Developing Practice Issue 1 - 2018

DEVELOPING PRACTICE

Issue 1 2018

The Manchester Grammar School aims to support all colleagues in their individual professional development. Engaging with research and carrying out research within our own context is vital in the changing landscape of teaching. I hope that this publication will provide a means of increasing access to relevant, current research and serve to inspire and support further meaningful research within MGS. As we become more research engaged, I hope to be in a position to publish more of these each year and make effective use of an online format. I hope to include digests of current research, book reviews, executive summaries of Masters dissertations, short articles about classroom experiences of teaching and learning strategies alongside the research reports completed by our Teacher Researchers. If you would like to contribute to future editions of ‘Developing Practice’ or be involved in the publication in any way, then please do get in touch!

Anna Wicking Assistant Head (Professional Development)

Issue 1 Contents: The Effect of an Adaptation of Homework Practice on Independent Learning and Literacy Clare Owens

Delivering Effective Marking and Feedback in MFL Sarah Paulson

An Investigation into the Potential Uses and Benefits of Cross-curricular Links between Mathematics and Other Subjects in the Lower School.

Alison Carolan

Lesson Study: A Critical Reflection of Research and Practice Anna Wicking

How is Curriculum Transition managed for boys coming into Year 7 at Manchester Grammar School?

Catriona Ashurst

Ashley Hern

Clicking on each image should take you directly to the article. I have not included the appendices referenced in some of the articles in this publication. If you would like to see these, then please let me know and I shall pass them on to you.

The Effect of an Adaptation of Homework Practice on Independent Learning and Literacy Clare Owens

Introduction Literacy

Research consistently shows that boys’ literacy lags behind girls’. Even at MGS, a high-performing school for able boys, this can be an issue. During my first year teaching here, I found that some boys struggled with reading aloud, many did not often read for enjoyment, and several saw reading as a task and did not employ a varied vocabulary when speaking and writing.

Independent Learning

I also noticed that, although undeniably able, many boys wanted to be ‘spoon-fed’ the right answer and be taught to an exam. Several were unwilling to engage with wider reading or any activities which weren’t going to be tested in an exam and receive a grade. I wanted to change this, because it is my belief that education should not just be about the accumulation of facts for exams (which, alas, it all-too-often is); it should be about the training of the mind to think (as someone once said – sort of).

How might the problem be solved?

Teaching is a stressful profession and time is always limited, so I wanted to see if boys’ literacy and independent learning could be improved by making simple, small adaptations to homework practice, rather than instigating huge changes which might take years to implement and become effective. My hope was to come up with a system which would be manageable for full-time teaching staff and have a positive impact on boys’ literacy, alongside improving their ability to learn, work and research independently. I would therefore summarise my research as trying to find answers to the following questions:  Why don’t more of our boys enjoy reading?  How can I get them to enjoy reading more?

Could the adaptation of my homework practice have a positive effect on the boys’ independent learning and literacy?

Background Myth vs. Reality

The first thing I wanted to address was: is the myth correct? Are boys’ literacy levels really worse than girls’? The short answer is: yes. In fact, nationally, girls outperform boys at every level in reading and writing.

Recent research by the All-Parliamentary Literacy Group Commission revealed that 76% of UK schools said that boys did not do as well in reading as girls; furthermore, they said that boys’ attitudes towards reading and writing, the amount of time they spend reading and their achievement in literacy are all poorer than those of girls.1 However, this problem is not limited to boys; there is also evidence to suggest that fewer children of both sexes enjoy writing and that an increasingly diminishing number write in their own time on a daily basis.2 But now let me address the second supposition: that boys (most boys) don’t really enjoy reading. Here, I think there’s more of a debate to be had. The Commission found that only 1 in 4 boys between the ages of 8 and 11 read outside of class every day for enjoyment.3 On first sight, this seems a rather depressing figure. However, we need to allow for the fact that many children enjoy reading, even if they do not read every day; furthermore, it could simply suggest that they are yet to find something stimulating which they particularly enjoy reading. What cannot be denied is that there is a clear natural link between reading enjoyment and reading skills;4 children who enjoy reading will develop better literacy skills, therefore we need to get them enjoying reading. Reading is the foundation stone upon which all other learning is built.

Focus

So much for generalities. Let us now focus on particulars. There are a lot of national statistics being bandied about, but the fact is that there’s been very little research of this kind undertaken on able secondary school students in single-sex schools. At MGS we have a supposedly highly selective cohort of boys who should be enthusiastic readers, capable of and confident in undertaking wider research they find interesting, whether or not it pertains to an exam syllabus. So why does this not seem to be the case for many of our boys?

It’s true that our students complete an IRP in Year 12, but even this often has an ‘aim’ – that is, to be submitted as written work as part of a university application. Unless boys have undertaken an EPQ (again, as an exam), they have not all had the opportunity to undertake some wider reading and research until Sixth Form and even if they have, it has been geared towards an examination, rather than for their own interest and enjoyment. I believe that by then, it is too late.

The best time to capture our students’ imagination and interest is precisely the age when their lack of enthusiasm for reading widely and researching independently often begins: age 11/12 (i.e. Year 7).5 I

1

National Literacy Trust: Boys’ Reading Commission (2011) ‘Children and Young People’s Writing in 2017/18’ (2018) NLT 3 National Literacy Trust: Boys’ Reading Commission (2011) 4 Clark, C. and Teravainen, A. ‘What it means to be a reader at age 11: valuing skills, affective components and behavioural processes’ (2017) NLT 5 Conversations with MGS Junior School staff revealed that most of their boys are avid readers. It is when they reach the ‘transitional’ age of 10/11/12 that their enthusiasm seems to switch off, possibly as a result of a lack of ‘middle material.’

2

wanted to see if I could accomplish this and get them all (or at least the majority) to enjoy reading and independent work in Year 7, in the hope that this will follow them throughout their school careers.6

6

For an excellent article on reading motivations, see: De Naeghel, J., Van Keer, H., Vansteenkiste, M., Roseel, Y. ‘The relation between elementary students' Recreational and Academic Reading Motivation, Reading Frequency, Engagement, and Comprehension: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective’ (2012) Journal of Educational Psychology 104 pp. 1006-1021

Methods Class(ical) Projects

As a Classics teacher, I know all too well that Rome wasn’t built in a day (more like a million days), so I decided to start by looking at Year 7 – a crucial year in terms of development, transition (from Junior to Senior School) and often the age when it seems that boys fall out of love with reading.

I decided that alongside the usual homework I set my Year 7 Classics class (learning the Greek alphabet, practising transliteration, answering questions about the Trojan War, re-enacting the Pankration, et al.) that roughly every third homework I set would be ‘wider reading and research.’

I explained to them that although their Classics textbook (Hellenica) covers many areas of Classical mythology and history, there are several other areas which come under the umbrella of Classics which it does not have time to delve into. I wanted them to do some wider reading and research into these areas, choose one which interested them and then present their findings to the rest of the class at the end of the year. This could be in a format of their choice (e.g. a speech, PPT, model, game, piece of artwork, etc.), but they would all be required to talk the rest of the class through their research.

The aim would be threefold:   

To broaden their Classical knowledge To help them learn the skills required for independent research and presentation To enjoy learning about something off-syllabus which would not be in the exam

We began with an initial homework where boys found out the different areas covered by the broad title of ‘Classics.’ The next lesson, the boys took turns to write these all up on the board and divided them into topics: mythology, history, drama, literature, linguistics, philosophy, art, etc. along with any useful books, websites and apps they had already come across. This gave them a starting point from which to continue.

Subsequent homework slots were used for their own research into Classical topics and they were be required to produce a short written summary of what they had found out. The next lesson, they would be called up one by one (while the rest of the class got on with another task) to tell me what they had encountered in their research. This had the double benefit of helping them to organise and express their thoughts verbally to me, as well as giving me some individual time with each boy to talk through his ideas.

I could then give each boy some verbal feedback about his work, along with suggestions as to how he might progress.

Questionnaires

In addition to this, I asked the boys to complete two questionnaires anonymously: one at the beginning and one at the end of the year, asking them about their reading habits, which books they enjoyed reading, how they felt the project had gone, etc. I informed them that since the questionnaires were anonymous, they should be completely honest in them. I wanted to see what their initial reading habits were like and how confident they felt about researching independently, and then to track how this progressed over the year and whether their wider Classical reading and project preparation had had any impact on it.

(In)tangible

It must also be acknowledged that I anticipated some results which cannot necessarily be quantifiable, such as: do the boys seem to enjoy the subject more because of their projects? Do they have better Classical knowledge? Have their verbal skills improved in lessons? Has this inspired them to give a talk at Classics Society or to take the subject further?

Analysis Questionnaires

The questionnaires highlighted some interesting points. From the 19 responses I received, the following emerged:  that our boys generally do enjoy reading if they find something which interests them and that this year had seen a small positive effect on the amount they read;  the boys seemed to have read fairly widely and were happy to list books they had enjoyed reading or wanted to recommend to their peers;  they enjoy reading series and really getting stuck into an author or series they find interesting;  there were very few ‘classics’ on their reading lists;  they enjoy reading a broad range of genres;  perhaps (although not necessarily) as a result of completing the project, they seemed to become more polarised by the end of the year in terms of how confident they felt researching independently and presenting findings, unlike their initial answers, which demonstrated a spread of opinion – perhaps this could be used as an early identifier;  they all seem to realise that reading is important, but there is still something of a focus on the fact that it is only useful for improving grammar and vocabulary;  most boys seem to have understood the point of the project and got something out of it, whether that is broadening their Classical knowledge, helping with their presentation skills, or creating something individually;  there are some boys who still want to be taught ‘to the test’ and do not see the merit of completing something for its own sake.

At the time of writing, the boys have not yet presented their projects, as they are completing exams (ironically), but I look forward to seeing them. For information, I completed a similar exercise last year and the range of topics covered by the boys over these two years has been phenomenal.7 My intention is to devote two lessons to their presentations and give them all written feedback, but emphatically not a grade. One colleague asked me at a recent CPD session if I thought that the boys would be disappointed about this. Probably some of them will be. However, the point of the exercise has been to broaden their academic scope and not to define that with a letter or number. There will, of course, be appropriate praise in the feedback I give them and I intend to follow up the presentations with a class discussion about what the boys have learned in the process and how (or whether) they feel their learning experience has been enriched by it.

7

It is worth remembering when looking through this list that these are almost all topics which are not covered in their Classics textbook; the wealth of material is impressive.

Conclusions Limitations

Firstly, as stated before, tackling whole-school literacy is an immense task and I have made only the smallest of dents in this research. I carried out my research on one Year 7 set and in one subject.

Necessarily, the questions I asked the boys in the questionnaires were to some extent leading (although I did impress on them the fact that their answers would be anonymous and the importance of being honest) and the boys’ answers would always be somewhat subjective. However, in research such as this, I think that the boys’ perceptions of themselves can be extremely revealing in and of themselves.8 It would be interesting to try this experiment with a whole year group and, in the future, older year groups, to see how this may affect results.

