HSAEL News

Consider the 30 most important pieces of knowledge you taught your class in the Spring term. These pieces of knowledge will be non-negotiables meaning you need students to have memorised and be able to quickly recall this information for them to succeed in future lessons, in further study of your subject or so they had the essential cultural capital in order to be considered educated.  

Consider what would happen if you tested every child in your class on those 30 pieces of knowledge when they returned to school after the Easter break? How many of your students would be able to recall the most important pieces of knowledge? Should you move on to new content if your class can’t remember the most important things you taught them the previous term?

The answer at HSAEL is no. You do not move on until every child has mastered the basics.

Most secondary school age pupils in the UK move from lesson to lesson, day to day, week to week, year to year, making little to no progress with their academic studies. It is commonplace for teachers to teach brand new content every lesson in a bid to cover lesson sequences. We’ve all heard someone in the staff room talking about ‘getting through the content with Year 11’. Just because you have imparted the knowledge onto your students doesn’t mean they understand; it doesn’t mean the knowledge will transfer into their long-term memory and it certainly doesn’t mean they will be able to apply that knowledge in any kind of powerful or critical way. Only once the most important knowledge becomes automatic can students begin to do the real thinking.

In Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School, he explains the importance of students developing a firm understanding of the subject’s fundamental facts and principles. At HSAEL, we do this using a simple Look, Cover, Write, Check method which students do until they have memorised the knowledge. ‘Memorising key knowledge by rote may seem tedious, but unfortunately it’s well proven that there’s no better way of storing information in long-term memory’.

What are Golden Nuggets?

Students are given the 30 most important pieces of knowledge they learnt that term at the end of each term. Their holiday homework is to ensure the terms they will have come across in lessons throughout the term are all are memorised. In their first lesson back after the holiday, in each subject, students are tested. Our pass mark initially was low for these tests sitting at 50%; on a second iteration we have raised the bar to 65%. Due to the huge number of students who are now passing their Golden Nugget tests, in our next iteration in September, the pass mark will be 80%.

Students test each other on the cobbles in the morning with their Golden Nugget booklets. They look forward to their tests relishing the prospect to prove their knowledge, beat their friends and be the best! They compete for top scores and enjoy being rewarded by their teachers for top marks. Students are truly empowered now we have defined the parameters of their learning; they know how to be successful as we have made it very easy.

When the data is in, students who pass all but one of their tests are given a golden ticket at line up. They are taken off timetable and invited to our knowledge celebration parties with pizza, games, party hats and music.

Students who do not pass are given the opportunity to re-sit in lessons while the rest of the class is rewarded. The reward is students getting to moving on to move difficult and more exciting new topics. Those that are still unable to pass as they have not put the work in to commit the terms to memory are taken off timetable and we intervene. We teach them the learning strategies to commit knowledge to memory as without this crucial skill, their working memories will be constantly overloaded in lessons causing them to move from lesson to lesson, day to day, week to week, year to year…

Since our launch of our Golden Nugget testing, we have seen a key shift in the attitudes of our students. They are more engaged in lessons; they are less passive in their learning. They understand that their lessons are not there simply for them to exist in; they instead must pay attention as the knowledge they are being taught is important. Crucially, they will not move on until it is mastered.

Golden Nuggets. They’re ye-ha!

 

Emma Connolly, Assistant Principal