How to move your lessons from good to outstanding

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. My favourite T&L strategy at the moment is "Pose, Pause...Pounce, Bounce" #AfL". 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. This is the hard part. Explore! 1. 2. 3.

Ofsted, Outstanding Teaching and the iPad | dedwards.me If OFSTED were to walk into a lesson tomorrow they would see the following: Prior to the lesson students would have viewed an 8-10 min screencast introducing the topic. This resource would have been produced and sent via twitter to the students when appropriate.Students would have uploaded work required to Edmodo that is then assessed, annotated and sent back to students again prior to the lesson. The nature of the work is determined by perceived difficulty of the topic. The initial task would be a Socrative quiz to establish understanding for the lesson (AFL) – this often includes one multiple choice and two short answer questions. With a given problem the students would then have to produce an explanation of the problem on the interactive whiteboard app ExplainEverything - collaboration in groups of 3. Socrative would then be used again to assess where the students are and the lesson would be adjusted accordingly. So what would OFSTED make of this standard lesson? Attitudes to learning.

Sbsgeog's Weblog | Just another WordPress.com weblog 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 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. So how did Brailsford lead team Sky to become “the most admired sports team in the world“? Hone in on the important data: You get what you pay for: Regular communication:

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. thoughtweavers | Just another WordPress.com site Making Feedback Count: “Close the Gap” Recently I have been looking again at the issue of marking. It is a hugely important source of feedback provided that we keep the volume of marking in proportion to the level of impact it can have in improving learning outcomes. I’ve discussed this in a much-read earlier post: Marking in Perspective: Selective, Formative, Effective, Reflective. At a whole school level at KEGS and in my own department, a key objective for the year is to devise approaches to marking that deliver maximum impact for all to see – that ‘progress over time’ issue. What does marking look like when it is clearly securing improvement and progress in learning? Marking time again. To help with our search I was fortunate to be able to arrange a visit to the wonderful Saffron Walden County High School, a thriving, dynamic school in NW Essex that recently received an astonishing OfSTED report: Outstanding in every detail. The cycle of learning and feedback – with a gap! Closing the gap in Art as a project progresses

The Behaviour Guru: Tom Bennett's School Report 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. 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.

Full On Learning | Because learning is too important to be left to chance