Ideas and Observations

I certainly cannot take credit for all of these ideas, as many have been suggested to me by colleagues, but I think that the following would certainly be worthy of consideration for the future, in the light of this research:  Make reading more accessible and obvious to the boys: have recommended reading lists stuck in classrooms and around school. The attractiveness and availability of books cannot be underestimated;9  include all genres and do not neglect non-fiction, practical books, comics and even advanced picture books;  set up a reading challenge – this would create a sense of competition, but also freedom for boys to choose books from a list, rather than making a list prescriptive in its entirety;  give boys some freedom over what they read generally;  ask and go through the meanings of words;  encourage close/deeper reading rather than skimming;  have a ‘reading room’ at school to contrast with the more formal setting of the Library. It could contain, for example, bean bags and be a place that is not silent, so that boys can talk to each other about the books they are reading and perhaps laugh together if they are co-reading something entertaining;  Lower School Diploma – this will come into effect from September 2018 and will hopefully have a positive impact on all Y7 and Y8 boys;  suggestions from teachers: show them that we read, too;  get parents involved in students’ reading – the boys’ and parents’ book club set up by ONN will be immeasurably useful in this regard. It is vitally important for students to have strong adult reading role models, who show them that reading is something normal, important and of value for its own sake.10

8

See Smith, J.K., Smith, L.F., Gilmore, A., Jameson, M. ‘Students’ self-perception of reading ability, enjoyment of reading and reading achievement’ Learning and Individual Differences 22 pp. 202-206 9 Broeder, P. and Stockmans, M. ‘Why should I read? A cross-cultural investigation into adolescents’ reading socialisation and reading attitude’ (2013) International Review of Education 59 pp.87-112 10 See, for example: Ransaw, T. ‘The Good Father: African American fathers who positively influence the educational outcomes of their children’ (2014) Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men 2 pp. 1-25

Closing Summary

Today, the assertion that boys simply don’t read has acquired the status of an incontrovertible truth.

Having completed this research, I would take issue with that. Boys do read and they do enjoy reading, but they need guidance, encouragement and the opportunity to do so. By slightly adapting the way I set their homework, I created an opportunity for them to explore my subject beyond the confines of the textbook and current syllabus. This gave them the freedom to read widely, research something they found interesting and present their findings to their peers.

I think that this research can be of benefit to all teachers, but it particularly slots into the gap I mentioned earlier: that of encouraging able boys in single-sex schools to read widely and complete independent research. It has certainly had an effect on my own approach to teaching and learning in Year 7.

The short answer to the main question I posed in my research (‘could the adaptation of my homework practice have a positive effect on the boys’ independent learning and literacy?’) is ‘yes and no.’ It seems from the questionnaires and from my own impressions that the boys’ literacy has generally improved throughout the year and that the wider reading and project work I set has had a positive effect on this and been a worthwhile exercise. However, the polarised results of the answers to question 15 on the final questionnaire suggest that while some boys now feel very confident about researching a topic on their own for homework and presenting their findings to the rest of the class, others have realised that this is an area in which they lack confidence. Perhaps this type of exercise could therefore be used to identify boys who need to develop these skills throughout their school career (although, of course, anonymity would have to be removed from the exercise).

Let me be clear that I am not going for all-out popularity. I know that not every single boy will love Classics, nor do I expect every boy to thoroughly enjoy reading for hours each day. It is also true (and perhaps even more so in a fee-paying, private school) that some boys (and parents) will fail to see the intrinsic value of this type of liberal education for its own sake, because it is never going to be formally tested in an exam. That is, perhaps, a battle for another day (hopefully one in the near future).

So, I shall finish with a tricolon of sorts. What I hope I have managed to inculcate in most of the boys is a love of learning beyond the curriculum and an opportunity to delve into something off-syllabus; I hope that they also enjoyed the academic and creative freedom to choose their topic and mode of presentation. Finally, I hope – I believe – that this experience has enriched them all, even the ones who may not realise it just yet.

Bibliography I list below a select bibliography of some of the most interesting and useful books and articles I came across during the course of this research – thank you for the many recommendations I received from various colleagues.

Adler, M.J. ‘How to read a book’ (1940) Simon and Schuster (New York) Barrs, M. ‘Gendered Literacy?’ (2000) Language Arts 77 pp. 287-293 Bozack, A. ‘Reading between the lines: motives, beliefs and achievement in adolescent boys’ (2011) The High School Journal 94 pp. 58-76

Broeder, P. & Stockmans, M. ‘Why should I read? A cross-cultural investigation into adolescents’ reading socialisation and reading attitude’ (2013) International Review of Education 59 pp.87-112 Clark, C. & DeZoysa, S. ‘Mapping the interrelationships of reading enjoyment, attitudes, behaviour and attainment: an exploratory investigation’ (2011) NLT Clark, C. & Teravainen, A. ‘What it means to be a reader at age 11: valuing skills, affective components and behavioural processes’ (2017) NLT Clark, C. & Teravainen, A. ‘Celebrating reading for enjoyment: findings from our annual literacy survey 2016’ (2017) NLT Clark, C., Teravainen, A., Picton, I. ‘Children and Young People’s Reading in Manchester in 2016’ (2016) NLT De Naeghel, J., Van Keer, H., Vansteenkiste, M., Roseel, Y. ‘The relation between elementary students' recreational and academic reading motivation, reading frequency, engagement, and comprehension: a self-determination theory perspective’ (2012) Journal of Educational Psychology 104 pp. 1006-1021 Drummond, K.V. & Stipek, D. ‘Low-income parents’ beliefs about their role in children’s academic learning’ (2004) The Elementary School Journal 104 pp. 197-213 Flouri, E. & Buchanan, A. ‘Early father’s and mother’s involvement and child’s later educational outcomes’ (2004) British Journal of Educational Psychology 74 pp. 141-153 Gilbert, L., Teravainen, A., Clark, C., Shaw, S. ‘Literacy and life expectancy’ (2018) NLT Lemov, D., Driggs, C., Woolway, E. ‘Reading Reconsidered: a practical guide to rigorous literary instruction’ (2016) Jossey-Bass McGeown, S.P., Johnston, R.S., Walker, J., Howatson, K., Stockburn, A., Dufton, P. ‘The relationship between young children’s enjoyment of learning to read, reading attitudes, confidence and attainment’ (2015) Educational Research 57 pp. 389-402 McGeown, S.P., Norgate, R., Warhurst, A. ‘Exploring intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation among very good and very poor readers’ (2012) Educational Research 54 pp. 309-322 McGeown, S.P., Osborne, C., Warhurst, A., Norgate, R., Duncan, L.G. ‘Understanding children’s reading activities: reading motivation, skill and child characteristics as predictors’ (2016) Journal of Research in Reading 39 pp. 109-125

Murphy, J. & Murphy, D. ‘Thinking Reading: what every secondary teacher needs to know about reading’ (2018) John Catt Nettle, D. ‘Why do some dads get more involved than others? Evidence from a large British cohort’ (2008) Evolution and Human Behaviour 29 pp. 416-423 Ransaw, T. ‘The Good Father: African American fathers who positively influence the educational outcomes of their children’ (2014) Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men 2 pp. 1-25 Smith, J.K., Smith, L.F., Gilmore, A., Jameson, M. ‘Students’ self-perception of reading ability, enjoyment of reading and reading achievement’ Learning and Individual Differences 22 pp. 202-206 Teravainen, A. & Clark, C. ‘School libraries: a literature review of current provision and evidence of impact’ (2017) NLT White, B. ‘Are girls better readers than boys? Which boys? Which girls?’ (2007) Canadian Journal of Education 30 pp. 554-581

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Delivering Effective Marking and Feedback in MFL Sarah Paulson

Introduction What motivated me to do this research? The feeling that marking can be one of the least rewarding elements of the job, the fact that I had read some interesting articles on the effectiveness of marking and feedback, and many exasperated conversations with colleagues about the amount of time spent correcting a piece of writing only for the same mistakes to appear time and again. Marking can be time consuming and demoralising when you find yourself repeatedly correcting the same mistakes – not to mention the frustration of having to correct work that has been copied incorrectly from the whiteboard, or work that should have been self-marked in class. The primary role of marking should be as an effective and productive method of giving feedback and a way of monitoring pupil progress, but as teachers we can feel that we are doing it to satisfy the expectations of parents and senior management. Giving feedback is an important part of the job, but it is surely only worth doing if it enhances pupil progress.

Clearly, it seems that many boys do not take on board the comments on their work or the corrections made to their work. To make marking a piece of work a worthwhile exercise, you would hope that the pupil concerned would learn something from your efforts and not continue to make the same errors. I felt that I needed to look at ways of making my feedback to the boys more effective.

With these thoughts in mind, I decided to look at effective methods of marking and feedback in MFL teaching to see whether any would improve the standard of my own students’ written work. I have concentrated on the subject area of MFL and focussed on written work, although how to give feedback on oral work is interesting. Should you interrupt to correct at the expense of embarrassing the student and interrupting the flow, or should you ignore accuracy in favour of spontaneity and fluency. In written work we are marking for grammatical accuracy as well as content or cultural knowledge, and in the case of A Level pupils we are also looking for examples of a ‘good’ essay which is well-structured and relevant.

My research took the form of reading on the subject, talking to other people, a pupil survey and experimenting with different methods of giving feedback.

Background reading When I started researching this project, I was surprised to find that there is actually very little previous research on the effectiveness of marking and feedback in schools, although there is substantially more focussing on further and higher education. Plenty of people have written articles suggesting different methods of marking but there do not appear to be any conclusions drawn as to their effectiveness.

However, some of the findings at a higher educational level were interesting and could be applied to a school environment.

A Marked Improvement the 2016 report of the Independent Teacher Workload Review Group concludes that marking should be driven by professional judgement and be manageable, meaningful and motivating. The quantity of feedback should not be confused with the quality. This would suggest that as teachers we should target certain pieces of work for thorough feedback rather than trying to scrutinise every piece of a pupil’s work. This also means setting aside precious lesson time for pupils to digest the feedback and devising an efficient and effective way for them to do so. We also need some way of assessing how effective our feedback is. Paul Black, Kings College London has stated that research has shown that grades or scores, or grades and scores with a comment do not raise standards, and Pieterick (2009) says that most students tend to read end comments first as they think they contain information to explain their grade. They read marginal comments for information that they believe shows them specific places in the text where they got it ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Her research suggests that they don’t see either as learning tools. Students also tend to see feedback as relevant only to that particular piece of work in isolation and with no relevance to further assignments. If, as these researchers suggest, comments and grades are not particularly effective, what can we do to make our students engage with us and their work?

Obviously, making no comment is the worst type of feedback, and excessive comments are too much for students to take in. Ronald Lunsford (1997) referring to Higher Education students suggests the PQR system when commenting on a piece of work: P – Praise (but it must be justified… “This is very good because…”)

Q – Question (Why didn’t you include…?)

R – Revise (Next time, Include…)

Actually asking questions of pupils and encouraging them to respond is one way of getting them to be more proactive when receiving marked work.

Several researchers have talked about the merits of direct and indirect error correction in MFL writing.

Dana Ferris states that indirect error correction, where mistakes are highlighted or brought to the student’s attention but not corrected by the teacher is superior. Over a period of time an improvement is seen in verbs, however little improvement is seen in structure and syntax. However, direct error feedback is often unavoidable in MFL because we want to ensure that the student gets it right, and sometimes the student does not have the vocabulary or grammatical knowledge to correct themselves.

Survey All the boys studying Spanish in Years 10-13 were given a questionnaire about the feedback they receive in MFL. The main findings are as follows: The boys were unanimous in stating that they like a grade on their work and that it is the first thing they look for.

Unsurprisingly the majority admit that they do not check their work before handing it in, but they also do not feel that they repeatedly make the same mistakes. (This could be linked to Pieterick’s finding that students tend to see each piece of work as a separate, unique entity and do not associate one task with another).

They prefer direct feedback which is again unsurprising, and could be due to a lack of confidence in being able to identify their own errors, a lack of knowledge, or simply laziness.

Pupils do not mind work being returned covered in a lot of red ink and they say that on the whole they are not afraid of making mistakes, which is good when learning a language as trying to experiment and manipulate the language inevitably leads to mistakes.

Although I am not looking at giving feedback on oral work, most boys said that they are not embarrassed to speak in the target language in class and are happy to be corrected, although one did note “languages are terrifying. I’m afraid of making mistakes”.

