vce learning in terms 3 and 4 john munro. a vce year learning plan learn, memorize and apply the new...

VCE Learning in Terms 3 and 4

John Munro

A VCE year learning plan

Learn, memorize

and apply the new ideas

Automatize what you

know

Exam Preparation

In the exam : A strategic exam

plan

VCE learning in Terms 3- 4 : changing what and how you know

VCE learning at this time of the year involves students

•reorganizing what they have already learnt, •making new links between ideas,

•seeing when/how/why to use them to solve problems,

•automatize them.

Make sure you help students understand that they need to learn in these ways.

Include this in your dialogue with the students.

VCE co-ordinators in Terms 3- 4 as learning coaches

1. Coaching students to make maximum use of what they have learnt and know and to how to manage their knowledge retrieval and display most effectively in assessment contexts

1. Coaching colleagues to understand the learning and emotional-attitudinal factors that are impacting on their students’ learning and knowledge.

1. Work on setting a culture of ‘consolidating and automatizing knowledge’ in your classes.

1. Unpack in your own mind what the automatizing, transfer and application of knowledge processes will look like in your subject area/s.

Automatize what you know

Teach students to

1. use what they know automatically and make links between ideas more automatic so that one ideas stimulates others.

2. link questions with what they know; learn to ask different types of questions about the topics they are learning

1. summarize topics and summarize them again : compress what they know.

1. practise applying the ideas in a range of contexts.

1. practise looking at a topic in multiple ways; How would you explain / compare/analyse/apply/expand on/ it.

1. practise remembering, for example, What are the four main ideas you know about ….?

1. see themselves automatizing what they know.

Teachers use dialogue that guides/directs the automatizing

Teachers use dialogue that guides/directs the automatizing

Exam Preparation: link knowledge with assessment tasks

Guide students to

1. Draw up a working study plan. 1. Practise doing past exams and link these tasks with their topic knowledge. What ways of

thinking do they want you to use ?

1. Practise interpreting different types of tasks; work on what each type asks them to do.

1. Practise using different strategies for showing what they know in writing and organize how they do this,

1. improve their time management on task

1. Explain key ideas to someone else.

1. Replay time or stretch time.

• Work with friends

Teachers use dialogue that guides/directs students to ‘play the assessment game’

In the exam : A strategic exam plan

Guide students to

1. Fit their knowledge to the exam; Know what they to say, Know the types of questions they will be asked; practice answering exam tasks

1. Plan how they will 'unload' your ideas, plan how they will use their time

1. Preparing for subjects they 'can't' prepare for, eg English

1. Using the reading time

1. When writing begins

1. Use effective self-talk

1. Help the examiner see what they know.

Teachers use dialogue that guides/directs students to show their knowledge in the assessment context’

Outcomes of survey

Possible problem areaPossible problem area

Have a superficial, literal knowledge/skills for topics but have difficulty using this to answer questions; they don’t easily link questions with what they know.

3.4

Have difficulty thinking about their knowledge in ‘deep ways’, answering questions that require them to interrogate and analyse their knowledge of topics, for example, for the assessment /instructional verbs ‘analyse’, ‘evaluate’, ‘compare’.

3.4

Can recall ideas when scaffolded or prompted, but not independently or autonomously 3.2

Lack the necessary vocabulary for the topics they need to know 3

have difficulty dealing with the amount or breadth of knowledge they need to know; they have difficulty learning and keeping track of all of the ideas; they have difficulty handling literally all the ideas that they are learning and studying

3

Don’t seem to understand what to do / the learning strategies to use in order to revise, review and consolidate what they know

3

Rating values : not a problem at all (0)’ to ‘a major problem (4)’

Outcomes of survey


Are not aware of or appreciate the depth or breadth of knowledge they need to be successful

2.8

Seem to be drowning in the content that make up the subjects; have difficulty organizing their knowledge into main and subordinate ideas, seeing the main ideas, forming a ‘big picture’ understanding of topics

2.8

Have difficulty applying and transferring their knowledge/skills to new contexts and unfamiliar tasks, for example, for the assessment /instructional verbs ‘apply’, ‘infer’, ‘predict’. Their knowledge seems to lack ‘flexibility’.

