Welcome to Philips High School’S Teaching and Learning Magazine – May 2017 - Sharing ideas with teachers!
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Contents 1) Embarrassing School Moments Page 3
2) 1 Minute CPD: Marking
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‘When the world outside appears to have fallen apart, teachers will make sure the world inside remains reassuringly familiar’ Page 7
4) Top 10 Revision Apps for Students
5) White Noise!
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Embarrassing School Moments https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2017/05/20/mirandamoments/?utm_content=buffer8d520&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=b uffer
20th May 201720th May 2017 Reading Time: 3 minutes. How often do you have a ‘Miranda’ moment? We have all suffered ‘Miranda Hart’ -esque mishaps at school. Teaching is littered with embarrassing moments and unfortunate incidents. It would be nice to think that we look the part and portray a calm, professional front to the outside world but this just isn’t the case. At least not for us Miranda types where things just go ‘wrong’ on what feels like a daily basis. Laugh at yourself Bodily functions seem to score highly along with mispronouncing words that always come out as an obscenity. Then there is an uncanny ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with a fair amount of tripping up or just generally looking an absolute fool. You know the sort of thing: telling someone off but speaking so fast that your words end up crashing into each other so you end up in a tizz, blowing bubbles of saliva like a baby, until your mouth stops working – great behaviour management technique that one. Mistakes are brilliant opportunities for us to laugh at ourselves and for others to celebrate our vulnerabilities as normal human beings struggling to get through the day. Ask Mrs Jennings, my mentor: she managed to leave the Ladies with some loo roll hanging from the top of her skirt and walked round the playground with it there, completely unchallenged. She was mortified when she realised. My ‘Miranda moments’ tend to happen without warning and normally in front of the whole school for maximum impact. I cringe and shudder at the thought of them – some I’ve never got over. Is It Just Me? I was once talking to the whole school about something important – I can’t remember the ‘theme’ but I do remember I was addressing all the children and all the staff. I was holding a piece of paper which I dropped. As I bent over to pick it up I heard (as did most people present) an almighty tear of magnificent proportions and in that excruciating freeze-frame moment of ‘what the hell do I do now?’, I vowed never to buy a ‘cheap pair of trousers for school’ ever again. 3
Giggles and laughter erupted from all those assembled and I had to finish the assembly sat on the stage, legs firmly pressed together as my hapless colleagues got everyone out desperately trying not to laugh themselves. Moral: always take a spare pair of trousers to work and make sure they cost well over £29.95. This actually doesn’t beat doing a whole school assembly with my flies undone. I spent the next term worrying whether the Police and Social Services were going to come knocking. Moral: check, double-check and triple-check before exiting the house. My top five Miranda Moments 1. Staff meeting I once ‘felt myself going’ half-way through a staff meeting and fainted into the lap of Mrs Burrows. I ended up on the floor with Mr Saxon fanning my face with some Year 6 assessments. Hugely embarrassing – I’ll do anything to get out of a meeting. Moral: always have a window open, don’t sit next to the heater and sit ‘at the end’. 2. Parents evening Spilling hot coffee all down the front of my crisp white shirt and best M&S tie about 20 minutes before parents evening was due to start. No access to a hand dryer, parents evening was conducted in a wet shirt covered by a flowery cardigan I borrowed from Miss Featherstone. I got some looks. Moral: always take a spare shirt and tie to work. 3. Outside learning I took a class outside to do some pond dipping. They were excited, I was excited. I gathered them round and was just about to go through my health and safety spiel and ‘interesting facts about water boatmen’ when I felt a splat on my head and wondered why one of my glasses lenses had turned white – a pigeon downloading on me had the class in hysterics. It even went in my mouth. Moral: don’t go pond dipping without a hat. 4. Whiteboard washout Having a dreadful cold is no excuse for staying at home if you are a teacher as you will drag yourself in regardless…even if Ofsted are in. I couldn’t stop sneezing on the day in question and whilst standing facing the whiteboard I sneezed so suddenly and so violently I ‘Jackson Pollocked’ the whiteboard in slime. The class bleated ‘Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh’ in unison and I wiped it off only for it to smear and a visibly disgusted inspector scribbled a note into his black book. Moral: if you are ill, stay at home and don’t be a ‘soldier’.
