Teaching Psychology - Adjusting to Linear Specifications

Lather, Rinse, Repeat!

Relevant for GCSE and A-Level

As a school, we decided that this year we would not enter our students for AS exams and 'go linear' instead. This has many pros in that we can be far more flexible with the order of topics covered, we can build skills (especially for 16 markers) consistently from the beginning of year 12, and students don't lose a block of time at the end of year 12 for revision and the exam period. The cons seem to be that students can be less motivated in year 12 due to having no exams, and can worry more about how much they will have to know for year 13 (no matter how many times you tell them they'd have to know the same amount regardless of whether they sat the AS or not).

Consequently, I started thinking of strategies that I could use to help students to consolidate their knowledge over the two-year period. Below, I have selected a couple of strategies that I am experimenting with this year that enable me to assess how well students are retaining the content of the course, and that students appreciate in the long-run. As I continue to experiment, hopefully I'll be able to add to these ideas.

A couple of things to note before we get into the strategies:

1. My school uses a bronze, silver, gold medal system for differentiation. This can be used to give students choice (so they can complete either the bronze, silver or gold task) or they can work their way up the medals to earn gold and go from the 'easiest' task to the most 'difficult.' We then use challenge activities to really extend the thinking of the top end.
2. Both of the strategies are suitable to use at both GCSE and A-Level. My examples are designed for the 2017 Edexcel GCSE specification and the AQA A-Level specification.

Strategy 1 - Recap quizzes

With the seemingly constant squeeze on lesson time, this strategy involves students completing recap activities outside of class. Students are given a quiz on a particular section of content from a previous topic (see right for a GCSE example) and work from the bronze questions up to the most challenging questions they can complete. I emphasise that I expect all students to do at least the bronze and silver, and reward students for attempting a level of challenge above their target grades.




To minimise the marking, the starter for the next lesson involves students self-assessing their work as I read out the answers. They can then make improvements as they go along. For students who haven't completed every level of challenge, I make it clear that I expect them to fill in the answers up to and including the gold as we go through so that they are continually pushing themselves to improve.


Additionally, I set homework tasks that repeat a class activity from a previous topic. For example, when recapping the Multi-Store Model of Memory, students are given a blank template of the model and cut outs of the key features (see left). They are then given differentiated success criteria (see below) for recreating the model (please note that this is for the GCSE). Again, the answers are marked in class by simply redisplaying the model from the original lesson. Students are encouraged to make improvements by adding the features that they hadn't been able to do as part of the homework.



Strategy 2 - Revision and exam question selection

At A-Level, it is important that students not only recap content, but also the specific exam skills of different topics. To encourage this, students are given a weekly differentiated independent study task (see right for an example). Students have free choice to either complete:
  • The bronze activity where they make revision resources on particular sections of content and then have to prove that they have tested tested themselves effectively.
  • The silver activity where they complete shorter-answer exam questions on the same sections of content.
  • The gold activity where they answer extended exam questions on the same sections of content.
Students are very good at selecting appropriately, and I've found that many will switch medal colours each week depending on how they feel about the content. This strategy has the added benefit of helping students to build in time across the course to develop revision resources that they can use at the end, rather than them feeling the pressure to make and use resources for every topic in the last couple of months.

To encourage independence, the next week of independent study involves students using a mark scheme to mark their answers from the previous week as well as completing the next week of content. Then whilst students are working in lessons, I can check that the work is done and give students opportunities to ask questions about particular questions they need extra help with.

Whilst these strategies take a fair amount of time to set up and embed, I would highly recommend them. I have started making assessments that incorporate previous topics as curveballs, and students' results on these questions are consistently improving over time. This gives me, and them, greater confidence that they are being supported in their revision across the entire course. Give them a go and let me know how they work out.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teaching Relationships – Filter Theory

Image
Singles Night Match-Making Relevant for A-Level When I was first choosing which optional topics to teach for the Unit 3 paper, a couple of topics stood out as potentially being student favourites – relationships and forensics. Students are always fascinated by how and why relationships form (and fall apart), as well as the idea of studying criminals. At face value, these topics are easily applicable to students’ lives; relationships are an important part of their lives, and making sense of the make-ups and break-ups is an appealing and useful application of knowledge. Hopefully they haven’t been criminals, but they love documentaries about them, and unfortunately the world we live in means that crimes are more at the forefront of their minds than for previous generations. However, when I started teaching the relationships topic (which I hadn’t on the old specification), I felt that some of the theories were a bit dry and students had a tendency to mix up the concepts from diffe
Read more

Teaching Research Methods - Statistics

Image
How to choose statistical tests Statistics. The most commonly named area of the course when Psychology teachers are asked which part of the A-Level they are most nervous about teaching. When this is combined with how it is often named by students as the part of the course that they are most worried about learning, you've got a recipe for a whole lot of anxiety. As psychologists, we know that some anxiety is good, but too much can have many detrimental effects, including a negative impact on our students' abilities to learn and remember information. As mentioned previously, I quite like teaching Research Methods, and I include statistics in that. The great part about statistics is that the exam questions are fairly predictable and there are so many examples out there that students are able to practise each of the required skills repeatedly. To help to quell the anxiety, I design lessons that build their confidence through repetition. This may not result in the most creative
Read more

Teaching Research Methods - Sampling techniques

Image
Sampling Sweets! Relevant for GCSE and A-Level When I started teaching, I always thought sampling techniques would be one of the easier parts of Research Methods to teach. Yet students really seem to struggle with them, especially stratified sampling. I've found that they find it really difficult to imagine how you can create a sample that proportionally represents the target population (and what 'proportionally represents' means!). They also struggle with a true definition of 'random' sampling rather than their definitions of random from everyday life. So to help with this, I use a practical strategy that they love - sweet sampling! A few things to note before we get into the strategy: 1. This is a GCSE lesson for the new Edexcel GCSE (teaching from September 2017) Specification so systematic sampling is not included (I'll go through how I do it for A-Level though). 2. My school uses a bronze, silver, gold medal system for differentiation. This
Read more