A4A Magazine: Volume 1 Spring Issue

LEISTON HIGH SCHOOL SEAWARD AVENUE LEISTON IP16 4BG

Volume 1 Spring Issue 2012 Special points of interest: Using technology in the classroom The joys of Twitter

A4A magazine ….. for the learning community

5 to drive and Learning Journeys Phil Beadle and Paul McGinnis

Welcome to A4A Magazine!

Blogging Classroom ideas

Inside this issue: Letting students use technology

2

Motivation is the key

4

Book Reviews

5

From our own correspondents

A Final Thought

technology that can enhance

Magazine’ will be designed

(Achievement 4 All’) will be

the learning experience and

to foster a sense of shared

about showcasing good

to share our reflections with

participation to further im-

practice, innovation and

others. It will also incorpo-

prove and strengthen our

technology that supports

rate articles from educa-

expertise. Our ‘A4A’ ethos

learning and teaching. I

tionalists working not only

and teaching & learning

want it to be about enhanc-

in the UK but across the

vision will further be im-

ing our professional learn-

world.

proved by sharing and

ing community with articles

9 Reasons to use 3 Twitter

More teachers need to blog

A4A Magazine

6

7

8

developing our expertise.

that inspire and educate us.

As educators, we all strive

It’s also about collaborating

to adapt to and meet the

with each other in ways that

needs of all of our students,

allow us to take risks, to

but we know, on our own,

innovate, to investigate new

this is a difficult task. ‘A4A

Eric Wareham

An Invitation…..

I am inviting all colleagues

intervention strategy, at-

pects of school life may

to write articles on anything

tended an inspiring training

benefit. Or you might have a

that may boost classroom

day/session or developed

particular view about any

practice, enhance our un-

new engagement tech-

aspect of education (a ‘blog’

derstanding of pedagogy or

niques. Perhaps you are a

type article) that you would

inject a ‘spark’ into our pro-

classroom teacher, LSA,

like to share. You may have

fessional performance e.g.

NQT, PGCE/SCITT or head

seen an article that is worth

something that worked well.

of department who has, or

sharing. Whatever your

Colleagues may have had

is, experiencing success in

role, I would like colleagues

particular success with an

areas from which other as-

to freely contribute.

Page 2

A4A Volume 1, Issue 1 Letting students use technology to create presentations, reports, journals, etc., can be an easy way to introduce technology in a lesson plan or project.

by Rebecca Garland

“Rather than just blowing off improving technology in the classroom, you should look for ways to use it more simply.”

Image from Go!Animate.com

If you’ve been teaching longer than a few years, you already know that it can be tricky to be a “perfect” teacher all the time. While we might play the part of perfect when it comes times for evaluations and such, most of the time we tend to fall back on what we know – which usually isn’t the latest and greatest technology.

Unfortunately the lack of planning time and huge amounts of expectations in the classroom create a challenge when it comes time to work in some technology-based lessons. In many cases, there just isn’t time to learn about the sites or figure out how to use them – no matter how great they looked in the thirty minute meeting you had with the technology specialist last week.

Rather than just blowing off improving technology in the classroom, you should look for ways to use it more simply. The key to this is to let the students create with technology – it’s far less time-consuming for the teacher than having to create a lot of content yourself. Here are a few quick lessons that have a great technology tie-in that shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes to plan or organize.

GoAnimate.com – It’s an animation website (wait, don’t panic!) that your students can use to create their own short movies. All you have to do is send students to the website on the library or computer lab computers. Have them set

up their own free accounts and explain that there are very limited choices for free accounts when it comes to customization of characters, but they are creative enough to work around that.

Once they are signed in, they should create an animation in one of the available “worlds” to perhaps summarize a book or short story, deliver a speech they have written, teach a lesson on a particular topic or introduce themselves or their ideas to the class. It’s a great way to present student work without having to force students to the front of the room.

Voki.com – Another great, simple website that students can jump right into. Voki creates talking, somewhat animated avatars. Have students write poetry or speeches and then create a Voki to actually read the message aloud. Or make a final deliverable for a formal paper a bit more interesting by having a Voki that the student has created read it aloud to you.

Both Voki and GoAnimate are “cutesy”, but often letting students play with a website gets them much more engaged in what you’re asking them to do.

