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Supporting students during the exam waiting period: tips for teachers

Waiting for exam results can be extremely stressful. The anxiety and pressure that most students are feeling leads to worry and fear of uncertainty, and while these emotions are normal, it is important to let your students know that they are not alone.

Here are 6 tips for how you, as a teacher, can help your students during this exam waiting period.

1. Maintain calm amongst students

It is easier said than done to ask someone to remain calm in a stressful situation. These are words that will make your students’ eyes roll but really, during this stressful time, it is imperative to remind your students to try to relax. Have your students take a deep breath before you announce exam results in class to help them feel less overwhelmed. Also, soothing words will help simmer the bubbling nerves by providing comfort and encouragement.

2. Get students moving

Exercise is a good way to relieve stress. Encourage your students to go for a walk or a run, play a game of soccer with their friends. The release of endorphins during exercise can help alleviate depression and anxiety symptoms.

3. Reward students

Exams are over! That is something to celebrate. Your students have studied hard, so now it’s time to reward them with something they’ll enjoy. A field trip to the beach and perhaps a movie in class are simple rewards that your students will be sure to appreciate. Students will be sure to stay relaxed and calm with these fun activities.

4. Look out for your students

Stress can lead to fatigue, emotional exhaustion and even depression. Look out for your students during this time. If you notice that they are irritable, suddenly change their behavior, or isolate themselves, encourage them to talk to someone about how they feel. They can talk to you, a family member or a counsellor in the community. See below for a list of professional people your students can talk to.

5. Encourage students to get results directly from their school

It’s advisable not to receive exam results via SMS, online or looking in the newspaper, rather students should go to school. Students who did poorly or failed only a few subjects can discuss their options right away with the principal. They could even request a remark or apply to write the supplementary exam.

6. Remind students to stay positive and formulate a plan of action

Make sure that your students remember that success is not always about achieving the highest results. Instead, success is about how you accept challenges, solve problems and continue with determination to succeed. Instead of worrying, try finding the root of the problem and discussing ways to solve it. Help students to decide on their plan A and formulate a backup plan in case their first plan doesn’t happen. Discuss with them the possibility of taking a gap year and working or finding an apprenticeship while they decide what to do next.

Who can I talk to?
Here is a list of organisations students can contact. They offer free telephone counselling.

SADAG (The South African Depression and Anxiety Group)
To contact a counsellor between 8am-8pm Monday to Sunday:

Call: 011 234 4837 / Fax No: 011 234 8182

For a suicidal emergency contact us on: 0800 567 567

24Hr helpline: 0800 456 789Learn more at: https://www.sadag.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1897&Itemid=101

Childline South Africa

Childline National Office:

Tel: (+27) -(0)31-201 2059

Fax: (+27) -(0)86 511 0032

Learn more at: https://www.childlinesa.org.za/contact-us/

Coding & Robotics for Foundation Phase

Whilst it might seem far fetched to consider teaching a child how to code or operate a robot, the benefits of coding and robotics far exceeds the obvious.

Children will learn creativity through play using digital, but they can also be the creators of their own learning. In addition to learning computational thinking, it enables learners to understand logic and develop cognitive skills in terms of logical and sequential processes. This means that they will not only be able to use logic to solve problems but also apply those skills to other subject areas and situations.

Coding encourages collaboration as your child learns to work in groups solving problems and share what they learn alongside one another. In doing so, they also develop their communication skills which enables them to better explain or share their difficulties or their victories more confidently.

Your child will also learn how to be persistent in keeping them engaged to try again. Coding enables them to complete a task by systematically training them how to navigate through complex problems.

The world of coding and robotics is not limited to encouraging learners to become astronauts, gaming experts or engineers but it does provide clear advantages to boost their confidence in the world they live in, today. Introducing new possibilities, logical reasoning creating new career paths of learning now and in the future.

We have compiled a few interactive activities to take you on a short journey of what coding looks like in the world of a young learner.

PLEASE NOTE: for an optimal experience, complete the activities on a PC.

