Eight ways teachers can reduce their marking mountain

Thanks to MJS for spotting this article in The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/may/15/eight-ways-teachers-can-reduce-their-marking-mountain#img-1

Marking comes with the territory of teaching but, as the weather gets better, most of us would rather avoid spending all evening with only a set of books for company.

In fact, marking was identified as the single biggest contributor to teachers’ unsustainable workload in the 2014 Workload Challenge (pdf). Since then, two new reports – a Department for Education (DfE) independent workload review(pdf) and an Oxford research review entitled “A Marked Improvement” (pdf) – have highlighted ways to cut the marking mountain without affecting students’ progress. So here are some of their key recommendations to buy you a bit more time in the sun......

Follow the link above to the full article.

RAG123 marking experiment

An account of a teacher's decision to RAG123 mark students' books. This means the students rate themselves on a scale of 1-3 for effort each lesson and Green Amber or Red for their meeting of the success criteria for the lesson.

The teacher then marks their work and gives their own RAG123. This has led to some good dialogue between student and teacher and this might be a relatively painless way for this to happen.

Food for thought.

https://mrbenney.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/my-rag123-marking-experiment/

Mini TeachMeet 6

1Interleaved Learning (JLi)

·         Teaching can become quite episodic whereby each topic is taught in turn and then not revisited until revision. With interleaved learning, the attempt is to try to build on learning rather than have blocked learning - ABC ABC ABC rather than AAA BBB CCC

·         New syllabus more likely to require students to mix skills together than have blocked learning

·         Evidence suggests students achieve better as a result

·         Use starters as a way to recap from several weeks ago - Corbettmaths

·         Video - Robert Winston synapses. Learning something is difficult at first but as the signals pass again and again a more solid pathway is produced.

·         DO shared some thoughts from Professor Coe on this regarding recall. If one wants students to remember things from some time ago, one has to require them to do so in order to set this expectation. If we teach in an episodic/modular way then that’s how they will learn.

3 Challenge Strategies(JCD)

·         Jason shared 3 strategies that he has used with his classes to promote challenge

1.       Worksheets where the challenges built in to tasks immediately - each question has a challenge rather than an extension at the end of the sheet. More students engage with these challenges as they happen at the time.

2.       CO2 cycle - rather than a cycle to learn by rote, JCD reads out text and pupils record what happens in their own way without using words, then has to explain their diagram etc to pupil B

3.       Gut glucose transport - rather than exposition, gave students a blank diagram and some facts as a challenge to try and describe it the self - scaffold present where necessary.

Dealing with Day-to-day Differentiation

A good read from HeadGuruTeacher on differentiation here.

He acknowledges that meeting everyone's needs is hard :

The fact is that we all find it hard  – and that’s because it is; sometimes it can feel as if you’re never quite getting it right because someone or other isn’t flourishing.  As with many things in teaching, we need to aim high but we also need to be realistic, pragmatic and tolerant of imperfection in order to flourish ourselves.

But he also talks of two non-negotiables

We all have ups and downs; we can all mess things up.  We all have lessons that seem too complicated to factor in yet another level of support or challenge; we have all had lessons where behaviour issues dominate or you do more didactic input and the differentiation is less evident. However, there are always two things that I’d say are non-negotiable:

1. Neglecting the basic access entitlement of students with particular learning needs. If you have a student that can’t read the text-book or follow the standard instructions because of learning difficulties or physical impairment, you have to sort them out every time.  You need to plan for their needs every lesson and go to them immediately to make sure they know what to do.

2. Setting work that is too easy for the top end. There is nothing worse than having students waiting for others to finish with nothing to do or simply having time for a good chat because they’ve completed a basic task.  Here the solution is to set in-built extension tasks as a matter of routine. “If you finish Task A, then go straight on to Tasks B, C and D”.   Of course, there is the issue that ‘more work’ doesn’t necessarily equate to ‘more challenge’. It’s better if each task is increasingly difficult  and you can always consider allowing students to skip Task A and B if they feel confident to tackle other tasks straight away.   At the very least, there should always always be a ‘what next’ if the initial task is quite easy.