Rather than just the typical ‘write a summary of the article’, tell students to create a Voki to describe it instead. It uses the same principle of summarizing and picking out main points, but it also lets students dabble in the sorts of things that make learning

‘fun’ to the digital mind.

Blogger.com – If your students have access to Blogger, have them use the blogs instead of a journal to outline ideas or create products for your assignments. Since the blogs are visible to the world, you might assign pen names (that you would know, of course) if your students are underage – and be sure to get permission ahead of time. Stress to students that having published work means it must be mindful of the audience and cautious at the same time.

Let the students write journal entries, address prompts you’ve set up, or summarize chapters of the text or novel you’re working on in class. One idea that is a bit more involved and “out of the box” is to have students set up the blog as if they are the main character in a novel or perhaps even a scientific element or historical figure.

They must stay “in character” throughout the blog posts and post a minimum number of times exploring concepts, ideas and plot points through their posts.

You would need only to go to their posts to view the blogs when the assignment is finished to create a grade. You could even have fun leaving comments for your students to have them respond with deeper thoughts on the posts – much like a more traditional reading response journal.

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AFA Volume 1, Issue 1

Nine Reasons to Twitter in Schools

“Twitter can be like a virtual staffroom where teachers can access in seconds a stream of links, ideas, opinions, and resources…”

I think therefore I tweet!

1. Together we’re better Twitter can be like a virtual staffroom where teachers can access in seconds a stream of links, ideas, opinions, and resources from a hand-picked selection of local, national and global professionals.

2. Global or local: you choose With Twitter, teachers can actively compare what’s happening in their areas with others. GPSenabled devices and advanced web search facility allow searches that tell you what people are tweeting within a certain distance of a location.

3. Self-awareness and reflective practice Excellent teachers reflect on what they do in their schools and look at what is going well in order to maintain and develop it, and what needs improvement in order to make it better. Teachers on Twitter share these reflections and both support/challenge each other using forums called #hashtags, e.g. #ukedchat has open sessions every Thursday from 8pm-9pm with topics voted by users.

4. Ideas workshop

and sounding board Twitter is a great medium for sharing ideas and getting instant feedback. You can gather a range of opinions and constructive criticism within minutes, which can help enormously, whether you are planning a learning experience, writing a policy, or putting a job application together.

follow. Hone and develop the list of people whose insights you value. Once your Twitter network grows past a critical mass, you can ask them detailed questions and get higher-quality information back than a Google search would generally provide.

5. Newsroom and innovation showcase Twitter helps you stay up -to-date on news and current affairs, as well as on the latest developments in areas of interest like school leadership and technology.

8. Communicate, communicate, communicate Expressing yourself in 140 characters is a great discipline. You can become better at saying what needs to be said in your professional communications with less waffle and padding (even without txtspk).

6. Professional development and critical friends One of the best things about PD days is the break-out time between sessions, when teachers can get together to talk about what they are working on or struggling with. Twitter enables users to have that kind of powerful networking capacity with them all the time. It’s just a matter of finding the right people to follow.

9. Getting with the times has never been so easy!

Twitter is anything but complicated! You simply visit Twitter.com and create your account. A little light searching using key words for your areas of interest will soon yield a list of interesting people to follow.

There are plenty of Web sites offering advice on getting started and how to avoid a few common beginners’ faux-pas.

7. Quality-assured searching Trust the people you

A4A Volume 1, Issue 1

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Motivation is the Key! By Mcintosh8 For a while now I have been questioning why sometimes students that I teach are really motivated to learn, whereas at other times they lack that drive. Some of it I guess is down to human nature & factors outside of my control. However, I know that motivation is something both internally driven & externally influenced.

Therefore it’s a combination of the students motivating themselves, but also being motivated to learn by the environment I create in the classroom. From this I have compiled my list of motivational cues. I have called it my 5 to drive!

1. What I do in the first 5 minutes is vital. It has to engage, it has to spark their interest & promote thinking & discussion. This does require often a bit of out the box thinking by me to create this engagement. But it is worth it! Speed dating to recap & talk about previous topics & how they link to new learning was a good one I used.

2. Engage before explain! This involves students taking some responsibility for finding out what we are doing before I do any explaining. If they dont engage with their peers in some form of collaborative study, any talking or presenting from me are just words. My explanation can always follow their engagement 3. Students have to be involved in their learning. This could take the form of pre-planning or coconstructing of the lesson itself.

Most certainly they need to be responsible for leading their learning in the lesson.

