RAG123 as defined by the students

Our head of maths has done a piece of work recently on RAG123 that I think I just have to share...

Firstly if you've never heard of RAG123 then look here for my original post on it, and then see here for all the others I've done...

Pupil voice
So far with RAG123 I've seen teacher definitions of what R,A,G mean, and what 1, 2, 3 mean, and we've occasionally had a go at doing a student oriented set of descriptors. However it surprises me to admit it but we've never previously asked the students to define it themselves!

With my stepping up to SLT this year I have had the pleasure of welcoming and line managing a new HoD to run the maths department. Simon Preston arrived at our school, inherited RAG123 from me and then he embraced it and used it for a while. Then he had a brainwave that is so obvious I don't know why nobody had thought of it before... He asked the students to define their understanding of all the RAG123 ratings...

Simon did this by issuing a sheet like the one below and asked the students to fill in the boxes with a description of what types of work or attitudes warranted each rating. Notably he didn't just ask them to define R, A, G and then 1, 2, 3, but he got them to define all 9 combinations of letters and numbers.

What did the students say?
I have been fascinated by the responses that the students gave. Having collated their inputs and drawn together the common themes Simon has compiled the following grid, which for me now seems to be the definitive RAG123 rating grid.

I think the nuance that the students have highlighted between R2 and R3 in the root cause for the low effort is really interesting. Also like the A1 "just enough". Overall I am really pleased by the clear linkage between effort and understanding. It all comes back to the basic position where students on 3 for understanding need clear input from the teacher to move them, and those on R for effort also need a decision from the student to improve.

Involving parents
Also this week we held a parent information evening for our yr 11 students where we were briefing them on revision techniques and ideas to improve home-school partnerships. This RAG123 grid was shared with parents and students in this session. We suggested that parents could work with students to RAG123 their revision processes at home in order to help figure out whether a session was effective or not. This was really well received and we have had several positive comments from parents about this giving them the tools to help review progress with revision, particularly in subjects that they have no expertise in.

Have you done something similar?
The idea of asking the students is so obvious I'm amazed I or someone else haven't already done it - does anyone else have a similar student perspective on RAG123? If you have I'd be really keen to see it.

Once again - if you've not tried RAG123 you don't know what you're missing in terms of building linkage between marking and planning, building dialogue with students and the promoting growth mindset type linkages between effort and progress. Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

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!

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....

Outstandingly ordinary

A few days ago I had one of those spine tingling lessons that just 'worked'. This kind of thing is the life blood of teaching - it's a perk of the job you can't properly relate to non-teachers. A lesson that clicks makes all the hard work we put in worth it. Frustratingly though it's really difficult to predict when these sparkling lessons will happen. Sometimes they are the result of massive and meticulous planning, but at other times they can be a complete surprise and happen despite patchy planning. In all honesty the one last week was a complete surprise - the planning I put into it was nothing special and really did not deserve the results it delivered for me or the class, particularly given the context/timing of delivery.

"Can we have a fun lesson sir?"
Picture it for a moment... a middle ability year 9 group, in the very last lesson on the last day of half term - they're are about to have a week off and want to wind down, frankly so do I! They came in with the predictable "It's our last lesson sir, can we have a 'fun' lesson", which was met with my equally predictable response of "Of course it'll be fun, we're doing maths!" Up my sleeve I had nothing more than their first ever lesson on trigonometry...

No gimmicks*, nothing flash, no student lead discovery, no card sorts, no videos, no animations, no movement around the classroom, just a basic lesson where I tell/show them something and they then practise it. You could even describe it as a chalk and talk lesson - I explained what trig is, what it does, and showed them some worked examples, and then gave them some time to have a go at it themselves while I moved around the room offering support and checking progress. At the end we self assessed by checking answers and the students did a RAG123 rating and comment. (*Alright I did use a chalk pen to write SOHCAHTOA on all of their desks before the start, but they've seen me do similar before so I don't count it as a gimmick!)

By the end of the lesson the whole class had made massive progress; they could ALL use trigonometry to find a side length in a right angled triangle by selecting the correct trig ratio and correct calculation to do. This is something which NONE of them could do at the start (I had asked at the start - nobody had even heard of trig before other than perhaps something mentioned as 'really hard' by a parent or older sibling).

For the record I fully acknowledge this is teaching a process and not a deeper understanding of trig at this stage, however to expand on this requires a bit more discussion which would take me away from the central point of this post. I promise I'll return to that theme with a future post...

