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Guidance, ideas and examples to support schools in developing their curriculum, pedagogy, enrichment and support for more able learners, within a whole-school context of cognitively challenging learning for all. Includes ideas to support curriculum development, and practical examples, resources and ideas to try in the classroom. Popular topics include: curriculum development, enrichment, independent learning, questioning, oracy, resilience, aspirations, assessment, feedback, metacognition, and critical thinking.

 

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Using Microsoft Teams to support remote learning
Posted By The Bromfords School & Sixth Form College, 03 July 2020
Amy Clark, Assistant Headteacher for Quality of Education, explains how The Bromfords School and Sixth Form College has used Microsoft Teams to support both students and staff – delivering remote learning, pastoral support and peer-led CPD.
 
Being thrust into the world of remote learning has galvanised us to dig deep as a profession and do what we do best: find ways to make learning enjoyable – even in the toughest of times. At The Bromfords School, a small group of us had already been trialling the use of Microsoft Teams with our sixth form pupils to enhance the provision they were receiving, with the focus on enabling students to participate in a learning-rich environment without having to be in the classroom. Students loved having access to a digital learning space, outside of school, that they could use to have academic debates on key topics, share links to wider reading or resources and generally support each other in a collaborative way.
 
We also saw Teams as a way for staff to share best practice CPD. We all know what happens when you attend an amazing INSET day or twilight session; you eventually find time to do planning and create some wonderful resources that you share with colleagues, but they get lost amongst the mass of emails, meaning the brilliant work done often gets lost. The plan was to use Microsoft Teams to provide a specific space for professional dialogue about teaching and learning, where teachers could share resources, upskill each other and continue to develop as professionals.
 
Then along came COVID-19 and thrust our plans forward…

Using Teams for academic, pastoral and peer support

Even though the timeline for rolling out Microsoft Teams across the school was sped up, our staff certainly rose to the challenge. Whilst Teams isn’t the only software we have used to communicate remote learning to students, it is quickly becoming a space that students use for both academic and pastoral purposes.
 
Tutor group channels were set up on Teams for every year group, where tutors have been able to ‘check in’ each week with pupils. This has ensured that students’ academic needs are met, that students have access to advice should they need it, but most importantly, tutors could keep track of students’ mental wellbeing. Open lines of communication meant that if a child was struggling, we could support them. Students didn’t know how to work remotely, how to organise their time or how to be self-motivated; our use of Teams has provided them with methods for easy communication with an adult they are familiar with on a daily basis. 
 
We hope that by having the lines of communication open to students and having a compulsory check-in each week, the bridge between students working in isolation at home and returning back into the building is eased and that that we are able to lower anxiety for our students. 
 
Our Teams CPD channel has supported staff not only in developing their IT skills to enable the best possible provision for students, but also in accessing a range of ideas they might not have come across before. Our channel has ‘How to…’ videos on topics including the use of narrated PowerPoints, quizzes or forms on Teams, how to use ‘assignments’ within Teams and mark these using a rubric to give feedback on the work completed, to name just a few. Staff have also shared information on how to create drop-down and tick-boxes in Microsoft Word, where to go to get icons for dual coding, methods for increasing student engagement and other concepts that will improve remote learning.
 
Even staff members who are self-proclaimed ‘technophobes’ have been able to develop their IT skills to ensure the digital learning process for our pupils is as strong as it can be. The channel has enabled everyone to feel like we are all in this process together, all learning together – and nothing is as daunting when you have others by your side.

Five core principles for effective remote learning

As a school, we were keen to ensure we were catering to the needs of all our pupils during this time, with our more able students being a key focus. We wanted to ensure the provision offered to this group remained high quality so they were able to continue to be challenged academically – avoiding the dreaded generic worksheet, a one-size-fits-all approach. We also found that many of our more able were struggling with managing workload, which developed increased levels of anxiety. 
 
A group of leaders and I developed what we felt were the five core principles of remote learning and delivered this to staff through CPD meetings, to ensure our more able students were academically and emotionally supported.
 
We felt that remote learning should be:
  1. Concrete: it should have a clear purpose and learning intent that fits with the wider curriculum. There should also be clear timings for tasks so that students do not spend excessive amounts of time on projects.
  2. Inclusive: consider how you stretch your most able students by providing links to wider reading, podcasts, challenge tasks or breadth of choice such as presentation methods.
  3. Considerate: taking into consideration students’ learning environments and access to materials they could need. Also planning tactically so that students do not become overwhelmed with the sheer amount of work expected of them.
  4. Reflective: students should have feedback at key points and self-assessment opportunities through sharing clearly defined success criteria.
  5. Engaging: staff should incorporate a range of learning activities and software to avoid students becoming demotivated. Also focusing on mechanisms for praise so that students know their hard work is being recognised.
The concepts here are not new. But when staff are also dealing with the pressures and anxiety a COVID-19 teaching world presents, it is a timely reminder that the core principles of teaching must remain so that students can continue to succeed. The five core principles listed above all aim not only to enrich the remote learning a student receives, but also take into consideration students’ mental wellbeing too. 
 
