Retrieval practice, or reconstructing knowledge by bringing it to mind from your memory, has been shown by numerous researchers to improve student learning (see...
Retrieval practice in the form of multiple-choice testing has been shown to be successful as a learning strategy, including in the primary classroom (McDaniel e...
Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) has recently become ‘The Next Big Thing’ in teaching. Dylan Wiliam tweeted on 26 January 2017 that he had ‘come to the conclusion Sw...
I recently explained to a colleague about how engaging with cognitive science has helped me develop as a teacher.
‘Interesting... but what does that look li...
Whenever I talk about the power of visuals, I am very keen for the audience to understand I am not referring to particular people, or to the myth of ‘visual lea...
Interleaving refers to the benefits of sequencing learning tasks so that similar items – two examples of the same concept, say – are interspersed with differe...
Like all secondary schools nationwide, we awaited the unveiling of the new linear GCSE and A-level qualifications with a mixture of emotions. Whilst looking f...
Last summer our faculty decided to re-write our Key Stage 3 science scheme of work (SOW). It had become apparent that our students were severely lacking fluency...
Amanda Spielman (Spielman, 2017) has said ‘at the very heart of education sits the vast accumulated wealth of human knowledge and what we choose to impart to th...
Teaching and learning approaches that make use of retrieval, interleaving, spacing and visual cues have been found to enhance students’ performance, but are not...
Thinking about the problem
Ask a group of children, young people or adults to identify an object they haven’t seen before and it isn’t long before we hear phra...
Within the teaching profession, there is a consensus that national curriculum has been far more demanding since 2014, when the government initiated reform to ma...
What does research say about memory?
Scientists and psychologists have spent years developing numerous models to try and unpack how our memory work. Whilst d...
When embarking on a new stage of schooling, each student brings with them a different experience of what learning looks like and feels like, often reinforced by...
