In the classroom

Provided by Roisin McKeever

I trialled this idea after the Year 13 Mock exams in 2019. I was at the stage of marking where it felt that the students hadn’t been in the same classroom with me – they had the correct exam technique and in most cases they had the knowledge but yet they were missing the point of the question and scoring really low marks.

The idea came through an article recommended by Teacher Tapp.

The article was looking at a piece of research linked to metacognition and that students are apprentices. The paper identifies that “domain (subject) knowledge…provides insufficient clues for many students about how to actually go about solving problems and carrying out tasks in a domain. Moreover when it is learned in isolation from realistic problem contexts and expert problem-solving practices, domain knowledge tends to remain inert in situations for which it is appropriate, even for successful students”.

Teachers therefore need to teach “Strategic knowledge: the usually tacit knowledge that underlies an expert’s ability to make use of concepts, facts, and procedures as necessary to solve problems and carry out tasks”.

One way the article suggested to build strategic knowledge was to share your thinking process when sitting an exam paper.

So in the next lesson I gave each student a blank copy of the paper they had just completed and told them to write down everything I wrote, word for word. I wasn’t planning the answers or telling them the correct answers – I was showing them what I was thinking about as I read the case studies and the questions – hoping that they would make the link between what they did and what they should have done.

In the example below I wrote down what I was thinking about as I read the paragraph, ultimately summarising the key point of the paragraph. This is something that the students rarely do; they will highlight a significant amount of text but won’t be able to tell me what the paragraph is about.

Here is one of the questions linked to the case study. The students had read the question as ‘assess the view that the government should intervene in the banking sector’ even though the ‘should intervene further’ part of the question is obviously there. I again wrote down everything I was thinking about as I read the question and the students soon realised that they hadn’t processed the whole question.

When I am sharing my thoughts I tend to focus on:

• Specific words in the questions,
• the topic,
• the marks,
• how the answer should be presented, and
• what should be included in the answer.

After this process I will then go back and plan the questions with students, preferably with a different colour of pen so that they can see the difference between the thinking process and the exam technique.

In this example I only provided them with my thinking and nothing else. None of the students had picked this question in the exam and once I shared my thinking I set them the question to complete. There was a significant improvement in the marks allocated to each student in this case.

Delivered by James Harrington

The aim of this session was to analyse the methods by which we should set learning objectives and success criteria to suitably challenge all students.

A learning objective (or learning intention) describes what it is that we want students to learn. These goals can be short-term or long-term, and therefore may be objectives for a single lesson or a series of lessons.

Learning objectives are most effective when removed from the context of the learning, thus enabling students to transfer and apply acquired knowledge and skills.

If learning objectives relate to the process of learning, then success criteria (or learning outcomes) relate to knowledge at the end points of learning. They should not merely refer to the completion of activities or the level of enjoyment. Their role is to help teachers and students to be able to measure how successful they have been in learning. Success criteria can be used as an aid to differentiation if they indicate how far students have been able to transfer learning into new contexts.

When constructing learning objectives and success criteria the first point of reference is the scheme of work: What is it that students need to know and what skills will they be using?

The wording of the objectives and success criteria should be based on Bloom’s revised taxonomy:

Taking these two things into account here is an example of the learning objectives and success criteria I used with my students:

I don’t always include questions within the success criteria, however than can give students a better idea of what it is they need to be able to do.

In some situations you may have to explain what the words you are using mean – do students understand what analyse means? It is easy to assume that they do know it as you use it regularly and that other members of staff do as well. Check with the students or change the wording to something they are more likely to understand, or better fits the topic you are teaching.

Here are some useful resources that can be used when deciding on the wording of the LO and success criteria: