Saturday 29 June 2013

Some of the things we've been doing

As observed in earlier posts - we've been busy in the department over the last couple of years seeking improvements in all sorts of ways. In all of the posts so far I've mentioned several fairly structural ways we've been making changes and improvements, but haven't really done much regarding some of the classroom approaches we've been using.

So here are 5 suggestions of things we've done, with examples & pictures of how we've used them.

Some of these are ideas proudly magpied from various places (twitter being a big one!), others we came up ourselves with but of course they could easily have been in existence elsewhere. I'm not crediting sources here not because I am claiming them for myself - it's just because we've lost track of where these ideas have come from. If you feel strongly about ownership of any of these ideas then please feel free to claim anything via the comments at the bottom.

1) Graffiti revision wall
Get some lining paper, or some other big sheet of paper to put up somewhere in your room to use for this.

While revising if a student finds something that they think would be useful to them, or someone else in the class in the future or they can go and write it on the board. If they are uncomfortable writing it up directly they can ask me to do it (though they have to say exactly what to write) or put in on a smaller piece of paper that is then glued on. Also of a student feels they can explain an idea in a better way they can replace work on the board by sticking a replacement over the top.

After a week or so mine looked like this:

One of our SLT saw it on the wall and made a quip about me "not being at college when they covered display work." I pointed out that it's meant to be dynamic, organic and USEFUL, not pretty! He accepted the point!

I ran it with two fairly low ability groups and they liked the fact that they could control what went up on the board, and that they could refer back to it when they needed. it was really nice to see it develop over a series of weeks.

2) Question boards
Similar vein to the graffiti wall but not quite so imposing. We have had different versions running in the department.

One looks like this:

When a student in the class asks a question and then finds out an answer they write their question and their name on the post-it. If another student in the class asks the same question they are directed to the board to find out who in the class knows the answer so they can go and ask them. Here are some examples:


This helps to remove the perception that the "teacher is the holder of all facts", and encourages sharing of info between students.

Another alternative is this:
Students use a small piece of paper either to write a short guide on a key topic (with an example), like this:

Alternatively they can write a question that's puzzling them and others in the class can go up and answer them, like this:



3) Student comments on display work
Again making displays interactive. Work is done for display and then put on the wall. The students are then encouraged to comment on the work with post-its that are added to the display. Where appropriate the teacher can clarify or add to comments made by adding an extra, different coloured post-it.

The whole effect looks like this (student comments in yellow and orange, teacher comments are the green arrows):

 The students provide some interesting feedback to each other:


4) Use more of the classroom as a whiteboard
I've seen several people suggesting using windows as whiteboards - we've used them with students writing on them like this:

Teachers have also used them to pose questions (different questions on different windows - for differentiated tasks) - like this:


If you've not got windows that are suitable/accessible then you can get a product called "instant whiteboard". It comes on a roll and sticks to almost any surface like clingfilm. Students can use it to discuss and share ideas:

Or teachers can use it to set work for a specific group of students:

5) Key word bank
Only actually used in one of our classrooms but I'm looking to spread it further. Think primary schools use this type of thing a lot.

Fairly self explanatory - it looks like this...

6) Measuring progress against revision topics
This is another one that is supposed to be dynamic and USEFUL rather than pretty!
Linked heavily to the "passport to grade" resources by Mr Slack found here, but could be used with any topic list. Key topics displayed on the wall. When a student demonstrates proficiency in a topic they get a stamp in their passport and can go and sign the wall next to the topic. They then become an expert on that topic so if others in the class need help they can look at the wall and go and ask the relevant student.

After a few lessons it looked like this:

The students liked signing up and seeing their names up on the board. Next time I do this I was thinking of having key assessment/example questions for each topic attached next to the topic name. Might also include a QR code linking to online revision resources.

Hope this was useful
Hopefully you've seen something you might use, or perhaps it gave you an idea for something else? Either way - all thoughts & comments gratefully received.

Saturday 22 June 2013

Marking & feedback - a journey over 18 months

February 2012 saw a internal school departmental review for the maths department. In that review the following observations were made:

  • Marking, though regular, too often failed to give constructive feedback identifying next steps to improve.
  • Use of formative and summative assessment to inform pupils of next steps for learning is inconsistent.
Evidence for these statements was drawn both from reviews of books, and also from pupil voice surveys, which were quite often negative towards maths.

