A ragging birthday!

Time flies!

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote my first blog post about RAG123 (find it here) which followed a single week trial of an idea that seemed illogical... Mark more often, but write less, improve feedback and reduce workload. Remarkably it worked - students responded positively, I felt more in control of my marking workload and my lessons were more effective. I still haven't taken a single pupil book home to mark since I started RAG123 over a year ago, but ALL of my books are marked up to date.

I've since written loads of posts on RAG123 (all found here), and tweeted prolifically on it over the past year. I know I am guilty of being a bit evangelical about it, but I do feel justified in my enthusiasm. The evidence suggests that using this approach to marking and feedback (and planning) really does have a beneficial impact both on the students and the teachers involved. I get fantastic feedback like this on a regular basis:

No going back!

As I know I can be a bit biased on this throughout the year using and developing RAG123 I have regularly asked for negative feedback or stories of people that have tried RAG123 but stopped. From the responses I have received there are only a couple of people that have stopped once tried. In these cases it was never because they didn't think RAG123 was beneficial, it was due to some external factor such as illness or a change in role. In all cases where someone said they'd stopped they followed up with a comment that they would start again as soon as their circumstances allowed. I remain open and receptive to constructive criticism of rag123 and want to retain balance on it. To be honest though negatives only really come from people who have never tried it, or haven't really understood the idea. To date the overwhelming evidence is that once you try it you will see such benefits that you won't want to go back. 

Going national and international
As well as individual teachers using RAG123, there are whole departments adopting it, and I know of a couple of schools that have adopted RAG123 as a central part of their marking policies (one has even reported it to me as a contributing factor in their schools journey out of special measures). I'm constantly being contacted by people who are sharing it within their departments, their schools or via teachmeets across the country. In fact it's also gone international, and not just in English speaking countries. I know it's been translated into Welsh (#COG123), and also is in the process of translation into Swedish...
 

So... a year later what have I learnt?
I've written, thought and learnt a lot about RAG123 over the past year. While the core idea remains exactly as described in the original post, there are a number of subtleties that I have seen and picked up over the last year. I've probably tweeted most of them at some point or other, but it's also about time I shared them all in one place. Along the way there are a couple of confessions I should make too...

Top 10 tips to get the most out of RAG123:

1. There are no strict rules for RAG123! Each teacher should take the core principle and make it work for them, their students, their school, their workload.

It makes no real difference if you use the colours or numbers for understanding or effort. It also doesn't matter if you need more than 3 levels for each aspect to fit with some other system (I know of at least one RAG1234 system being used, and there is also a RAGB123 out there). Actually you could call it anything, ABC123 would work just as well

However I do personally think colours are emotive and therefore can add to impact, which is why my preference remains RAG for effort as that's the bit I want the students to identify with the most (though for a cautionary note on colours see point 5).

2. While the process I put forward for RAG123 involves marking every day, there is no actual necessity to mark every day or every lesson. However without a doubt the more often you can manage it the more effective it will be.

Personally I try to RAG123 between every lesson but don't manage it all the time (still true even now I'm on an apparently empty SLT timetable). What you gain from doing it after every lesson is the opportunity for RAG123 to feed into planning for the next lesson, thereby improving differentiation and the impact of the next phase of teaching (for more on RAG123 as formative planning see here). I now find it much harder to plan if I've not had chance to RAG123 my books.

3. It's the 2 dimensional nature of RAG123 that brings its strength. Separating effort (student controlled) from understanding (teacher influenced) is really important.

If a student is not trying then even the best teacher will struggle to help them learn. Conversely if the student is working as hard as they can but not learning then it is the teacher that needs to do something different. This is why it's simply not the same as a plain traffic light assessment of understanding (more on that in this post). Highlighting the impact of their effort is important to students and makes direct links with other powerful things like growth mindset.

I often get asked how to measure effort, or how I decide exactly what constitutes a "green" "amber" or "red" effort? My answer is always the same - the rating should be scaled to the message you want that individual student to receive. If you think they're cruising then it's amber, if they're going flat out then it's green. It doesn't matter that one student has done half a page vs another doing four pages... If you know from the lesson that the half page struggled and persisted the whole lesson then it's green, if the four pages are all well within the ability of the student then it's amber. The brightest, best behaved students can certainly get reds if they are cruising (and they really don't like it so improve almost instantly!).

4. RAG123 doesn't and can't completely replace more detailed feedback, and I've never said that it should. Students need this, you still need to write extra at times. To help this it's good practice to aim to write an extra comment in 10-15% of books each time you mark. This hardly takes any extra time and after a week or so you can easily cover the whole class. Alternatively perhaps that feedback is verbal - which is fine too, though fails a little fouler of the dreaded "evidence for inspection". For me if you and the students are able to talk to an inspector about the feedback given (verbal or otherwise) and how it helps them to improve then that's perfectly valid feedback, but I do acknowledge that it takes a bit of confidence to fly without the safety net of written evidence. 

