Kristian Still is a Deputy Head at Academic Boundary Oak School, an independent private school in Hampshire. He has over 20-years’ experience as a head teacher and senior leader with a MsEd in Kinesiology, BSc in Sports Science, and a Level 5 Coaching and Mentoring. Kristian shares a keen interest in education leadership, evidence informed practice and #edutech
In this practical guidebook, Kristian Still details details the most up to date research into improving learning and retention and takes us on a journey into test-enhanced learning, spaced retrieval practice, motivation, metacognition and personalisation. In so doing the book provides a blueprint for all teachers and schools to improve the academic outcomes of their students and to achieve this in ways that improve the motivation of learners and reduces the workload for teachers. Kristian Still has been developing these ideas with his classes for many years and has achieved considerable success in terms of the direct learning gains, and improved assessment grades of his pupils and the indirect gains in students growing confidence in lessons, with a wider group of pupils contributing to class and improved classroom behaviour. Consequently, students are finding greater comfort in class and experiencing less pressure or underpreparedness when a question is asked. The book is supported by the free Remembermore app which uses digital flashcards as an aid to deliver the learning gains of personalised, spaced retrieval practice, providing teachers with insights into the effectiveness of their own teaching. It also contains a number of practical case studies from teachers using these techniques and the app to produce great results in their schools. Spaced retrieval practice is a highly effective but counter intuitive revision technique in that it involves forgetting and relearning knowledge. This book provides a blueprint for motivating students to adopt this technique in favour of seemingly easier but less effective techniques such as re-reading. Moreover, the Remembermore app does most the convincing for you. It is a tool, not only to provide the flashcards for retrieval practice, but also to demonstrate the power of the technique to pupils.