Putting Planning First

 

We all know that feeling… thirty books to mark, plus assessments and suddenly that’s the weekend gone. But what if we could make our marking speedier and more efficient? What if we could use our marking to stretch and challenge? And what if our marking really could inform our planning and help us know our kids better?

This was the thinking behind some recent research we did on how to cut down the hours of laborious marking without compromising on the quality of feedback and the importance of assessment. So here are our top strategies to help free up your weekend and put planning firmly on the top of our agendas…

1. Focus on one thing: There is a place for in-depth, all inclusive marking perhaps for assessments. However, most of the time, stick to focused marking because it is much easier for the students to digest. Share the focus with the students before they complete the task and break it down. E.g. I am focussing on how you analyse language/how much critical terminology you use accurately/introductions and conclusions/your line of argument/AO3 context etc…
2. Use a skills worksheet: Using a simple key, simply mark where particular skills have been met. Tick off on a checklist, easily identifying which skills have not been met and targeting DITS to these skills.
3. Using an overview sheet: tackle misconceptions, spag errors, praise, concerns, stretch and challenge and generic DITs all on one sheet. Simple print out a copy for each pupil to stick into their books, highlighting anything specifically relevant to them.
4. Effective peer marking: share with them the marking criteria, get them to reword it or highlight most important things that are being assessed prior to the task. Discuss the skills and levels as a class or in groups. Allow them to choose the levels they are aiming for and connect with that level in some manner. Once the task is complete, revisit the mark schemes they have deconstructed, clarify any issues with it now the task has been completed. Then peer marking will take place. Model the task and the marking, talking them through the thinking process. Focus them on how we mark their books for guidance. Use green pen for peer/self-marking and a different consistent colour for your own marking. It takes training, but can work really well.
5. Use technology: record your class feedback as a video or sound file to share with pupils on the student drive or other on-line platform.
6. Live marking: Marking there and then: focus on 2 or 3 students each lesson. Target specific students (e.g. those who have missed lessons or have particular weaknesses.)
7. Use the yellow box: Highlight just a section of work e.g. just the middle section of an essay, and close mark this, targeting feedback specifically on just this area. Make sure they respond by drawing an empty yellow box (vary the size depending on how much you are asking them to do .e.g. redraft an entire paragraph.

For further information, please contact any of the Lead Practitioners.

Download example overview template: overview-mark-sheet

The Pros of Using Debate

After noticing waning effort levels in her year 12 group, Geography teacher, Laura Wolfe, decided to shake things up a bit…

Year 12 have mainly worked well in their geography lessons, however their effort levels sometimes varied. This changed when the task I set was a debate. We had discussed at the start of the lesson the different types of coastal management strategies, with pros and cons for each. I then split the class into two teams, due to a relatively small class size, everyone has a specific role.

Having run debate mate previously, I could explain the formal way a debate should run, with speakers on each side having a chance to make their point in turn, without people just shouting out.

The debate worked better than expected, as I chose the teams and whether they were opposition of proposition, I was surprised to see how well they worked together and came up with convincing arguments, even if it wasn’t the view they would have naturally taken. I set up the tables and chairs to represent the correct debate format so that they could face each other and sit in a specific order.

All of the students took their roles seriously and came up with some fantastic arguments, wanting to fight for their team. Engagement and enthusiasm was shown by all, even those that may have previously taken more of a back seat in lessons.

This is an activity that I will definitely be repeating.

If you have tried something that worked a treat, tell us about it!

Haydon visit to Harlington

A huge thanks to colleagues at Harlington for welcoming and inspiring us last month. We are setting up Lead Practitioners at Haydon and came away really inspired, with a number of approaches to the role that we aim to embed over this year. Mark Fisher has already set up a blog: http://haydonlearningblog.com which we are building up, ready to launch to staff in the new year.