Big grins
They all left at the end with big grins having experienced success with this skill, many thanking me for the lesson, and I am optimistic that they will be able to recall and build on it after half term (though we'll have to wait and see). What's more, despite the apparently dry content I had not a single comment/complaint about not doing something 'fun' (usually student code for playing some kind of brainless game or watching a film), and they were all engaged and working hard throughout the lesson. 

Not that I'm hung up on levels but to give some perspective for those non-maths folks out there, this class have target levels in the range of high level 5 to low level 7. Trigonometry is rated as level 8, and as such this is a topic that should stretch even the best in the class. By most predictions it shouldn't have worked - surely they weren't in the mood for this at the end of a long half term? Surely they needed something more 'engaging?'

Only ordinary

I'll re-emphasise, this was their very last lesson before a week off, at the end of a 6 week half term. Frankly if a student teacher had suggested doing this lesson at that timing of the week/term I may well have questioned their judgement, but it worked! Basically against all the odds given timing in the day, week, term, and pre-conceptions about 'good' activities a completely ordinary, very traditional lesson had delivered outstanding outcomes. 

I'm not writing this to proclaim myself as some kind of super-teacher, I think I'm fairly ordinary. This lesson on paper had no right to be as successful as it was given all of the factors going against it. I certainly wouldn't suggest it could fall into a category of "outstanding" as planned, I guess it could even be viewed as "requires improvement" as planned.

What made it work?

It actually took me a while to realise the significance of this lesson in terms of my relationship with that group. When I was planning the lesson I'd not even questioned that they might not be up for it, but afterwards it struck me that it was by no means a certainty. I had to think it through a bit, and in the end I came to the conclusion that this lesson was just one in a long string of basically good lessons, which is something they are now completely used to....

All about habits

I'm suggesting that what made the real difference with this group in this lesson, and what gave me the confidence to plan it in this way given the context, is a track record of ingrained habits and expectations (both from me and the students).

I've been teaching this group since July, and they know that I have high expectations for them. Since November I have been using RAG123 marking with this class. As a result they know that I will review their work and respond to exactly what they have done in each lesson. This means their effort levels are consistently good - they don't like to get reds! I also know them very well now as a result of RAG123 dialogue, and know the kind of support each student is likely to need during a lesson like this.

I have always made it clear to them as a class that I won't let their target levels limit what I teach them, or put a cap on what they can achieve; as a set 2 they are taught the exact same content as our top sets. All of the topics we have covered this half term have been level 7 or 8, and they have experienced success with them. In our last assessment test the entire class (27 students) scored at least one sub-level ahead of their target, all of them were level 7 and above, and 6 were in level 8. The chart below shows their progress in tests since September:

Over time this class have developed a trust with me that difficult topics will be broken down, I'll review what they've done in lessons via RAG123, revisit it, re-teach it and practice it with them when needed. In a lesson the class know they need to listen during an explanation, and can ask questions when they need to. They know I will target questions during these explanations to check understanding. They also know that they will have a level of control in the difficulty of the practise I ask them to do, via star rated questions that allow them to push harder or go easier depending on their confidence.

None of this is outstanding on paper - it's just 'good' teaching, nothing fancy.

Outstandingly ordinary
I don't think I've ever once tried to plan an 'outstanding' lesson for this group, but I always aim for my practice with them to be consistently good. I think that's what they're responding to, and that's why they're making outstanding progress.

I've blogged previously on the idea of basically good teaching being a foundation for outstanding outcomes - see this post. Also see this post by David Didau (@LearningSpy) which I think explores a very similar area.

The result is that this group are basically in the habit of learning effectively, and they trust me to deliver a lesson that will help them to progress. They also know that they can get help during a lesson, from me, from their peers or from other resources in the room. They can also indicate a need for help in the next by making comments in their books that I'll respond to due to my regular RAG123 marking.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that because this group are in the habit of receiving a diet of basically good lessons, with good feedback, and good dialogue, they are in a place where even a lesson that should be really difficult to deliver can be made highly effective.

This lesson wasn't the first spine tingling occasion with this group, and I don't expect it to be the last as they are working in such a fantastic way at the moment. However I don't think the next one will come from the expense of masses of time planning, or from my delivering whizz bang performances - it will be due to continuing on the diet of basically good.

I'm more and more certain that consistently good for a long enough time is all that is needed for incredible progress.

Comments & thoughts are always welcome.

