Fractal Planning

I started to think about planning across different time-scales: a lesson, a week, a term, etc. And I'm calling this process 'Fractal Planning', partly because each timescale is kind of a bigger replication of the last one, but mostly because I like the word fractal.

 

It's started to look like this...

 

So where's the evidence-base that this kind of planning might be any good?

 

Well, it picks up a couple of things. Stepping outside of the lesson-focused model of planning really frees you up to think about 'spaced practice' (as opposed to 'mass practice'). An interesting starting point for evidence on this is Grote et al (1995) who found that shorter sessions on a topic, spaced out across a series of weeks, was more effective for both the retention and understanding of physics concepts than teaching the whole topic in one block across a series of lessons (which is more typical in the traditional scheme of work). Spaced Practice is also credited by Hattie with an effect-size of 0.71 - only just outside the top ten most effective strategies in teaching:

 

 





But what I found particularly interesting about the Fractal Planning approach was the one/two week timescale because that doesn't seem to get much of a look-in elsewhere. What I'm doing with this at the moment is something I call the 'Sangster Method' - named after the teacher I nicked it off. But this requires its own post - coming soon.