Welcome to Philips High Teaching and Learning Magazine – March 2017
- Sharing ideas 1
with teachers!
Contents 1)
Exclusive: Only two pupils will get straight top grades in new GCSEs, DfE adviser predicts Page 3
2)
Inspection and the use of grade predictions
3)
Too Much Teaching is Wasted
Page 5
4)
Creating Memories
Page 7
5)
Manga High; Supporting the Race to Year 6 SATS Page 10
6)
Some things about Teaching
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Exclusive: Only two pupils will get straight top grades in new GCSEs, DfE adviser predicts Martin George https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-only-two-pupils-will-getstraight-top-grades-new-gcses-dfe 27th March 2017 at 12:23
Prediction about scarcity of straight grade 9s exacerbates fears about increased pressure on top-performing pupils Just two pupils in England could end up achieving top grades in all their GCSEs under the new grading system, the Department for Education's chief analyst has predicted. The government is gradually replacing the current A* to G grades with numerical grades, from 1 to 9 – with 9 being the highest. Just 20 per cent of those who would have achieved A or A* under the existing system will be awarded a grade 9. Responding to a tweet about the number of pupils who would get straight 9s, Tim Leunig, the DfE's chief analyst and chief scientific adviser, wrote: “2 is my guess – not a formal DfE prediction. With a big enough sample, I think someone will get lucky...” The suggestion that so few pupils will get top grades across the board has exacerbated concerns that the new system could increase the pressure on top-performing pupils. Last year, Caroline Jordan, then president of the Girls' Schools' Association, said independent schools were downplaying the importance of the new grade 9 to parents and pupils to preserve students' mental health, and warned that the “days of all bright pupils getting 10 A*s are over”.
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Setting the grade 'far too high' When told about Dr Leunig’s tweet, her successor Charlotte Avery, who is also headmistress of St Mary’s School, Cambridge, said schools had not known grade 9 would be this difficult. She told Tes: “If the top grade is so unachievable, I think this is setting the grade far too high. “We are almost setting up many of them to feel that they are failing, if that is the level of difficulty. “It demoralises the school and the child and the parents, who are all working so hard to make education so enjoyable and successful.” The new grading system is being phased in over three years. It will be used for English and maths exams taken this summer, with 20 more subjects following next year, and most others in 2019. Last week, Sally Collier, the new chief executive of the exams regulator Ofqual, told Tes that some parents and employers would be confused by the new grading system, and Ofqual had a big job communicating the changes.
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Inspection and the use of grade predictions Sean Harford, 2 March 2017 — Common inspection framework, Inspection, Schools The culmination of two years’ hard work for those about to take GCSEs, including my own son, is soon to be upon us. Once the exams are taken, marked and graded, the results will reflect the curriculum choices, planning, teaching, learning and sheer hard work of pupils and their teachers across the land. They will be a source of pride for most and disappointment for some. But whatever emotions they stir, we know that exam grades are only a partial reflection of what happens in a school. That’s why inspection takes into account a wide range of evidence on achievement; it doesn’t just rely on published test and exam data. We know that there is a much higher level of uncertainty this summer, with the new English and mathematics GCSEs being taken for the first time, as well as the first set of new A-levels. While we know that the national profile of results will be stable, none of us yet knows what a new grade will ‘look like’ in terms of pupils’ work. We also know that there is always more school-level volatility in results when qualifications change.
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So trying to work out how pupils will fare, in terms of predicted grades, is even more problematic than when qualifications are well established – and it is a very imprecise science even then. In short, it’s a mug’s game at times of change in qualifications, and should be avoided. That’s why I have written to all our inspectors in the March 2017 'School inspection update' to ask that they do not request predictions for cohorts about to take examinations; and that goes for key stage 2 SATs as well. I hope this reassures school leaders and teachers that inspectors will just ask how schools have assessed whether their pupils are making the kind of progress they should in their studies and if they are not, what their teachers have been doing to support them to better achievement. Cath Jadhav of Ofqual sets out the pitfalls of predicting for GCSEs and A-levels very clearly. While English and maths GCSES and some A-levels are the qualifications affected this year, the same considerations will apply to all other subjects in the next few years. The March 2017 'School inspection update' also explains that, from September, we will be providing inspectors with information about what can and cannot be inferred from this summer’s results. This will be at a couple of different levels: (1) generally how much reliance can be placed on individual subjects to reflect achievement precisely, and (2) how much reliance can be placed on different outcome measures for individual schools. I know that some believe that inspectors place too much reliance on test and exam data, while paradoxically, others criticise us for our judgements not lining up with data sufficiently. I want to assure schools that we will continue to use data as ‘a signpost, not a destination’ for inspection and that our inspectors will come into schools with clear information on what can and cannot be relied upon to even be written on the sign. I wish everybody about to take tests and exams in the next few months the very best of luck. https://educationinspection.blog.gov.uk/2017/03/02/inspection-and-the-use-of-gradepredictions/ **********
Too Much Teaching is Wasted Posted by Tom Sherrington ⋅ March 23, 2017 Let me give you some information: (Try to imagine that you’re going to learn it.)