Check out the full post by following the link below:
https://headguruteacher.com/2014/02/01/dealing-with-day-to-day-differentiation/

Strategies to promote challenge

With a focus on differentiation, it seemed apt to find a blog post on Challenge. I like #15 here - 'Don't Round Up'. When students answer questions in class do we too often focus on the parts that are right and move on? I often tell them in what ways they are right but then ask them to improve their answer, or challenge others in the room to improve their answers.

Anyway, the post follows (source: https://pjlovingthelearning.wordpress.com/2015/02/15/strategies-to-promote-challenge/ )

The word challenge is much used in education. There can be no doubt that sufficient challenge is important and the stakes are high. Too challenging and students give up and find learning uninspiring. Too little and work becomes too easy and monotonous and little learning happens.

Here are 16 strategies that may help you to challenge students.

Much of these strategies are self explanatory or maybe even plain obvious. However, I think these three ideas in particular are all really important.

Firstly, as Willingham rightly says
‘Memory is the residue of thought’. So, strategies that make students think are essential, in my view, for challenging learning. Otherwise, we run the risk of our students being on ‘autopilot’ and therefore not learning.

Secondly, encouraging students to take risks in their learning and not worrying about failure. This is easier said than done. However, a climate of excellence, positive classroom relationships and using the ideas of Dweck’s Growth Mindsets should support this.

Thirdly, I had increasingly come to believe that questioning is one of the most essential tools in the pedagogical toolbox. Doug Lemov’s ideas in his work ‘Teach like a Champion’ really struck a chord with me. Not rounding up student answers and using probing questioning to challenge misconceptions and promote deeper thinking can be adeptly utilised by the teacher to support challenge, thinking and understanding. Crucial is not just the questions we ask but how we respond to their responses. Through increasing our own wait time by a few seconds we can ask more probing questions and foster better class discussions.

Clearly, this is not an exhaustive list. Ultimately, it’s about us, as teachers, taking that risk and really believing our students can do it. So, what if the students say ‘I can’t do it’. Great! They are being challenged. ‘You can’t do it yet’ must be our reply.

So, think about how we learnt to ride a bike when we were younger. When it happens and clicks it really is one of those ‘eureka’ moments. Yet it happens through challenge. Taking the stabilisers off, experiencing the failure and frustration of falling off and taking the risk to really really go for it. That’s what makes lessons challenging too!

What are your ideas on how to best challenge students?

The Art of teacher exposition

Sometimes in the midst of planning, assessing, collating resources, re-working schemes of work I certainly take for granted the basics of teaching - how we explain things. This blog post that I've come across looks at just that. Why not take an opportunity to reflect on your own exposition and think about how you explain concepts to students. What if they don't understand?

Link to blog post 'The Art of teacher exposition'

Mini TeachMeet 5

In the fifth Mini TeachMeet, FG and DO shared ideas.

1.       Differentiation by using song (FG)

·         FG shared how she uses an Irish folk song within English lessons. The students have certain skills that they have to apply to a text (in this case a Crime and Punishment text). The students find this difficult.

·         By using a song, and with the written verse, she gets them to apply the principles to the song and finds the students more able to develop the skills necessary before then applying them to the texts.

·         FG got us to listen to the songs ourselves and went through the exercise with us.

·         It was agreed that this would be a useful task for any subject that might have more generic skills that can be applied to other contexts.

2.       DAS Teacher Toolkit (DO)

·         DO shared his idea for developing a teacher toolkit for Dame Allan’s as at present it is difficult to know within T&L what is good and what is a phase

·         Teachers are often are re-inventing the wheel and making resources which in more generic forms would be useful to other subjects

·         Staff might be unsure what might work in our setting

·         It was resolved that we should try to develop a bank of things that work in Dame Allan’s (ideas for activities, generic resources) along with a small write up with contextual information – linked to a staff member who uses it, example of use in their subject

·         This could be held on the blog

What is Worth Reading for Teachers Interested in Research?