Instructions on how to complete the activities:

Click on the interactive you want to complete.
When you want to listen to the instructions, click on the speak button on the screen.
Each time you complete a screen, click on the next button.
Each time a new screen appears, you can click on the speaker button to listen to the next set of instructions followed by the next button.
You will know that you’ve completed each task successfully when you reach the “Star”.

Decomposition Interactive Activities

Decomposition is the process is the first process in learning computational thinking skills (using coding). Learners will learn how to process complex problems or responsibilities by breaking huge tasks into smaller bits of information. This will allow them to feel less overwhelmed by tasks, and enable them to process each part and work out where they get stuck.

Activity 1: Space Puppy

Skills taught:

Developing a structured problem-solving method
Identify individual parts of a problem
Following instructions to complete a task

Activity 2: Treasure Hunt

Skills taught:

Identify and plan the steps involved in solving a problem
Using smaller steps to solve a complex problem
Recognise, identify and name two-dimensional shapes in pictures
Identify, copy, extend and create patterns

Activity 3: Ready, steady go!

Skills taught:

Breaking problems down into its different parts
Solve problems in context using concrete apparatus
Identify and match shapes
Recognise, identify and name two dimensional shapes in pictures
Deconstruct a large shape into smaller shapes

Algorithm Interactive Activities

Algorithms will teach your child how to come up with a solution, step-by-step. This is the last piece of the puzzle in learning computational thinking skills. It is also the process in which they’ll develop a clearer understanding of order. So, in the real world, they’ll need to figure out which patterns will result in the best or most successful outcome. When they’ve mastered this skill during coding lessons, they will be able to communicate clearer and more concise. In a coding application, you child will not be able to progress further during an activity and will find themselves having to repeat the activity, teaching them how to persevere and evaluate their plan using strategy. This concept also teaches them how to translate concepts into actionable steps, which can be applied to any of their areas of learning.

Activity 1: To the Park

Skills taught:

Recognise that the order in which steps are taken is important for problem solving.
Follow directions to move within a specific space.
Place steps in the correct order, to achieve a specific objective.

Activity 2: Busy Beads

Skills taught:

Identify simple patterns
Identify colours
Recognise order in which steps are taken in order to solve the problem
Identify sequence of events
Making calculations

Smart-Kids Coding & Robotics Workbook & Teacher’s Guide

9781776103942 Smart-Kids Coding & Robotics Grade 2 Workbook

The Smart-Kids Coding & Robotics workbook assists learners in understanding coding and robotics concepts. It consists of write-in worksheets that can be used by teachers to introduce the subject to young learners, or by parents who want their child to learn and practise the skills required for coding and robotics.

Workbook features:

Activities with clear instructions and answers
Cutout coding blocks for additional practice
Cutout keyboard and screen to make your own laptop
Star chart and certificate

Smart-Kids Coding & Robotics Teacher’s Guide in eBook format provides the educator with guidelines to help learners with the activities. It includes reference to the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) addressed on each page in the Smart-Kids Coding & Robotic workbook and includes the answers to the activities.

Click here to purchase Smart-Kids Coding & Robotics Teacher’s Guide Grade 2.

Teaching mathematics is more than the sum of its parts

Benadette Aineamani, Director of Products and Services for Pearson Africa was interviewed on Channel Africa by Zikhona Miso. Aineamani discussed some reasons for the decline in mathematics performance in South Africa, and why mathematics is important. Through her research, and in writing her PhD thesis on the subject, Aineamani investigated the role of the teacher in developing learners’ mathematics discourse and understanding. She offers a few solutions around teacher and learner competency and tips for improving mathematics teaching and learning.

Coding. Robotics. Artificial Intelligence. Data analytics. These are just some of the words that might flash in the mind of a young high school learner as they dream of their future career. In this fourth industrial revolution, the digital age has flung wide the doors of possibility. For many young South Africans, these doors remain shut tight as their inability to pass mathematics holds them back.

According to Benadette Aineamani, Director of Products and Services for Africa at Pearson, the state of mathematics education in South Africa is declining. In 2019, only 54% of matriculants who wrote a mathematics exam passed it. This is down from a pass rate of 58% in 2018. Adding to this, only 2% of the 2019 mathematics passes were distinctions.

