The Lights are on but is Anybody Home?- Exploring Alternative Pupil Response Approaches

I carried out some action research in my Primary school last year; investigating the ways pupils respond to teachers' questions (this was prior to the introduction of Ipads).  The research included interviews with groups of Upper KS2 pupils, email interviews with teachers; and questionnaires from parents, pupils and teachers.  -

The alternative response approaches investigated were:
-Random Selection- lollysticks (lolly lotto)
-Choosing a particular child
-Talk partners
-Visual response equipment
(e.g. Number fans, digit cards, money fans etc)
-Voting     (investigated in my MA)
-Mini whiteboards

My findings were that (at my school, and perhaps similar schools):

Teachers should:
-Ask less questions (to encourage children to ask more!)

-Plan response approaches that encourage children to ‘think and interact for more of the learning time’ (i.e. random selection, voting etc), instead of overreliance upon ‘hands up’.

-Make judgements about  which approach (e.g. selecting a particular child, random selection using lollysticks) would suit the lesson content and pupils’ understanding of it, at certain points throughout classroom talk.

-Arrange pupils in the room so they have an equal chance of receiving attention from the teacher.

-Explain, to pupils, how the response approaches work (including laws of probability)- as pupils didn't feel that teachers were always being fair when they selected pupils to answer questions.

-Plan teacher-led (and TA led) small groups to further develop issues/misconceptions arising from whole-class discussions (it appeared that Literacy hour style guided groups were on the decline).

-Explore the potential of polling apps on mobile devices e.g. Kahoot

I would be interested to receive any comments about this work.  Thanks for reading my post.
Heidi Singleton

Children Blogging for Purpose

Having just launched my class blog (google-  "Classhopper blog"), I have successfully attracted comments from my pupils. However, after just a few short weeks, I have the same few who volunteer to comment at home in their own time. They also choose to comment under my less academic posts (Minecraft and 1D- both pupil requested titles). 

So several questions remain for me to grapple with:

1. How can I tempt them to enter my writing competition and blog a longer piece of writing of good quality? (I don't have time in class as I am a ppa teacher).  ( Possible answer blogging could be included as a choice for Takeaway homework).

2. How do I encourage more pupils to join the blog?

3. How can I keep the momentum going without the site getting clustered?

My aim is to raise standards of pupils' writing. Any tips would be well received.

Thank you for reading my blog today!

Heidi Singleton

Primary School Teacher years 2-5.

What's in and What's out - part 2

I also believe that some teachers could, on occasion, focus too much on assessing whether or not a pupil has met which of the 3 differentiated SC, that they miss other more important assessment opportunities. Finally, I just wonder if the time spent typing up differentiated SC, cutting them out and sticking them in; is proportionate to their impact on pupil progress? The researcher in me is now itching to locate any research that has been carried out in the area of use of SC and its' impact on learning. To conclude, I awkwardly admit that for me differentiated SC are 'OUT', when it comes to my list of essential teaching and learning tools. 

What I prefer to do with SC, rather than sticking in predetermined differentiated ones, is to encourage pupils to generate their own success criteria. I believe that this works very well, for example in PE. It helps to keep the SC alive in the lesson as pupils feel more ownership over them. 

What's In and What's Out?

During my lessons this week, the importance of stopping part way through the lesson to focus on misunderstandings (especially in Maths where several pupils are finding a particular method/question tricky) or redirect the learning/task was confirmed for me- so 'portable plenaries' are definitely IN!

As for the use of success criteria to move learning forward;  well, a large question mark hovers over this concept in my humble opinion. In theory the idea of breaking down the learning outcome into small steps; or the idea of SC as ingredients sounds very useful and logical. I am not questioning the fact that they can involve pupils in their learning by making expectations more explicit; or that they could be useful for teachers in terms of assessing pupils' progress, but I do have some unresolved areas of uncertainty about the best way to harness their potential.  Firstly, I find that the language (for various reasons) in which they are written is sometimes inaccessible to the pupils.  Secondly, it doesn't sit comfortably with me when the differentiated work set for pupils limits them to a certain SC 'rank' regardless of whether they were in fact capable of achieving more in that particular instance.