LEARNING TO LEARN
I began my second set of this GCSE with an approach to address these challenges by educating the students on how their memories function and enabling them to reevaluate and restructure their revision habits .
Retrieval practice for a knowledge based curriculum
Giuliana Savini , Teacher of Classics
The study of Classical Civilisation at GCSE allows students to access Greco-Roman literature and culture in English . Because of this , there is often the perception amongst students that this is an ‘ easier ’ option than Latin or Greek GCSE . When I first taught this course , I was surprised by the quantity and specificity of factual content that the students were required to recall during a short assessment . In addition to the nature of this knowledge-rich curriculum , I observed three main obstacles that faced most students .
First , they professed to ‘ re-reading ’ as a revision strategy . Secondly , the common refrain was that two 20-minute homework tasks per week were simultaneously onerous and not practically geared enough towards practising then retrieving information . Finally , because they largely enjoyed the content ( Greek mythology , the Trojan War , etc .) and were tangentially familiar with it through popular culture , they were hoodwinked by an ‘ illusion of knowing ’ ( Brown et al . 2014 ). In September 2022 ,
In order for students to write essays in the top band they must demonstrate “ consistently accurate and detailed knowledge and understanding of classical sources ”, in addition to the short answer questions which require this same recall . For example , in the Odyssey unit ( 25 % of the course ), there are over 70 proper nouns which students must define and contextualise . In a sub-topic on Mycenaean decorative arts ( 6 % of the course ), students were surprised that in addition to analysing the artistry of frescoes , they had to memorise a table of pigments and their various manufacturing processes . They were then presented with an entirely different set of manufacturing processes for these same pigments when they are used for clothing dye . It only takes students one test to realise that they cannot simply reread their notes as revision . I hoped to teach the benefits of retrieval practice not to highlight the monotony of memorisation or the tedium of examination based curricula , but to empower students with the ability to create a more holistic , and ultimately more beautiful picture of the ancient world in their memories , whilst educating them about how to reflect and improve upon on their learning .
Retrieval practice
The pedagogy for this initiative is based on the principle that long-lasting learning is effortful , involving practices that require the learner to actively generate answers ( Brown et al . 2014 ). The authors of ‘ Make It Stick ’ explore the shortcomings of re-reading , primarily that it is time consuming , results in weak memory , and leads to ‘ unwitting self-deception ’ as it instills a growing familiarity that feels like mastery ( 2014 ). Agarwal offers the helpful dichotomy of not viewing learning as a ‘ sinking in ’ effect , but rather as ‘ practising remembering ’ ( 2019 ). Activities that support this should be low or no-stakes for the students and low effort and flexible for the teacher .
I hoped to build a classroom in which students opted for ‘ testing ’ rather than ‘ revising ’. I began by allowing them to prepare for their first topic test with their own habits carried over from Year 9 . After their poor performances , we spent 30 minutes learning about the principles of generation ( attempting to answer a question or solve a problem before being shown the answer ) and elaboration ( finding additional layers of meaning in new material ). As it is best to teach revision skills in context , we workshopped practices that utilised these principles . These activities were not groundbreaking : flashcards , writing practice tests and answer keys , free-form ‘ brain dumps ’ on a topic , mind maps etc .
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