Aineamani explains, “The way that mathematics as a subject is scaffolded means that learners need to progress from one concept to another. If they don’t grasp a concept, they are then left behind with little hope of catching up on their own. So they fail.”

Aineamani believes too many of our learners are already one or two grades behind. “With the time lost to the COVID-19 lockdown, the South African education system is in dire need of helping its learners to catch up if they ever hope to qualify for admission into higher education. Mathematics is so important, and every year it becomes more so,” she says.

Through her research, and in writing her PhD thesis on the subject, Aineamani investigated the role of the teacher in developing learners’ mathematics discourse and understanding – the topic of her thesis.

“There is an issue around teacher and learner competency in mathematics and most of it comes down to teaching mathematics with and for understanding. If a learner doesn’t understand mathematics, then the teacher will need to draw on various strategies in order to help the learner to grasp concepts in a way that leads to conceptual understanding.”

Through Pearson, Aineamani uses her knowledge of mathematics teaching and learning to provide much-needed training for teachers and schools across the country. In her extensive research, she has discovered three critical problem areas that may be taken for granted, but are a reality in many mathematics classrooms.

Begin with the intended object of learning

In all the hundreds of lessons that she observed in doing her research and training teachers, the biggest issue seems to be one that takes place right at the beginning of every lesson.

“I have seen so many teachers walk into a classroom, open the textbook and just start teaching. And they do this without actually introducing the lesson objectives. With no context, the learners struggle to focus and generally don’t understand what is being conveyed to them. It is not easy to believe this but it is the reality on the ground.”

Aineamani believes that lesson preparation is crucial, and lessons should be taught in relation to the learners’ prior knowledge.

She says that all lessons should begin with an announcement of the intended object of learning to avoid confusion on what learners need to focus on and what they need to ignore. She says there is a need to make mathematics teachers aware of the impact of starting a lesson without announcing their intention(s). In a discovery lesson, the teacher should find an appropriate way of ensuring that the intended object of learning is embedded in the discovery activity and hence kept in focus during the lesson,” says Aineamani.

The power of examples is found in translation

Aineamani says that teachers should embrace the power of examples and what they bring into the classroom. She says, “Teachers should not just open a text book and start going through the examples written in the text book, without considering the learners and their realities in relation to the prior knowledge that is needed to engage with the examples in the textbook.”

According to her, some of the examples provided in some text books often do not engage the learners exhaustively. “Teachers should use all available resources to customise examples for their learners and translate that knowledge in a way that their learners will understand.”

Many voices in the mathematics classroom

“If you are a teacher in a mathematics classroom, are you the only voice in the room?” questions Aineamani. “If you are the only voice that is heard in the classroom and provide absolute authority, are you really allowing learners to engage in a subject in a way that they understand?”

Part of the problem Aineamani has discovered in our mathematics classrooms is the use of the teaching method which she calls ‘presentation mode’. “Mathematics teachers need to engage with their learners and allow learners to communicate their mathematics reasoning. Let the learners get the answer wrong and then guide them by drawing on their prior knowledge and experiences, to assist them to ‘see’ why their answer is wrong.”

An educator on a mission

With a passionate history for education, Aineamani has dedicated her life to improving education at a school level. Through Pearson, she has been working with educators in different provinces in South Africa to find ways of identifying and helping schools improve their mathematics competencies.

“With so much school time already lost to COVID-19, we now have an even more desperate need to develop targeted interventions that will help our teachers and our learners to catch up. This is our mission at Pearson and one that we hope schools across the country will take us up on” says Aineamani.

Listen to radio interview

How to increase student engagement with eTextbooks

Have you ever wondered… Why don’t students do their assigned readings? How can I increase learners’ engagement with eTextbooks?

A 2015 study looked at how an instructor’s use of eText affects student reading and learning. It found that 70% of students preferred eTexts over paper textbooks because of instructor highlights and annotations.

Technology alone doesn’t improve learning. Teachers like you, play the most important role in encouraging students to read.

