Part Three
Estimating how long it takes students to learn concepts
Think carefully about how much a student can read and how long it will take students to learn particular concepts and skills in planning curriculum implementation.
The ACT BSSS curriculum is looking for depth over breadth of knowledge understanding and skills. Spending more time on knowing some things deeply and developing the skills and conceptual understanding to learn the rest is preferred.
However, Math has a particular set of topics to learn, so careful planning must be undertaken to ensure the prescribed topics are all studied and given the proportion of time needed for them to be understood by the average student and also considering the significance to the curriculum. Sometimes you will have to move on.
Use your previous experience and the guidance of senior colleagues to help you plan your weighting of curriculum elements.
As a general rule of thumb, if the class is achieving comprehension at C grade by around 80% of students it is time to move on. You will circle back to concepts later.
If class comprehension is less than that, and time in pressing, plan to circle back and retrieve notions to support further understanding.
Here are some readings you might consider in your leisure:
https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Rosenshine.pdf
http://pdf.retrievalpractice.org/RetrievalPracticeGuide.pdf
http://pdf.retrievalpractice.org/InterleavingGuide.pdf
Research on Assignment Completion Times and Lengths
Some research on this topic is available below:
https://cte.rice.edu/resources/course-workload-estimator
While the research considers first year university students at a prestigious university in the USA, with thought, it can be used as a reflection exercise for considering how much time it takes students to complete assignment work
Considering Weightings
As a general principle, the more cognitive demand, time and effort a task requires, the more it should be weighted. Make sure the task is not unreasonably large as the students will have tasks in every subject to complete!
A similar principle is that the more parts of the curriculum covered in a task, the more it might be weighted.
Weight more discriminating and reliable tasks more heavily.
Heavily weighted tasks need strong risk management procedures to ensure academic integrity.
Some schools assemble many small tasks each with a small weighting into single portfolio task with a larger weighting. This has risks and benefits. A risk with many small tasks assembled into a portfolio or summative score, is that the small tasks will not sufficiently differentiate students. Another pitfall is that they might not be of consistent and comparable standard and distort the picture of student capacity. Designing a portfolio of tasks of sufficient challenge and consistent standard in a laborious task, therefore fewer parts are generally better than many parts. To support students and prevent them doing it all at once at the end, it also requires regular grades based feedback to ensure students understand their progress. Another concern with this model is that formative assessment becomes conflated with summative assessment thereby placing too much pressure on students who will not get a chance to learn through trial and error in a low stakes environment. Consider the effectiveness of using assessment as a classroom management strategy.
Estimating Time for Tests
The best practice in determining how much time is needed for a test or examination, you should have a colleague do the test with full working and see how long it takes.
In terms of time, a student will take longer than a teacher. Apply an appropriate multiplier, in terms of A/T/M, Specialist, Applications, complexity etc, to the time it took your colleague.
This will also enable you to see if the question can be answered in the time you have set, or if there are problems with the questions.
This might also serve as a model answer to support student learning when returning work.
Elements to Consider in Setting time limits
There is an interaction between expectations of quality and time limits. Expectations should be made clear in the rubric.
Do you want them to use trial and error to formulate a response? They will need more time for trial and error. Reflect this expectation of experimentation and reasoning in the rubric.
How complex is the question? It will take more time to answer several parts and to answer with appropriate depth
Is the material familiar and the question predictable? They will need less time if the question is expected and the material familiar.
Part of the planning might be that only some students can complete all questions in the time available as a matter of differentiation.
Considerations - Investigation Report
When considering setting a word limit for an investigation, you should consider the number of words it takes to make a well-evidenced and logical point in Mathematics. You should also consider the expected parts of a report. Consider the parts of a report suggested below:
Title
Abstract- summarise findings and reservations
Introduction- outline problem, evidence, hypothesis, explanation .
Method- propose methodology, work the problem showing working and trial and/or trial and error working
Discussions- explain significance of evidence, link to wider research, outline weaknesses and strengths of method, cite evidence, make suggestions for improvements to get better results
Reference Lists
Appendices