A toolbox to help start your term

UPDATED JAN 2014. - Adding in #RAG123 info and updating download data.

I've posted at various points over the last few months about using common formats, excel sheets or tools to help make some aspects of day to day teaching easier. It's not about making everyone's teaching the same, it's about giving a basically good structure to help save time and allow outstanding teaching to flourish around it. A background to this philosophy can be found here in my very first post.

I thought it might be useful to collect the main bits together in one place with a bit of commentary, and I've also shared publicly a couple of the formats that I've not shared previously... Realise this is a bit of a clip show of a post, but hopefully it is also useful.

Transform your marking with #RAG123
Counter-intuitive it may be, but marking more often really can reduce your workload and have real value for students. I can't emphasise enough how much impact this has had on my day to day teaching and also helping to manage my workload. Powerpoint explaining the key points can be found in this post.

Seating plans
Seating plans are deceptively powerful and can be used as an assessment and monitoring tool as well as a way to manage behaviour. However the more data you put in the harder it is to change the plan at a later date - this is a tool to help with that... In this post I explained the thinking behind this sheet - basically it allows you to create and modify seating plans easily and include useful bits of student data at the same time.

The proforma is here. (over 800 downloads on TES as of Jan 2014)

Markbook and feedback proforma
The process behind creating this sheet is explained in this post - the resource is a feedback sheet that has been used in my department to transform the quality of feedback & marking, as described in this post.

I've not shared the proforma before, but it's now available for download here. (downloaded over 400 times on TES as of Jan 2014)

Formats for giving summative tests/assessment formative impact.
As discussed in this post and this post I really value testing in my department, but it's got to be about more than just grades and levels. The following resource allows analysis of any exam, assessment or test. I've even used it in the past to give feedback to book marking but that's been superseded by the feedback proforma above. I find this type of analysis really powerful and the students at our school also find them useful.

I've not shared this widely before, but again it's now available for download here. (downloaded over 150 times on TES as of Jan 2014)

Regular testing followed by good analysis and formative feedback has resulted in our department posting a second consecutive record year of results at GCSE. This year was the first time ever that the school's maths results passed 70% A*-C, with an overall figure of 76.8%. You can see how regular mocks and feedback led to improvement in the graph that tracked our progress during the year...

Prompts for questioning linked to SOLO
This has been one of my most popular posts ever, and the resource has been downloaded on TES over 360 times as of Jan 2014. You can find the sheet here.

Other SOLO resources can be seen here.

Sharing learning objectives with KS5
Sometimes I find it difficult to share learning objectives in a meaningful way with KS5 students - I've found this format useful as explained in this post. The format for the logs can be found here. (over 70 downloads as of Jan 2014).

Make yourself some promises for the start of term
As a HoD or as a classroom teacher it is good to take a few moments to reflect and make yourself some promises. I've explained the thinking behind the formats in this post, and the documents themselves are available here. (over 130 downloads as of Jan 2014).

Other tips to help this year to be better than the next
1) Get on twitter... why? see this post...
2) Do something different in your classroom - here are some ideas
3) If you want something to improve - find a good way to measure it an make it visible - as explained here.
4) Run a departmental open day - you'll get way more from it that you might expect. Details on our first ever one can be found here.

I hope that this coming academic year will be good to you and your students - if you have any other good ideas please do share them.

Making resolutions for the new academic year

Was thinking earlier and this idea popped into my head... Thought it worth writing up - will blog again about how it goes once I've tried it...

Making resolutions
In recent weeks I've seen various people on twitter/blogs talking about making promises for the coming academic year, such as @HoDTeacher, @magicalmaths, @TeacherToolkit, and there are bound to be more that I've not spotted.

I got thinking about what I wanted to resolve and started scribbling down some headings that I wanted to sort them under (yes my mind really does work that way!!). The headings I came up with were:

• Something to continue doing
• Something to stop doing
• Something to start doing
• Something to take a risk on
• Something to improve
• Something to enjoy
• Something to persevere with

To make all of these changes it occurred to me that I might need some help, so I added some categories for help too (segregated between school and home) - more below...

When I looked at the headings and the sheet I'd scribbled out I realised that I could use the same basic sheet in 3 linked but different ways.