When instructors actively use the eText with highlights and annotations students actually read more, highlighted more, and made more notes. In other words, when instructors engage with the eText so do their students.

With eText, you have new opportunities to connect with students, and guide their learning. When you use it to its full potential, you can inspire students to engage meaningfully with the text.

We would like to share with you a short video on how you can use eTextbooks to encourage students to engage with their reading.

Browse and Purchase eBooks

Take your assessments online

Katherine McEldoon and Emily Schneider

If your preference is to use a traditional summative exam, these research-based tips can make the online experience better for you and your students.

Here are some research-based tips on how to make the online assessment experience better for you and your learners

Create clear and specific rules and instructions so students know exactly what to do.

Online assessment is new for your students. Reduce anxiety by clearly communicating the rules and instructions before the exam so there are no surprises. For example, if you would like them to write their essays in paragraphs or to show their work for problem sets, be sure to explicitly state this.
The rules may include how many opportunities students have to complete the exam, if they can or cannot save and come back later to finish, if they need to put away all mobile devices, and whether it is an open or closed book exam.
Provide other details such as the list of learning objectives the exam will address, how many questions to expect, the amount of time they will have to complete the exam, how many points each question is worth, and so on. A study guide or a practice test can also help your students prepare.

Reduce the opportunities for cheating

Password protect your exam and limit students to one login attempt.
Require students to complete a statement of honesty before beginning the exam (this can be done through a digital form or added as the first item of the exam).
Open and close access to your exam session within a predetermined time period.
Shuffle items or create multiple versions of the exam to randomly assign to students.
Create a pool or item bank to pull random questions from (many platforms allow for this and most learning management systems.
Ask students to justify or explain their answers by adding an open response field after each selected-response question.
If you don’t have the capabilities listed here, use more open-ended question types instead of true/false or multiple-choice questions.

Make sure students can reasonably complete the exam within the time allotted

Unless you are assessing how quickly your students can complete the exam, allow them ample time to complete it. It is important to keep in mind that your students don’t know the knowledge and skills as well as you do, so be sure to cushion each item with more time than you would expect to take to complete it yourself.
If possible, have an assistant or colleague proofread your exam before it is time to administer it.

Align your exam questions to learning outcomes

Regardless of whether the exam is online or on paper, if you are creating it from scratch, make sure you use the objectives as your guide as you develop the questions.
Determine which types of questions or items best reflect the learning objectives. For example, if the objective requires a student to critique a poem, then an essay question would be a more logical and efficient choice than a multiple choice question.

Base scoring and point values on the complexity and difficulty of the questions

For instance, if you have a multipart question, consider assigning partial credit for each part of the question if the system allows. For math or science problem sets, allow students to show their work such as by sending in a photo of their workings or describing the steps they took to solve a problem or complete a process.

Download Complete Guide

About the authors

Katherine McEldoon, PhD
Katherine is a Senior Research Scientist at Pearson. Trained in cognitive science research labs across the country, she has worked to connect insights from the science of learning to educational practice throughout her career. Katherine earned her PhD in Cognitive Development and was an Institute of Education Sciences’ Experimental Education Research Fellow at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education. Her postdoctoral work at Arizona State University centered on a research partnership between The Learning Sciences Institute and ASU Preparatory Academies, incorporating a theory of active learning into middle & high school teacher pedagogy. Since then, she has continued to bridge research and practice outside of academia, working with educational technology start-up companies, state governments, and more. Katherine firmly believes in the power of enabling educators with insights from research and incorporates this mindset into her work at Pearson.

Emily Schneider, PhD
Emily has spent more than a decade researching and designing learning experiences for higher education. As a Senior Learning Designer at Pearson, she helps product teams create effective and engaging digital learning experiences at scale. Emily believes that we should take advantage of technology for what it offers but never forget the power of the embodied human experience. She holds a PhD in Learning Sciences and Technology Design from Stanford University.

Tips on creating hybrid classrooms

Katherine McEldoon and Emily Schneider

The hybrid model of teaching and learning combines online and in-person learning into one cohesive experience. Although the model has been around for many years, interest has been on the rise because it gives instructors the flexibility to design their courses in a way to reduce the risk of exposure to COVID-19 and give students ownership over their learning.

