Friday 26 October 2012

Guest Post & Half Term

Following a talk I gave to my school's NQT and PGCE cohort on Wednesday, Dave Rogers asked me to give a guest post for his blog about my top tips for taking risks in lessons. You can read it, here. Also, IT'S HALF TERM!!!! Finally....!! Have a good break guys :)

Saturday 20 October 2012

Independent Learning: how I intend to achieve it.

As part of my ongoing professional development, and following on from an earlier post, I am determined to encourage independence in my students.

In the end, my Year 10 class showed themselves to be capable of writing their controlled assessments without too much flapping. However, I had to give them the basic tools to encourage their slight increase in independence. Arguably, as teachers, that is what we ought to be doing. I feel like I want to 'set them free' more though. So, I've set about doing some research of methods which can help to promote further independence in students. Since we have one more week of 'The Half Term That WILL NEVER END', I'm going to use this week to put them into practice and see how it affects the kids.

Group Work

I already use a lot of group work in most of my lessons. Last year, I spent a lot of time conducting my lessons by asking direct questions and getting the response from the same seven or eight kids in the class. After Ofsted visited us and said I was doing too much talking (moi?!), I realised that I had to shift my game plan. Now, my lessons revolve around the students having a set length of time to discuss their ideas and answers to a question, followed by feedback from each group. I usually record their answers on the board and get the kids to copy it down into their books. So, in the end, it feels like a team effort, led by the kids. It also enables me to see exactly who gets it and who doesn't, and allows me to ask harder questions to the brighter kids.

Choices

Looking around, many sites and experts suggest giving students a choice of activities. Up until now, I've done things such as give them sentence starters for PEE paragraphs and said that if they feel capable of not using them, then don't. Or, I've said that those aiming for the higher level should attempt it on their own etc. But, what I've never done is give them a choice of 'Activity A' or 'Activity B.' It would promote independence, allow them to take responsibility for their learning, and would open up opportunities for 'Ask the Expert' type activities. However, the immediate problem I see with it is how to assess it; whilst one class is reviewing one activity, what are the others doing? Perhaps it should involve some sort of swap over/peer assessment work. Some sites suggest doing it as homework. I think I'll try it in class first and then with homework next half term, now that my department have scrapped the irrelevant IET booklets.

Learning Goals

We spend so much time setting targets for students - levels, grades, AFs - but how can students really attain independence if they aren't setting their own goals? When I set myself goals, if I don't achieve them, I feel like I'm letting myself down. If someone else tells me what they want me to do, I feel significantly less attached to them and a lot less motivated. It's like that great feeling you have when you achieve something for yourself, by yourself. So, why do we take that away from the kids? This week, I'm going to spend time with all of my classes and allow them to create their own targets. We had book monitoring this week and the feedback I had said that I need to let the kids have time to respond to my feedback because I'm putting in a load of work and it ends up being ignored. So, my plan is to let them have ten minutes to go through and review my feedback and then spend some time setting their own goals. We can have review lessons every few weeks.

Self Learning Facility

An interesting idea which I read on one website is the idea of having a 'Self Learning Facility' which is a space full of resources, activities, quizzes and ideas for students to access and/or add to. The idea being that as students become more self-aware as learners, they will recognise their weak areas and by accessing a store of extra resources, they can actively work to improve their skills in their own time, or, if they complete an activity faster than their peers during lessons. This will take quite a lot of time to develop and implement. I'm thinking it could work by dividing resources up between AFs and then encouraging the kids to develop their skills, based on their learning goals. This facility could even take up part of the learning goals lessons - I can't think of a better way to encourage students to immediately engage with their goals and to also maintain the independent feel of a lesson. Again, the only issue would be assessing their progress. Short of giving myself hours upon hours of disjointed extra marking, it would need to be peer or self-assessment again.

In short, all of these things would need to be practised, trialed, and adapted. It's not going to be a quick fix solution, but rather something which will take a lot of time and effort. I'm excited though and, with Ofsted due back in January, it gives me a couple of months to get started. Game on!

Thursday 18 October 2012

Keep it under your hat, but...

Had a lovely chat with a Year 11 boy today which warmed me slightly. Reminded me it's all a front really..!

Me: so what's the plan after school then?
Year 11: *being all macho* well, I'll do the football academy at South Downs I expect.
Me: oh right, cool. Do you think you might need a back up plan?
Year 11: well *looks about to check nobody is listening, leans in to me and whispers* I quite fancy Animal Care.

