More Classroom routines

With routines secured, flex the four Classroom modes and practice settings, using either overt (recorded responses) or convert (thinking-hard responses) practice and 🌺 ideas.

⚙️ Classroom Settings: 🎚️ +/- Deck size 🏷️+/-Tags ❓+/- Qs 🏷️show/hide Tags 📝Notes ⏲️ +/- timer ⤵️ Reorder and 🔄 Refresh. 🖊Overt 💭 Covert 💬 Verbal

🔥Win or day streaks 🪤Hunt correct answers (no hands up) 🔮Forecast performance 🃏Life-line

🛠️ Set up 💡Top tips 🌺 Share ideas

✅ Self-assessment: 2 marks for a precise / exact answer. 1 mark for a correct answer. Learners agency - (marks 2, 1 or 0 and divided the total marks awarded by two and round up).

With our Classroom routine embedded, our default for this Year 7 class was six Cards, increased from four to five to six. Learners are automatically focused and get on with their 📝retrieval practice. Countdown showing. (I take the register and set up the lesson in almost utter silence.)

The class's knowledge of 'A Story Like the Wind' is getting sticky and broadening. increased the number of prompts from four to five to six Learners have a secure understanding of the context, the characters and the first three tags pages 0-25. We had used the "fast response" routine to close of lessons., during which a new learning activity was spontaneously and creatively, if accidentally, created. An activity spurred on by learner curiosity and some hard thinking.

Once all the Cards had been reviewed and revealed, I drew the class's attention to how their knowledge was deepening and how their investment in "knowing stuff" was paying dividends. I went on to emphasise the importance of making connections in their new "smarts" or knowledge (to promote alternative pathways to solutions) when one learner clarified my comment making a statement connecting the vocabulary Tag "Displaced" with a prompt about one of the characters - Tagged "refugee." Boom! My response was to offer high praise and almost immediately another other learner latched on and made a second connection. One bright learner then connected three Cards and the game was afoot. No extra planning, lots more "hard thinking" for them. Dylan Wiliam would approve. The educators task, to evaluate the quality of learner connections.

This activity, is in fact very important and is a form of elaboration. The concept of elaboration among cognitive psychologists is broad and can mean a lot of different things, however elaborative interrogation is essential asking how and why questions, making connections and links. My assertion here is making connections between prompts using the Tags, requires learner have to ask themselves 'how' and 'why' questions and think - hard.

🛠️ Post review and reveal - ask learners if they can connect two Cards by the Tags. Now three Cards, four, all Cards.

🌺 Connect only prompts. 🌺 Connect only responses. 🌺 Connect prompts with different responses.

When learners are now familiar with the Classroom routine, when they have moved from learning new substantive content to regularly retrieving it successfully, now is a good time to road test Fast 10 (an arbitrary Card value). Whole class.

⚙️ 10 Cards from a deck of 30, 50 or 100? You'll see why we went with 10 Cards in dur course, it could be less.

🛠️ Learners read and retrieve of the response (disguised reading). Every six seconds, the educator reveals the paired response.

💡Have learners keep a public record of their score on their fingers. Hence 10 Cards.

💡Have learner stand, then sit when they encounter the first difficult question. Great feedback for the educator.

The educators asks the room - "More than 3, 4, 5. More than 6..." you judge the level of feedback you want. Start with a low score, all hands go up. For those learners that put their hands down early, you may want to ascertain what it was that they are finding difficult.

As it is such an efficient routine, 10 retrievals in 60s, you may review 3 or 4 or more times. ⤵️ Reorder or 🔄 Refresh is up to you. Look for learners who consistently report weak performance. On the upside, these same learners are getting significant retrieval opportunities and feedback corrections over 📝overt routines. Drawbacks, no record is available, performance is self-assessed.

You may wish to explore this adaptation for "within lesson" testing or lesson closes, in part due to the speed and ease with which Classroom can present prepared prompts on any focused topic being taught.

This is tricky, if very popular, sometimes lively routine. It works really well with somewhat smaller groups (4-18). It can be used with classes, if you plan for the fact that only one learner is active and in the spotlight, some learners may not have to directly answer a question during the Review, and those "knocked out" and inactive, need to attended - in case they are thrown a 🃏 lifeline.

⚙️ 10-15 ❓ Any mode. No ⏲️. As the educator, your role is "Quiz show host." Learners are players.

🛠️ Players stand in front of their chairs, so "active players" are visible. Players "knocked out" sit down (quickly and immediately) to allow for clear sight of active players.

