A lot of richness in this week’s TOTs. Enjoy!

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Do learning intentions need to be written on the board and in student’s books? Via @shirleyclarke_

An overview of the fundamentals of instructional coaching + critique, via @PepsMccrea, reply from @jonniegrande

In his usual clear and insightful style, Peps McCrea shares in this Twitter thread the fundamental components of instructional coaching.

This thread from Jonathan Grande, in response to Peps’ original thread, is also fantastic and raises lots of deep questions. Well worth checking out : )

Be sure to check out Steplab’s upcoming coaching conference in London too. It should be an amazing day (I’ll be there!).

Edit: For an excellent guide covering what Instructional Coaching is, a summary of the research evidence for Instructional Coaching, guidance for how to set up coaching in a school, advice on how to select and train great coaches, and more, check out the Steplab Beginner's Guide to Instructional Coaching.

How to tackle the hard class (Narrative!), via @hfletcherwood

I’m really excited about this blog post! In it, the insightful Harry Fletcher-Wood shares sage advice about how to get a handle on a really tricky class and, just as excitingly, does this through the power of narrative! This is a new approach in this space, and I think it’s super powerful. Give it a go, have a read : )

Ten Techniques, and six principles, for Retrieval Practice, via @teacherhead

In this article, Tom Sherrington shares 10 techniques (and, perhaps more importantly, 6 principles) for quality retrieval practice.

One that I’ve been using a fair bit recently is ‘rehearse the explanation’! After explaining something to a student, or students, I’ll give them a minute or so to practice explaining it to a partner, then I’ll have them explain it to me. I find that this is a fantastic way to both check for understanding (at a deep level), as well as prompt retrieval. Doing this again in the following lesson checks what’s beginning to make its way into long-term memory!

‘FAME’ – A useful acronym for improving Worked Examples, via @EducEndowFoundn

In my work on Cognitive Load Theory I’ve highlighted many components of what makes quality worked examples. Some of these strategies include fading, alternating, providing non-examples, and prompting students’ self-explanation.

In this new acronym from the EEF, these four ideas are captured as follows:
F – Fade
A – Alternate
M – Mistakes (non-examples)
E – Explain (self-explanation)

There are many other important factors for structuring quality WEs, such as removing split-attention, redundancy, transience, and optimising modality! But FAME is a great place to start!

More evidence against the Reading Recovery program, via @ehanford and @CLPeak

‘A new, federally funded study has found that, by third and fourth grade, children who received Reading Recovery had lower scores on state reading tests than a comparison group of children who did not receive Reading Recovery.’

Full article here.

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