Lovely! Restored my faith a bit :)

Monday 15 October 2012

Secret Independent Thinkers

One of the biggest questions that seems to face modern teaching is how we can encourage students to be more independent in their learning.

I remember, once, very smugly talking to my brother about college and the expectations my tutors held in me. He had been ill and was telling me how his teacher hadn't remembered to collect in his homework, which he hadn't completed. I, being all 'I'm 16 and doing AS levels and know everything', told him that he should have gone out of his way to make sure it was done and handed in. He was a bit cross with me and, on reflection, probably rightly so, but still, he wasn't showing independence in his studies and nor are my students.

Last academic year, I was only teaching KS3 and it worked well because they're still quite malleable. Lots of my lessons are now geared up with a focus to develop independent learning and group work and whilst students are in the lower school, it's still reasonably easy to help them form good learning habits. At least, it is, once they're past the incessantly, irritatingly needy stage the Year 7s are currently in anyway..!

However, I realised today that my Year 10s are not going to be quite so easy.

This week, they're sitting their first controlled assessment, discussing the play Whose Life Is It Anyway by Brian Clark. We've spent six weeks studying this play, during which time I have built in independence-encouraging activities to every lesson. They haven't always been quite as enthusiastic as my younger students but I had hoped that their engagement with the text was one based on their independent exploration of it. Alas, I was wrong.

Today, they were supposed to be planning their essay for the assessment. Put simply, they couldn't do it. I should clarify that they are one of the top sets in the year and their understanding of the play, its characters, and the question is excellent. They have understood everything through our study of it. The question is a broad, excellent topic which gives them the opportunity to really go into detail. In short, it is an easy question, in my opinion. And not just because I'm an English teacher... (which is what they claimed when I was a bit exasperated earlier).

So the question is: how can I encourage them to be more independent?

I had intended to try and answer this question here but since it's been about 20 minutes since I typed the last sentence, it seems clear that I won't be doing that. Arguably, if I was able to answer it then I should probably avoid publishing it on the internet and begin talks with the TES for quite a lucrative publishing career. However, tomorrow, I will endeavour to build their independence and I shall report back then. Wish me luck... *whispers* I'm going to need it!!

Thursday 11 October 2012

Open Evening

Tonight, was open evening at the school.

The English Department, in our infinite wisdom, decided that we should all dress up as literary characters. I must admit, I was dubious beforehand but, in the end, I had a lot of fun tonight!! I was talked into being the Queen of Hearts:

We also had Moll Flanders, Lady Macbeth, the witches from Macbeth, Hamlet, Dr Frankenstein and a host of others, not least the (quite literal) spelling bee which consisted of my second in department dressed as a bee, nursing a dictionary, and handing out sweets to kids who spelt words correctly. Genius.

We laid on a load of activities in three themed rooms: Shakespeare, Gothic, and Poetry. All in all, it seemed to go really well. We handed out leaflets, answered questions, encouraged the kids to guess who we were dressed as for the quiz, played with Shakespearean insult fridge poetry, and loads else too.

The rest of the school also laid on an equally as brilliant spread and the whole thing seemed very positive, with loads of excellent feedback from parents too. Here's hoping we did good!

Tuesday 9 October 2012

8 Week Half Term of DOOOOOOM!!!

I feel like I've hit a bit of a wall this week.

I woke up on Monday morning and felt exhausted before I'd even lifted my head off the pillow. All I kept thinking was 'THERE'S THREE MORE WEEKS...' Normally, we'd be breaking up this Friday, or even next Friday, but instead it's 3 weeks away still.

From a practical point of view, I've been trying to elongate the current schemes of work to fit from a 'five weeks plus assessment' format, into a 'seven weeks plus assessment' one. I'm failing miserably at that. I've given in and I'm starting assessments with all of my classes. The up side is that I might not have loads of marking to do over half term, as a result.

I'm just tired. We all are. The Summer was only 5/6 weeks ago but it feels like forever ago. The kids are tired, we're all tired, and I'm being a proper grump. The weather isn't helping either - this rain is dragging everyone down and the kids are behaving like they've never seen precipitation before.

Better still, I'm being observed on Thursday, when we also have Open Evening too.

On the plus side, I was told today that in the half term leading up to Easter, it's only a five week half term, which is awesome. In April, we MUST remember how hard we worked now.

Basically, I know I'm whinging a lot here but it's more of 'we're all in the same boat' type thing, with a tiny bit of whinging thrown in for good measure.

May the next two and a half weeks go quickly and may we not all go insane in the process.