5. There is likely to be a colourblind student in every class group.... This was a big penny that dropped part way through the year, and I give thanks to @colourblindorg for the pointers on this. Clearly this causes tension for a system that has colours at its heart. However there is NO barrier to using RAG123 with colourblind students so long as symbols (e.g. "R", "A" or "G") are used and not simply coloured blobs/dots or even different coloured ink. Colourblindness is a big limitation for the various "purple pen of progress" or "green for good, pink to think" concepts that abound across teaching policies and #chat discussions. Using different coloured pens becomes irrelevant if colourblind students (and teachers) can't reliably tell the difference.

Colourblindness can render unlabelled R,A,G unintelligible to an average of 1 student in every classroom

The key message here is that all RAG123 posters, stickers, guidance must always have a way for colourblind people to distinguish between the colour designations - simply labelling R, A, G does this perfectly. Colours are still powerful and useful for the non-colourblind majority so I'm still in favour of using colours, but it's important we make them accessible to those that can't distinguish between them.

Just labelling R,A,G as shown above retains full accessibility for colourblind students.

6. RAG123 is absolutely a leap of faith, and sceptics take a lot of convincing!
Perhaps my biggest confession here is that despite sharing RAG123 nationally (& internationally) and even having it adopted by whole schools in other parts of the country I have not yet got it embedded across my school, or even widely used outside of the maths department.

The reasons for this are many... Perhaps I have been  being a little more shy about pushing RAG123 within my school with people who may not be actively looking for new ideas (compared to people at teachmeets, on Twitter or reading blogs who are clearly looking for and open to new ideas). There's also the fact that until September I was 'only' a head of maths and my influence only reached so far within school. Even now I'm on SLT there is someone else on the team that has the clear remit of improving marking and feedback and I don't want to step on their toes. I've spoken to them about it and actually they like the idea, but can't quite build it into a whole school position yet due to other priorities. While I do find this a little frustrating I want to emphasise that this is not a criticism of my colleague(s) across my school. They are all working immensely hard and have a real desire to do the best for the children in our care, they simply choose to do this in a different way to me and I have yet to fully do he hard sell on RAG123.

This also in no way suggests that I don't have faith in RAG123. Personally I feel my teaching would suffer massively if I had to stop, and think most people's teaching would benefit from adopting it, but I also recognise that change is difficult and it's not easy to try something like this. I know I'm not the only one that faces this challenge, Damian Benney who is the author of probably the second most read blog about RAG123 is a Deputy Head at his school but has struggled to get colleagues to try it, as detailed here. We're both completely sold on RAG123, and have had success sharing it across the country but changing minds more locally can be really hard.

7. Students need support with RAG123 to make the self reflection aspect meaningful. I've written before about how difficult reflection is so won't go into it again for this post (find more here and here), however I will emphasise that the provision of sentence starters or other scaffolding to prompt more meaningful comments really does help. It's also vital that students are given the time in lesson to review and respond to comments - if you don't demonstrate it's important they won't treat it as important.

8. Relating to the last sentence in the paragraph above... Marking & reviewing books as regularly as using RAG123 allows becomes a really powerful way to demonstrate to the students that you care what they do every lesson. This is a big point and shouldn't be underestimated. There are groups of students who don't like RAG123, when you ask them it's usually because they have nowhere to hide in terms of effort. The vast majority of students REALLY like RAG123, when you ask them it's because they know for certain that the teacher is taking an interest in what they do each day.

9. Even bad RAG123 is still quite good. I'll be absolutely honest, compared to the examples I've seen on Twitter my own practice of RAG123 is nowhere near the level that some people have adopted. In all honesty I don't know where some of the teachers that do this find the time to do anything other than school work, maybe they don't? The detail some go into with RAG123 marking is almost to the level you'd expect from a more traditional marking methodology. For me this is awesome but a little overwhelming and I wouldn't want others to think that if they can't sustain that level they are doing it badly.

What I do know is that my books are basically marked and I know the students in front of me extremely well as a result of talking to them in lessons and using RAG123 with them regularly. I also know that the lessons I plan are tuned to the progress that the students make each lesson, and therefore the marking that I do isn't pointless (see more on my thoughts about pointless marking here). I'll gladly argue my case that the progress students make is evidence that my marking and feedback is effective, even if it only results in a better planned next lesson rather than reams of written evidence in books. This will be a contentious point for many, and some may disagree completely, but that's true of so many aspects of teaching.

10. RAG123 as with all good teaching simply comes down to promoting good levels of effort from the students and good planning from the teacher. Initial users of RAG123 will often ask if a student can get a R1 (low effort, excellent understanding), or a G3 (high effort, low understanding). The answer in both cases is of course they can. For me the effort ratings should provoke the students to question what they are doing (can they try harder, can they maintain their current effort across a sequence of lessons) and the understanding should provoke the teacher to question their support/extension/differentiation for the student or planning for the class as a whole.