Resolutions for departmental planning
At the start of an academic year (and again at the start of each term) I lay out the priorities for the department and link that to the actions we are taking and are going to take. I try to make this a two way discussion, and to help that this year alongside sharing the priorities I am going to ask the team to help me to fill in this sheet for the department:

I envisage a post it note & prioritisation activity to help decide the various inputs. I then plan to put it up on the wall in our resource base and refer to it in departmental meetings as the term progresses.  (A link for a word version of this file is given at the bottom of this post)

Personal resolutions
Some of my team reflect and plan for themselves as a matter of course, while others need a bit more coaxing. To help structure this for the whole team I am also going to ask them all to complete this subtly different version for themselves.

Importantly I am going to encourage the team to ensure that their responses do not all need to be school related (we've all got lives outside). I've also changed the help section a little to recognise that we may need help from people outside of school. I will encourage the team to put these sheets in their planners for reference during the term, and if they are willing I'd like to take a copy of theirs too, but I'm not planning on forcing this (I want copies only because I might need to arrange the help they need and it could help plan CPD for the department).

(A link for a word version of this file is given at the bottom of this post)

Student resolutions
After doing all of this it occurred to me that I could use something like this as a start of year activity with my tutor group, which I can then use during the year for mentoring. I might yet use it with some of my maths classes too. I tweaked it to make a student version (note I took out the "take a risk" row - thought it could be contentious!):

Hope they are useful
Word versions of all these documents are available for download here.

As always - all comments/thoughts welcome.

Some pieces of paper are more important than others

I think I've started to write this post or something like it about 5 times, but I either scrap it or it becomes something else during writing. It's done it again to some extent, and the message I thought I'd sat down to write about was very different to the final post that I've just re-read. That's one of the fascinating things about writing a blog - you think you have this amazing, powerful argument for something groundbreaking and then you write it down to realise it's a bit of a generic rant. Hopefully this has turned into something more worthwhile in the writing!

An old assembly
After finishing my A-levels I did a year out in industry before going to University. As part of the training I did during this year I went back to one of my old schools to do an assembly for the students about to start their GCSEs.

The assembly went roughly like this:

I held up a £10 note and asked the students what I was holding - obviously they all said "ten pounds" (hardly a challenge). We then got into a bit of a discussion about the fact that it was actually just a piece of paper, but society had attached an extra value to the specific printing and format of that piece of paper. If I took another piece of paper and wrote £10 on it then the value doesn't follow it. The message I was trying to send from this is that some pieces of paper are more important than others as society attaches a particular value to them.

Having then quickly established that all of the students (and the watching staff) wanted to have lots of £10 notes in their futures, the students suggested that the best way to do this was to get a good job, and we linked that to good qualifications. From there I steered the discussion towards my newly received A-level certificates. Again I was emphasising that they are all just pieces of paper, but the information on them and what it means to society makes them more important than some other pieces of paper. These certificates (pieces of paper) had helped me to secure a university place, and my plan was that this in turn would allow me to get a good job and earn lots of £10 notes.

In summing up I tried to emphasise the need for the students to work hard in their new school to maximise the value of all of their bits of paper to give them the best chance of having lots of £10 notes.

Important bits of paper stand up to time
I'll fully acknowledge that the assembly I've just described was a bit clumsy and heavily contrived - I was only 19 years old after all! However at various points in my life, and even more so since I have been a teacher, I keep coming back to the fact that we build our society around certain pieces of paper.

Beyond the A-levels I was able to talk about when I was 19 I now have my degree certificates, chartered engineer accreditation, teaching qualifications, marriage certificate, birth certificates of by children, and I could go on. Each one is technically just a piece of paper, but in its own way has a value way beyond that. Critically these pieces of paper endure over time and stand as proof of certain events even if the detail of the events themselves fade from memory.

For example, I have a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Bristol. To get this I studied topics such as thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, systems and control, electronics, and several more that don't spring immediately to mind. I took exams in these topics at various points during the course, and I graduated in 1999 with a certificate stating that I achieved first class honors.

I understood the course well at the time and given my results it is clear that I was able to demonstrate this in an exam, however if you now presented me with almost any of the questions I faced back then I would struggle. I can recall some small bits of information on some topics, but the vast majority has been forgotten due to the fact I stopped using it after finishing my degree (even though I immediately took up a job as an engineer)

Importantly though the qualification represented by my degree certificate (piece of paper) doesn't fade with time - it still has the same impact and value on every job or course application form I have ever completed. While my school qualifications, degree certificates and professional accreditations didn't actually secure any of my engineering or teaching jobs on their own, they were there as evidence when I completed the application forms (more bits of paper) that got me shortlisted.

