Monday 12 October 2015

Kicking the TIM habit

Two things that I am determined to do the very next time I am in my classroom are as follows:
 
Number One
I will show the fantastic Austin’s butterfly video to my new class.  It is something I show every year sometimes more than once.
 
 
Showing this video is useful for many reasons: it reminds children to have a “growth mindset” and persevere; it teaches them how to peer/self-assess in a way that is kind, focused and specific and it shows them the power and importance of redrafting work.
 
Number Two
I shared some ideas with the Soton Scitt students this morning about AFL, which included feedback and marking.  I described a couple of ideas about how to save time marking; including using colour coding that leads to pupils copying down their own next step the following morning before redrafting.  I was discussing how I mark pupils’ work in green and then they respond to my feedback and questions using purple pen etc.  Then I said that pupils should then respond to my feedback using more purple pen (I stressed that the colour of pen didn’t matter and that I would only ask pupils to do this if their work had been independent etc- so not after every lesson!).    
 
After the lecture I realised that I haven’t been encouraging my pupils’ independence enough; and that although I had told the Scitt students about @learningspy’s blog and how he advocates pupils taking ownership of the feedback progress, I hadn’t really been doing this myself!  I had been occasionally asking pupils to peer or self-assess their work, particularly in maths and sometimes English.  But by accident I had fallen into the horrific Triple Impact Marking (TIM) trap!  
 
Now I want to try to break my habit so I am going to print these next three steps out and try to make me and my pupils follow them at every opportunity:
 
 
1.     Pupils self asses their work and highlight sections where they feel they have taken a risk or struggled
 
2.     Teacher provides feedback where it has been requested by pupils (and if necessary- feedback about pupils progress towards the original learning objective)
 
3.     Pupils then improve a section of their work using the teacher’s feedback
 
 
Can I kick the habit?  I will let you know!
 

Saturday 25 July 2015

Jumping for Joy- at Primary Scratch Jam Dorset

Yes we had one yr5 boy literally jumping for joy at our recent scratch coding competition. It was literally a yr5/6 computer geeks paradise when boys and girls came to compete in our coding competition. 

The stakes were high as students scored lego bricks in a bid to win Amazon vouchers and other prizes. There were also trophies to award pupils for creativity and teamwork too. 

The secondary teachers present were amazed by the skills of our primary pupils and felt that they could have competed against GCSE level students. 

One of the highlights for me was; during break time, when a boy from my school demonstrated a Python game he has made at home to a pupil from a rival school. 

It was a fantastic day and it was great to meet up with local teachers and pupils; and has inspired me to start digital leaders at our school. 

Watch out for a larger Scratchjam next year hopefully based at Bournemouth Uni; to build upon our links with the animation school there. 

Monday 23 March 2015

Twitter Inspired CPD

Mine and my colleagues' CPD have recently exploded due to using Twitter. From asking for specific resources or advice, to networking and idea swapping, it has become our main and virtually only method of CPD. 

It was a great means of communication that helped when organising our Teachmeet; and Primary Scratch Jam.  It allowed us to secure sponsorship and funding as well as delegates to attend our events. 

More recently I have discovered the fantastic Twitter based forums, including Primary Rocks (Monday night 8-9); amongst others. I have also heard about Staffroom and am keen to start blogging on that site.

I find with Twitter that one find leads to another and thus I have discovered fantastic websites and apps thorough Twitter links; e.g. Literacy and Maths Shed websites. 

I also find out about conferences, including Pedagoos, that I would never have known about otherwise. 

Children love it when a celebrity retweets their work or responds to a tweet!

One of my favourite Twitter advantages is finding other local teachers and organising events for local teachers and staff to meet up and idea swap. 

So get tweeting teachers and spread the word!

Thursday 19 February 2015

Can we all be above average???

Amidst the backdrop of current Education representatives' targets for Britain to raise standards in Maths and English to compete with the best in the world (Japan, China, Singspore and Norway etc); I am left pondering several points.

First of all, how did we get so far behind? How can the English, not be the best at English?

Then there are many cultural and sociological elements to consider. How can we possibly compete with countries where school hours and homework hours are longer? Countries where people think and know that hard work can pay off! I know that some of our schools are teaching pupils about Mindset theory etc but is it all too little too late? 

Do parents and pupils have more respect for teachers in those high ranking countries?  Perhaps, dare I say it, the selection process for teachers is tougher in their countries? Are their teachers trusted and given more freedom? Are their teachers more numerate and literate than ours?

The fact remains, that trying to compare Britain to other countries that are so dissimilar to us might not be helpful. I am not by any means saying that standards shouldn't rise. They should! I believe that parents and teachers need to encourage pupils to learn basic facts and concepts at a younger age: reading, tables, number bonds, sounds and tricky words etc. 

To that end I have been investigating the use of KIRFS and a super website for maths practise www.conkermaths.com , mentioned on Micheal Tidd's blog (courtesy of Jo Harbour). This prompted me to play Numberbonds to 5 Tennis with my 4 year old in the car.  He picked it up right away. It doesn't take much for parents to support children a bit more at home. Helpful sites for parents can be shared on school webpages too, as understandably not all parents have had teacher training!

Perhaps Britain is still trying to find an optimal balance between Victorian style schooling and modern approaches including Independent learning; between  drilling and exploring through play? But maybe that isn't what matters most? 

Societal and cultural influences could count more than we counted on?

Thursday 15 January 2015

Blogging With Year 3

My lesson today all started when I came across Phil Bagge's Spider search lesson (http://code-it.co.uk/internet/howsearchworks_planning.pdf). 

Last week the children role played being spiders trawling the Internet, to find all the glue sticks, pencils etc in the classroom. Then they ranked the best places to find each object in a similar way that search engines do. 

Today I was planning to get them to role play being parts of a school computer network, so they could understand how it works... when they asked me if they could practise using search engines (we hadn't had enough time to do this last week).

So this is the lesson that unfolded: the children used Google to search the Internet for facts about the Egyptians. When they found their facts they posted them onto our class blog (http://blueprintteacher.primaryblogger.co.uk/2015/01/15/year-3-egyptian-fact-explosion/#comment-2087). 

I had some limited time to approve/reply to them during the lesson (whilst trouble shooting-as it was the first time some of them had blogged!) and showed the stream of comments coming through on the IWB. They were very excited to see their comments appear on screen, and it motivated them to find more facts (they went on to comment on other posts on the site too). 

At the end of the lesson we reviewed their comments as a whole class and they were able to spot that many children  had forgotten to include full stops and capital letters. 

Then I linked their blog comments onto my teaching Twitter feed and requested comments from my colleagues to prove we had a real audience! 

They will be thrilled to see that another teacher at our school, Mrs Lucas, has replied to them. 

So to conclude, the lesson ticked many boxes: they really enjoyed working in pairs to use a search engine to find facts (which were linked to their topic). They were all able to comment on the blog during the lesson and were writing for a real online audience. Some children were inspired to add more facts when they got home. Above all they really enjoyed the lesson. We printed off the blog feed and put it up on our Egyptian display. 

Next week we will be role playing a computer network. All thanks to my Twitter CPD finds! 

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