You will have also seen the Hampshire external reports highlighting the positive aspects of our teaching and learning ethos. All our recent staff, student, and parent feedback has been positive, which reflects the views of all major stakeholders. These are all examples of why this is a great College to work in. Thank you, and I know this is recognised by SLT, parents, governors, and any visitors we have at the College. 

So, for this blog, I just want to recap on all the emails, blogs, and training we have delivered over the last few years and condense them for us all. This is nothing new, just a handy tool to help answer that internal question we all have at times: “Am I doing the right thing?” 

Planning 

• Medium Term Plans are on itslearning and live for students, with resources made available for them to use. Show the students. 

• All components should be based around a ‘Big Question,’ which students should be checked on at the end. These should be matched to the curriculum map. 

• Activities should be planned to support all learners, with consideration on how to extend and support where needed. Fill out the challenge box to remind you to challenge HA students at points in those components of learning. 

• Homework should be planned, differentiated where needed. All homework must be set through itslearning, even if set through another platform. 

• Plan regular assessments to check on learning, and then consider how our MTP’s should reflect this moving forward. 

• Week-by-weeks must be planned as per the ARR calendar. We want students to know assessments are coming up and how to prepare for them. 

• We expect at least one homework and one assessment per half-term to be reflected in the assessment record on itslearning. 

• Adapt MTP’s for your class and consider how to differentiate for outliers. 

Feedback and Marking 

• Feedback every two weeks in core lessons and every three weeks in foundation lessons. 

• This should include at least one piece of student work marked, with formative feedback to help the student improve that piece of work. Question-based feedback is recommended. 

• Students should respond, and the teacher should check this. 

• Mark for literacy when you do this. 

• Use live marking where possible. 

Teaching 

• Welcome at the door: Check uniform and ensure the start of the lesson is orderly. 

• Have a ‘Do Now’ task ready while you take the register. 

• Go through the Big Question for this component of learning. 

• Use CFU at key points in the lesson, such as mini whiteboards, think-pair-share, or cold calling. 

• Model work through the ‘I do, we do, you do’ structure. 

• Encourage discussion where possible, following the Crookhorn rules for discussion. 

• Move around the room as much as possible. Position yourself where needed and be full of positive praise for students when you can. 

• Have your green pen in hand when moving and get into the habit of giving live feedback in the moment. 

• Differentiate in real time and adapt the lesson as it progresses, based on what you learn from CFU. 

These are the Crookhorn standards, and if we all follow them consistently, we know it will benefit everyone. We are an excellent group of staff who work extremely hard to ensure we give our students the best possible outcomes. Thank you for all the hard work you put in every day to make this College the great place it is to work. Any comments or questions are gratefully received. 

The key thing for us moving into 24-25 is that we are not introducing anything new in terms of our pedagogy. Now is the time to consolidate on the structure and techniques we have been working on over the last few years and making them consistent across all our classrooms. As teachers we don’t want too many initiatives and compliance tasks that we must follow. At Crookhorn, we don’t believe in making you all do the same thing as many academy chains do, as we don’t believe this is conductive to getting the best out of you as individuals. However, there are some good evidence-based strategies that we would like to embed into your teaching that we believe help the students with their learning. I am going to highlight two of these below that we want you to consider when planning your upcoming components of learning which you have been trained on before but worth reminding you on.

DO NOW (Retrieval)

Do Now, an absolute ‘Teach like a Champion’ favourite, mixed with the idea of retrieval, which we all know is a must when it comes to moving knowledge from the short-term to the long-term memory. Below is something I stole of Twitter (I will never call it X!) which is a simple starter that we could all use to help us settle a class and build the retention of knowledge at the same time.

Hopefully you will remember the blog we did highlighting the fantastic work in science, with their ‘Blast from the past’ which asks students to remember something from last lesson, last week, last month. You could look to do something where you mix these two templates, as I do like the idea of these tasks above but not just from the last lesson. This also fits in nicely with our DBLP activities, such as flash cards and mindmaps.

Think Pair Share

As you all know by now, I am not a big fan of the ‘hands up’ policy of questioning. The days of the teacher standing at the front lecturing the students and then checking they have understood by asking them to raise their hands to answer a question, picking on 1 or 2 and then moving on are well and truly dead. It thankfully is very rare we see that in classrooms now with far more teachers using mini whiteboards and techniques such as T/P/S to check for understanding from the whole class, rather than a few. I like this diagram above as it makes it really clear on the steps we should take when we do ask a hinge question that is vital in us understanding where the class are up to and where I am going to take the learning next. It might be worth getting this printed off, laminated and put on desks for students to use if you feel this is appropriate. The key part for me that is often neglected is the very first bit, which is the thinking part. Giving them time and somewhere to jot down their thoughts is absolutely crucial, and the mini whiteboard comes in handy here as you can walk round and look at individual thoughts, so you know who knows what!

Two keys techniques for our classrooms that we all are familiar with. Nothing new, but something we want to get right across our College. If you have any questions please do ask me or speak to your coach/mentor in your next session.

Enjoy the rest of your break and looking forward to seeing you all in September.

If you look at Appendix 1 attached to this blog- you will see the document, we issued on the October training day as a clear guide to what adaptive teaching looks like. The points on this document absolutely stand true as an excellent guide with one tiny alteration to the third bullet point right at the top of the document, where previously it had said ‘targeted support for students who are struggling’, it now says ‘to ensure the active engagement of all learners in the classroom’.

The reason for this slight tweak is for the following reason. If you look below, you will see that I have created a graphic to try and explain visibly the difference between adaptation and differentiation. Adaptation is where you adapt the learning for all the learners in your class. Differentiation is where you have to have specific strategies in place to support those who might be progress outliers in your class, either because of cognitive barriers or because of attendance or behavioural issues.  The bowling alley analogy, sums this up very well.

Difference between Differentiation and Adaptive teaching

Adaptive= is adapting the curriculum or the lesson resources for the whole class (can be where you adjust a teaching resource to fit with how your class learns best, can be revisiting certain areas of information to allow for strong recall, can be dropping some tasks out or adding some tasks in.)

Differentiation= targeted support in the classroom (can be the order in which you live mark, can be a coaching table, can be how the TA supports in the classroom, can be a different level of depth to what other students in the class might be reaching, can be different resources or different exercises)

Specialist= interventions and higher-level support offered through the SEND team.

So, when you look at the Adaptive Teaching guide all the points remain valid as they focus on key strategies and teaching pedagogy you would deploy to ensure the engagement of the various students that make up your class.

To understand how to provide differentiation in your class for progress outliers which will require further thought and intervention, I have now created a separate guide which is Appendix 2.

Also connected to differentiation is the role of the TA in your classroom. If you have a TA supporting you with a class this provides a great opportunity for differentiation to be taken to a different level. To help with this, I have attached as Appendix 3 the Vision for the Effective Deployment of TA’s that you contributed to in the Spring term of 23. In this vision, within the teacher section it clearly outlines that the teacher should be actively working to support the lowest attainers in the classroom (differentiation), along with live marking to give dynamic feedback to these same students (differentiation). The TA is deployed to support and assist the learning, by checking on the progress of other students in the classroom and feeding back to the teacher where there might be gaps in understanding, thereby enabling the teacher to adapt the lesson (adaptation) to ensure the correct reteach of material that has not been properly understood in depth by the class.

Take your time to look at all the points on the vision document for TA deployment and try and assess how confident you are, that this vision is being put into action in your classroom, with the TA’s you work with. Likewise, TA’s, think about how confident you feel with the vision of your role and what areas you think you might need support with.

In reading around the topic of More and Most Able (MMA) the theme of challenge recurs often. 

“More able pupils in general welcome challenge and often like to take a lead in shaping their own learning”. (Cullen, Cullen, Dytham et al, 2018).

This document will look at how challenge can be provided for MMA students through different forms of scaffolding regarding key ideas on:

• Task design and differentiation
• Live Marking and Feedback

Task Design and Differentiation

One useful and popular form of scaffolding is a written resource: e.g. writing frames, sentence starters, single paragraph outline structures, checklists, vocabulary lists, and glossaries.  

Single Paragraph Outline

Here is an excellent example of how an SPO can be differentiated for more and most able students.

The questions and prompts are challenging and probing, asking the student to provide and explain their evidence, including using key vocabulary and quotes.  The subject-specific vocabulary is used confidently and is extensive.  The SPO then acts as a checklist for content.

The feedback also ensures the students include key points in their plan, which allows for a well written final answer.

Writing Frames

This next example from Geography shows how a task has been scaffolded with a writing frame to support an SEN student in assessing the hypothesis.

The open format of the MMA student’s work has challenged them to write the hypothesis review in full, together with using full sentences and subject specific vocabulary, thereby allowing them to consolidate these skills.   The differentiation is clear.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is key to comprehending and following a lesson.  It should be introduced carefully to ensure understanding.  It is also vital in expressing ideas and thoughts.  Research has shown that explicitly teaching vocabulary increases the understanding and use of that vocabulary by students. 

In addition to the Tier 2 vocabulary highlighted by Katy in her blog, it is important to teach subject-specific vocabulary.   Explicit teaching may include the use of word lists and glossaries.  It should also include students reading and analysing “The Big Question” and all keywords within it.

Students must understand the meaning of keywords, as well as examples of context.  The MMA students should be given words that challenge them and allow them to express their knowledge in increasingly sophisticated ways.

Summarising

This work is an example from an MMA student in a KS3 RS lesson.  The student was given extension work; to summarise key information from a short piece of text. 

Research has shown that summarising information is an effective and simple way to add challenge in the classroom, requiring a range of cognitive processes from selecting, organising, and integrating information.

Live marking and Feedback

Live marking allows for immediate feedback and identification of misconceptions which can be addressed within the lesson. It allows us to identify students who require more support and also those who have understood the main content and require stretch and challenge.

An excellent example from Maths shows how live feedback has been used to support a SEN student and challenge a MMA student.

Feedback is one of the most powerful techniques regarding students' outcomes and can be differentiated to support or challenge students. Below is an example of feedback from a piece of work in history given to a Year 7 SEN and MMA student where feedback questions have been carefully considered, allowing for greater depth and response for the MMA student.

An example from an English lesson shows how the question of ‘why’ can be used to stretch students. As well as the probing question why, which demands a considered response; the student must elaborate and therefore make connections with prior learning.  This helps embed the knowledge and encourages critical thinking.

In this blog we have highlighted many different ways to construct and adapt planning or feedback to stretch the high attainers. We must get the level of challenge right for them, especially in our mixed-attaining classrooms.

As part of our professional reading, James and I have recently revisited “The Revision Revolution” by Helen Howell and Ross Morrison McGill.   The book discusses how students should be taught explicit study skills from Year 7, how to make revision enjoyable, and how to embed learning to help students grow into knowledgeable and informed young adults.  This is precisely the aim of our developing blended learners programme (DBLP).   The book provides a comprehensive guide on how to start and sustain a revision revolution in your school, building a culture of effective study that flows through all aspects of school life.  

The key points of the revision revolution … 

• It is to help students grow into knowledgeable and informed young adults, not just to help them pass exams.
• It is based on the idea that students need to be taught how to revise effectively, not just told to revise. 
• It involves building a culture of effective study that flows through all aspects of school life. 
• It involves using a range of study techniques, including active recall, spaced repetition, interleaving, and metacognition. 

The study skills that we have taken from the book (and other sources such as teachertoolkit.co.uk) and built into the DBLP are: 

1. Active recall: This technique involves recalling information from memory without the aid of notes or textbooks. It helps students to identify gaps in their knowledge and improve their retention of information.  This technique is based on the idea that the more you practice recalling information, the better you will be at remembering it. 

• To use active recall, students can create flashcards with questions on one side and answers on the other. They can then test themselves by trying to recall the answer before flipping the card over.  
• Another way to use active recall is to write out what you know about a topic from memory, and then compare it to your notes or textbook to see where you need to improve. 
• By practicing recalling information, students are able to identify gaps in their knowledge and improve their retention of information. 

2. Mind mapping is a study technique that can help students to organise their thoughts and ideas in a visual way.

• Mind mapping involves creating a diagram that connects different ideas or concepts together using branches and sub-branches. Mind maps can be used to summarise information or plan essays. 
• To create a mind map, start by writing the main idea or topic in the centre of the page and drawing a circle around it. Then, draw branches radiating out from the centre circle, each representing a sub-topic or idea related to the main topic. You can then add further sub-branches to each branch, creating a hierarchical structure that connects all the ideas. Mind maps can be created using pen and paper r using software such as Microsoft Word or online tools like Get Revising. Using different colours for each key concept can help organise your thinking and keep your ideas on track. 

 ACTION: As a tutor, encouraging students to do either of these techniques in their 10-minute chunks. Have some blank cue cards/mindmap templates ready for them to use. As a teacher, think about what homework could be based around this.

3. Spaced repetition is a study technique that involves revisiting information at increasing intervals over time. It can be explained by the ‘forgetting curve’, which is an idea that has been around in psychology literature for over one hundred years. 

• The forgetting curve was first introduced by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885 and shows that the rate of forgetting is highest immediately after learning and then levels off over time.
• To use spaced repetition, teachers should plan to revisit key topics at certain points through activities such as ‘Blast from the past’ (Science) or retrieval quizzes.
• By revisiting information at increasing intervals over time, students can retain information in their long-term memory. 
  

ACTION: When have you planned for this in your MTP’s and lessons? Have you considered what should be retrieved and when?

2. Interleaving: This technique involves mixing up different topics or subjects during revision.  

• To use interleaving, students can mix up different topics or subjects during revision. For example, instead of revising all the topics in a single subject at once, students can revise different topics from different subjects in a single revision session. 

These techniques are particularly pertinent to year 11 as we move towards their final few months.   I know a lot of you have planned a week-by-week schedule up to these mock exams and will be developing your final schedule based on the misconceptions shown through your marking.   Please consider how the points above best suit your subjects.    

• When is it best to make a mind map, and when should cue cards be used?     
• How do I structure the week-by-week and class work to allow for spaced repetition? 

I have never done a blog on parents’ evening before, and with the next one rapidly approaching, I thought that this was a good time to share some useful advice for these evenings. When I was training to become a teacher (yes, that was a while ago now...) we were never trained for these evenings and it was literally a case of sink or swim. There is far more research out there now and I have investigated the National College for teaching to support this Blog. I hope it helps and if you have any questions, please feel free to come and speak to me or your HOS.

I have often thought that communication is what we do best and is probably a reason why we became teachers in the first place. We hopefully deliver clear explanations, impart knowledge, simplify complex concepts, give effective feedback and build positive relationships with those around us. We use our voice to manage behaviour and control situations, as well as to inspire and motivate.

However, for many of us, especially those new to the profession, the thought of holding conversations and giving feedback to parents/carers about their children and young people can feel particularly daunting, especially when we know that some of that feedback might be hard to hear. If this sounds familiar, this is the blog for you!

Firstly, you are not alone in feeling like this, as every teacher at one time in their career has had to face a parents’ evening for the first time, and most of us (if we’re honest) will remember feeling slightly intimidated by it. Secondly, feeling a bit anxious about a parents’ evening means that you care; you see its importance and you want to do a good job! The good news is there are lots of things you can do to ensure the experience is successful, purposeful and even enjoyable. It is an unpredictable night, but one we can plan for to support with the more challenging moments.

The benefits of a parents’ evening

A parents’ evening is a great opportunity to give positive feedback to parents/carers about their child and to give them an insight into their child’s life in school. Parents/carers ultimately want to know that their child is safe, happy and learning, and this is the opportunity to reassure them and to feedback what their child does well. There are always positives! This is your chance to show parents how much you value teaching their child. Watching parents light up with pride is such a rewarding part of our job.

We encourage students to accompany their parents/carers, so students get to hear the positive praise you are communicating. This can really boost students’ motivation and sense of pride which means they will continue to strive harder in class. Parents’ evening will also allow you to get to know your students even better, as you often find out things you might not have known.

Parents are often keen to tell you what their child is like at home or what their outside interests are, and this can really help you to build positive relationships with your students in class.

Obviously, one of the main purposes of parents’ evening is to feedback on students’ progress and what they are learning about. Make this conversation effective and purposeful by thinking about the key messages for each child. This is your opportunity to communicate what could be improved on.

Use this conversation to get parents onside and to get their support with their child’s learning or behaviour targets. You can even make suggestions about how they can support their child. Most parents/carers will receive constructive advice well if framed in a conversation which shows that, like them, you want the best for their child. (More about that later.)

How to prepare for parents’ evening

• Make sure the assessment record is up to date and be prepared to show the parents all the assessment and homework marks the student has received this year. Make sure the parent knows how to access this on ItsLearning and how to check what homework has been set.
• Know your students! I know this sounds silly, but go through your class list/s in advance of the day. Have ClassCharts up and what rewards and sanctions have been awarded in your subject area. Start with the positives or any improvements seen.

• Check the student books in advance, as you will want to share these with parents if possible. What can you show the parent on what the child is doing well, and where they can improve? Make sure the marking is up to date.

• Go armed with short notes about each student. Your conversations need to focus on student progress and targets, as well as their attitude to learning. Think carefully about how you will give difficult messages in a kind way.
• If you are a new teacher, practice and role play with your mentor some different scenarios. Practice how to conduct the appointment and iron out any issues.

Practical tips for the evening itself

• Look the part. You are the public face of the College on parents’ evening, so it’s a good idea to represent it as professionally as possible.
• Arrive ahead of time. Rushing into the hall to find a queue of parents does not give the best impression, so aim to dismiss students/students swiftly that day so you arrive before parents.

• Bring a drink and ensure you have eaten.

• Ensure you have a name sign on your desk, so you can be found. (This is usually organised by the support team.) You will need at least two chairs but be aware that some parents bring other family members and the student/s themselves. (Don’t be afraid to send the student away to sit in the waiting area if you wish to address the parents in private, though.)

• Have School Cloud open with the appointments but bring notes and data as well as paper and a pen to note down actions resulting from your conversations.

