This is a short tongue in cheek blog for people like my husband (who is a fantastic teacher but who doesn’t see the need for the constant rebranding of the same thing needlessly). Here are a few translations (broadly speaking) that will help people who have been teaching a long time but not kept up with said research:
‘Low Stakes Quiz’ = back in the day we called this ‘a short test’. Nice because the kids can mark it themselves. Not called a ‘test’ anymore because we don’t want to put any stressful words on it that may cause upset. To go that one stage further, we will say it’s ‘low stakes’ (not that any of them will know what that is) and call it a quiz to make it sound fun!
‘Interleaving’ = think along the lines of ‘cross curricular learning’ or encouraging students to do some thinking related to a similar theme/topic/way of thinking/concepts that has previously been done.
‘Direct instruction’ or ‘Explicit Teaching‘ = chalk and talk or as we used like to think of it ….. teaching!
‘High stake test’ = more marking for you.
‘Dual coding’ = annotating/drawing a diagram while teaching.
‘Retrieval practice’ = recall or remembering. Now this is a really good thing but back in the day was only Level 3 – irrespective of however hard the concept was.
‘Spaced learning’ = leaving spaces between learning.
‘Metacognition’ = thinking about learning. In fairness this has always been metacognition.
‘RQT’ = newish teacher, likely to get any TLR 2 type posts that come up.
‘Cognitive load theory’ = think ‘zone of proximal development’ from back in the day when you trained.
‘Building social capital’ = putting effort in to make eye contact and a quick nod whilst walking down the corridor or asking the person at the photocopier how their dog is. In olden days this was deemed as ‘having good manners’.
‘Cold calling’ = picking someone to answer a question to check understanding (or as I do it from time to time, to check they are listening)! We used to call this ‘no hands up’
‘Verbal feedback’ = talking to students about how to improve their work.
‘Written feedback’ = as for above but done with a pen. Used to be called ‘marking’!
‘Pre Public Exam’ (PPE) = a ‘mock’. Pixl schools lead this one. It rolls off the tongue so much better than ‘mock’.
PEx = Permanent exclusion = Expelled.
‘Terms 1-6’ = term 1 is correct in old money, term 2 is the second half of term 1, term 3 is the first half of term 2, term 4 is the second half of term 2, term 5 is the first half of term 3 and term 6 is the fun term 🥳🥳
I’m not mocking any of these techniques, they are all fab!! I wrote this in the first instance to highlight that all of these words that are, essentially, things we have been doing all along but under a different name 🤣🤣🤣. The renewed focus on some of these are both important and powerful.
Disclaimer- I am aware that there is an awful lot more to these techniques than I have given credit to. Please nobody be offended 🙏😁
Mrs M’s Teacher Talk 