Teaching and learning magazine oct 2014 by Emma Platt

Welcome to Philips High School’s Teaching and Learning Magazine – Oct 2014 - Sharing ideas with teachers!

Welcome It’s good to be back!! I’d like to take this opportunity to thank John, Alison and Joanne for doing such a good job in my absence. I’m really excited to see the new initiatives that are being developed around Teaching and Learning this year at Philips High School. With only 7 weeks into the term, already we have started to implement our ‘Open Door Classrooms’ and the all new ‘Teaching & Learning Community’ is taking off. I am hoping the TLC will give us the chance to talk about teaching in a supportive way. As usual, the half termly workshops are taking place. The Kagan workshop was back by popular demand this half term, but please let me know of any other workshop ideas you’d like to see next half term. Our WAILS and MAD time are fully embedded now and I really do feel our ‘teaching and learning’ is moving onwards and upwards. As ever, it is down to you, the teachers, who are making a difference! What a fantastic start to the year! Happy reading and Happy Half term!!

Contents 1) Top Tips for Re-engaging Disengaged Students – Page 4 2) Kagan In The Classroom – Co-operative Learning – Page 7 3) My Best Lesson- Page 9 4) DIRTy Butterflies: Understanding and acting on feedback – Page 10 5) Can I be that little bit better at...understanding why I might be getting differentiation wrong. – Page 13 6)

Progress 8 – being held to account for every grade, in every subject – Page 21

7) How do I work effectively with my Teaching Learning Support Assistant in the classroom? – Page 28 8) Rethinking Marking – Page 30

Top tips for re-engaging disengaged students The discussion was opened with a question about how disengagement can be identified, in other words, how do we know if a student is disengaged. @Lianne_Allison commented that disengagement can manifest in poor behaviour and / or poor learning. Others reiterated this point and added that negative attitudes towards school and learning as well as disrupting others are also indicators. Later in the discussion, some people debated whether the term ‘disengaged’ was an appropriate way of describing students who are not reaching their potential and suggested that as teachers, the way we describe the problem of the ‘disengaged’ can be rather ‘disengaged’ in itself. I posted a link to a discussion of the construct here: http://t.co/iisQdInPoG. Ideas for re-engaging students who seemed disengaged acknowledged that disengagement is a mutli-dimensional construct and that it does not simply refer to behavioural engagement, but emotional / relational engagement (including relationship with peers, staff and home) and psychological and cognitive engagement (how challenging and relevant the content of the lesson is). Therefore, suggestions to improve engagement ranged from using music or movement at the start of the lesson to set a tone / pace and expected participation, to demonstrating your own enthusiasm or passion as a teacher, showing them ‘ you are there for them not the job…knowing them as a person” (@TheBenHornbury) In acknowledgement that not all students who are disengaged are ‘naughty’, there was some discussion relating to how to identify if a student is fully achieving their best, or fully ‘switched on’. There was some concern that those who are ‘silently’ disengaged are not picked up on or seen as less of a problem because they are not disruptive. @JCPiech commented that teachers are often unaware that disengagement is a reflection of a bigger mental health problem which teachers can miss, or worse, exacerbate because of a lack of training in the area. Some people commented that disengagement usually stems from teacher actions (indicating it was unhealthy to make the ‘problem’ the student’s ‘fault’ and pointing out that students don’t like to ‘be preached to’ from someone who they feel doesn’t value or understand them’ – @tmeeky), whilst others (who were also teachers), blamed themselves for failing to engage all students, which, as others pointed out, is unhealthy in itself as the issue is more complex. Disengagement can happen for one or a number of reasons, complexly linked from internal, emotional and mental factors to wider contextual factors of past experiences in school, relationships to staff and peers and home life. As @Eslweb suggested, personalisation is key, as well as relating the content of the lesson to student’s own lives (@Jobinatwigg @day_tom, @jivespin). Relevance of the topic to ‘the real world’ and student’s own lives was explored further and suggested that if work can be linked to something the students enjoy as well as their lives beyond school and in the future , 4

there will be more value to the work for them. It is my opinion that in addition to this, the work itself can hold intrinsic value if it is expressive or creative in any way and therefore a reflection of the student’s own thoughts, personality etc. @Bussinessangmeri suggested that the expectation on students could be said to be a factor in student disengagement, when the expectations are just too high and students become overwhelmed. Some agreed and others added that a lack of expectation or challenge could have the same effect. It was agreed that a balance of boundaries and clear expectations, along with flexibility, showing interest in the student as a ‘whole person’ and differentiating the tasks step by step was the answer (proximal zone of development). Some links were provided to blogs with top tips such as http://t.co/J8TjjQHeN4 and http://t.co/LvWnKXoabb and specific ideas that other schools are currently trying out were suggested such as surveys with your class to reflect on the relevance and challenge of the work, letters and postcards (@aslweb also made the excellent suggestion of postcards featuring student work) and calls home to share relevant praise with home, and ‘friendly competition’ that avoids apathy in class and by passes some of the peer pressure ‘not to care’. There seemed to be very few comments about actually identifying a list of disengaged students, trialing interventions with these groups or tracking any data about student attitudes or engagement. There was a sense that it was difficult to put into quantitative terms but talking to students, allowing a degree of choice over content of lessons and flexibility (adapting lessons, subtle us of behaviour management that means teachers seen as ‘human) were seen as vital. Something to avoid (as noted by @kevupnorth) was assuming you know why a student is disengaged and that you know how to ‘fix’ this. Using individual student’s names (especially in secondary) was identified as important and easy to apply, as was the idea that contacting home in one form or another each Friday was good practice to prompt staff to consider who they could engage further via praise each week, although @eslweb disagreed and said that, from experience, the less the school had to do with home the better, in order to have a clean slate and ‘be the best version of themselves’. @Kezmerrelda and others stated that knowing the whole child and taking time to form a connection with them means that the student will want to meet expectations and do well. A link was made between student behaviour and teacher attitudes. The inference was that whichever party a negative behaviour / attitude originated from, it would be reflected back by the other and perpetuated, until both teacher and student held negative views of each other, causing the relationship to break down and therefore disengagement on the student’s part. ‘putting yourself in the student’s shoes’ and ‘breaking’ this negative cycle was seen as a change of mind set by the teacher initially, with people suggesting finding something positive or shared interest as a ‘way in’, with responsibility for student behaviour gradually being introduced as the relationship gains in strength. The difference between initial engagement (surface) to deep engagement is discussed here http://t.co/vDITYWZ0WK.