A good selection of reading material here from Professor Coe at the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring in Durham. Much of it is freely available online.


His starting point is that when he gives talks he is always surprised by education is in such contrast to other professions such as medicine where a knowledge of recent literature is paramount. But he is sympathetic to the fact we may not know where to start or have read lots of bad literature in the past and are therefore reluctant to try again.


He goes on:
"So here is my list of sources of educational research for teachers: things that are worth reading. These are all relevant to teaching and/or school leadership and present high-quality, sound research. Most are written for a teacher audience, ie not too technical, jargon-filled or unnecessarily complex. They may be more likely to challenge, provoke and inform than immediately inspire: more balanced meal than fast food. But hopefully something nutritious to chew on, digest and enjoy."


http://cem.org/blog/what-is-worth-reading-for-teachers-interested-in-research/

Closing the Gap Marking

Mark better – take less time, get more impact

This post is a couple of years old but it shares the principles behind our marking policies.

How do you mark twenty-five essays in an hour, while ensuring students know how to improve?
Has anyone ever found a way to ‘work smarter, not harder’?
Dylan Wiliam says they should spend longer reading your comments than you spend writing them- how does that work?

https://improvingteaching.co.uk/2013/08/17/closing-the-gap-marking/

Forget the pecking order at work

A good video sourced by EAM again this time. This one about valuing the collaboration that goes on between individuals in an organisation.


"
Organizations are often run according to "the superchicken model," where the value is placed on star employees who outperform others. And yet, this isn't what drives the most high-achieving teams. Business leader Margaret Heffernan observes that it is social cohesion — built every coffee break, every time one team member asks another for help — that leads over time to great results. It's a radical rethink of what drives us to do our best work, and what it means to be a leader. Because as Heffernan points out: "Companies don't have ideas. Only people do."
"




Ted Talk Link

Growth Mindset

Interesting post found by EAM on Growth Mindset by the Headmistress of Barnard Castle Prep School. They have focussed on this approach in helping students to deal with setbacks. Of particular note was the way in which praise is now used.

Read the full post here: https://schoolsnortheastblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/growth-mindset/

An interesting post on the use of 'Exit Tickets' to assess understanding following a lesson and to use to inform planning for the next lesson. These are a single or very brief set of questions related to the objective that can be given to students to complete before they leave the room. The post describes what can then be done:

"

On looking through exit tickets, it may be that:

a) All students got the answer right: recycle the exit tickets – students have ‘got it’, you can move on, the exit tickets are no longer needed.

b) All students got the answer wrong: recycle the exit tickets – students haven’t ‘got it’, you will need to reteach.

c) Some students got it right, some got it wrong (the most likely outcome): you could

1. Briefly revise key points in a starter.
2. Share a model student answer and discuss what makes it good.
3. Share a partial student answer and improve it together.
4. RAG mark the exit tickets and have students revise or extend their work accordingly.
5. Sit down with those students who’ve struggled at an appropriate part of the lesson.
6. Group students according to the task which is the most suitable next step.
7. Pair students with answers at different levels and ask them to compare the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Whatever you choose to do, it shouldn’t take very long.  Of the options above, number 6, grouping students by task, is likely to prove onerous, and I’d be unlikely to do it.

"

The full blog post has example tickets in a number of subject. Please follow the link below for the full post:

Using exit tickets to assess and plan: ‘The tuning fork of teaching’

Jigsaws

VW found this idea about using blank write-on jigsaws for adjective endings in languages. This may have applications to other subject areas too. Multiplication tables, classifying etc.



I’ll do my homework too!

An interesting tactic by a teacher who has a class who are reticent to complete their homework is shared in this blog.

The essence of this is that the teacher resolved to give the class a practice paper as a homework but told them he would do it too, in exam conditions. The class were very motivated to try and beat the teacher and took great delight in pointing out the one mark he would have lost. We would all have to pretend to lose a mark here I am sure.


He had also annotated his paper with helpful exam tips and he projected his responses on the whiteboard.