RAG123 as formative planning

I'm at risk of becoming a bit evangelical about RAG123 marking, but despite repeated pleas for balance to my enthusiasm on this I've still never EVER found anyone who has tried it that doesn't find it both beneficial to them and students and NOT a drain on their workload. Also so far nobody who has tried it has told me they are stopping! (or maybe they've both stopped RAG123 and stopped talking to me too!)

If you don't know what I'm talking about with RAG123 then see my earlier posts here, here and here. And also this post from Mr Benney (@Benneypenyrheol), who is almost as enthusiastic about RAG123 as I am!

Without a doubt for me, moving from what I would have classed as "good" marking every 2-3 weeks with formative comments to daily RAG123 has improved my practice, AND reduced my overall marking & planning workload.

Fomative marking becomes formative planning
A really important aspect is that having seen the books after one lesson I can react in the next one. I change/tweak plans, I target questions, I provide extra support, I revisit topics, I go and have a chat with specific students.

The students know I am responding to what they did in the last lesson - they link my reponses in the next lesson to their actions in the last, and this also shapes their actions in the next.

I'm finding that I don't need to give a worked example and model it as part of marking - this can be done as a natural part of discussions in my next lesson, writing it while marking serves no extra benefit.

I also don't necessarily need to write specific questions in response in their books - so long as I react in the lesson content and they know what they should be doing next (but that doesn't always need to be written down while marking). Yes this brings with it some issues in terms of evidence of feedback when doing a book trawl, but come and talk to my classes - I challenge anyone to find a student that doesn't know what they need to do to improve.

So they know what to do to improve, how does RAG123 do that?
Is it possible that all students really need to DO to improve is "put enough effort in and try your best to achieve the learning objectives in each lesson" and perhaps "let your teacher know when you haven't understood something"?

If I write in a student's book "you need to improve your algebra skills" exactly how does it help them really? If they struggle with algebra then just telling them that they need to improve it is basically just stating the obvious and misses a vital element of how to improve.

If I correct some work and give a model answer without other explanations/support, etc then that could just be showing them how to solve that problem, not addressing the misconception that caused the original error.

However if I am shaping lesson tasks to help them with their algebra skills then really what they need to do to improve is to put in as much effort they can to the tasks that I am guiding them through. They know that so long as they are putting in plenty of effort and trying to do the tasks I am planning they will make progress, because the plans are based around what they have shown me they can do and therefore what they need next.

Therefore I believe the single most important bit of feedback in RAG123 is the effort grade (RAG for us, but others do it differently). That's the bit the student has direct control over. If they are trying hard then it's up to me to design tasks that maximise learning. However if they're not trying hard then the key step for improvement may well be just try harder first.

I do give them other pointers too, they do get written comments, but often they are very short, and backed up with verbal discussion.

Errors don't accumulate
The most significant thing for me with RAG123 is I can see clearly if a class, a group of students or an individual is working at the level I expect for them. If not I can do something about it. However with RAG123 I do something about it next lesson, not in 2 weeks when the misconception has compounded to make bigger errors, or when the student has completely forgotten the thought process that took them there. Really importantly it's before we move off a topic, so I can re-teach or revisit aspects before leaving them.

For example I could draw the following graph for understanding over time with "traditional" marking - by this I mean big detailed feedback done once every 2-3 weeks.

Before you say it, yes I know learning is non-linear, but lets think of this as a rhetorical picture!

The important part is that with traditional marking, corrections must be big if the student drifts from the intended understanding. I may be exaggerating a bit and it may well be that the traditional marking does close any gaps perfectly between intended and acquired understanding, but equally it may not fully close the gap, simply because it's not timely enough. It's also harder to then check again that the gap has closed - does that happen in the next 2-3 week cycle? That may be too late.

By contrast a RAG123 graph might look like this

Obviously I'm idealising - I like RAG123! But doesn't it make sense that lots of little corrections stand much better chance of getting back or staying on target than fewer bigger ones?

Will it work for any subject?
I honestly don't see why not. Most people I talk to about this respond initially with "well it might work for maths but we mark things differently." Actually I know people using it in science, RE, English, MFL - how much more different can you get?

If you think it might work then why not try it? If you think it won't work why not try it anyway - within a week you'll know your students better than ever!

Actually you don't even have to do it daily - every 2 lessons or every 3 lessons with self assessment every lesson would still be beneficial.

I should stop sounding quite so much like a salesman on this - and my next post will be on something other than RAG123 - I promise!!

However, seriously, if you don't like RAG123 please let me know - I'm keen to understand its limitations and put some balance to my sales pitch on this!

