Narration Impact

Developing the ongoing Conversations around learning...

What do the children think about Narration: 14.3.2022? See Newswebb Week 22: https://sites.google.com/littlegreen.herts.sch.uk/little-green-newsweb/week-22-11-03-22 AND:

Some generally very positive reflections with some very interesting reflections from Year 6. We are planning to link the narration approach to our Learning Journals Report Writing so, comments suggesting the importance of the repeated looking back over time will be actioned at this point linking to the work on The Forgetting Pit and wider research on Long term Memory.

It will also be interesting to reflect on the impact once the practice and process is even more embedded and a longer reflection can be carried out linked to Learning Walks and Book Scrutiny planned for the summer term SMT meetings.

Your child's books - narrating their learning:

Your children's books will be coming home next week before your Parent's Consultation. Here are a few tips to help you understand what you are looking at:

Can they show you their progress? Can you see progress? Have a look at a few pieces in September and then a few pieces in February - can you see the progress - improved hand-writing, better word choice, clearer punctuation; success at more challenging questions and word problems in maths.
Can they narrate their learning? - Their narrations should help them: From January, we have driven a narration approach to support children. We share some examples and children's perspectives in today's Newsweb. In short, we support children to make sense of their own learning and progress each lesson. Through narrating, the children develop their internal voice, their self-reflection, their independence and their responsibility for and speed of learning.
What are they trying to get better at? Do they know their targets? Whole Class Feedback and Narrations will help them explain this to you in English. What are they trying to get better at next? (Try not to give them a huge list but ask them to highlight a few key next steps which will also be evident in the feedback and narrations.)
See the video of a short example modelling a conversation to support your conversations. Note: If this had been a completely real interaction, I would have spoken far less to the camera and audience and allowed Imogen even more time to retrieve from her memory, her examples of learning. See information on 'The forgetting Pit' below if you'd like to understand more.

Looking at Learning as a Parent

Modelling the Model

A real, unpracticed and and unscripted example of a chat about learning to support your own conversations at home.

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Narrating Computing in Year 4

Here are some Year 4 children, Autumn, Rishi and Isaac, discussing their narrations in Computing.

(Video is just uploading and should be available soon.)

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Some Year 5 children sharing views on the impact of narration.

Narration - why children remember? The Forgetting Pit!

The Forgetting Pit analogy helps us make sense of when children remember or forget things and what we can do to help children to remember them. The use of whole class feedback, reflection and narration is a great way of making our experiences more memorable and stick around:

"Information in itself doesn’t have a coating. The coating is added when we think about information in working memory. If you don’t think about it, it doesn’t get a coating. Information which doesn’t have a coating can’t stick to the walls of the Forgetting Pit. Accordingly, it will be quickly forgotten, falling past the Point of No Return."

"Every time information is brought back into our working memory, the stickier the coating on it becomes. This means that the more we ask students to think about particular information, the more likely it will acquire the coating necessary to stick to the walls strongly. In other words, the better we will learn it." [In other words, Practice makes better!]

From https://theteachingdelusion.com/2020/03/30/the-forgetting-pit/

The Forgetting Pit is discussed in The Teaching Delusion 3: Power Up Your Pedagogy by Bruce Robertson, published by John Catt Educational.

An example of Whole Class Feedback in Year 6

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