Is there a right way to teach? It’s become a trite and hackneyed truism that if they’re not learning you’re just talking. We’re all clear that teaching only happens when the little tinkers manage to make some sort of progress – preferably that of the rapid and sustained variety. But this simple truth, like so many others, seems to have been systematically and catastrophically misunderstood by many school leaders and inspectors. Until recently it was universally accepted that the key to a good lesson observation was showing that pupils are making progress in the 25 minutes available to us, and that the only way we could demonstrate this progress was by shutting the hell up and letting the kids do some work. If a teacher was observed speaking to the whole class they’d be exposed as being a bit rubbish and fast tracked on to the capability process. But is this right? Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for a spot of constructivism. When I began my career, direct instruction was all the rage. I get that things move on. Like this:
Hywel Roberts Create Learn Inspire | A journey through curriculum liberation, Mantle of the Expert, pupil voice, great questioning, contextual learning, engagement, independence and other adventures in learning. Punk Learning – I want to be free, free to learn to be me. “Well I hate to go to school and listen to the stupid rules. Just to keep me out of the way. So they can have an easy day. I want to be free, free to learn to be me” I Hate School – Suburban Studs The research by George Land, undertaken way back into the late sixties is a staggering study. Rather than righteously banging on about the lack of creativity in student’s work, or complaining about the SoW (that we religiously follow) not allowing our students to be creative or blaming external variables for the lack of imaginative lessons that we have to deliver. “Something’s happening and it’s happening right now. As an example, if you had to teach your class about George Orwell’s Animal Farm, why on earth would you just teach them (or tell them, which is probably more accurate) about the book? If you’re still reading this and thinking, “yes, fair point but we haven’t got the time, we’ve got a lot of content to get through” then answer this question. “And they put pressure on my brain.
School Improvement – The Dave Brailsford Model Today there is a great article on the BBC website about the inexorable progress of the Sky cycling team under the expert stewardship of Dave Brailsford – see here. The ‘aggregation of marginal gains approach‘ is now well known and can be easily summarised as identifying those small performance factors that, when aggregated together, can have a significant cumulative impact. This can apply to teachers tweaking their pedagogy to transform their practice; students breaking down their tasks to focus on the constituent parts to improve; or school leaders aligning their school priorities. The article takes the process a step forward by focusing on the key developments for moving from good to outstanding as a team. The first quote from the article that immediately stood out was the following: “You’ll get more from a £900,000 rider with a coach than you would from a £1m rider without one.” This seamlessly applies to a school context. Hone in on the important data: You get what you pay for:
Jig-sawing new information « The challenge I have set myself, as I mentioned in the last post is overcoming a didactic culture of learning and getting students to embrace group and independent study. Whenever I have observed really good lessons in other subjects they often have one thing in common: a kind of symmetry in terms of activity, simplicity and results. The most well-rounded of group work techniques is jigsaws. Today I tried this with factors affecting hydrographs. Experts had a photocopy from the textbook and had to make notes on mini-whiteboards to take back to their home groups. I did the same activity with my year 8s on factors affecting climate and it worked a treat. Like this: Like Loading...
How to move your lessons from good to outstanding | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional Where would I be without Twitter? I have decided to elaborate on this AfL strategy, following this tweet from my @TeacherToolkit account on #ukedchat 3.11.11. My tweet said "#ukedchat Missed out tonight, look forward to reading ideas. Firstly, this concept is not mine. So it is at this point, where I will be honourable and credit a colleague who I think has a money-spinning idea here. The fabulous Mrs Pam Fearnley delivered the session. What is it? It is a simple, yet sophisticated, AfL (Assessment for Learning) questioning technique to help teachers move from good-to-outstanding. Why is it useful? For many reasons. The strategy encouraged teachers to take risks and tease out the "learning" in class. How does it work? I have listed the four-part approach below with additional information that I hope explains the method. • Give the context of your approach to the class. • Insist on hands down before the question is delivered. This is the hard part. • Push the boundaries. Explore! 1. 2. 3.
Cultural ties… This has been a hard week for the children in the support group. One of them, who had been doing well back in class, has been very disruptive again lately. He poked his head round my door one morning at breakfast club, looked at me with a wry smile, and asked if he could return to the group as he wasn’t managing and didn’t want to disrupt the other pupils. I was very impressed with this maturity! However, his return to the group has caused ripples in the order of things and there has been a battle for the position of ‘top dog’. When this spills into school it can be very hard to manage as tempers flare and the staff and other members of the group try to mediate. The rhythms of the term are re-establishing themselves and the Senior Leadership Team are back on track with their monitoring timetable. I also had the first part of my own performance management this week. There are some very inspirational Head Teachers out there and I was fortunate enough to spend Friday with three of them.
thoughtweavers | Just another WordPress.com site Outstanding teaching using the new #Ofsted framework « @ TeacherToolkit Firstly, this is not a model, just an experience… Ofsted background: …Throughout my teaching career, I’ve been part of 5 Ofsted inspections, dating back to 1997 as a class teacher, and most recently in 2011, my second as a senior teacher… When starting my current school, Oftsed had departed the day before! My wife, after 11 years of teaching has only been ‘subject to Ofsted’ once, but I’m sure some teachers across the country have averaged one every 2 or 3 years! My average is every 4… On each of the occasions I have ‘been done to’, the framework has changed and so has the experience; alternating from reply-slips and no-comments from the observing inspector, to a broad smile, coupled with detailed feedback and a reciprocated pair of ears. Believe me, I have received all levels of judgements throughout my career. What I’ve been up to: In my role as lead for Teaching and Learning, we have started a series of six-paired ’rounds’ of learning walks and paired feedback observations. “Aprons on!
The Behaviour Guru: Tom Bennett's School Report Mishmashlearning goes blogging | Ideas in a mixed up world of tradition and tech. Welcome to Dylan Wiliam’s website Professional development Finally! The revised Embedding formative assessment pack for schools and colleges to run their own two-year professional development programme on formative assessment is now available worldwide. In Europe, this can be ordered through SSAT, in Australasia through Hawker-Brownlow, and in North America from Learning Sciences International. Further details of the pack are here. Also, a series of high-quality video presentations by Dylan Wiliam, with a total running time of over two and a half hours, is now available world-wide.
No longer Bullet Proof « stilllearing This was the week I discovered I wasn’t bullet proof. My NQT year has had its highs and lows during the last twelve months, but nothing that has laid me low or given me too much that I couldn’t resolve it. Yet this week has been by far one of the most challenging. Lets set the scene I have a the bottom set year 9′s, there are sixteen in the class who are all school action, school action plus with one statement child. The behavior and emotional ‘issues ‘I am not sure of as I am not privy to know all the details as there are various agencies involved. I have been having class management issues with this class from the beginning. I started the term with us deciding on the rules of the class and our expectations of each other, which although a lively lesson I felt was quite successful, little did I realise that no matter what is said one day the next they have forgotten. So I walked away little battle weary but nothing that left any scars. So flak jacket on and now ready for battle again.
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