Post

New Blog Post 📝 I hate QLA. Originally due to the time it sucked out of my PPA I now know that QLA documents do not provide the information we think they do. I go over the justification for why I ditched QLA and the reasons why you should get rid of it too. open.substack.com/pub/joel1201...

Agreed. QLA is reductionist. "If we just know the single items of knowledge that they know and don't know, we'll how to teach precisely". There's much more to understanding and meaning. ...

Another issue is how much is done for students... A single teacher can't match that complexity, but collectively the students could. The clear answer is educate our students to be self-regulated learners. As evidenced by @rethinkingjames.bsky.social 's research.

No, as I train them up I just give them the mark scheme and have them make notes. With my year 10s, at the beginning of the course, I do the exam in front of them, using a visualiser, to model exam technique. But then, they must take ownership of their understanding.

Before feedback I annotate each Q with FC flash card ‘fact’ or S ‘skill’. And prepare activities to repractice the skill. They annotate their questions along with me with what I see & associate. I give them time to make flash cards of the ‘gaps’ and after they have time to re practise the ‘skills’.

Annotating an exam paper is a great demonstration of your thinking and is so useful for the pupils to see.

But instructing them to annotate with you is the next level up. It shifts the current activity more towards the active as it prompts them to think about why this is highlighted and how is this word associated to that, and doing the annotating also helps promote the habit of doing it in the future.