RAG123 and the future
So a year in and what's next. For me it's simply keeping using RAG123, I would be a worse teacher without it; I know other users feel the same. 

Sceptics will often ask for evidence that it works before trying it. I understand this but am also frustrated by it. I've tried to put together some evidence (see here) but it gets confounded by other factors, and as a result the relatively small sample size and other influences makes this limited sample ripe for taking shots at in terms of robustness of data. To accumulate enough hard data to support it (with a robust control group for comparison) would take a spectacularly long time and frankly I think it's simpler than that...

• RAG123 costs nothing - there are no subscription fees!
• RAG123 can be started and stopped overnight, all it takes is a decision to do it.

As such I'll reiterate the challenge that I issue whenever I present this at a Teachmeet... Try RAG123 with a class for 2 weeks. If you don't see a benefit then stop... If you do stop then that's absolutely fair enough, but please get in touch to tell me why as I'm keen to understand if it has limitations! Similarly if you find it useful then please spread the word by challenging others!

Comments are always welcome, happy Ragging!

Pointless marking?

This post is written in response to a "Thunk" from @TeacherToolkit - see here.

What's the point in marking?
Perhaps a reason that it seems nobody's answered this 'Thunk' before is that it's a bit obvious; we all know one of the basic tasks in a teacher's workload is to mark stuff. When non-teachers go on about long holidays, only working from 9 till 3 and all the standard misconceptions, teachers will universally include marking in the list of things that take up time around the taught lessons. However, if we put the preconception that marking is just a part of a teacher's being to one side, what is the actual point of it? Who gains from all this time spent? Do we do it because we want to, have to or need to? Also, is it done for the students or for the teacher?

What if we all stopped Marking?
I'm a fan of thought experiments, so let's consider a system where there is no marking at all - what would we lose? Let's take it slightly further for a second - no assessment at all by the teacher.

For the sake of argument, with no marking or assessment the teacher's role would look something like this:

At the end of each lesson the teacher would have to decide what to teach in the next lesson based on an assumption of what's been understood. Here you would need to consider the fact that an intended lesson goes through a series of filters between inception, planning, and delivery, and then again from delivery to reception and recall:

Filters from intent to recall…

1     The original intention becomes filtered to the actual plan by what’s possible given constraints of timetable, school, students, staff, resources, etc.

2     The planned lesson becomes filtered to the lesson actually delivered by real life on the day, something not quite going to plan, students not following the expected route, behaviour issues, interruptions, teacher's state of mind, detail of choices on the day, etc.

3     The lesson delivered is filtered to the lesson actually received by prior knowledge, attention levels, language/numeracy skills, cognitive load, method of delivery, etc.

4     The lesson as received is filtered to the lesson recalled by the influence of other factors such as other lessons/happenings after the event, levels of interest, and so on.

You will also see that I've separated the later 3 stages between Teacher's view and Student's view. This is important - the teacher with deep subject knowledge, knowledge of the original intention and plan, and sight of a bigger picture for the subject is likely to perceive the lesson in a different way to the students. In fact the 'Student's perspective' row should really be multiplied by the number of individual students in the class as the experience of one may well be very different to others. (Also note for reference that if the lesson is observed then there would need to be a whole extra row to cover the observer's point of view, but that's another discussion altogether...) Basically what I'm saying here is everyone in the lesson will have their own unique perspective on the learning that took place in it.

How accurate are your assumptions?
As a teacher delivering lessons with no assessment and no marking you would have to rely entirely on your assumptions of what the students receive and recall from each lesson. An inaccuracy in one lesson would likely be compounded in the next until the intended learning path is left behind entirely over a period of time. I'd suggest only the most arrogant of teachers would attempt to argue that they could keep a whole class on track and keep lessons effective without any form of marking or assessment, and frankly they'd be wrong if they tried.

Open loop control
Basically without assessment and without marking, we are using what would be called an open loop control system in engineering terms. A basic toaster is an example of a device that uses open loop control. You put the bread in and it heats on full power for a period of time, and then pops up. The resulting toast may be barely warm bread, perfect toast, or a charred mess. The toaster itself has no mechanism to determine the state of the toast, there is no feedback to tell the toaster to switch off before the toast begins to burn. To improve the system we need to close the loop in the control system; we need to observe the toast and take action if it's burning. Closed loop control is really what we want, as this uses feedback to adjust the input, which takes us to the Deming cycle...

Deming cycle = Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA)
Dr W. Edwards Deming pioneered the PDCA cycle in the post WW2 Japanese motor industry. His work on continuous improvement and quality management has become prolific across engineering sectors, and he is generally regarded as the father of modern quality management.

PDCA is simply a closed loop cycle, where you Plan something, Do it, Check if it did what you wanted it to, and then Act in response to your checking to develop things further. The ideal is this then leads into another PDCA cycle to deliver another improvement, with feedback being sought on an ongoing basis to adjust the inputs.