A fairly poor situation really. I'd been HoD for 5 months at that point and had come to the same conclusion before the SLT review wrote these findings.


Time for a change
Since then, we've developed the standardised feedback and marking process I've already written about in this post. We have also developed and embedded the formative feedback from summative assessments discussed in this post. We've also done things like buy "Verbal Feedback" stamps to record when we've had a formative conversation with a student.

This wasn't plain sailing - in October 2012 a review of exercise books still showed massive variability in practice. However we've continued to push, developing the systems together and always looking for a better way to do it.

Departmental reviews through 2013 have shown a steady improvement in consistency.

The payoff
The school held a work scrutiny event 2 weeks ago where students from years 7, 8, 9 and 10 were selected to review their work with the SLT and a retired HMI acting as a consultant to the school.

In every year group maths came out as the most regularly, consistently and constructively marked. Pupil voice about the maths marking was unbelievably positive, there wasn't a single negative point directed towards maths.

Not showing off
I'm not looking to boast about this - this blog isn't about self promotion.

I'm quite simply over the moon that the hard work the department has put in to improving feedback and marking has had such a marked impact. It demonstrates that improvements may take some time to embed in a teaching environment, but by working out a system that helps everyone to be at least "good" it is possible to make a really marked improvement.

I want to say thank you to my department - they have come such a long way and put in loads of work to achieve this result. I also want to thank the students who have responded so positively.

For me this is the kind of thing that makes being a HoD so rewarding. I'd love to hear if you have had a similar journey...

Monday 17 June 2013

Lesson logs - Sharing objectives and prompting reflection for KS5

For me KS5 lessons always feel like they need a slightly different approach to sharing learning objectives compare to those lower down the school. Maybe it's just my perception but the students seem to want a different approach to signify that they are more mature. Taking the same approach as used for KS3 and 4 always felt a bit patronising. Similarly getting them to reflect on their learning in a meaningful way was always a bit of a challenge.

Anyway I was struggling on with this for a while and then I remembered a sheet that had been shown by a chap called Jonathan Briggs from the school I taught at in my NQT year. I dusted off a copy of his sheet, and tweaked/adjusted it until I was happy with it.

Learning log document
The result is a "Learning log" and it looks like this...

How I use it
At the start of each section of work (usually 2-3weeks worth) I fill in the top "What we're working towards" section with a brief description of the main topic, the goals and the assessment that will be used.

At the start of each week I then fill in the "Objectives" and "Outcomes" section of the "What I am doing this week" bit. This breaks down the bigger picture into a one week set of learning objectives. The students get a printed copy handed to them at the start of the week.

At the end of some lessons and at the week I ask the students to do a final rating of their progress, complete the reflection section at the bottom and also fill in the "What I still need to do" bit. To be completely honest I don't police this bit heavily - it is mainly for them to use to structure their work outside of lessons, but the fact I ask them to do it means they're at least thinking about it.

The "Progress" bit can be completed by the student - I've rarely insisted on detailed completion of this as on a week by week basis this doesn't really change drastically, however I don't really feel comfortable just deleting it yet - not sure why. Guess If I wanted to get flash with it I could set up a mailmerge of student targets and latest assessment data to personalise the sheets, but I've never got that far.

As well as tracking objectives and reflection the students are encouraged to use these sheets as page dividers for their work. I also use them with students that are absent for lessons as they can see the learning objectives that they need to review & study to catch up for the missed lessons.

Impact
I tried it with my Year 13 group last year and they said they found them useful. They even asked where they were when I didn't hand them over at the start of the lesson one Monday due to a problem with the school printers.

I also found them useful as part of my planning as it caused me to have a much more detailed think about how each chunk of work breaks down into learning objectives on a week by week basis.

I have no real way to measure whether they were effective in terms of grades or understanding, but the fact that the students said they liked them and I found them useful for planning is enough to make me carry on. I also take the view that even if they have no tangible benefit they are very unlikely to actually do harm to progress!

I am now asking my department to run with this across all KS5 lessons for the coming academic year

Get a copy
If you would like a copy of this sheet then you can get one here.