The Earth-Sun distance is used as unit of distance called the Astronomical Unit. 1 AU. The Earth-Moon distance is 0.0026 AU to 2 significant figures. The nearest Star is Proxima Centauri (part of the Alpha Centauri system. Pronounced ‘Sen-TOR-eye’). The distance to Proxima Centauri is 270,000 AU to 2 significant figures. 5
On a scale we can relate to, let’s say 1 AU is 1 metre. The length of a metre ruler. This makes the Earth-Moon distance 2.6 mm; the Earth-Sun distance, 1 metre, and Proxima Centauri 270km – on our scale model. In fact the Moon is 384,400km away. This is about 30 times the diameter of the Earth. The International Space Station orbits 400km above the Earth which has a radius of 6371km. The moon is about 1000 times further away than the ISS.
It’s quite easy to imagine the gap-fill worksheet in a typical classroom: 1. The nearest star is
called ____________ _____________ 2. The distance to the moon is about 10 / 30 / 100/ 3000 times the Earth’s diameter. 3. If the Sun is 1 metre away in a scale model, the distance to the moon is 0.26mm / 2.6 mm/ 2.6 cm/ 26cm. Students who complete this worksheet during the lesson minutes after being taught about the information will happily fill in their sheet, answer a few questions, stick the sheet in their books and skip off to break. They may never encounter this information ever again. Even if they were asked to pronounce Proxima Centauri in class, they may never say the words again. They may never be asked to recall the distances, in absolute or relative terms ever again. What have they learned? … What will they remember in an hour, a week, a month, a year? I’d say that this type of super-short-term ‘learning’ is all too common. The teaching has been wasted because there is not remotely enough emphasis on the process of securing the information in long term memory or on practising the mathematical skills involved. The topic has been ‘covered’. But what does that mean exactly? Students will later say – ‘yeah, we’ve done scale models; we did that Earth-moon model thing’. They’ll be familiar with it – but will they have learned it?
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Of course, some lucky ones will and some won’t. But – lets’s assume we want all students to retain this information so that they have a good understanding of the relative scale of various distances in the cosmos. It’s not merely a case of knowing the numbers as bits of google-able pub quiz info; it’s about them having a really secure understanding of relative distances to inform their mental picture of scale in the universe. Let’s just assume we actually care that all our students remember the things we teach them. To begin with, we might tell the class that this information isn’t just some information. It is the information. We could present it as a neat knowledge organiser so that students can see exactly what they need to know. As we teach it, they could be engaging with the information knowing that, in 20 minutes and then again next week, they’ll have a multiple choice test on it. This could be repeated a few times in the coming weeks. Similarly we could practise the mathematics involved in making scale models with various different cosmic objects – the planets for example. We could practise saying the names of stars out loud and make sure, by checking, that every student can do it properly. Basically, if we’re teaching it with the explicit goal that the students must remember it later – at various spaced points in time – then it informs how we give the information and what we expect students to do with it. It’s just no good exposing students to information hoping it sinks in somehow after a few immediate recall exercise. This is what I call wasted teaching. It’s inefficient and ineffective. But it happens a lot. Rote learning has a bad name. Call it what you like, do it how you like – but teaching students so that they can actually remember things is our job; that IS teaching. And don’t kid yourself if you think ‘you teach for understanding not just to regurgitate in a test’… Zzzzzz. (In other words, you can’t teach for understanding and somehow bypass the process of teaching for recall if you want that understanding to last for any length of time; it’s not something you can do instead.) How are you doing yourself? Remembered the info above yet? Do you understand the real relative scales involved? Test next Tuesday. Be ready.
https://teacherhead.com/2017/03/23/too-much-teaching-is-wasted/
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Creating Memories HCC Ped Team / 5 days ago Our students are going to have to remember a lot. Our current Year 9 Geography class will have to hold the details of the Lesotho Water Highland Project in their heads, ready to apply it to a question in two years time. My Year 10 class are currently very knowledgeable about 7
the problems facing the people of Lagos and can talk in depth about the issues of the Eko Atlantic development; will they be able to do this next year? I have some reasons to be optimistic because the brain has a seemingly unlimited ability to store information – the problem is sometimes in getting it out. On Monday’s CPL session I shared a piece of research that would be familiar to many. The researchers asked people to identify the correct 1 cent coin from a selection of options. Despite having been exposed to the sight of this coin thousands of times, around half of people could not identify the right one. Exposure to something doesn’t create a strong memory. In order to remember something Daniel T. Willingham, in his book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”, says that we must think hard about it. To get my classes to remember the details of water supply in Lesotho and urban issues in Lagos I have been trying to find ways to make them think hard. One way to help students to remember is to get them to change the form of the information. Turning text into a flow diagram or into a picture. One thing that Durrington High School have been successfully doing is to represent case studies as pictures showing the key information that needs to be remembered. By thinking about how to show something you are creating a memory. To work out how to show “Hurricanes form in water heated to over 27oC” I have to think about what it means. Thinking about meaning creates memory. Another method we have been using are knowledge quizzes. David Didau talks about the importance of forgetting in creating memories. By spacing out retrieval, and making pupils struggle to remember, they will find it easier to recall the information in the future. An example of this would be the quizzes my Year 12 class do every Friday. Some of the questions will be about material they covered that week but some questions go back to topics covered much earlier. Struggling to recall will create stronger memories.
