TEACHING AND LEARNING

All lessons across the school now start with a do now task, these are short activities that allow our students to get started as soon as they arrive. The activities are carefully planned to overcome the forgetting curve.

This shows that we forget new information after a matter of only a few days. Reminding students of this information, through retrieval practice helps our students to remember and retain this new knowledge.

Retrieval practice involves teachers providing frequent opportunities for children to remember what they’ve learned, often through low-stakes testing, so that it becomes deeply embedded and eventually takes less effort to recall.

In this way, retrieval practice remoulds teacher assessment into a learning strategy, asking students to think hard to access, and in turn reinforce, the curriculum content they’ve been taught. Our do now tasks, use this technique to help our students recall information in the short, medium and long term, overcoming the forgetting curve.