It is always useful to step back from your practice and reflect on why you are doing this job in the first place. Even our car journey was a moment to reflect on pedagogy! We discussed Growth Mindset, which was the inspiration behind an action research project at Harlington, and the pitfalls of over-praising children. Mark had been to a Growth Mindset conference at Vyners the previous week and said that one of the speakers never praises his children, ever. This seems a bit harsh on the surface of it, but he said that when he praised his son and told him he was an amazing artist, he never wanted to do art again. What Carol Dweck’s research shows is that praising the person instead of the process is counter-productive. “If I’m good at art, what happens when I get stuck? What if my experiments and work in progress look rubbish? People have such high expectations of me! I’d better not fail, so I’d better not even try.”

This made me think about my son, aged 22 months. He gets praise ALL the time from all different directions: “You put that away, HOW CLEVER!!” “You used your spoon, you’re such a bright little boy!!” I’m not suggesting he’ll never use a spoon again if he’s praised for it, but what if the need for praise one day outweighs the joy of learning? When he’s just got to get on with stuff by himself or comes across something he can’t do, or doesn’t understand, he’ll need his own inner strength and sense of worth to fall back on. We need to discuss the strategies used instead of just the outcome: “Well done! I like the way you tried different methods to make it work.” Or “What would you do differently next time?” See Mark’s blog entry for more reflections on this…

http://haydonlearningblog.com/questioning/wwidd-reflective-questioning/

Our first year as Lead Practitioners at Haydon is rooted in Growth Mindset – we have run sessions where staff are encouraged to develop their own practice and return to share ideas, successes and failures at subsequent sessions. Inspired by the work we’ve seen at Harlington, we hope that some of these will develop into action research projects and make a difference to our students.

Thank you for hosting us, for giving us so many ideas and biscuits.

Rebecca Skertchly

Translating EAL Training into Practice – New opportunities for faculty development.

This year, the EAL faculty at Harlington School is lauching the EAL Working Group. The group will consist of one representative from each faculty and will include year-long EAL support, designed specifically for each team. To start with, EAL training will be delivered by the EAL Co-ordinator, Patryk Malinski, during which a variety of issues concerning the education of EAL students will be discussed. This will include the different stages of EAL development, obstacles faced by EAL pupils and strategies to support these students in the classroom, accompanied by examples of differentiated material used in lessons.

Following the initial training, Patryk will work with individuals or  groups alongside  the faculty reps to discuss specific EAL matters facing the faculties and the knowledge gained at the first training can be put into practice. Depending on individual needs, faculties will be able to work on their specific classes with a high proportion of EAL pupils, concrete lesson plans or whole schemes of work. The faculty reps will be developing their lesson plans/SOWs in an EAL-friendly way with Patryk’s assistance.
There will be a final feedback session to discuss the process and the outcomes and look at things that went well and how the whole thing could be improved for following years.
It is a great opportunity to upskill each department and the reps will be encouraged to disseminate what they learn during their Faculty Development Time. Hopefully, at the end of the project, there will be a much better understanding of how to provide support for EAL students in Harlington School across faculties.

To be part of this exciting collaborative project, contact Patryk: pmalinski@harlington.com

Patryk Malinski, EAL Coordinator

 

No Opt Out

We’ve all had that moment when we ask a student a question only to be met with a shrug or silence. In the past, I might have moved on, or helped out in order to maintain momentum. This year, our key priorities are challenge and engagement and so, to move toward greater rigor, I knew I had to find a way to add challenge. In other words, I needed to stop students opting out.

Taking inspiration from Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion 2.0, I tried out a new technique this week that forces me to challenge my students and forces them to take risks in a safe way.

Here’s how it works:

Me: xxxxxxxx, how does George feel about Lennie?

Student 1: silence… followed by I don’t know…

Me: Who can help xxxxxxx out, how does George feel about Lennie?

Student 2: George gets angry with Lennie because he always has to look after him.

Me: That’s right, so xxxxxxx, how does George feel about Lennie?

Student 1: George feels angry at Lennie because he always has to look after him.

Me: Yes, that’s good, and why does he have to look after him?

Student 1: Because Lennie isn’t clever and can’t look after himself.

Me: Thank you xxxxxx.

By doing this, student 1 doesn’t get to opt out but still gets to experience success through follow-up as well as push her skills. There are a number of variations of this in Lemov’s book (there is a copy in the HUB).

