What I will then do, over the coming lessons and weeks, is provide students with time to explicitly reflect and discuss the EVERY method as a technique. It made me think, what explicit strategies to do I teach my students? Am I too implicit at times in my own explanations and expectations of the students? Do they really reflect on how successful they have been with a particular strategy? Next week, I want to identify a strategy I will use, for example Tom Millichamp’s EVERY calculations, and explicitly model this for students, then provide them with opportunities for practice. ![]() Elizabeth Mountstevens provided a very thought provoking discussion in to metacognition and it’s place in a #CogSciSci classroom. ![]() Because of this challenge, I realised all I had read and written about had been completely forgotten about in my practice. What I love about CogSciSci events is they really challenge you to rethink your own practice. Like most teachers, I have read the EEF guide on Metacognition and Self-Regulation and even written is out it previously on my blog. Using metacognitive approaches to cognitive science techniques I am hoping this will become a rich and exciting discussion with some of the best chemists in the school. Next week, with Year 13, I will be showing some Maxwell Boltzmann distributions and chemistry focused graphs from Nature/Science journals and will ask the students to deduce what they can from them. Goal free problems can be done after effective independent practice to provide further challenges and get, as Robbins’ says, “More bang for your buck” when it comes to resources. The key takeaway being this is not for ‘novices’. I now feel that highlighted my own narrow focus on assessment and Robbins’ presentation this year clarified when and where we should use the goal free effect for maximum impact. When I first heard Adam Robbins share this goal free approach, I was taken aback as I didn’t see where it fitted for my kids and how it would help in exams. I intend on starting with a blank canvas and a graphical pad, showing the processes the students already know and then linking to and elaborating the whole cycle as I draw it live. I will be using both of these techniques with Year 11 next week when teaching the carbon cycle. * Direction of Travel – familiar to unfamiliar, concrete to abstract and explain then define. * Start on a blank canvas – which allowed the directing of attention and the regulation of the flow of information Boxer provided several demonstrations of explanations, each slightly better then the last, in a way to show two fundamental aspects of a powerful explanations: An vital skill for all teachers and educators that is seemingly ignored in literature, explanations provide the knowledge students need to develop their understanding further. In the keynote presentation, Adam Boxer provided powerful insight in to the wonderful world of explanations. This list is my no means exhaustive, just what I want to apply to my classroom (and what I will suggest other teachers at my school do too). I will focus on a few of the many great presentations and ideas shared and discussed. I wanted to share some of my key golden nuggets or takeaways from the day and how I intend to apply them next week in my classroom. I am thrilled to say the event, like it’s predecessors, was a storming success and allowed like-minded Science educators to come together to share ideas, challenge one another and bring out the best in each other. Firstly, a quick thank you to Bill and Rachel for the perseverance in seeing this task through in what must be the hardest circumstances imaginable. Fast forward to 17 months later, the event was reorganised and I had the honour of attending the event at Beechen Cliff School in October 2021. Like most CogSciSci enthusiasts and followers, I was gutted when the original CogScSci 2020 event in May 2020 had to be cancelled due to the pandemic. ![]() Thanks James!ĬogSciSci Bath “2020” – Golden Nuggets and Takeaways Click the link above to go to his twitter page and find links to his other blogs. James has been kind enough to write up some takeaways for those that could not make it to beautifully rainy Bath yesterday.
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