Overall, it was pleasing to see the boys positivity towards language learning.

Talking to other people I also spoke to colleagues both at MGS and in other schools, and found that people use a wide variety of marking and feedback methods from using highlighters and symbols to colour coding, giving verbal whole-class feedback, using individual feedback forms for pupils to stick in their books, and setting targets for the next piece of work. Many of these individual colleagues find that these methods work for them, but there is little to prove how effective they are in increasing pupil progress. Some colleagues have methods of giving feedback imposed on them by their school or department which they do not feel are effective but instead time-consuming and burdensome.

Experimenting During the first year of my research, I did background reading and experimented with different methods of giving feedback. I started to make comments on pupils’ work rather than giving a grade and I have continued to do this. Despite the survey indicating that the boys prefer to have a grade, no one has yet commented or asked what their work is ‘worth’. If this means that they are focussing more on my comments, it can only be a good thing, but it is hard to say whether their work has improved as a result. I am also trying to give some meaning to my comments i.e. it is not enough to write ‘excellent’, one should explain why it is excellent. This should be more valuable than giving a grade.

I have given Years 10 and 11 a self-editing checklist to stick in their books. This takes the form of a table, and in class before handing in a piece of work, it is decided which areas need to be focussed on, e.g. verb endings and adjectival agreement and the boys have to read through their own work, or a partner’s, and check those specific areas of grammar before ticking them off and handing in the work. This is proving to be an effective way of eradicating the usual silly mistakes that the pupils make, and as a result there is an improvement in the accuracy of the work being handed in, but it does take up lesson time.

In the first year of the research project, I split my Year 12 group into 3 smaller groups, and used a different technique to mark each group’s written work. With the first group I used direct, corrective feedback, correcting all their errors. For the second group I highlighted their mistakes without correcting them and used codes to indicate whether the mistake was one of grammar or vocabulary. With the third group I simply underlined errors without using a code or comment and gave verbal feedback to the whole group.

These boys were left to make their own notes and decide which of my comments referred to them. The second two methods were the most effective in getting the boys to discuss their work both with me and with each other, and the boys involved looked back over the piece of work more thoroughly than those who received corrective feedback. Group 1 were very passive and asked few questions. When this class went into Year 13, I decided to use the highlighting and codes method on the whole group as this encourages the boys to be more proactive in studying the feedback and in taking responsibility for their own learning. I only used this method on essays, and still commented on content and analysis. How effective this method is in improving the standard of work and reducing the number of mistakes is difficult to say. Certainly, some very bright boys continued to repeat the same relatively minor grammatical errors although the content and essay style often improved, which could be due to practice or my comments. A study by Dana Ferris has shown that by using this type of indirect error correction, over time verb errors significantly improve, but errors with articles and sentence structure do not. However, there is a lot of individual variation. It would appear that indirect feedback is superior to direct feedback over time, but we do not always have that time.

Also during the first year of my research, I created a feedback form for my then Year 13 group which I used for the first draft of their essays. The form commented on the good points of the essay, what they could do to improve it and also commented on grammatical accuracy. The boys then produced a second, final draft which I marked according to the AQA mark scheme. The effectiveness of this method of feedback was variable. It was time-consuming for me, and while some boys produced vastly improved and very good second essays, other second attempts showed little improvement on the first. It would seem that it depends very much on the individual as to how they interpret and are able to act on feedback, and what works for one person may not work for another.

One other method of marking that worked well was marking with a colleague. I tried this with Sixth Form exam essays although both colleagues needed to have knowledge of the cultural topic involved. Reading through an essay together and coming up with a final grade according to the AQA mark scheme is certainly quicker when two of you read and discuss it. We also suggested three things that would improve the essay, which again was easier to do in collaboration with a colleague. Less time is spent deliberating

with yourself over what grade should be awarded. There was not enough time to assess whether our feedback was effective, but it was certainly an effective way of marking.

Conclusions Is one method of feedback more effective than another? I would suggest that non-corrective feedback is potentially more effective but so many things have to be considered. For example, I would not necessarily expect a Year 7 boy to be able to identify his mistakes and so direct correction would initially be needed.

An able linguist would probably be able to see their errors when pointed out, but at the same time, more able linguists tend to be more ambitious and want to use more complex language and as a result need to be corrected directly as they are using structures that are new to them. The other thing to factor in when giving non-direct feedback is that you need to create time for the boys to do the corrections and then you need to check that this has been done.

The different methods of feedback that I used have seen different results depending on the pupil concerned, and with some pupils the same mistakes still occur. Pupils need to be aware of where they are likely to make mistakes and need reminding of the need to check for errors. This is where the self-editing checklist is useful.

I personally will continue to use the self-editing checklist as this does make the boys read through their work with fresh eyes before handing it in, and hopefully will ultimately make the boys’ writing more accurate. I will also continue to give non corrective feedback to Sixth Form essays, although the effectiveness seems to depend on the boy. However, it provokes discussion and encourages the boys to ask questions of each other and me.

I have not had a ‘Eureka!’ moment and found the one method that is effective. Maybe, as we are all individuals, there is no one size fits all way of giving feedback. However, it has been a worthwhile exercise for me personally as it has made me think about how I approach marking and giving feedback and I will continue to experiment in the hope of finding the most effective method.

References Black, Paul. In Burke & Pieterick, Giving Students Effective Written Feedback. OUP (2010) Ferris, D.R. (2006). Does error feedback help student writers? New evidence on the short and long-term effects of written error correction. In K. Hyland & F. Hyland, Feedback in second language writing: Contexts and issues. Cambridge University Press (2006).

Lunsford, Ronald. (1997) In Burke & Pieterick, Giving Students Effective Written Feedback. OUP (2010) Oxford University (2016). A marked improvement? A review of the evidence on written marking.

Pieterick. (2009) In Burke & Pieterick, Giving Students Effective Written Feedback. OUP (2010)

Bibliography Feedback in Second Language Writing – Ken Hyland and Fiona Hyland. Cambridge University Press (2006) Giving Students Effective Written Feedback – Deirdre Burke & Jackie Pieterick. Open University Press (2010) The Language Teacher Toolkit – Steve Smith & Gianfranco Conti. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform (2016) Written Corrective Feedback in Second Language Acquisition and Writing - John Bitchener and Dana Ferris. Routledge (2011)

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An Investigation into the Potential Uses and Benefits of Cross-curricular Links Between Mathematics and Other Subjects in the Lower School Alison Carolan

Objective The objective of my research was to investigate cross-curricular links between Mathematics and other subjects taught at MGS in Years 7 and 8. I wanted to look at links that currently exist and potential areas for closer ties.

Reasoning behind this research: I feel that in Mathematics, we are sometimes giving pupils tools that have applications but we aren’t always able to show these applications. I felt that when pupils saw for themselves the reasons for studying certain topics, it would give them relevance and therefore result in the boys having more interest in the subject and better retention. Mathematics also has a history and so I feel that it is important to include in my teaching an element of study of the subject itself in addition to studying the tools of Mathematics.

Tasks undertaken Briefly, the tasks I have undertaken have included: 1. Identifying cross-curricular links by reading through the Maths schemes of work for Year 7 and 8 and collating ideas from other members of the Maths department 2. Reading schemes of work for other subjects 3. Meeting with members of other departments 4. Doing my own investigations in order to enhance my own schemes of work with cross-curricular activities/ideas In more detail: 1. One of my first tasks was to look at our Lower School scheme of work and identify where I thought there were links. At a departmental meeting, I then asked the member of the Maths department what they perceived the links to be. The initial ideas were:  Science: accuracy in measurement, estimation, forming equations, graphs, units of measurement and averages  History: who invented/discovered certain aspects of Mathematics, how the Egyptians used fractions, history of imperial units  Geography: population growth, bearings, graphs/charts  Art: 3D drawing, ratios (colour mixing), symmetry, tessellations, Islamic art  Latin/Greek: the history behind some of the Mathematical language, notation and names of shapes  PE: various aspects of Cricket scoring, the best place to take a kick in rugby, the size of an athletics track, dimensions of different sports grounds.  Music - fractions 2. After considering links from Mathematics to other subjects, I then spent time reading through the Year 7 and 8 schemes of work for Science, Latin, History, Geography and Music. I chose those subjects as I felt that the closest ties were with then. In addition to this being helpful for this project, as a Lower School Form Tutor, I found it a really interesting read and it meant I had a better feel for what the boys in my form were studying which helped me form a closer bond with them 3. Obviously, teachers detour from the scheme of work and also not everything that is being taught is detailed on the schemes of work; therefore I felt it was important to spend time with members of all of those departments discussing possible links. In addition, I also spent time with Mike Watkinson trying to understand Cricket scoring and with Mark Hesketh to understand the links between Mathematics and Electronics.

4. The main bulk of my time after that has been spent going through my own individual schemes of work and annotating them with cross-curricular links, borne out of the above reading and discussions but also through my own investigations. This aspect was really started in earnest in the second year. I have been annotating my Year 7 and 8 schemes of work as I have been teaching them and have either incorporated ideas into my current teaching or have sown the seeds for closer collaboration.

Examples of cross-curricular links that I have developed or discovered or would like to develop further Number      

This history of prime numbers and how prime numbers are used in cryptography Looking at some of the great unproven Maths problems that on the face of it look relatively simple How our number system has evolved – historical links with the Babylonions (base 60) Why we have fractions – links with imperial units Different melting/freezing points for different elements and directed numbers How different number bases are used – Binary and Hexadecimal in Electronics and Computing

Algebra  

The history of the word ‘algebra’ and its use dating back to Babylonian times What else do we use short hand for? Chemical symbols – how are the rules different to the rules of algebra?

Shape          

Where the names for shapes came from and why we are interested in shape at all Where do you see shapes in everyday life and why have those specific shapes evolved (e.g.

Hexagons) or been used (e.g triangles) The history of the size of a degree and why there are 360o in a circle Angles and lines of latitude and longitude. Coordinates and grid references Looking at how 3D coordinates are used in computing gaming design The link between angles of elevation and depression and surveying Symmetry and links to religion and art.

Why do we bother calculating the surface area and volume of objects – practical applications.

The history behind the circle. Links with PE and the size of the athletics track.

Create a project using the Conwy trip to look at the Castle from a non-historical perspective (e.g what is the volume of the stone required to build the castle)

Data 

 

In Year 7 the boys do a ‘popcorn’ experiment in General Science and calculate the mean average.

We could use the same data in lessons but calculate the other measures of average and compare different results from different classes.

Looking at misleading graphs in political pamphlets and discussing reasons why graphs are generated this way Investigate different cricketing measures such as batting averages and use data generated from MGS matches

Benefit to me personally I enjoy teaching and learning about my subject. However, with the day to day demands of being a teacher, investing time in exploring Mathematics is a real luxury as there is always some other pressing task – marking, report writing, form tutor issues etc. I managed to move my one period per week to a double period per cycle to give me a reasonable amount of time to focus on this which I found really helpful. I was also good at disciplining myself to focus on this project during that double period, irrespective of what other jobs I had to do. I have therefore had protected time to spend exploring different aspects of my subject that has given me personal enjoyment but has also enhanced my teaching.

Future ideas I feel that in order to develop a more cross-curricular approach, it needs to be looked at in collaboration with other departments and tackled school wide. Most people do a job that isn’t connected to one particular subject and therefore giving the boys experience of tackling a problem or exploring a concept from a cross-curricular perspective is very important. A possible approach to this is to have a crosscurricular project that perhaps takes a week. In Lower School this could maybe run at the same time as the Year 9 and 10 exams.

An example of how this week could work could be: Take one topic such as The Battle of Hastings 1066.

Boys attend their usual lessons but each lesson is focused on an aspect of this topic.

