Learning focused student book reviews.

With the announcement by Ofsted that their focus on reviewing curriculum through student books, I thought it would be useful for me to share what a learning driven book review should contain. I wrote this along time a go , as an attempt to move the focus away from "book scrutiny" and a genuine attempt at prioritising what we know about structuring learning through lesson design and the curriculum. There will undoubtedly be something missing from this list but I think the following will reveal to us elements of lesson design, and the sequencing of teaching that can lead to learning. The list hopefully begins to ask the question "Does the curriculum serve the learning of my students?"

In no particular order the list is as follows:

• Constructive alignment of:
• intentions, teaching, assessment and feedback.
• Engagement in content over tasks.
• Activation of the correct prior knowledge.
• Multiple exposures to the same idea ( 3 or 4)
• spaced with time.
• interleaved with other content
• involves practice with content, especially the role low stakes testing can play.
• Does feedback develop self regulation? eg Use of Checklists, exemplars, co-constructed success criteria.
• Big ideas are broken down into smaller ideas and then built back up.
• Students have opportunities to think and struggle with content, i.e enter “the pit”
• Avoidance of relying solely upon scaffolded performance.
• Tasks that reduce means end thinking.
• Timing is considered for use of scaffolds. eg after an initial struggle.
• What assessment assess performance ( short term recall and understanding) or learning ( long term retention and application?)
• When does assessment of learning occur?
• Use of pre and post tests.
• is testing linked to learning intentions or grades?
• Does the feedback help student interact purposefully with the content.
• Is there an over reliance upon means end feedback, task level feedback.
• Is there sufficient content feedback.
• Domain thinking such as writing with genre.
• Opportunities to write applying knowledge of the subject in a formal way?
• clear literacy feedback upon developing this skill?
• Is academic language at the heart of learning? Eg science writing in the third person.

Since writing this I have developed what I hope is a self reflective activity for teachers to undertake a book review of their own. It is mainly focused around feedback, but where it has been planned as well as some of the elements from above.

What type of marking is present in this book?

There are many ways to provide feedback to students that can have a positive effect upon student learning. However the general rule is that content feedback is most effective.

“Regulate the learning rather than the activity. “ Dylan William.

1. Feedback about the task- how well was it done? What factual knowledge do they have? What conceptual understandings do they have? Advice and guidance may seek to identify what to do next. Eg.  Give an example here.
2. Feedback about the Process- how well have they thought about the task? What procedural knowledge do they have? Advice seeks to help the students think through the task. Eg. Start by showing your working out, before substituting the data in. or these sequence to help students work how to tell which organelles are nucleuses and which are chloroplasts: How many nucleuses does the plant cell have?____ Do plant cells have more than one chloroplast? ____ .How can you use this to remember how to label THE nucleus and the chloroplasts” (Process feedback)
3. Feedback about Self regulation based upon how well have they directed their activity and thinking and actions? What metacognitive knowledge have they employed?What might be a good strategy for learning how to remember labelling diagrams? Might covering them and trying to draw them from memory then checking how accurate you’ve been  help? ( Self regulation- providing a rehearsal strategy)
4. Feedback about based upon personal evaluation.Seeks to spot attitude, effort and motivation problems. Eg Poor effort. Advice and guidance is intended to motivate or correct poor learning attitudes.  This can often be counterproductive.
5. Content feedback seeks to clarify student thinking, provides the information that students may not have been holding in their working memory while producing the work or answer. Advice and guidance goes beyond the current task, and are often simple re-explanation. You have wrongly labelled the Nucleus as a chloroplast ( Task feedback based on content knowledge) In which does the force of weight act?  
6. Feedback about the quality of  student work attends both accuracy of the ideas within the work and then any notion of quality that your subject or schooling values. For example add units., spelling and grammar corrections
7. Summative assessment feedback that indicates current level of performance. This feedback intends to inform the student of their current level of performance through exam grades, percentage scores; it should tell student if they are on-track or if they are heading in the right direction.

Task A: Look through your book and tally each bit of feedback provided in these categories.

Task	Process	Self regulation	Personal	Content	Quality	Performance

Task B: Now tally up the ratio of teacher comments to student responses.

Total number of comments	Number of teacher comments where response is expected	Number of student responses

Learning is most successful when:

Task C : Ideas are built upon, and revisited over time. For ideas to be learned they should be revisited 3 or four times. Is there an example in your book that shows this? Photocopy or photograph this sequence and annotate where the ideas are established.

Task D: When students receive high quality content focused feedback. Is there an example in your book to show this?   Photocopy or photograph how this was scaffolded and annotate why the student response was successful

Task E: Teachers use student learning ( and errors) as a feedback and change the teaching as a result of it.

1. Is there an example of student work being used diagnostically so that a change in teaching sequence, strategy or emphasis occurred? Photocopy or photograph how this was scaffolded and annotate why the student response was successful
2. Is there an example of a rubric or pre-planned marking code to target key knowledge?Photocopy or photograph how this was scaffolded and annotate why the student response was successful
3. Is there an example of students have redrafted work to improve its quality?Photocopy or photograph how this was scaffolded and annotate why the student response was successful

Task F: Is there an example where you feel the work has been overly scaffolded and students may have missed an opportunity to struggle and think about the content? Photocopy or photograph this task and annotate why this content may have been better served being less a structured performance.

Task G: Learning is considered long term retention and application of knowledge  while performance is more short term and completed with scaffolding and classroom prompts to hand or in near memory.

1. Is there an example of assessment of learning?
2. and example of  assessment of performance?