Step 1: Nominate a player to answer Q1. If they do not know the answer, they respond by sitting down. Nominate the next player to answer, up to x knockouts. Decide how many knockouts are permitted. At which point, anyone seated can be thrown a 🃏 lifeline and if they answer correctly, that player returns to the game by standing up. Otherwise return to Step 1.

Step 2: When the question is answered correctly that player nominates the next player to answer. - See Step 1.

💡+/- the knockout value speeds up, or slows down the Review.

💡Interleave difficult Tags to manipulate the challenge level.

The last player standing must be able to answer the final question, or they are "knocked out / sat down" as well! Players like the idea that it is possible to have more than one winner.

🌺 More strategic though a little slower- at Step 2 the player nominates both the player and the question.

💡If players are standing and distracted or not meeting your expectations, I have been known to seat them.

Paired retrieval practice is very popular in a number of schools. In fact, even the simple process of "instilling an expectation to teach" increases learning efficiency at home and in the classroom, Nestojko et al., (2014). Here are a few paired ideas using either Classroom or RememberMore.

• Team retrieval. The preferred routine, with learners working in pairs and having to agree and committed to their response.

• Paired competition. The preferred routine, with learners going head-to-head.

• Using RememberMore: One learner reads the prompt, the other responds.

Go Ahead Then

⚙️ x Cards. No ⏲️

Learner A bids how many questions they can answer. Learner B has to either raise the bid OR - say "Go on then." If the bid is achieved, the learner wins, if they come up short, they lose. Learners quickly learn to bid strategically, but they may need a little prompting to think outside the +1 box.

🌺 We are actively seek more paired and group routines.

Calibration has been defined as the degree of fit between a person’s judgement of performance and his or her actual performance, with postdictions typically more accurate than predictions. As such, calibration reflects a metacognitive monitoring process that provides information about the status of one’s knowledge. Based on this information, learners can regulate their learning and learning strategies. Therefore, greater accuracy in a person’s judgements of performance (being well calibrated) creates greater potential for self-regulation, linked to greater achievement (in general, higher-achieving students tend to be more accurate but more under confident when compared to their lower-achieving counterparts.)

"The act of assessing one’s own judgement of learning is one of the most effective ways to deepen a memory trace," Sadler (2006).

Over 12 weeks, two Year 8 (n=52) mixed prior attainment English classes were asked to forecast their performance on a weekly 10 question quiz from a deck of 30 cards or 10/30 and on a final end of unit quiz with a shared expectation that learners be accurate in their assessment. Results showed attainment and forecast accuracy improving and performance variance reducing, if always a little confident.

🔮 With this knowledge, why not award bonus points for prediction or forecast accuracy?

"The Generation Effect" Jacoby, (1978) and DeWinstanley and Bjork (2004) refers to the superior learning that results from learners providing information themselves rather than simply reading it. Outline what makes a great RememberMore prompt pair. Then why not get your learners to generate prompt pairs with the caveat that only the very best examples get added to the deck.

🛠️ Set up an electronic form.

Description: Outline how you want you retrieval prompts designed.

Q1: Space for the prompt.

Q2: Space for the response prompt.

Q3: Space for the notes.

Q4: Select a drop down for the category 1 tags.

Q5: Select a drop down for the category 2 tags.

Learners design 5 retrieval prompt pairs with the best examples being added to the deck.

We have learners writing questions-answer prompts as an effective way to get learners to explore the content.

Treasure Hunt is a useful refresher exercise, after half-term, to reconnect learners with the learning or topic.

Access to Classroom or RememberMore required.

Set x❓from a deck. Learners have to find the answers. Learners read and refresh a lot of information looking for the specific questions.

For those they know and can recall, simply make a record. The others are found by reviewing the decks, Tags can be selected to refine the deck.

Match mode was introduced in March 2021. So here is what I have learnt about the new Match mode, from my own road tests and feedback from others in the opening week using "Match" mode to learn and relearn Elizabethan English translations on the Shakespeare decks. Elizabethan English translations are for the most part single-word pairs or paired associates.

⚙️ Select a focused 🏷️Tags. 6❓ (4 is too few variations).

For Elizabethan English translations, that was just twelve worlds in total. 3 minutes was plenty, 2 minutes was tight but achievable. Learners quickly adopted two different approaches.

• Most learners, copied down the two columns of 6 words and drew lines - a matching approach.

• A few learners wrote down the first stem and then selected the response. Then the second stem, second response and so on.

Reveal shows the matches and allow learners to self-assess.

Why is "Match" mode so important. Does quiz format matter? Yes. Yang et al., (2021) reported the top 3 question formats as:

• (g = 0.9) for Matching; (g = 0.8) for Fill-in-the-blank; (g = 0.6) for Short answer.