For example:  General Science: the design of a siege engine, projectiles etc  English: a descriptive piece of work from the view of a soldier/villager/commander, etc  Mathematics: the cost of going to war and feeding an army, time taken to gather troops and walk the required distance to battle  Languages: what language was spoken at that time and the consequences to our language after the Normal invasion  History: the lead up to and the battle itself  Geography: what was the population at the time, what were the consequences of enlisting farm labourers in the army, what was the topology of the land like where the battle took place  PE: re-enacting the physical requirements to take part in a battle, how you can work as a team to move the goods required to feed an army  RS: what was the main religion of the country at before 1066 and what were the consequences to religion following the invasion  Music: what instruments were played at that time and how important was music  Drama: re-enact battles, the effect on villages of being pillaged and losing their men to war  Art: look at the artistic equipment that was used in that time to re-create paintings. Try some tapestry.

Solving a cross-curricular problem e.g. “How to improve the transport situation in Manchester?”  General Science: The effect of car pollution on humans and the environment and therefore what is the need for improved transport  English: Describe a journey from the perspective of different commuters undertaking the same journey (car driver, cyclist, motorcyclist, bus passenger, train passenger)  Mathematics: Calculate the amount of money and time spent on different modes of transport (calculate the average journey time and cost for the different modes of transport, maybe in general or just on particular routes). The impact of delays on work time.  Languages: Which languages are most frequently spoken in Greater Manchester and are they in particular areas with a view to how transport issues are communicated  History: How has the transport infrastructure built up over time – canals, roads, railways, tramways, bus routes.  Geography: Population density of the different regions of Manchester and their transport requirements  PE: The benefits of non-motorised transport verses motorised transport. How much better is it for you  RS: Do different religions use different modes transport in Greater Manchester. What are the most common forms of religion in the city and are people of a certain faith located in a particular area.  Music: The sounds of different forms of transport. Is it possible to make it sound beautiful?  Drama: Act out confrontations between different supporters of different modes of transport  Art: The beauty of transport – the railway stations, tram stops, making the rail network look like the London tube map.  Economics: The positive impact to business of improved transport infrastructure – perhaps looking at case studies of other cities.

Alternatively link two or three departments who would fit naturally together, for example, Maths and Science, and look at how they could synergise their teaching to help create a cross-curricular syllabus (it could just be cross-curricular for a few weeks of the year but it would be a starting point).

Reflection After presenting my activities at one of the CPD Twilight sessions, many of the people at the presentation expressed an interest in exploring this idea further. Perhaps to get the ball rolling we could share (perhaps on a spreadsheet?) simplified schemes of work for Year 7 and 8 between colleagues so they could identify their own cross-curricular links. There is definitely mileage in exploring this idea further but, like everything else, it just takes time.

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Lesson Study: A Critical Reflection of Research and Practice Anna Wicking

This was produced as supporting evidence for the TDT Lesson Study Practitioner Course in 2017-18

Critically reflect on and evaluate the features of effective CPD by engaging with Lesson Study There has been a culture shift within education to move away from reliance on expensive and impersonal external CPD courses. Schools are increasingly looking to develop their teachers’ subject knowledge and pedagogy using the expertise present within their body of staff. Lesson Study presents an interesting model by which this can be achieved. By trialling method in my own establishment (The Manchester Grammar School), I hope to better understand the limitations and potential benefits of this model of CPD. At The Manchester Grammar School (MGS), we are keen to engage with Lesson Study as we recognise the benefit of CPD within the school being sustained and collaborative. Through offering opportunities such as this for colleagues to work together on projects, we hope that our staff will become more confident discussing teaching and learning and asking each other for advice about their practice. Having read through available guidance about how to set up Lesson Study within an institution, I recognise that it provides all of the key elements of professional learning that most improve learning and teaching (Cordingley et al., 2004).

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The fact that teachers are learning over a sustained period of time will maximise the impact that any change of practice could have on the outcomes for their pupils.

Lesson study encourages teachers to engage with professional research from beyond their school setting and consider how it could be used in their environment.

Using real groups of pupils in the test lessons hence any professional development is focussed on the aspirations and outcomes of pupils in the teachers’ own setting.

The emphasis on collaborative enquiry allows for joint professional development (something that is strongly recommended in any professional development programme by Hargreaves (Hargreaves 2012).

Above all, it encourages teachers to try new things and aims to facilitate innovation.

A recently published study by The Education Endowment Fund (EEF) has not found strong evidence for Lesson Study having an impact on outcomes for pupils (when used as a development tool in that study).

However, as explained by David Weston in response to the publication of this paper, Lesson Study has been shown to improve collaboration and general pedagogy within schools. I am confident that the use of Lesson Study will provide opportunities for our school to develop a more collaborative model of professional development. I do recognise though that it cannot be used in isolation. As a school, we must ensure that staff are offered time to develop their subject knowledge and confidence engaging with relevant research in order to maximise the potential impact of the use of Lesson Study.

Implementing a Lesson Study Enquiry I have now introduced the concept of Lesson Study to a cross section of staff at MGS in lunchtime seminars.

The feedback from these sessions was positive and the ideas have been taken back to different departments to be discussed. Our Chemistry department are keen to try this in place of stand-alone peer observations.

They recognise it to be a more collaborative model that will ‘scaffold reflective practice’ and ‘lead to instructional improvement’ (Cerbin, W.) thereby offering pupils a better learning experience. Our Head of Chemistry would like to use Lesson Study to develop a Sixth Form practical lesson which is currently not being well understood by some students. The hypothesis is that it may require more scaffolding and differentiation for some students. The triad will be using research to inform their practice to decide what form of differentiation would be appropriate and then trialling the reviewed lesson with select groups.

Another triad in this department would also like to investigate whether there is a discrepancy between the student perceptions and the teachers’ perceptions of difficult topics in the IGCSE course. This will help to better provide for the Year 11 students as they being the revision and exam preparation process.

Our Modern Languages department and Junior School will also be trialling the use of Lesson Study to enhance their own CPD provision. I shall be supporting each department in their use of Lesson Study, acting as the ‘Knowledgeable Other’ to help develop focused enquiry questions required for this to be effective.

To support the implementation of collaborative enquiries within our school, I have developed guidance and pro forma to use. This will unify execution of the Lesson Study in different departments and also ensure that any findings are easily shared across the school and potentially with the wider community. To produce this guidance, I have made use of a selection of handbooks and suggested models whilst also attending courses run by the TDT and Learning Cultures. I have found most to be useful but none have offered an entire ‘off the peg’ option that would work in our setting. For instance, the suggestion made in Lesson Study: a handbook by P.Dudley of multiple rounds of Lesson Study will work in some departments (those with fewer teachers) but in the larger departments, this would be too difficult to coordinate and potentially lead to division between triads if the makeup of each triad was stable. I would hope that one outcome of such professional development would be to unite groups of teachers so I think it would be best employed as a single round of research, collaborative planning, teaching/observation and reflective discussions. After each round, groups could then be rearranged should we want to investigate issues in any more depth.

I also feel that our staff should not need to make use of the suggested Lesson Study Group Protocol in P.Dudley’s handbook. Whilst I can see the benefit of this in some staff bodies, I think it would change the tone of the enterprise and make it too formal which would reduce the impact and enjoyment of collaborative working for our staff. We do not have the pressures of performance management and so, where possible, development opportunities are offered rather than forced upon teachers.

I have found that the pro-formas suggested in the handbook provided by the DfE useful when creating resources for our teachers to use in Lesson Study. They were clear and pitched at the right level for our staff.

However, I had to remove the reference to NC (National Curriculum) as this is not something we make use of in our teaching.

The guidance and pro forma being used within MGS to conduct Lesson Study are included in the following pages:

CPD 2017-18

LESSON STUDY Lesson study allows teachers to work collectively (normally in groups of two or three) to reflect on their teaching, the learning that takes place and the resources being used to share a deeper understanding of the impact the teachers have on pupil outcomes. Using existing evidence, participants collaboratively research, plan, teach and observe lessons, using on-going discussion, reflection and (where needed) expert input to track and refine their interventions.

The outline of the approach is as follows:

Image taken from: http://tdtrust.org/what-is-lesson-study

The principles behind Lesson Study are closely linked to the principles of coaching. It is therefore worth thinking through your approach to the feedback session(s) to ensure that you are supporting each other using positive, professional conversations rather than forming a mentor:mentee relationship. Coaching is about self-evaluation and supporting individuals to grow and develop through encouraging them to identify their own learning goals and find their own route to success.

This pack contains suggested forms for use when you are working on a Lesson Study project:  Lesson Plan template  Observation sheet  Reflection and discussion sheet

LESSON STUDY: PLANNING

Subject

Date

Teachers involved in Lesson Study Focus of the Lesson Study

What is the academic / behavioural profile of the pupils that you will monitor in this lesson

How do you expect the pupils to respond to the activity/activities in this lesson?

Pupil A

Pupil B

Pupil C

LESSON STUDY: OBSERVATION

Subject

Date

Teachers involved in Lesson Study Activities observed in the lesson

How are the pupils responding to the activities? What evidence of learning is there?

Initial thoughts

Pupil A

Pupil B

Pupil C

LESSON STUDY: REFLEC TION AND DISCUSSION

Subject

Date

Teachers involved in Lesson Study SUGGESTED PROMPT QUESTIONS:

How effective was the planned activity in allowing each pupil to learn?

Did anything surprise you?

Would you use this resource/method to teach this topic again?

What aspect of the teaching technique could be adjusted to improve pupil progress in future lessons?

Future development opportunities:

Pupil A

Pupil B

Pupil C

Communicating and Disseminating your Lesson Study Enquiry This is a summary of one of the projects conducted at our school: Title of Lesson Study Enquiry What did the LSE diagnostic lesson reveal?

What was the target cohort?

Who was involved?

What characteristics of our context needed to be considered?

How target language is used by pupils in the MFL department at Manchester Grammar School.

The triad had an initial discussion rather than a specific observed lesson to draw from.

- This identified the main topic based on individual reflections on their own practice and what they felt would be worthwhile developing this year.

Year 9 continuers – these students have done two years of language study and can be demotivated during this period before the GCSE course begins.

KJT – Head of German PRT – Newly qualified Russian teacher OKS – experienced French/Italian teacher.

In German, the boys are broadly set for their lessons. The class used were the lower achieving group.

In French and Russian, the groups were mixed ability.

What did existing evidence suggest could improve student outcomes?

We know that if they are talking in the lessons they report feeling more confident and their pronunciation will improve over the year. The speaking exam in MFL GCSE is the one exam that worries our students. We hope that by developing use of target language in lessons, we will remove some of this anxiety and develop their overall skills and confidence.

What were the outcomes of the project?

All three teachers used the same activity (quiz, quiz trade) as part of an observed lesson. In all the lessons, boys were using the language and all boys attempted the activity. The increased scrutiny and focus on this skill did mean that the target language was used for a greater proportion of the lesson.

How could this be further developed?

Planning collaboratively and sharing observation feedback has led to long term collaboration and pedagogical discussion within this department.

Planning collaboratively was difficult. This may be due to the mixed languages used for the study and inability to use common resources.

Reflection There has been a positive response to the principles of Lesson Study and teachers have been quick to realise the potential of Lesson Study for their own professional development and teaching and learning at The School. However, we have found that it is hard for teaching staff at our school to be able to prioritise projects such as this when faced with the day to day challenges of teaching.

The initial enthusiasm for the projects has definitely waned; this is likely to be due to a lack of direct leadership and accountability. Where the Head of Department/leader of the project was enthusiastic and bought into the benefits of the use of Lesson Study, studies have been completed. Where the leader was less clear about the process and did not set clear timeframes and expectations, this led to the collapse of the triads and projects being abandoned.