What all of this demonstrates is that though my working knowledge of the subjects I've earned certificates for may have diminished, I have hard proof that I achieved a specified standard at some point in the past. This proof (piece of paper) has a value in society much greater than the detail of the topics needed to gain the certificates in the first place.

Hard evidence
What I'm getting at is that I think it is important to remember that when a student leaves our care the key thing they take with them as hard evidence of our impact on their life is the exam certificate we help them to achieve. This will be the case so long as society attaches a long term value to these pieces of paper.

Yes schools do so much more than just create exam results, and of course it's not always just about the grade, but grades are often the core currency of a student's future. Of course I hope that I encourage students to be interested in maths, and to be the best people they can be in the future. However if I've not also maximised their grade using whatever tools I have available to me then I've let them down in some way.

In 5 years time it is unlikely that anyone could tell based on hard evidence if that particular person was taught to the test or studied a broad and rich curriculum. They may also have just scraped their grade or just missed out on the grade above. The past student may well have forgotten how to add fractions, use the cosine rule and have thrown away their scientific calculator. They might have discovered that trick I showed them as an act of desparation to solve a particular type of exam question stops working when they apply it in all other contexts. Or they might realise why I forced them to derive that formula so that they knew where it had come from, even though it wasn't part of the exam.

Whatever route was taken to the qualification (be it educationally awesome or awful), the piece of paper it gives to the student is the thing that lasts the longest; it could well be of more future value to them than all the skills they used in order to earn it.

Most importantly
I intend to celebrate successes and learn from any disappointments. Then I'll consider how I can best help next year's cohort - their pieces of paper are still blank!

As always all thoughts welcome!

Radio silence

It's going to be a little while until I post anything more... I'm working on updates & additions to several early posts, plus plans and new ideas for the new academic year.

However most importantly it's the summer holidays... and as a result I think it is vital that time is taken away from teaching and even thinking about teaching - partly to spend much missed time with my family and partly to recharge, relax and come up with some fresh ideas.

Keep an eye out for updates restarting in September - in the mean time please revisit, comment, make suggestions on any of my earlier posts - or better still - take a break - you deserve it too!

10 thoughts for a head of department

I've just finished my second year as head of department. I think they've been successful - we have scored school record GCSE results in both years, have raised the profile of the department immeasurably and have recently demonstrated the strength of our team with our first ever departmental CPD open day. I had taken on the HoD role with just one year of teaching experience completed in another school before I started (so I've just finished my 3rd year of teaching). While I knew about managing teams from my earlier experiences and trainign in my engineering career, it struck me as odd that there is no real training or standard framework given to all school HoDs when they start. The following list includes some thoughts that might be useful to new HoDs (not trying to blow my own trumpet or looking to teach anyone to suck eggs - you're welcome to ignore or disagree with any aspect of this if you see fit! I just thought these might be useful...). I'm listing these in no particular order...

1) Get to know your team's strengths & weaknesses at an individual level
Particularly important if you are coming into a HoD post at a new school, but it's also worth considering if you're being promoted at the same school - knowing someone while working alongside someone can be very different to knowing them as a line manager.

Vitally don't take anyone else's word for it. When I started in my current position I was given an overview of the department and the SLT view of all of the teachers - I'd say this was accurate for only about 50% of the team, and could have been grossly misleading if I had taken it purely at face value.

Talk to your team about their lessons and their teaching, talk to the students, gather as much information as you can.

If there are people in your team that are more experienced than you then use that to your advantage - ask for their opinion (but remember you can choose to ignore it - you're HoD after all). If there are weaknesses in the team then think about what you can do to mitigate for them and eliminate them over time through CPD.

2) Lead from the front
Effectively "practice what you preach" - never ask your department to do anything that you aren't willing to do yourself. Whether that is to take that difficult bottom set, to implement a marking schedule, or to try a new idea. You can't be judgemental on someone else's practice with any credibility unless you are demonstrating that you are doing the right thing yourself.

I'm sure there will be conflicting views on this but as far as I'm concerned You don't have to be the best teacher in the department to be an effective HoD, but you certainly mustn't be the worst! As a HoD you will teach fewer lessons than the rest of your department - if you're the best then you're actually depriving the students of the best teaching! Just as the best footballers don't necessarily make great managers, the best teachers don't necessarily make great HoDs. Due to your management commitments your teaching will probably suffer a little - just make sure you consistently hold on to good lessons otherwise you'll lose credibility quickly.

