Deliberately curated
Fourteen you could trial within ordinary teaching
Chosen from the 144 because they're easy to understand, need little or no preparation, respond to common classroom needs, and don't require buying or adopting anything. Each links to its card on the guide page.
- Brain Dump A blank page, two minutes, no notes: write everything you remember. The imperfect attempt is the point. What students cannot recall shows precisely where teaching needs to return. 01 Retrieval Practice · The Testing Effect
- Yesterday, Last Week, Last Month Three questions per lesson: one from yesterday, one from last week, one from last month. These intervals are a starting point; complex topics may need revisiting more frequently. 01 Retrieval Practice · Spacing & Interleaving
- Withhold the Objective Ask students to name what they learned at the end rather than copy an objective at the start. Generating the answer embeds it far more reliably than copying from the board. 02 Formative Assessment · Clarify Learning Intentions
- Mini Whiteboards All students write their response and hold it up simultaneously. The teacher reads the room in seconds: full participation, no waiting, no dominant voices. Works across all subjects. 02 Formative Assessment · Elicit Evidence of Learning
- The Muddiest Point At lesson close, each student anonymously writes the one thing they are least clear about. The teacher addresses the most common muddy points publicly at the start of the next lesson. Two minutes; high value. 02 Formative Assessment · Students as Owners of Their Learning
- Wait Time 1: After You Ask Rowe found most teachers wait under one second before speaking. Extending to three seconds increases the length and complexity of responses. Silence is thinking, not a gap to fill. 04 Questioning & Discussion · Wait Time & Thinking Space
- Write Before You Speak Ask students to write before any verbal response is taken. Writing prevents the quickest from foreclosing others’ thinking. The pen democratises the room before the voice takes over. 04 Questioning & Discussion · Wait Time & Thinking Space
- Hands Down Wiliam shows hand-raising distorts who answers. A small group volunteers repeatedly; the rest disengage. Remove hands and direct to named students. Every student should be asked. 04 Questioning & Discussion · Participation & Equity
- Reduce Volume, Raise Focus A page of comments overwhelms. One or two precise targets land. Identify the one thing that would make the biggest difference right now and focus entirely on that. 03 Feedback · Timing & Frequency
- Questions, Not Corrections Return work with questions, not corrections. "What evidence supports this claim?" demands more thinking than rewriting it for them. The cognitive work belongs with the learner. 03 Feedback · Closing the Gap
- Say It or Show It, Not Both Sweller’s redundancy effect: narrating text on screen forces double processing. Say it or show it, not both. Use the B or W key to blank the slide while you talk through the idea. 05 Explanations & Modelling · Managing Cognitive Load
- Think Aloud Rosenshine: model the process, not the product. Use a visualiser or screen share to think aloud live. Narrate your decisions as you work. Make invisible expertise visible to all. 05 Explanations & Modelling · Modelling & Worked Examples
- Ask Yourself As You Go Flavell: monitoring means questioning your understanding mid-task. Teach students to pause and ask “do I actually understand this?”, so gaps surface in time to fix them. 06 Metacognition & Self-Regulation · Performance & Monitoring
- Compare Predicted to Actual Winne: calibration improves when students see the gap between expected and real scores. Have them predict a mark, then compare, so monitoring is corrected by evidence over time. 06 Metacognition & Self-Regulation · Self-Reflection & Evaluation
This list is curated, not rotated for novelty. Want to start from a specific need instead? What are you trying to improve?