Follow this link to read the whole post: I'll do my homework too!

The Value of Pause

An interesting blog post on the importance of not always hurtling through content and taking a step back to help student memory.

The Value of Pause

Mini TeachMeet 4

Google Apps for Education (AP)

·         AP gave an overview of the various aspects of Google Aspects for Education:

o   Google Classroom – send resources to students, set assignments, link to calendar

o   Google Drive – (Docs, Sheets and Slides)

o   Google Sites

·        AP showed how Drive can be used for assignments and how teachers have access to the files as students are creating them. This helps to eradicate issues with the handing in/transferring of files.

·         AP also showed some student work created using Docs and Drawings

·         Maps has clear applications for Geography as students can create a map from Google Maps and annotate it as they wish

·         Integration with 3^rd party apps such as PowToon for creating cartoon explanations. These can all be attached to an assignment when the student uploads it.

·         AP showed the range of 3^rd party apps available

·         AP demonstrated using forms to create quizzes using Flubaroo for grading which puts results straight into a spreadsheet

·         Sites can be created very easily by integrating Google Drive files into the page e.g., a slides presentation or a video.

The Secret of Effective Feedback

Dylan Wiliam (of Inside the Black Box fame) has written a journal article on effective feedback. The abstract is below and a link to the article.

"The only important thing about feedback is what students do with it," declares Dylan Wiliam in this article. The standard school procedure (in which a teacher looks at a piece of student work and writes something on it, and the student later looks at what the teacher has written) does not necessarily increase student learning. Teachers need to keep in mind that the purpose of feedback is not just to improve the existing student work, but to enable the student to do better work in the future. Wiliam describes how teachers can make feedback more useful by (1) assigning tasks that illuminate student thinking; (2) considering feedback as detective work for students, and (3) building students' capacity for self-assessment.

Journal Article

Using Desktop Cameras

I found a blog post about using Desktop Cameras in teaching and I know a few classrooms have these in them. This might give you a few ideas of how to use them in different ways,

Using Desktop Cameras

22 Ways to Use Twitter for Learning Based on Bloom's Taxonomy

Read the whole blog post on Teach Thought: 22 Ways to Use Twitter for Learning

101 Educators to Follow

Teacher ToolKit (@TeacherToolKit) has posted a list of 101 educators that post regularly on Twitter who you might find interesting to follow. They are not all teachers but are all educators in various sectors and countries. They may help you draw inspiration for your teaching.

Follow the link below to view the list.

http://www.teachertoolkit.me/2016/04/03/101educators/

April INSET - Starters and Plenaries

HW looked at new ideas for Starters and Plenaries.

Starters and Plenaries PowerPoint

April INSET - Positively MAD

Follow the link below to access the PowerPoint from AH's CPD session on the Positively MAD session.

Positively MAD PowerPoint

April INSET - Tracking for Tutors

Please view the handouts and PowerPoints in the Private - Staff folder.

Many thanks.

April INSET - Flipped Learning

Follow the link below to view the PowerPoint from CMB's CPD session on Flipped Learning.

Flipped Learning PowerPoint

Mini TeachMeet 3

In the third Mini TeachMeet, GW and BJW shared ideas.

1. Dvolver moviemaker (GW)

• GW explained how she had used this online simple animation/storyboard site with her Year 10 class. The students were set a task to write an animated story to explain the concept of xxx to their peers.
• Possible uses were discussed including:
• Explaining a new concept to your peers in your own words for any subject
• For the 2 characters to have a conversation in a foreign language for MFL
• To explain the stages of a method or process in maths or other subjects.
• The group then made their own animations using the laptops

2. Integrating Careers Education into the Curriculum (BJW)

• Recommendation 4 from John Holman’s research on good careers guidance regarding linking the curriculum to careers guidance was used as a context for the session.
• With the upcoming Careers week, BJW delivered a presentation aimed at helping all staff to integrate information relevant to their subjects into their lessons.
• She shared a wide range of resources to help teachers, online, on the network and in printed form so that all reps had access to relevant material and ideas.