Retrieval Practice with Flipgrid

Retrieval Practice with Flipgrid

I recently bought the excellent book by Kate Jones called Retrieval Practice. This book is really accessible and is packed with great ideas about how to promote retrieval practice in your classroom. If you have not yet picked up a copy of this book, I highly recommend it and as an added bonus, it is very affordable.

Reading through Kate’s book got me thinking about how I could support my students through technology with their retrieval practice and I came up with the idea of linking a retrieval practice task with Flipgrid which would enable my students to access model answers after they had attempted to answer the question for themselves.

As Kate says in her book, the key concept of retrieval practice is about getting information out of the students. It is the process of trying hard to remember which ultimately aids the students. And so it is important that students are not given the opportunity to access the answers before they have attempted the questions. It’s also really important that the students grapple with the questions and try hard to retrieve the information required without using any notes or any material that will assist them.

So this is what I did.

Firstly, I made a retrieval practice exercise which included a set of 12 questions based upon content and material that we had recently studied. I created the document below using PowerPoint. The QR codes that you can see in the image came later.

Next I had to create the QR codes and this is where Flipgrid comes in. I hopped over to my account in Flipgrid and created a number of topics as you can see from the image below. In each topic I recorded a video which explained the model answer to each of the retrieval practice questions. But instead of the students seeing my face and me explaining the model answer, I decided that I would put the question onto the video screen so that the students were able to see the question whilst they were hearing the model answer. I thought this was a good idea because it enables the students to see the question and hear how I was often referring back to the question when providing the answer. This way I was not only providing an answer, I was also modelling how to construct the answer based upon what the question was asking of me. Using the snip tool in Windows 10, I snipped an image of each of the questions from the PowerPoint slide and saved them. Then, after I had recorded my video on Flipgrid, I used the ‘Add Custom Sticker’ function to put the question onto the video screen, as in the images below. I then made the rest of the background white by using the whiteboard function. Once I had made the video and entered the white background with the question on the screen as a sticker, I then followed the usual procedure in Flipgrid and created my video. Then I downloaded the QR code that is automatically generated by Flipgrid and I cropped it a little bit, before saving it as an image. Next, I then inserted each of the QR codes onto the slide, resized them, placed them in the corresponding position with the relevant question, aligned them using the alignment tool and that was job done! I printed the PowerPoint slide out a number of times to use in my lesson and I also inserted a PDF version into OneNote and distributed the page to my students, which means that they can now access this retrieval practice exercise whenever they want to.

Public Schools – The promotion and organisation of sports and games

In this blog we take a look at the promotion and organisation of sports and games in 19th century Public Schools.

Below is an extract of an audio tutorial taken from my online course – Teaching A Level PE – Influence of Public Schools on Sports and Games. 

 

“Here we are looking at the promotion and organisations sports and games in the public schools and it is important that we make sure the students are aware that we are talking about what was going on in the public schools themselves. So this isn’t about what was happening in society, this was what was happening internally within these public schools, post 1850.

A key point to establish before you start teaching this area and to avoid potential pitfalls that I have fallen into in the past, is the assumption that your students understand what we mean by public schools. So it’s a good idea of course it take the time to make sure that they do understand.

Often students will know of Eton and Harrow and it’s useful for them to do some background research on one or two famous schools, such as Charterhouse, Shrewsbury, Winchester, etc. 

So, let’s look at the characteristics of what was going on in the public schools which promoted the organisation of sports and games in schools.

Space

The first thing we need to be thinking about is that the schools had space and they had facilities. I draw your attention to the word specialist and that is because the exam board in the past has been very picky about this point and will not accept just facilities or just space on its own. In this case, facilities and space on its own is not acceptable, therefore we need to make sure we teach our students to use the qualifier ‘specialist’ or ‘high quality’ before facilities. 

We then have to ask the question ‘so what’? If students just identify characteristics on their own they are unlikely to obtain marks (depending on the question asked). So we need to coach and train our students to answer that question and that, for me, is with the linking phrase ‘which meant that’. So for example, if students identify specialist facilities and space they would then have to develop that with which meant that ….. the boys had the opportunities to participate in sports which lead to skill levels rising and the growth of the cult of athleticism.

Specialist coaches

The next point is that the schools had specialist coaches. And again, students would need to develop this point by saying that this meant that this enabled the boys to become proficient at sport, which also promoted the growth of the cult of athleticism. 

Character Development

The games themselves promoted the idea of character development. Here, we’re talking about values such as honesty, integrity and courage, leadership, teamwork, for example. All of these values which the public schools at the time espoused as being great attributes of a Victorian gentleman. 

Time

The boys had plenty of time to play sport and in most of these schools during this era games was compulsory. This meant that the boys probably played five or six afternoons a week. This would have lead to the growing popularity of sport and reflected and developed the cult of athleticism.

House matches and School matches

The boys played house matches within the schools and they played fixtures against other schools. Both of these points reflect the growth and popularity of sport and the start of how competitions were set up. 

6th Form Role Models

The games were organised and promoted very heavily by the sixth formers who acted as role models to the younger boys. This point links back to character development and meant that the senior boys were developing organisational and administrative skills, which would be used later when, as ex-public school boys, they codified the games and established national governing bodies of sports.”

‘If students just identify characteristics on their own they are unlikely to obtain marks’

To find out more about the promotion and organisation of sports and games and to develop your teaching on all areas of the 19th century public schools, including the promotion of ethics and the cult of athleticism, head over to my online course here:

Teaching A Level PE – Influence of Public Schools on Sports and Games.