Sunday, 9 February 2014

The first rule of RAG123 club

Sharing best practice requires interaction, but teaching can be a fairly solitary profession - planning lessons alone, marking/feedback done alone, lesson delivery often done where you're the only adult in the room, reflection on lessons done alone.... But why?

I teach in several different rooms across a week (due to a combination of class sizes and the desire to inconvenience myself first before the rest of my team), and as a result my class's books are spread across different rooms. Previously I collected them and took them to the maths office to mark (using RAG123 - see this post), and then returned them to the correct room afterwards. The penny dropped that this was a bit silly so I have started to just sit in whichever room the books are in to mark them, which often means I'm marking in another teacher's room, and something remarkable happens.... we talk and share thoughts about the classes while getting on with our work!..... and this gave me an idea!

Wouldn't it be fascinating to identify a time each week where a number of us got together and just marked our books in the same room? I'm going to propose it next week - just to give it a try. (of course I realise that this does require people to move their books to the designated room, but this is about achieving something more than simply marking the books)

Importantly I'm not going to compel anyone to join in (acknowledge that some might find it excruciating to be in the same room as others for this kind of thing), but I'll identify a room and a time and invite others to "bring your books to RAG123 club"....

The rules of RAG123 club:

  1. Tell everyone about RAG123 club!
  2. You don't have to come to RAG123 club, but it would be great if you did
  3. You don't have to talk/share at RAG123 club, but it would be great if you did
  4. You can share anything at RAG123 club - interesting work done by a student, interesting comments, frustrating responses to a task, particular successes, particular failures
  5. Feel free to magpie any ideas you pick up via RAG123 club, and let the other person know that you've done it/how it goes
Of course some of you might already do something like this - if so I'd be keen on your thoughts.

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