Feedback welcome
Is this useful? Do you do something similar? Have you got an alternative that's better? All thoughts appreciated.

Saturday 15 June 2013

Using seating plans to capture student data

UPDATE September 2013
The day after I created and shared this sheet in my department (June 2013) a copy was seen by one of our SLT - I was asked to share it at the following morning's whole school briefing. Since then it's been used by a large number of teachers across the school. It has also been downloaded from the TES website almost 350 times, and I know it is in use in several other schools.

I've just been asked by our headteacher (new since September) to share it again across all staff at our school on Monday.

The version now available via the link below has been updated following feedback from use both in my department and beyond - it includes the ability to display more data on the plan and seat more students. The formatting should be a bit more robust to layout changes too.

Original post...
Very functional post this - simply a tool for making seating plans more effective and easier to make.

Background
For all sorts of reasons it's really useful to have student data visible on teacher copies of seating plans. It helps when allocating seats to start with so that you take things like SEN status into account, but we've also found it useful to include target and current working at levels/grades as well.

Having the student's status vs target visible can be very telling if you develop a pocket of underachievement in a certain area of the class, which may not be so obvious on a normal class list. It can also be useful if you are looking to sit a strong pupil with a weaker one as you can instantly see where they're distributed across the room. Form an observation point of view it can be effective in indicating how differentiation has been used, and can also give a quick view of progress.

The problem with this though is that it can take ages to get the data into the plan, and then to keep it up to date can also be a real pain, both when moving students around the room or between classes, and also to update latest assessment grades into it.

As it's time consuming and is only really visible to the class teacher on a day to day basis it will often get pushed towards the bottom of the pile when things like marking, planning, teaching and life outside of school start squeezing your waking hours. We needed a solution that helps everyone in the department to create high quality seating plans and to keep them up to date....

A data linked seating plan tool
Following a bit of discussion and Excel fiddling in the department we've come up with something that takes the pain out of it all!

Basically you cut and paste your class list and key bits of data into one tab of the spreadsheet like this (this is fictional data made up by me for blogging purposes only; any similarities to real people entirely accidental!):
You only have to fill in the green bits - the sheet works out the comparison to target based on the data entered and key stage of the group. (useful when updating the CWA grades - only got to update one column). For KS4 it counts grades above/below target (note grade S means A*), for KS3 its NC sublevels above or below - could easily be tweaked for alternative grading structures.

This data will then be placed into correct place in the seating plan tab depending on where you put each individual pupil's number. It also has functionality to check that you've seated everyone somewhere in the room and also highlights if you've put someone in twice

The seating plan itself can be displayed at different levels...
Full data - for the teacher to use, and useful for printing for observed lessons - summarises progress and key "groups" info in one A4 sheet.
You can move the student within the plan by typing their number into the shaded green box next to each seat, their data moves with them automatically

If you want to display or print the plan to show to students you can choose to show them with or without the comparison to target, like this (with targets visible):

Or this (targets hidden):

Clearly this is specifically set up to the layout of one class in our school, however by dragging the boxes and the formulae they contain around the sheet it can be reconfigured to represent any classroom configuration. Row hiding to display data or not may take a little thinking about for less conventional layouts but it's all possible with a bit of fiddling.

Updating the CWA grades just requires overtyping or pasting the latest figures into the pupil list, the rest will automatically update

The outcome
I created 2 seating plans for new groups completely from scratch inside 10 minutes today, including cutting and pasting the data in and tweaking positions of students to get the right balance on each table. In the past this has taken me at least half an hour per group. I also know that I can adjust and update the plan really quickly in the future

I'm asking my whole department to use this sheet (or a tweaked version that fits their room layout) - it's just so worthwhile to have this kind of data really clear to you when planning. As they're all basically the same format it also becomes really easy for us to have a central saved record of plans in case of cover/absences.

Do you want it?
If you want a copy of the excel sheet you can get it here.

My department and I think this is really useful - I'd be interested to know your thoughts...

Sunday 9 June 2013

What's the point in writing this blog? (and being on twitter?)

My first ever blog post was in April 2013, about 2 weeks after my first foray onto Twitter for professional/CPD purposes. When I started (mainly encouraged by the irrepresible enthusiasm of Nik for the benefits of maths education blogging - by the way have a look at his blog!) I wasn't at all sure if it was for me.

