Feeding Back and Thinking Forwards

As we’ve all become used to remote learning – whatever form that may have taken – it is only natural that we start to think about how we know that students are learning and remembering what we want them to. But like many things associated with online provision, our usual methods of assessment need to be adapted to ensure that we are giving regular feedback and helping them to improve their work.

Core Knowledge

The idea of a ‘recovery curriculum’ when school eventually returns to some kind of normality makes me shudder. It implies that what we are providing our students with is inadequate and that they are somehow damaged by this different way of working. What are they recovering from? I can only presume that it is a recovery from not retaining the knowledge we want them to.

Not for a second am I suggesting that remote learning is ideal or in any way a substitute for in-class teaching and learning; but I do believe that this somewhat pessimistic view of what students are doing is quite extreme.

Instead, we should acknowledge that what students are likely to remember is probably diminished when compared to being in class – without the drilling and questioning from expert teachers, those big substantive ideas which we want children to remember might not be as secure as we want them to be. Therefore, it is essential that we as teachers are clear in exactly what it is we want students to remember; to map this out clearly across the remote curriculum and to use every opportunity for feedback we have to reinforce these ideas. Like everything to do with remote learning, less is more.

For instance, year 9 are currently starting to learn about Jane Eyre – a big ask over remote learning! However, by mapping out and building students confidence in applying concepts, my hope is that by the time they return to school they have remembered and can discuss these ideas confidently, even if they can’t recall more minute details of the novel. An example of year 9’s week 1 core knowledge is below:

Week 1 Vocabulary: Foreshadowing, hypocrite, atmosphere

Week 1 Literary Terms: Bildungsroman, un/reliable narrator, Gothic

Although our lessons will inevitably cover more than just these terms and ideas, by reducing the minimum expectations of what we want students to recall, we are able to focus and develop their understanding of them at every opportunity. By reinforcing a small number of ideas each week, we also give students the sense of success which they need during remote learning – my year 9 class have loved learning the idea of bildungsroman and it has taken relatively little effort on my part to get them to remember the term and its definition.

Using Feedback to Secure Knowledge

So after mapping out a smaller but more concentrated web of knowledge, how exactly can we make sure that students remember what we want them to?

Feedback, all kinds of feedback.

My department have worked on using different strands of interaction with students to embed these key ideas.

Firstly, each week we set one piece of whole-class feedback – usually centred on improving a piece of extended writing from the week before. This takes the form of a quick five-minute video lesson where teachers explain to students explicitly how to improve their writing, but also model how to include new core knowledge they’ve acquired in their work. This normalises the use of new terms through practise and builds students’ confidence that they’re applying that knowledge correctly.

Secondly, individual comments highlighting students’ misconceptions are an effective and personalised way of recognising where students have made mistakes – although this takes a lot of time for a large class and so is used sparingly.

Perhaps the most exciting way of giving feedback that we’ve been using has been through Google Meet. The school’s policy is that every lesson starts with a 10-minute video call with the class through Google Meet, giving a chance to check in on students and take attendance.

More than that, Google Meet has tools such as polls and breakout rooms. Using polls is an excellent way of taking stock of what students know and being able to instantly remedy misconceptions. Teachers set a question about the core knowledge concepts of the week and give four possible options for students to vote for – if 100% vote for the right answer then they’ve got it! If not, a quick explanation or clarification helps correct students’ thinking. The best bit is that students can’t see who has voted for what, but teachers get a breakdown of the answers given by students which can be recorded elsewhere and be used to shape the feedback we give elsewhere.

Breakout rooms are an excellent opportunity for students to discuss their ideas as a group – something I think they’re missing by working remotely – before announcing their ideas to the class. Teachers can join the breakout rooms to monitor that students are doing what they should be. I recently used this by challenging students to come up with a clear definition and example of four terms (protagonist, antagonist, social criticism and patriarchal society), then group-by-group saying their ideas aloud with the best definitions earning the whole group merits. Again, this allowed me to know what students had a clear grasp of and what I needed to focus my feedback on later in the week.

Finally, the fact that the whole class are there at the same time – perhaps the closest to a ‘normal’ classroom we can get – means that we can use targeted, no-opt out questioning as we would in school. By asking questions about the week’s key concepts in different ways, we can be sure that students which we might be concerned about are remembering and retaining the core knowledge.

By focusing on these big-picture ideas of core knowledge, we are making sure that as a department we are thinking about the future – it is more likely that students will retain the big ideas and substantive concepts which they’ll need upon their return to school, with lessons when they return planned around and building on this core knowledge. We aren’t doing anything ‘whizzy’ or overwhelming, it’s simple but powerful. We are able to focus on what children are remembering now and hopefully avoiding problems caused by misconceptions or gaps in knowledge, not pushing those problems into the future and relying on the creation of a ‘recovery curriculum’.