2.8

Have difficulty interpreting assessment tasks, linking the tasks with what they know. They have difficulty describing what particular assessment /instructional verbs are asking them to do.

2.8

Can talk about or do the ideas adequately but have difficulty writing about them at the same level

2.8

Difficulty using their study times effectively; don’t know how to study effectively 2.8

Have difficulty setting effective goals for reviewing and consolidating what they know; they set unrealistic goals or no goals.

2.8


Outcomes of survey


Lack a satisfactory breadth of knowledge for their subjects; they have limited knowledge of most of the topics

2.6

Not being able to use effectively the feedback they receive from teachers to modify or improve their knowledge

2.4

they have difficulty recalling literally ideas they have learnt earlier 2.4

Difficulty allocating enough time to study; handling competing demands on their time 2.2

Use a lot of negative thinking and self talk about the likelihood of being successful in the VCE subjects

2

Dealing with parent expectations; these can include being inappropriately demanding, not supporting the student’s need to study

1.6

Neglect their physical health and well-being 1.4


Issues in VCE learning to target through coaching in Terms 3-4

1. Guide students to use effective self talk 2. Lack a satisfactory breadth of knowledge for their subjects. 3. Difficulty storing new knowledge in their long term memory : they

have difficulty recalling literally ideas they have learnt earlier. 4. Difficulty knowing the topic at the required depth. 5. Seem to be drowning in the content that make up their subjects. 6. Difficulty interpreting assessment tasks. 7. Difficulty displaying their knowledge in writing. 8. Difficulty using feedback effectively. 9. Difficulty allocating enough time to study; handling competing

demands on their time 10. Need to know how to handle the stress in the pre-assessment and

assessment contexts ? 11. Taking care of physical well being.

Following each issue:

1. What do you want your VCE students to know about the issue ?

1. What do you want your VCE colleagues to know about how to guide their students to increase their ability to deal with the issue in their subject ?

1. What actions would you be advising them to take ?

1. How will you plan to increase their awareness of this ?

Guide students to use effective self talk

Self talk influences how individuals learn and use their knowledge.

VCE students frequently use a lot of negative thinking and self talk about the likelihood of being successful in the VCE subjects.

They frequently need VCE co-ordinators to suggest alternative self talk.

What negative self talk does your students use ?

What positive self talk could you teach ?

Lack a satisfactory breadth of knowledge for their subjects.

Recommended teaching proceduresReasons for lack of breadth: 1.Poor recall of topic vocabulary.2.Can’t talk about enough propositions /key ideas for the topic in sentences Target the lack of necessary vocabulary for the topics they need to know. During revision, work on one topic at a time, select the main terms and 1.Have students say, write, recall explicitly the meanings of terms, link images and actions with them. 2.Teach them synonyms for key subject vocabulary.3.Link concepts into categories, draw concept and network maps for each section, paragraph that shows how the subject area vocabulary fit together. 4.Teach students how to deal with and work out the meanings of unfamiliar words.5.Guide students to think about and sort the terms into big concepts, middle concepts and specific concepts and detail for particular topics.6.Help students see how their vocabulary knowledge is improving.7.Help students see the value of an enhanced vocabulary.


