Welcome to Philips High School’S Teaching and Learning Magazine – May 2013 - Sharing ideas with teachers! 1
Contents 1. The Problem with Progress: Designing Lessons for Learning – Page 3
2. Learning Intentions and why we need ‘em – Page 8
3. Thinking out of the box – Outstanding – Sonja Weed – Page 10
4. Are your students thinking? – Page 11
5. Do we really have high expectations of our students? Or is it just talk? - Page 13
6. Does Technology Hinder or Help Toddlers’ learning – Page 16
7. Teaching Repertoire to Learning Repertoire – Page 20
8. Unlocking the Power of Progress – Page 24
9. What Makes a Great Teacher? – Page 28
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Memories are made of this ... – Page 30 2
The problem with progress: Designing lessons for learning #David Didau
Over my last couple of posts I’ve suggested that you can’t can’t see learning in lessons, you can only infer it from students’ performance. This means that as a teacher, when you get students to respond to exit passes, signal with traffic lights and otherwise engage in formative assessment what you see are merely cued responses to stimuli. What I mean by that is that the tasks we set students to check whether they’ve learned what we’ve taught only tell us how they are performing at that particular time and in those particular circumstances; they offer no indication whether the feckless buggers will remember any of it, or be able to apply it in new and interesting ways. I’m not saying that assessing performance is without value; by monitoring students’ performance if we can get some idea of what they may have learnt. But that’s all it is: inference. The problem comes when well meaning teachers, having been blessed with some training on AfL, believe that they can ever know what their students have actually learnt rather than what they were able to do, and then, congratulating themselves on their clear-sightedness, adjust their plans for tomorrow’s lesson accordingly. At a massively simplified level, the process might look like this: - Teacher teaches students how to multiply fractions. - Teacher sets some problems which require students to multiply fractions. - Students successfully complete these problems. - Teachers marks their books and thinks, ah good; they’ve all learnt how to multiply fractions. Let’s move on to some harder sums. Sound familiar? I’ve certainly operated in this way (although not about fractions!) The problem is that I’ve really no idea whether the students really have learned what I wanted to teach them. All I know is that they were able to do (or not do) the task I set. If I assume that knowledge has successfully been transmitted and move on, many of the students may not have retained anything from the wonderful lesson I so lovingly crafted. And I won’t realise this until they sit some terminal exam and fail. Of course, this is a caricature and I’m sure no teacher would actually behave this way. Would they? 3
Well, maybe in a culture obsessed with demonstrating progress in lessons they might. If they’re under pressure to design lesson so that an observer can tick a box and nod wisely at what the students have magically learned they might start to think that this is in fact the right thing to do.
Learning is messy. Sometimes students look like they’re making no progress at all but actually they just have a problem with the performance task you’ve designed. Sometimes students seem to fly; they jump through all our hoops and then, for reason we can work out, don’t appear to know anything when they’re asked to apply their knowledge in a different setting. And sometimes students look like they’re learning loads but actually they were able to do all they stuff you just taught em back in year 6! Or maybe we prepare students so thoroughly to perform in exams that that’s all they can do. So, if that’s the problem, what’s the solution? Well, step one is to organise your programme of study to introduce what Robert Bjork calls ‘desirable difficulties‘. (See links at the end of the post.) And step two is to plan lessons which take account of how children actually learn rather than how we’d like them to. Here are a few principles to help us do precisely that: 1. Build progress into learning outcomes This is pretty obvious really. Use your spaced and interleaved curriculum to add to and connect the knowledge students are (you hope) acquiring. Nuthall’s research tells us we should assume that students will only retain new concepts in long term memory when we have taught them for the third time. Until then we need to remind students about the context in which they previously came across the information in order to activate their working memories. I’m going a bit off-script here, but I’ve become increasingly convinced that SOLO taxonomy is most effectively used to plan learning outcomes; many of the tricks and gimmicks involved in explicitly teaching students about the taxonomy should, perhaps, be bypassed to concentrate on expanding students’ domain knowledge. There, I’ve said it. I find SOLO incredibly valuable in helping me plan and organise a curriculum, but much of the time I was previously putting into teaching the taxonomy itself was based on the flawed belief that it would help students demonstrate progress. And make no mistake, it is great for getting students to demonstrate progress; but of what? If I accept 4
that learning takes time and needs to build on a firm foundation of knowledge then there really isn’t any value in prompting students to show they’re able to more from multistructural to extended abstract in a single lesson. All this demonstrates is the progress they’ve made in their ability to perform a particular task at a particular time. True extended abstract thinking develops over time. This is of course something we should plan for and it seems a sensible use of time within a spaced, interleaved curriculum that we should plan to take students on a journey from knowing very little, to knowing a lot, to being able to apply this knowledge in new and interesting ways. An alternative approach to helping students to think more deeply about the knowledge they’re acquiring is contained in this guide on Visible Thinking from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. 2. Test for prior knowledge If we’re to have any chance whatsoever of tracking what students learn we need to know what they have already learned. This means that before we teach a topic we should use diagnostic assessment to see what we might need teach and who we might need to teach it to. Nuthall tells us that 50% of what teachers teach is already know to their students. And to further complicate matters, students will all know a different 50%! This sounds impossibly complex; how are we ever to know what to teach? Since the acquisition of new knowledge and skills depends on establishing pre-existing knowledge and skill, knowing what students know and can do when they come into the classroom or before they begin a new topic of study, will help us design lessons that build on student strengths and acknowledge and address their weaknesses. Cognitive psychologist, Daniel Willingham says, “students come to understand new ideas by relating them to old ideas. If their knowledge is shallow, the process stops there.” Diagnostic assessment doesn’t have to just be a test. Direct measures like tests, concept maps, interviews etc. are all useful but so, sometimes, are more indirect methods like student selfassessment, reports and inventories of topics that have already been studied.
