TS-9.3

45 O P I N I O N again, but this time with some input from the students – or as the EEF puts it, “Promote and develop metacognitive talk in the classroom.” Students then can attempt the strategy themselves, before being encouraged to reflect on how useful the strategy is and how they might apply it in future. Elaborative interrogation This is a process whereby students are prompted to generate an explanation for an explicitly stated fact. This will usually involve an explanatory prompt – from the teacher, a peer or themselves – in the form of a question. For example, ‘Why does it make sense that….?’; ‘Why is this true…?’; ‘Why is [X] true and not [Y]?’; or just simply, ‘Why?’ The evidence suggests that elaborative interrogation works, because it enhances learning by supporting the integration of new information with existing prior knowledge. Further explanation of this can be found via bit.ly/rb-ei. The most straightforward way to apply this during revision sessions is to make sure that you’re asking follow- up questions when students respond to a question. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shaun Allison is director of the Durrington Research School and head of school improvement for the Durrington Multi Academy Trust. He is also author of a number of books, including the award-winning Making Every Lesson Count , co-authored with Andy Tharby (£20, Crown House Publishing) teachwire.net/secondary Self-explanation Finally, try incorporating self-explanation into your questioning during revision sessions. This is when students are asked to explain how new information is related to known information, or detail the steps they’ve taken during a process of problem solving. This has been shown to be a high impact strategy in terms of supporting effective learning (Dunlosky et al, 2013 – see bit.ly/ ts-dunlosky ). If you’re interested in developing approaches to improving the long-term memory of your students, you might be interested in Durrington Research School’s 3-day ‘Improving Memory’ training programme – for more information, visit research school.org.uk/ durrington .