computer Science examples, they can be applied to other subjects:
    • Planning a project or research by splitting it into easy to achieve tasks
    • Describing concepts to others in a simple and concise way
    • Designing the layout of anything

 

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Friday Gem #29 – Revision Planning using Confidence Rating

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!

  1. 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.

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Slow Learning

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.

[3] Ibid. p. 63.

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Friday Gem #28 – exam/assessment wrappers

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 video is 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:

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.   

 

  1. Microsoft Forms for targeted reflection on specific skills/questions (Suzy Pett)

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.

  1. And here is another example of 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.

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Friday Gem #27 – start of term reflection on prior learning

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.”


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Teaching and learning Gem #26 – using Teams conversation space for student self-reflection and visible improvement on prior learning

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:

WHS Classwork Example

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:
WHS Classwork example

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Friday Gem #25 – harnessing the self-reflection of Motivational Maps and R&R

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.

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Teaching and learning Gem #24 – questioning for students to connect personally with the ideas

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:

  1. “Why do we care about…?”
  2. “Are you surprised by…?”
  3. “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.
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George Cook, explores ideas from The Culture Code (Daniel Coyle) and Radical Candor (Kim Scott)

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.

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Thinking about our Bread and Butter

Suzy Pett, Director of Studies, explores best practice for assessment and feedback.

Whilst cognitive scientists are increasingly enhancing our understanding of how students learn, to all intents and purposes, learning is still invisible. Sometimes we glimpse signs of learning: those eureka moments when a piece of knowledge suddenly clicks into place. But, to see the learning itself is a chimera.

Because of this, assessment and feedback is our bread and butter as teachers. We assess continually in a variety of ways to work out what has and hasn’t been learnt. It allows us to explore a student’s schema (network of knowledge), to put right misconceptions, to encourage individuals and to adapt our own teaching accordingly. In this way, we can make a myriad of adjustments to the way we teach to enhance student progress. Plus, with the help of cognitive science, we’re getting better at knowing what does and does not work in terms of assessment and feedback.

But, the idea of ‘assessment’ can strike fear into students. And, do students fully take on board our feedback, anyway? During our staff study day at the end of last half term, a group of us discussed our ethos surrounding assessment and feedback. It was important to refine our collective understanding of both these fundamental areas of pedagogy. With linear A Levels and GCSEs, we need to shine a light on our assessment methods, making the most of spaced and interleaved practice. But, we spoke, too, of students’ misunderstanding of the purpose of assessment and feedback.

We boiled down our ideas to a powerful message, drawing from our own experiences and in light of reading articles by David Didau, Tom Sherrington, Hattie, Clarke and the Education Endowment Foundation.

We want students to realise that:

  1. Assessment doesn’t just measure learning, it helps learning and it happens all the time in the classroom.
  2. Feedback is not a judgement on their ability but a spring-board towards further personal and academic development. Everything students do is part of a wider personal and academic endeavor.
  3. Feedback is an opportunity for reflection on, and ownership of, their learning.

Let’s dig a little deeper into these three ideas.


Assessment doesn’t just measure learning, it helps learning and it happens all the time in the classroom:

Assessment and testing turbo boost learning: They don’t just measure it, they propel it! The process of recalling knowledge strengthens long term memory; the process of collating ideas and organising them on the page helps consolidate schema. We want students to know this!

Lightness of touch, good humour and warmth: Frequent low stakes testing or quizzing (especially if spaced and/or interleaved) is fundamental in encoding ideas in the long term memory. And, it is an opportunity to quickly put right any misperceptions forming in the student’s mind. Regular testing, should, therefore not feel like a burden, but should be an opportunity to learn.   As teachers, we need to help set the tone for this. With a lightness of touch, good humour and warmth, these low stakes tests can propel more rapid learning and can build student confidence. Our attitude must reflect this spirit.

Toggle between knowledge: We need to be aware, too, of the illusion of understanding. Pupils can perform well in a low stakes quiz, especially if the quiz reflects a unit of blocked learning. However, students might not necessarily be able to transfer the learning to another context, or be able to recall it in an exam which requires them to toggle between different sorts of knowledge (such as in the linear GCSE and A Levels).  A longer, more formal, interleaved assessment or test is still important to gauge how students can pull together ideas from across their different schema. However, a refrain we often hear from students is “Is this an assessed piece of work?”, with rising levels of panic creeping into the voice. So, again, teachers need to position this sort of testing accordingly – as a chance for students to learn, rather than the teacher to judge.

