Update of week 12

As this is the last week I decided that it was best to do an endurance test on pack 1 and again am happy to report that i managed to recall 98 SAFMEDS in 2 minutes with no LO’s.

I have also managed to achieve my fluency aims in pack 2 (50 SAFMEDS correct in 1 minute with no LO’s) and credit this to use of the celeration line and goal boxes as it meant i knew my goal for each day 🙂

 

Update of week number 11

 

This week due to maintaining the same number of corrects (20) across three days I decided to introduce a tool skill drill where i practiced untimed, reading the cards and saying aloud the answer as quickly as possible. I also intoduced a x2 celeration line to give me an idea of what I needed to aim for and showed this via goal boxes on my timings chart. This seems to have worked so I will carry on with this until my learning picture advises otherwise.

The celeration line that I have added has also indicated that I should be fluent in all 50 SAFMEDS by the time the learning project has finished therfore i dont feel thats it is appropriate to add any further SAFMEDS and have also indicated my aims via aim stars labelled with the number two on the right hand side of the SCC in order to differentiate between the aims of pack 1 and pack 2.

Next week I am planning to do one final test on the aims of fluency with SAFMED pack one but cant decide whether I should do a stability test or another retention test?? Any input would be appreciated.

 

Update of week number 10.

This week I have continued on with my second pack of SAFMEDS and my LO’s have decreased and my corrects have increased. My learning picture was jaws and was beginning to turn in to take off but due to a little blip on Friday it ruined this. However hopefully now as I have achieved no LO’s my learning picture will turn in to climb :). Although this may not be likely as I am planning on introducing 20 more SAFMEDS tomorrow.

Today i decided to perform an endurance test on the initial pack of SAFMEDS and achieved 100 corrects in 2 minutes with no learning opportunities, which indicates that I am fluent in my first pack and means that I dont need to think about slicing or stepping back and also reaffirms my decision to step up the curriculum.

 

Update of week number 9.

This week I have been working with a new pack of course SAFMEDS. I have manged to make 30 SAFMEDS from new content that has been given to me during lectures. I have decided that I will add to this amount as the weeks go on and will show this as phase lines on my SCC. I feel that 80 SAFMEDS in total will be appropriate and I will aim to correctly see and say between 60 to 70 of these without achieving any learning opportunities in a time frame of one minute.

As you can see by my timings chart I have only been doing one timing a day in a bid to attain some base data. I feel that I haven’t done too badly as my SCC shows that over the past three days my corrects have risen and my learning opportunities have begin to fall forming the beginning of a jaws learning picture. For this reason I am choosing not to use an intervention and once i have a few more cards in my SAFMED pack i will consider adding in a celeration line. Although maybe I could reduce my timings to 30 seconds to quicken my pace?

 

Update of week number 8.

Last week I asked whether you felt it was best for me to continue until I reached the top end of my aim (60 correct SAFMEDS in 1 minute) and I decided that this was the best course of action as it would take me a number of days to make the new SAFMED cards so that I could step up my curriculum.

I have now managed to reach my aim of 60 correct SAFMEDS in one minute whist achieving zero learning opportunities and have maintained this across three days. Therefore my learning picture is indicating that it is definitely time to make a change, hence why as of tomorrow I will begin charting with the new SAMEDS that I have now made. You can also see from my timing chart that I am now able to achieve aim within one timing which can only be a positive 🙂

My SCC now shows a really positive improving learning picture that indicates I have reached and maintained my aim for a number of days. I have also decided that I am going to carry on charting on this SCC as my next steps involve stepping up my curriculum rather than changing it all together. Currently as we have only had a couple of lectures covering new topics that are not in my current SAFMED pack I have decided to make my initial new pack of SAFMEDS quite small (30 SAFMEDS) and add new SAFMEDS every week. If you have any other thoughts then please do suggest them as I am aware that this may effect my learning as I will be more familiar with some SAFMEDS than other. Maybe I could just make several small packs across the next weeks and introduce them seperately from previous packs rather than merging them?

Update of week 7.

This week I have reached my aim and have also performed a retention test just to make sure it wasn’t a one off but am happy to report that it wasn’t (well it doesn’t seem to be). Therefore I need to step up my curriculum, so I plan to introduce a new pack of SAFMEDS and then perform further endurance and retention tests at later dates on this particular pack of SAFMEDS. 

As you can see by the above timing chart in the last couple of days I have been reaching my aim specified by my celeration line in one timing. I put this down to really making a conscious effort with my error correction procedure (going through SAFMEDS until i get every single one correct before the counting period) due to their being an exam today and being aware that any of the SAFMEDS could appear on the test.

My learning picture finally shows that off reaching my aim which I maintained across 3 days hence why I chose to do a retention test yesterday (Monday 11th November). I am now going to begin making some new SAFMEDS and haven’t decided whether I should chart this on this SCC or start a new one to avoid confusion. I shall start charting again as soon as my new pack has been made. Or maybe it would be better to continue with this pack for the time being and aim for the top end of my original aim (60 correct SAFMEDS in one minute)?