@Jivespin noted how giving set roles or responsibility in lessons can engage students quickly and provide purpose and most agreed that praise (where actually deserved) was very positive as a way of building relationship and trust, a ‘wow’ board was mentioned, but participators acknowledged that at times, it was not appropriate to do this explicitly and that it was better done discreetly. @Jivespin also commented that ‘learning spies’ are used as ‘secret shoppers’ in lessons to look for progress of groups or individuals. @chrischivers2 commented that programs of study should build on student strengths and interests and towards a set goal. Promoting competence is a big feature of this interesting article which I linked to: http://t.co/FSRSbNOw7z The use of older student (for example sixth form) mentors, or ambassadors, was seen as engaging for the older and younger students, and also reduced the potential hierarchy /authority of a staff / student dynamic. Responsibility, ownership and mastery / competence were common themes in this period of the discussion in which modeling your own investment in the learning process as a teacher was also vital in expecting the same commitment from students. @ClareBrunet simply suggested that two words: “I care” were key to engaging learners. This was backed up by @rapclassroom who stated “I hear you say you’re giving up, but I’m not giving up on you”. Both in terms of the importance of encouragement, positivity, personal relationship, and the distinction between behaviour and the student as a person, this concept was central to the discussion. The session ended with lots of people saying they has some ideas to take back to class the next day – especially writing or calling home as it was Friday!

Kagan in the Classroom Posted on October 6, 2014

Resident Kagan expert Vicky Littler shares a selection of co-operative learning structures that can easily be used in the classroom. What is Kagan? Kagan activities are any tasks in which students work both independently and collaboratively with others in order to further their learning. This learning process is simultaneous; students are learning together and there can be no ‘passengers’ or ‘opt outs’. Why should teachers engage with Kagan? The activities facilitate interaction between students and gives them a chance to be active learners in your lessons (quite literally – they’ll be out of their seats!) Did you know? The oxygen supply to the brain is increased by approximately 15% just by standing up? Kagan also gives you a chance to take a back seat so you can observe errors or misconceptions about a subject or topic and address them. The activities can be modified, tweaked and differentiated to meet the needs of all students in your classroom. They’re also a great way of making ‘boring’ topics like punctuation more palatable. Top three Kagan Structures: Quiz – quiz – trade:

Each student is given a card with a question, coaching tip and answer on it. Pupils put their hands up and find a partner (hand up again when free!) Specify which person is to ask their question first (e.g. shortest hair). If they each get the answers right students can swap cards. 7

Differentiation: split class in two: higher and lower order questions; the pupils must circulate within their ‘half’. Alternatively, high ability students can write the QQT cards themselves to consolidate learning. Clusters: Each student is given a card with a name/ figure/ fact on it… Students will be given a specified amount of time to ‘cluster’ their information into groups of some significance – e.g. characters from a particular Shakespearean play Differentiation: higher ability can create cluster activities for you; you can tell students how many groups there are in total before they try to make links between their pieces of information or give them a clue! Show down: Students get into groups of four – each group has a set of questions (these can be printed or shown on a white board). Each person attempts the questions individually (I use whiteboards – one minute limit – the buzzer works well as students know when the time is up) When 1 minute is up students share answers – they then have another minute to reach a consensus and write the agreed answer down Example cards:

My Best Lesson Posted on September 29, 2014

Pippa Speed, D&T Team Leader shares a simple formula that maximises student learning. My best lesson? Really simple actually… Think, Pair, Share After our recent advisory subject inspection in Design and Technology by Ofsted inspector Peter Cox I received some excellent feedback on my lesson and started to realise that this very simple formula of Think, Pair, Share could work so well in so many subject areas that I had to share myself. Think, Pair, Share is a structure first developed by Professor Frank Lyman at the University of Maryland in 1981 and adopted by many writers in the field of co-operative learning since then. It introduces into the peer interaction element of co-operative learning the idea of ‘wait or think’ time, which has been demonstrated to be a powerful factor in improving student responses to questions. It is a simple strategy, effective from early childhood through all subsequent phases of education and beyond. PURPOSE: Processing information, communication, developing thinking. RELEVANT SKILLS: Sharing information, listening, asking questions, summarising others’ ideas, paraphrasing. STEPS 1. Teacher poses a problem or asks an open-ended question to which there may be a variety of answers. 2. Teacher gives the students ‘think time’ and directs them to think about the question. 3. Following the ‘think time’ students turn to face their Learning Partner and work together, sharing ideas, discussing, clarifying and challenging. 4. The pair then share their ideas with another pair, or with the whole class. It is important that students need to be able to share their partner’s ideas as well as their own. Benefits to using this teaching technique… Positive interdependence: The students are able to learn from each other Individual accountability: Students are accountable to each other for sharing ideas. The student may also be required to share their partner’s ideas to another pair or whole group.

Equal participation: Each student within the group has an equal opportunity to share. It is possible that one student may try to dominate. The teacher can check this does not happen. Simultaneous interaction: High degrees of interaction. At any one moment all of the students will be actively engaged in purposeful speaking and listening. Compare this with the usual practice of teacher questioning where only one or two students would be actively engaged. APPLICATIONS         

Before a lesson or topic to orient the class (previous knowledge etc). During teacher modelling or explanation. Any time, to check understanding of material. At the end of a teacher explanation, demonstration etc., to enable students to cognitively process the material. To break up a long period of sustained activity. Whenever it is helpful to share ideas. For clarification of instructions, rules of a game, homework etc. For the beginning of a plenary session.