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How to organise a concept map A quick word on concept maps. Novak and Canas describe concept maps as “graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Words on the line, referred to as linking words or linking phrases, specify the relationship between the two concepts.” So, essentially they’re a more structured mind map (and not under copywrite by Tony Buzan!) Concepts are represented hierarchically according to the structure for a particular domain of knowledge and also on the context in which that knowledge is being applied or considered. I’d advise constructing concept maps with reference to a particular question you want students to focus on. This ‘focus question’ can be broad or specific depending on what you’re planning on teaching – the key is to keep students focussed on identifying concepts that answer the question and then rank them in order of importance. These concepts are then used to construct the map, which, students need to realised is never finished but will expand to fit in new concepts they learn along the way. And that’s the point: all students will have constructed their own map which they can use to help them decide what they need to learn. Too trendy? If co-construction’s not your bag, you can always stick with a test; as long as you have a reliable means of assessing what students know before you start teaching you’ll have a benchmark against which to assess how much they’ve learned when you 6
finish. Anyone who doesn’t do this is effectively fumbling in the dark and using a combination of guesswork and fortunetelling to work out their students’ progress. 3. ‘Take the temperature’ of lessons It’s important to gauge whether students are ‘getting it’. I written before about how I use my ‘flow chart’ to work out whether the levels of stress vs challenge in lesson are sufficient for students to move from what they comfortably know to knowledge that is ‘just out of reach’. But the king of the in-lesson thermometers is the hinge question. For the uninitiated, here are the essentials: - A hinge question is based on an important concept in a lesson that is critical for students to understand before you can move on. - The question should fall about midway during the lesson. - Every student must respond to the question within two minutes so go with multiple choice, factual questions - You must be able to collect and interpret the responses from all students in 30 seconds. This is a great use for all those mini whiteboards gathering dust in the stock cupboard. - You need to be clear on how many students you need to get the right answer in advance – 20-80% depending on how important the question is. 4. Use dialogic questioning to explore misconceptions Dialogic teaching is very different from the classic question-and-answer sessions we’ve all either suffered or perpetrated in which students compete to offer brief answers to closed questions. In contrast, dialogic teaching is characterised by comparatively lengthy interactions between a teacher and a student or students in a climate of collaboration and mutual support. Alexander (2005) describes dialogic teaching as: … collective, supportive and genuinely reciprocal; it uses carefully-structured extended exchanges to build understanding through cumulation and throughout, children’s own words, ideas, speculations and arguments feature much more prominently. A teacher’s stock in trade is the question. Acres of forests have been felled to provide the paper needed for all that’s been written about questioning but in the interests of the environment and convenience I’ll point you in the direction of Alex Quigley’s Top 10 questioning strategies. The point is that we need to have a battery of questions ready to explore what students currently understand and to use this information to guide them away from amusing misconceptions. This can be done during whole class direct instruction or with individuals or individuals while students get on with the tasks you’ve designed for them to demonstrate their current performance. If you have students’ concept maps to hand you’ll be able to establish who might need particular support with this particular topic as well as who requires stretching to make relational links with the stuff they don’t know so well. The Rolls Royce approach might be to design specific questions for key students, but who’s got time? I rely on using a range of clarify, probe & recommend questions in order to drill into why students think what they think and to get them to establish connections with the other aspects of the course which are being interleaved. 7
Over to you! I’m sure there are many more wonderful strategies which promote the long term retention and transfer of knowledge rather than the whizz bang showmanship of teaching for short term performance, but these will be enough to get you started. I’d be delighted if you felt able to suggest your own top tips for designing lessons for learning.
Learning intentions & why we need ‘em! http://learningspy.co.uk/2012/02/18/learning-objectives-why-we-need-em/
Over the past week I’ve gotten myself snarled up in a number of increasingly heated debates about the efficacy of the humble learning objective. The view of many seems to be that they get in the way of students’ learning and are some sort of top down imposition which autocratic teachers foist on their unwilling classes. There seems to be a movement which believes that learning objectives kill creativity and spontaneity. Whence cometh this bile? I remember the first time I saw a learning objective being used in a lesson. My school had just been placed into Special Measures and things were looking grim. I’d only joined the school a few months previously and was wondering how to get out. Then, at a INSET event organised to rally the troops I watched a video of David Gale (a maths teacher who tweets as @reflectivemaths) writing the learning objective on his white board, questioning the class about what they might learn and then getting them to learn it. The scales fell from my eyes. That’s what I was supposed to doing. You see, I’d bumbled through my Oxford University PGCE with absolutely no idea about what to do with objectives. In those days we called ‘em teaching objectives and as far as I could see, you put together some, fun engaging activities for the kids and then worried up an objective from the national strategy and scribbled it on your lesson plan. Until watching Dave in action not only I had never considered sharing my objectives with students, I barely understood what they were for. This experience changed the trajectory of my teaching and my career. I became an evangelical convert. Fast forward 10 years and learning objectives are now the norm. Every lesson I have observed in the past 5 years has objectives (or aims, or intentions, or outcomes, or whatever) dutifully written up on the board and copied into students’ books. Does this mean that the learning objective has become mere white noise; a meaningless routine enacted in thousands 8
of classrooms with very little impact on learning? Well, sadly, yes; this is probably all too often the case. The use of learning objectives has, all too often, become a reflexive box ticking exercise with little or no thought behind it. David Weston makes the point that, “Teachers need to understand theory and evidence of learning and make informed judgements, not comply with rules.” I concur. We have far too many ‘how to’ guides in schools but far too few ‘why to’ guides. James Michie wrote this a couple of days ago in which he takes up the learning objective baton and reminds us that they are an integral part of assessment for learning. He reminded me of Dylan Wiliam’s assertion that sharing objectives (or intentions as he prefers) opens up a discourse about learning and that students need to know where they’re supposed to be headed if they’re going to have a chance of getting there. Fair point. So should we go back to dutifully copying them down so that students can tick them or draw smiley faces next to them at the end of the lesson? No, of course not. It is my contention that learning objectives are important for two reasons. Firstly, they ensure that teachers are clear about the purpose of the lesson before they begin thinking about all the fun they want to pack into them. Secondly, they provide a very useful signpost against which progress can be checked. Now, I know progress has become a bit of a dirty word and I’m not suggesting that Ofsted’s insistence on students visibly making progress every 20 minutes is a good thing. Even Ofsted seem unclear about this. But no one can seriously want to make the counter argument that students shouldn’t make progress, can they? Make no mistake though; simply writing your objective on the board is not good practice. The effectiveness of learning objectives is seriously hampered by a paucity of success criteria. Any teacher worth their salt needs to be able to break down their objectives into incremental, achievable steps. Please note: I do not advocate the all/most/some heresy here. Informing students that only ‘some’ of them will get around to the hard bit is a recipe for low expectations and thus to be avoided. My advice is to use something along the lines of the learning continuum which allows students to make progress without suggesting a point at which they can opt out. Another point made by Paul Dix was that students should have a hand in designing their objectives. He advocates a negotiated assessment grid in which the teacher and students arrive at a set of ‘task specific criteria’. Now, I’m not against this per se, I just worry about giving the students too much scope for coming up with stuff which clearly isn’t going to be useful. At best, I think student negotiated success criteria are a sleight of hand in which the teacher fools the students into coming up with the point that they, the teacher, would have come up with anyway. To summarise:
DO have a learning objective clear in your mind before you plan your lesson DO feel free to share it with students in as creative and interesting a way as you’re capable of DO have success criteria against which progress can be measured DO refer back to your learning objective at various points in the lesson and get students to explain how far they’ve met it. DON’T just get students to copy them down in their books and tick them at the end of the lesson. Damian Ainscough tells me that copying objectives for 3 mins per lesson = 10 school days (50 hrs) ‘wasted’ per pupil per year. We need to avoid the dreaded ‘copy these in to your book so that we can sit and tut at the slowest writer’. 9
Sonja Weed ~ OUTSTANDING ~ Thinking out of the box We had an OFSTED inspection and I was being observed doing literacy by the inspector and by the head. The premise was that a mysterious parcel arrived in the classroom marked “do not open” “top secret” “danger”. Oh the FUN we had passing it round, shaking it, smelling it – trying to decide WHAT it could be. At this point, the head and inspector were NOT in the room. The kids were climbing the walls when we decided to open up the box, in which was a threat from some spies who had been watching us (CIA – a letter written with an official Whitehouse letterhead). They had heard that the teacher (AKA – me) had stumbled upon a secret plant testing facility (the previous day’s lesson, which included some great video as stimulus) and unless the children wrote some detailed descriptions of the plants there would be serious consequences… So usual vocab a-la Tim Rylands style illicitation ensues (head and inspector now arrive) and the kids wrote the most AMAZING descriptions. So, the rest of the lesson ran really well. I knew it was OUtstanding, support staff knew it was outstanding, my head said it was EASILY Outstanding but the OFSTED man said it was Good, with elements of Outstanding. The reason? The fact that I didn’t use ICT as the stimulus instead of the box – he said it should have come as an email or a text. No matter what we argued, he wouldn’t have it!! The WHOLE lesson, all the resources etc etc came out of that box. The whole reason the kids wanted to write was because of the BOX -an email just would NOT have done it! So my point is (sorry for rambling on!) that somewhere, the function of ICT got lost in translation. Somewhere, people are forgetting that it doesn’t HAVE to be in every lesson, sometimes slate and chalk do just as well. I know you agree, I just wanted to give you a real life example. http://www.timrylands.com/2013/04/20/sonja-outstanding-weed-thinking-out-of-the-box/
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Are your students thinking? Inspiration, not desperation!
Smashing the glass ceiling – progress #blogsync
Like Baroness Thatcher, I am in the business of smashing glass ceilings. “Teachers now,” said a parent at a recent Y10 parents’ evening, “are not like they were twenty years ago. I left school at 15, but my teachers weren’t like you are now. It was different back then.” His son is one of the twenty-nine students in our current Year 10 that I am aiming at Oxbridge. This demands high rates of progress from day one in Year 7 as most of our students lack “cultural capital”. So how do I make sure that our most able make progress? I teach half of top set Y7 English once a week for speaking and listening. They have been learning how to debate, and watching back their first formal debates which I videoed before Easter I realised that they are not using facts and figures as evidence to develop their arguments. I planned a peach of a lesson on Margaret Thatcher, using lots of facts and figures from The Guardian’s excellent infographic. Students had to develop arguments for or against “This House believes that Margaret Thatcher was the best Prime Minister since Churchill”, which they will develop in to a three minute debate speech for homework. Girls make more progress than boys at our school, across all ability bands, and teaching top set Y7 I see why. Daz has shown little interest since September, despite being one of the sharpest in the year. He has told me that his future career is secure in the music/dance industry and English and Maths are irrelevant. But this lesson, second day back after Easter, he is in a reflective mood. “Would I do better if I were at a grammar school, Miss?” he asks. (Clearly miles away, he’d interrupted another male student who was explaining the infographic to the class.) “I was just two marks off,” he explained. After visiting Tom Sherrington’s ( @headguruteacher ) boys’ grammar school, KEGS, before Easter, I have returned with new determination to focus on “cultural capital.” From the British museum project to the grammar hub, co-construction of lessons and use of real life projects like publishing a newspaper, there are high expectations at KEGS and a culture that motivates boys. Interestingly, most students are in mixed 11
ability classes, which means that there is greater equity in some ways than there is in my setted comprehensive. Though of course grammar selection testing means there is a much smaller range of ability across the whole year group. When I started using the five minute lesson plan every lesson and reflecting on it last term, I asked Daz about his lack of engagement. I found out he does not like lessons where he and his classmates discuss abstract ideas. He wants facts, a Hirsch load of facts to cram in his brain, facts he leaves knowing that he didn’t know before the lesson. So the infographic was an ideal starting point, and as they came in to class they used post its to identify which statistics showed things got better between 1979 and 1990, and which showed things got worse. They learnt GDP, pay percentages, and lots of data interpretation skills. Rajiv explained these really well as they worked, so he then summarised for the class. Next they watched a couple of minutes each of David Cameron, then Glenda Jackson, speaking about Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons. As they wrote down arguments they heard for and against Thatcher, Rajiv asked in amazement, “Did she really smash a glass ceiling?” Allocated to for or against(they had some choice, but one side was over represented…) they had to come up with arguments as a group, supported by evidence, and then I picked the strongest debater from each side to demonstrate as a plenary how to listen and then use evidence to argue back against a point. They had spent some time before Easter identifying logical fallacy in arguments, for example in a highly controversial lesson which began with a video message from our Headteacher announcing the launch of compulsory Saturday school, with apologies that he wouldn’t be there as he would be watching Chelsea every week. Homework: prepare a full three minutes of a debate speech for or against and bring to next lesson. We will begin next week with them arguing in pairs, avoiding logical fallacy and listening while their opponent speaks, so they can argue back against points, rather than just trotting out what they have prepared. I will listen in and select the best speakers to model a higher quality formal debate to the class in the second half of the lesson. I will video this to use for future lessons. Daz lost it in the group stage. He was completely off task (despite all the facts!) and had the other boys in the class entranced in a discussion about music. We strolled outside together. “How would it be,” I asked him, “if you were dancing with your crew and I came and started dancing in the middle? ” “We’d welcome you in, Miss.” “Nice of you,” I reply, “but the reality would be that I would spoil it completely, and that is what you are doing in my lesson, with my crew.” We looked in through the door at the two groups working away on their arguments. “Join in, like they are, and then you will do better than you would have done at a grammar school. But at the moment you are not making any progress here, so you would probably do better there.”