• Keep an eye on the time. If things look like it won’t be resolved, explain that you will call them the following week to speak about this further. Note this down on your pad!

Dos and Don'ts of an effective conversation

Dos:

• Do stand to greet the parents/carers. Shake hands, smile and thank them for coming, then invite them to sit down. They may be nervous too, so make small talk about things such as the weather or if they managed to find you okay. Help them relax. Make sure you have the right parents in front of you in case someone has not shown up. Most parents/carers offer the name of their child in the first instance.

• Do take a moment to read your notes and look at the student’s data before you start talking.

• Do start with a positive and a strength, even if the student is not making the progress they could: “His attendance is excellent, uniform impeccable and he is always on time.” “She wants to achieve and is keen to learn.” This part of the meeting is key, as it is here you show the parent that you care and want the best for their child. Parents will accept more constructive advice more readily if they know you are on their side.

• Do describe succinctly what the student has covered in terms of content but focus more on their progress. Use words like “steady progress”, “good progress”, “very good progress”, “excellent progress”. Give examples of what they have done well. Identify strengths where you can.

• Do describe what they need to do in terms of improvement, and that includes attitude to learning and things they need to work on more. Be specific! For example: “If he is going to achieve a grade 7, he needs to use a range of different tenses in his written and spoken work. He needs to do some independent learning on verb formation in French so that it sticks.” “She always starts off the lesson being really interested, but she has difficulty maintaining focus. We have started using a sand timer and a checklist to help her concentrate. It would be good if she used these at home too, when doing homework.”

• Do take time to listen to parents/carers and their concerns. This is a two-way conversation. Make notes of actions to take forward. This will mean they see you are taking their comments on board.

• Do be truthful. Do be kind.

Don’ts

• Don’t be overly negative or use negative language, e.g. “lazy”, “apathetic”, “rude” or “weak”.

• Don’t be excessively positive unless it’s true.

• Don’t comment on things that can’t be changed, such as a child’s personality. What is the point of telling a parent that their child is “quiet” or “talkative”? Being quiet doesn’t mean you aren’t learning and being talkative doesn’t either.

• Don’t be vague. Avoid, for example: “They need to work harder.”, “They need to add more detail.”, “They need to keep going.” Rather, be specific about actions which can help the student/student progress: “They need to be spending and hour each night using the revision techniques we have been using in class.”

• Don’t be afraid to get support if you need it. You can refer parents/carers to other colleagues if you need their expertise. SB and I are in the foyer in the Performing Arts if needed, and please direct any parents who are not happy to us.

Dealing with negative feedback or bigger issues

It’s worth remembering that the majority of parents/carers are enormously grateful to teachers and often admire us for the job we are doing. Parents/carers will often feed this back and thank us for our support, which makes parents’ evening a really enjoyable and affirming experience.

On occasion, parents may use parents’ evening as a forum to voice their concerns. This is fine, but if a situation or concern is serious or complicated and can’t be resolved during this 5-minute meeting, don’t be frightened to communicate this.

• Firstly, listen carefully to the parents’ or carers’ concerns. Give eye contact and nod. Make notes so the parent/carer knows you’re taking their concerns on board.

• Express your concern: “I am sorry to hear that.”

• Ask what the parent would like to happen to resolve the situation (whilst not promising that you will follow their suggestions). If you can deal with their concerns in this meeting by suggesting some actions you could take, then do so. For example: “Okay, let’s try moving her to a different seat, so they are sitting apart. That just might resolve the problem.” However, if the issue is greater than that, explain that tonight’s meeting is only a five-minute slot for feedback on their child’s progress, so an additional meeting will need to be booked which might involve other colleagues, such as the Head of House.

• Try to get the meeting back on track by updating them about their child’s progress and wellbeing in College.

Don’t hesitate to seek help from colleagues if parents become hostile or personal. This is very rare. If you expect this may happen in advance of the parents’ evening, ask that another colleague is present with you when the meeting takes place such as your HOS or SLT.

Difficult questions

You may come up against some tricky questions. However, if you plan and prepare well, you can anticipate them and be ready with an answer. Remember, being tactful and diplomatic is key, whilst remaining honest and truthful.

Top tips for dealing with difficult questions

• Anticipate the difficult questions that could come up and plan your responses to them.

• Seek advice from experienced staff about experiences they’ve had, and how they would answer tricky questions.

• Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know the answer to a question. Simply make a note of it and promise to get back to them with an answer.

• If a parent/carer asks directly about how their child or young person is performing in relation to the rest of the class or year group, you need to be truthful but tactful. You could refer to age-related expectations too. If a child is below expectations, you can still communicate this in a positive way. For example: “They are not quite where they need to be, but I am confident with the support we have in place, they will continue to make progress.”

After parents’ evening

Reflect on the evening and dwell on the highlights first. There will definitely be some. Think about what you handled well and embrace the areas you are going to work on further. Seek advice from others and share your experiences with your colleagues on what went well, what was tough and what you learnt.

Remember to follow up on those actions you promised you’d do, so parents know you are true to your word.

1. Feedback and marking

HOS would expect to see the students given feedback every two weeks in core lessons, and 3 weeks in foundation lessons. This would be at least one piece of student work marked, with formative feedback to help the student improve that piece of work. This could be done either on itslearning or in books. We would then expect the student to respond and the teacher to check this. No need to mark that response, just acknowledge with tick or como’s. In the books, the teacher marks in green and students respond in red. There is a need to mark for literacy when you do this, so please refer to Katy King’s emails on this- I got my TA to help me with this, which works well.

We are pushing the idea of ‘live marking’, where you will give students instant feedback in class, and they do their response at that time. Plan approximately 15 minutes of independent time where students can work without you, and you go around and mark some books and get them to respond straight away. This means that you don’t have to take any books home with you! The books or itslearning plans should have a clear footprint in of teacher feedback and how this has led to progress. No need to stamp ‘verbal feedback’ in books, we know you do that all the time!!

2. Planning

We expect all planning to be done on itslearning and plans to be made live for the students to access. We would expect teachers to show the plans to the students during the lesson and teach from itslearning, bringing up any documents needed. This will build up good habits for teachers and students in the consolidation of Blended learning. All departments have their plans now on itslearning, which are sequenced and built around MTP’s and then components of learning. All components should be based around a ‘Big Question’, which students should be checked on at the end. Teachers should have considered the key knowledge and skills needed and what vocab is vital to teach to the students to help with their understanding. Activities should be planned out to support all learners, with consideration on how to extend and support where needed. Homework should be planned in at regular intervals and checked/rewarded and teachers should reflect on their learning at regular intervals (Progress partner meetings as a minimum). We should plan regular assessments to check on learning, and then consider how our plans should reflect this in future. We would expect at least one homework and one assessment in each half-term to be reflected in the assessment record on itslearning. I know many of you do far more as this really helps build up a picture of how that student is making progress.

3. Teaching 

We have the ‘Excellence as standard in the Crookhorn classroom’ guide, which is our absolute bible when it comes to what pedagogy is expected in the classroom. Here are the biggest vitals as a quick reminder;

• Welcome at door-check uniform and make sure the start of lesson is ordered. Have the ‘Do Now’ task ready for them, whilst you take the register. This could be a quick retrieval activity from previous learning. It should be an independent task to keep them quiet. Great to do on Mini whiteboards (MWB) so you can see what they are doing.
• Go through Big Question for this component of learning- and how they will develop their knowledge to answer this over a learning period. Explain how their learning will be checked at end of lesson. Consider things such as exit tickets or a task to show they have worked towards this outcome.
• Get as much data as possible from students when it comes to checking what they have learnt. If they are asking questions, or checking they have understood something, there is no point going to hands up and then checking one person’s understanding. Again, things like MWB will give you the whole classes understanding quickly, or live marking will give you a greater understanding whilst they are working on a small task.  There is no need for students to be shouting out at you so make sure this is not tolerated.
• Consider using ‘Think, Pair, Share’ when it comes to checking understanding. Get students to write one or two bullet points on MWB, then share with their partner and discuss who has a stronger answer, then get them to hold up boards, so you can see which partners have answers you want the whole class to hear and discuss.
• Use of the visualiser is really powerful, and a great way for you to model. Also, a great way to share students work, and get them to consider ways to improve etc. The ‘I do, we do, you do’ model should be standard practice.
• Encourage discussion where possible, following the Crookhorn rules for discussion.
• Move around the room as much as possible, place yourself where needed and be full of positive praise for students when you can be.
• Have your green pen in your hand when moving, get into the habit of giving live feedback with students in the moment.
• Consider live differentiation in every lesson- and how this can be done. Start with CFU, and plan how to differentiate from there. If certain students don’t get a task, consider moving them onto a table and then working with them whilst others are working on a greater depth task. If this is not possible to move students, then choose these students for live marking immediately, and give them extra pointers to help them. Extra support such as them using BYOT to check their itslearning plans, use of exercise books and resources on itslearning or access textbooks/help sheets that you have pre-planned will help.

I hope this ‘quick guide’ helps remind you of the key expectations of what high quality teaching looks like at Crookhorn, but if you have any questions please do ask your HOS, coach or myself.

“Strong literacy skills give students a greater opportunity to improve their fluency of content.  This then enables students to build their knowledge and understanding within the content and problem solve to a much deeper and greater level both in your subject and make cross curriculum connections.” Mark Kyrillou (2023) (James always like research in these blogs!)

In Maths, you would think Literacy has a minor part to play and the only letters we use are “x’s” and “y’s” in algebra.  People don’t realise, but Literacy in Maths is equally as important as getting the sum correct because without knowing what they are answering or why they are answering a question, we can’t expect them to be able to get the answer correct.

“Without the input of deep, contextual learning at the beginning of every learning episode, students only learn the content on a low superficial level.  Without Literacy being taught well, the content has no meaning and students do not understand or appreciate why this learning episode has its place.  The understanding of keywords and context of the literacy give the foundations and building blocks for students to understand the content.”  Failed footballer and male model Mark Kyrillou (2023).

So what do we do in the classrooms to promote literacy, and what can every teacher consider?

Teacher prompts

• We are considering how to get students to meet the complex demands of unpacking worded problems in Mathematics through discussion.
• We have really considered the use of the ‘group discussion rules’ introduced to the College. Since we moved to tables it has helped us get the students to talk about their mathematical thinking and literacy demands of the subject. This needs to be planned, and we have found it so important to give them time to do this. Our next step is to consider how we structure these discussions, and we are looking into talking frames in the future.
• We encourage students to debate possible solutions to problems in Mathematics and ask them to work together in groups to come up with different answers.
   

Strategies used

Without meaning to patronise anyone here, I know many of you use these strategies, but I thought I would share some of the strategies you can use:

Word searches – all the keywords they could use with this component of learning can be put in a word search. This helps with spelling. We then have a class conversation with students finding out the definitions of the keywords.

Scrabble block – you get students to give you 10 letters at random, and you write them on the board.  They then have to come up with as many words as possible linked to your topic and explain how that word is linked to the topic.

Recap (Starter) questions – include definitions or contextual question at the beginning of your lesson which gives students the opportunity to either recap or explore information.

Examples I use in my learning episodes:

1. Where are decimals used in real life? Where have they used decimals or percentages in real life?
2. Give 2 definitions of the word “mean”?  (Mean is the average in Maths but also used as a description of me!)
3. Give an example of how a Scattergraph is used in Geography.  (I would have already taught them that Scattergraphs shows the relationship between two variables)
4. Define the word ‘multiple’ or give an example?
5. What measurements and units are used in Catering?  Or can you put these measurements used in Catering in order from biggest to smallest?
6. Where are percentages (or figures/graphs/tables whatever I am teaching) used in Sports data?

Diagrams with no questions - I’ll put a diagram of a triangle or graph on the board and students have to come up with 5 questions they could ask about that particular diagram – they are then having to think of the keywords themselves.

Match up the keywords with the definitions - Literacy is treated with as equal importance as any question they are answering from the task given. At the start of the lesson and before I explain how to solve any question, a few minutes are spent defining the keywords – students write these with me with the same expectation of learning as the Maths content.  Planning this into our retrieval thinking means we know this will be recapped on in future learning.

I am really keen to develop cross curricular links between subjects and if anyone has any suggestions or strategies they use, I am always looking to develop my teaching and work with the T+L team here to support colleagues.  Please feel free to share your ideas with me no matter how unnecessary or basic you think your idea is.

Mark Kyrillou

Failed footballer/model/genius but happy teaching Maths!

The following screenshots of this research, which I am sure many of you have seen before, highlight the importance of intervention. The Toolkit looks at each of the key interventions that schools use, how much they would generally cost (£) and then the strength of the research behind this (Padlock). The number in the circle at the end is the months of progress an average child will make compared to a child who does not receive that intervention. The link below will allow you to go onto the website and have a more detailed look if you would like.

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit

Let’s take a look at some of the strategies mentioned at the top of the league for promoting progress and what we should be doing in the Crookhorn classrooms.

Feedback: "Feedback is information given about the learner’s performance relative to learning goals. It should aim towards (and be capable of producing) improvement in students’ learning. Feedback redirects or refocuses the learner’s actions to achieve a goal, by aligning effort and activity with an outcome. It can be about the learning activity itself, about the process of activity, about the student’s management of their learning or self-regulation or (the least effective) about them as individuals. This feedback can be verbal, written, or can be given through tests or via digital technology. It can come from a teacher or someone taking a teaching role, or from peers."

Crookhorn: We promote many different ways of providing feedback, including through exercise books and ItsLearning. I believe that live feedback is best; the student is in the process of learning and any corrections or adjustments to their learning at that point should have most effect. We also have done some training with our TAs, and if you are working with a TA and have given them support with this, they could also help with live marking. Many teachers are now using ItsLearning to provide feedback, with audio and video feedback being used to help with teacher workload. If you need any support with this, please see your coach.

Homework: "Homework refers to tasks given to pupils by their teachers to be completed outside of usual lessons. Common homework activities may be reading or preparing for work to be done in class, or practising and completing tasks or activities already taught or started in lessons, but it may include more extended activities to develop inquiry skills or more directed and focused work such as revision for exams."

Crookhorn: We believe that homework should be set consistently across the 5-year groups. If students are not consistently set homework for your classes in KS3, they will not be in good habits as they move into KS4. Homework should be planned into your components of learning and should be set through ItsLearning. The use of SENECA or ItsLearning self-marking tests should be used, to make sure teacher workload is not increased. Prepare students for upcoming assessments in KS3 by getting them to study for this using the revision techniques we promote, as again, this will promote good habits for them when it comes to GCSEs.

Reading: "Reading comprehension approaches to improving reading focus on learners’ understanding of the text. They teach a range of techniques that enable pupils to comprehend the meaning of what is written, such as inferring the meaning from context, summarising or identifying key points, using graphic or semantic organisers, developing questioning strategies, and monitoring their own comprehension and identifying difficulties themselves (see also Meta-cognition and self-regulation)."

Crookhorn: We all have a responsibility to improve the reading comprehension of the students in our class. It can’t be seen solely as the task of an English teacher, or Cheryl, Sarah Woods or Ellie McBride with their specific interventions and mentoring. We are moving DEAR time from after Roll Call over to the morning which will be linked in with tutor time to increase the profile of reading and its importance with students and staff. Teachers should think about their planning and consider where there are opportunities to enable students to read, the potential barriers they may face and then develop student understanding of what has been written. We have asked HOS to choose words from out Tier 2 vocabulary lists that teachers will be promoting, to develop further students’ understanding of key words, to support them with their reading. 

Collaborative learning and oracy: "Collaborative or cooperative learning can be defined as learning tasks or activities where students work together in a group small enough for everyone to participate on a collective task that has been clearly assigned. This can be either a joint task where group members do different aspects of the task but contribute to a common overall outcome, or a shared task where group members work together throughout the activity. Some collaborative learning approaches also get mixed ability teams or groups to work in competition with each other, in order to drive more effective collaboration.”

Crookhorn: By getting students to work together, and talk to each other about their learning, we will see progress made. As a College, we have followed the research and introduced mixed attaining teaching in many of our classrooms (see below), and the classroom layout you have in your classrooms should facilitate students to be able to easily discuss learning. Plan for this, and don’t forget the ground rules we have in place to make sure that the students discuss learning in the right way. We want to develop skills that students will need for the rest of their lives, not just to pass their GCSEs! Working together in a team, presenting ideas, looking at two or more points of view and realising that others have a different take to you are all strategies we want our children to have.

We have an amazing group of teachers at Crookhorn, and our students are very lucky to have such a hard-working, determined, and self-reflective collective of staff to support them. When you have your next coaching session, please use this blog to reflect on where you stand with each of the strands I have highlighted, and what you could do to improve your practice in the coming months. Have a great summer term, and if you have any questions or reflections on this blog, please do not hesitate to ask.

The ‘Big Question’ is an innovative pedagogical tool, where instead of implementing a learning objective, a question is posed at the start of each component of learning. It is important that we share this question with the students, through our itslearning plans, so our students can get a full understanding of what they need to be able to answer by the end of this particular learning journey. There are many different research references to support this thinking which I have highlighted at the end.

Good practice indicates that we should get the students to read and consider all key words within the question. After allowing time to think, students have the opportunity to discuss their initial thoughts with their peers. Once they have consolidated their ideas, they are asked to share what they think are the important words and what these mean to them. This can act as a quick and easy form of ‘Check for understanding’ (Assessment Reform Group, 2002), where the teacher can make initial amendments to the component of learning to address any misconceptions that had not been predicted.

This dissection and analysis of the ‘Big Question’ helps to place responsibility on the students, allowing them to take ownership of this learning journey (Holligan, 2013).

How is a big question different from an objective?

The ‘Big Question’ allows the children to understand the success criteria. If they can answer the question at the end of the learning journey, they have been successful.  The children have the ability to take ownership of their learning journey as they work through the components as they build up to the fuller understanding of the ‘Big Question’.