Update of week number 6.

As you can see since last time my learning picture hasn’t turned out quite as i predicted as the frequency of my corrects have turned down and my celeration has not turned up or down (maintained across my last three timing sessions). Therefore as from tomorrow I have decided to introduce a tool skill drill where I will practice turning the SAFMED cards over as fast as I can. I have already drawn in my phase line to indicate that this is what I plan to do. Hopefully this will see my learning picture change from ‘Get trucking’ to ‘take off’/’climb’. I have also indicated that I would like to reach my aim by this time next week and have shown this by adding a x1.4 celeration line to my SCC. I am also aware that having a gap in my learning on the 3rd and the 4th of November was probably less than beneficial but celebrating your birthday is a must :).

Finally in regards to my timing chart I chose not to include a goal box for todays timing as I had missed 2 days of timing and the x4 celeration line on my SCC indicated that I should be achieving 100 corrects a minute by today. I felt this was unrealistic due to my two days off and did not want to demotivate myself so chose to see how many corrects I could get without any constraints or aims. This in part has led to my aforementioned decisions regarding the lower celeration and tool skill drill.

Weekly update Number 5.

Last week I stated that I had decided to introduce an intervention, as my initial learning picture was that of an uphill nature. The introduction of this intervention initially saw my LO’s jump down and my corrects continue to increase at my desired celeration of x2. However as my LO’s did not maintain a number between 0-1 and began to turn up I decided to introduce an error correction procedure. This saw my LO’s begin to turn down and the beginnings of a jaws learning picture appear that will hopefullly be maintained next week.

The error correction procedure that I used involved an untimed pack review before conducting my daily timings. I would review each card in the pack like normal and make a pile of corrects and LO’s. I would then again pick up my LO’s pile and review them again following the same procedure. I repeated this until I had said out loud one correct response for every card in my pack.

As you can see by my timing chart and SCC I did unfortunately miss a day due to work, but hopefully this hasn’t affected me too much. You can also see that I have decided not to limit my intervention to three timings a day but to do as many as I feel is required/ until I reach my goal box. The amendment of my prior intervention began on Saturday 26th October 2013 alongside my error correction procedure.

Please also be aware that the goal boxes charted on the timing chart are incorrectly charted from the 19th-24th October, as I did not draw the celeration line to the goal box from the first timing that I had done within the session. I have looked at this as a learning opportunity and have now begun to chart them correctly :).

Update of Week number 4.

Last week I stated that I was unsure of the behaviour I was going to count and have now decided to continue with seeing and saying the SAFMEDS given to me in the Evidence Based Methods in Education module. To the left is a photo of my learning picture charted on the standard celeration chart (SCC) and as it is quite a small and blurry photo I thought I would start by making reference to what I am counting, who is performing the counted action, who my supervisor is etc. I myself will be the performer, charter, counter and timer, Mike will be my supervisor and will monitor my learning picture monthly, Jennifer will be my adviser and will aid Emma, my manager (who will assess my learning picture daily) to suggest ways to improve my learning. The behaviour that is being counted is see/say Evidence Based Methods in education module SAFMEDS.

I began charting on Thursday 3rd October 2013 with a pack of 80 SAFMEDS and recorded the amount of corrects  and learning opportunities (LO’s) achieved within a single 1 minute timing session. Initially my corrects did not steadily increase however by Friday 11th October 2013 and the following days after they began to show signs of improvement where as my learning opportunities continued to intermittently increase and decrease, showing no signs of beginning to steadily decline. For that reason I decided to perform an intervention after my timing on Thursday 17th October 2013 and introduced two further one minute timings, increasing my daily timings from one to three.

To aid me with my intervention I began to use a daily timing chart, a picture of which can be found below on the right. Once I had finished the first day of my intervention and charted the best (most corrects) of the three one minute timings on the SCC I then added a x2 celeration line to display the number of corrects I should be achieving day after day. This allowed me to use goal boxes on my timing chart to ensure that I had an aim and that I achieved at least x2 celeration in the days to come.

Since the intervention my LO’s have decreased to between 1-2 and my corrects have increased at a x2 celeration or higher. However if I am to achieve my aim of 50-60 corrects in one minute I may need to think about performing another intervention to improve the rate of my corrects.

Objective

This blog will be used to record how well I have learnt and retained knowledge presented to me daily via a number of SAFMEDS. I will be using the standard celeration chart to chart my progress and hope to either use SAFMED cards given to the class by the module organiser or to make my own to aid the learning of the most common words used in the Spanish language.

My overall aim is to be able to see and say the correct response to 50-60 SAFMED cards whilst incurring as little (0-3) learning opportunities as possible in a time frame of one minute.