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Shaun Allison’s and Andy Tharby’s wonderful book “Making Every Lesson Count” really emphasizes the importance of excellent teacher explanation. It is a major tool in teaching well and yet something that isn’t always given much attention. One reason it is critical when finding ways to get pupils to remember is that the brain seems to be programmed to remember stories. If we can impart information that is illustrated by a story it is more likely to stick. My GCSE class remember the process of freeze-thaw because they remember my story of what happened when I thought it might be a good idea to chill a case of beers in a freezer when working in a cafe. It wasn’t such a good idea but it gave me the perfect story for a class years later. Swings and roundabouts. Pupils won’t remember by accident or even by being exposed to our brilliance. It is something we have to plan for. Questions to consider 1. What role does the recollection of information play in your subject? 2. What techniques do you use to help pupils remember key information? 3. How can pupils revise effectively in your subject?
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By Mark Enser (Geography)
https://heathfieldteachshare.wordpress.com/2017/03/23/creating-memories/
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Manga High; Supporting the Race to Year 6 SATS Posted by LeadingLearner ⋅ March 21, 2017 With only twenty six teaching days until the arithmetic and first reasoning SATs tests for Year 6 the pressure is on. Every minute of every lesson counts. We question why some children can’t remember facts they have been taught previously; when can we squeeze in revising these? There simply aren’t enough hours in the teaching week to fit anything else in. Like many Year 6 teams we wish we could have just a little bit longer to reteach and revise key topics. Manga High has become has become our go to; it’s also used as a workload busting, non-negotiable Maths homework in Years 5-8. ThroughDAFITAL (data and feedback informed teaching and learning) meetings we have used assessment data to really focus our teaching on “what children don’t already know” but need to know before May 10th. One strategy we have used is to make further use of Manga High. Instead of setting blanket whole class homework we have taken the
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information discussed at DAFITAL and set focused tasks for our Year 6 pupils, tailored to individual needs.
The above dashboard shows the different activities completed by children recently, not all children are assigned the same activity. It also clearly shows the teacher who is in need of extra support in certain areas, after Manga High use. In some cases this might be going back and rehearsing key skills from previous year groups that have not yet been mastered and consequently are hampering progress in Year 6. This is shown below with one of our Year 6 pupils now demonstrating 100% accuracy with her 4x tables which she had not previously known. This new skill has helped her in class as now she knows her 4’s it is supporting with her 8’s through doubling.
With some children they have the skills but simply need to speed up their recall of facts. For them games such as Jet Stream Riders timetables helps with this working against the clock.
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Kiera and Tiegan work together to master a new skill and try to beat classmates up the leader board. We have facilitated children being able to access Manga High at breaks and lunchtimes and they are keen to support each other with skills. We have also been keen to encourage children to use and apply knowledge they have in some areas of the curriculum in a range of different contexts. Some of the activities set allow children to do this.
Luke is looking again at sequences for this activity he not only has to use his knowledge of sequences but also apply knowledge of odd and even numbers. As we approach the end assessment of a second year of higher expectations in Year 6 we are taking all the help we can get. Manga High is playing a key role in our journey to successful outcomes in Maths.
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Since its implementation mid-way through last academic year there has been a noticeable increase in pupil enthusiasm for completing Maths homework and a reduction in excuses for not completing it. Teachers are also positive about the programme and say workload in terms of marking and chasing homework has been reduced significantly. The blog post has been written by Heather Martin, our Trust Maths & Numeracy Assistant Headteacher. https://leadinglearner.me/2017/03/21/manga-high-supporting-the-race-to-year-6-sats/
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Some things about Teaching Posted on March 15, 2017 by classteaching Today I led a session for our trainee teachers on great teaching. We talked about lots of things, but in particular we talked about these four slides. Between them, I think they sum up what great teaching is all about. This one had course:
to be included of
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These three great questions from Rob Coe:
As well as these nine things from Dylan Wiliam:
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And finally of course, this from John Tomsett:
https://classteaching.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/some-things-about-teaching/
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