CURRICULUM IDEAS I often use this technique when asking students to think about the construction of an object whether it be made from food, textiles or resistant materials. Think, Pair, Share can be used in all curriculum areas and is limited only by the creativity of the teacher. * * * * * * * *

DIRTy Butterflies: Understanding and acting on feedback POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 28, 2014 BY @CHRISLOWEMFL This blog post is certainly inspired Tom Sherrington (@headguruteacher) and his tweet this week about his year 8 science class acting on feedback in a similar vein Austin and his butterfly. This naturally got me thinking about how I could use this with some of my classes to get them to really consider the comments made on written work and to encourage them not to be content with mediocrity, but to aim for excellence and hopefully become more inquisitive learners. So, I chose Friday afternoon and my year 10 and year 11 French groups for this, can I say experiment?

I currently teach in an independent school and it is not necessarily a full integral part of our school’s cultural to think about how to reflect and act on comments and to give lesson/homework time over to improving the quality of a piece of work. It is assumed that the pupil will do this in addition to the work in the next lesson which I think is a little counterproductive given that I think the need to be able to put (some of) their mistake right before moving on to the next thing. Hence I was a little tentative about how my classes would receive something that they don’t perceive as “normal” because they won’t have been used to seeing it. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong and it made for a more enjoyable Friday afternoon with both of these classes. I started off the lesson by showing them the video on YouTube of how Ron Berger explained how first grader Austin drew a butterfly. I thought it was a great way to get the class focused on the nature of feedback by allowing them to respond to a stimulus such as this which made it much easier for me to explain what we were going to do that afternoon. Both classes were fascinated by how these primary aged children were able to critique and respond to feedback about how to improve and how they celebrated how Austin has responded to feedback in order to improve his drawing. The result was outstanding; he produced a wonderful reproduction of the picture that he was being asked to copy by focusing intently on the feedback from his teacher and his peers. Having discussed the mechanics of the video we then got thinking about how to apply this to improve the quality of our written work on French by considering these principles. There was some discussion, heavily prompted by myself, of how we can use comment made on our written work to improve the quality in terms of presentation, grammatical accuracy and the flow of the content. One of the main things that they came up with was that they needed time to do this, I agreed, naturally. Then they said that they would like the ability to re-do the piece of work to correct all of their mistakes and add in better ideas and more complex language if they were aiming to achieve the highest grades. This was certainly music to my ears! Subsequently I put the DIRT (Dedicated Improvement and Response time) concept out to them, without explicitly mentioning it because they were very much hinting at this throughout discussion after the video. The remainder of the lesson was given over to redrafting their essays based on the individual feedback given by me and they were working with a great sense of purpose on a Friday afternoon which I though was great! A little more time was needed, so I said that as part of next week’s homework I would ensure that there was a little time for them to complete the re-drafting process. When it is completed, I will ask them to provide some feedback about the process and how it has helped them to produce 11

excellent pieces of work. I hope that this will then feed into the excellence display that I am hoping to put up in my department this week, something for all to look at and consider in their own work. Another great thing that came out of this lesson was personalised differentiation by the feedback that was given and this was something that Chris Moyse (@ChrisMoyse). He said that feedback was one of the most important aspects of differentiation as you as able to help the individual needs of the pupil. He certainly was right! I had to stop myself from announcing the point to the entire class for them to become aware because I remember him saying that not everyone in the room is having difficulty with that thing so is it necessary? It worked as I was able to help them out on an individual basis to improve the quality of their written French. I am now looking forward to seeing the finished results next week! Follow me on twitter: @chrislowe_mfl http://chrislowemfl.wordpress.com/2014/09/28/dirty-butterflies-understanding-and-acting-onfeedback/

Can I be that little bit better at.....understanding why I might be getting differentiation wrong SUNDAY, 31 AUGUST 2014

There are a few things in education that either scare me or confuse me. One such thing is the term differentiation. When I trained as a teacher we discussed the fact that students vary in ability in lessons. This is common sense and something anyone would be able to tell you. If I remember back to my own school days, every lesson I was in put me in a different academic standing. Some lessons I flew in, some I struggled and some I just plodded along. It's obvious then that students in lessons may require additional support, help or challenge. Now this thought sits very comfortably with me. But this sounds so simple. Why then does the term 'differentiation' wake me up in the middle of the night with screams of terror? A few years into my teaching something changed. All of a sudden (and I'm not sure where it came from) people were talking about the fact that we need to be planning detailed lessons that highlighted and catered for every single student in the classroom. The word flew in like a whirlwind and numerous strategies and ideas were left in its path. Suggestions of designing a lesson numerous different ways, creating thirty different worksheets for thirty different students, changing the outcomes for the different abilities in your lesson, utilise students learning styles, that it should be clearly visible to an observer how I was differentiating for every student..... It all got a bit overwhelming and if I'm totally honest, a little bit far fetched. Luckily for me our school stayed pretty grounded and kept things in perspective. But the worry of whether I was doing it right still lingered.

The differentiated worksheet

The reason that this particular face of differentiation bothers me is that it seems very unrealistic on teachers. I am fully aware that the students in my classroom are very unique and learn in very different ways. Experience tells me this. I understand that some prefer different approaches and various forms of interactions. I understand that students differ in the type of instruction they need. They're not battery hens where a one size fits all system works. But what for me felt like hysteria around differentiation a few years back gave me the feeling that what was expected wasn't for the students, but for other groups of people. It felt like there was an expectation that every lesson had to be uniquely tailored to all students. Now that takes time. And I tried it for a while. Believe me I did. I spent hours on each lesson thinking how I could ensure every student was catered for. But ultimately it became an impossible task and I felt fraudulent when I eventually only did this level of planning for things like observations. So how could I manage this effectively and be realistic, and a bit more effective, in helping cater for students in my lessons? As part of my renewed focus on my practice over the past few years I started to think of ways that I could scrap this view of differentiation, and simply look at ways that I could instead provide challenge for all. In fact I'm not even sure what I'm talking about is differentiation anymore. With it I began focusing on approach that would ultimately work for me and my students. So what lessons have I learnt? Differentiation isn't a short term fix For me differentiation felt like a series of short term solutions. 'How could I adapt this part of teaching for this part of this lesson for this student on this day' became stuck in my head. What I've learnt is that differentiation isn't about that at all. It's not about one off strategies and doing things in isolation. These can help but for me it's much better than that. Differentiation is all of those tiny subtle things we do on a day to day basis. The things we do naturally with the various students in response to their needs. The hundreds of conversations, questions, discussions and pieces of advice. These small moments that happen consistently on a daily basis makes a much bigger deal in the long run. 14

