Revisit and review: Secondary

[On-screen text] Revisit and review: What it is 

• Supporting students with revisiting their prior learning for consolidation. 
• Planned, regular reviewing – and reteaching where necessary – focused on recent or past learning. 
• A supportive technique for students who need additional instruction and opportunities to practise. 
• A formative assessment opportunity to guide decisions about the teaching and student practice needed before moving on.  

[On-screen text] This video demonstrates examples of the following techniques to revisit and review: 

• Focus on knowledge and skills that will maximise learning progress 
• Match techniques to the purpose of the review 
• Include regular, short and appropriately paced reviews 
• Design review for high participation rates 
• Use a variety of review routines 

Sue Hartshorne, Learning Specialist, Lake Colac School: It's really important to do the reviews and revisit content. They need multiple opportunities to learn that content, so we need to come back to it regularly, give them a chance to learn it again, to experience it again, to hear it again. You're not quite sure when it's going to be that child's chance to learn that, when they're actually going to show you that they've got it. It could be the first, could be the fifth, could be the 20th. Yeah, we don't know when it's going to be. So we just keep revisiting that content and then as we can see they master it, or we can see that's demonstrated, well then we can slowly move on. There's a daily review at the start of a math lesson. There's also a daily review at the start of every day. So we have a daily review to open the day.  

[On-screen text] Focus on knowledge and skills that will maximise learning progress 

Sue Hartshorne: It usually includes a little bit of English and maths, and a little bit of social-emotional, so we go through our values and things like that, as well, in that opening PowerPoint. But, again, there's usually some vocab unpacked in there, particularly if we're learning something new. So that's those multiple opportunities for the students to be learning the same content. 

[On-screen text] Include regular, short, appropriately paced reviews 

[On-screen text] Design review for high participation rates 

Sue Hartshorne: Let's start. So we're going to start with our daily review, which shows, so you're writing A or B, which shows 1 less than 70,650. So 1 less. 

Student: 700 and 649. 

Sue Hartshorne: A or B, Tom? Well done. Fantastic guys. Yeah, because we're looking here, aren't we? At the 49. It's one less than the 50. Don't get stuck on all the other numbers. Which shows 10 less than 23,900, so 10 less. A or B? 

Gaelle Pajot, Year 7 French teacher, Merici College: I review content of previous lessons by doing a lot of repetition, so often there will be students standing up, they start the lesson trying to recall numbers, so we do it together and then ask them individually. So everyone is engaged and knows they're accountable. And because it's every lesson is systematic, so it really helps to have the language at the forefront of their memory, again switching back into thinking in French. And because the language is cumulative, you have to keep revisiting, constantly. 

[On-screen text] Include regular, short appropriately paced reviews 

Gaelle Pajot [in French]: Good morning, girls.  

Class [in French]: Good morning, Madame Pajot.  

Gaelle Pajot [in French]: Okay, so today we’re going to do some revision and we’re going to commence with numbers from 10 to 100. Listen and repeat. Ten.  

Class [in French]: Ten.  

[Gaelle Pajot and class repeat in 10s through to 100]. 

[On-screen text] Design review for high participation rates 

Gaelle Pajot [in French]: I’d like you to listen once again. Forty. 

Class [in French]: Forty.  

Gaelle Pajot [in French]: Eighty.  

Class [in French]: Eighty. 

Gaelle Pajot [in French]: Forty, eighty – they’re different, okay? Let’s start with you. Here we go.  

[On-screen text] Use a variety of review routines 

Student [in French]: Ten.  

Student [in French]: Twenty.  

Gaelle Pajot [in French]: Very good. Forty. Excellent.  

Daniel Flood, Year 7 Industrial Technology and Design teacher, Wilsonton State High School: I find the do now task and the warm-up tasks really useful in recalling and revisiting and sharing knowledge with the class. The do now helps me to get a quick insight at the start of the lesson [about] what students can recall, and also where we're looking to move to in the start of this lesson, and starting to embed those components together to create a successful lesson. 

Okay, we're going to do a very quick warm-up. I've put 3, 3 minutes, but I think we can do this a little quicker. 

[On-screen text] Focus on knowledge and skills that will maximise learning progress 

Daniel Flood: So, what are some purposes of sanding and what is the reason for using our sanding block? Okay, turn and talk. 

[On-screen text] Design review for high participation rates 

Daniel Flood: I’m going to give you guys one minute to turn and talk. Go.  

Class: [Interposing voices.] 

Daniel Flood: Nice. Cutting fingers, good. Nice. Could you repeat that? 

Student: If you go against the wood, while sanding, it will make it all wavy and uneven and disoriented.  

Daniel Flood: Great answer.  

Student: And it will feel very, very weird. 

Daniel Flood: Do, can you share that with the class in a moment? 