Let’s think back to our worked example in History- ‘Why did William win the battle of Hastings’. If we shared that question with the students at the start, and they discussed possible explanations, this should gain their interest and then start breaking down what they will be learning over the coming weeks. We then can then break this down into smaller components of learning based on what we need them to understand to get that fuller picture. The assessment at the end is based on the initial ‘Big Question’, so we can check learning at the end of the journey. Below is the link to the thinking template History used.

https://crookhorncollege.itslearning.com/ContentArea/ContentArea.aspx?LocationType=1&LocationID=65

When using a learning objective, teachers must generate their own questions within the lesson to support higher-order thinking. Research suggests that open-ended questions support higher-order thinking skills, but teachers tend to ask closed questions. Teachers can plan ahead using the ‘Big Question’, considering what further questions might arise as a result. Use of the ‘Big Question’ can facilitate teachers’ questioning skills, where an open-ended question can be used at the beginning of a component to initiate deeper understanding. We have encouraged this use of ‘hinge-questions’ to support our CFU points throughout a learning journey.

How is the Big Question formed, and how does this lead to components of learning?

There are several steps to planning the ‘Big Question’:

Step 1: Consider the initial learning objective. What should be learned, and what is needed for this to happen successfully?

Step 2: Identify knowledge children already hold which will allow them to be successful with this new component. An effective ‘Big Question’ will enable the teacher to make it clear to the children what prior knowledge they need to draw upon.

Step 3: Establish the components children will learn and understand, building on the prior knowledge to introduce new concepts or content. For those of you who were here in March 2020, we talked about the idea of schema, and how to break up learning into components. The example below comes from a ‘Big Question’ – what is a bird? We would need to break this down into the components of a bird and how all these parts make up a bird. We can use this concept with any big question we are teaching.

Once all these things are considered, a list of keywords (Tier 2 and 3) can be made and these form the structure of your ‘Big Question’ for that specific session.

An effective ‘Big Question’ will allow the students to interpret what they will be doing within that session and how they can show progression from one session to another. Therefore, it is essential that the ‘Big Question’ incorporates all the key concepts and vocabulary that will be used throughout the component.

The benefits of using the Big Question

This use of the ‘Big Question’ will improve the use of dialogic within the classroom (Alexander, 2008). This produces a positive impact across the entire curriculum where talk is an essential tool for developing and articulating understanding across a range of attainment levels.

Implications for future practice

 The ‘Big Question’ promotes ‘outstanding’ teaching and learning in accordance with Ofsted (2015). To name a few criteria suggested by Ofsted, outstanding teachers should use questioning highly effectively, identify common misconceptions, check pupils’ understanding and plan lessons very effectively. The ‘Big Question’ promotes and endorses all of these criteria, allowing for constant questioning that checks for understanding and misconceptions. This innovative pedagogical choice provides us with confidence that we are giving the students the best learning experience possible and that we are supporting them in developing key skills that they will need throughout the whole curriculum and later on in life. Having seen it in practice and having witnessed its impact on both the students and the teachers within College, we believe using the big question as the basis of planning is in the best interests of the students.

References

Alexandra R (2008) Towards dialogic teaching: rethinking classroom talk. 4th edn. York: Dialogos.

Assessment Reform Group (2002) Assessment for Learning: 10 Principles [online]. London: Nuffield Foundation. Available at: www. aaia.org.uk/content/uploads/2010/06/ Assessment-for-Learning-10-principles.pdf

Crossland, J. (2015) Thinking about metacognition. Primary Science, 138, 14–16.

Dawes, L., Mercer, N. and Wegerif, R. (2004) Thinking together. 2nd edn. Birmingham: Imaginative Minds.

Holligan, B. (2013) Giving children ownership of their science investigations is easier than you might think. Primary Science, 128, 5–8.

Office for Standards in Education (2015) School inspection handbook [online]. Manchester: Ofsted. Available at: www. gov.uk/government/publications/schoolinspection-handbook-from-september-2015

Retrieval practice is not a new concept in education.   Teachers over many years have been working with the technique of getting their students to remember knowledge from past lessons.   Here at Crookhorn, we are now looking at best practice and how we can develop our retrieval skills - both as teachers in lessons and students studying independently.

As part of the Developing Blended Learners Programme, we have considered both retrieval and revision and how we can upskill our students to get the most out of their working time.   Through discussions, we realised that staff have varied definitions of retrieval and revision, and this was a potential point of confusion for students and parents.   We have therefore come up with the following definitions:

Revision:

Going back over taught and learnt content, using previous and new resources, to ensure a secure understanding. 

Revision materials:

Concise and accurate documents that contain a clear summary of previously taught content.

Retrieval Practice…

“refers to the act of recalling learned information from memory (with no or little support) and every time that information is retrieved, or an answer generated, it changes that original memory to make it stronger. 

The retrieval process cements the information in the long-term memory, which should enable that information to become easier to retrieve in the future.”  Kate Jones

• is intended to be low (or no) stakes work
• needs to have appropriate ease and challenge to allow to a high success rate (80%+)
• can be used to close the vocabulary gap and support vocabulary instruction

It is a common misconception that retrieval practice is just about learning facts.  Although it is easy to see why this is the case, the process of recalling information regularly supports the development of links within the long-term memory.  In turn, this allows students to be able to use this knowledge more effectively when working on new concepts.

We need retrieval to be frequent and ongoing, not just part of revision towards assessments.   We need to build retrieval into every lesson as well as independent work.   An activity doesn’t need to be long, but the sequence of the activity needs to be carefully planned.  

When in class, we need to be explicit with the students that this is a retrieval task.   We need to explain to the students the process they are going through and how they can use the same process as part of their independent work.

For the past year, science have been using their ‘Blast from the Past’ sheets which have questions from various time scales in the past. 

With this example, the class teacher should be explaining to the students the reasons for revisiting work from a year ago and not just focussing on the last lesson.

The Developing Blended Learners Programme will be working with students to get them to consider their independent learning and revision process, but the more we can support this this in every lesson, the better working practice our students will have.

Seneca is a great way for students to be given short sharp retrieval activities as homework.   Taking on board the idea of revisiting over time, a Seneca assignment can be built up of short sections from multiple areas of the Seneca ‘course’.  There is no need to complete all of once section of the ‘course’ in one sitting.  Careful planning and analysis of the results can ensure coverage of the whole curriculum across time and address weaker areas of knowledge.

The retrieval practice definition shared earlier comes from Kate Jones’ book ‘Retrieval practice: Research and Resources for every classroom’.  This, along with book two, is available in the staff library and is an easy read, summarising the work of many practitioners – including Rosenshein and Sherrington on the Principles of instruction.  Jones has collected several retrieval techniques and I share a few with you here:

Generic retrieval questions

• • State 3 facts from last lesson.
  • What keywords did you use or learn last lesson?
  • Ask your partner 3 questions based on the content covered this term.
  • Explain a key concept or idea from last week in your own words.
  • Discuss with your partner what we were studying in the lesson last week.

Brain dumps

Simply refers to dumping as much information from the brain about a specific topic

Cops and Robbers

A build on from brain dumps.   Once the initial brain dump has been completed, student read other students work and ‘steal’ other information

Retrieval relay race

• • One question on a page, 4 empty boxes
  • Student 1 writes as much as possible in the 1^st box
  • Paper is passed to student 2 who needs to add ‘more’ information to box 2 – this requires student 2 to read students 1s work before writing their own information
  • Pass on to student 3 and 4 accordingly
  • Can be done with all students on the same question or a variety of questions in the class

Flashback Friday

As an end of lesson task, students create a list of 10 questions based on the current content (with answers separately if you want).   They will return and answer these questions in a future lesson – answering their own questions or a peer’s questions as you see fit.

Retrieval grids

There are many different forms of retrieval grids – this one appealed to me the most.

• • Create a 3 x 3 grid (or whatever size you want)
  • Add a question / fact / keyword etc in each box
  • In lesson 1, student complete 1 box of their choice – they will opt for the one they know the best
  • Lesson 2 a second box is completed and so on.

‘Apart from the initial lesson, the students will know what they will need to retrieve next lesson, and they may decide in advance which they wish to focus on for the next lesson.  The fact that they were deciding to act on that in advance to be prepared in the lesson is brilliant and exactly what they should be doing.  Kate Jones

Retrieval at Crookhorn

SCIENCE

Following the memory pedagogy training at the start of November, Sean has been working on a couple of ideas, one of which he shares here:

Thinking inside the box!

Make as many links as you can on your white board between these images.

The purpose of these activities are twofold

a) retrieval opportunity

b) allow students to form their own dual coding - Also allowing you to see when they are unable to do this and therefore address any misconceptions.

GEOGRAPHY

Having considered the Retrieval Grids idea from Kate Jones, Barbara has amended the process of her GYM sheets.  

Geography now complete these more often as their Do Now task, one box at a time. 

Hopefully the students will begin to consider a little revision between lessons as they know what they need to work on in the next lesson.

We’ll be able to share the update on the developed use of these sheets in due course. 

We know there is good practice going on around the College and we would like to showcase more.  Please can you email AJB with examples from your teaching by the end of term.

It demonstrates that discussion, practising doing, and teaching others is by far the best way to learn something, and this is what we are seeing more in the classrooms.

I wanted to share with you all some general feedback that Tor and I discussed, and what she has seen commonly across the county on all her learning walks. I also want to share with you what a student panel thought as well.

1. With ‘Think, Pair, Share’ (TPS), we often rush the process. We need to slow down and let the students think. As practitioners, we don’t think the pace is quick enough if we just stop and let them think, so often speed it up and talk over the students whilst they are thinking.
2. When it comes to the thinking stage, let them jot down their thoughts on whiteboards or in their books. You will be able to tell when the right time is to move on by just watching them. Have the mini whiteboards on the desk so they are easy to grab for the students. Tim has offered to send out a video of him leading a ‘TPS’ session this half term which I think will really help us.
3. When using the whiteboards for a CFU, ask them to show the boards at the same time. If they are holding up their boards at different times, it can often be the case that students check what others have put up and then quickly copy them. It is also much easier to check that everyone has put up their boards and answer when they all raise their boards at the same time.
4. What happens after your CFU? There are some times when we see some excellent ways teachers check for understanding but then nothing really happens due to it. The teacher ‘ploughs on’ with their plan. I have spoken before about the values of flexible teaching, or adaptive teaching, which I believe is even easier with our new classroom layouts. An example of flexible teaching could be the following.

Teacher CFU on mini whiteboards and sees some students have not quite got the concept. Teacher sets up next part of the lesson, which is extending the thinking of the students who do understand. The teacher brings the students who do not understand the first concept to a table and moves the students who do get it to the now free seats. The teacher works with these students, and if there is a TA they can work with the students who are working on the extension task.

Tor Flynn did a really interesting student panel with a selection of our KS3 students. Much of what they said backs up our own thoughts and observations of our oracy strategies. Their key points are as follows:

1. Give us time to think! We often only have 10-20 secs which is nothing. Check both partners are contributing when walking around.
2. Give us some examples of sentence starters to help us start off as this helps some of us.
3. Teachers check our answers, but don’t do anything with this apart from ‘well done ‘or ‘that’s not right, think again’.
4. ‘They need to know what we don’t know.’ Quote from Y8!
5. Live marking really helps us.
6. The key words help, but sometimes the definitions used by teachers are too fancy, using words we don’t know! It’s better when they put it in a context that we will understand.
7. Lots of talking over us when we are working which stops us thinking!
8. We recognise we are not confident in speaking in front of the class, and need help getting better at this.
9. Each teacher or subject should actually ask us what helps us, through student voice.
10. Teachers are using cold calling less, and more TPS but cold calling is still good if done well. Sometimes it is just used to check the ‘naughty kids’

I think there is a lot for us to consider, but we are on the right path, and we all need to get into the right habits of doing this more in the classroom. Following on from the last point the students made, Doug Lemov (Teach Like a Champion) has written a blog about how to develop our questioning, and then getting students to think and respond to it through cold calling. This ties in directly to the points made above.

GETTING ALL STUDENTS TO THINK HARDER WITH GOOD QUESTION DESIGN

What makes a really good question? How do we ensure that we get as many students cognitively engaged as possible? And can subtle tweaks in the way you ask questions help your students feel more confident when they answer? Given that asking questions is the primary vehicle for Retrieval Practice, which continues to be one of the best bets for students learning, it is essential that we consider how to do it best. Lately, there has been a renewed interest amongst teachers for using a questioning method known as cold-calling, which is when a teacher solicits an answer from a student who hadn’t raised their hand to answer the question.

This blog (and the downloadable graphic below) looks at three different approaches to using cold-calling, with each one tweaking the structure of your question and building on the last…

THINKING ABOUT AN ANSWER + WAIT TIME + COLD-CALLING

There are certain situations where it would be beneficial to have students think of an answer to a question (instead of writing it down). These may include for younger students who haven’t developed their writing skills, for example. This type of questioning is known in the research as “covert Retrieval Practice”.

However, it is worth noting that when we ask students to think of an answer, if we tell them at the start of the question who we want an answer from, we subconsciously give the rest of class permission to switch off, as they know they are not going to be asked for an answer. As a result, they don’t have to recall the information and so miss out of the benefit of Retrieval Practice. In fact, it is likely that only the student you ask gains anything from it.

By contrast, if we use the student’s name at the end of the question, we increase the amount of time the rest of the class are being asked to recall the answer. Despite the fact that they are subsequently not chosen, more of them have still engaged in this Retrieval Practice. This means both the students you ask the question to and the majority of the class are reflecting on the task for longer.

Some worry that cold-calling can increase students’ stress levels, as the thought of being put on the spot can make them feel uncomfortable. This may well be the case if

· it is not done in a supportive and inclusive environment

· it was a one-off event

However, evidence does suggest that being part of a classroom that repeatedly uses cold-calling can actually help students feel more comfortable in participating. So, make sure to use cold-calling often to make it a norm in your classroom.

WRITING THE ANSWER DOWN + LONG WAIT TIME + COLD-CALLING

Overt Retrieval Practice is where students write down their answer to a question. So, under the right specific conditions, why might having students write down their answer be a useful strategy? There are four different, but probably related answers...

1. It helps ensure that all students are retrieving information – When students are asked to retrieve covertly (i.e., thinking of an answer), we cannot be 100% sure that they are in fact retrieving. For all we know, at any given time, students may be thinking about something else. 2. It helps the teacher asking the question to slow down and not rush their wait time – Given that there is some evidence that some wait-times are akin to the speed of an F1 pitstop, this could provide a very valuable strategy. Teacher self-discipline is a big factor in effective wait times, as it can be difficult not to jump in and solicit an answer too quickly. As it takes longer to write an answer than to say one, this helps slow down the whole process.

3. Students can cover a broader range and larger depth of information – Due to the constraints of working memory, holding an answer in your head is always destined to be somewhat limited. Writing down their answer can help students mitigate this effect.

4. Overt retrieval may potentially lead to a memory boost – If this was to be the case, it would be because of an increase in desirable difficulty, as well as utilisation of the Production Effect (which states that by producing something new with the information, students are more likely to remember it). However, it should be noted that the potential memory benefit to overt retrieval over covert retrieval is still relatively thin, with a clear consensus yet to be achieved. So, more studies are definitely needed (if you want to read some of the studies on this, you can do so here, and here).

WRITING THE ANSWER DOWN + LONG WAIT TIME + COLD-CALLING WITH A FORMATIVE PROMPT

A formative prompt is a sentence that encourages students to start the conversation. It gets the ball rolling and inspires students to share their thoughts. It can help reduce the fear of failure as perfection is neither required nor expected. It essentially lowers the stakes for the student being asked, and as such can reduce their anxiety of having been cold-called.

Formative prompts also have a secondary purpose. By phrasing the sentence as “Laura, let’s start with you” it also signals to the other students that they have to pay attention to Laura’s answer: this is just the start of the conversation, and they may be called upon to build on Laura’s answer. This ensures higher levels of concentration.

Formative prompts work best for open-ended questions. This is because formative prompts rely on students to build on each other’s answer. This would be difficult to do for factual closed questions. Therefore, you need to carefully consider the nature and format of the question you’re asking.

FINAL THOUGHTS

When asking questions in the classroom, getting your students to write down their answer, increasing wait times and using formative prompts are all strategies that, if done well, can increase student concentration, reach a sweet spot of desirable difficulty and facilitate richer classroom discussions. It definitely takes a bit longer to implement, but the learning rewards it offers make it a strategy all teachers would do well to have in their locker. This blog was co-written by Bradley Busch (InnerDrive) and Doug Lemov (Teach Like a Champion).

What is it?

Think-Pair-Share is a cooperative learning approach where the whole group is given a single question or prompt to discuss. Students consider the question individually for a few minutes before forming pairs to discuss their responses. Finally, they share their thoughts with the wider group, be it the table they are on or the whole class.

Why do it?

A major benefit of Think-Pair-Share is the wait time. This initial phase of silent thinking is a crucial opportunity for students to retrieve their prior knowledge and organise their thoughts. This in turn promises to improve the quality of the subsequent discussion and increase participation in the ‘Share’ stage. We know as professionals we often skip this ‘thinking’ stage or rush it, as we are worried about the silence or the pace of the lesson.

The structure gives every student a low-risk opportunity to formulate a response and rehearse expressing it to one other person before ‘going public’. In this way it promotes the equal participation of every student.

It potentially exposes students to points of view and approaches which contrast with their own and bring new perspectives. Our new classroom layouts really support T-P-S, and we should be generating more on task discussion as a result of the group based learning.

