CHECKING IN: Using CFUs to level up our teaching

Written by Louise Brown, Secondary Teacher, St Margaret's Anglican Girls School

How do we know students are learning? When I started teaching almost thirty years ago, this question would have been more about intuition than evidence. It was heuristics that proved our impact as teachers: busy students, animated group work, not-too-noisy? All must be well.

To be fair to my early-career self, this was a time when the evidence about how learning happens just did not exist, or if it did, it certainly hadn’t made its way to the classroom. It is only within the last decade, with dense academic papers clearly communicated in books, blogs, and podcasts, usually by educators themselves, that teaching has been able to truly call itself ‘evidence-based’. Cognitive science gives us models of working and long-term memory, and we know novices learn differently to experts, and forgetting is essential to learning. Robust evidence suggests instructional practices most likely to secure students’ success.

Knowing what learning looks like is one thing, but collecting the evidence and making use of it is another. Expert in Responsive Teaching and Instructional Coach Bronwyn Ryrie Jones spoke at a recent Science of Learning Conference about the frequency with which we assess students’ understanding. She described ‘long cycle’ assessments, typically an end of unit test, and the ‘medium cycle’ assessments, such as a draft paragraph submitted mid-term. These are important measures of whether or not the previous learning has ‘stuck’. But Ryrie Jones also encouraged us to think about ‘short cycle’ assessments: the multiple opportunities we have within a single lesson to check whether students are on track.

We must still tread carefully when looking for evidence of learning. Learning is a change in long term memory (Kirschner et al., 2006), distinct from the ‘performance’ of a single moment, inferred rather than directly observed. What we do have is the capacity, many times within each lesson, to check our students’ current level of understanding. From this, we can create the optimal conditions for long term learning, close gaps and misconceptions before they develop, and build student engagement and motivation as a result.

Checks for understanding (CFUs) can take many forms; they might be whole class mini-whiteboard responses, a ‘turn and talk’, cold calling, ‘everybody writes’ or hinge questions. All can be effective, efficient, and inclusive. Students benefit as much as teachers because CFUs build in practice and rehearsal time. When we learn anything new, we need to practise. Learning to play tennis requires multiple repetitions of the serve; when learning to drive we isolate and repeat each manoeuvre.

This also applies to academic subjects. ‘Expert blindness’ means we often underestimate the importance of this practice; when our own understanding is secure, we forget that for novices, these practice drills are crucial. Teach Like a Champion author Doug Lemov (2015) uses a sports analogy to describe ‘at-bat’ opportunities – multiple mini-whiteboard responses are the equivalent of practising a new baseball swing over and over again. Repeating and trialling what has just been taught builds the foundations of learning.

Observing these rehearsals is a rich source of data for teachers. From here, we can adapt and modify our teaching in the moment. Ploughing on without asking ‘what have you learnt so far?’ would potentially waste the next part of the lesson. Without solid foundations, the subsequent learning is error prone. It can be hard to hear that your students don’t understand, but in asking the questions, we become better teachers. Having to pull something else out of our teacher toolkit sharpens our pedagogical practice. If the preceding explanation didn’t work, we need to adapt: How else can I present this knowledge or explain this procedure? Which other examples might work? Paying close attention to what students have and haven’t grasped leads to better instructional decisions and makes us more effective teachers in the long term.

Feedback is also a significant benefit of CFUs. Here, again, it is the timing that makes all the difference. UK educator Daisy Christodoulou has written extensively about assessment and asks us to imagine ourselves taking a driving lesson and clipping the curb as we attempt a three-point turn. Would we prefer to wait two weeks for a letter describing what went wrong or be told in the moment how to alter our steering? Teaching a whole class is different from one-to-one instruction and longer answers certainly require time outside of the classroom to assess. But the longer students go without feedback, the greater the potential for gaps to emerge.

This can particularly disadvantage lower-achieving students who are less able to articulate, in the moment, why they are struggling. As the Dunning Kruger effect tells us, all novice learners struggle to accurately judge their own level of competence – we don’t know what we don’t know (Dunning, 2011).

Live marking is a powerful CFU technique here. Scanning responses as students are working, nudging in the right direction, or re-directing when we see answers going off-course provide immediate opportunities to move one step closer to success. Succinct verbal feedback also means improvements don’t seem overwhelming; writing becomes an iterative process open to revision.

Sharing our current thinking with other people also builds our sense of belonging. When teachers only ask volunteers what they have understood, taking ‘hands-up’ answers, the evidence for ‘whole class understanding’ is weak. Other students not required to participate may feel that this class discussion is too advanced for them or that their ideas are less valued.

The Teach Like a Champion technique ‘everybody writes’, where all students have two minutes to jot down a response before being asked to share, communicates both accountability and inclusivity. Everyone is expected to participate, and everyone is able to participate. Students may never contribute if they have never experienced the glow of achievement that comes from having done so. Each time teachers check for everyone’s understanding, we build students self-identity as active, successful learners.

Ryrie Jones asked us to consider the barriers teachers face in using CFUs. She acknowledged that we often plan for content but not questioning. Scripting questions can feel unnatural when we want to be responsive and allow the lesson to ‘flow.’ But having well-crafted questions, intentionally placed and worded to elicit deep thinking, can still be adapted in the moment. It is the certainty of the script that allows a flexibility in the moment.

Another barrier is allowing too much choice in how students present their CFU answers, leaving teachers with a bewildering array of formats that are difficult to scan for errors. Author, podcaster, and Cognitive Load expert Ollie Lovell talks about ‘standardising the format’ – clear data for teachers provides rapid feedback for students (Lovell, 2022).

In the Sociocultural Faculty at St Margaret’s, we are working hard to leverage the benefits of CFUs. Our student booklets provide carefully worded questions at key junctures. Centrally planned, these questions can be adapted by class teachers in response to their CFU data. In faculty meetings, we discuss 100% student participation, share best practice, and isolate specific teaching techniques. Our goal is one which Ryrie-Jones emphasised as the ‘gold’ of professional development: seeing multiple models of excellence. Whether that is watching videos of teachers in real classrooms from providers like StepLab and Teach Like a Champion, or peer observations giving each other feedback as we trial evidence-based techniques, we are developing our mental models of effective practice.

Like students, teachers need to see what success looks like when we learn something new. Both teachers and students reap the rewards of this professional growth.

References

Christodoulou, D. (2017). Making Good Progress?: The Future of Assessment for Learning. Oxford University Press.

Dunning, D. (2011). The Dunning–Kruger Effect: On Being Ignorant of One’s Own Ignorance (J. M. Olson & M. P. Zanna, Eds.). ScienceDirect; Academic Press. https://www.sciencedirect. com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780123855220000056

Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75–86. https://doi.org/10.1207/ s15326985ep4102_1

Lemov, D. (2015). Teach like a champion 2.0: 62 techniques that put students on the path to college (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Lovell, O. (2022). Tools for Teachers How to Teach, Lead, and Learn Like the World’s Best Educators. John Catt Educational.

Ryrie Jones, B. (2024). Responsive Teaching. Bronwyn Ryrie Jones. https://bronwynryriejones.com/responsive-teaching/