4. Perceived choice! Keeping their motivation up there by facilitating the students into how they progress their learning. Some may want to talk, some may want to record down, some may want to mind map.

They can choose as long as they can demonstrate their learning.

5. A real recognition & praise from me for the resilient approach to always be looking for the chance to do things better. This is something that I try to model as much as possible in the hope it rubs off on the students.

Hopefully my 5 to drive will make my students into self-starters & make them self motivated to be life long learners.

Learning Journeys & Jigsaw Groupings

After reading some great posts from the blog of @dkmead via twitter about learning journeys, I decided this week to give them a go. A learning journey is basically a visual representation of how the students are going to learn and meet their learning outcomes. Instead of just writing up 3 learning outcomes and getting the students to copy them down, a learning journey gives a visual picture of where they are going to be travelling during the lesson and more importantly how they are going to get there.

The true spirit and ethos of effective AfL. Below is my learning journey prezi for my A2 PE group on aerobic capacity. Just zoom in on the learning journey circle. http://prezi.com/9s5p593zvd4i/aerobic -capacity/ The learning journey stayed up there all lesson for the students to keep referring to. Before I even began the journey I initated a 3 step process to the actual learning which resulted in great progress being being made by the students. As a quick fire starter the students had 5 minutes to write down 5 facts relating to what made someone have a high level of aerobic capacity. This tapping into their previous knoweledge really got them thinking straight away.

I then briefly explained their journey and highlighted how it involved taking in 3 important areas. This led me to implementing Petty’s jigsaw groupings.

Basically it involved splitting the class into 3 groups to cover the 3 areas to be learnt. Each group then had 10-15 minutes to become an expert in that area. They were told that they all had to be an expert and could not just allow one or two of the group to take over. Following this I numbered the students off and created new “teaching groups”. Each “teaching group” contained an expert from the 3 topics we initially started on. Depending on numbers you may have to have a couple of experts from each topic area. What happened next was the magic started!! They all then started teaching each other in their groups their own expert area. The results were quality to stand back and observe. Their learning pro-

gressed at a rapid rate, they were involved and engaged in what they were doing and all I did was facilitate what was happening.

Mcintosh8's Blog found at: mcintosh8.wordpress.com

“A

learning journey is basically a visual representation of how the students are going to learn and meet their learning outcomes. “

A4A Volume 1, Issue 1

Page 5

‘How to Teach’ by Phil Beadle Beadle is of course a one-off charismatic and, so some would say, inimitable teacher.

But here he puts together a rich array of delightful insights into the art of teaching in such a way that everybody will be able to take something to shape their own practice. It s one for the staff library and a must-read for all new teachers. --Sir Tim Brighouse Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education London Teaching is one of the most cognitively engaging, emotionally draining, and physically demanding occupations there is. In fact, it is such a complex job that one life-time is not enough to master it, which is what makes it such a wonderful career. No matter whether

you are a beginning teacher or a 20-year veteran, one can always get better at it, and this book is a great resource for helping in that journey. Beginning teachers will find lots of useful advice about this incredibly hard job; practical, sure, but also realistic about what is achievable in typical classrooms. And even the grizzled classroom veteran will find something new, or at least a new way of looking at old things, here. And this book is funny. It is laugh-outloud, embarass-yourself-inpublic funny. Every teacher should read it (in private). -Professor Dylan Wiliam, Deputy Director, Institute of Education, University of London

guage, stand-up humour, gruesome anecdotes, and politically-incorrect hints -- Phil Beadle takes the 'horrible histories' approach to the how -to-teach manual. The result is a funny, informative, practical and realistic book overflowing with memorable, cut-out-andkeep, easy-to-follow tips.

Reading this book will be a whole lot more fun than your first teaching practice - and more valuable too. Beadle is the wise, but mischievous, old lag in the corner of the staffroom - pull up a chair and wonder at his stories of survival. They could save your teaching career. --Mike Baker, BBC News/The Guardian

Shocking stories, fruity lan-

Courtesy of Amazon.co.uk

“How to Teach is the most exciting, most readable, and most useful teaching

‘Visible Learning for Teachers: maximizing impact on learning’ John Hattie In November 2008, John Hattie’s ground-breaking book Visible Learning synthesised the results of more than 15 years research involving millions of students and represented the biggest ever collection of evidence-based research into what actually works in schools to improve learning.