Assessment happens continually, anyway: students need to realise this. As teachers, we’re not judging a one-off performance. Assessment is an ongoing process to help individuals make progress:

  • It’s the checking of prior knowledge at the start of the lesson (helping students orientate new understanding within their existing schema)
  • It’s the Q&A during lessons
  • It’s the one-to-one discussions whilst the teacher is circulating when the class are working
  • It’s the quick quiz during class time
  • It’s the careful observation of student talk/work during activities
  • It’s the mini plenary to judge how well new ideas have been assimilated
  • It’s the exit card for teachers to work out how each individual has grasped the learning.
  • NB: the verbal feedback in lessons and the one-to-one discussions are arguably the most powerful forms of feedback, more so than the written feedback on written work. Students should not underestimate this sort of feedback.


Feedback is not a judgement on student ability but a spring-board towards further personal and academic development. Everything they do is part of a wider personal/academic endeavor.

Low threat to self-esteem: One of the most striking discussions we had during staff study day was around the profound impact of feedback to bolster or demoralise students. An entire page of feedback on an essay may be well intentioned, but it can in fact deflate a student. Feedback is received best when there is a low rather than high threat to self-esteem, and we should be mindful of this. Instead, choosing to focus feedback on one particular skill, or on one particular element of the essay/test can be more impactful for the student, who can use it as a springboard for development.

Get off the hamster wheel! Learning is more that digesting ‘testable chunks’: Fortunately, WHS already has grit and resilience at the heart of the learning experience: growth mind set is firmly established amongst staff and students. However, we still need to beware to avoid assessment and feedback making students feel like they are on a hamster wheel. Instead of narrowing horizons to the next test or the next piece of feedback, it’s important for students to realise why this learning is important, beyond the looming GCSE and A Level. In giving feedback and when quizzing/assessing, we need to be sure that we keep our eyes on the whole and share this with students. Giving reminders of the wider canvas of the learning are key i.e. why is this knowledge/skill/technique important to our subject. Let’s even think beyond our subject divides and tap into our school’s STEAM ethos. We must keep at the forefront that what we are doing is unlocking the expansive, fascinating potential of our subject, not simply breaking it down into testable chunks. Feedback should remind students of this; it’s a chance to nurture their love of the subject.

Ditch the satnav: In contrast, David Didau has coined the term ‘satnav marking’, to indicate the sort of reductive mark that simply tells students the next steps. Whilst arguably useful in the immediate term, it makes a subject operate in a ‘paint by numbers’ capacity. We should avoid this sort of marking, instead encouraging students to think in nuanced ways about their work and their subject and their passions.


Feedback is an opportunity for reflection on, and ownership of, student learning.

If feedback is seen and not heard, it is pointless: Fundamental to feedback is students’ reflection on it. During out staff study day, we spoke about our sense that pupils often felt like they were doing the assessment/homework/test for us as teachers, rather than for themselves. By placing metacognition at the heart of the feedback process, we can shift this student misperception so that students take ownership of assessment and feedback as a personal learning process. Teachers need to carve out time and prioritise students taking on board the comments. Strategies were discussed, such as ‘DIRT’ time; students rewriting sections of their work; students responding to questions posed in the marking; students pre-reflecting on their work to allow teachers to respond to this in feedback; student tracking their marks/feedback using OneNote.

Give feedback on ‘best’ work: An idea that struck a chord was that students need to take ownership of their learning by the effort they invest in their work. There is little point in giving feedback on work students know isn’t their best…the feedback will just confirm what they already know. We need to give feedback on students’ ‘best’ work: i.e. work which is a result of high effort, in which students are invested and which shows ‘liminal learning’ (work which is pushing at the bounds of their capabilities). If this is the criterion for marking work, then students will want to see the feedback.

Self/peer assessment is not because we’re lazy! We also discussed the use of peer and self-assessment in allowing students to take ownership of their work. Whilst students often do not like this method of assessment, preferring the safety net of the teacher marking their work, we know that it develops metacognition.  This is not a technique for lazy teachers not wanting to mark (as we suspect some students think!) but it is a vital tool for student self-reflection.

It’s about a whole school culture. Most important of all is for this mind set of ownership and self-reflection to be reinforced regularly across the school: it’s about a culture which comes from teachers, tutors, form times, PSHE peer counsellors, subject leaders.