I have blogged before about making learning stick – typical techniques that teachers use to help ensure that ‘information’ becomes ‘knowledge’ – which is, of course, what good teaching is mostly about. Techniques like:
Presenting new information in small doses; explaining it clearly, with modelling and scaffolding as needed; using questioning to prompt everyone to think; providing multiple opportunities for students to practise; reviewing learning to find out what all learners know, and don’t; regular retrieval practice, and so on.
These are all fairly standard things that are accepted by the vast majority of practitioners these days – which is why Rosenshine’s Principles are now widely espoused around the world.
This blog emphasises a slightly different point, about teacher mindset: the point that new information sticks best when teachers are ‘banging on’ about it, almost ad nauseam. I want to celebrate this ‘banging on’ that many teachers do, but that I think some teachers may not do quite enough of, teaching content-heavy specifications in the extraordinary hurly-burly that is the day-to-day classroom of 2022.
By ‘banging on’ I mean:
- Presenting new information in sensible ways, such as those outlined above
- Providing lots of practice, both guided practice and independent practice
- Going back over previous learning, again and again and again – all ‘learning’ becomes ‘previous’ learning, after the point when it has been introduced, of course
- Wasting not a moment of valuable lesson time in activities with a low learning return, such as lesson upon lesson of group work and extended ‘project work’ (clearly, undertaking an independent project in subjects such as Art and DT is different, as it is an important part of the specification)
- And keeping at it from the beginning of the course to the end of the course, to squeeze every last drop of learning into learners’ minds
The smartest ‘banging on’ involves retrieving learning, not in ad hoc way but systematically – and that involves an extraordinary level of organisation, or an extraordinary scheme of work or textbook!
Great teachers bang on and never let up, and they never give up on their students.