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Returning to the lesson, Daz and I then had an animated discussion with Rajiv about the stats at the board. “House prices going up, that’s bad, because then people can’t afford to buy a house,” they argued. I thought about the difficulty in finding objective evidence when it comes to judging political leaders. “Do come and dance with our crew, Miss! It would be great.” “I tell you what,Daz, get ten A* grades and I will come and dance with you and your crew.” And I listen out for the sound of a glass ceiling cracking somewhere in the future, as I body pop across it.
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Do we really have high expectations of our students? Or is it just talk? Posted on April 20, 2013 by tabularasaeducation “Miss Matthews, these texts aren’t exactly very inspiring!”- Year 10 pupil, Galaxy High. Last week, I blogged about the low expectations Galaxy High has of the behaviour of its students; this week, I want to go a step further and suggest that low expectations are so entrenched in the system that even the curriculum we teach perpetuates poor standards. The rhetoric of high expectations continues to chime throughout the halls of my school and I wonder once again: is it just talk? The philosophy that underpins the curriculum is steeped in low expectations. The English Language non-fiction exam is a prime example of how good intentions can result in a substandard education for our students, and I will take examples from this to clarify my viewpoint. However, I am beginning to think that the entire curriculum is plagued with the very same philosophy that has sucked the soul out of English lessons. Two key underlying principles of the curriculum that trouble me are: 1. That it ought to be relevant to young people’s lives. 2. That it ought to be engaging for young people. I want to argue that by emphasising the importance of relevance and engagement above all else, we are treating children as weak minded and therefore incapable of tackling a genuinely challenging and rich curriculum. Furthermore, this is an inaccurate understanding of what actually interests children, and what will help them to become well-rounded members of society. By structuring the curriculum around content that we think students will find interesting, we are trapping them within their own narrow horizons, and risk not equipping them with the tools they need to escape them. 13
“Our curriculum needs to be relevant and engaging for our students.”- Head honcho, Galaxy High. This misguided fallacy directly contradicts the chat about high expectations that gets banded around so much. Teachers that have genuinely high expectations of the students they teach believe in expanding horizons through great subject content. Whether this means teaching era-defining speeches in non-fiction English lessons, or the mysterious story of the square root of two in maths, there is a wealth of knowledge out there that can encourage children to be curious about the world they live in. Kids know none of this stuff when they start school. They probably wouldn’t learn much of it at home or through the pursuit of their personal interests either, yet we design what we teach around curricula that prioritses engagement and relevance. This week, I was faced with a very real dilemma. I was about to embark upon teaching the non-fiction exam to my year 10s in preparation for their mocks in a few weeks. The exam is utter nonsense. Students are given leaflets, magazine articles and web pages to analyse, and the topic content covered is always supposedly ‘relevant’ to them. However, I do not believe that this is what teaching non-fiction should be about. Non-fiction writing is an extremely powerful tool for communication. It has the power to inspire and influence others, and used well, can instigate change in our society. Therefore, surely I should be helping my students to understand that by providing them with the best pieces of non-fiction texts that are out there. Important political speeches, enlightening autobiographies and ground-breaking journalism can really help students to understand the true power of language, and can help them to form their own opinions about this tumultuous world in which we live. Moreover, these texts serve as an efficient vehicle for building cultural and historical knowledge, which I believe to be fundamentally important. With this in mind, I began planning my scheme of work for this term. Within about twenty minutes of sourcing speeches by Elizabeth I, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, it suddenly struck me that this was not necessarily going to help them to pass their exam. The exam does not test students’ contextual understanding of the significance of texts through time, but rather their ability to make ‘perceptive’ comments about the use of alliteration in a headline. My dilemma, therefore, was this: do I teach to the exam, helping them to get a fairly decent grade and therefore ‘improve their life chances’ or do I teach them a rigorous curriculum that will expand their horizons? Perhaps I could strike a balance between the two: teach the skills through decent content (which I know many teachers do, and I respect them for that), but it is a very fine balance indeed, one that I am not sure I have yet refined. Time is precious, and the more time we spend discussing the various nuances of the Spanish Armada and the speech at Tilbury, the less time we have to practice writing PEE paragraphs. Yes, they might be interested in what food Tinie Tempah enjoys, but has anyone stopped to think that they might also be interested in things they don’t already have a pretty extensive knowledge of? My students know loads about Tinie Tempah, but they don’t know who Margaret Thatcher was. The problem with continuing to teach content that is ‘relevant’ to them is that we never end up teaching them anything new.