As I trained in engineering and became Chartered Engineer in my career before switching to teaching I have always seen a series of lessons as a series of PDCA cycles. I plan a lesson, I deliver it, I find some way to check how effective it was, and I deliver another one. In my best lessons I manage to incorporate a number of PDCA cycles within the lesson, adjusting the content/activities in response to the progress being made.

Marking helps us to create a closed loop system.
The model with no marking or assessment is open loop. It would rely so heavily on making assumptions about what had or hadn't been learnt that it would become ineffective very quickly for the majority of classes.

By reviewing what students have actually done in a lesson we can determine how effective our teaching has been. We can make adjustments to future lessons, or we can provide guidance and feedback direct to the student to correct misunderstandings. (note there can be a vast difference between what has actually been done and what we think has been done both at an individual and a class level)

As a result of this need to close the loop an absolutely vital role for marking is to provide feedback to the teacher on the impact of their lessons. (As John Hattie says - "know thy impact").

Is it regular enough?
Note that if marking is the only form of feedback a teacher gets then it needs to be done regularly enough to have an impact on their teaching. Between marking cycles the teacher is running an open loop system, with all the issues that this brings with it. As such we either need to mark regularly enough to keep the PDCA cycle as short as possible, minimising the time left with an open loop, or we need to build in some other form of assessment.

Other assessment
Gaining feedback within a lesson or within a marking cycle is where AFL in its truest sense comes in. Through assessment that takes place during lessons the PDCA cycle time is reduced right down - the teacher gets feedback outside of the marking cycle, meaning changes can be made either within lesson or for the next lesson. I'm not going to discuss AFL in detail here as this post is about marking, but this is why AFL is so important, particularly if you have a long cycle time on your marking. (note for the purposes of this discussion I'm drawing a distinction here between AFL techniques deployed in lesson with students present, against marking where a teacher is reviewing work when the students are elsewhere - I appreciate there can be and should be an overlap between AFL and marking, I'm just ignoring it right now)

RAG123 shortens the closed loop

You may have seen my other posts on RAG123, if not see here for a quick guide, or here for all of my RAG123 related posts. I'm sure those of you that have seen my other posts will probably have been waiting for me to mention it!

For me the key thing that RAG123 does is to shorten the marking cycle time, and that's one of the reasons that it is so effective. By reviewing work after every lesson (ideally) you augment any AFL done in lesson, and can plan to make sure your next lesson is well aligned to the learning that took place in the previous one. More on RAG123 as formative planning is in this post.

Marking for the student

I'm guessing by now that some of you will be getting frustrated because I've hardly mentioned the other purpose of marking - giving feedback to the student... After all teaching is all about learning for students!

From a student's perspective I think marking can be about many things depending on their relationship with school, that subject or that teacher. Sometimes it's about checking they've done it correctly. Sometimes it's about finding out what they did incorrectly. Sometimes they engage deeply, sometimes they dismiss it entirely (or appear to).

If we go back to closed loop vs open loop control for a moment then a lack of marking leaves the students functioning in an open loop system as well as the teacher. In engineering terms their control system needs feedback, otherwise they could go off in a direction that is nowhere near correct. Just like a tennis player benefits from the input of an expert coach to help them to develop their game, a student benefits from the input from an expert to help them develop their learning.

Hit and miss

In truth though I think marking as a direct form of feedback to a student is far more hit and miss than teachers using it for feedback on their own practice. Depending on the quality of the marking and the level of engagement from the student this could range from really informative to utterly pointless. Sometimes the best students are given poor feedback, or least engaged students fantastic feedback, arguably both are pointless. Also what seems like fantastic and detailed feedback from a teacher (or observer's) perspective could easily be ignored or misunderstood by a student. 

This potential for ineffective marking/feedback is why it is so important to try and establish dialogue in marking; again we're looking for a feedback loop, this time on the marking itself. However I'm keen to highlight that in my view dialogue doesn't always have to be written down. Discussion of feedback verbally can be much more effective than a written exchange in an exercise book, just like a face to face conversation can be more effective and result in fewer misunderstandings than an e-mail exchange.

In summary

To get back to the original question... The point of marking is to give the teacher feedback on their lessons, and to give students feedback on their learning. Both are vitally important.

The best marking has impact on the students so it changes what they do next. Good marking highlights to students that what they do is valued, highlights aspects where they have succeeded, and areas/methods to help them improve. 

However the very best marking should also have impact on the teacher and what they do next. It's not a one way street, and we have a responsibility as professionals to adjust our practice to help our students maximise their learning. For example perhaps Kylie needs to develop her skills at adding fractions, or perhaps Mr Lister needs to try a different way of describing fractions to Kylie so she understands it more fully.

In short, if you are marking in a way that doesn't change what you or they do next then you're wasting your time...

This is just what I think, of course you're welcome to agree or disagree!

