Changing my lesson structure.

I came across the following tweet (1): and it has got me thinking, in fact so much that I have changed my lesson structure accordingly

My lessons' general structure post-Bjork:
Retrieval practice: 10- 20 mins
Feedback on it: 5-10 mins
Last lesson recap : 10 mins
New idea/nugget: 10 mins
Practising new idea: 10 mins

My new lesson structure follows this format closely, with only the timings that might vary. I have decided to keep a blog on how this new structure impacts on my students and their learning. There are three outcomes that I can envisage for the new lesson plan:

i) it is successful and the students retention and versatility improve; measured by exam scores.
ii) either my own feedback or feedback from my students convince me that this is not the way to structure lessons.
iii) I am observed and told that this structure is not suitable, change it now.

The first question must be why did this structure appeal to me? I am a fan of retrieval practise, my belief being that most students will struggle to recall this information from long term memory as it is likely that they will not revisit it unless in lesson time. Williamson (2) details the importance of building a link between long term memory and working memory. There are a number of useful guides given by Retrieval Practice (3) which detail ways to keep knowledge available to students, including retrieval practise and interleaving.

So the first part of the lesson is retrieval. For this section of the lesson the students will not able to look at notes and (initially) no worked examples from me. Initially I thought that retrieval might be spending time on a topic that we looked at a few weeks ago, last term or in this academic year. The main criteria for selecting a topic would be that it was something that I noted that the students really struggled with first time around, for example my year 9s struggled to grasp the process of estimating the mean from grouped data. We have been through this, now they understand the process and can answer questions on it, but I have left it for now and will revisit it in the future.  Another initial idea was to select a topic by analysing the students homework. After reading about Whole Class Feedback (4) I have taken to noting and feeding back to students the areas the class as a whole struggled with. Our homework is set on Hegarty Maths (5), which means that it is easy to see at a glance where students could do with a recap, often using worksheets from the excellent Corbett maths website (6). These initial ideas are fine but I was aware that there might be a missed opportunity, instead of selecting a random topic would it make more sense to select one that is in someway related to the rest of the lesson? For instance, with my bottom set Year 8s (my favourite class) we have started to look at perimeter, then moving on to area. So for these lessons I now include multiplying and adding, mainly integers but also including some challenges, e.g. fractions, decimals and algebra. This means that as we start our new nugget I can be confident that the students are aware of the basics and will not need to waste working memory on how to multiply.

I have recently listened to Mr Barton Maths Podcast with Robert and Elizabeth Bjork (7) and one discussion in particular stood out for me; namely what gap should be left between teaching the topic and then trying it again with the students. Elizabeth made the point that the length was dependent on whether the students work was looked at by the class after completion. If so then it is better to leave a longer gap between the revisiting a topic, but if the class did not spend anytime looking at and correcting their work then a shorter gap should be used. For me it makes sense to check the students work, or at least get them to check their work and identify areas that need to be looked at again. The added benefit of this is that with more time between revisits there is more time to cover all the topics in our packed Scheme of Work. There is time allotted to this feedback/ checking process in the lesson structure.

There was recently a tweet (8) by MrBayewm where he discuses the 5 stages of Deliberate Practice and the two ideas seem to me to dove tail nicely together. The argument is that to allow students to be able to solve problems without taking up to much working memory we should break topics down into simpler processes and to practice each one until the student can perform each one confidently. For me this new lesson structure really supports this, there is time for a student to learn a nugget, and then to practice a new nugget in the same lesson.  In the next lesson this nugget is re-enforced in the last lesson recap. So each lesson students are constantly introduced to a new nugget and then reminded about what they already know and how the nuggets fit together.

Similarly Craig Barton discusses atomisation, where a topic is broken down into sensible sub-topics, where learning one sub-topic will help in learning the next one. Even recently I would have tried to teach a topic in one go, and presumed that it was all making sense to the students as we were looking at the big picture and students would be able to see how the pieces fit together. However I can understand the strain we might put upon our students by doing this. To a student it might seem like we are trying to do sub-topics a,b and then c. But then they might struggle as they are not confident about how to do step b, or why, or how does it relate to step c? If a student does not understand step a then is it right to expect them to solve a problem that requires this step? Following the new format there is time to introduce a new nugget and to make sure it is understood. The next lesson allows students time to revisit step a to ensure that it is fresh, and then there is plenty of time to move onto step b. The students can see how these are related and are given time to practise each nugget.

My final issue is one of time, will spending so long breaking nuggets down allow me to cover everything? This is a concern of mine but I think the answer will be yes. Firstly it might be that we have to take a longer term view on this, so teaching students how to add fractions would occur in just Year 7, but with constant retrieving this should be enough. How could we incorporate this sensibly into lessons? As mentioned earlier a topic might be selected as a prerequisite to a topic. Referring again to the Bjorks' podcast (4) Craig Barton mentions that instead of spending four weeks on fractions a teacher could just spend an initial two weeks, then spread the other two weeks throughout the year. In the case of fractions they could be looked at again before teaching probability. Secondly (I hope) a benefit will be that constantly accessing previous topics will re-enforce their retrieval from long term memory, making them more confident learners and negate the need for an unplanned reteach of the maths that I presumed students knew.

Thank you for reading my blog. Feedback would be lovely, especially if you have tried this system and have found pitfalls.



References:
(1) Tweet by Miguel Pimentel https://twitter.com/mrpimentelmaths/status/1091766353646768129 
(2) Why don't students like school? Page 55. Daniel T Willingham
(3) Retrieval @RetrieveLearn
(4) My tweet on Whole Class Feedback https://twitter.com/search?
(5) Hegartymaths.com

(6) https://corbettmaths.com/contents/

(7) Mr Bartons Maths Podcast 29th June 2017

q=%23wholeclassfeedback&src=typd

(8) https://twitter.com/MrBayew/status/1091810003697233920