To gain insight into the opinion of classroom teachers who participated in a Lesson Study, I asked them to complete a questionnaire through www.surveymonkey.co.uk : Questions I enjoyed working collaboratively on a Lesson Study What was the focus of your Lesson Study?

Lesson study can improve teaching skills Participating in a Lesson study increased my confidence in the classroom Participating in a Lesson Study has changed my practice Lesson Study will have a positive impact on teaching and learning at MGS What was your biggest frustration with the process of Lesson Study?

How could we develop the use of Lesson Study in MGS? I would like to use Lesson Study again to develop my practice

These were a mixture of a sliding scale answer, comment box and tick box. The results showed me that: -

Colleagues enjoyed the opportunity of working collaboratively on a project.

A range of different projects were undertaken although the initial research questions used in most could have been further refined.

The experience did not increase confidence in the classroom but it has led to a change in individuals’ practice.

Generally, people feel that this model has the potential to have a positive impact on teaching and learning in our school.

The main frustration reported was the difficulty in finding time to complete projects collaboratively.

Individuals are keen to try and use Lesson Study again and have suggested embedding it in our individual or departmental review process and ensuring that projects are started at the beginning of an academic year.

Our Head of MFL has also sent the following information about how their projects were managed: 1) Any interested members of the department met as a group after school in order to discuss the general principles. As a result of this: - We decided what our focus would be (Encouraging target language use by students) - We decided the make-up of the groups (3 groups of 3, each containing a range of languages and experience) - We decided a time scale (one lesson study to be completed by May half term with shared feedback after half term).

2) Each group met up to plan the format and content of the lesson to be taught, who would teach it and when this would be. We allowed colleagues to request cover in order to facilitate observation and/or post lesson discussion.

3) Coming together as a larger group to discuss and share experiences. I think our group’s (my) failure to actually do it is valuable part of this - symptomatic of a lack of time / time of year that we chose to do it?

I think that her comments reflect the wider experiences of the school and give me a clear idea of how to progress with Lesson Study in the future.

I will ensure that the findings of our MFL departments’ Lesson Studies are shared both within school and with our wider teaching community (via printed poster summaries and emailed pdfs of the reports). It will also be important that the participants’ efforts are recognised by our SMT. This recognition of effort regarding professional development is important to ensure that there is an uptake of such enterprises in the future.

How will we refine the process of Lesson Study in MGS?  More training given to HoDs about the potential uses of Lesson Study.  Allow Lesson Studies to be used in place of annual lesson observations (IF properly written up)  Suggested research questions sent round by AW at the start of each term – could then collate findings into a whole school study.  Make the forms and documentation used to support Lesson Study at MGS more flexible.

Remove some of the boxes and replace with free space BUT then expect a formal report written summarising the findings that can then be disseminated.  Ensure that all teaching staff have full access to relevant educational research.  Encourage more reading and discussion of educational research.  Make use of the Teacher Researchers to lead Lesson Studies in different departments.

This critical reflection has been a useful process. It has shown me the value in reflecting on initiatives and the importance of engaging with evidence when planning to introduce new ideas in any setting. Context is so important in education; what works well in one establishment might be disastrous in another. However, if the principles behind the new initiative are supported with key research evidence and/or science (and these are effectively communicated), then, individual teachers will engage positively and look to find ways in which to make it work. As a school, we shall continue to use Lesson Study but will look to find ways to refine the process for our staff and students.

AW

References: Dudley, P. Lesson Study: a handbook 2014 Cerbin, W, & Kopp, B. (2006) Lesson Study as a model for building pedagogical knowledge and improving teaching. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Volume 18, 3, 250-257.

Department for Education (2009) Improving subject pedagogy through Lesson Study Hargreaves, D.H. (2012) A self-improving school system: towards maturity Cordingley et al. (2004) Understanding what enables high quality professional learning http://tdtrust.org/lesson-study http://tdtrust.org/lesson-study-work-look-new-eeftrial?utm_source=TDT+Newsletter&utm_campaign=cb04f7d585EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_14&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b642853da0-cb04f7d58591098797&ct=t(March_newsletter3_14_2017)&mc_cid=cb04f7d585&mc_eid=f1ddd87c71 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8F2DC1E5AE07092F

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How is Curriculum Transition managed for boys coming into Year 7 at Manchester Grammar School?

Catriona Ashurst

We strive to enrich boys’ lives through an exploration of their own experience and imagination, developing their ability to shape their thoughts both orally and in written form.

Taken from the English Department section of The Manchester Grammar School website11 In 2016, external candidates came into Year 7 from 56 different schools in addition to the 101 boys coming from the Manchester Grammar Junior School, which prompted the question: How is curriculum transition managed for boys coming into Year 7 at Manchester Grammar School?

This study will look at the impact of questioning during the teaching of comprehension skills to support transition from Year 6 to Year 7 and how varying types of question can provoke talk and deepen comprehension. This section aims to review explanations of comprehension and create a comprehensive and accurate definition. Research on talk in the classroom will be analysed and reviewed before research specifically on questioning and Guided Reading is evaluated.

Government guidance on education and reading has been used to inform research, however it has been taken into account that this guidance is subject to revision and change as this research progresses. This research uses the Interpretative/Qualitative model, due to the fact that the researcher assumes a dual role of participant observer and researcher. The main focus of this research is to “inform understanding of educational issues drawing on and developing educational theory” (BERA, 2000: 1.1).

The current structure of English teaching at the Junior School is based on a novel selected for its potential to develop both writing and comprehension skills. Alongside this, comprehension is taught through analysis of the class novel and also stand alone texts. This research aims to identify areas where the curriculum structure could change to support pupils moving from the Junior School into the Senior School. As English is such a wide ranging subject, reading comprehension has been chosen as a focus for this pilot study. It has been found that this is an area with which current and new pupils to the Junior School need the most support to develop accuracy. Pupils come from a range of contexts, both culturally and their previous school. A challenge faced in the Junior School is two-fold: developing the skills of our pupils in terms of depth of analysis of challenging texts and also introducing pupils to new and unfamiliar genres. During his study, class teaching was adjusted to support pupils, not only in Year 6, as the need was common to all year groups. To further build upon this, transition was chosen as a focus to capitalise on the fact that the vast majority of pupils in Year 6 continue their education in the Senior School. This will also ensure that the Junior School curriculum shows progression and supports pupils academically as they move into Year 7.

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https://www.mgs.org/422/english

Literature Review The National Curriculum makes the point that ‘by the end of year 6, pupils’ reading and writing should be sufficiently fluent and effortless for them to manage the general demands of the curriculum in year 7, across all subjects and not just in English’ (DfES: 31). This indicates that it has been on the Government’s agenda for some time as a continuous area to monitor. With the pressure of national tests and entrance examinations, it could be argued that external pressures steer the focus in the classroom towards these in order to prepare pupils adequately. The UKLA study argues that the new National Curriculum is a thing of mixed quality emphasising that it undervalues spoken language in the primary years and has an unnecessary weighting of this in secondary schools (UKLA: 20).

Interest in transition has been widely discussed topic; a five year study by Rudduck et al (1991-96) has highlighted the issues of loss of progress towards the end of Year 7 and in Year 8; the findings have been widely endorsed by teachers and confirmed in smaller scale studies in other schools (see Doddington et al, 1999; Rudduck et al, 1998).

Studies focusing on reading relevant to this research project fall broadly into two categories: firstly, those that examine the practice of reading in terms of teaching and how to ensure teaching maximises potential and, secondly, literature focusing on the improvement of comprehension skills.

The literature examined is a combination of studies on reading and guidance from the National Strategies.

The Cox Report The Cox Report (1989) outlines the structure of the attainment targets and their progression over the key stages and proposes that an essential aspect of development in the secondary stages is that pupils should increasingly make their own decisions about their writing - what it is about, what form it should take and to whom it is addressed. The full development of both reading and writing in the secondary years requires a broad definition of text to encompass both literary and nonliterary forms. Pupils should continue to develop in their dual roles as makers of meanings in their own texts and as receivers and makers of meaning in the texts of others (1989, 17:22). Professor Cox also emphasises “the need for younger pupils to have increasing encounters with a range of examples through which they make sense of literary experiences and this should continue into the secondary stages. By careful planning of schemes of work to integrate programmes of study for speaking and listening, reading and writing, teachers should be able to foster the writing development of their pupils, helping them to develop an ear for language through reading or listening to works in a wide variety of styles written by really fine authors. Both literary and nonliterary writing will often develop from the interaction between the pupils' own insights and what they have read (or heard read) in the classroom.” (1989, 17:16).

The most pertinent section of this report is the summary of how comprehension is fostered through the structure of a class novel, a teaching practice currently present in Manchester Grammar Junior School. Cox refers to a document produced by the Heads of English Group from Northamptonshire

LEA.12 The table outlines a number of approaches to the class-sharing of a novel. They are designed to reflect the purpose and nature of teaching literature in the shared context of the "class-reader" (1989). They concentrate on forms of interaction with the text that are characteristically different from forms that a reader might use in tackling a text privately. The overall purpose is to bring pupils into active participation with the text, and to promote the text as a rich and vital source of meaning, which can be related to the needs, interests, purposes and motivations of the pupils as developing individuals. The approaches are framed in such a way as to recognise the levels at which a fictional text operates and to support groups of readers in becoming aware of these levels, whilst accepting that in a mixed ability class there will be different degrees of appreciation and understanding: narrative: being aware of the story, particularly how it is sequenced; being able to follow the book at the level of its story; symbolic: being aware of what the story stands for the universal meanings, and circumstances illustrated by the particular narrative; being aware of the metaphors and imagery used in the construction of the narrative and the descriptive passages; stylistic/linguistic: being aware of the "crafting", particularly the structuring of the book, selection of literary devices and vocabulary, use of syntactic conventions; developing a critical awareness of the relationship between form and content.

Bloom’s Taxonomy An area that cannot be ignored when gaining an in depth understanding of the teaching of reading is Bloom’s Taxonomy of questioning. Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956) can be linked with this study as questioning is key to developing comprehension skills both in terms of assessment for and of learning and depth of understanding. Bloom’s Taxonomy focuses on six levels of higher order thinking skills that can be supported and extended through questioning.

1. Knowledge questions recall and locate information, for example, ‘List the steps for making a cake using the instructions.’ This skill displays the ability to understand, describe, select or retrieve information, events or ideas from texts and use quotation and reference to text 2. Comprehension is defined as the ability to grasp the meaning of material and is concerned with the ability to deduce, infer or interpret information, events or ideas from texts.

3. Application is the ability to use learned material in new and concrete situations and links with the strategies used to decode text.

4. Analysis refers to the ability to deconstruct a text and examine its individual parts.

5. Synthesis is the skill of putting separate parts together to form a new whole. This is a combination of identifying writer’s purpose and comparing texts with others to put it in a literary context.

6. Evaluation is the final level of questioning and refers to evaluating the value of the material which links with AF3 in the use of inference, AF5 in commenting on writer’s language use and AF6, how the writer’s choices affect the reader.

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Kate Buttler, Tony Buttler, Liz Gifford, Simon Langley, Clare Matthews, Brendan Mulcahy, Jonothan Neelands, David Pryke, Maurice Quirke, Mary Rich, Carol Sanderson.

Defining Comprehension In order to examine the use of questioning, it is important to define comprehension as this is the means by which questions are validated. There are numerous definitions of comprehension (Parker and Hurry, 2007; Golinkoff, 1975; Durkin, 1978; RAND, 2002; Duke, 2003; Pardo, 2004, Palinscar, 1984). Parker and Hurry put it simply in that comprehension of text is a process which involves the reader in actively constructing meaning (2007: 301). Parker and Hurry cite Rosenblatt in explaining how the reader arrives at making meaning: The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment, and a particular physical condition. These and many other elements in a never-to-be-duplicated combination determine his response to the peculiar contribution of the text.