Managing with colours - SLTeachmeet presentation

These are the slides I presented at #SLTeachmeet earlier today. Click here

The info shared in the presentation picks up on aspects covered in these posts:
Using measures to improve performance

Using seating plans with student data

RAG123 basics

As always feedback is always welcome...

RAG123 is not the same as traffic lights

I've written regularly about RAG123 since November 2013 and since starting it as an initial trial in November I still view it as the single most important thing I've discovered as a teacher. It's now absolutely central to my teaching practice, but I do fear that at times people misunderstand what RAG123 is all about. They see the colours and they decide it is just another version of traffic lighting or thumbs up/across/down AFL. I'm sure it gets dismissed as "lazy marking", but the reality is that it is much, much more than marking.

As an example of this uncertainty of RAG123 at a surface level without really understanding the depth I was recently directed to the Ofsted document "Mathematics made to measure" found here. I'd read this document some time ago and it is certainly a worthwhile read for anyone in a maths department, particularly leading/managing the subject, but it may well provide useful thoughts to those with other specialisms. There is a section (paragraphs 88-99) that are presented under the subheading "Marking: the importance of getting it right" - it was suggested to me that RAG123 fell foul of the good practice recommended in these paragraphs, even explicitly criticised as traffic lighting and as such isn't a good approach to follow.

Having read the document again I actually see RAG123 as fully in line with the recommendations of good practice in the Ofsted document and I'd like to try and explain why....

The paragraphs below (incl paragraph numbers) are cut & pasted directly from the Ofsted document (italics), my responses are shown in bold:

88. Inconsistency in the quality, frequency and usefulness of teachers’ marking is a 
perennial concern. The best marking noted during the survey gave pupils 
insight into their errors, distinguishing between slips and misunderstanding, and 
pupils took notice of and learnt from the feedback. Where work was all correct, 
a further question or challenge was occasionally presented and, in the best 
examples, this developed into a dialogue between teacher and pupil. 
RAG123 gives a consistent quality, and frequency to marking. Errors and misunderstandings seen in a RAG123 review can be addressed either in marking or through adjustments to the planning for the next lesson. The speed of turnaround between work done, marking done/feedback given, pupil response, follow up review by teacher means that real dialogue can happen in marking.

89. More commonly, comments written in pupils’ books by teachers related either 
to the quantity of work completed or its presentation. Too little marking 
indicated the way forward or provided useful pointers for improvement. The 
weakest practice was generally in secondary schools where cursory ticks on 
most pages showed that the work had been seen by the teacher. This was 
occasionally in line with a department’s marking policy, but it implied that work 
was correct when that was not always the case. In some instances, pupils’ 
classwork was never marked or checked by the teacher. As a result, pupils can 
develop very bad habits of presentation and be unclear about which work is 
correct.
With RAG123 ALL work is seen by the teacher - there is no space for bad habits to develop or persist. While it can be that the effort grading could be linked to quantity or presentation it should also be shaped by the effort that the teacher observed in the lesson. Written comments/corrections may not be present in all books but corrections can be applied in the next lesson without the need for the teacher to write loads down. This can be achieved in various ways, from 1:1 discussion to changing the whole lesson plan.

90. A similar concern emerged around the frequent use of online software which 
requires pupils to input answers only. Although teachers were able to keep 
track of classwork and homework completed and had information about 
stronger and weaker areas of pupils’ work, no attention was given to how well 
the work was set out, or whether correct methods and notation were used.
Irrelevant to RAG123

91. Teachers may have 30 or more sets of homework to mark, so looking at the 
detail and writing helpful comments or pointers for the way forward is time 
consuming. However, the most valuable marking enables pupils to overcome 
errors or difficulties, and deepen their understanding.
Combining RAG123 with targeted follow up/DIRT does exactly this in an efficient way.

Paragraphs 92 & 93 simply refer to examples given in the report and aren't relevant here.

94. Some marking did not distinguish between types of errors and, occasionally, 

correct work was marked as wrong.

Always a risk in all marking, RAG123 is not immune, but neither is any other marking. However given that RAG123 only focuses on a single lesson's work the quantity is smaller so there is a greater change that variations in student's work will be seen and addressed.

95. At other times, teachers gave insufficient attention to correcting pupils’ 

mathematical presentation, for instance, when 6 ÷ 54 was written incorrectly 

instead of 54 ÷ 6, or the incorrect use of the equals sign in the solution of an 

equation.

Again a risk in all marking and RAG123 is not immune, but it does give the opportunity for frequent and repeated corrections/highlighting of these errors so that they don't become habits.

96. Most marking by pupils of their own work was done when the teacher read out 

the answers to exercises or took answers from other members of the class. 

Sometimes, pupils were expected to check their answers against those in the 

back of the text book. In each of these circumstances, attention was rarely paid 

to the source of any errors, for example when a pupil made a sign error while 

expanding brackets and another omitted to write down the ‘0’ place holder in a 

long multiplication calculation. When classwork was not marked by the teacher 

or pupil, mistakes were unnoticed.

