Vary practice: Secondary

[On-screen text] Teaching for how students learn: Vary practice 

[On-screen text] Vary practice: What it is 

• Providing multiple opportunities for students to consolidate their learning at special intervals. 
• Using learning and assessment tasks that vary how students interact with and apply what they’re learning. 
• Explaining and modelling to students how spaced and varied practice supports their learning. 
• Explicit explanation and modelling to guide students’ own development of effective approaches to learning. 

[On-screen text] This video demonstrates examples of the following techniques to vary practice:  

• Vary question and task types 
• Vary participation routines 
• Vary practice content 
• Check for understanding during practice 
• Encourage students to question and explain their thinking 
• Equip students with skills for effective revision and study routines.  

Gaelle Pajot, Year 7 French teacher, Merici College: I give students a lot of opportunities to participate in the different activities. They're varied in themselves. Some of the different strategies and activities I use are pair and share, mini whiteboards, guided practice, independent learning – just a range of different high-impact teaching that will really help students develop learning over the course of time and help not to have their cognitive load too high. 

For this one, don't show it up, because it's going to be a lot for me to read. Just leave it on your desk, so I can have a look. And can you talk to the person next to you and use that sentence.  

[On-screen text] Vary participation routines (pair-share) 

[On-screen text] [French]: Work together.  

[On-screen text] [French]: I speak, you speak. 

Gaelle Pajot: And say your sentence ‘Vous parlez, je parle.’ And see if your partner can understand what you’re saying. 

[On-screen text] [French]: Let’s start talking with your partner. 

Class: [Interposing voices.] 

[On-screen text] Check for understanding during practice. 

Gaelle Pajot: C’est très bien. And it’s ‘le chien’ because it’s masculine. You’ve got it right, for the verbs. Le chien.  

Nicole Commins, Year 7 Integrated Humanities teacher, Merici College: The value in giving students different ways to practice a concept, I guess, is grounded within the idea of placing information into their long-term memory. So, the more that they practice a skill, and they can see it in different ways, the more likely it is to be retained. 

TEEC in body paragraphs. What does that acronym stand for, please? Twelve more seconds. Okay, well done, girls. Everyone got that correct. Erase the board. 

[On-screen text] Vary question and task types (pairing simple and applied questions) 

Nicole Commins: Rather than doing whiteboard, we’ll actually – can you tell the person next to you what colours apply to TEEC? Okay, so yellow, is that the evidence, or is that the explanation, or is that the topic sentence? Concluding sentence. Okay, so tell the person next to you what the colours represent of TEEC. 

Class: [Interposing voices.] 

[On-screen text] Check for understanding during practice 

Nicole Commins: Good. So what's the blue? 

Sue Hartshorne, Learning Specialist, Lake Colac School: So, we vary the, the practice to help students consolidate their learning by providing a range of different questions. But it's around the same topic. So, there might be a question, true or false, a multiple choice. There could be a question: what is the 5 in this? What is the 8 in this number? So, just a range of different questions. But, again, same learning by giving the students different ways of seeing that information and showing that they understand and comprehend that information. 

Partitioning into 3 digits now, a three-digit number. So we're partitioning into hundreds, tens and ones. The values of your hundreds, tens and ones.  

Good Skylar. So there's our 273 partition into 270 and 3.  

All right, so 500, 0 and 7. All right, having a look at this, you are calling out to me, which one is correctly partitioned: A or B? 

[On-screen text] Vary question and task types 

Student: It's B. 

Sue Hartshorne: What's wrong with A? Who can tell me what's wrong with A? Charlie, do you want to tell me what's wrong with A. 

[On-screen text] Encourage students to question and explain their thinking 

Student: Two sixes down the bottom. 

Sue Hartshorne: What should – yeah. 

Student: You should add a zero to that 6. 

Sue Hartshorne: Correct, because what should it be representing? 

Student: Sixty. 

Sue Hartshorne: Correct. The tens. Well done.  

I choose the different types of questions based on, again, the proficiency, I suppose, that the children have been showing, all the students have been showing. If it's newer learning, I'll look for more scaffolded examples. So, there could be – it might show a right and wrong, and they have to determine which one it might be, and give them some clues around that.  

[On-screen text] Vary practice content 

Sue Hartshorne: When we're doing the non-standard expanded form. Again, I put my hand up over and said, ‘We’ve already got the 5, so what will the remainder be?’ Hopefully, to guide them in, because that non-standard expanded form is something we've been a little bit stuck on. 