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An insult to children Do we really have such low expectations of children that we don’t think they could cope with challenging and culturally significant content? Children in the private sector are regularly introduced to rigorous and culturally rich content, and they manage it just fine. “The won’t engage with it unless it is relevant to them.” -Various This is another excuse that comes up time and time again. Making content relevant and engaging is perceived as a panacea in challenging schools, particularly when dealing with silly ‘kinaesthetic’ boys. What I find most frustrating about this approach is that it underestimates what actually interests children. Believe it or not, kids from council estates can read, understand and engage with an extract from Plato, they can learn to complete the square, and they can be fascinated by Galileo’s discoveries. We are afraid of losing kids in lessons. OFSTED make it quite clear that students must be engaged if we are to achieve a decent lesson grade, but our understanding of what engages children is misguided. In the same way that they do not need to be ‘up and about’ using flip-cameras every lesson to be engaged, they do not need to be given a dull article about the RNLI in order to find English interesting. In my experience, the texts offered by the exams actually have the reverse effect. Many students hate these exam style questions with a passion, demonstrating the low expectations the exam board can have, not only of how to expand our students’ horizons, but of their interests, too. Children should be inspired and pushed in school. The prioritisation of engagement and relevance above all else is a low expectation of our students. They do not need to be educated about things they already know; this presumption is both patronising and insulting. They need to be given the opportunity to learn about life beyond their own back yard and to be inspired by the best ideas that culture has given us. Our students deserve a rigorous and enriching curriculum. Despite having the best of intentions, the focus on relevance and engagement does little to help our students to break free from the shackles of socioeconomic disadvantage. It’s about time that we give children some credit and start to take them more seriously. We must expect more.
http://tabularasaeducation.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/do-we-really-have-high-expectations-ofour-students-or-is-it-just-talk-part-two-curriculum/
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Does technology hinder or help toddlers' learning? By Philippa Roxby Health reporter, BBC News
Children under five years old have an uncanny knack of knowing how to master new technology. From smart phones to tablet computers and game consoles, it is not unusual to see toddlers intuitively swiping screens and confidently pressing buttons. Even if parents enjoy the momentary peace that comes with handing a small child a gadget to play with, parents secretly worry that this screen time is damaging their brains. But it appears that screens can be beneficial to learning - and the more interactive the experience the better. Research from the University of Wisconsin, presented at a meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development this week, found that children aged between two and three were more likely to respond to video screens that prompted children to touch them than to a video screen that demanded no interaction. The more interactive the screen, the more real it was, and the more familiar it felt from a two-year-old's perspective, the study suggested. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote Kids who are interacting with the screen get better much faster, make fewer mistakes and learn faster� End Quote Heather Kirkorian University of Wisconsin 16
Heather Kirkorian, assistant professor in human development and family studies, carried out the research and says touch screens could hold educational potential for toddlers. When she did another test on word learning, the results were repeated. "Kids who are interacting with the screen get better much faster, make fewer mistakes and learn faster. "But we're not turning them into geniuses, just helping them get a little more information." Helpful tools So breathe more easily parents, your toddler is just doing what comes naturally and interacting with the world. In any case, technology, in the form of phones and tablets, is here to stay. Many primary schools and some pre-schools have introduced iPads into the classroom to facilitate learning. Technology, understanding how things work, and ICT are part of the curriculum. "I'm not one of those people who think we shouldn't expose children to mobiles, tablets etc," says Helen Moylett, president of Early Education, a charity that aims to improve teaching practice and quality for the under-fives. "They can be really helpful and interesting tools if used in the right place to help us learn - and not all the time, or instead of other things." However, her main concern is that parents are not always good role models.
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"I'll just do this headstand, then I'll go and play on mummy's phone" "I see parents texting while they walk. Often they are so plugged into their device that it becomes a barrier to communication with their child." A recent study from Stirling University's school of education found that the family's attitude to technology at home was an important factor in influencing a child's relationship with it. It concluded: "The experiences of three to five-year-olds are mediated by each family's distinct sociocultural context and each child's preferences. "The technology did not dominate or drive the children's experiences; rather their desires and their family culture shaped their forms of engagement." Christine Stephen, study author and research fellow at Stirling, says most parents understand the dangers of addiction and passivity, and set up rules on screen time to make sure that children do a wide range of indoor and outdoor activities. Bad habit But there are other experts in the field who disagree. Psychologist Dr Aric Sigman has regularly said that children are watching more screen media than ever, and that this habit should be curbed because it could lead to addiction or depression. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote We can get in a terrible panic about [screen time], but toddlers are very curious and savvy� End Quote Helen Moylett Early Education charity He calculates that children born today will have spent a full year glued to screens by the time they reach the age of seven. If true, few people would argue that this fact is scary. Yet, if only 9% of UK children do not have access to a computer at home or school, as studies suggest, then screens are pervasive. There is no going back. The key must be for children to use their time in front of them to best advantage by downloading the best apps and the right software to aid their learning. Jackie Marsh, professor of education at the University of Sheffield, says there needs to be more research done in this area. 18
"We are going to outline what we feel should be the principles for good apps because there is a lack of a central resource for teachers. "It's not just a case of giving them the iPad," she says. "It's finding the right quality of apps that's important." Develop skills She also maintains that good-quality programs and particular software can help children with learning difficulties develop the skills they are lacking. Online environments can also provide children with a virtual space to develop in confidence - something they might not be able to do in the home or the classroom, she says. Her message to parents is that two hours of screen time each day is enough for children aged six and under. Although there is a minority who consider screens not to be healthy, there is no evidence to suggest they are detrimental, Prof Marsh adds. Children quickly get bored with one type of media, research suggests, and tend to combine screen time with playing with toys and running around in circles outdoors. "We can get in a terrible panic about this, but toddlers are very curious and savvy," Ms Moylett says. "Children are going to be exposed to all sorts of things." Perhaps, in the end, they just want to enjoy technology the way adults do.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22219881#