Visible Learning for Teachers takes the next step and brings those ground breaking concepts to a completely new audience.

Written for students, preservice and in-service teachers, it explains how to apply the principles of Visible Learning to any classroom anywhere in the world. The author offers concise and user-friendly summaries of the most successful interventions

and offers practical step by step guidance to the successful implementation of visible learning and visible teaching in the classroom.

This book: Links the biggest ever research project on teaching strategies to practical classroom implementation Champions both teacher and student perspectives and contains step by step guidance including lesson preparation, interpreting learning and feedback during the lesson and post lesson follow up Offers checklists, exercises, case studies and best practice scenarios to assist in raising achievement

Includes whole school checklists and advice for school leaders on facilitating visible learning in their institution Now includes additional meta-analyses bringing the total cited within the research to over 900 Comprehensively covers numerous areas of learning activity including pupil motivation, curriculum, metacognitive strategies, behaviour, teaching strategies, and classroom management.

Visible Learning for Teachers is a must read for any student or teacher who wants an evidence based answer to the question; ‘how do we maximise achievement in our schools?’

Courtesy of Amazon.co.uk

manual ever written.”

“The author offers concise and userfriendly summaries of the most successful interventions “

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A4A Volume 1, Issue 1

‘More Teachers Need to Blog’ by Kenny Piper

‘How can I know what I think until I see what I say?’

EM Forster

‘How can I know what I think until I see what I say?’ EM Forster I’ve always thought that, as a teacher and a professional, it was not merely my right to speak up about educational matters but my duty. When I started Blogging a year ago it was to share things I was trying in class with a wider audience and to attempt to communicate with educators who, perhaps, felt the same way about the way things were changing. Education is in a constant state of change in Scotland – and, seemingly many countries. It is not a new thing. However, what has changed is the ability for teachers to share these discussions with a wider audience through social media. I chose Blogging because I wanted to write.

Blogging does allow you to develop a thought, into a point, into a discussion. The disorganised thoughts flying around my mind during the week now find somewhere to go, instead of post-it it notes which get lost. When I write my blog posts I start by splattering any thoughts in no particular order, a sort of stream of consciousness. But when I see those disorganised thoughts I can ‘ see what I say’ and edit accordingly.. This has made me a better writer and, thus, a better teacher of writing. I can more understand the practical difficulties in structuring an argument, or reflecting some thoughts; something

I ask my students to do all of the time. It also allows me to reflect on things I thought six months ago and adapt or even disagree with now.

And I want people to read my blog too. It is no vanity project (or is every Blog a vanity project? Discuss.) I think I have something to say but what good is writing without a reader. It is no diary, no keeper of secret thoughts.

There is nothing more public and the Internet has become the ultimate leveller for the unpublished writer. I read other Blogs to find inspirational ideas, great thoughts and wonderful writing. And, as I do in school every day of my life, I look for those who set high standards and attempt to emulate them. Why settle for second best? Even though I often fail to live up to that standard.

Before blogging I walked about with an almost constant niggling doubt about what I was trying to achieve in Education.

There are as many great things which I felt were not being celebrated in schools as there are bad ideas. I questioned everything, as I try to encourage my students to do, but had no focus, no burning pyre to get rid of those ideas.

My Blog has given me somewhere to distribute the detritus of my everyday thoughts.

Some of them I wish I’d spent more time on. Some of them I’m every proud of. But I wouldn’t change any of them now. A year of Blogging re-

flects my development as a teacher but also as a thinker.

And that can’t be a bad thing.

There will be those of you who are very Blog and Twitter savvy who believe there are too many of us out there gassing on about our opinions.

However, I want to be controversial here and say that, in Scotland at least, there are not enough. Social media has opened up a world once closed to us. A country full of great educators with things to say. I suggest that there is not enough discussion going on out there and certainly not enough relevant literature to inform, inspire and explain the changes occurring in Scottish Education.

Too many people who have great ideas often become stifled by school structures and the intimidating hugeness of it all. We are professionals.

We are not fools. We can discuss the world of education in a positive and supportive, if often critical, eye without any of it becoming personal. You are a teacher. You have great things to say. Share them. Get blogging!