Not really my cup of tea
I'm not someone who has ever kept a diary or other form of journal. In my life as an engineer before teaching I worked towards Chartered Engineer professional accreditation and as part of that I needed to record my activities in a log as part of providing evidence of my professional development. While I was successful in achieving chartered engineer status I found the whole recording process incredibly dull, and stopped as soon as I was able to.

Similarly part of my initial teacher training required me to write a blog about the progress of one of my groups, and again I found this really difficult to muster any enthusiasm for, and again I stopped as soon as I was no longer required to complete it.

Therefore starting a blog of my own when nobody was forcing me to would seem like a really daft thing for me to do, given my history of disliking it!

As far as twitter was concerned, I was massively skeptical. How on earth could a social network be of benefit professionally?

Just another thing to do
In addition to never having liked anything like blogging in the past I am also a busy Head of Department, a husband, and a father to two young girls. I already work more hours than I probably should (and substantially more than I ever did when I was an engineer), and spend more time than is probably healthy thinking about work. So why would I voluntarily start writing this blog and give myself another thing to do?

For that matter why would I also create and update a new account on twitter? Surely I'd be better off not doing all of this and just getting on with my job, and spending more time with my family?

So why do it?
Since I've started this whole twitter & blogging activity I have rapidly become converted to the benefits. I'll try to explain why here:

1) Organising ideas
In my day to day work with my department we have come up with a massive array of ideas as part of improving what we do. Now that I am writing them down properly (so that other people can understand them) I am forced to think in much more detail about what we have done and why we have done it. As a result it makes me much more reflective and analytical of my practice as a departmental leader and a teacher. After all, if I am going to say or recommend something potentially to the entire world via my blog I had better be fairly sure I know what my personal view on it is, and also what evidence I have to support what I'm saying.

2) Sharing ideas across schools and across countries
I worked in the car industry before being a teacher, an industry that has processes and procedures for everything. Given that experience of a global organisation working on fairly diverse products under a highly standardised management structure it is a constant source of amazement to me that every school I've been to in the UK is run with a different leadership model and management structure. In fact it goes further and every department or faculty in every school I've been in is run in a different way. For example every school has their own performance management model and process; They have their own behaviour policies, rewards systems, and timetabling processes; They have their own way of collecting and sharing data on students at a school level, and within a school there are usually wholly different ways of doing that same job across each department.

I find this very strange - we all have the same basic job to do. We're all helping students to be the best that they can be. All UK schools are measured by the same metrics (alright there are differences with the exam system in Scotland, but you know what I mean). All UK teachers have the same standards to meet.

Why should a school in London be run in a fundamentally different way, using completely different documents, formats and procedures to a school in Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester, Belfast, Dundee?
If you're going to tell me it's to protect the personal preference and individuality of the teachers, leaders and students involved then I have to disagree. For example having a good method for recording and analysing pupil data isn't about expressing your individuality it's simply about good management. 

Having the right tools to do the best job we can shouldn't depend on the individual skills of the particular member of staff that happens to do the job. For example if someone is really good at using Excel you could have a department with an amazing spreadsheet that can identify pupil underperformance and put plans in place to respond really quickly. However in the department next door or the school down the road the relevant member of staff might not have the same skills. Does that mean that the students in that subject or the school down the road should miss out on the early detection and intervention actions? Of course it shouldn't... but that's exactly what happens because the department next door or school down the road often don't know that anything different is even possible!! It's not that the other department or other school aren't working hard enough, or even that they don't have the right person in the job, it's the lack of a standard best practice model of school and department management. This standard model should come with the appropriate toolkit of best practice documents to eliminate the need for local experts to create something that has the same basic requirements in every department across the country.

As a new head of department in 2011 I either inherited and adapted or invented from scratch all of the systems and processes that are now running in my department. I did this based on what I thought would work best, and on what I decided I needed to manage the department effectively. There was no central source of best practice documents from within or from outside my school. As a result I'm sure I reinvented the wheel in some cases. I know that there are others out there who have already solved some of the problems that I find. Similarly I might have found solutions to problems that others are currently struggling with. The more open we can make this, the more we can share document formats, and share our procedures the better we can make the provision for our students.