How to set it up

1. Before the session, develop a stimulating open-ended question (this should be part of your ItsLearning plans) – have a go at responding to it yourself – and prepare materials such as slides, as needed.
2. During the session, introduce the Think-Pair-Share activity, including the hoped-for-benefits.
3. Pose the question and ask students to spend a few minutes thinking about it individually, jotting down some notes and preparing their response. They can note this down on their mini whiteboards to lessen the fear of getting it wrong.
4. Next, ask students to pair with another student and share their responses in turn for a further few minutes, noting similarities and differences. If they disagree, encourage them to summarise each other’s positions so they can explain why and how. You may ask them to integrate the ideas into a joint response for the ‘Share’ stage. Let students know whether you will be calling on every pair in the ‘Share’ stage, or inviting volunteers.
5. Finally, invite the pairs to share their responses with the table or with the whole group. It doesn’t always have to be just discussion. They could share their ideas via a classroom thread on ItsLearning, or a poll you have set up. They could share by writing  paragraph and then sharing these with the rest of the group.

Considerations

We know at Crookhorn we have seen a decline in the students’ level of oracy. This may take time to build back, so don’t feel dejected if it doesn’t work straight away.  If the room and group size allow, consider intervening to allocate students into pairs of your choosing. This will give them an opportunity to get to know others outside their social network. As well as helping them bond, students are likely to encounter new perspectives and approaches.

If students start chatting immediately, do emphasise the value of that first silent individual ‘Think’ phase. It gives students the opportunity to retrieve what they know and organise their thoughts about the question, both of which are central to learning and improve the quality of the discussion.

The quality of the conversation will be affected by the difficulty or sensitivity of the question, and the extent to which students feel comfortable making mistakes.

Variations

‘Stump your partner‘ is based on an idea from the Centre for Teaching Innovation at Cornell University for consolidating learning from that session’s objective, reading, or other didactic material. For the ‘Think’ stage, ask students to individually and silently come up with a question to test their partner and help them to learn. Instruct students to try to stump their partner with a challenging question, but to keep it based on important concepts from the lesson or reading. For the ‘Pair’ stage, ask students to turn to a partner and pose their question, followed by a discussion of the responses. Finally, for the ‘Share’ stage, collect the questions to get a sense of what students find central and/or challenging.

How to know if it works

Compared to whole-group discussions without the Think or Pair stages:

• Is there more equal participation? What proportion of students are participating in the plenary ‘Share’ stage?
• Is there any change in who participates in the ‘Share’ stage e.g. quieter students, students from under-represented backgrounds?
• Is there any change in the quality of the contributions e.g. is there difference in knowledge or sophistication; how productively are students engaging with differences of viewpoint?
• Does the nature of the question affect the participation?
• Do students find the activity helpful?

Examples

• In Mathematics, Ariana Sampsel’s (2013) small-scale action research project found that students’ explanations became longer, giving her more feedback about their thinking.
• Lange, Costley and Han (2016) deployed Think-Pair-Share to make students’ language use more meaningful and improve their acquisition. They found students gave fuller responses and participated more equally compared to an alternative technique. They attributed this to the structure and wait time.
• In Engineering, Janet Rankin explains how it can work.

I hope you have found this blog useful and there are some hands-on strategies you can use. If you have any questions or feedback, please do share this with your coach. This is a very powerful way of developing many different attributes within our students.

Part 1 of this Mixed Attaining blog focused primarily on “The Learning Journey” – a fundamental tool in not only mapping out the intended learning outcomes for students, but what prior knowledge needs to be considered, revisited and embedded for all student groups before moving on. As teased within the first blog on this subject, there are a number of other techniques, concepts and strategies which can be implemented, and which can work hand in hand with having a solid, well-thought-out learning journey in order to promote progressive learning within the mixed attaining classroom.

So, now you’ve hopefully had chance to digest, consider and maybe even implement some of these ideas relating to the learning journey, much like a long anticipated follow up to a summer blockbuster hit, here is the Mixed Attaining Teaching Blog – The Sequel; a summary of further teaching strategies that can help elevate the learning and teaching for all pupil groups within a mixed attaining classroom.

1. Task design and differentiation

Using the same Year 7 Maths example from the previous blog, within the key skills/knowledge section (which represents the bulk of the learning journey), tasks need to be progressive; allowing students of all attainment levels to work through and embed, apply and then challenge their learning. One way of doing this could be to allow students to choose, or for you to set them off at, different starting points; middle / higher attainers could complete tasks relating to the orange or green concepts (which should be easy enough for them to complete independently, whilst still providing opportunity to stretch and challenge). The class teacher is then available to explicitly teach the LA [lower attainers]. Also, in those classes where addition adults are available, a ‘helicoptering' technique can be used just to check in specifically with any MA [middle attainers] who may need additional support as they progress through, linking to what we will later explore as flexible grouping.

Whilst differentiating tasks could appear overwhelming and contribute to a growing workload, one possible solution to this would be to make small adaptions in content. Again, using maths as an example, if all students are completing a task on finding a percentage of an amount (without a calculator), the higher attainers may do this with numbers such as 27%, which would require you to partition in a number of more complex ways, along with additional steps, whilst a child working below this level, may only need to find 20%. Here, the concepts hasn’t changed, nor has the expectation of what they are doing, but the values they may need to partition or manipulate would be more within their remit, allowing them to concentrate and develop their understanding of the concept taught, rather than the numbers or the context used. In English or curriculum subjects, this may look like removing or simplifying certain words which need to be read, so as not to change the meaning, but to reduce the level of reading skill required, should that be the student’s barrier to their learning.  All adaptations and tweaks should just be enough to relieve the cognitive load, but maintain the essence of the concept being taught. Also, these adaptions, whilst widely done to remove barriers for lower attainers in the class, will actually support all students, and remove that ceiling of what teachers or other students believe either they or others can achieve; everyone is learning the same thing, though maybe just accessing it in a slightly different way. Not only does this then promote a positive mindset, through this model, all students have had the chance to progress further and deepen understanding, with HA / MA perhaps doing this more independently and with the opportunity to access deeper thinking/reasoning tasks, whilst the lower attainers are able to have explicit teaching, catching them up, ready to progress with the rest of the class. Lower attainers may not progress onto orange or green concepts within that lesson, but they are now included in the same learning journey, and able to apply this knowledge as the learning journey continues.

2. Flexible grouping, Live marking and levels of scaffold.

Differentiation and different starting points is one thing, but to really elevate their effectiveness, it is evident that the role of the teacher is crucial. As teachers, we are the most valuable resource in the classroom, so plan yourself into your lessons!

Live marking (whilst also reducing the work load of marking after a lesson) allows for immediate feedback and misconception addressing within the lesson. ‘Checking for understanding’ (CFU) tasks within lessons can greatly contribute to recognising those children who are struggling, along with those children who could be stretched further. Questioning, along with when questions are asked, should be considered early in the planning stage of a learning journey and used to stretch and challenge, assess understanding, but also pre-empt misconceptions. If you are able to recognise, but also plan for these misconceptions, teaching is more targeted and effective. Consider when you will work with certain students or small groups of students. That is not to say that you only work with certain children for the duration of a lesson, but to split your lessons up and recognise when and where your support would be most helpful. For example, you may need to spend 10 minutes supporting a LA group during a ‘Do Now’, warm up, or even ‘responding to marking’ tasks, allowing them to ‘peel away’ and work more independently as they gain confidence and understanding whilst embedding and securing knowledge the rest of the class already demonstrate. Once working independently, this could then provide an opportunity for the teacher to move to live marking work completed by MA/HA to see how they could be extended. As learning moves into the main bulk of the lesson, teachers would move on to delivering to the whole class, using questioning to decipher who may need support, and as students are set off to complete more independent work/practice (which could be differentiated in the ways already explored), the teacher would prioritise working with those students identified. A further positive to the teacher frequently working with different groups of children based upon immediate recognition of need is that it creates a culture of ‘any and all students can and will be worked with throughout a lesson’, thus creating an inclusive working environment. It again eliminates the ceiling of what each child believes they can do; working with an adult is no longer considered something only someone/the group who is struggling does.

The level of support each student my need will also differ. Even though we may identify students as either lower attaining, middle attaining or higher attaining, we know that this could be for a variety of different reasons and that no two students are alike. The level of scaffold (Rosenshine) therefore also plays a key factor, not only in teaching and clarifying concepts, but allowing children to learn from teacher feedback and progress; teachers or the supporting adult is not just repeating the same models, but encouraging the child to develop and build up understanding from these models.

Self scaffolding is more suited to those HA’s or those confident in topic who are encouraged to check their own work and recognise mistakes. Adult may just direct to ‘check this’.

Prompting relies on the supporting adult drawing attention to a misconception, but limits the scaffolding. Phrases such as ‘Can you explain your thinking here?’ allows a student to develop their reasoning more and encourage self-correcting before the self scaffolding stage.

Clueing allows the supporting adult to be more direct in pointing out a misconception, but again, limits the information given to fix it. Phrases and examples such as “this part here doesn’t look right – what do you know already?” or for example, providing alternative homophones when a spelling is incorrect for a student to decide which one to use.

Modelling allows the supporting adult to model a method within a similar task for the student to learn from and apply to their own work / misconception.

Correcting occurs when the student repeatedly makes the same mistake and needs work corrected and explained the misconception in more detail. Once corrected, the supporting adult should provide one or two further, similar questions to check understanding / misconception has been addressed.

3. Resources to reduce the cognitive load.

Willingham discusses ‘cognitive load’. If information is in our long term memory (e.g. multiplication facts, spellings/spelling sounds, continents/countries, dates etc), then problem-solving using these facts will require less of a ‘cognitive load’ (essentially less brain power) than if these facts are only in our short term memory. Warm up sessions and ‘do now’ tasks can not only provide opportunity for children to either deepen knowledge or develop it, but as an opportunity to commit these concepts to our long term memory. Stanislas Dehaene’s research goes on to support the use of spoken language and verbal tasks in helping facts being stored in our verbal memory, which can be beneficial to all students, but particularly for SEND or those with reading/writing barriers to learning. Tasks where saying (and hearing) the sound pattern of the phrase, and stem sentences are important, and so should also be considered in the tasks teachers are asking students to complete, and could again be something teachers think about when trying to differentiate or create progressive tasks for students.

For some SEND, trying to commit something to memory can present its own problems. Therefore, recognising what the key element of learning is, and how you could lighten the cognitive load in achieving that can really make an impact. Having word banks, significant words or equations, diagrams etc available to students, so long as this wasn’t the key element of learning you wanted to teach / test, would help free up the cognition of students (and then could later become fluency or do now tasks in later lessons to help embed.)

Further, examples:

• An English lesson focussing on text analysis – How does the author create a sense of danger… - could be supported by word bank of synonyms. For those HA students who perhaps wouldn’t need a work bank, they could still be given one, with some red herrings thrown in, allowing for a reasoning and deeper thinking opportunity where they would need to explain why some words would be more appropriate and effective than others. Additionally, for MA, this would provide an CFU opportunity; checking that they understand the meaning of specific words, as well as potentially broadening vocabulary. 
• A maths lessons on Pythagoras could be supported by word mat of squared numbers / square roots.
• A science lesson which requires table / graph plotting could be supported by table / axis already drawn. This could be further differentiated by having more or fewer things, such as titles and/or scales, already populated.

Other possible resources; word mats, word banks, pre-drawn tables, times tables grids/facts, number lines, working walls with relevant information, or which has been put up as a result of class discussion etc.

I recognise that there is an awful lot of ideas, theories and information to digest here, but I can’t stress enough that it only takes the smallest adaptation in your classrooms for all of these things to have a chain reaction; what looks like a mountain of work, only needs to start from one, well-thought-out idea or adaptation, and the rest naturally develops over time, so long as you recognise what you want to achieve next. If there is anything you would like to discuss further, whether its help designing or adapting tasks, clarifying a concept, or just to get more information, please do not hesitate to ask!

What is Oracy?

Oracy describes the speaking and listening skills needed to be a good communicator, it intends to give spoken language the same importance as ‘literacy’ does to reading and writing. It’s about having the vocabulary to say what you want to say and the ability to structure your thoughts so that they make sense to others.

Why is Oracy so important?

To be able to communicate with each other is a life skill, and something that we believe our children need in their future careers. If this Oracy development is not supported in schools, this might affect children’s future life chances.

Evidence found that children who struggle with language or have poor vocabulary at age five are:

• Six times less likely to reach the expected standard in English at age 11 than children who had good language skills at five.
• Ten times less likely to achieve the expected level in Maths.
• More than twice as likely to be unemployed at age 34 as children with good vocabulary.
• Twice as likely to have mental health difficulties, even after taking account of a range of other factors that might have played a part.

The impact of Oracy is clear. We know the gap between the disadvantaged students and those who come from advantage is widening, and if we must do a range of measures to narrow this gap.

A number of organisations have developed resources that explore curriculums for Oracy, including Voice 21, whose Oracy framework is depicted here:

What can we do to improve Oracy here at Crookhorn?

1. Develop the effective use of ‘Think-Pair- Share’. The coaching team will work with you on how this is used in class. We will work with you on developing the think time, as this is often rushed and overlooked. Getting students to really think through what they want to say, and jot down some points is key. We also need to consider how to conduct the ‘pair’ stage. The share section does not need to be a whole class discussion but in groups. Teachers need to build adequate time in for this into some lessons and to enable meaningful learning from the talk.   
2. Consider the use of Cold Call- and how this is used effectively, so it builds confidence and is not used as a tool for terror! Teachers to plan questions specifically, and plan for who will answer these questions. 
3. Our student council are currently discussing some ground rules they would like implemented when having a group discussion. These will be distributed to all staff this half-term to be promoted in the classroom and for us to follow when students are discussing issues.
4. Make time for Oracy: Time is needed above all else. Although timetables are already filled to the brim, think about where there might be chances to teach Oracy. You may be able to find time to teach Oracy explicitly as a standalone lesson, however even if you plan in opportunities for Oracy into other curriculum areas, this will make a difference.
5. Give opportunities to practise Oracy: Children need as many opportunities to use their Oracy skills as possible. Think about the amount of time you give children for discussion and the structures you use – can you change your approach to encourage Oracy? When you talk with children, do you always question or do you comment and prompt? Do you build upon what children say? Think about how often children are given opportunities to report orally, both planned (e.g. presenting research) and unplanned (e.g. How did your group find that?)
6. Have high expectations for Oracy from all: Being a good role model for Oracy is crucial. Just as using your thinking voice is an important tool for developing children’s metacognitive skills in Writing, so it is for Oracy. Verbalising making Oracy choices and thinking about the most effective way to phrase speech is key to supporting development. Feedback about Oracy is also helpful. If a child says something incorrectly, rather than focusing on their mistake, repeat what they said back to them using the correct phrasing. For example, if a child asks ‘Can I toilet?’ say ‘Please can I go to the toilet?’ back. Where possible, praise and give feedback on speech specifically, even when Oracy is not necessarily your objective or main focus. For example, ‘I think the way you explained that had a really clear sequence.’
7.  Have fun with Oracy: Enjoy debates, performances, role play and games together, where Oracy takes centre stage. A whole range of ideas can be found on our webinar recording discussed below.
8. We are going to release 10 key Tier 2 words every term, and will ask you to consider how these words are used in your subject and plan in when you can cover them in your lessons. We have worked with a selected group of subjects this term (RE/History/English/Science/Geo) about which Tier 2 words are used frequently and asked the staff to explain what these words mean to the students and how they can be used. This is to be planned as an Oracy task at some point during a lesson. We could teach these words in a variety of different ways, and we have noted some ideas in a Power Point in the literacy folder in itslearning.

https://crookhorncollege.itslearning.com/ContentArea/ContentArea.aspx?LocationType=1&LocationID=65

We started our main Blended Learning journey in the spring term of 2020, way before we had even considered what the effect that a global pandemic would have on education.  As we come out of all restrictions, now seems an appropriate time to revisit our Blended Learning Protocols and develop how they now fit into our everyday teaching ethos, rather than being something to support learning during the pandemic.

Our protocols themselves remain unchanged, with just the removal of 4b – the section that refers specifically to students isolating for COVID reasons.  The protocols can be found in the Curriculum planning folder in the itslearning Staff Room:  LINK

In the November Blog we revisited and explored some of the main CFU activities that we can use in the classroom and as part of our day-to-day teaching:  LINK

Since writing that previous blog, SLT have revisited several key documents on the subject of planning and SEN provision, including Barak Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction and Hampshire’s SEN Support Guidance for Schools.   Both of these documents are vital reading when we consider our planning of the curriculum and also when we consider individual lessons, so we can support all learners to make progress inside and outside of the classroom.

BL protocol 1: All plans are to be on itslearning and bespoke to individual classes

We will all agree that the makeup of all classes is different and changes constantly.  Therefore, we need to consider this individual makeup when planning lessons.   The ability to collaboratively plan and share lessons through our itslearning mastercourses has had a notable impact on the quality of planning that departments are doing; however, these planned components will not be suitable for all classes to follow at the same speed in the same way.  Review notes support our understanding of the progress of a class and where things need to be amended.   We should also be adapting and adding in activities as suited for our individual classes and students.

Review notes also help in the longer term.  When planning an upcoming year 9 topic recently I was able to review the notes I made last year. I had identified the issues that the students were having, and therefore I was able to adapt the component plans appropriately this year – I await the results of these developed plans but have the strong belief that they will improve the students understanding.  I know Barbara has also used the review notes to help plan the same topics next year- a great way to use the note section. 

In recent monitoring I saw the following review note in a Spanish lesson – clearly identifying the issue that the lower attaining students are having.  This can be used for reflection in the coming weeks and addressed in planning for future cohorts.

BL protocol 1: All plans … ensure that future learning links to or builds on the learning from the previous lesson.

Extracts from Rosenshine’s Principle 1:

The most effective teachers in the studies of classroom instruction understood the importance of practice, and they began their lessons with a five- to eight-minute review of previously covered material

Over the past few years, we have worked hard at certain pedagogical practices.  The ‘Do Now’ Task is embedded into lessons well, but are we using this time effectively in all of our lessons? In Rosenshine’s research, he suggests that this time is best suited for review to strengthen previous learning rather than the introduction of new concepts. This concept of over-learning is essential for many of our SEN students, who need constant revisiting of content in order to comit this information to their long-term memory.

BL protocol 2: The activities … must be explicitly clear with the task that is to be completed.