Another advantage of the hybrid classroom model is that it can be the “best of both worlds” by giving students and teachers the in-person and social interactions they crave while also taking advantage of the benefits of technology.

This article serves as a primer for those who are ready to try hybrid teaching and learning. Drawing on the research literature, it covers where to start, a model for integrating technology, how to plan hybrid interactions with students, what a learner-centered approach is and how to support it, advice for online assessments, as well as an example of a hybrid implementation.

Where to start

Successful hybrid courses fully integrate online and face-to-face instruction, planning interactions in a pedagogically valuable manner. Build around what you want students to learn:

Don’t: think of your hybrid class as a direct translation of your face-to-face course. Common pitfalls are to directly translate the online or to add online components onto a face-to-face class.
Do: build your course by starting with the learning objectives in your syllabus. Then, as you’re building your course, select and align the delivery method, technology, and assignments that will best help students learn the objectives and content.

Consider three things during this process:

What needs to be done in-person versus online
What needs to be in real-time versus giving students flexibility
What needs to be instructor-facilitated versus facilitated by the learning resources

Integrate the experiences
Melding in-person and online classes doesn’t need to be disjointed. You can incorporate them in such a way that they support each other. For example, assign challenging and engaging online learning activities and then discuss them in-person, inviting questions. If you’re encouraging online discussion, reference these discussions in class to confirm their value.

Choose the right technology for you

Technology also has benefits that can improve learning, such as immediate feedback and monitoring progress. Rather than starting by shopping for educational technology, start by understanding the problems you experience. Then evaluate whether educational technology can help solve those problems. We have provided examples in the complete guide, available for download.

Plan effective interactions

After you’ve identified the learning objectives, think about the interactions you’ll use to facilitate learning and which mode you’ll use. Hybrid learning enables a lot of flexibility in how the students interact with each other, with you, and with the learning materials. Interactions can be categorised into three types.

Instructor-Learner: Instructor interaction is a major driver of successful learning. Examples include emails and discussions.
Learner-Learner: These interactions can either happen online, with learners interacting but not necessarily in real-time, or in person. Examples include discussions, collaborative group work, and peer-review activities
Learner-Content: The SAMR Model is one way of thinking to make the most of student interactions using technology. Examples include lecturing via Zoom instead
of in the front of a classroom or instead of studying a static diagram of a physics concept, students watch a video and predict what happens next.

Craft a learner-centered approach to learning

In a hybrid model, encourage students to take control of their learning. Start by enabling students to choose how they engage with the materials. Hybrid models allow students to chose in when, how, and what they engage with. Although there are real-time aspects of a hybrid course (either face-to-face or online), much of the learning occurs on the students’ own time.

Their own independence should be encouraged and they’ll need support to take ownership of their work. Importantly, prompt them to monitor and reflect on their learning, and then act on their new understanding.

Take your assessment online

If your preference is to use a traditional summative exam, these research-based tips can make the online experience better for you and your students. Here are guidelines for taking your assessments online.

Create clear and specific rules and instructions so students know exactly what to do.
Reduce the opportunities for cheating.
Make sure students can reasonably complete the exam within the time allotted.
Align your exam questions to learning outcomes.
Base scoring and point values on the complexity and difficulty of the questions.

Methods and tips on each of these points can be found in the complete guide available for download.

Continuously improve

Keep your approach simple at first and aim for continuous improvement, not perfection. We encourage you to try something, get feedback from your students, and keep improving your course. And, you’re not alone. Your colleagues may also have advice too. You can build an informal or formal learning network. This is a learning experience for everyone.

Download Complete Guide

About the authors

How to motivate your students

Dan Belenky

We know that motivation is an important tool in helping students to achieve more. When combined with other self-management abilities (like planning and organising work), motivation is a bigger predictor of grades than IQ. So how can we encourage this in our students?

Frequently, people think of motivation as something either present or absent. “Jo is a motivated student, but Ali isn’t.” However, academic research on motivation has revealed that a more productive question to focus on is, “What factors are motivating this person’s behaviors right now?” With this lens, we don’t focus as much on whether or not a person is motivated, we focus on whether the motivation a person is experiencing is appropriate for goals they are pursuing, and the environment.