With RAG123 ALL work is seen by the teacher - they can look at incorrect work and determine what the error was, either addressing it directly with the student or if it is widespread taking action at whole class level.

97. The involvement of pupils in self-assessment was a strong feature of the most 

effective assessment practice. For instance, in one school, Year 4 pupils 

completed their self-assessments using ‘I can …’ statements and selected their 

own curricular targets such as ‘add and subtract two-digit numbers mentally’ 

and ‘solve 1 and 2 step problems’. Subsequent work provided opportunities for 

pupils to work on these aspects. 

The best use of RAG123 asks students to self assess with a reason for their rating. Teachers can review/respond and shape these self assessments in a very dynamic way due to the speed of turnaround. It also gives a direct chance to follow up by linking to DIRT

98. An unhelpful reliance on self-assessment of learning by pupils was prevalent in 

some of the schools. In plenary sessions at the end of lessons, teachers 

typically revisited the learning objectives, and asked pupils to assess their own 

understanding, often through ‘thumbs’, ‘smiley faces’ or traffic lights. However, 

such assessment was often superficial and may be unreliable.

Assessment of EFFORT as well as understanding in RAG123 is very different to these single dimension assessments. I agree that sometimes the understanding bit is unreliable. However with RAG123 the teacher reviews and changes the pupil's RAG123 rating based on the work done/seen in class. As such it becomes more accurate once reviewed. Also the reliability is often improved by by asking students to explain why they deserve that rating. The effort bit is vital though... If a student is trying as hard as they can (G) then it is the teacher's responsibility to ensure that they gain understanding. If a student is only partially trying (A) then the teacher's impact will be limited. If a student is not trying at all (R) then even the most awesome teacher will not be able to improve their understanding. By highlighting and taking action on the effort side it emphasises the student's key input to the learning process. While traffic lights may very well be ineffective as a single shot self assessment of understanding, when used as a metaphor for likely progress given RAG effort levels then Green certainly is Go, and Red certainly is stop.

99. Rather than asking pupils at the end of the lesson to indicate how well they had 

met learning objectives, some effective teachers set a problem which would 

confirm pupils’ learning if solved correctly or pick up any remaining lack of 

understanding. One teacher, having discussed briefly what had been learnt with 

the class, gave each pupil a couple of questions on pre-prepared cards. She 

took the cards in as the pupils left the room and used their answers to inform 

the next day’s lesson planning. Very occasionally, a teacher used the plenary 

imaginatively to set a challenging problem with the intention that pupils should 

think about it ready for the start of new learning in the next lesson. 

This is an aspect of good practice that can be applied completely alongside RAG123, in fact the "use to inform the next day's lesson planning" is something that is baked in with daily RAG123 - by knowing exactly the written output from one lesson you are MUCH more likely to take account of it in the next one.

So there you have it - I see RAG123 as entirely in line with all the aspects of best practice identified here. Don't let the traffic light wording confuse you - RAG123 as deployed properly isn't anything like a single dimension traffic light self assessment - it just might share the colours. If you don't like the colours and can't get past that bit then define it as ABC123 instead - it'll still be just as effective and it'll still be the best thing you've done in teaching!

All comments welcome as ever!

Reflecting on reflections

Reflecting is hard, really hard! It requires an honesty with yourself, an ability to take a step back from what you've done (that you have a personal attachment to) and to think deeply about how successful you've been. Ideally it should also involve some diagnosis on why you have/haven't been successful, and what you might do differently the next time you face a similar situation.

Good reflection is really high order thinking
If you consider where the skills required or the type of thinking for reflection lie in Bloom's taxonomy then it's the top end, high order thinking. You have to analyse and evaluate your performance, and then create ideas on how to improve.

Picture from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_taxonomy

Some people don't particularly like Blooms and might want to lob rocks at anything that refers to it. If you'd prefer to use an alternative taxonomy like SOLO (see here) then we're still talking the higher end Relational and Extended Abstract type of thinking. Anyone involved in reflection needs to make links between various areas of understanding, and ideally extend this into a what if situation for the future. Basically use whatever taxonomy of thinking you like and reflection/metacognition is right at the top in terms of difficulty.

The reason I am talking about this is that one of the things I keep seeing on twitter and also in observation feedback, work scrutiny evaluations and so on or are comments about poor quality self assessment & reflections from students.

Sometimes this is a teacher getting frustrated when students asked to reflect just end up writing comments like "I understood it," "I didn't get it" or "I did ok." Other times it is someone reviewing books that might suggest that the student's reflections don't indicate that they know what they need to do to improve.

It often crops up, and one of the ways I most often hear about it is when someone is first trying out RAG123 marking (Not heard of RAG123? - see here, here and then any of these). This structure for marking gives so many opportunities for self assessment and dialogue that the teacher sees lots of relatively poor reflective comments in one go and finds it frustrating.

