Pedex final march 2015

PedEx Pedagogy exchange steeped in practice 18 February 2015 Volume VII

In This Issue...

I can’t do it yet!

Making Marking MaSer Promo5ng SMSC in Tex5les Memory strategies in Languages

From September 2014 we are delighted to announce our Teaching and Learning Leadership Team has grown in number and strength. The team now includes Mrs Ann-­‐Marie Connor, Deputy Prinipal, Sarah Marshall, Director of Teaching and Learning, Emma Stebbings, Andvanced Lead Prac55oner, Jacqui Fowkes, Challenge Coordinator, Sarah Davies, Literacy and Catch Up Coordinator, Claire Perry, Vicci EllioS and Ka5e Campbell, Teaching and Learning Champions.

We look forward to working with you in the future!

Do you teach any boy-­‐heavy classes and would like some strategies to engage male learners in lessons?

Email Vicci EllioS for more informa5on.

Talk-­‐Less teaching is a brilliant book for prac5cal teaching strategies. This is excellent for teachers at all stages of their prac5ce

Are you in need of some new ideas for teaching low ability students?

Email Ka5e Campbell for more informa5on.

My favourite 5p: Silent learning conversa/ons -­‐ give students a topic to talk about and a blank sheet of paper. They can recall or ques5on as much as they need to (within a 5me limit) but only by wri5ng things down!

This is an excellent way to review a topic, or to assess what students already know!

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I can’t do it ...YET!

This is the key message I took away from a course last summer on ‘Growth Mindsets’. Led by Carol Dweck (Professor of Psychology at Stanford University) the course looked at the fascina5ng research Dweck has done into mindsets, in par5cular the benefit of a ‘growth’ over a ‘fixed’ mindset. Dweck states that individuals can be placed on a con5nuum according to their beliefs of where their ability comes from. Those with a fixed mindset believe success is based on a fixed, innate ability that cannot be changed. However, those with a growth mindset believe that success is due to hard work and challenge. Consequently, these individuals respond beSer to set backs and see these as opportuni5es to develop their intelligence and learn.

Quote from Carol Dweck: "In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abili5es, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the 5me and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abili5es can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it."

Research has shown that students with a growth mindset actually perform beSer academically so on returning to school I was excited to start sharing these ideas with students and the belief that they could grow their intelligence!

All students in year 9 had an introduc5on to growth mindsets in one of their maths lessons. We first looked at some ‘famous failures’, ranging from Albert Einstein, to David Beckham. We discussed how even the most successful people made mistakes and it was their growth mindset and the process of learning and growing from these mistakes that made them successful. In some lessons we used the phrase ‘Failing Forward’ to capture the no5on of how failure can ul5mately lead to success.

We looked into how the brain can actually grow when mistakes are made and new pathways are created. Students were excited to see how they can develop their intelligence and grow their brain! We then developed a series of phrases to use instead of some of the common fixed mindset phrases we o`en hear in the classroom. Rather than “I can’t do algebra” we can say “I can’t do algebra…yet!” and instead of “This is too hard. I give up” we could say “This is challenging but I will use some of the strategies I have learned and persist.”

Students engaged really well with the experience and the growth mindset language and no5on of ‘failing forward’ are being used across maths lessons to encourage students to believe that even if it’s not yet -­‐ they CAN do it!

Jacqui Fowkes

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Making Marking ma;er It’s a well-­‐known fact (because we never miss an opportunity to say so!) that the marking in English is a demanding and onerous task. Students produce a large amount of wri5ng every week and require careful and specific feedback to guide them on how to improve. However, teachers have o`en complained that they spend hours marking for it to only be given a cursory glance by the student at the start of the next lesson, where they then go on to make the same mistakes in their work. This year, it has been a focus of the English department to make sure our marking has a more direct impact on our students’ learning.

Enter David Didau – English teacher extraordinaire.

Didau blogs regularly on all things educa5on, and his advice and honesty is refreshing. Many of his strategies for marking and feedback are applicable to teachers of any subject, at any level – why don’t you pick one and try it out next 5me you are marking?