Talk about key ideas and propositions for each topic. Students do activities in which they 1.say, read and write propositions (sentences) that link together the subject terms.2.paraphrase each proposition and main idea. 3.decide whether each proposition is a generalization, cause and effect, conditional proposition, how it contributes to their understanding of the topic and the implications of each.4.say the question/s each proposition answers. 5.visualize particular propositions and then talk about them in sentences.6.organize the ideas they know about a topic into one or more hierarchies. VCE students are not aware of or appreciate the breadth of knowledge they need to have in order to be successful. Guide them to 1.note how broad successful responses are in breadth2.suggest how they could improve the breadth of the response


VCE students often have difficulty dealing with the amount or breadth of knowledge they need to know. Useful teaching procedures include: 1.after learning a topic, ask the students to list all of the ideas and show the relationships between them.2.make students aware of the various relationships between ideas3.guide students to ask questions about the ideas they remember that are based on the various relationships to recall other ideas. 4.encourage the students to link the set of ideas in images/episodes, to visualize them. Students may not have a clear idea of what their topic knowledge ‘looks like’.

Difficulty storing new knowledge in their long term memory : they have difficulty recalling literally ideas they have learnt earlier

To assist them to store topic knowledge in memory. At the end of reading a section of their notes or a text, teach them to

1.say what you will remember as concisely as possible. 2.link it with what you know.3.try to compress it using an acronym, a mnemonic, a formula4.Where would you use it in the future ? Visualize remembering it

For further ideas in this area, see suggestions in Know how you learn Parts 2, 3 and 6.

3.2 They need to store ideas in language forms. Teach students 1.how to talk/write about this knowledge in words and sentences and to practise doing this as much as possible2.paraphrase the key ideas, say the ideas in multiple ways.3.practise linking the verbal tasks with their imagery/action forms of knowledge.4.reading aloud from text or notes.


To assist them to recall the ideas in the future. Teach students to gradually improve their recall of a topic: •‘go back in their minds’ to when they last heard or saw the ideas

•write down all of the ideas they can recall and reflect on the gaps

•tell themselves : The ideas will come into my awareness if I let them float up. •Teach them to use a meaningful action or mnemonic for ‘pulling in’ the ideas they didn’t recall.

•Teach the importance of ‘practising to recall’.


Some students can recall ideas when scaffolded or prompted, but not independently or automatically Teaching /coaching to get at this: 1.for each topic, select the essential ideas students need to recall and use automatically and target them, bit by bit, in your teaching.2. provide repeated strategic practice3.guide students to link together ideas so that one idea stimulates other ideas. 4. have them practise summarizing topics. 5. teach them to use key words for a topic and to draw network diagrams where they are given one/a few word/s and they provide the rest.6. show them a topic and have them imagine in their minds first the key ideas and then the details for each key idea.7. use pictures, images, symbols and mnemonics that pack as much information as possible into each key word or picture.8. use ‘replay time’.

Difficulty knowing the topic at the required depth.

Some students difficulty applying and transferring their knowledge/skills to new contexts and unfamiliar tasks, for example, for the assessment verbs ‘apply’, ‘infer’, ‘predict’, ‘analyse’, ‘evaluate’, ‘compare’. They have difficulty 1.applying and transferring their knowledge/skills to new contexts and unfamiliar tasks. 1.analyzing and evaluating what they know, answering questions that require them to interrogate and analyse their knowledge of topics.

1.being aware of or appreciating the depth of knowledge they need to be successful; they don’t seem to know what a ‘deep understanding’ looks like. They show depth difficulty when they need to answer the more probing questions that require them to manipulate what they know in the specified ways.


Useful teaching procedures: 1.Take a short topic in the subject. Identify key thinking actions students need to apply. These will be indicated in the assessment verbs used in the subject, for example, outline, evaluate, apply and compare. Show your students a good example of each of these responses to the topic, for example, an explanation, a comparison, an evaluation, a summary. Have them

• describe how they differ. • analyse and describe the thinking that underpins each. • discuss how the person who wrote each response seemed to think about

the topic. • say what more they know about the topic having applied the assessment

verb. • say how they will apply this analysis to their work. What have they learnt

about how to do the thinking actions for each of the assessment verbs ?

1.Make a list of these ‘thinking actions’ your students will need to use in your subjects and have them practise applying them to what they know about particular topics and say what new things they know having done this.