Kenny Piper 22nd January 2012

Read Kenny Piper’s blog at: http://justtryingtobebetter.wordpress.com/

A4A Volume 1, Issue 1

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From Our Own Correspondents: ‘Less Is More….’ By Trevor Stafford On Friday 13thJan three of us were fortunate to get a chance to hear Paul Ginnis speak at St. Albans Catholic School in Ipswich. Paul is the author of the Teacher’s Toolkit, and works with a variety of schools across the country developing their Teaching & Learning.

The good news is that many of the strategies Paul worked through are very familiar – carousel learning and De Bono’s hats, for example.

More challenging, however, was his insight into how OFSTED are preparing to evaluate teaching and learning.

The new emphasis is firmly on the side of the learner, and teaching – in the teacher-led sense – needs to be VERY

limited – Paul suggested to 10 minutes per lesson. The teacher’s role, Paul suggests, is to design the lesson, then facilitate it – NOT to actively lead the learning. Whilst this again is not new, the fact is that relying on the TEEP template alone will not suffice to design good (let alone outstanding) lessons. The TEEP structure is brilliant in terms of laying the foundations of lessons in which allow students to explore, understand and explain, but there is still a danger that we will lead them too actively in this process for OFSTED’s taste. To put it another way, the TEEP –based lessons I’ve been teaching, thinking they were ‘good’ – or perhaps ‘outstanding’ – could

still only be ‘satisfactory’ by the latest OFSTED criteria.

Paul also stressed the importance of Metacognition, again something OFSTED will be looking for. If I’m brutally honest, it’s some time since I incorporated ‘now let’s just think about how we did this’ into my lesson planning, but that’s exactly what I need to do.

After the course, my head still spinning somewhat, I tried to put some of the principles I had just heard into practice.

The Year 12 Philosophy Lesson Plan is an attempt – probably feeble – to do just that. Feel free to criticise ..........

“The new emphasis is firmly on the side of the learner”

‘An Innovative use of Facebook’ by Bradley Thompson Whilst out shopping last December in Waterstone’s, sorry I mean Waterstones, I stumbled across an intriguingly entitled book: ‘The History of the World According to Facebook’. Ultimately the book takes a light hearted look at historical events, presenting key historical figures as Facebook users.

After buying it for a friend (yes I read it prior to wrapping), the concept seemed so usable in lessons. I have used it to consolidate understanding of the relationship between different physical features and geographical processes and it has proved most effective but it could equally be used to present new information. For example: LongShore Drift and Transportation are now friends

Long Shore Drift uploaded the album ‘me at work’ Erosion changed its status to: “Ohhhhhhhhhhhh yeaaaah gonna wipe out some soft geology today, probably some boulder clay”.

Erosion, Deposition and Shingle Spit like this Happisburgh Cliffs dislikes this Erosion commented on Happisburgh cliffs wall Erosion: “ Happisburgh you’re going down man” Happisburgh: “What eva” Deposition: “ And i’m gonna drop you somewhere off the coast” Shingle Spit likes this I wanted to share this idea

because its range of application throughout the curriculum seems vast, not only in Geography but obviously History, in English to explore and illustrate main characters of a text, in drama to un-pick a script, in science to illustrate reactions, are my immediate thoughts.

So far I have used it with Year 10 as a ‘work sheet’ where I have laid it out like a facebook page, giving the users and leaving other boxes blank for students to fill them in with common Facebook phrases such as statuses, likes/dislikes, in a relationship, even photostyle spaces for pupils to include sketches of processes, e.g . ‘Long Shore Drift’ uploaded the Album ‘me at work’ the students then have to sketch a diagram of the process of long Shore Drift in that space.

The students seem to really enjoy this and I am certain that once they understand the concept, they will easily construct their own. I have really enjoyed using this idea and the students seem to love it.

“Let me know how it goes if you try it.”

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A4A Volume 1, Issue 1

And Finally: Something to think about ‌.

If you wish to contribute, please email: eric.wareham @leiston-high.org.uk

OR Tweet: @EricWareham

The Guy in the Glass

by Dale Wimbrow, (c) 1934 When you get what you want in your struggle for self, And the world makes you King for a day, Then go to the mirror and look at yourself, And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn't your Father, or Mother, or Wife, Who judgement upon you must pass.

The feller whose verdict counts most in your life Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He's the feller to please, never mind all the rest, For he's with you clear up to the end, And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and "chisel" a plum, And think you're a wonderful guy, But the man in the glass says you're only a bum If you can't look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years, And get pats on the back as you pass, But your final reward will be heartaches and tears If you've cheated the guy in the glass.