Now having thought about the type of thinking required for good reflection is it a real surprise that a lot of students struggle? To ask a group to reflect is pushing them to a really high level of thought. Asking the question is completely valid, it's good to pose high order questions, but we really shouldn't be surprised if we get low order answers even from very able students, and particularly from weaker students. Some may not yet have the cognitive capacity to make a high quality response, for others it might be a straight vocabulary/literacy issue - students can't talk about something coherently unless they have the appropriate words at their disposal.

Is it just students?
The truth is that many adults struggle to reflect well. Some people struggle to see how good things actually were because they get hung up on the bad things. Others struggle to see the bad bits because they are distracted by the good bits. Even then many will struggle to do the diagnosis side and look for ways to improve. It's difficult to recognise flaws in yourself, and often even harder to come up with an alternative method that will improve things. If we all found it easy then the role of coaches and mentors would be redundant.

As part of thinking about how well our students are reflecting perhaps we should all take a little time to think about how good we are at reflecting on our own practice? How honest are we with ourselves? How objective are we? How constructive are we in terms of making and applying changes as a result of our reflections?

Don't stop just because it's difficult
Vitally just because students struggle to reflect in a coherent or high order way doesn't mean we should stop asking them to reflect. But we shouldn't be foolish enough to expect a spectacularly insightful self assessment from students the first time they try it. As with any cognitive process we should give them support to help them to structure their reflections. This support is the same kind of scaffolding that may be needed for any other learning:

Model it: Show them some examples of good reflection. Perhaps even demonstrate it in front of the class by reflecting on the lesson you've just taught?
Give a foothold: Sentences are easier to finish than to start - perhaps give them a sentence starter, or a choice of sentence starters - the improvement in quality is massive (See this post for some ideas on this)
Give feedback on the reflections: As part of responding to the reflections in marking dialogue give guidance on how they could improve their reflections and not just their work.
Give time for them to improve: A given group of students that have never self assessed before shouldn't be expected to do it perfectly, but we should expect them to get better at it given time and guidance.

As ever I'd be keen to know your thoughts, your experiences and if you've got any other suggestions....

SOLO to open up closed questions

I've been dabbling with SOLO for a while now, it's been part of bits of my practice (see here, here and here) but I've yet to really embed it in all lessons as fully as I would have liked. I have used it as a problem solving tool, or to help structure revision, but not really deployed SOLO on a more day to day basis, and I want to change that.

I recently completed an interview for an Assistant Head position and as part of that was asked to teach a PSE lesson. This took me well out of my Maths comfort zone, so I had to give the planning deeper consideration than a maths lesson might have. After some thought I decided to introduce SOLO as part of the lesson, and it worked really well...

SOLO as a structure for discussion
I was teaching this PSE lesson to a group of year 7 students that I had never taught before and I knew that they had never seen SOLO before. As such a bit of my lesson needed to become an intro to SOLO. Fortunately the symbols are so intuitive that once I'd suggested that a single dot (Prestructural in SOLO terminology) meant you basically knew nothing about a topic, and a single bar (Unistructural) meant you knew something about it, the students were able to develop their own really good working definitions for Multistructural, Relational and Extended Abstract:

Once they had defined this hierarchy I could refer back to it at any point in the lesson and they knew what I was talking about. As such when I asked a question and the student responded with an answer I could categorise their response using the SOLO icons, such as "one bar," "three bar," "linked bar." If the student gave a "one bar" response I then asked them, or asked another student what was needed to make it a "three bar" response, and so on.

I was really pleased with how natural the discussion became, escalating up to really high level answers in a structured way. Similarly the students could use the same method with each other to improve their written answers through peer and self assessment. It even gives an easy way to open up a closed question question... For example:

T: "Name a famous leader"

P: "Nelson Mandela"

T: "What type of answer is that?"

P: "It's just a fact so it's got to be One bar"

T: "How could the answer be improved?"

P: "Give more facts about him, like that he led South Africa, or say why he was famous"

T: "Can you improve that further?"

P: "Maybe make links to other countries or compare him to other leaders"

T: "Fantastic, work on that with your partner..."

Rightly or wrongly I have a feeling that the opportunity for this type of discussion is much more common in a subject like PSE, and the SOLO linkage is much clearer as a result, however it got me thinking about how this approach could be used in the same way for Maths...

SOLO vs closed questions
A constant battle for maths teachers is the old "there is only one right answer in maths." Now of course that may be true in terms of a numerical value, but that ignores the process followed to achieve that answer, and often there are many mathematically correct processes that lead to the same final answer. In more open ended activities there may also be multiple numerical answers that are "right."

In maths we constantly battle to get students to write down more than their final answer and to show their full method. Following my experience of using SOLO for PSE I started thinking about how to use it to break down the closed answers we encounter in maths. As such I've put this together as a starting point...

The pupil response could be something that is seen written down in their working, or something that they say verbally during discussion. The possible teacher response gives a suggestion of how to encourage a higher quality of response to this and future answers. This could be part of a RAG123 type marking (see here for more info on RAG123), verbal feedback, or any other feedback process.