Since starting this blog I have discovered contacts with other educators and heads of department that are wrestling with similar issues to me. I've shared formats for timetabling, analysing tests, book reviews, questioning, and shared ideas on a range of other topics. This is why blogs, twitter and initiatives like teaching dropboxes from @mrlockyer to share our documents and ideas is so good. I have also been the grateful recipient of a huge range of ideas for my classroom and for my department.

3) Discovering ideas
Just a few of the things I've stumbled upon via twitter and other blogs are:
Blogs and sites with interesting ideas and resources for maths:
http://101qs.com by @ddmeyer
http://justmaths.co.uk/ by @justmaths

Interesting Teaching & Learning resources for all subjects:
The 5 min lesson plan & related resources http://teachertoolkit.me/the-5-minute-lesson-plan/inset-for-5minplan/ by @TeacherToolkit
The level up series http://www.malit.org.uk/category/teaching-strategies/ by @OTeaching
An absloute wealth of T&L info on http://www.bulmershetoolkit.blogspot.co.uk/ by @ASTsupportAAli
Some interesting ideas on success through marginal gains on http://marginallearninggains.com/ by @fullonlearning

Management level info:
Loads going on under the #sltchat banner on twitter - you can find almost anything on there, or someone who can offer an interesting perspective.
There is also other great stuff from @headguruteacher on http://headguruteacher.com/

There are loads more out there that I've found and been inspired by and I apologise if I've missed you off the list (though I do always try to re-tweet when I find something I like) - you'll probably be on the next list...

4) Generating enthusiasm
Basically writing this blog and being on twitter is making me better at my job. I have found hundreds of like minded people out there, dong all sorts of interesting things to improve learning. I find myself thinking "I need to think about that some more so I can write about it properly" at various points during the week. I also no longer find it difficult to find the right resource for a topic (in fact it's now becoming a question of which of the excellent resources should I use rather than looking for one that is suitable).

In conjunction with my teaching & learning leader for my department I try to include a weekly teaching & learning tip for my department. Since being on twitter we are never short of ideas on this.

Overall
Now I find myself two months into this process and this is my 10th post. My blog has now been viewed by people on every continent (something I'm quite astounded by - the web really is world wide isn't it!!). The number of people viewing it has risen steadily, as has the number of people following me on twitter. What's more I've had some really nice comments and feedback in various formats.

While these views and followers are nice I've realised that I'm not actually writing this for anyone else. It doesn't matter if nobody reads it; the reflection it helps me to do is worthwhile on its own. If what I write and share helps anyone else be better at their job, and therefore brings some more success for some students then that's even better! Being part of this wider twitter/blogosphere is a really interesting way to keep my approach to the department and my own teaching fresh and packed with new ideas.

As always I'd be really keen to hear what you think. Please leave a comment or drop me a line on twitter.

@ListerKev

Monday 3 June 2013

Better assessments & better use of assessments

This has been sparked by a recent review & rescheduling of assessments in our schemes of work and also some excellent work on better assessments for maths kicked off recently by @mjfenton. More details of his excellent initiative can be found here. It's a great move and one that I really want to get more involved with over the coming weeks.

I've just read back through this before posting and realised it's a bit of a rant - didn't intend it to be, but it's important - I hope you agree. Please let me know your thoughts, make comments, share any ideas and suggestions you have.

Please note for the purposes of this post when I'm talking about assessments I really mean some kind of test or exam. I'm not talking about other types of assessment for learning that are used more dynamically as part of a lesson (e.g. targeted questioning, mini-whiteboard feedback, etc). The vast majority of schools use some kind of summative tests under controlled or exam type conditions at various points during the year, and these are what this post is referring to...

What are these assessments really for?
Unless we're talking about a FINAL assessment that results directly in the exam certificate, diploma or whatever's appropriate to the end of the course then ALL assessment should be used FOR LEARNING.

To clarify this lets just consider what other possible uses there could be for doing an assessment...
  • Assessment for reporting (to parents, leadership, whoever)
  • Assessment for categorisation/sorting/ranking of students
  • Assessment for teacher performance management
  • Assessment for occupying the student's time
Alright the last one is a bit tongue in cheek, but lets face it, if there is no formative or learning outcome then none of these look like a good reason to take time away from lessons to complete an assessment (where learning progress may be measured, but is not made).