When we return to school, I hope the lessons learnt from using technology during this time do not get lost. Many members of staff have told me how much they have enjoyed using Microsoft Teams to support learning and how they will continue to use it moving forward, particularly to aid collaborative work with peers and to support home learning. Our eyes have been opened to the potential of this technology in supporting and enriching the curriculum for more able students though many of the methods listed above. It has certainly provided both staff and students with a very different learning experience, with the potential to continue to enrich learning beyond the classroom for students and increase enjoyment in developing pedagogy for staff.
 
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Tags:  apps  collaboration  CPD  KS5  lockdown  pedagogy  remote learning  technology  wellbeing 

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Achieving “desirable difficulty” in remote learning
Posted By Laura March, 11 May 2020
 
NACE Associate and R&D Hub Lead Laura March explains how Southend High School for Boys (SHSB) is ensuring learners continue to encounter “desirable difficulty” during the current period of remote learning.
 
In a recent ResearchEd presentation, Paul Kirshner delivered an insightful presentation based on the book Lessons for Learning. In one of his tips, he highlighted the need to avoid offering too much new subject matter during remote learning and to instead use this time to focus on maintaining the skills and knowledge that have been previously learnt. We know how easy it is to forget this learning without regular retrieval practice – we see this happen every year over the six-week summer break. Sometimes we underestimate the power of revision and repetition and this is a good opportunity to encourage pupils to consolidate knowledge from prior learning (see example retrieval grid).
 
For effective independent learning to take place, it is helpful to provide step-by-step worked solutions and provide alternative routes for all learners so they are offered support during their practice. On the other hand, we want there to be some form of “desirable difficulty” – not too hard, not too easy. Desirable difficulties are important because they trigger encoding and retrieval processes that support learning, comprehension and remembering. If, however, they are too difficult (the learner does not have the background knowledge or skills to respond to them successfully) they become undesirable difficulties and pupils can become disengaged, especially when working from home without teacher instruction and regular prompting (Bjork, 2009).
 
As time goes on, students’ internal resources start to increase as they begin to learn the content. At this point students are in danger of finding the task too easy. If there is no difficulty involved, then learning is less likely to occur. The best choice here is to start reducing the amount of support so pupils can achieve independence.
 
To help us reflect on this research, departments at SHSB have used two frameworks when considering and reviewing the tasks and activities being presented for remote learning:

Fisher and Frey: the gradual release of responsibility

In Better Learning Through Structured Teaching: A Framework for the Gradual Release of Responsibility (2008), Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey probe the how and why of the gradual release of responsibility instructional framework – a model which is deeply embedded across SHSB (see this summary of how we are using this model to inform our approach to remote learning). To what extent have we been providing tasks that fit into each of the four stages of effective structured learning? Is there a gradual shift in responsibility from the teacher to the pupil, moving from “I do” to “you do together” and “you do alone”? 

Sandringham Research School: the memory clock 

We also wanted to think of simple ways to continue to achieve the interactivity that is crucial to teaching and learning. The “memory clock” shared with us by Sandringham Research School has helped pupils revise and consolidate their knowledge. To avoid offering too much subject matter at once, the clock prompts pupils to structure learning into chunks and to always end with ‘assessing’ to self-regulate their own learning (see this example from SHSB Business department). It is important to ensure each study session has targeted questioning to check content is understood before moving on.

Ensuring learning is transferred into long-term memory

A wealth of research tells us that delivering new information in small chunks is more effective for working memory – the type of memory we use to recall information while actively engaged in an activity. The capacity to store this information is vital to many learning activities in the classroom and just as important for remote learning. Presenting too much material at once may confuse students because they will be unable to process it using working memory. We can observe when this happens in the classroom and respond by explaining and repeating the material. It is more difficult for us to identify this in remote learning.
 
In both models outlined above, you will see recall and retrieval plays an important role. This has been embedded in our SIP over the last few years and departments at SHSB have been creative in revisiting material after a period of time using low stakes quizzes, retrieval grids, multiple choice questions and images. This review helps to provide some of the processing needed to move new learning into long-term memory and helps us to identify any misconceptions before introducing new material.

Additional reading and resources

  • Daisy Christodoulou, “Remote learning: why hasn’t it worked before and what can we do to change that?” (March 2020) – includes a list of learning apps that are effective in helping pupils to recall and self-regulate their learning at home.
  • Fisher, D. and N. Frey, Better Learning Through Structured Teaching: A Framework for the Gradual Release of Responsibility, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, Virginia, 2008.
  • Kornell, N., Hays, M. J., & Bjork, R. A. (2009). Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 989–998.
  • Free resources: supporting challenge beyond the classroom – roundup of free resources from NACE partners and other organisations.
  • NACE community forums – share what’s working for your staff and students.

Tags:  apps  free resources  independent learning  lockdown  memory  remote learning  research  retrieval 

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