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[Richard Breag Participant]

Thanks for the REACTS Taxonomy, I found it useful.

With regards to my thoughts on how FOSIL might reduce cognitive load: I think that the great thing about FOSIL is that it really gets you to focus on the essential i.e. what is the essential question or essential questions that the students need to be able to answer.  It then gets you to focus on delivering what our students need to know in order to answer the question/s.  It also gets you to focus on teaching and learning strategies that make it as easy as possible for students to be able to understand the key concepts.  By so doing, you have to question what is necessary and is extraneous.  If you can get this right,  I think that extraneous cognitive load is reduced significantly and our students have a greater chance of not being distracted and this will help allow the students to get on with genuine learning (germane load).  In other words as teachers we need to separate the “stuff from the fluff” and ensure that our students know what the “stuff” is, so that they can disregard the “fluff.”

[Richard Breag Participant]

Deciding on the end point and then working back has always been my approach to teaching; but I have found that by using the FOSIL framework I have become more ambitious with what I would like the students to achieve. Not necessarily in terms of content (indeed I find myself removing some of the content) but in terms of the way in which I would like them to use and apply their knowledge.  I have also noticed that using FOSIL seems to be a good way of reducing cognitive load, which I also feel the students really appreciate.  The students find themselves better able to focus on what it is they need to know and become more interested in the how  and why rather than the what. It is early days of course, but I am now really looking forward to applying FOSIL to language teaching and am relishing the prospect of doing so.  Encouraging students to use their higher-order skills, certainly seems to ensure that what they have been taught sticks that much better.

[Richard Breag Participant]

As Lucy mentions, teaching Classical Studies to Y8 is very different to teaching French and Italian at KS 3, 4 and 5.

Having the opportunity to teach something new has been different, interesting, fascinating and has certainly necessitated a “refocussing” of my approach to teaching and learning.  The age of teaching content to students and expecting them to reproduce it for the sole purpose of passing an exam is a so outdated and yet is still the staple of many classroom up and down the land.  FOSIL however, couldn’t be more different.  Getting students to internalise knowledge and to become the true masters of their learning through discussion, construction, expression and reflection is a real breath of fresh air.  It is like teaching in a classroom that is light years ahead of what we have been used to.  The levels of engagement that we have seen and the sheer excitement and enthusiasm that we have witnessed from a class that was not billed as being any of these things, has been truly reinvigorating and I should like to thank Lucy for helping us to develop some excellent resources and look forward to continuing this collaboration.

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