3) Get a grip on the departmental finances
Whether your budget is a few hundred pounds or a few thousand - spending it wisely can make a real difference to the department. Plan for expected purchases & bills at the start of the year so you know how much you have available for departmental development (ask your finance function to help you look back at prior year's expenditure to help you make forecasts).

Demonstrating good control will also help you justify requests for additional funding for particular initiatives. A clearly costed proposal against a backdrop of well managed finances is much more credible than scrappy data and lack of control.

I was once told that I should always ask for a bit more than I really want when asking for a budget so that when they give me a bit less than I ask for I'll have the right amount. I personally find that asking for the right amount supported by enough detail to fully justify it means that I've never yet had a budget request reduced.

4) Follow your instincts
So long as you are trying to do the best you can for the students in your care, and for your department then you can't go too far wrong. Try things out, suggest things, invent things. Ask for feedback from your team, from the students, from parents, from SLT. Never be afraid to admit you were wrong and never feel that you must have all of the answers instantly - sometimes you need to think, discuss or try something out before the right path becomes clear.

5) Embrace your conflicting roles in communication.
You're the voice of leadership to the department, and you're the voice of the department to leadership. These may require a different approach and there is nothing wrong with that - it's not being two faced, it's a vital part of doing your job.

You should filter and interpret SLT messages to your department (but not dilute or rubbish them). This should help your team to prioritise and work in line with SLT direction in the way that makes the most sense given the constraints of your department. You know your department better than anyone else (see item 1) - therefore you are best placed to work out how a particular message should be delivered for best effect. (If you do re-prioritise for your team then it's probably a good idea to let your SLT know the order you have placed priorities in - just in case they don't agree). This is a vital part of setting the tone and helping your team to be effective.

Similarly you should filter and interpret your team's attitudes and responses when communicating with SLT. If you know that your team will react badly or have reacted badly to a particular initiative then the most important thing to share is usually the reasoning behind this reaction, not necessarily the reaction itself.

Developing a bit of selective inertia in communication can be useful too. Early objections can quickly mellow to acceptance and knee jerk reactions can be revised - passing on messages or reactions too quickly can unsettle a team or harm management perceptions.

6) Take responsibility for successes and failures
With team leadership and the TLR payment it brings you take on a level of responsibility for the collective performance of the team. If the team does well then you should make sure you celebrate it both within and outside of your team. A successful HoD is only successful because of the team that they work with - lose sight of this and you'll run out of successes quickly.

Failures or poor performance from the team are also your responsibility. Acknowledge them, and learn from them. Always think about whether there was something else you could have done to avoid it - could you have detected it earlier? changed the staffing? changed the exam? asked for help? Don't point fingers at individuals if things go wrong - it's not about blame, it's about putting things in place so the team doesn't find itself in that situation again.

7) Delegate and tasks let them get on with it
If you delegate a task the worst thing you can do is check up on every step - you may as well do it yourself. So long as you know the person you delegate to has the right skills (see point 1) then let them do it - they'll learn far more by doing it themselves than by you shepherding them the whole way. Remember you can delegate upwards as well as downwards, and saying no to people delegating to you can be really important.

8) Establish a clear and regular form of communication
I use a weekly newsletter that I e-mail to the team at the start of each week. Others might use a verbal briefing. The key point is that the department need to know where they can find the key info for a particular week. I include anything relevant to that week and also advance notification of upcoming dates like reporting deadlines or parents evenings. This sheet may take me an hour each week, but it saves loads of separate e-mails and conversations that can easily add up to more than an hour. This same document also includes all departmental meeting agendas and minutes, again simplifying communication as it's all in one place.

9) Know your departmental data inside out
As a bottom line as HoD you should never be surprised by a set of results or a class's performance. Knowing how each group is fairing is a vital part of actively managing the performance of your department rather than being a passive recipient of it. For me as a self confessed Excel geek I find the data crunching side of this no problem, but if you don't have the skills to do this yourself then get some help from someone that can do it, for example your school's data manager.

Never sail hopefully - find a way to measure progress and make it visible to your team.

