The timeless struggles of coaxing pupils to get started on their revision (or homework). This year, as every year, for the past twenty-five years as a teacher, I have been encouraging pupils to get started. This year, I have a …
Why elephants and frogs 🐘🐸 As the saying goes, you eat an elephant ‘one bite at a time.’ Revision always feels like a BIG task. Another way to think of the long term, BIG task of revising is the story …
On the back of “Generate questions, testing or restudy” here are my top five tips for generating retrieval questions for revision. Time efficiency – When time to learn is limited, it matters a great deal how one puts to use …
Back in December I wrote a post for Sec Ed stating that an understanding of “retrieval practice alone is not enough.” In that post I argued that we also needed to be aware of spaced learning, interleaving, feedback and metacognition. …
We are entering a two mock cycle at our school. A full revision programme is underway; assemblies, revision packs, past papers, focused tutor groups delivering literacy and numeracy sessions*, revision planning sessions, post-it note mocks (live marking), walking-talking mocks, targeted …
Given what I have learnt this week about about the importance of sleep to learning, to our well-being, it’s omission from past revision sessions and assemblies as a key strategy was a mistake. Here is why. The World Health Organisation …
A few months back I asked all the exam boards if they could share the most common exam mistakes made by candidates, common exam blind spots or pot holes. I did ask for trade secrets, nor what was going to be in the …
This is my second year Championing the “Cover it in Custard” campaign. We delivered the session to all Year 11 pupils (yes, all of them) Friday Period 5 & 6. It was set up as a mix of team building, thinking tasks and CUSTARD …