SEN Guidance Section 6.3:

• Curriculum provides opportunities for repetition, over-learning and consolidation of skills at an appropriate level
• Strong emphasis on meta-cognitive approaches e.g. how can you help yourself remember this
• Use of strategies for scaffolding of literacy- based tasks e.g. writing frames, sequencing, cue cards and highlighting.

Chunking and scaffolding.  Again, two term that we are all familiar with.  Are these planned well into our components of learning?  

In the example plan here we see opportunities for students to rehearse and go over learning several times and the teacher has built in several opportunities for live feedback to individuals and pairs.

Breaking down tasks in this way with a numbered list helps it to be simple and clear and aids SEN students in seeing exactly what they need to do for each part. Instructions here are kept short and simple.

BL protocol 3:  …independent learning (homework) 

… can be planned as small CFU tasks such as self-marking tests.

… can be response to feedback that might have been given on an itslearning assignment.

Extracts from Rosenshine’s Principle 6:

Effective teachers also stopped to check for student understanding.  They checked for understanding by asking questions, by asking students to summarize the presentation up to that point or to repeat directions or procedures, or by asking students whether they agreed or disagreed with other students’ answers.

Another reason for the importance of teaching in small steps, guiding practice, and checking for understanding … comes from the fact that we all construct and reconstruct knowledge as we learn and use what we have learned.  We cannot simply repeat what we hear work for word. 

Extract from Principle 7:

It is important that students achieve a high success rate during instruction and on their practice activities.  Practice, we are told, makes perfect, but practice can be a disaster if students are practicing errors!  If the practice does not have a high success level, there is a chance that students are practicing the learning errors.  Once errors have been learned, they are very difficult to overcome.

A low stakes self-marking quiz gives students a high success rate.  The same quiz can be used several times through the course a of topic to reinforce understanding.  Itslearning has the option to randomise question order and the order of answers within a question.

BL Protocol 4: All main CFU or formative tasks are to be put on itslearning as an assignment or task. These should be planned into the sequence of learning.

Feeback that is specific and formative have a hugely beneficial effect on students, particularly SEN and LA students. Action based comments, with learning questions, are vital to moving a student's understanding forward. With feedback for SEN, ensure that the action point is specific and clear, so they know exactly what needs to be done. Be sure to all time for student response.

BL protocol 5: Additional resources can be added in over time, to allow for greater depth. Think about extra resources such as a week-by-week revision guide.

Changing mindsets

1. Learning from failure (OPEN MIND-Make mistakes)
   One of the major obstacles preventing students from becoming more independent is a fear of failure. To encourage a more independent approach, we must help students to see failure as an opportunity to learn, rather than something to be avoided at all costs. Be sure to praise students for trying even when they make mistakes and praise them further when they demonstrate that they have learnt from what they have done wrong in the past.
    
2. Praising persistence
   Effort and persistence can help any student to make great progress regardless of their starting point. While it is important to praise any examples of independent behaviour, you will really reinforce the importance of trying hard by praising the effort that a student makes above the final product of their work. As a result, students will be more likely to keep trying when they encounter difficulties. They will also believe that with enough effort they can always make progress, no matter what they are faced with. So true for our SEN students!
    
3. Minimise teacher talk
   In every lesson, there will be moments when the teacher needs to stand at the front of the room and address the whole class. Although sometimes necessary, these periods of teacher talk should be kept to a minimum, allowing for other forms of engagement that require greater levels of independence. This is something I know many of us are working on, including me, as Pam Jones who has coached me recently will tell you.  
    
4. What it means to be independent
   It is important to discuss with your class what it means to be independent in the classroom. While you might have a clear idea about what independence looks like, your students are likely to be less certain. Through a class discussion, devise a set of characteristics that define someone as independent and identify specific examples of classroom behaviour that demonstrate these characteristics. This may involve drawing attention to examples already being exhibited in the work or actions of students in the class. Recap on this at regular intervals.

Teaching tools

1. Include all necessary information
   When creating handouts or presentation slides that relate to a task, help students to be independent by ensuring that you include all the information that they will need to successfully complete the work. Teaching through the itslearning plan will show them where the resources are, so they can access them independently. While they are doing so, you can circulate to assess work, provide assistance where absolutely necessary or use questioning to challenge students’ thinking.
    
2. Reusable checklists/flow charts
   Checklists/flow charts are a great tool for promoting independence because they provide students with the means to make judgements, assess what they have done and deal with various queries without asking the teacher for support. Please liaise with the SEN department who will help you with this. The clear layout of activities in itslearning can be seen as a checklist- so highlight these to students who are accessing their plans through itslearning. In RE, we are being encouraged to provide these for our SEN students to give them clear tasks for them to complete over a period of time. If you need a template, see SEN or myself.
    
3. Helpful learning walls
   We have done lots of work on our learning walls, and this is something we should revisit within departments every term. They can be a brilliant aid to independence; they offer an alternative point of reference to help students deal with questions or problems relating to their work. Directing students to check the learning wall when they have a question will encourage them to search for answers independently before they ask for your help.
    
4. Set up a reference corner/itslearning resources
   To make sure that students always have a place to go when searching for answers, designate an area of your classroom (or itslearning!!) to be the “reference corner”. Within this area you should make available a selection of reference works. This might include general reference books such as dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopaedias, grammar guides and handbooks of equations. You may also choose to add text books or books relating to a topic you are currently studying. Kate Humby in the library is available for support in creating digital content.
    
5. Training in thinking techniques
   Taking the time to train students in problem-solving and thinking techniques will provide them with a go-to structure that can be applied to difficulties encountered in the classroom or when completing homework. The techniques you introduce might be as simple as learning to organise thoughts through mind-mapping, lists and diagrams. Whichever technique you decide to use, it is essential that you model it several times first. Let your students see how the technique works in practise, in the context of a genuine problem that has been encountered during a lesson. After a few supported attempts, encourage students to go off and use the procedure independently. Put good examples on itslearning, so they can see what a successful one looks like.
    
6. Refusing to help
   Although it may seem at odds with your role as a teacher, refusing to help students can be a powerful strategy for encouraging independence. For example, try refusing to help students until they can show you that they have made three attempts to solve their problem on their own. If they are still stuck after this, ask them to talk you through their attempts, so that you can explain how to solve a similar problem in the future, as well as helping with the current one.
    
7. Live marking
   You can help students to become more independent and more aware of the quality of their work by asking them to make improvements when they believe that they have finished. If you are in the good habit of setting the students some independent work in each lesson, then get around the classroom as much as possible with your green pen and give them some extension work and specific feedback to them, which helps their thinking further. If you see a good piece of work or something that you want to highlight to the whole class, take a photo and add it to the itslearning plan, so all students can access while you continue to walk around. Another option is to put on the visualiser and give some whole class feedback, take a picture through the visualiser and then add to itslearning.
    

As per usual, if you have any feedback or tips that you have tried to promote independence in your classrooms, I would love to hear about it, so I can share with others.

In History this year we have had a bit of a revelation.  While we want to stretch and challenge all our students, so they can make the greatest progress we don’t want to hamper our athletes before they have even started the race by giving them tools that will not help them get to their end goal.  With a very high percentage of our Year 11 students with SEN support this year, this is a very important time for us to review our practice and improve our provision for revision.

Knowledge organisers

Our existing knowledge organisers were content heavy and while they would support our level 7-9 students and challenge our level 5-6 students, they would not be helpful for our students in the low attaining band. Those with a target grade of a 4 or below would struggle with the level of literacy (example below)

Having attended an Eduqas webinar in October that focused on a school in a similar setting to Crookhorn, I was interested to see how they used knowledge organisers differently. 

They advised designing knowledge organisers following the principles of dual coding.  These were not to then be filed away or sent home with students to never again see the light of day! Each knowledge organiser was handed out at the start of the topic and stuck into the student book.  The images used in the knowledge organiser were then used in every ‘Do Now’ activity, so that students became used to using them as an information source.   

Research by Mayer and Anderson in 1991 found that when verbal information was presented alongside relevant images, it became much more memorable.  Therefore, having the images shown on the board or in the student’s book while they complete a piece of work mean that the cognitive load facing the student is reduced, allowing them to more easily complete the task in hand.

If our brains work best when information comes in more than one format, then the repeated use of these simplistic images over a series of lessons should aid working memory and ultimately lead to greater progress being made.

We have used these in our revision programme and already this year there has been a pleasing response from year 11.  Students are using the resources in a meaningful way.  The use of a visual representation gives them something to hook their learning to but more so, the over learning and repetition of using the knowledge organiser each lesson has afforded students a new-found confidence to respond to targeted questioning and cold calling. 

This is a tactic that we plan to cascade down to KS3.  Not only will this prepare our students to work similarly at GCSE, it would seem foolish to not use current research in our pedagogy for KS3 as well as KS4. In year 8 will be trialling the use of knowledge organisers that use black and white images from the noun project. 

This website is a useful resource that is a one-stop shop for simplistic black and white images.

https://thenounproject.com/

Please find below another example that we have recently used.

As classroom teachers we have many techniques we can use to check understanding. In the next few pages, we will refresh our thoughts on the most common of these and look at how we can extend the use of technology to get a true understanding of what our students have learnt, rather than what we have taught them.

Mini Whiteboards

A staple of some classrooms and used in many ways. Writing an answer and holding it up is probably the most obvious use, but how can we go beyond this?

A while back I found this article: https://thegoldfishbowl.edublogs.org/2015/11/29/mini-whiteboards/

Although a few years old, Miller’s comments are still valid for our lessons today.

Whiteboards are a way of getting immediate feedback about student understanding, with an effective sequence always starting with a well-designed task or question. Rather than just waiting as students write, this time can be used to seek the most useful responses. Do most students get it or not? Where are the great examples that can be used as models? Where are the examples of common errors that students can learn from? Which students are making the same errors?

…One of the issues that we have, as I am sure many schools do, is the use of unnecessary fillers in spoken responses. [Due to a] lack of confidence in what they are saying. Or that they don’t know what they are going to say before they start saying it. The few seconds it takes to write a couple of ideas down on a whiteboard can help to eliminate both of these. 

Miller talks about this well question. These are an integral part of our planning on itslearning, and we should see this in the key question's section of the plan.

Miller goes on to discuss what can then be done with the responses seen and how lessons can be adapted accordingly.

Going beyond this, rather than just letting whiteboard responses be one-off instant feedback to you, you can record general perceptions and misconceptions in the review notes of the plan for development when reviewing the topic before the next time you deliver. This idea of recording general thoughts can apply to our questioning of the students too.

Self-marking tests

Whichever platform we use, self-marking tests have huge benefits on teacher workload and meaningful analysis of results.

Some of the best tests I have seen staff use are the simplest. Succinct questions with multi choice answers. Really think about what it is you need the students to understand and focus down to that. When used for homework, there is no need to fill a particular time frame with extra questions – if you can gauge understanding in 10 questions taking less than a minute each, then why add anything else

There are currently two test versions in itslearning.  The itslearning development team have released the new version, however this still has some limitations, and some staff prefer using the older version.  There are no plans yet to remove the older version, and old tests can be easily converted to a new once it is functioning fully:

When creating self-marking tests, please consider the following questions as options:

Fill in the blanks – take a section of text (copy for an electronic resource or type in yourself), highlight the keywords to demonstrate understanding – done!

This type of question has variations:

• Just selecting the word means the students have to get the correct spelling, there are options for adding in common misspellings, so the students get the marks if they spell it a different way.
• There is also the option for marks to be awarded if students use the correct capitalisation.

Select from a list – very similar to the above, but students will be offered a list to choose from, as well as the words highlighted in the text, you can add in extra words to make the students think harder.

Differentiation opportunity – please consider the option of creating two versions of the above.  If you create one homework with the ‘Fill in the blanks’ and one ‘Select from a list’ then you can allocate accordingly to the class.

Spelling tests – for those subjects that need keywords spelt correctly, we can use a self-marking test as a tool for independent practice (Yes, I know we have no control over them googling the answers, but we never do with homework.)  Building the opportunity for them to independently try is always good.  You will obviously need to design a way that you can ask them to type a particular work without typing it yourself so do consider the option for recording audio files in the questions.

Support sheets:

Setting up
Selecting from a link and fill in the blanks

Examples seen recently:

English – 10 questions

Science – A CFU test set, with support videos if needed.  This test has been left open for as many attempts as they want, so students can independently aim for improved scores.  With a test open like this, you could attach the same test to a revision plan later in the year.

• Currently, only old tests can be accessed after the deadline.  The workaround for this on the new test would be to keep the original deadline and then change to a later date in the year for the revision session.

Differentiation opportunities – could the videos be in a ‘support’ CFU that is targeted at key students through the permission settings?  Could you ‘copy’ this test having created it, and add in some challenge questions at the end and then target to you higher attaining students. 

Matrix (survey question)

We’ve all had students in our classes that just don’t seem to get it: even though they are getting the answer right, they can’t tell you why.  It is therefore key that we know what level the students believe their own understanding is at.

A matrix question is a grid question where students can rate their confidence options for various questions.  The below example is set up with RAG options for five photography techniques.  These questions can be completely tailored to you – there are various other options, as well as how the results will come out to you on the support sheet.

Support sheet:

Matrix questions

There are many more ways that itslearning can support our checking for students understanding.  Kate Humby is now fully training on how to create resources and support your curriculum.  Through the Spring term she will be working with Heads of Subject offering her support.  Please do contact her if you’d like her to create a resource for you, or you would like some specific training, so you can create these resources for yourself.

DEAR Time and why it counts.

DEAR Time allows us to expose the lower years to a range of texts, to give them space to share their ideas verbally as well as to listen to the opinions of others. By asking open questions we encourage the students to think and, more importantly, respond by explaining their thinking using because/but/so sentences.

Example question: ‘What do you think we could do to help plastic pollution?’
Student response: I think we could reduce plastic pollution by recycling because it is better to reuse than to make new.
I think we could reduce plastic pollution by recycling but we need to stop buying it in the first place.
I think we could reduce plastic pollution by recycling so we can all help do our bit.

From Autumn 2 we will be starting the class reads during DEAR Time where teachers follow the schedule and read the allocated pages. The updated versions can be found on the Literacy page in Staff Resources: https://crookhorncollege.itslearning.com/ContentArea/ContentArea.aspx?LocationID=65&LocationType=1

• Year 7 – Pax
• Year 8 – Cirque du Freak
• Year 9 – The Extinction Files

Oracy – the importance of dialogue.

Oracy is a term first coined in the 1960s by Andrew Wilkinson and focuses on the ability to express yourself fluently in speech. We want to use dialogue to help students develop their understanding through consistent and meaningful dialogue; listening and responding appropriately, sharing opinions and demonstrating their knowledge.

The 5 step method, Robin Alexander (2008)

1. Rote – transmit knowledge to students by repeating ideas.
2. Recitation – targeted questions to test knowledge, progress and recall.
3. Instruction – tell students what to do and explain key ideas.
4. Discussion – encourage exchange of ideas and information.
5. Dialogue – structured questions and discussion to deepen understanding.

Oral rehearsal builds confidence and helps remove the fear of committing the wrong thing to paper which can be an obstacle to writing. Think-Pair-Share can be an excellent tool as it encourages students to listen to teacher input and then discuss their answers with a partner before group/class feedback to check for misunderstanding or writing down their rehearsed answer. Once students are confident and adept at doing this, we can then introduce this in a wider classroom setting. Sentence stems can be a helpful way to scaffold this structured discussion:

Allowing students the time and freedom to talk to one another can feel uncomfortable at first as it puts the onus on them to stay on task and focused but if we circulate and transition into the role of facilitator, we promote oracy and independence.

The Mechanics of Writing

These are the building blocks of success. Historically, our students have struggled with longer answer questions that require them to organise their ideas in a coherent and concise way with focus on the keywords of the question.

For many subjects, students are expected to support or justify their ideas which is where conjunctions become an important tool. Please look at the example from Technology:

Using conjunctions

Because     –    But     -      So

Conjunctions like ‘because’, ‘but’ and ‘so’ let you explain your ideas in more detail to help you get the higher marks by showing what you know.

Stainless steel grade 304 is used for the pivot screw because it is naturally corrosion resistant so will not rust.

Stainless steel grade 304 is used for the pivot screw but if it was a marine environment, we would use 316 as this resists corrosion in salt water.

We use stainless steel in the manufacture of pivot bolts so that we do not need an additional surface finish.

Alongside promoting conjunctions to explore ideas, we are continuing to focus on the basics for punctuation – capital letters and full stops – to instil the importance of accuracy and proof-reading. Consistency is key to success and can be a simple addition to your marking; capital letters for names or starts of sentences are easy to spot and highlight during live marking. I will be undertaking several learning walks this half-term to monitor the impact of our marking focus. Please find the help sheet attached.

Thank you to the staff who have started to embed Literacy in their practice. If you would like further guidance or have any queries or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

We have learnt a huge amount about pedagogy from our enforced time away from the College classrooms and the importance of taking this learning forward into our day-to-day practice cannot be underestimated. The vision Sarah outlined on our first day back in regards to our Blended Learning philosophy is clear, and we must all play our part in fulfilling this vision for what learning should look like in the coming years if we are to support the College in this vital area.

Pre-Covid, we were really making huge strides with our coaching, and without a doubt, we were all making progress in improving on our delivery in the classroom. On our recent disaggregated training, we had 3 sessions for teaching staff that focussed on the following;

1. Feedback and marking
2. Blended learning
3. Improving the quality of student’s literacy

There have been some wonderful examples from each area that I wanted to share with you from the last couple of weeks that really highlight excellent practice from within the staff.

Feedback and marking

In our training session, I highlighted to you some key steps to making sure you are giving good feedback. If you reflect, are you following these steps, and are you doing them well?

• Look at your itslearning planner- when is the most effective time for you to give students feedback? Plan this into your planner
• Work out how you will regularly ‘CFU’ and how this ties in with your more formative feedback.
• Plan for students to have time to respond
• Plan for how you will check that response
• Consider what you have learnt from the students' responses to help with future planning. This should go in your review notes.