There’s also a wealth of activities available here for you to bring to your classrooms and try out. Trying something new always involves an element of risk, but here at Harlington, our culture of collaboration and sharing good practice means that we can take risks without fear. It’s a culture that many schools strive for…

Discover and try something new!

IPAD apps.jpg

 

Sharing the journey

Follow this great reflective blog from Haemia Foote.

EAL – not quite ‘one size fits all’

A useful insight into differentiation for EAL learners from one of our beginner teachers.

Last week, I had an opportunity to look back at my students’ work from when I began my placement at Harlington. It was a sound start, but I was surprised at how much the quality of work from students has improved since then, when some students began only by having the date in their book and now they are able to produce good quality work in the lesson.

In the first week at Harlington, I received a class list for one of my teaching classes, I had students  from 3 different continents, speaking 7 different languages and time studied in the UK ranging from 1 week to roughly 8 years. I was overwhelmed and clueless on how to plan lessons for EAL students, so I simply ignored this information and delivered the lesson as if I was in a mainstream school in rural Britain. During the lesson, students appeared to be at 100% concentration, some students decided to take a nap and some meticulously took down notes from the entire powerpoint presentation. Not surprisingly, the learning outcomes from the class were mixed and I was told to take action immediately on making the lesson suitable for all students.

Therefore, one day I planned a lesson where students would extract information from a simple paragraph (hence able to work independently) and I could spend more time with particular students who were finding the language difficult. With that particular group, I was able to divide them into 3 categories:

1. No difficulties in reading/disruptions caused by behaviour issues
2. Some difficulties – can find information from texts but need some further explanation and guidance as a small group
3. Major difficulties – struggling to find information from texts

The descriptions and outcomes for all 3 groups are very different but they were all EAL students. Sometimes the EAL sub-grades (A1-complete beginner to C2-very fluent user) are good indications, but you never know how much progress they could make even during a term. Here are the students’ EAL grades under the 3 categories I mentioned from above:

1. A2-B2
2. B1
3. A1

As you can see, the EAL sub-grades can be a good indicator to identify students in group 2 and 3 but they can progress to group 1 when they could comprehend the language without much difficulty. With group 2 and 3, I begin with a short explanation using a mini white board to guide students with the task. After the explanation, group 2 students were able to continue with the task without much difficulty whereas group 3 students needed more guidance. Eventually group 3 students were able to attempt the task by highlighting a given list of keywords before attempting the original task. Even though this may mean more work to be done for planning lessons, at least now all students are able to work in class and able to have a more satisfying science lesson.

Are you ready for your close-up?

The best solutions start with a problem, and I had a problem.

I needed to provide a resource for some year 11 students who would be missing a whole week of lessons at a critical time. Notes wouldn’t cut it, I knew they wouldn’t read them, so I decided to film the lessons they would miss, that way, they could watch the lesson, pause the video and take notes/answer questions at their own pace and it would hopefully be the next best thing to actually being in class.

Brilliant!

So, armed with a flip camera and a pile of dictionaries to prop it on, I pressed the little red button. So far, so good. And then I watched the film…

Pretty soon, I was engrossed. Why do I do that with my hands? How many times do I say ‘Ok?’Why do I sound like the love child of DIck Van Dyke and Mary Poppins? And why, oh why, didn’t I hold my stomach in?

But once I stopped cringing, I also noticed some other things. I could analyse my questioning, I noted how long I gave students to respond, I could see how I interacted with individual students,  who I overlooked and how I adapted when things went wrong. And it was fascinating.

I intend to make filming a regular part of my practice and would encourage us all to consider doing so for a number of reasons:

1. To provide resources for students as a flipped or revision resource.
2. To share good practice
3. To reflect and improve on your own practice
4. As a method of data collection as part of action research

If you’re interested in filming one of your lessons but need help getting started, drop any of the Lead Practioners a line. You can keep it to yourself or why not watch with a colleague for some friendly and supportive feedback.

But don’t forget to hold your stomach in!

 

 

Speed Date CPD

Thank you to everyone who took part in our CPD event. What a collaborative and creative bunch we are!

More to follow including information and resources shared. Watch this space!