10) Never be afraid to ask for help
There will be situations you have never come across before, there will be conflicting interests or priorities. Identifying when you need help is a real skill and the sign of a strong leader. Help could be in the form of advice, a particular skill, time, direction, prioritisation, delegation, or simply someone to vent steam at.


I hope that at least some of this is useful, but if not I've still found it useful to write. If you have any thoughts or comments then please let me know... :-)

Possibly the first ever departmental CPD open day

Friday 5th July saw our first ever departmental CPD open day. This is certainly the first time it has ever been done in our school, and based on reactions via twitter, etc. when we were planning it might actually be the first one in the country (perhaps even the world?).

Background
As with all schools we have a programme of learning walks and observations that are part of the performance management cycle. These are done with various aspects as the focus, e.g. questioning, AFL, etc. These are generally arranged by someone in leadership and to be honest  the general feel from the staff is that it something that is being done "to" them rather than "with" them.

A little while ago I was discussing this disconnect between "done to" and "done with" with Rob Williams, my department's teaching & learning leader (@robewilliams79). We thought there were two aspects that contributed to this. One is the general perception of scrutiny and the other is about having a sense of control.

Perception of scrutiny
As trainee teachers we all have loads of scrutiny; every lesson is observed, and we get feedback throughout the process. This reduces a little in NQT years when we still have a number of observations and monitoring of our practice. Once the NQT year is over though - we're left to it, with observations for performance management actively limited by union agreements. Effectively the classroom door closes at the end of the NQT year and we become free to develop bad habits, free from scrutiny except specific times when it is applied to us.

It's just like learning to drive - once you've got your licence and have been driving for a few years without supervision most people would not like to go back and take their test again, and that's what the performance management visits begin to feel like for many.

The result is that over time scrutiny of practice becomes something exclusively linked with performance management and not about CPD. The baggage of gradings and the associated fear of falling short of the mark means that these observations or drop ins become a big deal for many. This in turn means that an otherwise confident, competent teacher can find the whole thing excruciating, meaning that they actively avoid any form of scrutiny other than those absolutely insisted on.

Out of control
If you're told "I'm coming to see you teach in Period 3 and I'm going to be looking at your deployment of AFL techniques" you have no real control other than the detail of the lesson plan. If you happen to be a good (effective) teacher but find some aspects of AFL difficult to demonstrate in lessons, or if the lesson you need to teach based on the SoW doesn't led itself to lots of visible AFL the whole experience becomes traumatic. You end up shaping the lesson to suit the observation rather than delivering the lesson that the students need. You also don't get to show off all of the other really good things you do on a day to day basis because you have been given a "focus".

Retaking control
Firstly we decided that we needed to encourage people to be more open with their teaching. We'd previously seen @TeacherToolkit's "Open classroom" information and decided that we needed to push this with the team... Then a throwaway comment was made by one of us (can't remember which one) "why not have a department open day". We both thought it a good idea but left it there to mull over for a while. It just happened that while checking twitter later that day I spotted a tweet from @TeacherToolkit on the very subject and there is the resulting feed:

And so the idea went from a throwaway comment to planning a full day....

Open department - mad? brave?

Interestingly the first response from almost everyone Rob and I mentioned this to was "are you mad?" or "you're very brave". Most agreed it was a good idea, but there were all sorts of concerns, for example Annabelle was really supportive of the idea but wasn't sure that others would be...

The strange thing is that we really shouldn't be afraid of this kind of thing. If we're that unsure in our practice that we don't want to invite people in then how good are we in the first place? Teaching requires a level of confidence to carry it off - we generally have around 20-30 observers in every lesson in the form of students. Why should having another adult in the room make things less comfortable?

Anyway - we pressed on...

What we did and how we did it...

Priority from the start was that it had to be optional - we didn't want this to be something imposed on anyone - that would have been completely the reverse of the intention.

We spoke to the department to gauge reaction, emphasising that we would choose which lessons people could come and see, and that the focus of it all is showing what we know we are good at. I'm really proud to say that the department were up for it with no persuasion.

Then we chose a date - we waited until the exam season was over and we also changed timetables early so wanted things to settle in there too, hence the delay between the 24th May and the chosen 5th July.

Each teacher was asked to identify which lessons in the day they would be happy to have people dropping into, and I'm pleased to say that most offered most lessons. We decided to place a limit of 3 drop ins per lesson to minimise disruption to students. We posted a sign up sheet in the staffroom and publicised it through staff newsletters and briefings. Here is the finished sign up sheet...