We then discussed the benefits of live marking, and some steps to put in place to make sure this is successful and thus reduce the amount you are having to mark outside the classroom.

1. Put in place a rota- a row at a time, a group of students each lesson
2. Plan for it – independent study time when students do not need whole class input
3. Put in place measures to support students who need help during this independent work– BYOT, research materials etc..

The last part of the training was looking at the use of the visualiser. A visualiser allows teachers to show all students what is expected and can give the whole group some instant feedback. I have seen teachers use this to great effect, taking a piece of work that is of a good standard, showing students where it could be improved, and allowing students time to check their own work and make corrections/additions.

In your pigeonhole with this blog are great examples of feedback and marking which we have either seen in exercise books or screenshots of how people are using itslearning to support their feedback to students.  

Blended learning

There is no doubt that the quality of our planning is in a far better position now compared to pre-covid. Staff are working much more collaboratively, and the plans are much more accessible to both students and staff alike. Adam ran a session during our training about a couple of key points we must all remember when developing our Blended Learning pedagogy.

To provide a true blended learning experience, additional resources can over time be built into the plans that allow students to pursue aspects of their learning on a topic to greater depth or resources that might help students master their understanding of the knowledge connected to a topic that they have struggled with. We should be getting into the practice of setting differentiated homework targeted and assigned to groups or individuals, especially when we have mixed attaining groups.

Putting the revision planners up for GCSE courses enables this additional aspect specifically if supported with complementary resources from GCSE Pod etc.

Teaching through the plan

We must all get into the habit of familiarising students with activities and resources that we are using. Students will need to access these when it comes to independent study and by going through this with students, it makes them understand what they can use in the future. I have recently used the tactic of having their do now task on the board ready for them, take the register whilst they are doing this and once the task is completed, show them the plan for the day, all the resources, and any homework set. I then click on the resources as and when I need them. I also encourage the students to have the plan open on their phones as we are working. I have found that this really helps certain students who might need to go back to certain resources or slides that are not up on my main teaching board.

Review notes

I have had a few conversations about review notes recently and the purpose of these. These are an expectation of the College and should be done at the end of each ‘big question/application’ of your plans. I believe that good practice would mean you reflect on the learning at the end of each lesson, and if there are identifiable points that will help you with your next lesson, they should be made in the review notes section. When I am writing my review notes, I concentrate on a few points.

1. What have I learned from that plan that I can take forward in my future planning?
2. Which students have I highlighted as struggling and need CFU and live marking as a priority? What students have I checked in with today, which books have I checked today?
3. Use of review notes to summarise the understanding or struggles identified in the live marking session.
4. Where I am up to with my plans- what’s my pace like, what do I need to revisit in future lessons.

Once I got in the habit of writing these quick notes at the end of the lesson or day, it really helped me with my future planning.

Literacy focus

Katy King went through the key points of the main foci for this academic year during her session. We have now streamlined our literacy action points to the following 3 main strands.

• Quality of reading and developing the reading strategy across the College 
• Oracy work and how this is built into the literacy strategy
• Mechanics of writing (sentences structure, appropriate vocabulary, appropriate punctuation, and paragraph structures)

Katy will be writing the October blog to really develop our understanding further in these three areas and give us examples of what is happening in colleagues’ classes to help us with our teaching. I have seen some great examples of a couple of key strategies from the ‘The Writing Revolution’ that staff are using regularly. Attached are some scanned pages from the ‘TWR’ that are important for us to read before we use these ideas.

The Single Paragraph Outline (SPO) is used extensively, and if used correctly, can be superb for students to use. The SPO is used to plan a paragraph and is not a writing structure/frame. Staff can use this to help students with a road map that they can follow to plan the beginning, middle, and end of a unified, coherent paragraph. I have also included the process of turning this planning of using an SPO into writing a coherent paragraph. The TWR sheets I have scanned show you a clear route for how to use this in the classroom which you will also find in your pigeonhole.

Because, But and So is an activity that is simple yet requires students to think analytically. It’s also the first conjunction activity you should give to your students. It will prod them to think critically and deeply about the content they are studying and allow you to check their comprehension. Have a look at the examples and talk to your coach about how you could implement these into your teaching.

Thank you all for the time, effort, and commitment you are showing to improving your teaching. It’s hard to change habits, it takes time and patience, but it is all worth it if it helps our students achieve the very best they can. Any questions or feedback, please do send them to me or your coach, and we will be happy to help.

Tom Bennett recently said that if we get behaviour right, everything else is possible. He stated that behaviour is the beginning of safety, equity, dignity, curriculum, opportunity and learning, not an afterthought or something that only matters when students misbehave. We also know as professionals that when our teaching is of the very highest quality, this helps our students remain on track and enjoy being in the classroom.

Since the students have returned to us full time before Easter, it was clear that some students have partially or entirely lost the learning and behaviour habits that we had instilled in them whilst at College previously. It was also clear that students with less privileged backgrounds struggled from going from few or no boundaries to the structure and routine of being back in the classroom. This proved a challenge for some students who pushed boundaries with staff at times.

There are some points that Chris mentioned in his blog that Dave and I believe support all teachers and ultimately help the students in the classroom to become better learners. If all teachers consider these at the start of term and we, as staff remain consistent with these principles, this will lead to a successful term for us all.

1. Planning

Chris talked about the importance of planning and strongly recommended us to read page 57 of PLAN, MARK, TEACH. This is vitally important when dealing with challenging groups. Chris described how important a ‘Do Now’ task was for the students, to settle them down straight away. The pace of the lesson is crucial, and the differentiation to make sure all students are challenged in the right way will keep students on track. Really consider your planning, have you supported the students who need guidance so they don’t feel disengaged or disheartened and can make progress? Is there challenge and rigour for the more and most able students so they can stretch themselves with their learning? As professionals, we understand that when this level of planning is absent, this can often lead to the most challenging of behaviours.

 2. Bring it back to learning

Whenever I ask students why they come to Crookhorn and what the point of turning up everyday is, they generally always say ‘to learn’. We drum this into them during transition and in SLT and pastoral assemblies. Refer the students to our OPEN MIND and Cornerstones philosophies, this is really important. Are they showing respect for their teachers and classmates, are they taking responsibility for their own learning, how can they prove they are committed to the learning and ultimately, are the achieving their potential? Use these terms with them, remind them what it takes to be a Crookhorn learner.

3. Define what you mean by good behaviour

There is an opportunity here at the start of term for you in your classroom to re-evaluate what you want behaviour to look like. We as teachers should define what behaviour is ideal in our classrooms, be concrete with your rules. Vagueness is the enemy here. If you are vague, you’ll barely be aware of when behaviour goes wrong; and students will not grasp what is expected of them. What does fantastic behaviour actually look like in an assessment or when students are coming into your classroom?

4. Good behaviour must be taught, not told. 

The best teachers actively teach the behaviour they want to see, as if it were a curriculum. Do you want students to be kind, or work hard, or listen hard in assemblies if you are their tutor? Teach them to do so, don’t just tell them. Set the example, highlight when students have done something well and share. Chris mentioned in his blog about praising students when you notice good behaviour, so other students know what this looks like.

5. Build routines, habits and norms. 

When dealing with students you should consider these questions:

1. What behaviour do you want them to think is normal? Then, tell them what it is and teach them what normal means in many circumstances. Challenge them when it is not met. Show them how to do it. Correct them every time they can’t or won’t do it. Never let it slide. Define the new normal by bringing it to life.
2.  What habits do you want them to develop? If you want them to be punctual, clarify what punctuality means. Insist upon it. The more a behaviour is demanded, and challenged by its absence, the more practice students get performing it, until it starts to feel habitual. We seek, ultimately, to change their behaviour habits, not just their behaviour. 
3. What routines do they need to learn in order to succeed as learners and human beings? This is crucial. In order for it to be as easy as possible to behave, students should be taught the specific sequences of behaviour they are expected to demonstrate.
4. Build the habit of phoning home, and not just when things are difficult. We know the positive phone call when a student has done well is so important when building a relationship with parents, so when things aren’t going so well you have a relationship in place and parents are more likely to support.

6. Make boundaries meaningful. 

Students need to know that deliberately misbehaving will result in consequences. When behaviour is poor, or fails to meet the standard, it must be challenged. Students need to know a line has been crossed. These lines can be managed by many means. Sanctions can act as a deterrent but only if consistently and fairly applied, and when there is a high expectation that they will occur. Rewards too can have a small, short-term motivating effect. Both sanctions and rewards are an essential part of our system- please use them consistently.

We know that a well-planned out lesson delivered by an enthusiastic and motivating teacher in a classroom is the best way students learn, of this there is no doubt after what we have been through. I honestly believe the vast majority of our students believe this too now (which is a silver lining in these difficult times!). I have attached Chris’ blog again if you want to refer back to the top tips.

 If you would like any further support within this area, please contact myself, Dave or Chris and we will be delighted to help.

As with any homework, I scrolled the internet first, to copy someone else’s, and gathered some information.  I then emailed a bunch of staff for their thoughts and ideas on the classroom techniques that they use to keep LLD to a minimum and keeping those students with a reputation for poor behaviour, on task.  Below is a list of my findings.  What I found most interesting was that many experienced staff had similar thoughts and ideas (most of which, have been around for a while, but are certainly worth revisiting!).

1. Planning – If you haven’t done so already, read page 57 of PLAN, MARK, TEACH.  I promise you that you will read further!

One re-occurring theme has been the importance of a well-planned lesson. This is vitally important when dealing with challenging groups.

1. Give the group a bite-sized, do now task, the moment they walk in through the door (plan this carefully).  Don’t give them a second to be a distraction/distract others.  The first 5 minutes is when you set the tone!! (no wiggle room)
    
2. Greet the students upon entry, “Welcome, your task is on the board, you have 2 minutes to get out your equipment, including your planners, and begin” (some teachers find this most effective to do at the door).
    
3. Be enthusiastic!  Passionate teachers often get the best results.  Sweep students up in a wave of enthusiasm, take them on a journey, they will learn without realising it…and hopefully never forget it!
    
4. Catch students doing the right thing.  “Thank you for putting your jacket on the back of the chair and getting out your equipment”.  This can sometimes be more effective when done privately… “I noted how you came in calmly and sat down today, thank you/well done Darren” (naughty boys were always called Darren – fact!)
    
5. The importance of consistency cannot be underestimated (one could write a book on this) in every area of our profession.  Have the same procedures every lesson!  This creates boundaries and students will soon realise what is expected of them.  Follow through…If you say it, make sure that you do it (Never say anything that you can’t follow through with).
    
6. Use non-verbal signals – a nod, a smile, a stare, a frown, a raised eyebrow, or a gesture is often all that is needed.  Similarly, moving into closer proximately to a student who is showing signs of distraction can be a non-intrusive deterrent.
    
7. Walkabout your class - don’t always deliver your lesson from the same spot (certainly, don’t sit or stand behind your desk).  If you have something on the board, walk to the back of the class to explain it.  Students will not only know if you are watching them or not, it will also give you a student’s eye view of your classroom/lesson.
   
   These are all well and good, but… I am struggling to be an authority in the classroom. I don’t’ get the respect from the students that I need for them ALL to make progress. I spend far too much time dealing with behaviour issues and not enough time teaching/paying attention to the students that deserve it the most... I hear you cry!!
   
   OK, it’s hard! What will work for some students, will not work for all students. Just when you thought you were winning, they blow it all back in your face, treat you like…It also takes time, years in some cases. It is no coincidence that some of the better “classroom managers” have had over 20 years in the profession (oh and they still get it wrong from time to time!!).

The following may help you increase your dominance and assertiveness

1. Own your classroom!!  Set rules/procedures and stick by them. 
2. Put a seating plan in place.  Put the most challenging student right at the front.  If your tables are grouped, try to get them working with well-behaved students
3. Be authoritative in your speech and body language
4. “Fake it until you make it” Be absolutely confident and in control, even though you don’t feel like it.
5. Wait for absolute silence!  I sometimes look at my watch, or I hold eye contact with the student/s that are still talking.
6. If someone starts talking when you are…stop (this is most effective halfway through a sentence) It takes practice, but don’t worry about losing your train of thought…apologise to the class “I’m sorry, I got distracted and have lost where I was”.  Remain silent and still, maintain eye contact until you get the response you want
7. Pose questions rather than telling a pupil off “Why have you not started your work?”
8. Use their names, especially when complimenting them.
9. Problem solve together, ask questions as if you don’t know the answer…work things out together.
10. Avoid sarcasm, what you might think is light “bants” will harm student-teacher relationships
11. Use reminders and warnings about rules before you start an activity
12. Make positive phone calls home.  Pleasantly surprise their parents.  Ask them to congratulate their son/daughter/name of student in their care!

The following are some golden nuggets from staff…and students (I asked a few year 11s for a hand…some of their insights were fascinating!)

1. Be honest, admit when you’re wrong
2. Take the class you enjoy teaching the least and decide to make them your favourite.  Make a huge effort to plan their lessons perfectly.  Remind yourself to be super positive and energetic before they arrive.  If the students believe you love teaching them, it transforms them
3. Don’t be their friend!  They will look to you for boundaries, guidance and compassion.  You can’t give students those things correctly if you are trying to be their friend (they will also walk all over you)
4. Consistency – be firm and fair with every student, no favourites
5. Have a sense of humour!
6. Don’t winge (about marking, they have produced the work, now you’re moaning about it)
7. Teach for understanding and not for grades
8. Recognise and thank students that work hard, compliment them
9. I tell the class that I am not strict, I am clear (they aren’t allowed to disagree)
10. Expectations, expectations, expectations
11. Challenge the behaviour that you don’t want to see… ”what you don’t condemn, you condone”
12. Be consistent, follow up
13. Engage. Respect works both ways. 
14. Embody the cornerstones
15. Know when to withdraw and observe
16. Reflect, in the moment and thereafter
17. “I have asked you once already, now I’m going to walk away for a couple of minutes to give you some time to think about “it” (behaviour/actions).  Please can you help me and yourself out and make a good decision”
18. I have always approached behaviour management by going in incredibly firm, having supremely high expectations and then easing off once they are safe in their boundaries.  Go in hard and then back away softly, enabling the magic of working relationships to begin.
19. Keep expectations high; students will soon learn what is expected of them!
20. Be consistent, if you warn a student and they carry on, then sanction them…ALWAYS follow through.
21. Show an interest in what students do outside of your lesson…students really respond well to you if they feel you really do care about them and their achievements/progress/interests
22. It’s all about relationships; connect with them, but remember, they are not your mates.
23. Learn names and use them for praise and criticism (work out quickly whether to do this privately or publicly depending on the individual)
24. Use humour about yourself or the work, but not the kids
25. Have a poster/quote/photo up that invites conversation or a comment/question, this helps them to see you as a person and not just a figure of authority to push against.
26. Enforce a rule where students are not allowed to laugh at another student, even if they are laughing at themselves.  This really goes a long way to encourage students to make mistakes and feel ok being wrong.  This creates a much more caring and accepting classroom environment. (try not to get this confused with having a good sense of humour, which is important, just understand that “we don’t laugh when someone gets something wrong, or can’t explain something very well”).
27. Put your hand up if you have a question or an answer.  I don’t tolerate calling out!!  I also make an effort to compliment a student who follows this…” thank you for being patient and putting your hand up”
    
    I do not wish to mention names, but I would like to thank all the staff that contributed to this blog…and students…and of course my good friend, the internet!

Writing is a process, or at least it should be. It involves thinking, jotting down ideas, refining these ideas, thinking about the structure, linking ideas and much more. One problem is that writing is often neglected in the classroom – it’s seen as time-consuming and ends up being relegated to a homework task with little or no proper preparation. This is not going to help our students in these more rigorous, writing-based exams.

If we want our students to become good writers, then we must spend more time in the classroom teaching them how to write. This doesn’t simply mean getting them to write more, as that isn’t teaching. Of course, practice is important, but you can only practice something if you have a clear idea of what your goal is and how to reach it. One of the key things to good writing is a willingness to go back over what you’ve written, edit, receive feedback, revise and rewrite. At first, it can be difficult and sometimes even painful (especially with our students), but, with practice, students will come to realise that what they are producing is improving by leaps and bounds. It’s not simply a matter of reading through a piece of writing looking for spelling mistakes or grammatical errors; it’s about reading through it to see how it can be made better. In a way, a piece of writing should never be finished – it should just be one step further on. 

Planning

Even if students sit down with a blank piece of paper in front of them (or, more likely nowadays, a blank screen such as I had at the start of this!), they need to have some idea of what they want to write. For most writing, there needs to be a purpose and an idea of who the reader is going to be. This is all part of the planning stage. Often the planning will take longer than the actual writing, but if the result is a better piece of writing then there is nothing wrong with that at all. Planning can take all sorts of shapes and forms, such as brainstorming ideas; noting down important facts or pieces of information to be included or annotating a piece of text with important inferences that can then be ordered into a piece of critical and evaluative writing.

When it comes to paragraphs and compositions, a quick outline can help students structure their ideas and understanding for larger essays. Outlines enable students to develop their writing as a cohesive whole and visualise a beginning, middle, and end in their writing. Outlines can also help students distinguish essential versus non-essential material and, importantly the sequencing information.

An outline has the following benefits:

1. Provides Structure
2. Eliminates Repetition
3. Improves Adherence to Topic
4. Aids in sequencing

Teachers should model a quick outline for the class before requiring students to complete outlines on their own.

Before beginning outlines, you might give students a Topic Sense (TS) and Supporting Detail (SD) and have students identify which is the TS and which detail is SD. For example:

__________ Mitosis is a process of cell division.

__________ In the cell nucleus, chromosomes are separated into two identical sets.

This might be a do now for a science class put on the whiteboard before the students come in. Once students can identify the topic sentence, the class might follow up with a conversation to articulate their reasoning.

