Teachmeet @ Cheney School Wednesday 12 June 2013

 On Wednesday 12^th June 2013 Cheney School held its first Teachmeet event.  Thank you to Dr Rob Bown for organising this; I have no idea how he finds the time do these wonderful things.  I would also like to thank everyone that presented. It is not easy to come and present ideas to colleague, but it was a fantastic evening and a wonderful way to share best practice.  I left for home a little overawed by the range of ideas, but I was buoyed by the experience and reassured that I do the most wonderful job with the most wonderful people.  Teachers and teaching is so regularly bashed in the press – if only they would come and see what we do first hand; I am sure this would melt their cynicism.

Below are my notes.  They are far from perfect and a little more really than a list of presenters.  My apologies if anyone is misrepresented.  If this is the case; please let me know, advise me of what should be there and I will update the post.

Hannah Tyreman who presented also shares her experiences on her blog: 

http://hannahruthtyreman.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/tmoxford/

Welcome

Jolie Kirby Headteacher of Cheney School Opening

Rob Bown Languages AST Chair

Presentations

Sir Tim Brighouse

Features of excellent schools

·         Teachers talk about teaching

·         Teachers observe each other’s progress

·         Teachers teach each other

·         Teachers plan together- these are the success criteria for a high functioning department.

 

Helene Galdin-O'Shea

Walk through my last Ofsted Lesson – the magic happened in the lesson when the students got stuck into a silent debate .

Claire Hamnett  Science AST

Speed dating for learning

Sophie Burrows film

Film Club presentation

Tom Boulter

I can't take my eyes off YouTube; how using teacher videos accelerates learning because students can revisit explanations and work at their own pace.

 

Carina Byles

Using mobile technology be encouraging students to use texting so we can poll classes, www.polleverywhere.com

Amjad Ali

The power of Poundland Pedagogy - using raffle tickets, share and replace board, post-it note corrections for spellings, director of learning - make trailers for learning using iMovie. Think tax and knowledge bank.  Balloons and so much more…. check out his blog at bulmershetoolkit.blogspot.co.uk  and twitter - @ASTsupportaali

Macro Pontecorvi

The UFGWPA

Andy Wright

Literacy and thinking skills are intertwined.

Maximise marking by:

They check/ friend checks/ teacher checks- 3 way check with all work to reinforce the importance of editing and making corrections.

Rob Bown AST languages

Michel Thomas learning

Simon Davis

Thinking hats and self evaluation 

Hannah Tyreman 

Ict resources -  Padlet.  Today's meet.  Thoughtboxes.  info.gram.  S'more. Check Follow her on Twitter  @hannahtyreman

James Gurung

Celebrate making mistakes, because it is an essential part of learning.

Keven Bartle

@kevbartle Pedagogy leaders

Matt Gray

Mr Gray's Blog - http://cherwellenglish.typepad.com/  Thinking Squares an alternative to mind maps. Backward engineering. Works well with Bloom's taxonomy. 

Alexia Uhia

Using mobile phones in the class. Ipadio.com

Rebecca Bartlett

Killer questions - students questioning each other.  Ideal for homework - research a question that students think no-one else can answer; this has to be related to the topic being studied and students have to know the answer.  Use the killer question as a plenary, when using this for the first time lead as a group activity to get the concept of killer questions.  Ask the question, pick three people to answer, and get a reward if no one can.  Keep a tally to reward the people who collect the most unanswered questions.

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 14^th 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"

Ever want a quick and simple tool to help with plenaries?

Plenaries are often the Cinderella in our lessons.  We should plan for them, but often forget, and often when we have planned one we run out of time or forget it is there.  Well this little wonder of a PowerPoint can have you up and running with wonderful plenaries with little or no planning; sounds too good to be true doesn't it? The PowerPoint is really simple; ask a student to pick a number, the number they choose links to a question and you can use this to check student learning from your lesson.  Simple!

AfL plenary resource: Pick a number