2 days agoCarousel and Springboard: A perfect match!Great technology cannot replace great pedagogy. However smart or intelligent the technology you put in front of students, without an expert teacher nurturing, communicating, transmitting, guiding and supporting them, students won’t learn. Similarly, great resources cannot replace great pedagogy. You can have the best textbook, the best PowerPoints, the best…Retrieval Practice5 min readRetrieval Practice5 min read
Oct 19Responsive FlashcardsA few months ago, we launched Carousel’s revolutionary C-Scores feature. We know that however intelligent an online learning platform is, its success rests on the teacher driving the process. In the absence of strong teacher input, students might “complete” homework in a technical sense — tick; done! — but they…4 min read4 min read
Jul 3C-Scores, Responsive Quizzing and Powering Up Your PracticeSarah is about to set a quiz for her students. She opens a Question Bank, and sees that up until this point her students have covered about 250 questions. She only wants to choose 20 for her quiz, so she starts to think about three variables: Prior performance: she wants…7 min read7 min read
Jun 19How Carousel Made Me A Better History TeacherMark has been Head of History at Oasis Academy: Mayfield for two years and last year became a National Lead Practitioner for Oasis Community Learning. Over the last year, I’ve attempted a number of different homework policies. The aim was that they: Were good for the wellbeing of my staff …5 min read5 min read
Jun 5Using images for retrieval practiceBy Adam Boxer A little while ago, I introduced my Year 7 students to cells and their organelles. Each organelle has a name and a function, for example:5 min read5 min read
May 10When It Doesn’t WorkImagine a student, who we will call S. As teachers, we don’t just interact with students at one point in time. They might join us at the start of their schooling in general or a course in particular. We then teach them, and they leave sometime later. The student at…8 min read8 min read
Apr 28Carousel for GeographyTo celebrate the launch of Carousel for Geography, we will be holding a free webinar on Wednesday 10th May to discuss the challenges and opportunities of using retrieval practice in the teaching of geography. Reserve your place using this link. Geography teachers are faced with a daunting task. As the…10 min read10 min read
Feb 1Carousel English Launch!English teaching sits in the fraught space between “teaching knowledge” and “teaching skills.” We want students to be able to think deeply and creatively about literature and to be able to produce interesting, insightful and idiosyncratic analysis. But we also know that we first need to break down the text…8 min read8 min read
Nov 16, 2022Multiple Choice 3: FeedbackTaking a quiz, a student is presented with the question below: Unfortunately, the student does not know the answer, so leaves the box blank and moves onto the next question. The student probably hasn’t achieved much, but at least there’s no harm done. Let’s say the student sees the question…7 min read7 min read
Sep 28, 2022The Most Important Question About Multiple Choice: when?This is the second in a series of blog posts looking at the use of multiple choice questions (MCQs). The first blog looked at some simple tips for writing MCQs, and can be found here. Consider the MCQ below: This is not a good MCQ. We learnt why in the…8 min read8 min read
