Avoid the perils of pre exam lessons

^{A bi-weekly teaching and learning bulletin for staff at Community Schools Trust}

If only…

Exams are around the corner. We have so little time left with our exam classes! In the last few lessons we have with our students, we are desperate to:

• Cover as much as we can
• Get them to take away as much as possible

Here’s a lesson that might feel familiar in the run up to exams:

• Teacher explains everything they need to know about topic X
• Teacher feeds them grade 7 knowledge ‘gems’: model answers, formulas they must know, grade 7 sentences – anything the teacher thinks they simply must know in the little time they have left!
• Teacher tells them to take notes as they go through it – the students can use it later for their revision they say
• Teacher allow a few more minutes for them to copy it all down
• There is silence as they copy. They seem eager for the knowledge. With the exam around the corner, even the naughty ones are serious now…
• The bell goes. Really good focus, teacher says. Good luck in the exam.

Unfortunately, none of the above will lead to the retention of the skills and knowledge that the teacher intends for them – at least not in the long term.

We know that silently copying work down is a poor proxy for learning and making notes as they listen to the teacher is assuming they can do both – effectively listen and write at the same time – and this is not the case. Sadly, the knowledge gems that the teacher may have spent hours putting together will go to waste.

We need to pre empt these pre exam perils with the following simple strategies:

1 Space and interleave your teaching

Tempting though it is to cover the entirety of topic x in one week, much evidence has shown this form of cramming is not effective for learning.

Instead, we need to ‘space’ out what we intend to cover with our classes because “distributing study time over several sessions generally leads to better memory of the information than conducting a single study session” (Willingham, 2002).

Interleaving is intertwined with the concept of spacing, and it encourages students to “mix, or interleave, multiple subjects or topics while they study in order to improve their learning” (University of Arizona, 2020).

Learning vs. performance

‘Learning’ is measured by long term retention and transfer of skills and knowledge.

‘Performance’ is measured by the speed or accuracy of executing a to-be-learned skill during the learning process itself.

It is true to say that blocked practice does enhance performance ‘in the moment’, but crucially, fails to enhance learning.

That’s why, at Community Schools Trust, we have long moved away from a blocked approach to our curriculum planning. 

But when it comes to our lessons, particularly in the final run up to the exams, we can fall into the trap of blocking our teaching. We want to ‘cover everything’ in the little time we have left with our students. We want to equip them with everything as fast and as much as we can. 

But whilst it may feel reassuring in the moment, for them and for us, and whilst their performance in class may show confidence, we are not necessarily ensuring long term retention and transfer of skills and knowledge.

Instead, what we need to do is work out how many weeks and lessons we have left with our classes and space and interleave the crucial skills and topics we wish to cover with them during this time. 

2 Opportunities for practice

In the lesson example above, the students did not get a chance to practise anything they were being taught. The duration of the lesson was dedicated to getting down as much information as possible. The thinking is, if they practise anything, they are losing crucial time they could be covering content.

But of course, ‘covering content’ is counterproductive if no learning is happening. 

Learning won’t happen unless they are required to apply what they are being taught. If they “struggle to recall the information that was learned previously” University of Arizona, 2020, they create stronger memory associations and if done over time, more frequent memory retrievals and better long term retention. In other words, they learn.

We need to explain this to our students too. Sometimes, when students struggle with recall or application, it can knock their confidence, particularly close to exams. They feel safer and more reassured by copying down information instead.

So teach them topic x, make them apply it in timed conditions and explain that struggling to recall is a good thing – it means they are strengthening their memory associations. The very act of recall is building their knowledge.

Do this again and again. Allow frequent opportunities for practice to allow for application and recall. Remember also, for many of our students, their revision habits are poor and the only practice they will undertake in this time will be in your lessons – certainly not in their own time (a topic for another post!).

In summary, this doesn’t work:

Cramming

This does work:

Weinstein, 2018

…and lots of opportunities to practise.

Bring on those exams.

Have a great week.

Thahmina