Another activity would be to give students four sentences and have students sequence the sentences for a paragraph. For example:

_______ Harriet Tubman helped slaves to freedom.

_______ John Brown led a small rebellion against slavery.

_______ The anti-slavery movement began to grow in the 1850s.

_______ Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election.

A third strategy that can be used as a quick do now or exit ticket is to have students identify the topic sentence and eliminate irrelevant details by listing different information or giving students an entire paragraph of information.

All of these activities help students to think about the elements of paragraph writing and building stamina and critical thinking for essay writing.

The Hochman Method Quick Outline is, therefore, this simple formula:

 TS; 4 details from the t + CS.

Note the dotted lines for the textual details. The dotted lines suggest to students that they do not have to write in complete sentences, rather include keywords and phrases. The TS and CS are solid lines that require a complete, specific, and detailed sentence.

The Quick Outline template above is for a single paragraph.

Additional lessons for outlining include:

• Students are given details and must generate a topic sentence.
• Generating a concluding sentence from a given topic sentence and details.
• Given a paragraph and convert it into a quick outline by picking out the key details
• Given a topic, generate a Quick SPO (Single Paragraph Outline) independently.

Drafting

Once students start writing, they need to understand that this is just the first draft – that finishing the writing is only the first step to getting a piece that is good enough. Drafting is a kind of practice exercise for a final draft. What you are asking them to produce in a draft is a rough version of how their final writing will look like.

It is most unlikely that their first attempt will be outstanding, and so you should plan to get them to re-write the draft at least once. The process of making changes to a draft is called re-drafting. Before this, they must develop their understanding through feedback.

It is vital to firstly check that students understand the feedback you have given them. If they do not understand, they will not make the necessary improvements needed. If you are giving feedback through live marking, then it is easy to check for understanding. If they are responding to feedback you have given them in your written marking, then make sure you target students who you know might need further support immediately as you circulate the room. Ask them to let you know if they do not understand their feedback which will help you know where to go first. Ask the students to identify the major problems which they need to work on. There might be many problems but try to get students to focus on the main problems through your feedback as that will help them make the greatest improvement to their work. They then redraft the writing or a section of the writing again.

My thanks to Caroline Nailor and Katy King for providing some excellent examples of how they have started using this in their lessons which have been photocopied for you and come with this blog. If you would like to speak to them further about how they have introduced this, please do go and speak to them and gain their insight.

‘Research – particularly that of psychologist Anders Ericsson – tells us that for practice to improve skills, it has to have a specific and focused goal and must gradually link together a series of smaller goals to created linked skills.’ - TWR

A fundamental part of teaching is the innate desire to impart knowledge and experience to others. We have the great privilege of being a shaping force in a student’s life and all want to guide them towards success. The Writing Revolution (TWR) is full of methods to help synthesise the teaching of skills in small and manageable steps linking towards the greater goal of exam literacy. However, it is not just for literacy-based subjects, it can be used to help students gain order and discipline in their thought processes.

The planning and refinement of ideas is a key skill the students need in order to secure a standard pass. As soon as a sentence appears on your laptop screen you are planning its revision and refinement. Yet, this hidden phase of sentence creation comes intrinsically from many years of experience and practice, which is something our students do not have. Hochman and Wexler focus on regular repeated exercises to gradually develop the key skills needed to write fluently. Editing and adapting the construction of sentences are key to building fluent readers, writers and speakers.

The TWR’s six writing principles

1. Students need explicit instruction in writing.
2. Sentences are the building blocks of all writing.
3. When embedded in the content of the curriculum, writing instruction is a powerful teaching tool.
4. The content of the curriculum drives the rigour of the writing activities.
5. Grammar is best taught in the context of student writing.
6. The two most important phases of the writing process are planning and revising.

Through the writing principles, we are encouraged to plan into our MTPs the explicit instruction of sentence creation as part of the wider learning topic. By creating an expectation of writing about the topic currently studied, the students learn the grammatical skills whilst developing opinions and knowledge for their upcoming test. It is encouraged that upon introducing a new writing activity, begin by modelling and have the students practise orally so that they can first formulate the idea out loud before they need to write it down. This will encourage them to practise self-editing without the stress of written ‘failure’.

A key skill our students struggle with is understanding the difference between a sentence and a fragment. The inability to express a complete thought often derails the results of our ‘forgotten third’ as they struggle to put their knowledge into complete sentences. TWR has many techniques to help these learners and one I have found success with is providing sentence fragments from the previous lesson as DO NOWs.

Example: You may give them ‘settled near rivers’ as a key bit of information they need to remember. The students then need to draw on the content they’ve learned to provide the subject of the sentence: ‘early Americans settled near rivers’. You could further develop this with the extension of the ‘because, but, so’ exercise or alternatively include the use of subordinating conjunctions (although, unless etc.) to change the meaning of the sentence. If struggling, the students can first practice the task aloud to a partner as comprehension is often easier to develop when heard.

An offshoot of this is the difficulty of developing the detail of sentences. I am constantly writing probing questions on their work in order to get them to develop their opinions. Rather than simply providing sentence starters you can practice the ‘because, but, so’ exercise to ensure they extend their sentences.

Example: You begin with a sentence stem that is directly about your topic (Scrooge is a representation of the entitled upper classes). The students then have to expand using the conjunctions because, but and so. This not only teaches them to add extra detail to their work but also encourages them to formulate their opinions/accumulate their knowledge on the subject. If done regularly, they develop the habit of extending their sentences with specific points about the subject, leading to greater retention in understanding.

Another valuable exercise is the commonly used sentence jumble. Rather than spend your life cutting out pieces of paper simply reorder sentences that contain key information for the lesson.

Example: The students first task is to unscramble the sentences correctly before working out what the new information means. You can do this on mini-whiteboards to assist with the visual delay from working off of a central PowerPoint and the ability to erase mistakes builds confidence. They are practising the creation of sentence construction and the intrinsic skills of editing and re-drafting.

Whilst this information doesn’t stem from a new fountain of knowledge, it will help to ensure consistency throughout subjects to aid students development. Building confidence in the creation and expansion of sentences encourages the students to not only develop their writing but also their reading, listening, speaking and questioning. All key skills are tied into meta-cognition, so the more we can encourage them to actively think about their learning the more they will learn.

Classroom environments can both support and enrich the learning of all children.  As well as being rich, enabling and welcoming, the classroom environment can be a learning tool, a way of engaging children and building the class community. It can create a sense of ownership and be used to support and promote learning as well as celebrating children’s work. With thought and planning an effective classroom environment is used as an interactive resource supporting teaching, learning and assessment.

I think the first consideration when planning the learning environment for your classroom is that what you put up around the room can really help set the mood of your room. It’s no secret that schools can be quite daunting places for many students. Having a calm, visually appealing learning environment can go a long way to helping students feel welcome and valued. We have promoted the fact that our classrooms should be SEN friendly, especially with the fact that 25% of our cohorts have recognised barriers to learning. Natalie has done training for us recently on some of the strategies and I urge you to look back over the Power Point I have attached to familiarise yourself with her guidance. The key ideas being for us to analyse our seating plans carefully to make sure the SEN students are in an appropriate place so teachers can easily access them and key vocab with definitions on the walls which students can quickly access.

The second consideration is that we should consider displays as learning tools and not distractions. One of the best things about children, in my opinion, is their ability to absorb knowledge like a sponge. It’s vital that students are exposed to content in as many ways as possible while they’re at College. We know that students can often absorb information subconsciously from visual prompts when they are tested in other spaces. Whether it be information walls, thought-provoking posters, or simple diagrams, your students will appreciate the reminders when their knowledge and understanding requires consolidation.

That being said – you can’t just jam-pack your walls with information! Research also suggests that you can, in fact, have too much of a good thing. Research by Fisher, Goodwin and Seltman showed that children can be more distracted by the visual environment, spend more time off task and demonstrate smaller learning gains when the walls were highly decorated than when the decorations were removed. It is important to avoid clutter! Keep at least 20 percent of your wall space clear, and leave ample space between displays so they don’t look disorganized. Resist the temptation to keep adding displays; it’s better to swap them rather than keep adding more.

So what do you do? How do you find the right balance?

If you are going to be teaching and directing your students’ attention toward a particular place quite regularly (such as the whiteboard), it’s a good idea to limit the content around this area. This allows students to more easily focus their attention on you. This area should be restricted to just the vital learning tools that you often need students to remember!

The areas where children will not be receiving direct instruction, such as the side walls and the back of the classroom are often spaces that can be used. It is important to direct the students to the relevant learning wall when appropriate.

It is essential that any print placed on your walls can be read!  If in doubt, do the squint test.  Stand about six feet away from your board and squint at it.  If you can’t see the key words or read the definitions of what the key words mean then there is very little chance the students can either which means then the learning wall becomes redundant.

When creating a language-rich classroom, learning walls are particularly valuable. The language used within them sets the standard for the vocabulary we want our students to use. So, what are some good ideas for language-rich displays?    

Word walls have long been a classroom staple, but how do we decide which words to showcase? An effective display should be clearly organised; it shouldn’t just be a messy collage of random terms. The words we want to focus are referred to as tier 2 and tier 3 words (Academic word list). Tier 2 vocabulary consists of tricky words that are regularly used by mature language users, found and used in any subject across the curriculum. Tier 3 vocabulary, on the other hand, refers to subject-specific terminology, like onomatopoeia or evaporation. A great idea is to build your walls around tier 2 or 3 words that relate to themes or topics that you are exploring in class. If you are teaching maths and doing averages you might want to create a learning wall around tier 3 terms like ‘median’, ‘mode’ and ‘range’. 

One of the best ways of preparing your class for new language is through familiarising them with common roots and affixes. Once a student understands that the prefix ‘min-’ means ‘small’, they’ll be able to independently see the links between words like “minion” and “minor”. There are many strategies and templates you can get from the internet which can be used to help you plan out a learning wall for promoting these words.

It was noted by OFSTED that our learning walls are very effective resources to support and check that students understand the work. They also stated that classrooms are used well by pupils, particularly pupils with SEND to help them with their work. Our learning environments are crucial to making sure students are supported in the classroom but they are only effective if you refer to them, you make them relevant to your learners and they are easy to access for all students.

My thanks as always for taking the time to read this and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Whilst many of the points I am going to discuss are linked to the way we teach science at Crookhorn, I see many ways in which they have cross-curricular implications. Before I discuss these ideas I want to make a few points about what we are all likely to have in common within our subject areas;

• Ideas can be abstract and difficult to understand.
• Students have to remember these abstract key ideas/knowledge for a long time... (KS3 à GCSE)
• Many GCSE marks are for the application of understood ideas. We must be imparting these skills early from year 7 onwards.
• There is a lot of ideas to remember and apply, we must build the skills needed to address this but also the resilience in individual learners.
• All students have to be able to deal flexibly and adaptively with these issues.

The model we have adopted and adapted this year in science I call the ‘precise learning model’. I am implementing this model because I believe it will help address the points discussed above.

It follows the formula below;

1. What do the students need to be able to do/understand to be successful in this lesson? What are the key bits of knowledge they need to have secure in their minds? What precisely is it that they need to get?
2. What prior learning do they have/ do they need in order to attempt this lesson? I need to check they have this foundation before introducing new knowledge.
3. How am I going to teach them this new knowledge? How can I do this and build resilience?
4. How am I going to check they “get it?” If they don’t what intervention/reteach will I introduce to ensure all students access the precise learning points for my lesson?
5. How will they then apply this information to a new possibly unfamiliar situation? I need them to solve problems in their final exams, therefore, I need to teach them in a way that makes them a good problem solver.

Below is a diagram we use to summarise this model in science.

I have found that teaching this way has two main benefits:

1. It gives their learning a purpose that is obvious to them.
2. Provides opportunities for learning to become embedded and remembered.

The part about embedding and remembering is so important. We need ideas to be understood and remembered well enough to be able to build upon them later. So our teaching has to be carefully planned around them understanding key ideas.

But we must plan activities that are designed to support memory. (on top of the interleaving stuff we are all probably doing anyway).

In Summary, I think we need to be really clear about the difference and relationship between ‘teaching’ and ‘problem-solving’. When this becomes clear, and like second nature this model becomes efficient at achieving the outcomes mentioned above.

I found the following information online very recently so from here the writing is no longer my own.  I think this article has links to what we are doing currently in the science department and other interesting information, which as you will see has implications for anyone in their classroom.

I would suggest reading the article multiple times. As you will see this is one way to maximise the movement of new information from short term to long term memory. There is no known limit to the amount of information the human brain is capable of storing. However, this is only true of information that is held in our long term memory. Therefore, it is a matter of use/reuse it or lose it!

A sensory stimulus leads to chemical and electrical changes in the brain; these are the basic memory traces in our short term working memory.  Cognitive Load Theory suggests there is a limit to the number of these traces that can exist at any one time in my working memory.   Whilst by no means certain and there is variability between people; about 4-7 memory traces can be held in the short term working memory at any one time.  However, the size of each of these traces/memories can vary from small to huge; it still counts as just one.  This will be important to remember when we look at elaboration and generation later on.  These memory traces soon disappear unless transferred from the working memory into the long term memory

Implication 1
When teaching directly, don’t overload pupils’ limited working memory with “extraneous” information.  Keep the instructions and information focussed particularly when pupils are meeting new material.  This requires discipline from the teacher and careful thought about what information is needed, in what order.

The transfer to long term memory involves stabilising the traces by organising them and linking them to associated information, already known.  This is the start of building up a mental model or schema.  Once learnt the information is pretty much permanently stored in our long term memory; storage strength is strong.

Implication 2
As new knowledge needs to be connected to prior knowledge, the order of teaching information must be very carefully sequenced.  Planning the sequential development of knowledge, the learning flow, is the critical first step in planning a series of lessons or scheme of learning.  If the sequential development of knowledge wasn’t important to supporting learning we could literally look at what pupils need to know or be able to do and teach the constituent components in any random order we like.

The real problem we have is often retrieving the information and bringing it back into our short term working memory; retrieval strength is weak and it takes time and effort to build up the retrieval strength through memory cues.  Once sufficiently strengthened these cues allow, almost without thinking, the recall pieces of information from long term memory; that is, automaticity.  Part of learning, therefore, involves forgetting and then recalling.  The more effort that is required in the recalling the greater the retrieval strength becomes.

Implication 3
We need to create opportunities for pupils to recall previously taught material, retrieval practice.  The retrieval process could involve low stake testing/questioning.  Start by retrieving the information taught in the lesson; a set of end of lesson multiple choice questions on the key information (quick and efficient but not requiring a great amount of effort to retrieve as the answer is one of the options provided) or a series of short response answers (require more effort as the pupils must use only their own memory cues) can be used.  The correct answers should then be given and pupils mark their own work.  This brings in the hypercorrection effect; pupils remember the corrected answer for longer than if they had guessed correctly in the first place.  Retesting a day, week, month or months later keeps improving the retrieval strength.

Once recalled or retrieved the memory is now pliable; we can now reform it and add in additional knowledge which will deepen our understanding.  In SOLO Taxonomy terms, the pupil is moving from multi-structural (lots of pieces of information) to the relational (the pieces connected together coherently) the to the extended abstract ( a more holistic understanding based on underlying principles or rules).

Implication 4
We need to develop a spiral style curriculum where pupils are able to revisit key ideas over time; spaced learning.  On each of these occasions, teachers should require pupils to retrieve prior learning with the minimal number of external cues possible.  There is then the opportunity to develop an iterative process where pupils can expand the mental model/schema/understanding of a particular area of the curriculum or life, in general.

Finally, we need to own the knowledge; the deepest test of understanding.  Can we coherently and correctly apply our learning to explain a particular phenomenon?

Implication 5
Periodically you should ask students to write a paragraph or two in response to a question that will test their new learning.  Why can seagulls dive through the surface of water but not ice given both consists of H2O particles?

The last part here is an example of how we might use application in order to problem solve, as I mentioned earlier.

Thanks for reading, now go and apply what you have learned.

Sean

Metacognition is defined as “higher-order thinking that enables understanding, analysis, and control of one’s cognitive processes, especially when engaged in learning.”

Metacognition is unpicking the process with the students of what they are doing and why they are doing it.

When I first started looking at Metacognition and what it entailed, I spent a long time trawling through various websites looking for something that would fit.  Eventually, I decided to use the Education Endowment Foundation.  This was for a number of reasons.  This organisation was established to provide validity and reliability to research carried out in education.  If I was going to find something it needed to be worthwhile and valid. They claim that: ‘Metacognition and self-regulation approaches have consistently high levels of impact, with pupils making an average of seven months’ additional progress.’  As a concept, this can be applied to any subject, any lesson and even added to our MTPs.  Taking it even further, the students can then start making cross-curricular links. The second reason I chose this variation was the simplicity of the process.  Trying to encourage disadvantaged students to invest their time in anything is challenging so the simple nature of this version helps. The following diagram helps really understand how metacognition should be used with students in the classroom and how we can get students to really evaluate, plan and monitor their own work.

The final reason for this decision was that the cyclical process means that the students don’t just stop once they have completed a task or topic.  The whole thing is not a linear process that stops once they have ‘done it’.  It encourages them to revisit the skills or knowledge, especially as part of a spiral curriculum.  I have used this structure in a lesson with Year 7.  All of them could tell me when they had previously attempted a similar task before immediately opening their books to find it.  They were then able to tell me what worked last time and what they need to work on.  They don’t have a teacher telling them everything in an exam; they need to be able to think for themselves.  Resilience and flexibility can be developed by them having to think for themselves whilst making the links between prior learning and what they are doing now. 

One of the most important aspects of this strategy is the teacher modelling how to use this structure.  My tutor group have seen me attempting science and maths explaining my thought processes as I go.  Explicitly teaching how to use this method is also essential as it demonstrates the necessary and appropriate level of dialogue expected of the student.

It takes time for these skills to embed.  Metacognition is not a quick or instant fix.  It is a strategy that needs to be developed over time to ensure the students can use it naturally becoming part of their thought process when faced with any task.