Using SOLO in a maths classroom

I've blogged on SOLO before (here and here), and it's still very early days in rolling this out beyond a few experiments, but it's working and developing...

Here are a few of the things we've been trying...

SOLO to structure revision:
The hierarchy of understanding that SOLO brings is a natural match to structuring revision. In helping my year 9 middle ability group to prepare for a test I put together some  sheets that tried to help them to collect and organise their knowledge & skills.

I used SOLO to guide them trough it:

• Prestructural - do they remember that we've covered that topic?
• Unistructural - can they remember one fact about it?
• Multistructural - can they remember any more facts about it?
• Relational - can they combine these facts to answer some questions about it?
• Extended Abstract - are there any links to other things that will help them to remember the key points?

I didn't want to guide them too much so I left most of the boxes blank, but gave example questions for them to complete in the Relational box, so they could prove their understanding. A completed sheet looks like this:

I tried this with the class with only a limited explanation of the stages - just presented them with the sheets and encouraged them to use their notes or other resources in the room to help get from Prestructural to Relational, pushing to Extended abstract where possible. The students reacted in a really positive way - they really liked the way they could demonstrate increasing understanding. The weaker students also liked that they could demonstrate some understanding even if they couldn't get all of the way to the bottom of the sheet. They recognised that they needed to find more of the multistructural facts and link them up in order to answer the questions posed. As a result I will definitely be using this approach again with this group.

More advanced revision
I have also started using a similar approach with my year 13 group. Initially this was a relatively informal process, with the SOLO icons scribbled on the board and student lead notes being made in class. Like this:

Following the success of the year 9 sheets, and a good response from the A-level students I've now got to the next step and created some proper A-level revision sheets - like this:

Tried it out with yr 13 on Friday - again a really positive student response, meaning I'll create more.

SOLO as a problem solving tool
I've also used SOLO a few times to help students to solve unfamiliar problems. For example without actually teaching anything about arc length or sector areas I put this slide up on the board:

The class then followed a "Think, Pair, Share" type activity to generate enough facts, individually and as a whole class. They then linked them up to allow the problem to be solved.

The second slide (arc length) needed much less discussion as the class had already accessed the key facts, and reached the solution more quickly.

Form there, without me actually telling the class how to do it at any point in the lesson, they all went on to confidently answer a range of questions relating to arc lengths and sector areas.

SOLO as a starter
We've also looked at using SOLO to collect prior knowledge on a topic at the start of a lesson. This can be really useful with a new group, or when coming across a topic that you've not touched on with a group before. Just put the icons on the board, write the topic name next to the prestructural blob and then see what facts the students can give to you and what links they can make between the facts.

SOLO as a Plenary
Part way through a lesson or at the end - just ask the students where on the SOLO taxonomy they think they are, how they know that and what they need to do to move to the next level - they soon get the hang of the icons and the conversations are great.

How are you using SOLO?
Do you have any comments or suggestions - I'm really keen to know how others are using SOLO in maths and in other areas - please comment or drop me a line on twitter.

Spreading #RAG123

UPDATED Feb 2014 - presentation updated for delivery to Teachmeet Solihull, including more recent feedback from people trying it and an "FAQ" section...

The original form of this presentation was created for sharing at Teachmeet Oxford in December 2013. I never actually delivered it due to an Ofsted inspection that happened at my school which meant I couldn't attend the Teachmeet.

I've now updated the presentation, which also includes the positive Ofsted feedback on the RAG123 approach to marking.

Find the powerpoint slideshow here

My original & most recent posts on RAG123 can be found here, and here

If you try or share RAG123 please let me know how it goes, positive or negative - comment here, send me a tweet @ListerKev or use the #RAG123 hashtag.

Getting reflections started

It can be a real battle to get students to reflect on their learning or on feedback given. Sometimes it's because they don't really know what to write, and other times I think it's because they don't know how to get started or how to form the sentence...

Give them something to start with

I've found fantastic responses when students are given the first part of a sentence to complete - it's like it just unlocks the door to reflection for them...

I put the following slide up on the screen and ask the students to pick 1 or 2 sentences to copy & complete. This could be done mid lesson or at the end. Sometimes I discuss the responses verbally with the students as part of the lesson, otherwise I use them as something to respond to and establish a dialogue with while marking books. Given these starting points I've found that the quality of responses is usually really good.

