A quick post to flag up a long-awaited #SciTeachJC I’ll be moderating in either a week or a fortnight. It was originally planned to be the week after half-term; for various reasons I’ll make the executive decision to postpone until Tuesday 10th June if there’s not enough time for those interested has a chance to read the paper.
We’ll be discussing a very topical article, about student strategies for recall and understanding, by John Dunlosky. It’s a 2013 article from American Educator and considers how to help our pupils realize that last-minute cramming is not the best approach.
Questions for discussion:
- How do you use these methods at the moment? Which one would you choose to adopt as the most significant improvement from your current position?
- Many students – and to an extent parents and colleagues – intuitively distrust the concept of distributed, spaced testing. How can we address this?
- How can we ensure students use explanations and links to previous material while revising to boost understanding and recall?
- Could we set up programmes of study that would demand/encourage gradual accumulation of knowledge? How does this approach contrast with the demands of the exam system?
Hopefully this will be shared and perhaps even copied to the SciTeachJC website – I’ll sort that once I’m near a proper keyboard again. Until then, I hope that colleagues will find this interesting enough to consider even during halfterm.
Teaching Science 
Reblogged this on The Echo Chamber.