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Teaching repertoire to learning repertoire Visible pedagogy One of my most memorable responses when I asked, “What do you like most about these lessons?” was the reply from a Year 7 pupil who answered without hesitation, “I like the plenary that Miss always does.” On hearing this, a wave of excited reassurance washed over me and I followed up with, “That sounds great, so what happens when you have the plenary?” Just as quick, the pupil confidently said, “That’s the bit where we get to pack up.” By thinking of pedagogy and the design of learning activities as akin to the exoskeleton of lessons, we can share the relevance (the ‘so what’?) of the learning by pointing out to learners exactly where the joints, connections and overall structure of the learning is and how it all fits together. In doing so, we offer a chance for them to grab on to the bones of the lesson and find their own way around complex knowledge, difficult concepts and new applications with each other. Making our pedagogy visible to learners is a fantastic way to deliberately involve them in the process of learning. It provides a great opportunity to introduce and establish a shared language of and for learning. It also offers a chance to share effective practice across the school. Jim Smith (@thelazyteacher), often talks about creating a sort of bingo card for learners to record all the different activities and ways they are asked to show their learning that they encounter during a series of lessons. Such a card could include presentations to the class, extended writing, role play, posters and so on. Building on this idea, the table below is an extremely generalised mix of activities and pedagogy that could make up a reflective tool. From this, you can refine the table into the way in which you design learning so that you use specific strategies for specific purposes, a sort of ‘What Works Well AND WHEN’ for learning design…
Launching new topics Checking progress Deepening understanding Clarifying misconceptions Gathering feedback on progress Assessing the security of understanding
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A learning script To squeeze even more learning out of adopting a visible pedagogical approach, we can ask learners to do more than just record what they experience. We can encourage them, as part of regular reflections on their learning, to demonstrate their understanding of how these activities help them learn and, most importantly, how confident they are in learning as a result of thinking in this way. From this point, learners could create their own activities for each other according to what will work BEST for the topic and phase of learning they are in. By deliberately integrating this as part of on-going self-reflection, we also avoid straying into the soul-destroying conversation many of us will have experienced over the years which goes something like, ‘I am a kinaesthetic leaner, so I can’t write any of this down.’ Instead, learners will become more discerning about what activities work best for them, when and why. Learners will become aware that some activities are more challenging for them than others and so they need tom consciously can invest more effort to become better at these. They will become more involved in their own learning process and gain access to what is often referred to as the ‘secret garden’ of the curriculum and the ‘so that’ of learning outcomes. Conversations with learners can then be informed by the card as a ‘script’ to help them reflect on the learning skills they are developing. The essential aspect of this is that the learners themselves use this to:
Recognise what, how and why activities are designed for them to learn in particular phases of a topic How effective these activities are in helping them make progress 21
How effective they are in learning in these different ways and what they need to do to improve The rationale for why certain ways of organising learning are used at specific times Start making suggestions as to how learning might be organised in light of their increased self awareness and understanding of what helps them learn
Making the untypical typical By having a prompt card such as this, learners have to be flexible and adaptable when we introduce a new way of doing something because this will be typical of what happens in all their lessons. We will avoid the, “Oh no! You’ve moved the room around!” statement of horror as thirty stunned faces enter what has become an alien landscape because this is the first time in 5 years that the furniture in the room has ever moved. Instead, you should hear, “Oh, are we doing hot seating / continuum line / talk partners / secretive…today?” One of the additional benefits of this approach is that we too can keep a record of the range of activities and approaches we have used with particular topics and groups. This can then be used to:
Remind us of our own teaching repertoire and ensure we adopt a relevant, purposeful learning design for each specific aspect of the topic Ensure that we regularly reflect upon, refine and adapt the way in which we design learning opportunities Open our teaching repertoire to self-reflection and peer scrutiny so that it is always ready for refinement Share different approaches across teams, departments and whole school, learning new strategies as small, manageable chunks of expertise
A Marginal Learning Gains Repertoire Card The repertoire card can also become a handy teacher prompt to refer to during the lesson and focus on a specific strategy as part of a Marginal Learning Gains approach. I’ve had a go at an Marginal Learning Gains version below:
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Once our pedagogy is visible to us, we can challenge ourselves to reflect on the very specific strategies we have tested and identify the impact on learning and develop ways to further develop these. A Pedagogical Platter upon which to feast Cross-departmental collaboration: We can collaborate with our colleagues both within and beyond our teams to create five new activities or strategies or try an existing one in a new and unfamiliar context. Student representatives: If you have student representatives in department meetings, this approach provides the students with a script of learning to which they can add, share experiences from other subject areas and teachers and authentically contribute to the development of teaching and learning across the school. Self-efficacy of learners: Imagine a time when learners have such high levels of agency that they feel confident enough with their language of learning and pedagogy to select from their own learning repertoire effective strategies to develop their knowledge and understanding. Or a time where they come to their lessons and point out that they have ‘done’ card sorts in their last three lessons, so please could they use a different technique today? Then you can invite them to decide what strategy/ pedagogical approach would enable them to best meet the success criteria of the task. And, once the activity is completed, with you, they can self and peer assess their outcomes by reflecting on whether the strategy they chose was the most effective based on how well they met the success criteria. The next step could be to design the way they will organise the next task, giving them an opportunity to lead their own learning for the outset, anchored by the assessment criteria against which they will measure their progress.