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5. Parents evening 2 Speaking for the allotted 10 minutes to Mr and Mrs Henshaw about their son Michael and his brilliant progress only to realise that I had been using my notes for Andrew Armstrong. They left delighted. I went home ashamed, knackered and confused. Moral: never try and cram 25 appointments into one parents evening as you start to go delirious and forget your own name half-way through. Every day is a school day.
What clangers, howlers and magnificent messes have you got yourself into?
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1 Minute CPD: Marking 23rd May 201722nd May 2017 Holly 2273 Views 0 Comments Assessment, classroom strategies, CPD, Feedback, Marking, One-Minute CPD, Plus Equals Minus, Workload Reading Time: 1 minutes. What is one-minute CPD? Here at Teacher Toolkit, we strive to help teachers save time, provide them with resources and support them to be the best they can be in the classroom. 1 minute CPD is a new addition to the #TTkitCPD family! 1 minute CPD will:
Take you no longer than 1 minute to read! Provide you with a practical tips to improve an area of your practice. Be on a topic selected by our readers!
So here it is our first 1 minute CPD! Plus, Minus, Equals Teachers should mark students’ work in relation to a previous piece of work.
If the latest piece of work is the same quality as the last, give it an = (equals) sign If it is better than their last piece, give it a + (plus) sign If it is worse than the last piece, give it a – (minus) sign.
Why is it good strategy?
Students can see at a glance if they have improved, stayed the same or if their standards have dropped If you do this regularly for a piece of work, it will save you time when marking You can adopt the ‘live marking‘ idea in class, which means less work to take home.
Tip Keep a tally of how many students get +, how many get – and how many get =. You can then distribute rewards and recognition appropriately without the task becoming too erroneous. Further reading 1. 10 Marking and Feedback Strategies 2. 5 Minute Marking Plan 3. 5 Tips to Eradicate the Marking Misery 6
'When the world outside appears to have fallen apart, teachers will make sure the world inside remains reassuringly familiar' Geoff Barton 23rd May 2017 at 13:55 Today, without fanfare, teachers and school leaders up and down the country will be quietly doing the right thing, doing us proud The apparently deliberate targeting of a venue filled with young people marks a repulsive new low in the acts some people will perpetrate to undermine our values, to try to break our society. We awoke to find – yet again – that our old certainties were under attack. The BBC phoned me to ask what school leaders would be doing today. From 15 years as a secondary headteacher, here’s what I know. It’s not that I ever had to deal with a situation on the devastating emotional scale of Manchester. But like all schools, like all organisations, the unpredictable can puncture the routines of school life. It did for us occasionally. My guess is what school leaders know foremost is that those routines matter. Schools are safe places, and part of their safeness derives from the clearly enforced routines – the assemblies, the lesson changeovers, the familiarity of register names being called out and answered. I learned early on in headship that when the world outside appears to have fallen apart, you make sure the world inside remains reassuringly familiar. Routines today will have carried many through, helping to keep emotions and speculation to be kept at bay. But I also know that what school leaders will have done is to legitimise discussion about the events of last night. In English or history lessons, in tutor time and science, teachers will have allowed students to express their horror, their bewilderment. They’ll have asked students to pause, and perhaps bow their heads in solidarity with the victims. They may have opened up a website to look with students about the latest developments. In this way – in an era of fake and sensationalist news – our teachers will have modelled a civilised, thoughtful response to events we can hardly comprehend. They will have been teaching young people how we – the adults they look to – navigate through a sometimes dark and baffling world. 7
Finally, across all schools and colleges, whatever their intake, today will be a day when their sense of community, of cohesion, will have been to the fore. More staff will have been on duty, mingling with students, talking to them, asking how they are. It’s a sign of how civilised many of our schools are that students are likely to have asked about the wellbeing of staff. In assemblies, in classrooms, the lunch queues, there will be a heightened awareness of how lucky we are – to be part of a community, to be with people who care, to be alive. Being a teacher, being a school leader – these are never easy jobs. Too much of what they do goes unnoticed. Today, quietly and without fanfare, the education profession will have done us proud. As a contrast to last night’s act of such abhorrence, we can’t thank them enough. Geoff Barton is the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. He tweets @RealGeoffBarton. https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/when-world-outside-appearshave-fallen-apart-teachers-will-makesure?utm_content=buffer7c8de&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_cam paign=buffer
Top 10 Revision Apps For Students 19th May 201721st May 2017 Reading Time: 3 minutes. How can you help your students revise? Revising isn’t easy. So, how can you help your students to become a ‘study ninja’? Revision apps can help students with organisation, investigation and memory. Take a look below at out top-10 suggestions. Study Ninja
Study Ninja inspires students to get motivated and build a personalised study plan. They can plan, practice, play and perform through a series of mini-games. 8
Includes tips on the best ways to revise.