An alternative is to use it for peer/self assessment, again to encourage progress from closed, factual answers, to fuller, clearer answers:

 I realise I may be diluting or slightly misappropriating the SOLO symbols a little, e.g. is the top description above truly Extended Abstract or is it actually only Relational? In truth I don't think that distinction matters in this application - it's about enabling students to improve rather than assigning strict categories.

Proof in the pudding
The assessment ladder is part of a lesson plan for Tuesday, and I am going to try and use the pupil response grid throughout the week to help open up questions and encourage students to think more deeply about the answers - watch this space for updates.

As always - all thoughts & comments welcome.

RAG123 user survey

I was asked the other day if there was a list of people using RAG123, in order to share best practice and develop it further. There currently isn't such a list... but here's our chance to create one!

If you use RAG123 please could you take 5 mins to complete this form. I'll look to share the results in due course - intention is that we can connect people using RAG123 in the same subject, same phase, etc. And just plain old share good practice...

The form is found here: http://bit.ly/RAG123survey

thanks in advance for taking the time - please share this survey with anyone you know that uses RAG123 - the more input the better...

A RAG123 epiphany

Our PGCE student had a real lightbulb moment with RAG123 this week... It emphasised to me that it is way more than a quick way to get books marked...

(as a respect for anonymity I will refer to the PGCE student  as "PG" for the rest of this post).

First lesson blues
It was PG's first lesson teaching a particular group, having only observed with them up to now. The group has a few characters in it who will always test out a new face in front of them. I wasn't observing the lesson myself but afterwards PG came to see me, clearly quite disappointed in what had happened.

In PG's view the group had not bought into the topic that had been taught. It was intended to be a lesson that picked up from earlier knowledge and then moved them into more advanced ideas. However PG felt that the students had just decided that their earlier knowledge was enough and they had rejected the more advanced method, and really not engaged with the lesson at all. This view was based on the verbal responses of a number of students during the lesson which shaped the general feel of the group (this "feel" was also backed up by the teacher who was observing PG teach).

I talked with PG about why they felt this way and what they could do to make sure that the next lesson was more successful. Now obviously part of this is a planning/experience thing for PG - at times like this it is important that the students can appreciate the need for the more advanced technique, so the earlier plan probably needed to include a way to demonstrate a flaw with the existing knowledge, creating a conflict that can be resolved with the new methods. We discussed that this might be where to start the next lesson. However I also encouraged PG to go and have a look at the books to get a wider view than just those more vocal students. (This group have been using RAG123 regularly since November so I was hopeful they would have given some comments/reflections) 20 minutes later PG came back to see me...

Perception from the few, reality from the many
Having reviewed the whole class's books and RAG123 self assessments PG's view of the class, and of the lesson was vastly changed. It was clear from looking at the work actually done by the class that the majority of the students had engaged with the lesson much more successfully than either PG or the observer had thought.

I emphasise - the observer was an experienced teacher who had been present for the full lesson, and they had also formed the perception thought that the majority of the class had failed to engage with the learning. However the work done by the students proved completely the reverse - the majority HAD engaged; the perception was dominated by the vocal few who had been more resistant.

Vitally with this information PG is now able to plan activities for the next lesson that align with where the class actually ended the last one. This starting point is MUCH more advanced than would have been the case if the lesson plan is based solely on the perceptions they ended the lesson with. It also allows a more effective demonstration of the gap between the students who were resistant than those who actually engaged but were less vocal.

Fundamentally PG has moved from feeling really disappointed about the progress of the whole class to being much more focussed on taking action to secure better engagement and progress for the relatively few individuals who shaped the overall perception. It's gone from a whole class issue to an issue involving only a few students.

More than marking, RAG123 is TEACHING
I've seen occasional sceptical comments about RAG123 (from those not using it), suggesting that teachers should use more than just looking in books to judge pupil's understanding or detect misconceptions. I completely agree with this perspective - I've never suggested that RAG123 should be used to the exclusion of other assessment methodologies. Abandoning any one method to the exclusion of others is rarely a good strategy for anything.

What this tale really highlights though is that the perception left at the end of a lesson for both the teacher and the observer was VASTLY different to the reality as shown by the student's work. Clearly there are questions about use of AFL strategies during the lesson - perhaps the right plenary or assessment method would have shown this up; then again it might not. However there is no doubt that without RAG123 the next lesson for this class would have been MUCH less effective.

This is a demonstration that RAG123 isn't just marking. The strongest bit is that it gives a way to connect with the class that is based on fact (e.g. what have they actually DONE) rather than perception (e.g. how did the you think the lesson went?). Shaping planning in this way means differentiation is more effective, less time is lost in either catching up or waiting for the perceived progress of the class to reach the desired level.

I know that PG is now completely sold on RAG123 as a way to make sure planning is effective....

All comments welcome as always