I want to thank Carl for writing this extremely interesting blog and I know he will be highly involved with Dave Lemon in extending the use of the metacognition strategies within tutor time which I truly believe will help develop the Crookhorn learner for years to come. If anyone else is keen to write a guest blog on an area of teaching and learning please do contact me as I know there is so much expertise and passion within our teaching staff on different topics that we would all find interesting, especially after all the educational reading done recently in staff training.

1. Align assessments with the curriculum

In many respects, this seems obvious! I doubt many teachers deliberately set out to create and administer assessments that are not aligned with their curriculum. And yet, for a variety of different reasons, this does not seem to happen, with the result that students sit assessments that are not directly sampling the content and skills of the intended curriculum. In these cases, the results achieved, and the ability to draw any useful inferences from them, are largely redundant. If the assessment is not assessing the things that were supposed to have been taught, it is almost certainly a waste of time – not only for the students sitting the test but for the teachers marking it as well.

2. Define the purpose of an assessment first 

Depending on how you view it, there are essentially two main functions of assessment. The first, and probably most important, the purpose is as a formative tool to support teaching and learning in the classroom. Examples might include a teacher setting a diagnostic test at the beginning of a new unit to find out what students already know so their teaching can be adapted accordingly. Formative assessment, or responsive teaching, is an integral part of teaching and learning and should be used to identify potential gaps in understanding or misconceptions that can be subsequently addressed. At Crookhorn, we always stress the importance of the reteach and if our assessment doesn’t allow us to work out what and where it went wrong, then the assessment has very little value.

The second main function of assessment is summative. Whereas examination criteria certify student achievement, in the school context the functions of summative assessment might include providing inferences to support the reporting of progress home to parents, or the identification of areas of underperformance in need of further support. SLT, Heads of Subject and Heads of House use this data to develop action plans to support students, so again if the data is unreliable, then this could lead to wasted time.

3. Use the most appropriate format for the purpose of the assessment

The format of an assessment should be determined by its purpose. Typically, subjects are associated with certain formats. So, in English essay tasks are quite common, whilst in maths and science, short exercises where there are right and wrong answers are more the norm. But as Dylan Wiliam suggests, although ‘it is common for different kinds of approaches to be associated with different subjects…there is no reason why this should be so.’ Wiliam draws a useful distinction between two modes of assessment: a marks for style approach (English, history, PE, Art, etc.), where students gain marks for how well they complete a task, and a degree of difficulty approach (maths, science), where students gain marks for how well they progress in a task. However, it is entirely possible for subjects like English to employ marks for difficulty assessment tasks, such as multiple choice questions, and maths to set marks for style assessments. As departments why don’t you consider if your assessments are too one dimensional (which might just suit a certain type of student) and if they are, how can you mix it a bit?

4.  Assessments that allow all students to succeed

Apart from summative assessments such as GCSE’s, we should always look to support students as much as possible in any assessment we give them, to really make the assessment a formative experience for both the student and teacher. I absolutely do not believe that we should make students sit in silence with no help at all for all their assessments, but we should make sure students are given support where needed and that support should be consistent across the class. Assessment should be about learning, right up to the GCSE itself so my advice would be always try to make the assessment fair but never leave a student behind to just fail.

5. Identify the range of evidence required to support inferences about achievement

We must avoid assessing too much and concentrate on assessing the key concepts that we have decided is vital to student success. Sarah talked on our training day about how many of us have still found it hard to narrow down what we teach to what is manageable and most important for our students to achieve at GCSE level. We find it difficult in practice to sacrifice breadth in the interests of depth, particularly where we feel passionate that so much is important for students to learn. I know it has taken several years for our curriculum leaders to truly reconcile themselves to the need to strip out some content and focus on teaching the most important material to mastery level (reteach and repetition!)! but this is fundamental to our development as curriculum leaders. Now we must do the same with assessment, and make sure that we assess what matters, and develop our future teaching from there.

6. Moderation of assessments

The purpose of moderation is to ensure that teachers are making consistent judgments about standards. In order to do this, they have to have a shared understanding about the expectations for each standard so that a particular level of achievement (for example, giving a student a grading of secure in Year 8 if they are on track for a 4) is awarded to student responses with the same characteristics, regardless of who marks/grades them.

Moderation is an essential part of ensuring integrity in assessment tasks. It is through this process, particularly at the assessment design and point of assessment stages, that issues of assessment validity and reliability are identified and improved.

I hope you have found this blog useful when thinking about how we use assessment at Crookhorn to really develop our planning because this I believe is the most important purpose of assessment. If you have any questions about your future assessments and how they were planned, or how you should plan you're reteaching because of the results, have a discussion with your Head of Subject for advice and guidance.

Every term, we meet as a group of coaches and discuss the key coaching themes moving forward and also recapping some of the essential techniques we have been working on with staff. In our training this term we looked at some more strategies used in ‘Teach like a Champion’.  The first is Cold call which is where we target students for our well thought out planned questions, moving away from hands up as this often allows students to hide in a lesson and let certain students dominate. This is also one of the strategies to check if students have actually learnt what you have taught them. Check for understanding has been promoted through how we use mini whiteboards, exit tickets and other questioning techniques. We also discussed if we were seeing staff moving towards live marking in the classroom as we know this has a real benefit to our students. The students often tell us that this type of feedback, which is short, sharp and in the moment really helps them. At Academic Board last week, we discussed the worrying performance of the boys and disadvantaged students in GCSE’s, and the research shows us that when we use these techniques I have recapped above, it has a positive and substantial effect on their performance. In a recent Blink, it was stated that in too many classes, the boys ‘have a place to hide’ because our teachers are not targeting them with questions or checking what they have learnt. Reflect on your own practice now, are these strategies really established in your teaching and if not, what do you need to do to make it embedded? If you feel the students are not making the required progress in your lessons would some of these strategies help if you focus on making them part of your daily routine?

In my last blog, I wrote about how we must improve our student’s vocabulary and some ideas on how to do this. In our examination system in the UK, the amount of writing and quality of writing will determine the academic success of our students. As coaches, we discussed the strategy of Show Call which is a technique where a teacher uses student work to project on the screen and students and the teacher give feedback on what was done well, and what can be done to improve. This is developing the idea of a ‘culture of error’ and also gives students live feedback on how to improve their work. When you use this technique, think carefully about what works to choose, is it exemplary, or does it demonstrate a common error; or does it have a good balance of strengths and weaknesses that will be good to go through. Planning where you use show call, is essential. This might be after a section of writing has been completed, after a reteach and rewrite on a piece of writing, or maybe partway through a task- to give the students quick feedback and help them make quick progress. Consider also how many students you will choose to show call. If you have not used one of the college visualisers yet, please speak to your HOS who should have access to one. Our aim is to make sure all teachers have a visualiser so we can all be using them as part of our routine.

I know a fear we have at Crookhorn is how we get students to write for a sustained period of time and also producing a high-quality piece of writing. As a result, we need to think about building up their stamina for writing just as you would build stamina for running or swimming: start small and scale up. Make the initial task about one minute’s worth of writing and make that expectation clear. You can add that by the end of the next lesson, you know the students will be writing confidently for at least 5 minutes, and it will not be stressful to them, because you will be training them in small steps. The most important thing is to have students’ practice being successful at writing steadily through a block of time when asked to, not only because seeing themselves succeed convinces students that they can, but because it makes a habit of writing steadily through the time allotted whenever asked. The idea is that when you say go, they write straight through because they can’t imagine anything else!

Another way to make sure students hit the ground running is to make sure they have some decent ideas to work from, making it all but impossible to fall back on “I can’t think of anything.” Before you say go, ask students to do a lightning-quick mind map and two-minute discussion. Then, very quickly, say “Now that you’ve got some ideas, you may begin. Go.” Give them the expectation that their pen should be moving for the majority of the time (let them know that there will be pauses for thought and student reflection if needed). This is useful because it’s visible and therefore clear and easy to manage on your end.

Writing is one of the most effective ways to process information, but all too often we run out of time for that end-of-class reflection.  Instead, try building in time at the beginning of class for writing.  Following your teacher input, allow students to write about the objective or concept, and then build in time for students to discuss their written thoughts with one another.  Creating a space for writing at the beginning of the class, as opposed to the tail end of class, gives priority to the importance of writing and allows you valuable check for understanding time as well, that might help shape how the rest of the lesson is facilitated. If a student has not put in the required effort, you have the time for an immediate rewrite. As teachers, we often accept mediocrity as we are just happy they have done it, but we must all get better at saying that at times, that is not good enough and that they must do it again. This is a key learning process, and we must not shy away from it.

We finished off our coaching training at looking at the ‘Door to Do now’ technique. This is making sure we have an efficient and effective way of making sure students enter the class and then start work immediately. Meet them at door, expectations are made and make sure all materials needed for them are on their desk. The students have a clear seating plan that they know, and the first task is in place for them to be getting on with.

There are many research papers and studies about improving boys’ performances over the last 50 years. There are also thousands and thousands of articles about how to improve disadvantaged students’ academic achievements. They all agree that the biggest influence on improving these groups of students is quality first teaching. We all entered education to make a difference and we have chosen to work at a College like Crookhorn because we know we can positively change lives through education, and we will do that through the high-quality provision that what we deliver in the classroom. Please give these strategies and techniques a real go, work on them on every lesson you teach and talk to your coach if you are struggling to embed them in your daily practice.

You can click on any of the blue links which will take you straight through to extra reading on the strategies discussed. Any feedback on the blog, or just how you are getting along in your teaching is always gratefully received.

Like most teachers when I taught GCSE PE, as soon as my students were finished in the exam hall I always used to go through the exam paper and guess on how I felt they would have done. Alex Quigley discusses doing exactly the same thing in his book and talks about the time when he was teaching GCSE English Literature paper and he believed that there was a real gift of a question on the theme of dreams in Of Mice and Men. When they came streaming out of the exam he excitedly asked them if they’d done it but none of them had. Why? Because it contained the word ‘futility’, and they had no idea of its meaning. This is just one example of how a limited vocabulary can be a significant barrier to academic success.

In our INSET training we now know that in order to comprehend a text we need to know an estimated 95% of its vocabulary. This might sound surprisingly high but think about the last novel you read, how many unfamiliar words did you encounter? One or two at most? Certainly few enough that your understanding and enjoyment were not impeded. 5 percent of words might be about 10 per page – at that kind of frequency our ability to comprehend disintegrates rapidly.

Conversely, the more words you know the easier you’ll find it to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words. If you know 95 percent of the words not only will you understand the text but you have a good chance of learning the other 5 percent. If you know fewer the 90 percent, then you’re probably stuffed. This leads inexorably to the Matthew Effect: This idea is that children who learn to read in the first three years of their education become fluent readers. They read more, learn more vocabulary which then enables them to read more and comprehend more advanced texts and so they advance further. The children who fail to learn to read, read less, are less fluent, have a poorer vocabulary, comprehend less and the gap just keeps on growing. It is the principle of ‘The rich get richer and the poor get poorer’.

Obviously the best way to build vocabulary is to read, but apparently we only learn about 15% of the vocabulary we encounter in written texts so we need to read a lot to make sure we encounter words on multiple occasions before they’ll become part of our working vocabularies. According to one source, if you read for twenty minutes a day you’ll encounter an estimated 1,800,000 words over the course of a year whereas reading for only one minute a day will result in only 8,000 words. Now I’m not sure of the source or of the maths but if it’s only slightly true then this suggests something important. Is twenty minutes a day doable? I know Martha Coates in her role of literacy leader is going to be developing our DEAR time to make sure that students are reading the high quality books which develop their vocabulary and I am sure we are all on board in making sure this is a success. 

Many of us our now considering the key vocabulary we need to make sure the student’s understand when planning our MTP, but how should we be choosing these key words?

Alex Quigley discusses that vocabulary can be usefully divided into 3 tiers:

Tier 1 – high frequency in spoken language (table, slowly, write, horrible)                                                 
Tier 2 – high frequency in written texts (gregarious, beneficial, required, maintain)
Tier 3 – subject specific, academic language (osmosis, trigonometry, onomatopoeia)

We don’t need to worry about tier 1 – students usually arrive knowing the basics and if not they will quickly pick them up in conversation with their peers. I also believe that as teachers we’re pretty good at recognising the fact that our students won’t know most of the Tier 3 words so it is important to teach them to our students specifically. Tier 2 words are often the issue- these are usually words that students will already have a conceptual understand of, even though they’re unfamiliar with the vocabulary. We need to consider these words carefully in our speech and our teachings. Isabelle Beck suggests there are 7,000 word families which are very high frequency in written texts and very low-frequency in speech. These are words that feature heavily in textbooks and exam papers. They are part of the language of academic success; without these our students will struggle in the new exams. The Academic Word List (AWL) was developed by Averil Coxhead which produced a list containing 570 word families which were selected because they appear with great frequency in a broad range of academic texts but would be uncommon for many students to understand. If you are interested take a look at her website. https://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist

Obviously as a classroom teacher, you can’t teach all this as you wouldn’t have time to do much else, but giving students access to challenging texts will expose them to much more Tier 2 vocabulary than they will encounter in dumbed down, ‘student friendly’ texts. If we want to make sure students learn this vocabulary we should concentrate on the ‘golden triangle’ of recognition, pronunciation and definition.

•Recognition – how is the word spelt? The ability to use phonics to decode new vocabulary and then to be able to reproduce the spelling makes a big difference.

•Pronunciation – how is the word said? Making students say it aloud and use it in a sentence increases the likelihood they’ll remember it.

•Definition – what does the word mean? It might sound obvious, but if you know the meaning of a word, you’re much more likely to remember it.

If we were to design a vocabulary building programme that concentrated on the words with the most instructional potential and highest utility then we might make a real start in closing the language gap between word-rich and word-poor children. And because we’re focussing on building vocabulary, it makes sense to teach students prefixes, suffixes and roots to help them puzzle out the meaning of new vocabulary more easily.

I am certainly looking forward to our INSET training on the 15^th of January by Tim Bezant where he will be covering the technical side of prefixes and suffixes and how to increase our own understanding of them. It should be really interesting beneficial for us all to grasp as we are all teachers of English.

Effective feedback from you will include the specific achievable steps (targets) to improve their performance. For example, the use of technical vocab, the identification of knowledge gaps, fluency, evaluation skills and ineptness of planning might all be included in your feedback. If a student is missing most of these, you have to give them a place to start.

Students’ lack of engagement with these steps/targets you give them also seems to be caused by their own perceptions of themselves as learners. They often see themselves as a “grade 4” student, for example. This makes it harder for them to come to terms with any grade that doesn’t fit with that label. Following a positive result, they can then become idle in their success. A negative result can leave students thinking it can’t be done. It’s vital that we spend time before giving feedback to help students understand what they should be looking to achieve, both in terms of short and long-term practices. They need to know and be constantly reminded that ‘progress‘ is not linear and that their path to success will not be a straight one.

Students need to see the bigger picture. One exam result can seem like the entire picture to some of the students. In order for these steps of feedback to be meaningful to your students, they need to understand their own learning situation. By this, I mean that your students need to be able to see what their current level of achievement looks like compared to their past achievements. Have they dipped? Plateaued? Accelerated? Where are they going? And how is this related to their end goal?

They should also be made aware of how far a student like them should be expected to achieve by the end of the course. Think about some of your students from previous years who have achieved similar mock results, but have then gone on to have even greater success when they have followed a specific plan. Share that plan with your current students, breaking it down into practical steps, which when followed, led to your previous student achieving the desired result.

By making the steps simple, your current students are able to see further progress as realistic. This provides them with the motivation required to increase performance in preparation for the exam. Because the feedback conversation is focused on future achievement, rather than past failure, your student’s mindset is far more receptive and they should react more positively.

Additionally, students need to feel supported. Many students’ will know that a poor result is their ‘fault’, but guilt and remorse will only make them dwell on negatives. This distracts from the positives and creates a barrier to forming a solution-focused mindset. Instead, ensure you are giving effective feedback by using as many comments as possible about what your students have achieved. By beginning the feedback conversation in this way (and feedback must be a conversation, not just one-way) your students will be encouraged to feel as though they have a platform to build upon for future success. They will also see you as being on their side, rather than just being there to find faults.

What actions can we take to prepare our students to receive feedback? I think it is important for students to consider some questions before they receive their mock papers back. Here are some questions I would consider asking:

1. What do you stand to gain from success in this subject?
2. What is your end-of-course target?
3. What was your target for the mock exam?
4. If your two targets are different, then explain why
5. What practical steps did you take to move towards your mock exam target?
6. Which of those practical steps paid off?
7. Which practical steps would you change or not use again? Explain your reasons.
8. If you could go back in time and give advice to yourself three months ago, what advice would you give?

Many of these I have got from Sander when he has been working with the students in his MADE sessions. You may change the wording of the questions, or even add/remove some of them. However, it is fundamental that we as a teaching team create a dialogue with each student about their own journey. The questions are really just conversation starters.

After giving feedback on the mock exams, it’s crucial that you put a plan in place to ensure that every single student can be monitored and so that their performance on exam day is not left to chance. The plan should be specific, realistic and time-bound if it is to work. But most importantly, the onus should be on the students to solve the problem. You will need to use the mocks to see where the gap in learning is specific to one or two students or where it has a broader base, which requires a rethink of future planning. What material are they struggling to commit to long-term memory? How will you help facilitate this?

Steps you can put in place:

• Students should respond to feedback as early as possible – create improved answers or redo the mock exam from scratch.
• Set aside specific times for one-to-one conversations with each student (if logistically possible). This should happen as soon as possible.
• Share results with colleagues in other departments and the Head of House to see if there is an issue beyond your subject.
• Students should create an action plan for the final exams. This can contain exam dates, when they will begin revising, successful revision methods, any future assessment dates.
• Book another one-to-one for 6 weeks time to see how students have got on individually. Did they bother to stick to the plan? Where’s the evidence? Did it work? How do they know? What do they now need to focus on? Is parental involvement necessary at this point?