Teach Secondary 13.3

61% The percentage of the overall secondary teacher recruitment target for 2024/25 met thus far (based on applications made up to February 2024) Source: Teacher Labour Market in England Annual Report 2024 produced by the National Foundation for Educational Research There’s nothing more disheartening for teachers than seeing stacks of impeccably neat, yet ultimately irrelevant revision cards. To be clear, effective revision cards can serve as powerful aids in consolidating knowledge, enhancing retention and facilitating efficient study practices – but they need to be done right. Each individual revision card should always focus on a single concept, fact or question/answer pair, so as to ensure clarity and prevent cognitive overload. Encourage students to avoid overcrowding their cards with excessive amounts of information, and instead get them striving to be as succinct as possible in how they present their key points. Moreover, revision cards should be active learning aids , not just reformatted regurgitations of existing notes. Teach your learners how to create cards that could potentially be used by non-specialists (parents, carers, siblings) to help them revise. The use of simple exercises, such as ‘fill in the blank’ activities, concept mapping or closed-ended questions, will allow for self- assessment while also providing rich opportunities for peer- assisted learning and better parental engagement. Encouraging users to actively participate in the learning YOUR GUIDE TO... REVISION CARDS ADAMRICHES IS ATEACHER, EDUCATION CONSULTANTANDWRITER If you and your colleagues are becoming frustrated at parents’ failure to fully engage with your school’s online information and learning platforms, one education charity’s recent experiences may point the way towards an effective – albeit rather radical – solution. The organisation Learning with Parents works alongside primary schools to tackle educational inequality by encouraging parents to take amore active role in their children’s learning – particularly among families contending with social or financial deprivation and other such barriers. It recently took the step of trying to boost its platform’s logins by abandoning compulsory parent accounts and passwords in favour of sending out personalised links. The result was a boost in take-up rates of around 3,800%. Granted, this may have been a case of a national organisation managing to engagemore effectively with the families of primary age children – but theremay be some instructive lessons there for secondary SLTs and admin teams. As Learning with Parents’ CTO, Peyman Owladi, recalls, “First, wemapped out how parents use the platform to understand where friction occurred in their journey. Through extensive user testing and feedback, we simplified flows to be intuitive. Now, parents simply click a personalised link and instantly start engaging with their child. By dramatically reducing the barriers to engagement, thesemagic links empower more families to enjoy impactful learning together.” process fosters deeper comprehension and retention of the material. Keeping revision materials aligned with what’s been learnt is important, though – there’s no point in learning new case studies that haven’t been covered in class, just because they’re included in the textbook. Encourage students to ensure that the content of their revision cards is contextually relevant to the subject matter, or the learning objectives for that particular topic or exam. Also, bear in mind that both the content and design of revision cards need to suit an individual student’s specific needs. Encourage users to personalise their cards, as this will foster a sense of ownership over the content. More importantly, it helps avoid the trap of cards becoming simply a generic regurgitation of information. Having a stack of effective revision cards to hand is one thing, but learners do need to actually use them properly – not just awkwardly shuffle them when ‘revising’. Get your classes to devise systematic review schedules, which will see them revisit and revise the content of their revision cards regularly. Spaced repetition techniques – where cards are reviewed at increasing intervals over time – can optimise long-term retention and help tackle forgetfulness. L E A R N I N G L A B 77 teachwire.net/secondary