Sometimes you may not even know you're doing it There are times in our profession, especially in observations, when we feel we have to make every action in our classroom visible. But sometimes differentiation will happen and you may not even notice you've done it. I worry that we expect differentiation to be the adapted worksheet or different task. Something we know we've done and can point to in lessons. Something we can physically hold on to and say 'here it is!'. Or worse, something we go out of our way to make visible for others to observe it. But differentiation may simply be the bespoke feedback you've given or the way you've demonstrated something differently to a student. It's the way we respond to students needs. It's helping students move forward. As I've just said, it's the tiny conversations we have. Those small things happen every single lesson and we may not even notice or recognise it. That for me is differentiation. Differentiation should be simple Over complicating differentiation has been my downfall in the past. It shouldn't take hours of my planning time but instead be part and parcel of what I do. I don't need over complicated resources, activities or tasks. Making things more efficient and manageable is a much better way to go. More work isn't differentiation - is it? There were times when all I did was provide more work for those who were flying which meant less work for those who weren't. Is this differentiation though or is it just simply setting more tasks. I'm not sure I know the answer. I guess that if we do provide more work, it should firstly be something that extends students rather than being much of the same. Secondly we need to make sure that there is a culture that everyone is expected to have the same output otherwise some students may produce two or three times the amount than others. 30 different worksheets for 30 different students isn't realistic Yes every single student in your class is different but spending hours creating unique and bespoke resources can be very time consuming. If it will help, if it will challenge, if it will support and if it will be used again then go ahead and make it. If you feel that simply planning your explanations, your questioning, your feedback or demonstrations would be a better and more effective part of a lesson, maybe the worksheets can wait. Don't make the task easier, making the thinking easier Adapted from Daniel T. Willingham, this little nugget of advice has really stuck with me. Instead of making the outcomes of tasks easier for different groups of students, structure the thinking 15

behind it that little bit better. A colleague of mine said a few months back that ultimately, every student in her class, regardless of ability, will have to sit the exact same exam with the exact same time limit as everyone else. Making tasks easier for some just means that they will know less. I have to agree. Gone are the 'must, could, should' objectives and differentiated endpoints. Instead every student has to learn the same key content, but, the way each student thinks and gets there may be different. Differentiation is about knowing your students I can't think of many things more important to help you teach your students. Focusing too much on a group I found myself guilty of focusing on specific groups of students that I actually took my eyes of those that remained. Pinpointing under achievers or stretching the more able is important, but what I did when doing this was forget about those not in these groups. And finally, differentiation is responsive If you have a firm grasp on your group and you use various forms of evidence, assessment or data, you can plan differentiation into your lessons effectively. Equally, if you know your students and know the difficult parts of the topics you teach, you could probably plan and adapt your delivery differently at these 'sticking points'. Being prepared and planning differentiation is important. However, I fell in love with the term coined by Andy Tharby; Differentiation the responsive way. Most of the differentiation we do in lessons happens in response to the events that unravel. Yes we can plan until the cows come home but it's the moments in a lesson when you have to rephrase an instruction, give a prompt when someone is stuck, pose a tough question that spins a student on their head when they are flying. We never know what will happen in lessons. We work with students so why would we. Having experience, skill and expertise in our teaching means we can respond to differentiating when it jumps out on us unexpectedly. So my approach to differentiation has changed and I hope for the better. Instead of trying to plan numerous resources and creating an extensive range of activities, my focus is to respond to students needs in the lesson. Planning to pinpoint sticking points, looking at tailoring questions, giving personalised feedback and helping support every student to achieve the same high aspirational goal is the key. So how am I doing it? 1. Data, assessment and information that I'll actually use Data is important but too often we can focus on the wrong things. Regular marking, questioning students, homework scores, test result, quality of book work.....are all things that help me build up a picture of how my students are doing. Years ago I would mark books because I had to. Now I take books to help me see who needs help, who needs to be stretched and who needs a rocket firmly placed. Paying attention to these details helps you understand the individuals and allows you to 16

have those all important conversations. 2. Seating plans Now I have tried a million different seating plans in my lessons. For a while the consensus for some was to have more able and less able sat together. The idea was to have direct support there when the lower ability student needed it. It allowed students to feel confident that the person next to them could help them and in return, the more able student would reinforce their understanding by explaining it to their peer. At the end of Year 11 I regularly get students to evaluate my teaching so I can tweak in preparation for my next group. Out of all of the things, this type of seating plan took the biggest hit. The higher ability students in the class highlighted their dislike for such a plan. They felt that when they wanted to extend themselves they had to come back to help those who were struggling. They also felt that discussions were limited and never grew with much depth. The less able enjoyed the support but benefited more from my intervention. Over the last few years I now group students based on their results. After unit tests or exams, the groups are reworked. Those that consistently achieve around the A*-A grades work together. Those around the B grade sit together. And this goes on. And it changes every unit. Now is it working? Well if I had to group students without any sort of data but purely on knowing my students they would be roughly the same groups. It means that I can go to every group and pose a slightly different question or challenge their thinking. On one table I may pose a question that gets them to reinforce a key piece of information. On another table I may ask students to think about the impact this topic has had on another. It isn't full proof but it allows me to provide 6 or 7 differentiated pieces of instruction, questions or feedback very quickly. 3. Oh no, not SOLO - The Marmite of eductaion Love it or hate it but using SOLO taxonomy to plan my lessons allows me to think through the different stages or a topic. It really helps me break down the components and begin to formulate a plan of delivery. This allows me to identify possible sticking points and create simple contingencies or interventions. The system also allows students to have different entry points. I can work with some students developing the important content knowledge that they need whilst helping others tie this topic into other areas we have covered. The taxonomy also allows students to go back a level as well. I worry some feel that we need to get to the top to EA as quick as we can where as we can actually spend a good lesson or two developing students uni/multi-structural knowledge go back and forth until it is secure. For me it's a real help. 4. Conversations More than anything I now try to spend time chatting to my students. Lesson time doesn't allow me to have numerous 1:1 chats, primarily because I have to get through the teaching. One thing I have done is design a rota where I aim to chat to 4 or 5 specific students every lesson. Over the course of a few lessons I have had a conversation with every member of the class about their progress, where they are at, what needs to be improved and where need to go to move them forward. The 17

