1. Deliberate Practice What it is and what it isn’t
T&L Briefing
Wednesday 6th December 2017

2. Deliberate Practice is hard – it happens when students struggle at the outer reaches of their ability to learn something intrinsically difficult and stretching.

3. Deliberate Practice v ‘Just Practice’
is extremely targeted
is focused on something that you are almost able to do but not just yet
has to be constantly monitored and adapted to your current level
needs the learning tasks to be designed so that you can take it one step further than your current level
is dependent on huge amounts of internal motivation
needs an experienced/knowledgeable teacher to give the effective feedback to maximise your performance
is focused, targeted improvement…not simply doing what we usually do.

4. Role of the Learner Deliberate practice requires the learner to:
move out of their comfort zone
put in serious, consistent effort
The key to meaningful practice is ration: the amount of help the teacher provides during practice and the amount of independent thinking the teacher expects during practice.
This ratio should shift along a spectrum from dependency to independence as students become more confident and fluent in new material

5. The Five Principles of Deliberate Practice
Practice comes in different guises depending on the subject…
In PE it might mean repeatedly serving a tennis ball; in English it might mean writing a paragraph properly sequenced using temporal connectives etc

6. A few strategies to consider…
Introduce pivotal concepts and vocabulary at the start of lessons and SoW to give students more time to practise them later on
Use explanations, models, questions, discussions and writing as opportunities to expose students to key concepts more than once
Consider lesson plans in terms of how each task in the lesson will enable the students to practise the same material in a slightly different way, deepening their understanding as they go
Teach less content every lesson to ensure students have the opportunity to rehearse and practise the important ideas
Use HL as an opportunity to drill and practise key concepts again
Never assume that just because a student understands a key concept once that they have retained it forever!
Bear in mind that the wrong ideas and misconceptions are embedded through exactly the same process!!