Over the past twenty-five years, researchers have made impressive advances in pinpointing effective strategies, intended to help improve learning. In Learning as a Generative Activity: Eight Learning Strategies That Promote Understanding, Logan Fiorella and Richard E. Mayer share eight evidence-based learning strategies that promote understanding. For teachers, Zoe and Mark Enser have written an excellent book that puts the research of Fiorella and Mayer ‘into action’ and is worth reading for practical classroom activities and metacognitive strategies.

In the past, the teacher burned themselves out by running revision sessions or tried to motivate a pupil by suggesting that without a ‘Grade 5 in English’ you will not get into the course of your choice. Research by John Dunlosky (2013) showed two interesting things: one, that some ways of studying are more effective than others and two, that learners usually do not know which methods work and where to start.

Our workshops build on the EEF’s guidance report about Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning and equip learners with strategies to build towards self-regulated learning, including understand Professor Barbara Oakley‘s Modes of Thinking.

1. Cognition strategies: moving new information from our working memory to long-term memory and being able to retrieve information in a flexible and agile way.
2. Metacognition strategies: embedding those processes and building a relationship with the knowledge to develop self-efficacy.
3. Motivation: every step requires a level of motivation.

We offer half-day or full-day workshops for children starting from Year 4 up to GSCE and A-Levels.