Reflec/on Time

Dialogue

Encourage students to ‘talk to you’ via their books. Pose ques5ons when marking, such as: “Why have you done…” How could you improve…? “Is ___ correct?” In return they can ask their own ques5ons, make points of informa5on or clarify misunderstandings and assump5ons. Some5mes I ask students to write me a leSer, where it is their chance to have their say – likes, dislikes, something they are proud of, something they want more of, a ques5on they want answering, a worry. It means when I am reading their books I can focus on the area THEY feel they want help with.

A`er you have marked students’ books, spend some 5me at the beginning of the next lesson where they can properly read your marking and respond to it.

We use purple pens for this so it is evident where they have acted on feedback. It may be helpful to display a slide with some prompts so they have plenty to do during this 5me. This is helpful to get students to understand that learning is about thinking and developing their ideas – it is unlikely in most situa5ons that they will write something once and it be the best it can be. Depending on the comments or the tasks you set, this is a good opportunity for differen5a5on.

Find Faults and Fix

Use the literacy marking codes to iden5fy errors in the students’ work, then get them to edit or redra` where applicable. If they don’t have any accuracy errors to fix I tell them to rewrite a sentence with more sophis5cated vocabulary or opening with a connec5ve – anything that gets them to consider how to express themselves more professionally.

(Advice taken from David Didau’s blog: The Learning Spy – ‘Marking is an act of love’ October 2013)

Emma Stebbings

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Promo/ng SMSC in Tex/les

In Year 9 tex5les we aim to build a founda5on of technical skills to allow students to gain a tool box of skills and techniques that they can draw upon in Year 10 and 11. It can be challenging to engage students in skills based ‘construct’ ac5vi5es. In the past they have tended to be seen as merely a means to an end.

Armis5ce Day was the perfect opportunity to build in spiritual, moral, social and cultural development into an otherwise mundane skills task.

We set about building a cascade of tex5le poppies to be displayed during Remembrance services, using the ceramic poppies at the Tower of London as a reference. Students discovered by pooling their skills they too could create a collabora5ve sculpture. It gave us an opportunity to discuss the purpose and impact of war and how large-­‐scale art installa5ons can aSract a wider audience to reflect on SMSC issues.

Students produced a poppy every lesson for 6 lessons. Each lesson used different technical skill, process and types of material, whilst having a common theme allowed us to avoid focusing too much 5me on the design development. Having a common purpose and strict deadline encouraged students to maintain both the pace and high standard of their work.

Pupils even took it upon themselves to produce extra poppies in their own personal 5me!

Half way through, students produced a visual research page on WW1 in their sketchbooks, this allowed them to build a deeper personal connec5on to the project as they expressed their own thoughts through a variety of crea5ve approaches. To conclude the series of skill based ac5vi5es, students were able to apply their skills to produce their own style of poppy that combined the different techniques they had now mastered.

The engagement was so strong that the ac5vity was expanded to a year 7 & 8 sewing club and solidified the founda5on for departments faith day planning.

Using a common purpose to produce a collabora5ve outcome that promotes spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is a theme we will definitely consider using again!

Ka5e Lee

Words, Words, Everywhere!

In Languages, the majority of our year 10 students are currently working towards their wri5ng controlled assessment which requires them to prepare a piece of wri5ng of around 200-­‐250 words and then write it up in controlled condi5ons. The students tend to struggle with revision ideas to help them learn their spellings and word order.

Using some of the ideas of languages teaching guru Rachel Hawkes as well as other members of the Languages department, I recently tried out a memorisa5on techniques lesson with my year 10 French group; 1. Assembly Method: Cusng up the text and reassembling it

I asked the students to review each of the techniques and it turned out that there were all sorts of combina5ons of methods that the students found useful.

I realised that that it’s good to give the students a range of revision ideas to suit different learning styles and give them the 5me to try them out – let’s hope the controlled assessments go well as a result!

2. Roman Room method: Visualising yourself wri5ng out your paragraph in different loca5ons inside a familiar room 3. Chunking method: Splisng the text into ‘chunks’ and wri5ng out liSle bits at a 5me.

Jules Morris 4