So, it just depends on where I think their proficiency’s at and where I think I want to see mastery. If I really want to see something – yeah, that they know something – for instance, where they had to write out all the addition and subtraction equations in that fact family, without any scaffolding whatsoever, it was me seeing that they're still retaining the information, because that lesson was probably a month ago. So, that one was in there without any scaffolds, just like write the 4 equations.  

Okay, off you go. Four equations: 2 addition, 2 subtraction, using the bar model.  

Jess Lacey, Year 12 Chemistry teacher, Merici College: It's important to constantly probe the deeper understanding because we are not teaching just for students to memorise facts. We want them to actually build a conceptual understanding about what they're learning. So, we ask the why question because we want them to take that next step. We want them to think about what they're actually writing down. If I'm asking them to recall information about the structure of a molecule, I don't want them to just memorise the points that we've covered in class. I want them to be able to explain what that means in terms of the way a molecule reacts. Or, I want them to go that next step further because, at the end of the day, we're teaching so that they have an understanding. Not that – not so they can just recall information for the point of it.  

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?  

Okay. We're going to stop there. I’m going to pick on some people to help me out. Eliza, give me one. 

[On-screen text] Encourage students to question and explain their thinking 

Student: Alkenes are unsaturated. 

Jess Lacey: Unsaturated. And what does that mean about their reactivity? 

Student: They undergo addition reactions. 

Jess Lacey: Good, addition instead of?  

Student: Substitution. 

Jess Lacey: Instead of substitution, excellent. Give me another one, Abby. 

Student: The other thing to me would be its open structure. 

Jess Lacey: Good, open structure. 

Chloe Rees, Year 11 Visual Communication Design teacher, Ballarat Clarendon College: When the students were working on the slow release, I was checking for understanding during that point and work – by working one-on-one with the students. And in that time, I was looking for students with the right answer that I could cold call to share back to the class. It's really important that everyone in the class hears those responses because they might make a different connection to the response that I have. It also allows the student to elaborate on their thinking and the why is really important in terms of that thinking. So why do you think it's the colour or why do you think it's the shape? 

[On-screen text] Encourage students to question and explain their thinking 

Chloe Rees: Layla, what was one of the design elements that you discussed? 

Student: I chose colour. 

Chloe Rees: And why did you chose colour? 

Student: Because I thought, like, the green and gold, it's pretty like significant to like Australia and how it’s recognised in the uniform. And I thought it was a – it’s like a constant theme in the uniform. 

Chloe Rees: So it's consistent in the uniform. And you've linked it back to other things that you know about Australia as well. So you've used some prior knowledge in your response there. If you were describing the use of colour, what words would you describe the colours? Would they be bright? Would they be dull? 

Student: Yeah, bright. And in my mind, they’re kind of like they’re kind of gradient into each other as well. 

Chloe Rees: Perfect. So they've got separate block colours, but they're also working together to create that gradient. 

Philippa Roso, Year 7 English teacher, Ballarat Clarendon College: Recording things in an efficient way is essential when you are given large amounts of information, for example in a lecture. But, ultimately, it's a great way to reinforce content knowledge. 

KPAS is a term from The Writing Revolution. It stands for key phrases, abbreviations and symbols. It's a form of note-taking we use at Clarendon. And by converting KPAS notes to sentences, they are able to reinforce that content knowledge. But also from sentences to KPAS notes – it allows them to practise that once more. 

[On-screen text] Equip students with skills for effective revision and study routines 

Philippa Roso: Now, I'm thinking about nuclear power, and I'm thinking about some abbreviations we might use. Okay, so these are our symbols in our KPAS (key phrases and abbreviations and symbols). What about our abbreviation of words? If I've got fossil fuels, I'm thinking I might do – from my note-taking – like that. If you don't like that – it's a, quite a personal thing, note-taking – you don't have to write that down next to your note-taking. Write down any that you think you will use. How could we abbreviate nuclear power, Marcelle? 

Student: Nuclear and PWR. 

Philippa Roso: Pardon? 

Student: Nuclear and PWR. 

Philippa Roso: Okay. Nuclear PWR. You could do NP, as long as you know what it translates to. Okay. You could do elec for electricity. But I want you to remember, if you abbreviate something, you must have a clear understanding of it. Because sometimes when you go back to your homework and our homework reviews, you say, ‘Oh, I can't remember what that says, I can't remember what I wrote.’ That means you've probably abbreviated too many words. 

It's really important to provide information to students in a variety of forms or mediums, as it allows them to see repeated information but in different formats, so that it reinforces the same message. But it also allows them to – if they don't understand it the first time – perhaps look at it in a different way to support that learning.