Student: No … 

Daniel Flood: You can do that. 

Student: … I don’t want to. 

Daniel Flood: Nice. 

Nicole Commins, Year 7 Integrated Humanities teacher, Merici College: I use a quick pace with my daily reviews. One, because time is very precious in the classroom and I need to be able to get to my main content of that day. But it also gets students to think quicker and embed things into their long-term memory. And it also lets me know if they are not getting something within a short period of time. That lets me know that this is something I need to slow down with or I need to reteach in a different way. So that's one of the main reasons that I keep it pretty sharp pace – as well as for the interest of the kids – that it's quick and interesting for them. 

[On-screen text] Match techniques to the purpose of the review 

Nicole Commins: So, before we get into the lesson, we're going to revise what we have learnt in the previous lessons to help us with what we're going to learn in terms of conclusions. Now, nominalisation. Okay, so we've talked about this before. Remember, nominalisation is when you add the ‘ion’ or ‘ment’ suffix to the ends of verbs to make them into nouns. Okay, so can everyone please pronounce this word for me? In 3, 2, 1. 

Class: Nominalisation. 

[On-screen text] Design review for high participation rates 

Nicole Commins: Arms out, let's do our sounding out of the syllables: 3, 2, 1.  

Nicole Commins and class: Nom, in, al, ise, ation – nominalisation.  

Nicole Commins: If it's green, everyone must do it. Okay? If you want an extension, add another matching example of a verb and noun – another word to the bottom of your list. Okay, but everyone, can you please do that now? Fill in the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 

Greg Ashman, Deputy Principal, Year 8 Teacher, Ballarat Clarendon College: At the start of the lesson, the students came in. They complete a starter activity, so, one of the students has a job of giving those booklets out, and they know that they're supposed to get straight on with that. And so they – the 7 questions that they do – and they vary around everything that they've done. So, the idea is that they keep returning to – even if we're doing a unit on linear functions, they're not just thinking about linear functions. They're still doing ratio problems, they're still doing percentage problems, they're still doing discounts and they're still doing, you know, word problems on this and multiplying 2-, 3-digit numbers or whatever. And they're returning to those all the time. We don't spend a huge amount of time focusing on the teaching of those. And sometimes I'll pick up on them – if there's not a huge amount in the lesson and I notice students have got a particular question wrong, we'll spend a little bit of time on it. Sometimes it's more like what I did today, whereas I very quickly reviewed it, had a couple of pointers that I wanted to, to remind the kids about, but then get onto the meat of the lesson. 

[On-screen text] Match techniques to the purpose of the review 

Greg Ashman: And then the second one is just rearranging, like we've been doing. So, this is 143.57. Quite a few of you missed that one out. So we might need to return to that. This one, again, rate of accuracy wasn't great. This is really important for what we're doing at the moment. So, we might need to return to these, but not today. This was a fairly straightforward ratio problem. That's what we do with butterfly wings that we always do. So it's 6. This one, you’ve just got to be able to read off the graph that it's 400. This one, you have to be able to see how you could arrange them differently. So, it's going to look like this. That's your other arrangement. 

Jess Lacey, Year 12 Chemistry teacher, Merici College: I think it can be really helpful for students if a scaffold is used in a daily review question, even if the questions asking them to explain how reactivity is dependent on structure or something that's quite broad. The scaffolds helps them remember the lesson where we covered that information and the little dot points in that scaffold help students to see roughly how much information do I need to provide here? 

[On-screen text] Design review for high participation rates 

Jess Lacey: Okay. So we've done this a couple of times before: we're linking structure to reactivity. Talk to the person next to you, jot some notes down if you like. What do you remember about the structure and reactivity of alkenes? 

[On-screen text] Focus on knowledge and skills that will maximise learning progress 

[On-screen text] Use a variety of review routines (choral response) 

Jess Lacey: We're going to do a quick recap of some of the vocab that we're going to need for this lesson. So we've covered these words before. I want you to call out to fill in the blanks. So, a nucleophile is an electron …? 

Class: Rich. 

Jess Lacey: Excellent. That will…? 

Class: Donate. 

Jess Lacey: Donate an electron pair, excellent. And an electrophile is an electron …? 

Class: Deficient. 

Jess Lacey: Good. Species that will …? 

Class: Accept.  

Jess Lacey: Excellent. We're going to see those words in today's lesson.  

Sue Hartshorne: The advice I'd give to someone who is looking at reviewing past content is to perhaps go back and look at those outcomes of where you want your students to really be showing mastery. Go back through the work that you did. Look for some worked examples or some exercises that you really enjoyed – that they enjoyed. Maybe if you had it a different –a couple of different – ways. Yeah, but go back and look at what it is you want them to achieve, what it is you really need to see, that mastery, and make sure it's still there.