Alex Bedford delivered an interesting session on the first day of the Festival of Education. The session focused on how ‘thinking hard is an essential routine for pupils to make sense of curriculum content’ and how ‘the process… encodes learning into the long-term memory’ but is often ‘over looked at the expense of getting ‘things’ written into books’.
When listening to this session, it became obvious that as educators we must harness an understanding of cognitive science behind the process that is needed for students to embed their learning into their working memory.
First we have to allow students to develop a cognitive awareness around their learning; placing their attention on their working memory. Simply put, we learn from practice, practice, practice with all learning built on prior knowledge. It is important when learning and using our working memory we do not split our attention, as it is this focus and process of repetition that leads us to embedding it into our long term memory.
With this in mind, we then have to ask the question:
How do you define learning?
Is it simply a process of making of sense?
When looking at the pedagogy behind this, we have to consider how learning occurs within the classroom. Upon reflection, there are three key areas that must be addressed when understanding how learning occurs.
- Direct Instruction
- Deliberate practice
- Explanation and interaction
Through the development of these within a teachers practice, it could result in allowing ‘pupils to become a little more expert’
In this talk, Bedford also discussed the CUSP teaching and learning framework and how this support student progress. This allowed me to question our own teaching and learning framework at my current school and how those three areas are strategically placed within it.
The ACS teaching and learning framework consists of six areas:
- Do Now
- Big Question
- Attempt This
- Now This
- Check Understanding
- Up Next
Apart from steps 1, 2 and 6, the rest of the phases are not fixed. The concept of direct instruction could take place within the ‘Attempt this’ or ‘Now this’ stage of the framework. The implementation of strategies such as modelling or ‘I do, We do and You do’ enabling us to guide students through the process of ‘practice, practice, practice’.
‘Attempt this’ allows us to build in deliberate practice into every lesson, whereas explanation and interaction can happen throughout the entire framework. As a result the framework enables teachers to keep students on their toes, which in turn supports with behaviour.
As the session progressed, Bedford discussed the idea of explicit vocabulary instruction, he introduced us to the hexagon pathway and how students could then elaborate on vocabulary they have learnt by making connections. Once mastered, they could then move onto sentence stems such as ‘I know’ and ‘ I think.
Lastly, he also presented the concept of knowledge notes in books. This is something to be developed and thought about in great depth. If done correctly, they could be a powerful tool in aiding students independence within their learning.
These two strategies are something that I hope to employ within my own teaching from September and, if successful, deliver whole school next year.
Pedagogy in Practice 