As learning is increasingly happening in online environments, independently driven, and over the course of the lifetime, this kind of lens becomes even more critical. As we move from thinking of motivation as “the fuel” of behavior to considering it as a tool to effectively “steer and accelerate” towards your goals, this guide will give you ideas on how to better support different aspects of motivation to lead to improved learning outcomes.

A growth mindset will help students if they hit a bump in the road.

We all hit bumps in the road—it’s inevitable. But what happens next? Some people may feel demotivated, taking the difficulties as a sign that they don’t have what it takes to succeed. Others may see these difficulties as important parts of the journey—they feel driven to overcome these challenges, as a way to improve and develop one’s abilities and skills.

Academic research has explored these two different perspectives people may hold, labeling the idea that you have a set amount of ability which can’t be increased a fixed mindset and the belief that your abilities can develop as a growth mindset. For example, a student with a fixed mindset will say, “I give up, I can’t do this!” But a student with a growth mindset will say, “I can improve if I keep trying.”

How can you help students develop a growth mindset?

“Direct” Approaches: How to talk to your students about growth mindset

Help students develop a growth mindset by talking about what it is and how to adopt it.
After introducing growth mindset, ask your students to write a brief letter to a student in another school, or a student who will take the same course in the future. The goal of the letter is to explain what growth mindset is, why they should adopt one, and some strategies to do so. Having students do this exercise can help them internalise those ideas.

“Indirect” Approaches: How to create a “growth-oriented” context in your class

Pay attention to how you structure your class and the signals it sends to your learners. Are you structuring assignments in ways that reward incremental progress (e.g. letting students rework problems for more credit)?
Consider the language you use with students, and make sure to highlight both the effort as well as approaches that are likely to lead to success. Pair messages like, “Keep trying, I know you can get it!” with actionable steps they can take (e.g., “Before your next attempt, why don’t you talk this problem over with one of your classmates and see if you can figure out what part is giving you the most trouble.”)

How do they determine their progress?

A student’s motivation is more likely to increase if they gauge their progress by looking at their own improvements, rather than by comparing themselves to others.

Some goals are self-focused—they use self-referenced improvement as their barometer (e.g. “How have I developed from when I started?”)—which some researchers refer to as “mastery goals.”

Others may use their peers as a way to gauge their own achievement (e.g. “How am I doing compared to everyone else?”), often labeled as “performance goals.”

You should encourage mastery goals as a general approach and think strategically about places where performance goals can be used effectively. It is important to have a classroom-oriented more around progress than markers of performance (like scores). Here are three ways you can achieve that:

Structure lessons and assignments so they continuously build off one another.
Demonstrate individual students’ progress compared to their own benchmarks.
Allow and encourage revision of work (where possible, such as submitting multiple drafts of writing or reworking of incorrect homework problems).

Help students see that it’s worth the effort.

We all do this—either subconsciously or explicitly. We ask ourselves, “How hard is it going to be?” and, “What do I get out of it?” before deciding to do a task. If students believe they have the knowledge and skills to succeed and understand the value of what they’re doing, they are more likely to be motivated.

Balance external rewards with activities that increase internal motivation.

Another way of increasing motivation relies on extrinsic (external) factors—rewards of various kinds, or the avoidance of punishment—rather than internal factors. While it would not be a good idea to have people rely solely on extrinsic motivation, it can have a place in the suite of tools available. You will find a table in the full report that will help you decide when it is appropriate to use it.

The different aspects of motivation discussed in this guide provide potentially useful ways of increasing students’ engagement and perseverance in their learning journey. In the full report, you can read how two educators improved their students’ motivation.

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About the author

Dan Belenky is Director of Learning Science Research at Pearson. Prior to joining Pearson in 2014, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Dan earned his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied how student motivation interacts with (and is impacted by) innovative instructional methods. His current research projects explore how insights from cognitive psychology and behavioral science can be used to improve learner outcomes, at scale.