Rosenblatt, 1938, pp. 30–31 cited in Parker and Hurry, 2007: 301 There are several events that happen prior to reading that determine its success; prior knowledge, personality and needs (both learning and dispositional) all impact upon the level of comprehension.

Golinkoff (1975) outlines three components of reading comprehension. The first is decoding to identify individual words. Comprehension is also comprised of lexical access whereby the reader has a meaning for printed word in their semantic memory. Text organisation is the third aspect; readers create meaning from reading text as units rather than individual words. The reader interprets the texts in terms phrases, sentences and then paragraphs to construct meaning. (Golinkoff, 1975: 5-6).

Durkin (1978) builds upon the work of Golinkoff and identifies three types of comprehension: instruction, application and assessment. Instruction is where the teacher gives children information to help them understand the meaning of a word. Application enables the teacher to see whether or not their previous instruction has impacted upon children’s understanding in a context and therefore comprehension. Assessment takes the form of questioning or written exercises to ascertain the level of comprehension (1978: 8-11). However, despite extensive lesson observations in this study, very little time was spent observing reading comprehension instruction. Palinscar and Brown outline that reading comprehension is a product of three main factors: considerate texts (those that follow the expected structure for the genre), compatibility of reader’s knowledge and text content and finally active strategies applied to ensure understanding (1984: 118).

A more recent study in 2002 by the RAND Reading Study Group, states that comprehension is the process of ‘simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. It consists of three elements: the reader, the text, and the activity or purpose for reading.’ (2002: xiii). However, this definition does little to explain how the reader achieves comprehension; is it through Durkin’s modes of instruction, application or assessment? It seems that further research needs to be examined.

Pardo (2004) coins what she terms as a common definition: ‘comprehension is a process in which readers construct meaning by interacting with text through the combination of prior knowledge and previous experience, information in the text, and the stance the reader takes in relationship to the text’ (2004: 272). This research synthesises research on comprehension and makes links to classroom practice. This is reinforced by Pardo’s ethos that ‘comprehension is one of the most important skills for children to develop if they are to become successful adults’ (ibid: 278). It seems that the definition of comprehension is becoming more complex.

Definitions of comprehension have been both simple and detailed; all have a common thread: to deepen understanding of the text. For the purposes of this study, comprehension will be defined as both the active process of decoding a text and the scope of understanding when reading. The active process is the means by which pupils combine their reading skills to interpret and analyse a text. The scope of understanding is the depth of comprehension through skills of inference and deduction combined with knowledge of other texts for comparison. The RAND Reading Study Group outlines that readers must have a range of skills to successfully comprehend (2002: 8). Pupils need cognitive capacities, such as attention, memory, critical analysis, inference and visualisation. Secondly, pupils needs to be motivated; the purpose for and of reading, interest in the content and efficacy of the reader are affected by their motivation. Lastly, knowledge is necessary for comprehension. This is in terms of vocabulary, topic knowledge, linguistic and discourse knowledge and knowledge of specific comprehension strategies (2004: 13). The scope of understanding is linked more with an end result in that the level of comprehension can be assessed at the end of engaging with a text. This dual definition will aim to show how comprehension is both a process and an analysis of understanding.

Conclusions The National Literacy Strategy argues that successful teaching is characterised by high quality oral work (DfES, 2006: 17). It is the balance of who is doing the talking that seems to mark discussions around comprehension and talk for learning. Alexander (2012) states that high quality classroom talk raises standards in core subjects in national and international tests and identifies six vital functions of talk (2012: 4): 1. Thinking 2. Learning 3. Communicating 4. Democratic engagement 5. Teaching 6. Assessing It is how this talk is used that affect learning and ultimately, comprehension of a text.

The research outlined and analysed here will be used to design a pilot study to see how teaching structures can be used to improve reading comprehension between Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3.

Three main themes that have been explored through this review will be used to support the inquiry: the need for support in transition; structures for teaching comprehension skills and how question types impact on the level of comprehension. What is apparent is that while there is a wealth of study and analysis of progression in comprehension, there is little specific focus on transition from Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3. This study aims to synthesise relevant research with current practice to support pupils in this key academic transition at The Manchester Grammar School.

Methods of Data Collection The data collected falls into quantitative and qualitative data, each of which will be dealt with in turn.

Quantitative Data The data collected for this study was the previous schools of the Year 7 cohort in 2016. This was obtained from the Admissions Department and used to identify trends and patterns depending on the lens through which data was observed. To data was grouped into four categories: Year 7 2016 cohort previous school; Junior School Pupils’ previous school, Non-Junior School Pupils’ previous school and the spread of school type for both Junior School Pupils and Non-Junior School Pupils.

For the lattermost category, schools types were Preparatory Schools, State Schools, International School and Home Educated. These groupings allowed for a clear understanding of the composition of the Year 7 cohort and add value to this research through tabulation and graphing.

It was felt to be important at the outset of this study to find out where the Year 7 cohort originate.

In the Appendix, a series of graphs depicts the spread of schools the 2016 Year 7 cohort. With around 50% of Year 7 coming from the Junior School, it was useful to compare the education timeline of their peers to gain an overview of their curriculum experience. For example, some schools adjust their curriculum in preparation for pupils taking entrance exams for selective secondary schools in Trafford. The format of these tests, and the preparation for them, would expose pupils to tailored teaching to support them in the exam(s), with some having a paper devoted solely to comprehension. The Year 6 curriculum in state primary schools is devoted to preparation for the end of Key Stage Two Standard Assessment Tests (SATs), which could create an imbalance in the amount of reading comprehension and grammar understanding for the reading and SPaG papers respectively.

Why is this important? To understand the makeup of the Year 7 cohort and add value to the reason for this research.

Qualitative Data There are several sets of data within this set, all of which add a valuable aspect to this research: Reading Curriculum Meetings A reading curriculum party was set up in the Junior School to evaluate the teaching of comprehension and develop progressive skills. The skills progression map is included in the appendix. The impact of changes made could be measured by comparing assessment data throughout the year. Reading curriculum meetings were attended in the Junior School to gain an overview of the way reading was being taught. This was lead by the subject leader for reading, a Junior School teacher, in a collaborative way to involve colleagues from each year group to establish consistency and progression within reading. The notes from these meetings are contained within the Appendix.

Why is this important? To gain an awareness of the practice going on in the Junior School.

Lesson Observations This is valuable to gain an understanding of how teaching impacts on progress and what methods are being used. A Year 6 class was observed several times to understand the restructure of comprehension teaching with a focus on question types. As a teacher researcher and participant, the teaching in Year 5 was evaluated and adapted after observing the Year 6 lessons. Strategies that were felt to compliment the needs of the Year 5 pupils were adapted to impact on progress.

Assessment data before and after these changes were made helped to evaluate their success.

Why is this important? To gain an understanding of how teaching impacts on progress and what methods are being used.

Interviews and Questionnaires Face to face interviews were considered an important part of the research to discuss the challenges faced by both staff and pupils in lessons in the hope to being to answer key questions: What do the boys find hard when they start Year 7 English lessons?

What gaps do Teachers feel the boys have when starting Year 7?

Do these gaps correlate with the origin of the pupil?

Interviews were conducted with a Year 7 tutor group to better understand the challenges pupils feel they face when starting Year 7 at Manchester Grammar School. The Year 7 cohort chosen had a balance of prior schools to gain a thorough overview. Letters were sent to parents to inform them of this practice to meet BERA ethical guidelines for research. This included the anonymisation of the group’s responses and explanation of how the data would be used.

Meetings also took place with a colleague to discuss the Year 7 curriculum structure. This colleague works within the English Department and looked closely at the curriculum for the Lower School.

Meeting to discuss marking rubric and compare with those used in the Junior School. Notes from these meetings are included in the Appendix.

Why is this important? To discuss the challenges faced by both staff and pupils in lessons. What do the boys find hard when they start Year 7 English lessons? What gaps do Teachers feel the boys have when starting Year 7? Do these gaps correlate with the origin of the pupil? (e.g. their prior school).

To understand how the curriculum has been adapted to suit the needs of the cohort and methods of assessment.

This wide variety of data was linked with research from the literature review and will be synthesised within the conclusion.

Findings and Analysis Analysis of the 2016 Cohort Looking at the previous schools of the 2016 intake, when this research project started, provided a useful insight into the educational experience of this cohort. Detailed graphs are included in the appendix; a summary will be provided here. The split of state, preparatory and other settings for previous schools showed that although preparatory schools were in the majority, 56% compared to 42% from state schools, this was not an overwhelming figure. This shows that the Year 7 intake for this year was a good balance of pupils from a variety of settings. In terms of the impact this has upon teaching and curriculum structure, there are a significant proportion of pupils having recently completed the end of Key Stage 2 Standard Assessment Tests (SATs). This means that almost half of the Year 7 cohort will have had an experience of a very specific curriculum in preparation for these tests, including Comprehension, Maths and Spelling Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG). Could this create a separation in the skill set between state and preparatory pupils? After meeting with a colleague who has developed the Lower School English curriculum, it was found that grammar and comprehension skills can vary; it is often a focus at the start of Year 7 to ensure all pupils have the same understanding. While SATs are not used for assessment purposes at MGS, it is important to keep in mind the curriculum areas covered to ensure that pupils coming up from the Junior School are suitably prepared for Year 7.

The most notable trend in the data is that a significant number of pupils come from Lady Barn House School, either into the Junior School or Year 7. Look at the outline of the English curriculum on their website, the structure of their teaching is similar to the Junior School: “From Year Two whole class readers are regularly used to help to develop the children’s vocabulary and encourage class discussions. Teachers also use these texts as a resource for creative writing, roleplay and drama sessions. These texts vary in theme, author and provide a varied stimulus in every year group.”13 This could be said to support transition into the Junior School due to building on a set of skills already present and appeal to both pupils and their parents.

Reading Curriculum Meetings and Lesson Observations Reading curriculum meetings were an opportunity to share experience and practice of effective teaching approaches. Each staff member responsible for planning English or with an interest in reading was invited to be part of the working party. The team consisted of a teacher from each year group, the Head and Deputy with me in as an observer.

In the first meeting I attended, the Year 6 teachers shared a new approach they trialled in the Michaelmas term to improve progress in comprehension. The Year 6 colleague responsible for the English planning discussed with their Year group colleagues the need for a new approach with the hope of improving results in comprehensions and a greater depth of analysis from the pupils. A comprehension skills booklet was created and given to each pupil; this is included in the Appendix.

This new approach aimed to teach pupils the different skills required of questions to analyse a given 13

https://www.ladybarnhouse.org/school-life-2/curriculum-subjects/english/

text. It was felt important that pupils were taught how to identify these skills and what would be required, so that analysis of the text used the relevant skills. Initial teaching focused on identifying question types and using the necessary skills to answer the question. Pupils used the mark scheme to measure their success and improve these new skills.

In order to better understand this approach lesson observations were arranged. From observing a set of three Year 6 comprehension lessons, it was apparent that the new format that was introduced was having a positive impact on the pupils. This was evident in terms of their attitude toward comprehension lessons; many pupils we less than keen to do a comprehension but knew that practice was needed to develop their skills. In addition to this, success could be measured using data from comprehensions completed in class. At the start of the academic year, a baseline assessment was done by pupils in Year 6 to ascertain their skills and areas for development. It was then identified by the Year 6 teachers that their approach to teaching comprehension skills needed to change to support progress. After this new approach of teaching was introduced the class average increased from 42% to 58%. All but one pupil in this Year 6 class made progress with some pupils doubling their percentage scores. Another comprehension was completed a few weeks later after further teaching using this new approach and the class average went up to 67%, a 15% increase from the initial assessment and 9% since the supported comprehension. The data from these comprehensions is included in the Appendix to show the progress over three half terms.