(A quick health warning here - the content of the picture is NOT mine originally. I picked it up somewhere on the web, liked it, tried it and found it to be really useful. However I've forgotten where I got it from originally. Based on the powerpoint file I believe it was put together by someone called Julia Fardy - thanks Julia! Really not looking to steal someone else's work here but it's so useful I want to share it! - if anyone wants to claim credit for this I'll happily reference properly...)

Progress tweets

Something else I've found useful is to ask students to "tweet me about their progress" - currently they don't do it actually on twitter, just write it in their books, but long term I'd like to think we can get to actual tweets.

The first time I ask a class to do this I usually have a prompt like this:

(This slide is mine but I'm sure others use progress tweets as a concept)

However they soon get used to it and now with my classes I can just say "do me a progress tweet" and they give me some useful feedback.

Interestingly the 140 character limit seems to spur them into actually writing more effectively than a basic "What went well". Again sometimes I will discuss them verbally, or use them as part of a dialogue in marking. It's also really nice when the students come up with a few #hastags that relate to the lesson or key words.

Instant plenaries

Both of these ideas can become instant reflective plenaries that can be bolted into a lesson with minimal planning. Particularly useful if a lesson has taken an unexpected turn off piste and your planned plenary wouldn't work any more.

Key point though - it's vital to show the students that you value their comments by discussing/responding to them - otherwise they'll stop putting any effort in and the comments stop being so valuable.

Give them a try - they're well worth a go.

All comments welcome as always.

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...

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.

Helping pupils work more neatly - Why is maths done on squared paper?

Update November 2013 - turns out that while students do appear to work more neatly on lined paper (purely a subjective view), they also seem to work much BIGGER. The result is them filling exercise books about 30% more quickly than they did with the squared paper (again a subjective generalisation, but noticeable across groups and the whole school). The neatness may improve but the basic quality of the work and hence the assumed quality of the learning is fairly similar. As a result we have just decided as a department to revert back to squared paper - mainly to slow down the consumption of books and the resulting growth in departmental spending! We'll just have to go back to policing the neatness...

Fairly short one this - bit of a work in progress actually, but showing good signs of positive effect...

Background
Standard practice in our school, and in every maths department I've ever seen in a UK school is to ask students to work in books with squared paper. this can be 5mm squared or 10mm squared, but it's always squared. We used 5mm squares.

However I often find that students struggle with this - the presence of the vertical lines seems to negate the horizontal ones in terms of organising their written work which can weave around all over the place. This is particularly true of weaker students or for students that struggle with presentation.

I thought about this for a while and it occurred to me that we only occasionally actually make use of the squares (drawing graphs, diagrams), otherwise the squares are a bit of a distraction for written work and note taking. We also have the issue that students often work more neatly when they draw a margin on the pages, but then we get into a battle of wills to insist that one is drawn (as it's impossible to buy a squared paper book with a printed margin).

On the other hand exam papers in the UK always give either completely blank space for working or a lined space. If a squared grid or graph paper is needed then it is explicitly printed into the papers. Similarly once you depart from the world of education it is very rare to come across squared paper unless you specifically need it.

So why do we persist with squared paper in classrooms?

I raised this in a department meeting and as a team we decided to stop with squared paper. As such our last delivery of exercise books was just lined, with a pre-printed margin (we've found they're also slightly cheaper than squared paper books - for those of you that are looking to shave down your departmental budgets!).

It's early days still - they're still rolling out across the department as students use up old books, however with about 30% of our students now on lined books the change does appear to be quite marked...

Students who used to scrawl all over the place on squared paper suddenly start writing on the lines (as they're trained to do in every other class where they need to write something down). This is purely a subjective thing, but the books with lined paper do look neater.

Speaking to students they much prefer to write on lined paper, and they say it's easier for them to organise their work.

What happens when they do need to draw a graph or need to use squared paper? the answer is obvious - We just give them a loose piece of squared or graph paper to stick into their lined book.

Is this purely about appearances?
Not really - it's about helping the students to make clear notes that they can understand, and can show their workings in a clear way.

Summary
1) The student's work is neater and more readable (so far this appears to apply across ability ranges and genders) - I've not got any pics to illustrate this but will try to grab some and update the post with them in due course.
2) The students say they prefer the lined books to work in
3) Lined paper matches the format given in exams and the likely paper available outside of the school environment
4) The lined books are cheaper

So why do so many maths classrooms persist with squares?

All thoughts welcome...

Giving summative tests formative impact

Not quite so directly related to managing variability this one, but it is a useful approach and it certainly does help if the whole department is doing it!