As you can see - we offered a total of 20 lessons across the day. In addition we also offered the chance to spend a bit of time talking to staff about department admin processes that we use in maths. We had 23 members of staff sign up, but actually had closer to 30 drop in somewhere during the day.

We had visitors representing Science, MFL, English, Psychology, History, Geography, and even had our Library manager and Business Manager pay us a visit too. Those dropping in included NQTs, mainscale teachers, heads of department, heads of college and SLT, and they visited lessons taught by a range including NQTs and experienced staff.

Take away menu & feedback sheets

We also loved @MrsPTaylor's idea of a Take Away menu, so Rob put one together, largely from the things that I've already blogged about (but that haven't necessarily been well shared across the school). We handed them out to everyone that dropped in.

We wanted to use the day to share practice across the school, but also to get ideas about where our next focus should be. Vitally though we didn't want any form of judgement being made in terms of Ofsted criteria, etc - it's about professional development NOT grading. Therefore the feedback sheets given simply asked for two stars and a wish.

An example of the tri-fold menu and a selection of the first feedback slips are shown below...

How the day went
It was unbelievably positive. Feedback slips were really constructive both in their praise and in the opportunities for improvement. It was just really nice to see members of staff from outside of the maths department wandering in and out of maths lessons - universally with big smiles on their faces.

The maths staff were really pleased to have had the opportunity to show what we know we do well (normal, well planned, effective lessons), and to receive feedback from others in the school in a non threatening manner.

Based on the feedback slips we also seem to have given others a range of ideas that they can apply in their subjects.

Without a doubt it's a success - We now think we might look to do a couple of these per year. The main reason being that if we get used to having people in our lessons more often then "official" learning walks and observations are less of a big deal.

Key points if you're thinking of doing this.
I can't emphasise enough the importance of the voluntary nature of this. As a department we agreed we wanted it and offered it to the school. I would hate to think that someone from an SLT sees this idea and directs departments in their school to run something like this. Bringing compulsion into it would be destructive rather than constructive. Therefore I really hope that you suggest and encourage but don't direct.

During the day Rob was asked by one of our visitors "if our department did something like this would we have to do this menu thing too?" The answer is simple - not if you don't want to. Days like this can give a lot, but it shouldn't be a burden in preparation - we had most of the info around us in any case so it was mostly a cut and paste job.

For the whole day we required no special prep from anyone - no insistence on formal lesson plans (5 minute or otherwise), no enforced structure, no compulsion to offer even one class for drop ins. Even no compulsion to come and visit for those outside of the department - it's all completely optional.

The result of this optional nature is it all becomes very collegiate and supportive, and completely disarms the threatening nature of drop ins.

Overall
I really struggle to express how proud I am of the department for being bold enough to do this. I've never heard of anywhere else doing something like this during a normal teaching day, however I'm pretty sure we won't be the last (we'll do it again even if nobody else does!). The general perception of the maths department has risen immeasurably as a result of simply offering this day, and if it sparks further sharing of practice within our school or in others then it's even more worth it.

I also need to make a point of thanking Rob for his part in this and the work for the Menu and feedback slips which put the icing on the cake.

We now have a list of constructive things to work on in the coming 12 months based on a broad spectrum of feedback from peers. This is worth more than a limited sample by only a small number of observers which is what we would get from a normal learning walk or observation cycle.

If you run something similar then we'd love to hear from you about what you did and how you felt it went. If you've got any suggestions on how we might make the next one even better then I'd like to hear them too! All thoughts welcome...

Some of the things we've been doing

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

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

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

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

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

After a week or so mine looked like this:

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

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

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

One looks like this:

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

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

Another alternative is this:

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

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

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

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

 The students provide some interesting feedback to each other:

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

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

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

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

5) Key word bank

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

Fairly self explanatory - it looks like this...

6) Measuring progress against revision topics

This is another one that is supposed to be dynamic and USEFUL rather than pretty!

Linked heavily to the "passport to grade" resources by Mr Slack found here, but could be used with any topic list. Key topics displayed on the wall. When a student demonstrates proficiency in a topic they get a stamp in their passport and can go and sign the wall next to the topic. They then become an expert on that topic so if others in the class need help they can look at the wall and go and ask the relevant student.

After a few lessons it looked like this:

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

Hope this was useful

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