Year 5 also adopted this approach after these lesson observations with a two week mini unit of teaching focused specifically on comprehension skills. As Year 5 came to using this approach later in the school year, end of term assessments were used to track progress. As a year group the Michaelmas Term assessment year average was 61%, increasing to 75% for the Lent Term and 74% for the Summer Term. In Year 4 the year averages for each term are as follows: Michaelmas 64%, Lent 67%, Summer 68%. In Year 3 the year averages for each term are as follows: Michaelmas 63%, Lent 80%, Summer 71%. The slight drop in the Summer Term for Year 5 can be attributed to new pupils joining the Junior School throughout the year who have not had as much input of this new approach of teaching. In Year 6, no new pupils are taken after October half term so the majority of the year group had the same amount of exposure to these new approaches. This is clear evidence that this new approach was having a positive impact upon progress and the model continued throughout the year.

Within this curriculum group, a reading progression map was drafted, evaluated and finalised in conjunction with the comprehension skills booklet and feedback from the reading team. This was effective in enabling teachers to adapt the approach used in Year 6 to suit their year group. A copy of this final draft is included in the Appendix.

Pupil Questionnaire The questionnaire given to a Year 7 tutor group, made up of a mixture of Junior School and external pupils, provided useful evidence to support this study. The full answers can be found in the Appendix; a summary of these will be analysed here. When asking pupils about their perception of English in Year 7, responses in the main showed that pupil expectations of the difficulty were not a surprise, but that it was a step up from Year 6. Several responses referred to the benefit of support from their teachers when faced with a new concept or approach, such as the format of studying a single novel. In terms of new learning, there was some confusion as to whether or not this referred to general or specifically in English; the wording of the question may have affected this despite verbal explanation that the questionnaire was related to English. Pupils highlighted that there were different comprehension approaches and more extended writing opportunities linked to a novel.

Pupils also appear to be aware that the novel is being used for both writing and comprehension techniques, almost like a textbook.

Pupils outlined challenges they faced academically when starting Year 7. These ranged from the quality of their spelling to meeting deadlines to pace in lessons. The main themes of pupil responses referred to comprehension both in terms of their depth of analysis and reading new text genres. This was the first instance where comprehension was referenced specifically. This questionnaire was given half way through the school year so that pupils had time to settle in to Year 7. It was evident that pupils were aware of the challenge of comprehension tasks as they were not always presented in the format of an extract with questions. Comprehension tasks also took the form of analysing a chapter in their novel, with inevitable reference to elsewhere in the book. There was an overwhelming trend that the area most pupils felt had improved was the new vocabulary learnt and the range of texts read in Year 7. Responses also referred to their enjoyment of library lessons to widen their scope of reading. In the Junior School, word definition questions aim to assess vocabulary knowledge and also inference techniques should the meaning of the word be unknown.

It appears then, that there is greater emphasis on widening vocabulary as pupils move into Year 7; in the Junior School inference skills are emphasised more, especially in the younger years.

When asked what they found easiest when starting Year 7, many of the pupils said that comprehensions were easy as they had studied many in Year 6. This was apparent in the responses of both pupils from the Junior School and external pupils. The commonality would appear to be a result of several factors. Firstly, the Junior School curriculum focusing on comprehension with termly assessments; state school preparation for the Reading SAT at the end of Key Stage Two; entrance exam preparation for selective secondary schools and National Curriculum requirements for reading.14 This instils a value of reading for meaning as well as pleasure prior to pupils starting in Year 7. The comparison of Year 7 and Year 6 English lessons provide a wide variety of responses. The main theme was that although the lessons were more challenging, pupils enjoyed the freedom within different parameters, such as writing an essay in an hour. It was also highlighted that there is less of a focus on grammar and punctuation explicitly, in that this would be taught more discretely and woven into lessons focusing on reading and writing techniques. This shows that their expectations were varied and that all English skills can be taught through reading and writing, rather than separating out each element of the English language. This will support progression in English as pupils can then synthesise their skills and develop their ability to utilise the relevant ones depending on the task given. At a Junior School level, it is necessary to separate these skills so that 14

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misconceptions can be clarified. New learning can also be introduced and, with support, be integrated into their English work as they move through the school.

Interviews and Meetings Several meetings took place with a colleague who has developed the Lower School English curriculum. All pupils sit the same exam at the end of the year; 45 minutes of comprehension and the same for writing. Comprehension texts are either 19th or 20th century aimed to assess skills in language analysis and inference skills. The structure of teaching depends on the teacher; it can be comprehension throughout the year (as with the Junior School), a split of comprehension and essay writing or comprehension just before the exam. For reading there are three skills areas taught and assessed: identifying a word or phrase in the text which is synonymous, defining words and explaining the connotations of a phrase. The lattermost of these skills is evident in the Junior School curriculum; there is also evidence of defining words, but less time is attributed to this compared to inference skills. More advanced readers in Years 5 and 6 will be able to begin to writing a phrase in their own words. More focus is on placing the text in context and using inference to analyse a text in depth.

As a result of these discussions, it was apparent that the initial text genre studied and assessed in Year 7 was poetry. The structure of the Junior School English curriculum is novel based, with little analysis of poetry unless as part of comprehension lessons. When looking at the Year 7 entrance exam, since 2013 analysis of a poem has formed part of one of the English papers. This prompted the question – could we improve our range of texts by including poetry comprehensions in our teaching? Pupils starting in Year 7 may have shown skill in analysing a poem successfully as part of the entrance exam, with pupils from the Junior School not given the same experience. As a result, it was decided that a series of lessons analysing poetry could be created as a transition unit for Year 6 to complete after their Summer Term assessments. This is outlined in the conclusion and planning is included in the Appendix.

Conclusions While there is not a wealth of literature specifically analysing transition between Year 6 and Year 7, the literature on skills progression within English has been particularly useful for this study. By drawing information from a wide variety of sources and ensuring it is relevant to MGS, has been beneficial in identifying the effectiveness of the English curriculum. By choosing to focus on comprehension within English, has enabled to me to adapt my research throughout the project and has informed my reading and analysis.

There are inevitable limitations to this research, which can inform future study. Focusing on MGS specifically means that this research would need to be adapted to be replicated in other schools.

However, this research was designed at the outset to be for MGS in evaluating curriculum structure within the school. Another limitation could be that each cohort is different so trends may not be replicated year on year. If this was a study over a significant period of time, for example over five years or following a focus group through their schooling, then different conclusions may be drawn.

To improve the research, it would be useful to gain a better understanding of how the entrance exam is structured. At the outset, it was not apparent that the entrance exam content could become such a focus in prompting questions. If this research were to be repeated, it would be useful to discuss how the entrance exam is put together and how data from it is used.

This research lead me to liaise with various colleagues and departments and generate dialogue around transition and curriculum structure. As a follow up activity from this research, I feel it is important to meet with the English coordinator in the Junior School to share my findings. Meetings with a colleague developing the Lower School English curriculum highlighted that the Junior School curriculum does not cover poetry comprehension, which forms the initial study in Year 7. Analysis of the entrance exams in the last five years highlighted that poetry comprehension was used each year in the English Section A paper. Therefore, pupils starting in Year 7 from other schools have potentially shown skills in poetry analysis. While in Years 5 and 6 pupils spend a term on poetry with Senior School English teachers, the content covered does not directly mirror the entrance exam content. It is important to expose Junior School pupils to these skills to support their transition into the Senior School. As a result of this, it is thought useful that a transition unit be created, designed to be taught in Year 6 at the end of the Summer Term to support transition into Year 7. Resources from this can be taken from historical entrance exams and resources within the Junior School to structure this unit. This means that this research will have ongoing impact and reflection based on the information collected and data analysed. It would also be useful to consult with the Year 6 teaching team to hear their thoughts about this and share ideas for how these skills can be taught.

The reason for doing it in the Summer Term was to lessen the impact on the timetable and preparation for assessment periods and workload on staff.

The research carried out was found to be incredibly useful both to benefit MGS and to gain a better understanding of how links can be strengthened between the Junior School and Senior School. I have found that structuring my reflection through this research, has given me a greater depth of understanding of how our curriculum with its ‘unashamedly literary’ focus to ‘developing their ability to shape their thoughts both orally and in written form.’15

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References Alexander, R. (2012) Improving Oracy and Classroom Talk in English Schools: Achievements and Challenges.

Presentation given at Department for Education Seminar on Oracy, the National Curriculum and Educational Standards, 20th February 2013 Available from http://www.robinalexander.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/DfE-oracy-120220-AlexanderFINAL.pdf Anderman, E.M. and Maehr, M.L. (1994) Motivation and schooling in the middle grades, Review of Educational Research, 64, 2, 287-309 Bloom, B. S. (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. New York: David McKay. British Educational Research Association (2011) Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research 2nd Revision.

Available at http://www.bera.ac.uk/.

Cox, C. B. (1989) The History of Education in England, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office Available at http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/cox1989/cox89 Day, J. (1996) School friendship groups and their impact on learning, Education 3-13, 24, 1, 51-58 Delamont, S. and Galton, M. (1986) Inside the Secondary Classroom, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Department for Education (2013) English Programmes of Study: Key Stages 1 and 2 Department for Education and Skills (2006) Primary National Strategy: Primary Framework for Literacy and Mathematics.

DfES Publications. DfES Ref: 02011-2006BOK-EN Doddington, C., Flutter, J. and Rudduck, J. (1999) Exploring and explaining ‘dips’ in motivation and performance in primary and secondary schools, Research in Education (in press).

Duke, N. (2003). Comprehension instruction for informational text. Presentation at the annual meeting of the Michigan Reading Association, Grand Rapids, MI. Durkin, D. (1978) What classroom observations reveal about reading comprehension instruction. Reading Research Quarterly. 14 (4): 481-533.

Golinkoff, R. M. (1975-1976) A comparison of reading comprehension processes in good and poor comprehenders.

Reading Research Quarterly. 11 (4): 623-659.

Marshall, B., and Brindley, S. (1998) Cross-phase or just a lack of communication: models of English at key stages 2 and 3 and their possible effects on pupil transfer, Changing English, 5, 2, 123-133 OFSTED (1998) Standards and Quality in Schools 1996/97 (Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Schools), London: HMSO. Palinscar, A. and Brown, A. L. (1984) Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension Fostering and Comprehension Monitoring Activities. Cognition and Instruction I (2): 117-175.

Pardo, L. S. (2004) What every teacher needs to know about comprehension. The Reading Teacher. 58 (3): 272-280.

Parker, M. and Hurry, J. (2007) Teachers' use of questioning and modelling comprehension skills in primary classrooms.

Educational Review. 59 (3): 299-314.

RAND Reading Study Group, Catherine Snow, Chair. (2002) Reading for Understanding: Towards a Research and Development Program in Reading Comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

Rudduck, J. (1996) Going to the ‘big school’: the turbulence of transition, in Rudduck et al (eds.) School Improvement: What Can Pupils Tell Us?, London: David Fulton, 19-28.

Rudduck, J. (1997) Freedom and control: the pupil perspective, lecture given at the School of Education, University of Cambridge, February.

Rudduck, J., Chaplain, R. and Wallace, G. (eds.) (1996) School Improvement: What Can Pupils Tell Us? London: David Fulton.

Rudduck, J., Day, J. and Wallace, G. (1997) The significance for school improvement of pupils’ experiences of within-school transitions, Curriculum, 17, 3, 144-153.

Rudduck, J., Wilson, E. and Flutter, J. (1998) Sustaining Pupils’ Commitment to Learning: The Challenge of Year 8, Report for Lincolnshire LEA, Cambridge: Homerton Research Unit.