This is just one of many excellent apps that will help your students to review more efficiently and effectively, preparing them for that all important exam: Get it on Google Play or Download on the App Store. Here are our top-10 apps for helping students with revision this summer: 1. Keep
All about organisation: from reminders to checklists – this app has it covered. Image to Text is a great feature that allows you to grab text from photos. Students can take photos of their notes and off they go! Get it on Google Play or Download on the App Store
2. Quizlet
A study and flashcard app, Quizlet let’s you create quizzes with your own information. There are also 400million quizzes already available across a wide range or areas. Get it on Google Play or Download on the App Store
3. Padlet
The easiest and quickest way to collaborate. Students can create a shared space where everyone can share ideas, links, images and tips. The link can be shared with everyone in a class, allowing everyone to add in their information, save as a pdf and send to everyone! 9
Get it on Google Play or Download on the App Store
4. Popplet lite
A beautifully simple way to create mind-maps. In this free version you are only allowed to create one popplet, so when you’re finished one, why not save a screenshot and start on a new topic! Download on the App Store
5. Spark Post
Make revision less boring by illustrating important quotes. The final image would fit nicely in the centre of a popplet (app 4). Download on the App Store
6. Clips
On Clips you can create short clips with live annotations! I recommend changing the language of your device; use the videos to test your pronunciation for MFL. Download on the App Store
7. Classic Explain Everything
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The only paid app on this list. EE is my go to for any subject. Import a photo, video or popplet, then add your voice explaining what you want to remember: blurt out all the vocabulary, processes and dates you need! Get it on Google Play or Download on the App Store
8. TextingStory
A fun little app where you can create a video of a ‘text conversation’. Create common answers to questions in a fun and visual way! Try importing your video to Explain Everything and practice your accent! Get it on Google Play or Download on the App Store
9. Gojimo
Already the UK’s most used revision app! It has over 40,000 practice questions ready to go and free! Focus on the specific areas you need to work, with instant feedback. Get it on Google Play or Download on the App Store
10. Paper by FiftyThree
Visually representing your information can save thousands of words. This app along with the others here has made my scrawl look beautiful! Appsmash this with SparkPost and Explain Everything to produce a video explaining processes and forming answers that words cannot suffice. Download on the App Store
And finally… A bit of productive procrastination! 11
Although this isn’t technically an app, get your students to have a look at Auto Draw. This Artificial Intelligence project can guess what you are trying to draw and finish it for you, creating lovely little drawings which you can use to help explain a solution, or just to make your answers look less bare and to make revision that bit more enjoyable!
https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2017/05/19/revisionapps/?utm_content=buffer32e14&u tm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
White Noise by @TeacherToolkit Reading Time: 4 minutes. This is a blog about student behaviour and their experiences of learning through a battlefield of systems and rules. Recently, I was reminded about what it must be like to be a student in a school who is finding life particularly difficult. Students who are struggling to meet expectations within school. This may be for a wide variety of reasons, and perhaps home life may be the determining factor; this aside for the moment, this blog is about students who appear on the teacher radar more often than others. This blog is not about the influences at home that affect students in school, although it will have a significant role in the reasoning behind some of the outcomes. However, I would like the reader to assume that we are aware of this and bring ourselves back into the day-to-day rigmarole of school and the routines and expectations that expected with schooling. Imagine … Imagine if you could for a moment, that you are a 14-year-old student in a large secondary school, moving from lesson to lesson on the ‘sound’ of the bell, every hour. And on the sound of this klaxon, you are expected to stop learning French and then start to learn for example, maths the moment you step foot across the classroom threshold.
