Putting SMSC into Lessons

It is too easy to think that our subjects don't really contribute to teaching Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural education.  But in good teaching and learning it is happeneing all the time.  This clip shows how the spiritual can come into science teaching.  In many ways, meeting the requirements of putting the spiritual into lessons is as simple as giving the students a sense of awe and wonder. 

Poetry by Stealth!!

I turned up to work the other day and what did I see; a range of strange messages designed to intrigue me!

Well it soon became clear that something was afoot - something mischievous - dangerous even, was happenening.  It was clear that somehting special was going on.  Below Paul Waite explains all ... Poetry by stealth!

“Ok class, today we’re going to write some poetry…”

Such an announcement may well elicit groans from some of the students in a standard mixed ability English class. Yes, some students enjoy poetry, but unfortunately many others are at best ambivalent, and at worst claim that they detest poetry - or that the mere thought of poetry bores them rigid! The irony of the latter is that most students, given the opportunity to explore a variety of interesting poetry, and particularly if invited to express themselves by writing their own poems, will enjoy the experience.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Robert Frost

Poetry is all about emotion – and students, being human (!), will want to express their emotions. Quite simply, once students realise that they can use poetry to do this, most enjoy writing it.

 “Poetry is a scream whispered onto paper “

© Y9 Creative Writing Enrichment Class, 2012-2013

Do the above words seem familiar? Not only is this a fantastic line of poetry, but it recently appeared, quite suddenly, along the top windows of W block. In the same week, Jolie arrived to find poetic lines brimming with teenage angst pinned to her door. Unsuspecting teachers chanced upon a washing line of stanzas fluttering near B block, and some discovered fragments of poetic lines written on cloth hung from benches: words were escaping from students’ imaginations and popping up all over the school…

Poetry by Stealth!

Think a little bit Banksy, a little bit Guerilla Gardeners (google them)…we are intrigued by mystery and also by the thought of doing something that appears slightly risky, slightly against the rules. So, if you can set students a task that generates that feeling then you are on to a sure-fire winner. Running it by Jolie first, I set my Y9 Creative Writing Enrichment class a Poetry by Stealth homework. The task was as follows:

·         Surreptitiously ‘plant’, somewhere in the school, a poem that you have written.

·         You might, for example, pin a poem on a notice board in a corridor, blue tac a poem to a classroom door, tape a poem to the side of a litter bin, etc.

·         You can write a new poem, or use a poem that you’ve already written. You may work alone or in groups.

·         There will be small prize for the most audacious and successfully completed mission – you might, for example, write your poem on a flag/banner and drape it somewhere noticeable.

·         The only restrictions are that you must be safe when you put your poem up, and poem content must not be offensive.

·         To win the prize, you must take a photo of you/your group next to you poem, in its location, as evidence.  

Hey presto: a class of motivated and engaged students, all wanting to write and share poetry!

Paul Waite.

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"

THE BUZZ - Judy Sayers' practical classroom tips

The young swimmer struggles. She wants to swim the 100 metres more quickly...

The coach wants to help. She ties a rope around the swimmer and uses all her strength to tow her through the water. The coach is exhausted; the young swimmer is happy ...

For me this analogy, from Guy Claxton, captured how I felt about some of what I was doing in the classroom. If we wish to create independent learners, and surely we all do, we must hand over responsibility for leaning to young people. We all begin with an overpowering desire and ability to learn about everything in the world. What happens to the “Buzz?” I hope some of the ideas which follow might help in recapturing that Buzz. They have for me.

Mallet’s Mallet: Quick fire word-association game. One pupil says a word and the other then has to reply immediately with a word that is in some way inherently linked e.g: one may say ‘Islam’, the next may say ‘Mosque’, and so on. Only to be done in pairs.

Memorise: They look at a picture for 90 seconds. They then turn it over and they write a bullet point list of everything they saw in the picture.

Odd One Out : Give them four pictures and they have to say which is the odd one out (like ‘Have I got news for you?’)

Pass the Buck: Paired work drafting answer to situation with large paper and colours (5 minutes) – swap and carry on with another pairs work redrafting their answer – papers passed on and back to original authors. Open ended scenarios best.

Postcard summary: Summarise your learning to send by postcard to your friend – image on the front depicting the subject. Rwanda– ‘glad you are not here’ card. Abortion – ‘be glad I’m here’ card written by the foetus. Euthanasia – ‘wish I wasn’t here’ card. ‘Wish you were here’ for marriage.