United Kingdom Literary Association (2016) Curriculum and Assessment in English 3 to 19: The National Curriculum for English from 2015.

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Independent Digital Learning: paradoxes, problems and potential in classroom practice Ashley Hern This article was written to be published in Impact (the journal of The Chartered College of Teaching).

“For nearly all of history, people’s lives have been governed primarily by ignorance… But sometime over the last several decades…science has filled in enough knowledge to make ineptitude as much our struggle as ignorance.” Gawande (2010)16 My 15 year teaching experience as a History teacher has paradox at its heart: a subjective feeling that my workload has increased, while my students appear less willing or capable of increasing their own productivity. I have become increasingly interested in investigating more effective methods to reverse this scenario. While the source of my (possibly false) perception is undoubtedly a result of my own pedagogical limitations, my reflection has been catalysed by preparing high-performing students for competitive university entrance which has highlighted how many have not fully internalised key conceptual skills such as analysis of primary source material. Such ideas are a central part of the curriculum, yet students still appear to place accumulation of knowledge over understanding. This is supported by my own experience of marking A-level papers where an absence of higher order thinking is often absent. There is support in research literature that even higher education often fails to develop independent learners with students prioritising ‘surface’ over ‘deep’ learning.17 At a time when technology has made information more accessible, why are we failing to develop students’ critical faculties and autonomous skills?

The key would seem to be developing more effective opportunities for students to develop their learning independently. Of course this term itself involves competing definitions, ranging from student autonomy: “the ability to take control of one’s learning,”18 to emphasis on the continued didactic role of the instructor: “No act of learning can be self-directed if we understand self-direction as meaning the absence of external sources of assistance.” 19 However, these are not mutually exclusive and can be resolved through the development of technology which provides teachers with an opportunity to direct students towards a more autonomous experience.

16

A. Gawande The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, (2010), p. 8 L. Gow and D. Kember “Does Higher Education Promote Independent Learning?” Higher Education, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1990), pp. 307-322 18 Holec (1991) 19 Brookfield (1985) 17

A Brief History of MOOCs The MOOC phenomenon has been a striking development of the last decade. These Massive (large numbers of participants) Open (accessible to a range of people without prerequisites) Online (all materials being available on the internet) Courses (a syllabus with an instructor, lectures, readings and assessments) were first developed publically in 2008 with the “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge” MOOC created by University of Manitoba. This connective MOOC (cMOOC) involved networks of distributed online resources which involved a highly interactive and collaborative learning environment which emphasised the construction and sharing of contents. Projects of collaborative learning had been developed within institutions since the advent of computer networks and email in the 1970s. This was predicated on a connectivist learning theory which saw learning as being encouraged by a network.20 The most significant development in the last few years was the “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course run by academics Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun at Stanford University in 2011. Norvig and Thrun anticipated 10,000 students enrolling but they ended up with 160,000 from 209 countries. The success of their course made Norvig, in particular, an evangelist for the MOOCs, arguing that they represented a revolutionary development that would change the face of higher education. 21 Norvig subsequently launched Udacity as a commercial enterprise to exploit this new phenomenon, which provides paid-for skills based education courses. Subsequently, a variety of different companies providing MOOCs have developed, often working in co-operation with universities who provide the course material. Edx is an open source platform which hosts a range of different university courses from over 100 institutions worldwide, blending paid and free courses, which covers a full range of topics. Future Learn is a commercial platform owned by the Open University which offers courses developed for its platform specifically by a range of universities in the UK and abroad.

20 21

L. Harasim, Learning Theory and Online Technologies (2017), pp. 81 – 104 Peter Norvig ‘The 100,000-student classroom’ TED.com 21 June 2012

MOOCs come in a variety of structures but can broadly be classified as below: TYPE OF MOOC

CMOOC

XMOOC

LEARNER ROLE

Active

Passive

INSTRUCTOR ROLE

Co-learner

Sage on video stage

LEARNING THEORY

Connectivism

Behaviourism

PRIMARY PEDAGOGY

Knowledge integration

Knowledge duplication

METAPHOR

"We link movies"

"We watch movies"

DEVELOPMENT APPROACH

Learning design

Instructional design

PRIMARY TYPE OF ASSESSMENT

Self-Assessment

External and/or Peer Assessment

FUNDING SOURCE

Seat of the pants funding Large external funding

MOOCs evaluated Thrun’s evangelism ensured considerable interest across the academic world excited by the increased accessibility afforded by technology and the promise of new methods of teaching.

Administrators were attracted by the solution that MOOCs seemed to provide to increasing costs for higher education. Salman Khan of Khan Academy was a high profile proponent of the belief that MOOCs heralded the era of mass participation in education. 22 A cursory study of educational bibliographies triggered an outpouring of research papers in 2013 and 2014, but the phenomenon has stalled in the face of several major structural problems. xMOOCs are of extremely varying quality.

Some have very high production values, with well-conceived assessment questions and high quality interaction. Others are very poorly executed based on a series of videos and limited tasks. Many courses merely replicated traditional lectures. The xMOOC follows traditional behaviourialcognitivist ideas of knowledge transfer which means although there is some collaboration through forum discussion, this is not central to the concept.23 The passive learning of xMOOCs which are based on knowledge duplication which is then assessed through quizzes is particularly striking.

Another major problem was abysmal completion rates: a study of Harvard and MITx online course participation rates showed that there was only a 5.5% completion rate. In broad numbers that was 245,000 out of 4.5 million participants which is still an impressive number but indicative of significant methodological issues.24 Participation is also a major issue. The vast majority of those who complete already hold some form of advanced qualification. An inveterate MOOC-er myself, it is clear when participating on courses that most of those who contribute are adults, many of whom are retired, who possess the necessary skills (digital fluency, information literacy, contribution, motivation, collaboration and leadership) for engagement with the platforms. Research on MOOCs has used the availability of large data sets to focus on how MOOCs are used, but there has been less work on qualitative assessments. Increasingly the literature has emphasised that completion is in itself not the singular measure of outcomes. Participants take part for a whole range of different motivations.

22

M.D. Bush “What MOOCs, Flipped Classrooms and OLPC Teach Us About the Individualisation of Learning” Educational Technology Vol. 53 (2013), pp. 60 – 63 23 R. Ubell, Going Online: Perspectives on Digital Learning (2017) 24 G. Veletsianos, A. Collier & E. Schneider “Digging Deeper into learner’s experiences in MOOCs: participation in social networks outside of MOOCs, notetaking and contexts surrounding content consumption.” British Journal of Educational Technology 46.3 (2015) pp. 570 – 87

MOOCs for the classroom A recent successful development in MOOCs is their use in adult education and professional training.25 Knowles’ identification of the characteristics of adult learners (andragogy), particularly their readiness and motivation to learn means that they are better equipped than students to handle the pitfalls.26 I have participated on a range of training and further education MOOCs, structured around the cMOOC model as well as a large range of xMOOCs, and found the value of collaborative learning as well as the facility of convenient accessibility of relevant materials being collected and presented.

The use of on-line learning in secondary schools has been much discussed but little qualitative research has been done, most of the work focusing on its deployment in higher education. In my own department we had developed some on-line materials but these were largely for information storage and attempts at collaborative on-line learning had repeatedly failed due to a lack of enthusiasm and sustained engagement from students. Within our school there had been some attempts to encourage participation in xMOOCs or timetabled lessons when the activity was to work through an existing xMOOC, all of which had mixed results, to say the least. All limited research on this area has emphasised the importance of an institutional framework if online learning is to have a positive impact on student outcomes. Beetham and White have shown that the personal digital skills that students already have will vary widely and some may find it difficult to transfer these skills into academic practice. 27 On a related point, (Killen, C. 2015) has persuasively argued that disciplinary context is important and that students respond most favourably to authentic and meaningful digital activities that are directly linked to, and embedded in, their programmes of learning and assessment and that are relevant to their future employment ambitions.28

25

M. Egloffstein, “Massive Open Online Courses in Digital Workplace Learning: Current State and Future Perspectives” in D. Ifenthaler (ed.) Digital Workplace Learning Bridging Formal and Informal Learning with Digital Technologies (2018), pp. 149 – 66 26 Malcolm Knowles The Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy (1970) 27 H. Beetham and D. White, Students’ expectations and experiences of the digital environment (2013) 28

Research Project Paying attention to these conclusions I created three discrete courses using the school Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), hosted by Moodle, which were directly related to a very focused learning objective within the curriculum. One was for a small group of 6th form students interested in studying archaeology at university. A recent science paper had re-examined a skeleton found in a medieval grave in Birsa, Sweden. The original identification had been that the skeleton was male, a conclusion based on the grave goods (including weapons) which had led to an identification of the individual as a ‘Viking’ warrior. The paper presented findings that the skeleton was actually female, which then fed into a wider discourse about the female Viking warriors which was current amongst contemporary media representations. The issue of how our concepts of gender shape our perceptions of the past was an extremely interesting topic as the media reactions demonstrated how entangled interpretations of the past are with current concerns. The mini-MOOC I constructed managed to combine presentation of information with forums asking students to present their own impressions of the material. I provided the original article, a test to show that they had understood its main conclusions, and a collection of different media reactions from initial presentation of the findings to subsequent criticisms of the evidence. The conclusions were more tentative than they at first appeared, so by effective organisation and presentation of the debate students were able to follow the evolving discourse. This worked very effectively and produced some excellent discussion which students were able to bring into the classroom. Feedback from students showed how helpful they had found the course for allowing them to understand the subject better. This is a reworking of the ‘flipped classroom’ idea where students learn the key information and bring this into lessons for debate, which allows them to engage with these issues on a ‘deep level’.

A second project was designed for students entering 6th form to study History which discussed the different perceptions in China and Japan of the Second World War through the different cultures of official remembrance of issues such as ‘Comfort Women’ and the Nanking Massacre of 1937. This was presented to students to complete before the start of their Lower 6 th Year and led into a class based discussion at the start of term on the way that History was studied and how different interpretations on the past are formed and how they are relevant to today. The participation rate (60 students) was more erratic than the earlier course, but the motivation level of students coming into 6th form was quite high so the level of engagement was good. Colleagues reported positive feedback from their lessons about how students had engaged with the material.

The final project was a more traditional xMOOC on the assassination of JFK for year 9 students which was run at the end of the Summer Term. Students were given a month to finish the course with at least one timetabled lesson in the computer room. Each module looked at a particular aspect of the assassination from the background to the different conspiracy theories that had been suggested.

The main focus was to present the necessity of reliable evidence when judging the viability of a statement or story. A series of videos (such as extracts from Oliver Stone’s JFK) and guiding text were used and students were assessed using multiple choice quizzes at the end of each of the 14 sections. There was a completion rate of 58% which given that the end of the course collided with the summer holidays was a good result. We were pleased to find that 99% of students had completed at least half of the course and over 90% of students achieved 70% or more in the quizzes showing that they had engaged with the material.

Conclusions Creating discrete MOOCs to supplement the curriculum seems an extremely productive method for encouraging students to learn independently and engage with ‘deep learning’. Significant thought needs to be put into their organisation and the more focused the initial objectives, the more effective they can be. I am currently developing an xMOOC for year 7 about the debate over King Harold’s death at Hastings (“the arrow in the eye” debate) which will allow them to assess the evidence and draw their own conclusion independently, which will culminate in the production of an argued conclusion on-line. With my 6th form students I am developing a cMOOC to investigate the study of a document to develop skills required for assessment, but by moving on-line they will be invited to come up with a collaborative interpretation which I will monitor. By explicitly linking this to assessment criteria I hope to gain a more positive response. Such courses are extremely laborious to construct but once they are done, they just require minor editing every year and should prove to be an extremely valuable resource for any department.

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