conversation is bespoke, it's unique and it's tailored to that student. By using a rota as a guide combined with the general hustle and bustle of getting around your class, I now try to ensure I have real conversations with students about their learning. Some are longer than others, some are more direct than others, but ultimately they happen and they happen regularly. 5. Bespoke feedback Feedback, in my own personal opinion, has to be one of the best methods of differentiation. What I say to one student will be different from what I say to another. The tailoring of this feedback can prompt a student to become unstuck or stretch their thinking beyond the curriculum. Each student is individual no matter how similar their grades may suggest. What you say can be hugely important and is such a vital part of our craft. Marking falls under this category as well. It may be slightly more time consuming than generic comment stickers or stamps, but I aim to give every student at least two feedback questions when I mark. Yes two students may have a similar grade or mark, but they have probably had a different experience doing that work. Knowing my students allows me to provide personal feedback that works for that individual. Feedback in my eyes in key. 6. Questioning There's a real craft in using questioning to support, stretch and challenge. Planning questions for key parts of the lesson is advisable but the art of being responsive and posing them in real time is a real skill. There are those students whose bewildered faces suddenly become enlightened when a rephrased question you pose gets them unstuck. There are those able students who think they've done it, only for you to spin their head with a higher level question. Having such questions at the ready may come over time with increased confidence in your subject and increased experience. But, along with the bespoke feedback you give, what can be more effective and more efficient in terms of differentiation? In my eyes, not much. 7. Examples of excellence No book has inspired me more than Ron Berger's 'An Ethic of excellence'. The book shares numerous stories of how Ron gets students from a young age to create work well beyond their years. It is a masterpiece and a must read. Throughout the book Ron explains how he uses 'examples of excellence' with his students to demonstrate the high quality of work they need to produce. He doesn't expect lower ability students to create any less work than a more able. In fact he aims students to produce professional pieces of work such as architect designs and town radon reports. The choice of excellent examples is a fundamental building block in the process. By sharing outstanding or high quality work with students, you can inspire them to achieve work beyond what they probably believed. The examples help students understand where work could lead to and the dissection and unpicking of it 18

helps to make the steps to greatness concrete. Collecting examples from industry, media articles and from students is easy to do and can be brought out when units or schemes are taught again in the future.

8. Modelling Modelling is not a new idea but one that is used so regularly in the classroom. And is it differentiation? If we go by any technical definition it might not be. In my classroom though, modelling is an essential component. Over the years I have begun to use students work as it happens. Sharing students work with their peers can be very helpful. Like with examples of excellence, models happen there and then. They can incorporate greatness, errors, and process of thinking. They help students who are struggling see the next steps. By working as a class to refine a sentence it can help the more able progress their work further. If we use models in the right way, they become an important method and can provide so much in terms of moving everyone forward. 9. I scaffold and structure As Daniel T. Willingham talked about, I shouldn't be making the task easier. Instead I should support the thinking that is needed to get there. And I totally agree with this. Within my lessons students are expected to produce excellent pieces of work. Some will get their by themselves. Others will need varying levels of support. What none of them needs is for me to make tasks easier and expect lower standards. Using a variety of scaffolds is very helpful. Using ideas like the four part process for writing excellent sentences is one great tool that pops up again and again in my class. For some students it becomes the guide that they really need. For others it is just a simple reminder of what to include. For others it is irrelevant as they write with confidence, style and elegance. Ideas like Dough Lemov's 'At first glance' sentence starters has also been a great way to develop, support and extend. Simply providing three words of differing academic difficulty (although all of them are still quite high) forces students to think and adapt the subsequent sentence they craft. Designing and displaying these starters is quick and effective. The important thing is that these types of scaffolds become redundant the more skillful the students become. And that's what I feel scaffolding and using structures (like PEED, IDEA and so on) should do. Help when it's needed but then disappear when ready.

10. Graphic organisers I rarely produce a worksheet for lessons anymore simply because of the balance between the time it took to produce it, compared to the time the student actually used it. Instead I have a bank of graphic organisers which I can tweak and tailor when needed. The beauty of these resources (such as double bubble maps, 19