What's really important is that the assessment allows you to learn something about the student that you didn't previously know - otherwise why spend the time doing it?

To put it another way: If you don't know how the output of an assessment will contribute directly to the learning of your students then you should ask yourself why you are asking them do the assessment.

How can well intended assessments turn bad?
In my view the following list are the 6 key ways that assessments may end up being bad. Unfortunately I can lay my hands on too many that fall foul of one or more of these - we're working to try and improve them, but it's a big job...
1) Questions set at a level that is inappropriate to the students
Either too hard or too easy. What does an assessment really tell you if an entire class scores upwards of 90%, or another class scores less than 10%. Does this kind of result help you or the students to identify how to improve in ways that couldn't have been identified without the test?
2) Questions do not have an appropriate gradient of difficulty
Too big a change in difficulty will hide misconceptions in the gap between the levels. For more complex questions there should be a way for students to display partial knowledge that can be built on later through effective feedback.
3) Too many questions testing the same skill
Does the second, third, fourth question on a given topic give you any more information than the first about what the student knows? e.g. Do you need more than one question that uses Pythagoras's theorem?
4) Test is too long/short
Too long can overly penalise slow workers in terms of time required to complete it. Students can succumb to boredom and give up, meaning that the results and therefore feedback will be inaccurate.
Too short can have all of the features of (1) and (2) - vitally does it give you or the student any more information that you didn't know before the test?
5) Questions are too similar to a method or example given in class.
Does the question test true knowledge or simply the ability to reproduce something they've seen? (though sometimes assessing the ability to simply follow a method is important - this isn't always bad, but needs to be done deliberately rather than accidentally)
6) Viewing assessments as fixed part of a scheme of work/programme of study
Don't get me wrong - as a department leader I am keen that assessments are done as part of a planned, coordinated activity so that they can be used for departmental management as well as for learning. However we shouldn't get caught thinking that we have to do the same assessment at the same time every year because that's what we did before. All SoW or PoS should be live documents, being developed year on year to maximise learning. If improved learning means scrapping an old assessment or inventing/finding a new & better one then tradition shouldn't get in the way.

But the biggest problem of all... (and this can apply even if an assessment is "good" in all other aspects)
Only giving a grade, level, score or percentage as feedback
Basically this doesn't contribute to learning, and gives the student nothing constructive. It rewards the high achievers, it scolds the low achievers and doesn't tell them how to improve. As a result the assessment a complete waste of your and the student's time, which could have been better much spent actively learning something.

As such there must be a formative aspect to all assessments and a feedback process planned that shapes both student activity and teacher planning for the future.

Students need the opportunity to reflect following assessments so that they can learn from them. This reflection needs to be diagnostic and give guidance on topics/aspects that need to be improved, so that if they were to attempt a similar test again in a few weeks they would be able to demonstrate progress (I'm not suggesting that this similar test needs to actually happen).

This opportunity for reflection should be given adequate time during lessons, and be structured and guided, especially for weaker students. I've talked about methods we've used for doing this in an earlier post here. We're constantly developing this, and I see it as a key tool for future successes.

Another similar approach from @justmaths is here and this also includes some really good next steps sheets that can be used to rectify gaps in understanding (something that I'm planning on adopting in the near future).

So are there Good or Bad assessments?
I'll stick my neck out a little here and suggest that there isn't really any such thing as a good or a bad assessment. Even an apparently dry and dull page full of repetitive tasks could be educationally useful for a certain student or groups of students if targeted appropriately and reviewed/responded to in an effective way.

What really makes an assessment good or bad is how it's implemented and how the information it gives is used to improve learning. Both of these are down to skilled teaching and having the right routines and feedback structures in place to support it.

Basically if the assessment is "bad" then don't blame the test paper - it's the teacher that has set it that needs a rethink. In some cases a re-write of the test paper may well be needed for that student or group, however in others it is simply about how the test paper is used. Similarly an apparently "good" assessment could be bad and therefore worthless if given to the wrong group of students, or if it's not used constructively.

The key point I'm trying to make:
Lets make better assessments, but more importantly lets make better USE OF assessments.

@ListerKev