Quotes Galore: Fill your classroom with all kinds of life quotes from the religious leaders, business gurus, celebrities etc. Place them on the ceiling, windows, all over the room. Particularly relevant ones for the GCSE course. Could a couple of decoy quotes that mean nothing. At certain points get class to search and find a relevant quote for the subject material.

Shout Out: Eg Topic on Buddhism. I read facts out – pupils shout out "Rubbish!" whenever they hear me mention anything that they think is untrue. The louder, the more foolish.

Spot the …: Can the pupils spot things in pictures. Alternatively – put numbers over pictures and ask the pupils what ‘number 3’ is etc.

Thumbometer: Arm out, fist clenched, thumb up for personal responses. Calling out Thumbs out’. To check instructions, test knowledge, gauge feelings, gather opinions. Could close their eyes if strong peer pressure.

Verbal Football: 2 teams and training (research) period. 3 correct answers (passes) and it’s a goal. Referee uses yellow and red cards.

Verbal Tennis: Students face each other in pairs and play word association with tennis scoring. Good lesson starter or informal test.

Back-to-Back: Students (A+B) sit back-to-back. A describes visual material and B draws it. Compare to original and swap roles.

Bingo: Pupils draw 9 square bingo grid. Choose from 12 topic keyterms. ‘Eyes down’ – call out definitions in random order. Pupils call out Bingo when they have one line, two lines and full house. Good for many technical terms. Variation – 16 Sq – 25 terms.

Chit-Chat: Can you talk for one minute on what you have learnt without stopping?

Co-operative Learning - TBo

Co-operative Learning is an approach to teaching which foregrounds students working in pairs and groups, high levels of engagement, participation and, erm, co-operation. It has been comprehensively branded by Dr Spencer Kagan, the US professor who first articulated the method, and who has presumably made stacks of cash from its global success; as a result, much of the literature and web-presence is a bit cheesy and commercial, which can be off-putting. However, its success cannot be denied, and those of us who have begun to experiment with Co-op have developed strong enthusiasm for the success, energy and fun it can bring to lessons.

Learning to use co-op will furnish your teaching with a range of student-centred structures and activities which are easy to use and which stick to a simple set of principles about learning. Kagan refers to these as the PIES principles, which state that activities which work well should promote:

· Positive interdependence (students need to work together to achieve a set goal or complete a task)

· Individual accountability (students have to play their role and are accountable to their group – without their input, the task can’t be completed)

· Equal participation (each student is expected to make an approximately equal contribution to the tasks)

· Simultaneous interaction (lots of students are active at any one time; lessons dominated by teacher-talk from the front are not encouraged!)

So in practice, what does it look like? To begin with a very simple structure, the teacher might replace traditional teacher-led Q and A with an activity such as Think, Pair, Share. In this structure, a question is posed, think time is given, then Student A is asked to explain their thoughts to Student B. Following this, Student B may be asked to explain A’s thinking to the rest of the class. That’s it – not rocket science, but very effective at creating an active buzz in the room, and avoiding the domination of the start of lessons by teacher-talk.

A slightly more complex structure could be Numbered Heads Together, where teams of 4 students are set an open ended, multiple answer question to investigate (could be anything: ‘why is this an effective piece of writing?’, ‘why are we here?’, ‘how can Science save the world’, ‘School uniform: good or bad?’, ‘which teacher has the worst dress sense?’. Students number up from 1 – 4, take think time, then stand up and huddle together – literally put their heads together – before each contributing their thoughts in turn. From here, they discuss their views until they agree on a team answer (a process which will involve some negotiation and compromise!). When they are agreed, they sit down, knowing that the teacher could call on any number to contribute, so they all need to be sure they understand their group’s view.

Of course, sometimes it works well, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all! Running co-op successfully certainly takes some practice, and a structure like Numbered Heads is likely to take a few goes before it runs smoothly. Learning to co-op has been compared to learning to drive; it’s a bit wobbly and anxiety-provoking at first, but you are soon whizzing along enjoying the ride. When it goes well, co-op lessons are brilliant – much more fun, much less tiring, much more productive and, when allied to the principles of Agile Teaching, there can be a real sense that the studentsare learning and making progress.