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Is this model for schooling still what we expect education to look like in the next 10-30 years? Is this how we learn and how we still expect students to learn? Even though we understand the brain and cognition a little bit better than we used to in the 19th and 20th century? Assumption … Allow me to assume, that students are bored in your lessons, or fail to understand the learning taking place in your classroom. I make this statement, because I know it happens in my classroom. I also know that there are a colossal range of outside school factors that will also determine the ‘learning mood’ of a child. This coupled with the pressure of performance and expectations on teachers, make schooling a pressure cooker! What would it feel like to you, if you moved from classroom to classroom and every time you entered into that lesson, and for whatever the reason, you are always told off by the teacher? ‘Shout; Bark!; Oi you! Stop it! Shout again! Get out now!’ How much of this could you soak up throughout the day?
Image: Shutterstock I know, that if I have just one, single unsavoury interaction with a colleague, it affects me for the entire day. In most of our adult (teaching lives), we will do well to go through one school day, experiencing just one unhappy incident. Imagine a child in your school, experiencing this 4 or 5 times a day … Over the course of the day, one would become increasingly grumpy and frustrated and steer towards a tipping point, where one more incident would send anyone over the edge! White Noise! It will be at this stage of the process, where anything any teacher says, becomes ‘white noise.’ The student fails to see a clear picture; their listening skills shut down and any ‘conversation’ continues to muffle in their ears. Throughout the course of the day and from a wide variety of people, any additional and resounding ‘telling-off’ that they receive, will soon become background white noise and lack clarity. The student will soon turn the television off. There is suddenly a drastic change in the picture. 13
There is no power … Lack of Power: There is no motivation to switch on. The child’s performance starts to wane and the white noise is left unattended for a small period of time … Their academic performance is affected. Their attendance to lessons/school may slip. A special relationship or specialist is required to intervene. At some point this student will rear their head on another radar. This may be the attention of their head of year, or the pastoral school leadership team who are required to intervene and support. And intervention will be required. In my recent analysis of the Teacher Standards – based on 99 teachers in my school – we have self-reviewed our expertise against the 8 standards. One of the significant areas that we have identified as a school for improvement in the classroom is standard 5: “Teaching: Adapt teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils.” Solutions: It is difficult in one single blog post, to be able to offer a one size fits all solution. Every child must be treated equally and as an individual. There will be a context every single child, coupled with a multitude of factors. There is no silver bullet. In all my experience of teaching, the vast majority of teachers I know you support students to a very sophisticated level and are fully aware and capable of reading the emotions of a child. This becomes increasingly heightened with experienced and job-role. So, how can you as a teacher make the right interventions; and at the most critical time so that we do not add further white noise to a child’s experience throughout the school day? What we can do to intervene? Take a look at some of the following;
Know when and how to differentiate appropriately, using approaches which enable pupils to be taught effectively (1)
Have a secure understanding of how a range of factors can inhibit pupils’ ability to learn, and how best to overcome these (2)
Demonstrate an awareness of the physical, social and intellectual development of children, and know how to adapt teaching to support pupils’ education at different stages of development (3)
Have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils, including those with special educational needs; those of high ability; those with English as an additional language; those with disabilities; and be able to use and evaluate distinctive teaching approaches to engage and support them (4)
As part of our duties as teachers, we must also safeguard every child. Being able to read a situation (and a child) and having the capacity to intervene at a critical moment in a child’s life, takes a high level of intervention. If all else fails in the lesson/corridor; 14
Speak softly. Adopt a non-threatening body language position. Speak in private rather than public; and especially do not sanction in front of the whole class. Be willing to apologise if you have to. Be prepared to listen without distraction. Make no promises for privacy. Seek support within your school.
At all costs, avoid the white noise signal being switched off longer than it needs to be … https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2015/05/15/white-noise-by-teachertoolkit/
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