Useful teaching procedures:

3. Ask your students to practise applying each key assessment verb and describe the outcome to someone else. 4. Have students look at a topic from multiple angles, for example, de Bono, Bloom. 5. Have students discuss what the depth of knowledge of a topic means.

Seem to be drowning in the content that make up their subjects.

Some students seem to be overwhelmed by the content and detail in their subjects. It is useful to 1.help the students see how the various topics fit together and how the details fit within each.

1.encourage the students to see ‘digestible bits’ in both the subject as a whole and in individual topics, and how individual topics and ideas within each topic are linked.

1.help the students see the knowledge pathway that underpins the subject.

1.help the students see what they already know about each topic.

Difficulty interpreting assessment tasks.

Some students have difficulty interpreting assessment tasks and linking the tasks with what they know. Using teaching procedures include 1.teaching students how to interpret each task in the intended way. The students need to connect what they know with what the task asks for.

2.teaching students that the task may not match what they know directly; they may need to interpret it, reword it, use synonyms, etc.

3.guiding students to visualize what their response to an assessment task will be like.

4.Guiding students to work out key questions answered by key topics.

5.making up mock assessment and exam tasks.

Difficulty displaying their knowledge in writing.

Some students can an adequate understanding of the ideas by talking about them or doing them but they have difficulty writing about them at the same level. 1.Break the writing task into segments: teach the students to

1.practise organising the ideas in terms of the key elements of an extended response.

1.dictation to model writing ideas in sentences.

1.practise expressing ideas first in 1-event sentences and then moving to more complex sentences

1.practise writing responses to typical tasks, think though writing.

2.how to make their knowledge as clear / obvious as possible for examiners.

visualize outcome of the task,

note down or record what they know in key words or drawings

put them in sentences and connected prose

Difficulty using feedback effectively. How you give students corrective feedback at this time is critical to exam success in a few weeks time. Feedback is given for multiple purposes, for example: 1.to correct incorrect understanding, applications, skills or interpretations; substantive feedback2.to modify how the student expresses their knowledge; their use of conventions; mechanical feedback3.to focus or re-focus their learning activity and their attitude to learning, continuing to study, etc. Students need to know the reason or focus for the feedback. Depending on the importance of the student’s knowledge that led to the corrective feedback, encourage students to 1.see that the feedback can potentially enhance their knowledge and their final outcome2.see that the feedback can help them improve how to learn/think in the next few weeks 3.say what they will do differently in the future.

Difficulty using feedback effectively. Some key characteristics of feedback

Give students feedback strategically. Give feedback that is clear and explicit. Common problems with ineffective feedback:•teachers avoid negative information to protect students’ self-esteem or motivation, •feedback is too global or too specific•teachers sometimes feel they do not have time to provide the feedback necessary.

Decide on how you will give feedback and what you will give it for.

For any student, how much corrective feedback will you give for a given piece of work; voluminous corrections versus balanced versus sparse corrections ?

Some students need to be persuaded that a greater amount of feedback than they would have expected may help them.

Under certain circumstances, peers can give effective feedback each other.


Form of feedback : Aspects of giving valuable feedback•Include the most pertinent comments where the student will be most likely to see them.•Balance the positive and negative comments. •Keep the overall tone of the comments professional and constructive.•balance mechanical and substantive feedback.•Ask : will my feedback help the student grow optimally ? •Informal teacher-student conferences and written comments without grades helpful. Initial feedback

•should focus on effective behaviors demonstrated by the student.•should focus on a mastery criteria know to students.


Corrective feedback should

•focus on the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the strategy employed by the student.•focus on error patterns, not specific errors.•use examples and nonexamples to help illustrate effective behavior.•be selective.

Effective feedback

•includes student elaboration. •focuses on increasing effort to use the strategy. •includes establishing goals for improving specific behaviors on subsequent attempts. •is provided immediately after the practice attempt and just before the next practice attempt.


• Feedback should focus on a mastery criteria known to students.

• What do you want your VCE students to know about how to use corrective feedback most effectively?