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Unlocking the Power of Progress I was recently asked to run a session for an INSET day on 'Progress for Outstanding Learning'. It got me thinking about the tricky issue of how a teacher can get students making real tangible progress and also show that progress is taking place. I researched and mulled over the issue in great detail in the two weeks leading up the session and gathered together far too many ideas! I have it drilled down to four key areas that help me focus on progress. I hope they help you too. Lesson Objectives: Lesson objectives are the foundation blocks of learning. If you get them wrong and build your lesson around a dodgy lesson objective the whole structure will collapse. The lesson will not work as it should, it needs those strong foundations to stand firm and tall. As an NQT I remember working for hours, planning lovely activities and spend loads of time preparing resources. I would go in proud of my hard work, only to find that the students were not actually progressing. They were busy and often very happy working but ask them and they did not see the point of the task or how it linked to the bigger picture. When I asked a colleague about this they replied in horror "gosh, don't ask them! What do they know?" This just didn't sit right with me - I was not getting the results I wanted. I set about finding out what I was doing wrong and righting those wrongs. No purposeful progress was being made because I was not focusing the students on the right things to help them move on in their learning. Getting the objectives right is essential for the teacher and the students. I started to look at the bigger picture first then zoom in to the smaller, zoom out and zoom in. I started to have a really clear focus and understanding of the assessment criteria, end game and skills I needed them to acquire to do well in that topic. The results were immediate, their progress rocketed. Once I had this understanding, all I needed to do was to translate the skills into objectives that allow progress and form tasks around that. Clear, simple and effective. As I have said, in the past I have been guilty of the task based lesson objective. I have seen the error of my ways. Now I always keep the objectives focused and the at the central of all the activities I set up in the lesson. Too many times I have observed a teacher who has worked so hard on the tasks set in the lesson but none have been helping the students to progress. I really feel for them when all that hard work has gone into the preparation. It's easy to remedy, skills focused not tasks focused objectives and form your activities 24
around them. Build the progress step by step. Yes you want them to complete the task but that is an expectation not an objective to help them progress. Here are some ideas that you can dip in and out of to keep your students focused and get them to engage with the objectives you are setting out for them.
Marking Matters: In a recent and extensive study looking at the impact of different elements on the learning and progress of students, Professor John Hattie found feedback to be one of the most important factors. I could not agree more. Good quality feedback that students are guided to use well is immensely powerful.
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Judging Progress: There are hundreds of wild and wonderful ways to check, gauge or judge progress overtly in the lesson. I can hear a few teachers at the back muttering something about not being performing monkeys - I completely agree! There was a short time when I too felt that all that stuff was just for show. I remember thinking it was fun but not real learning. I could not have been further from the truth. We should not be expected to put on a silly, over the top show every time an observer is in the room. I am suggesting that we need to bring some small routines into our everyday lessons. These routines will not only help observers see the progress being made but also help you and the students see it too. Making the learning visible is great for getting pupils to see others in the class progressing and understanding how they got there. They are modelling learning for you. In doing this they are helping one another to progress while you sit back as a proud teacher. I simply do not believe that a teacher 'just knows' when students are progressing, we are not bloomin' psychic. Well most of us aren't anyway! It is essential that we actually dip in and check the learning is taking place. We also need to check where the students are within that learning so we can adapt what we are doing for all students. For me it is not good enough to just leave it until I mark their books to see if they 'got it' - the learning time has gone then, it's too late. Some feel that students won't know if they have progressed. If that happens in my class I feel like I have failed. I immediately go back and look at how I can help them see the steps for progression in this area. Empower them, they need to take charge of their own progress and need us to show them the way. Below are a few ideas that help you quickly judge the progress being made to pick up and 26
use on Monday if you choose. They can be used as a plenary or a mini planers at any point the lesson. Traffic Light - We have the red, amber, green cards in our students planners but if you don't a simple set of three coloured pieces of card or paper on the desk of each student will do. Red for 'help I'm struggling'. Amber for 'I'm ok but could do with some more help'. Green for 'I'm happy I know what I'm doing here'. Thumbs - Similar idea to the traffic light but with thumbs up, middle and down to indicate their stage. This one needs no preparation - bonus. Don't Tell - Hold back the objective. Tell them the tasks they will be doing in the lesson and get them to figure out the objective. They can move on to deciding how they can be successful too. Real connection with the point of the tasks they are doing. WWW + EBI - Get the students to assess What Went Well in the lesson for them and to decide and Even Better If. They are showing what they know and planning for future progression. Learning Triangle - 1 thing I already knew, 2 things I learnt today, 3 things I would like to find out next lesson. Get them tiering up their learning, building on past learning and planning for future learning all in one little activity. Question Box - A box in the classroom that can have questions popped in it at any point in the lesson. e questions can be anonymous to avoid fear of asking and don't even need to be shared with the class. The teacher can check the questions box at various points in the lesson and allow the questions and gaps in knowledge to inform the lesson as it progresses. Mini Whiteboards - Simple as you like. Pose a question to check learning and ask them to write the answer on the mini whiteboards and hold it up to the front. A sea of answers. Immediately you can see where everyone is. Again I have seen these as part of the student planner - very handy. Face Rate - Again this is the same principle as the traffic lights. Smiley face for confident, neutral face for unsure or ok and frown for need more help. Good Old Fashioned Redrafting - If your marking routines are right then redrafting can be hugely powerful. They need user friendly and clear tips for improvement and then this works a dream. High Aspirations: Half the battle with students making progress is their lack of self belief. They have to believe they can achieve and trust in us that we are there to guide them. I care a great deal about getting the very best out of all of my students. If my students don't do well I always look to myself before pointing the finger at them or their past performance. top set to bottom set, I ensure they all know that I believe they can achieve and will fight to get them to do the same. In a previous school I was given the great opportunity of work with a HMI inspector in a consultancy capacity. Over the course of the day I realised how much I had achieved in my role at the time and learnt a great deal from him. I was working in a very much comprehensive Inner-London school at the time. we were discussing the targets that I was working with and my plans for the team when he paused, looked me straight in the eye and asked a question that has changed the way I think about student achievement and progress. "If the circumstances were right; teachers, timetabling, management, environment etc... what would you say you would expect a year group to achieve in terms of A*-C in your subject?" I barely had a moment to think about what I was saying before I 27
blurted out "100%." It was the strangest feeling, it just felt right, of course 100% of students can get a C if the provision and approach is right for them. We have them for 5 years! With every class I teach I will work tirelessly to ensure that they have what they need from me in order to achieve what they can. If it is not working I change it up and take a different approach, I don't blame them. I am great believer in reflection, hard graft and commitment in teachers and students alike. I constantly reflect on my teaching and their learning and work hard in order to get the very best I can from them. I aim to get them to do the same during their time with me. Raise the bar and they will strive to reach it.