compare and contrast maps) is that they can help students keep track of the information before working with it. The less able in the class can use them to record key points and then manipulate them. The more able can use them to find more detailed connections and relationships. The organisers are excellent and can be used flexibly from one lesson to the next. Adding prompt questions or even high level statements can support or stretch abilities. They can also help scaffold and structure work. A complex essay can be quickly mapped out before becoming a plan for the subsequent drafts. Graphic organsiers in my classroom have made things a lot clearer for students and have a place for all ability levels. 11. A level beyond the curriculum I've thought a lot that we shouldn't simply be restricted by the curriculum we follow. Yes students must know, cover and learn information that may come up in exams, but we can go beyond to really enlighten them. I've been dropping a few AS level PE exam questions into lessons. I use them for two reasons. Firstly, when something becomes difficult, showing them something at a more advanced level demonstrates the bigger picture and has helped students understand the topic better. Doesn't sound right does it? Secondly, they provide a great challenge when students have finished work and shows them that a topic isn't finished. There is always something more to learn. 12. Expect excellence And finally, I set the expectation that every student can produce great work. I know that links into the Growth Mindset ethos, and some might argue that not every student is capable of producing great work, but I do set the aim that we all can achieve a high standard of work. And I demonstrate how. Redrafting work shows that things do get better when we act upon feedback. Using techniques like the literacy upgrade shows that by improving the vocabulary we use in answers or essays, or work becomes more academic. By spending time with a peer/group/class removing redundant words I show that we don't all need to waffle and in fact we can become much clearer in our writing. Demonstrating these small things makes a big difference and changes habits. And so? And that final point is the big deal for me. It's the small things that make a big difference over time. Like Sir Dave Brailsford's Marginal gains, the aggregation of all of these little strategies improves the outcome over time. Are some of these things differentiation by definition? Most probably not. But I have learnt that I can't make lessons 1:1 or bespoke to every student every lesson. That takes too much time and is unrealistic. Instead I can put in manageable strategies and spend time doing the things that matter. In my eyes, if you asked me outright, I'd say effective differentiation (for me) is talking, questioning, challenging, marking and responding. I call it teaching. So can I be that little bit better at differentiation? I probably can, and probably a million times better. But I am not super human. @davidfawcett27 20

Progress 8 – being held to account for every grade, in every subject Introduction and a note on 2015: From 2016, secondary schools will be held to account using four accountability measures: Attainment 8, Progress 8, the percentage of students who achieve the English Baccalaureate and the percentage of pupils who achieve a grade C in both English and mathematics GCSE. On this final measure, rumour has it that before he left office Michael Gove had the intention to impose a 50% floor on schools. So having fewer than 50% of pupils achieve both maths and English at grade C will cause a school to be below the floor. This was not going to be announced in advance, so could easily still be the intention. Update: Tim Leunig has clarified below in the comments that this is not the case. Of these four accountability measures, Progress 8 is going to be by far the most important. Everything I have heard suggests that it will dictate whether a school is subject to an Ofsted inspection (or not), and is likely to dictate the outcome of the achievement grade during an inspection. Progress 8 has been developed largely by Tim Leunig of the LSE seconded to the DFE, who I’d like to commend on answering questions via twitter (@timleunig) in order to assist schools with understanding Progress 8. 2015: Before I talk about Progress 8, a word on 2015. Unless schools have opted in to Progress 8 (and I can see little benefit to a state school in doing so at this stage) the published accountability measures will be the same as 2014. So we will be judged on the percentage of pupils who get 5 GCSEs including maths and English, the percentage of pupils who make expected and above expected progress in maths and English, the percentage of pupils who receive the English Baccalaureate, and the Best 8 value added measure. Nothing has changed for current Year 11. 2016: Progress 8 comes in for all schools. We will have received an indicative Progress 8 score for 2015 via RAISE (I believe). Progress 8 comes from Attainment 8, so we should understand how to calculate that first. Before we do that, we need to understand the scoring system. GCSE scores: At the moment, a G grade is worth 16, an F is worth 22 and so on. I’m not quite clear on the reason for these numbers, which go up in 6s. 21

From 2016, the scores will be 1 for a G, 2 for an F, 3 for an E and so on right up to 8 for an A*. This seems to make more sense to me. So in calculating Attainment 8, we must have in mind these scores. I presume this will mean that the numbering systems for the new GCSEs in English and maths in 2017, and then the rest of the EBACC subjects a year later, can just fit in with the scores above. For guidance on what non-GCSEs are worth, please see the technical guide. Attainment 8: Baskets: Baskets or buckets or whatever they’re called, I know people working in schools are sick of hearing about them. I think they’re the easiest way to understand this measure though. Qualifications are in three baskets as follows. Basket One: Two qualifications – Mathematics and English OR English Literature. These qualifications count double as long as pupils have sat both English and English Literature. Assuming the student has sat both qualifications, the stronger of the English/ English Literature subjects goes in this basket. The other one can go in basket three. Basket Two: Three qualifications – English Baccalaureate. In this basket goes three of the other English Baccalaureate qualifications. These include History, Geography, Sciences, Computer Science and a very large selection of Modern Foreign Language qualifications. If pupils are doing Biology, Chemistry and Physics, all three of these can go in here. There is one exception. If students are doing Core Science and Additional Science, both of these qualifications can count in this basket. However, if they are doing Further Additional Science, this does not count in this basket. Each qualification in this basket counts single. Basket Three: Three qualifications – Other ‘High Value’ qualifications. Pretty much every qualification that isn’t Mickey Mouse (and some which are) counts in this basket. These can be three vocational qualifications, and can also include any qualifications that don’t fit into Basket One or Two because they’re full. These count single. Taking Baskets One, Two and Three together makes 8 subjects. Basket One counts double (English or English Literature as long as both have 22

been taken). These are added together to obtain an Attainment 8 score for the student. Examples: This is perhaps better shown by examples, so here are some. These are the results attained by an actual student from my current school last year (2014) H. Please ignore the curriculum. I’ve restructured that so no child follows a curriculum like this any more but that only kicked in with our new Year 11s as we did it two years ago. Anyway, H’s scores in 2013: English D, English Lit C, Maths C, Psychology C, Art and Design D, History E, Science D, RS Short Course C, Citizenship Short Course D Sticking these into the structure I’ve described and multiplying by the weighting:

So H would have achieved an Attainment 8 score of 4.0 – or 40 if you prefer not to use the decimal point version of the weighting. So what about fictional student Angela, who achieved these results: Art – B ,Maths – C ,English – B, Physics – B, Chemistry – D, Biology – B, Spanish – A, Music – C, Psychology – C:

Angela’s Attainment 8 score is 5.1 (or 51), significantly affected by not doing English Literature (hence English only counts single). School attainment 8 score: 23