Difficulty allocating enough time to study; handling competing demands on their time

A key aspect of using study time here involves students not learning new content but enhancing the knowledge they have already learnt. Particular problems include: students

•Don’t seem to understand what to do / the learning strategies to use in order to revise, review and consolidate what they know. You may need to model to them how to review and revise as described in 3.3 and 3.4.• •Having difficulty setting effective goals for reviewing and consolidating what they know; they set unrealistic goals or no goals. You can begin with the section Part 5 : Organizing yourself as a learner in Know how you learn.

What do you want your VCE students to know about how to organize their learning activity most effectively?

Need to know how to handle the stress in the pre-assessment and assessment contexts ?

Stress is caused by a perceived threat. Some students perceive the assessment situation as threatening.

A key factor here is the student’s self talk about •what they know•how well they will be able to show it in the exam context•implications of low performance for their future options. Key aspects to teaching positive self talk for dealing with anxiety•Try to get an impression of exactly what the student is telling themselves. •Identify the irrational aspect of it and work out alternative more functional self talk. This often includes the phrases

• must• awful /dreadful• should/shouldn’t

Need to know how to handle the stress in the pre-assessment and assessment contexts ?

How to teach more positive self talk

• Model how to use se effective self-talk, for example :

• Tell yourself that you will use the exam to show what you do know. • If there are things you can't remember about a task, don't panic.

Remember that they will probably come into your mind in a short while. • Concentrate on what you do know, not on what you don't.

I may not remember some of the ideas I need to

say


say


say


say


say


say

I’ll tell myself to think of what I last heard /saw them

I’ll tell myself to think of what I last heard /saw them

anxiety

less anxiety

Taking care of physical well being. Some physiological cause problems of VCE students at this time, such as fluctuating ability to focus, concentration

Coffee can do more harm than good. •Its stimulating effect drops after just weeks of repeated use and •can lead to persistent adrenal fatigue, can mar the quality and depth of your sleep.

• they work well in the morning and slow down in the afternoon;

• their attention fluctuates between on- and off-task,

• mind wanders, • make mistakes

Physiological causes; •low blood sugar, •body's circadian rhythm is lower, •mid-afternoon indeterminacy.

Reducing caffeine helps keep you naturally energised by enabling your hormones to balance while giving your body the chance to catch up on accumulated "sleep debt". Recommended liquid alternatives to re-energize include black tea and green tea.

Taking care of physical well being.

Push eating and drinking for learning. Ways to get long-lasting, even flow of energy:

Begin with protein. Breakfast includes protein and good-quality, low-GI carbohydrate, such as poached egg on wholegrain toast, cottage cheese on high-grain English muffins or porridge with yoghurt and nuts.Nutrients at noon. Replace starch for lunch contain with salads such as spinach, tomato, onion, broccoli, asparagus and capsicum.

Sip H20 regularly.

Even slight dehydration causes. reduced performance and fatigue, Suggest students drink/ sip water regularly throughout the study periods or day..

Taking care of physical well being.

Push eating and drinking for learning. Ways to get long-lasting, even flow of energy:

Keep the hardware tuned. Maintain physical well being while studying. Extended sitting at a study station can cause distractions. Integrate your physical well being with the physical space. Issues such as posture during study, stretch to stay flexible, simple neck, shoulder, "glute" and pectoral stretches can all help.Check that their chairs and desks are study-friendly.

Get physical.

Physical activity for 5-10 minutes after each hour of study. It can include a run, a brisk walk or any other activity that stimulates the blood flow, best in the fresh air. Many students miss or postpone their 15-minute fitness breaks.

Take a cat nap Some students need to ‘take a cat nap’ during the day when studying at home. They may feel guilty about this. Let them know that a 15-20-minute sleep can rebuild energy, as long as it doesn’t inhibit sleep at night.

vce learning in terms 3 and 4 john munro. a vce year learning plan learn, memorize and apply the new...

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