http://msfindlater.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/progress-inlessons.html
What makes a great teacher? POSTED BY HEADGURUTEACHER
Over the last 25 years I’ve worked with hundreds of different teachers and had the privilege of watching hundreds of lessons in the schools I’ve worked in and supported. My children have had a quite a few teachers now and I have their perspective too. Without doubt, it is fair to say that there is a range but right at the top of the pile, some teachers are simply exceptional. These are the teachers everyone raves about; you’d love them to teach your children; they inspire, enthuse, make learning accessible and challenging and get great results as well. At KEGS, they become ‘legends’. For me, they are the profession’s superstars; the people I look up to and strive to emulate. I may never be an exceptional teacher – but I’d like to be better! So, as the new term approaches, I’ve been thinking about the very best teachers I’ve known. At first, they are all seem so idiosyncratic in their approach; uniquely charismatic and impossible 28
to copy. But, if we are aspiring to join them, is there anything that they have in common that we can learn from and put into practice in our own lessons? Well, actually, yes. I’m sure there is proper academic research in this area, but based purely on my subjective evaluations, here is my list: 1) They are drivers: Almost above all else, I’d say this is the key characteristic. They are standards-setters, never happy with mediocre work or sloppy thinking; always pushing every child to go further, to aim higher. This manifests itself through classroom dialogue, the inherent challenge in lessons, routinely giving challenging and engaging homework and so on. They are relentless in pursuit of excellence and their language with students is infused with this sense of urgency and drive: come on, there is another level; you can do it. Some have a glass half-empty demeanour; for some the glass is always nearly full….but the effect is the same. 2) They nurture student-teacher relationships based on genuine mutual respect, where there is no argument about expected standards of behaviour. They achieve this in different ways – sometimes through the gravitas of maturity and experience; sometimes through amazing warm, interpersonal interactions with every child – but they create an environment where learning always thrives and there is a sense of the teacher and their students enjoying each other’s company. Their rapport with students is palpably warm, friendly and trusting. 3) They take joy in going off piste.. using deep subject expertise to go beyond the syllabus, inspiring students with their passion and their capacity to make connections and to tell stories or give examples that bring it all alive. At the same time, they take exams really seriously…. It is not one or the other. Exams are not the be all and end all – they include all the ‘fun stuff’ as well – but if you want an A*, you’d be in safe hands. 4) They celebrate the intrinsic reward and motivating power of learning and achieving and use this to great effect. To varying degrees, they have the ability to explain complex concepts in ways that make sense; they ask good questions and give really good feedback; they are usually experts in the use of AfL (even if they don’t always call it that); however it is done, students feel that they are learning; they know where they stand and feel confident about the process. This is reward and motivation enough. 5) They are principled about people, about learning and work with integrity. This means that they do things for the right reasons – usually self-effacing and not 29
the ‘big ego’ type. They are learners, happy to explore new ideas to develop their practice, but always in a way that captures the spirit; ie they are not slaves to the tick box or the OfSTED crib sheet; they embrace change with integrity, with passion – or not at all. It is obviously hard to capture – and some of the idiosyncrasy gets lost in the generalisation. But if we adopt the right attitudes and embrace the challenge, I don’t think it is unrealistic to meet these standards. The hard part is to manage them all. Crucially, even the greatest teachers are not at their optimum day in, day out…. but their routine core practice is so strong that they never fall too far from their peak.
Memories are made of this… “When I retire, I want to have some memories…!” So said ‘Tim’ – the amiable character in Ricky Gervais’s ‘The Office’ – when he tells ‘Gareth’ (the “assistant to the assistant manager”) that he wants to leave his job, go back to university and find something important to do with his life. Teaching is very hard work, but when you do retire (and that may be a very long way off) you can look forward to memories that people like ‘Tim’ can only crave… In 1979 I was doing ‘Victorians’ with my class of ten-year olds. We decided to put on a Victorian Music Hall for the Christmas show. I was the Master of Ceremonies and donned a handle-bar mustache for the part. We ran the show to a packed house for three nights. Everyone laughed. Twenty years later, I employed two young black guys who could sing and play the piano to gospel music. Within six weeks they had trained sixty kids to sing gospel. They performed a concert in the local church. Their voices nearly lifted the roof off it. Tears were streaming down my face. Four years earlier I was sitting on a tube train being stared at by a young black man in a hood. He got up and stood over me. “You’re Mr Newland innit?” I nodded. “Darren?” “Yeh…” he said. He sniffed. “It was good ya kna..!” Then the train stopped, the doors opened and he got off. One day in 1986 I was teaching maths to a group of nine year olds struggling with long multiplication. In the middle of the session, a little boy with a speech impediment starts 30
tugging at my shirt. I turn to him. He is nodding his head vigorously. His eyes and face are beaming. “I get it now! I get it now!” he is gasping with delight. Seven years later I get an email. It read: “I’ve googled Mr Newland and got this email address. Are you the Mr Newland who used to teach me between 1980-82? You were my best teacher.” Fourteen years earlier, I am in the Lake District with thirty kids doing adventure sports. One girl who has never been out of Hackney gets lost but finds her way back by asking a farmer for a lift on his tractor. Another who has never seen a horse before, falls off one, but jumps straight back on it. And a boy wakes me up in the middle of the night to tell me: “Sir! I’ve just seen the stars!” One day in 1984 a boy with learning difficulties is painting. It’s home-time and I ask him to pack-up. He says: “Can I stay here forever? I want to paint for the rest of my life!” Twentyeight years later, he invites me to his one-man show at a gallery in west London. Two years before that on a visit to a local museum, a girl notices an old photograph of a railway arch that’s near her house. It turns out to be the place where the first British pilot built and flew the first British aeroplane. We visit the site. It’s derelict. But we campaign to have it recognised. There’s a blue plaque there now. Five years later, an eleven year-old girl in my class refuses to speak to me for three days. On Friday after school, I find a note tucked under the windshield wiper of my car: It reads: “Sorry about this week. I started. Being a woman.” Last year the same person contacted me to say: “I’ve been living in Australia but I’m home to see my mum. Can we meet for coffee? I’ve got a little boy now and I want him to meet my teacher.” Not many jobs demand from you what teaching does. But when you retire, you’ll have many more memories like this. I promise. http://newteachersblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/memories-are-made-of-this/
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