To work out a school’s Attainment 8 score, add up the total for all students and divide by the number of students. This is what will be published. Progress 8: To work out a pupil’s Progress 8 score, we take their Attainment 8 score and subtract the expected Attainment 8 score based on KS2 fine levelled scores in English and mathematics. The fine levels (4.1, 4.2, etc) are available online from Fischer Family Trust. A model of the expected scores is available for 2013 from the technical guidance issued by the DFE. See page 17 but I’ve published it here:

We should note that we will not know the expected attainment 8 scores for 2016 until 2016 results are out. They will not be the same as in 2013, because pupils have not followed a curriculum driven by this accountability measure. So if Angela had an expected Attainment 8 score of 5.4, her Progress 8 score would be 5.1 -5.4 = -0.3 More examples: Let’s use another example. Fictional pupil Charlie achieved KS4 Level 4.0 average in English and maths. He is expected to achieve 34 Attainment 8 points. Here is his results set out in a different style table:

Charlie’s progress 8 score is therefore 4.7 – 3.4 = +1.3. A real positive for the school. 24

At this stage, I have to anticipate a form of gaming I believe may become commonplace. If there is a school in difficult circumstances, and Charlie is in Year 11 with this curriculum, come March or April, what is to stop the school deciding to force Charlie to take an English Baccalaureate subject via cramming so that he can at least achieve an F, or an E, or even a D with a headwind? It’s not in Charlie’s interests, I’d suggest. It is in the schools. If the school does this and he achieves a D, his profile looks like this suddenly:

So now Charlie’s score is 5.1-3.4 = +1.7. I’m minded of Daisy Christodoulou’s talk at ResearchEd where she pointed out that when a measure becomes high stakes it ceases to be a measure that has as much validity and reliability, and I wonder if this is something that has been considered – the careful manipulation of the curriculum. My final example is fictional student Barbara, who I designed to ensure that we learn the lessons of having an academic curriculum. Barbara got great KS2 results at average 5.5. Her expected attainment 8 score is hence 69 or 6.9.

Despite achieving an A* in everything, Barbara’s Progress 8 score is 5.66.9 = -1.3. Progress 8:Add up all the scores from the pupils and divide by the number of pupils. Here is a table that might help understand that:

This school therefore has a progress 8 score of 36.5/142. This will be rounded to two decimal places and the published progress 8 score will be + 0.26 I believe this will be displayed publicly like this slide here so that parents, governors and the community can understand:

Progress 8 in future years: The model is likely to become ex ante. This means that while the expected attainment 8 scores for 2016 will be based on 2016 results, beyond that the expected attainment 8 scores for each level will be based on prior year’s attainment. So the targets for 2018 will be set in 2016, 2019 set in 2017 and so on. My understanding is that this is partly to allow for a self-improving school systems model. Consequences: I can’t remember where I heard this, so it may be out of date or nonsense. Having said that, it makes sense to be something like this: A Progress 8 score of -0.5 or worse for a school will mean they are inspected that year. A Progress 8 score of 1.0 or higher means they won’t be. This narrative doesn’t fit in with what Ofsted are saying, but I would hazard a guess that something like that will happen. Implications: All subjects count: We are moving on from the era of English and mathematics being everything. Nonetheless, not all subjects are equal. In my school, I’ve said that Subject Leaders will want to be on top of the predictions for every student at every grade boundary 26

All grades count: This is not about C grades. An improvement from A to A* or from U to G will count the same as an improvement from D to C. Curriculum matters most: Schools with a ‘dumbed down’ or nonacademic curriculum will really suffer from this measure. In my school I’ve said that 95% of students should study 8 qualifying subjects. Ideally I think it should be 100%. I think all pupils are entitled to an academic curriculum. A part of this is that Progress 8 is the kind of accountability measure I would have designed myself if I wanted something to measure the curriculum I promote with our pupils. Schools will need to decide how to track and ‘intervene’ without traditional ‘interventions': So getting kids in to cram on Saturdays or after school like many schools do for maths and English now will have an effect, but nothing like the effect it’s had up until now. While 5A*-C including maths and English has been the benchmark measure, some schools have put incredible efforts into maths and English and assumed (usually correctly) that those students will achieve 3 other grade Cs. In addition, since progress in maths and English have been two of the other accountability measures, this has meant incredible focus on these two subjects. Should schools do this now, I’d imagine they’d suffer as all subjects and all grade boundaries are going to matter. Our reaction has been to expand our Pupil Progress meetings, where Pupil Progress Leaders (Heads of Year) in Years 9,10 and 11 meet with representatives from faculties (in Year 11 these are usually Heads of Faculties) to talk about 6 pupils. These meetings are twice per half term, in directed time, and the meetings are empowered to make decisions. Hence the colleagues in them have to have liaised with teachers and faculties about those 6 pupils. This can drive ‘interventions’, but actually it’s resulted in problem solving or even problem anticipating and is starting to have effect beyond the 6 pupils identified. The agenda for this meeting is sent out at least a week in advance, and preferably two weeks, and is data driven. There are no excuses tolerated, no blame attached, just solution focussed. Hence you have NQTs being a part of making decisions that impact on the Head of Faculty, and you have time, included in the time budget, for colleagues to actually liaise, chaired by the Pupil Progress Leaders.

I may write more about these in the future. We’ve done this for a year, but Progress 8 makes it even more important. I’d really like to hear how other schools are reacting. There is one note of caution (as well as the possible gaming I mention above). This measure seems right and fairly egalitarian to me. However, Headteacher Liam Collins (@kalinsky1970) reported that Suffolk LA had reported that in 2013, nationally only ONE grammar school would have had a negative Progress 8 score. I hope that this will change as schools that are not grammar schools adapt their curriculum to Progress 8. Disclaimer: I don’t think my blogpost is any easier to understand than just reading the DFE guidance below, but I have written it as several colleagues requested it.

