Friday, 30 November 2012

Literacy News (1: 22nd November 2012)

Thank you to Louise Marsh for providing us with the first of our literacy updates. I will also post these notes on the Learning Walks page.  In addition Louise has also found some helpful guidance on Ofsted entitled  Notes on the new Ofsted framework: how to be outstanding; just follow the link!  http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/nov/19/new-ofsted-framework-how-to-be-outstanding 


Thank you to the English and PHSE Departments who welcomed us for our first Literacy Learning Walks. We were lucky enough to spend time in KS4 and KS3 classrooms and noticed many areas of good practice in supporting our students’ literacy needs and development.
Displays and classroom environments:
  • Wide range of displays of key words, sentence starters and essay structures
  • High-quality, beautifully-presented student work, often side-by-side with professional work which highlighted our students’ strengths and similarities
  • Key skills for the subject with the main features/key words highlighted


Active teaching of Literacy-related skills
  • Strong focus on understanding exam-related vocabulary and words which were likely to feature in the upcoming exams (e.g. discussion and explanation of the words “deduce” and “infer”)
  • Modelled answers which were used to unpick Skilled and Excellent criteria
  • Dictionaries and thesauri which are easy-to-access

Assessment and feedback
  • Marking codes on display in some classrooms
  • Feedback which responded to written accuracy
If you would also like to display the Marking Codes in your classroom and/or stick copies in students’ books, please don’t forget that they can be found in Staff/Staff Resources/Literacy Resources/Marking and Assessment Support.
The Literacy Resources folder in the Staff/Staff Resources area also contains:
  • Writing Skills folder containing Non-Fiction Writing Guides
  • Reading Skills folder containing guidance about DARTs activities
  • Copies of Literacy Mats and a range of subject-specific materials, grouped under subject area
  • 2012 Literacy Guidance folder containing copies of INSET materials, overviews given to Departments and outlines of the year.

Thursday, 15 November 2012

Outstanding Lazy Learning; without the spoon fed culture!

On Wednesday 14th November Jim Smith presented to Cheney School. It was a stimulating session packed with interesting ideas.  If you want a copy of Jim's PowerPoint and a copy of the notes below please go to:  My Computer/RM Staff/Staff Resources/Developing Lesson Planning/Inset Presentations.

These notes are an account of Jim's presentation and not a reflection of my opinions.


Outstanding Lazy Learning; without the spoon fed culture!

Jim Smith 14th November 2012



Jim smith has a new book out that would be worth checking out; Follow me, I'm right behind you

Top tips to get students thinking 

  1. Use wordle to analyse speeches, exam specs, any text that you use
  2. Try to make links between words coming out from a wordle 
  3. Crazy paving mind map, students draw shapes, write down their ideas, organise on a larger sheet and then discuss and explain
  4. Discuss with elbow partners
  5. Questioning techniques; Think, pair, square, share or Pose, pause, pounce, bounce, go to thunks.co.uk
  6. Think about what pedagogy works rather than what content works
  7. Get feedback from a group that you want to polish.  Ask them to tell you - Keep grow change - anything that is down for change ask them for examples and who is using this, find out where our best practice is on a ange of different issues and learn from this. Then find three kids to monitor each of these and get them to monitor and feed back to you.
  8. EWAP, everything with a purpose 



Lesson starters: all about getting the students aligned; the independent RING, relevant, interesting, naughty, giggle.


  1. Here's the answer what's the question?
  2. Teach with expectation not with hope, be unapologetic for having high standards 
  3. Prove it! 
  4. What if?
  5.  What is the biggest best most beautiful?
  6. Magic numbers
  7. Speed draw, draw what you learn last lesson? This could be last lesson, period 3 not your last lesson with me
  8.  Would you rather; have foil teeth or feather fingers? Be a Roman or a Viking? Who would win in a fight, Basil a brush or Michael Gove?
  9. What are the top five most important............?
  10. Same answer different version
  11. Odd one out
  12. Can you link Barrack Obama to Cheney School in 5 steps
  13. Know what you don't know, what do you know, what do you want to know, how are you going to find out?
  14. Howbigreally.com
  15. What's the story .....?
  16. Your killer question .......
  17. Captions ...... 
  18. Top five things .......
  19. What could have happened next?



Outcome focused delivery
Outcome spectrum, student led discovery ------------------------- teacher led didactic
MI learning, your 8 way angle, how do you ensure that you meet different types of learning style?

Tools and techniques

  • John Davitt the learning event generator
  • iPhone. Random activity generator
  • Mark Anderson, ictevangelist.com
  • Peter Dickinson Announcer
  • Track thinking
  • Games based learning
  • Put student artwork online for sale
  • Talk based learning
  • Crazy talk software/puppet pals/Voki/ go animate
  • Plan how you are going to chunk up the learning, do something different, get active!

Learning development, what to do when the kids get stuck?
What do you expect your students to do when they get stuck, without just asking you.  Get rid of "Put your hand up and I'll come and help you!"
Imagine you we're a person who was not stuck, what would they do?
Some kids want to be stuck to avoid having a go and getting it wrong.
"Ok, if you’re stuck have a go and I'll come and see how wrong you were." - "What have you forgotten to do?"
Differentiation around the room, have posters etc to stimulate thinking and problem solving.
Multi-plenary lesson, check progress in parallel with the learning, don't stop the learning to capture progress.  Get a student to be the progress paparazzi.  Give students some post it's and walk away, see how the pupils react when you give some messages.
What is brand new and fresh?  Get the students to mark or asterisk this.
Reduced learning company, a 30 sec script on what they have learned.
"What have we not done today that we should have done."
Talking triads, speaker, questioner, assessor - Silent debate. - Learning tree
How do you leave a lesson? How do you get them wanting to come back next time?  The Eastenders finish.


Ways to unlock capacity


  •  Keep, trim, bin




Learning conversations
Have conversation observations, three hours of lesson observation is not enough to improve teacher development.  Why lead learning when learning can lead you?  Three hours of LO is about 0.29 of our output.

The live lesson observation, based round a series of questions.  During the lesson the teacher and the observer will have three conversations, one at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end.  When being observed it is important to talk to the observer so they can see what you have been thinking.  This means that you are giving feedback as you go and you address the grade as you go, it should also de-stress it. More lesson observations means there is less stress and emphasis on each observation.  The conversation means that the why question stops being threatening and becomes curious.  Everyone should be able to observe, the more you observe the better it is. Get parents in to see learning.  Get support staff to see lessons. Put a bring and buy board in the staff room, what can you offer to show and what do you want to see?


Have questions for the students to engage them in what they want to learn.  Jim Smith has a script for his lessons that he can leave as learning develops but can come back to if he needs to.





Marking


Triple Impact Marking

NIM marking, tick and flick, no impact marking

DIM marking, might get the kids to do something, you then write a target, but you move on without making improvements and reflecting based on this, give them time to act on your comments, double impact marking, dirty time.
TIM give the students dirty time; they say something, teachers then mark, student then respond.  2 lots of TIM per term for core 1 for non-core.  Get the students to point out the bits they want you to see. Get them to mark spelling of key words, such as environment. Pre-empt what you expect to see go wrong.
Ofsted look at the data, look at the books and look at the lessons to see if this backs up.  Less pressure on the lesson,.

Penguins in the dessert, what do you call a penguin in the dessert? Lost? An explorer?

DOA, data + observation = action - do on at least five students.

Socrates " I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think"