The problem
Summative tests such as the completion of mock exam papers just result in a grade. The grade is really useful for departmental level tracking, but the grade alone doesn't give the students an indication of what they need to do to improve.

This is the classic formative vs summative conflict that has been discussed at length in various forums - I'm certainly not the first to encounter this conflict. There is a wealth and breadth of work on this such as "Inside the black box" and other work of Dylan William, among many others.

So the challenge becomes to balance the need to do the summative tests to help predict grades and assess the performance of students, while at the same time making the result more meaningful than just a grade or level so that the students get something useful out of the tests as well.

The approach
I aimed to give the department and students a framework to help them diagnose where their performance  was strong or weak in a summative test so that it can be used in a formative way.

Perhaps it's due to my background but Excel came to the rescue again!

I created a sheet that allows student performance on each question or sub question on a test to be entered. (sheet is a bit clunky and may not be the most elegantly presented, but it works) This is a relatively coarse measure - full marks gets a green, some marks gets an amber, no marks gets a red - and it's subjectively assigned by the teacher (or possibly by the student). This can take a little time but data for a full class of 32 can normally be entered in less than 20 minutes once you get into the swing of it. Once filled in it looks like this... (I've chosen one with plenty of colour on it!)

Firstly this is quite a visual guide for the teacher. So in this example it is clear that Q5 & 16 were quite well completed but Q6, 11 and 13 were completely unsuccessful.

This can then be used to create summary graphs to help further analysis at a teacher level, like this...

However this still doesn't really give anything back to the students (useful for the teacher though). To make the leap to formative feedback the same sheet automatically creates a personalised feedback form for each student that looks like this:

The columns identifying "strong", "could improve" and "need to improve" correspond to the red, amber & green ratings on the first sheet.

Now this becomes more useful as it clarifies the topic, sub topic or specific skill that the student needs to work on. Note that the descriptions assigned to each question are teacher generated & editable to give whatever level of detail needed.

In follow up lessons the students can then be guided to tasks that will help them to fill in knowledge in their weaker areas. Additionally the teacher has a clear record of where skills lie or are missing both at class and pupil level, and therefore has guidance for future planning.

A further development of this general idea to give a greater emphasis on self assessment involves giving students time to review tests alongside a structure to help them to reflect and identify strengths and weaknesses. We use the following sheets as a template for the students to complete as a review, and then encourage them to identify 2 strengths and 2 weaknesses.

Depending on the group this sheet can be used alongside or instead of the red/amber/green one.

We've been using all of the above across Key Stages 3 and 4, and also in selected applications in Key Stage 5.

Other uses
I've also used the red/amber/green sheet to give feedback on written assignments and on presentations - the objectives & assessment criteria for the assignments can replace the question topics.

Nothing new
I'm fully aware that this isn't a massive innovation, many teachers review tests at a question by question level. What I'm not so sure of though is how many then use this information to form the basis of specific and personalised feedback to students.

I should also observe that I am aware that there are a great many schools where this type of thing isn't done at all for their summative testing, and as such they are missing an opportunity for some really useful feedback to both students and teachers.

The usefulness of these sheets and structures is in the fact that it is relatively easy to create good feedback that can be reflected and acted upon in follow up lessons.

Benefits - is it worthwhile?
This is one of many strategies we have been using in my department over the last 18 months.

At a basic level it has provoked useful and informed discussions with students about areas to improve. As well as being used for guidance in class, we have had students specifically take copies of these sheets home to use during independent study. Fundamentally the students like them and tell me and the department that they find them useful to shape their studies. If I saw no other benefit then this positive student message would be enough to encourage me that it was worthwhile. However we have a more tangible indication that the approach is working...

As part of a programme of regular mock exams with year 11 this feedback structure has allowed us to prepare almost the whole year group for early completion of their GCSEs in the March exams. Yes I know there are mixed views on early entry but our students were ready for these exams and the results they delivered prove this...

The results were published this week, and have already set a new school record for maths in terms of A*-C. Compared to other schools we scored 17% points higher than the average of similar schools with that exam board and 25%points higher than the average of all schools with them. With the remaining students completing exams in June, along with some students now looking to improve, we are likely to deliver in the region of a 5-10% improvement in headline results compared to last year.

I'll not claim that this feedback approach made all of the difference, but it was a contributing factor in amongst everything else.

Any thoughts?
I'd be keen to hear if anyone has another way to crack this nut, or if you have any comments or questions. Leave a comment or come and find me on twitter: @ListerKev.