David Didau @Learningspy

How do I work effectively with my Teaching Learning Support Assistant in the classroom? #classroomteam Making sure that you work effectively with your Teacher Assistant or Learning Support Assistant is paramount to success in the classroom. There are many things to consider when planning and delivering a lesson that involves support. Building a good relationship with your teaching assistant and making them feel part of your team of delivering learning goes a long way to ensure that all learners make the adequate progress. Below is a summary of some of the key components to remember when working with your TA or LSA; Please share and leave your comments below. Communication Make sure at the beginning of the lesson you go over the learning objectives for SEN students;  

What do you want the students achieve from the lesson? Deployment of the support 28

 

Any student that you may be particularly concerned about that you would like the support to focus on? Share ideas with the support they will know the students well and may have some good advice.

Support Teacher Learning Assistant Behaviour for Learning  

You should have a clear agreement about class expectations and the role of the support. The expectation of the TA is to support the learning of student.

Seating Plan   

The support has a good knowledge of the students and it maybe worth asking for advice on the seating plan Remember that the support does not want to disrupt your lesson by walking across the classroom when you are teaching. Ensure that the SEN students are in easy access for the support.

Feedback and evaluation at the end of the lesson    

Spend 5 minutes at the end of the lesson with the support to find out how the students achieved in the lesson? There may also be an opportunity during the lesson to check in with the support about pupil progress. Keep the support informed; planning for the next lesson. Avoid the support becoming an overgrown pupil especially if they don’t have prior notice of the lesson. 29

Rethinking Marking Posted on September 22, 2014

English Teacher, Katie Baldwin shares a practical evaluation of various feedback strategies and her research into the value our students place on effective marking. There is widespread consensus that providing students with regular and meaningful feedback is important if they are to make good progress. There are, however, a couple of troublesome questions that require practical solutions if this is to be achieved. Firstly,‘How can I find time to provide regular and meaningful feedback in amongst all of the other things that take up my time as a teacher?’ Secondly, ‘How can I be sure that students are actually engaging with the feedback I have provided?’ I’ve spent some time over the last year, exploring various approaches to marking that will hopefully work towards providing some of the solutions we need. I’ve read a number of blogs, articles and publications on the subject of marking students’ work, but have perhaps found surveying students’ opinions on the ways in which their work is marked the most useful. At times their responses were as expected and elsewhere, a little more surprising. The vast majority of responses indicated that they found feedback from teachers (both written and verbal) to be ‘extremely helpful’. This tallied with my experience of observing that our students do like us to read and respond to their work on a regular basis. What I hadn’t fully understood, however, prior to carrying out the survey was the value our students place in the various component parts of the feedback we provide.

They were asked to rank, in order of importance to them, the following aspects of teacher feedback: ‘the level/grade achieved’, ‘praise’, targets for improvement and ‘an opportunity to respond to the feedback’. 60% of responses indicated that they found, ‘an opportunity to respond to the feedback’ to be of least importance. Given the emphasis that we, as teachers, are currently being asked to place ensuring that students engage with feedback, these findings suggested that there was work to be done to help our students understand why we are asking them to do this. In terms of what the students identified as most important, responses were spread across two aspects. 53% felt that being informed of what level/grade they’d achieved was most important, whilst 43% selected ‘targets for improvement’. So it seems that perhaps students appreciate finding out what they need to do differently but are less enthusiastic when it comes to putting this into practice. Given these findings, I have been looking at several approaches that can hopefully move students towards a point where they are becoming more actively involved in the process of reviewing their own work… Marking Approach

How it works

Pros

Cons

Coloured Dots

Coloured dot stickers are placed on students’ work in places where they need to make amendments or improvements. Teachers can provided a set of targets on the whiteboard, allowing students time to identify and copy down those which apply to them. Alternatively, students can be asked to think for themselves to create a different target for each colour.

Time is saved as teachers do not need to spend time writing out the same targets across a number of pieces of work repeatedly. Targets can be designed to suit each different piece of work. Students are encouraged to directly engage with areas for improvement.

Sticker system can be confusing, especially for less able students.Teachers would need to ensure that they were fully stocked with stickers all of the time!

Highlighters

Very similar to the coloured dot approach. Students can also be given highlighters and asked to identify where certain targets (displayed on whiteboard) are applicable within their own work.

Highlighters are readily available. Precise areas for improvement can be identified and revisited with ease. A quick and straightforward approach.

Again, relies on students being sufficiently prepped and able to recognise specific issues within their work.

Codes are written onto students’ work which relate to a set of targets. We use this approach alongside target cards within the English department. E.g. W1 = writing target 1 on the student’s target card which is kept in the back of their exercise book.

Differentiation can be easily achieved by altering the extent to which students are involved in designing their own targets.

Pieces of work are ‘double marked’: in one colour by the teacher and then in a second colour by students who go through correcting and amending their marked work as appropriate.

Investing in sets of pens can be costly.The amendments that students make may Encourages students to only be superficial as engage with a ‘drafting’ they are not necessarily process and can in turn engaging with more develop literacy skills. complex areas for Students like using the improvement, only coloured pens provided. SPAG.

Question and Box

Rather than creating a target at the end of a piece of work. The teacher poses a question. Beneath the question, a box is drawn to indicate the length of response they are expecting from the student. Time (DIRT) can be incorporated into lessons following the marking.

Writing questions and drawing neat boxes in exercise books can be fairly time consuming. Perhaps this approach is more appropriate for more significant and developed pieces of work. Students often need one-to-one Students are given a support in responding clear indication of the to the questions that extent to which they are have been posed and it expected to respond. can be difficult to Encourages clear and provide this for larger timely progression in class sizes within the development of specific time constraints of a skills. lesson starter.

STAR Marking

This is along the lines of ‘2 stars and a wish’ that many of our students are familiar with from Primary schools. STAR = something I like, target, action, response.

There is a clear requirement for students to respond to the feedback that has been A more time provided and praise is consuming approach also incorporated. again

Codes

Coloured Pens

Relies on students reviewing past targets as they embark on each new piece of work. Can still be quite time consuming if teachers rather than students are writing out the targets in full.