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  • Support for early career teachers
  • UCL
  • Year 1: Second half-term: engaging pupils in learning

    • Self-Study Activities

    Review: 10 mins

    Read the Research and Practice Summary on this week’s topic. As you read, reflect on:

    1. the practices that you are already doing well
    2. the practices you are doing some of the time but could do more of/more consistently
    3. the practices you don’t use in your teaching yet
    4. which, if any, of the practices in Hasan’s lesson that you could adopt in your own

    Plan and Theory to Practice: 30 mins

    1. Practical exercise

    Think about the following story, which is about the interplay of long-term and working memory. What might be happening mentally at each point:

    1. Bob is introduced to the parts of a cell in Year 7 biology. His teacher explains what each part does, what they look like and where they are found in plants.
    2. The next day, Bob applies what he learnt about cells to some questions about different types of specialised cells and finds this relatively straightforward. He understands why they are found in the leaves of plants, but not in the roots.
    3. Two weeks later, Bob’s teacher asks him what chloroplasts are. Initially, Bob struggles to recall what they are, but with a prompt from his teacher that they are green, Bob is able to recall what he previously learnt about chloroplasts.

    This exercise is designed to provide a concrete example of how working memory and prior knowledge in long-term memory work together to create learning.

    During the first lesson, Bob is introduced to new content. As he thinks hard about the content, he begins to encode it into his long-term memory. The following day, he is able to easily recall the new information, especially with the prompts from his notes. Again, as he works through the problems, he strengthens the links between his new learning and his prior knowledge about plants.

    After two weeks, Bob initially struggles to recall the information, as it is no longer in his working memory. The prompt word chloroplast is not enough by itself to retrieve the information that he previously encoded in his long-term memory. When his teacher reminds him that chloroplasts are green, this is a sufficient prompt to enable Bob to recall from his long-term memory the things that he previously learnt.

    In your own teaching, you may well have encountered circumstances where some pupils actually perform more poorly the second time they encounter a particular type of exercise.

    • How far might this be explained by the sequence described above?
    • How might you use checks on prior knowledge and practice work to reduce this?

    To check on their prior knowledge, the second time they encounter a particular exercise, you could:

    • do a quick quiz of their previous learning -- you could reuse the same exercise or one that is similar
    • in pairs, get your pupils to rehearse ‘everything they remember’ about the prior exercise
    • give a quick recap of what they ought to have learned and follow up with one or two multiple-choice questions
    • ‘correct the teacher’ – deliberately quote to them the likely misconception and challenge the class to point out your mistake

    These activities also have the added benefit of securing knowledge in long-term memory. You will also make use of the same scenario in week 4 of this module.

    You will revisit some of these points in your next mentor meeting.

    2. Independent planning

    Consider your lesson plans for the forthcoming week and identify one context where you can try to make deliberate use of the relationship between working memory and long-term memory, similar to the kinds illustrated by the activity above and in Hasan’s lesson about Macbeth’s witches:

    • identify the lesson or part of a lesson that you will focus on
    • write a simple plan for how you will make use of your learning about the relationship between working memory and long-term memory in this lesson or part of a lesson
    • annotate your plan to show why you have designed it in this way, including where you anticipate pupils’ misconceptions, and discuss these with your mentor when you show them your plan; where you can, connect your annotations to the Research and Practice Summary above

    Next Steps: 5 mins

    Bring your planning from this session to your next mentor meeting. Be ready to discuss this activity with your mentor, including raising any questions that have come to mind while completing this task.