Kenton School TeachMeet

Kenton School are having a TeachMeet on Thursday 2nd November and we are warmly invited. 

The event has a bonfire theme, all about putting a spark into our teaching. The event focuses on how to engage and add a va-va-voom to the classroom. How can we excite and combat apathy in the classroom? How can we eradicate the gap between the achievement of disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students? What does this look like practically? You’ll leave the event with a number of exciting strategies that can be immediately implemented into your lessons.

A number of speakers will be presenting on the evening (some from Kenton, some from other schools), all offering 3 minute tips in a carousel format- as always you choose which tip will be most relevant for you!

We have a number of exciting prizes up for grabs too. 

Refreshments from 4:30 with the meet happening from 5-6:30. If you are interest in attending send an e-mail to. TandL@kenton.newcastle.sch.uk

Mini TeachMeet 9

Link to Presentation

1. Higher-Order Questioning
SS shared some good question prompts for different levels of thinking (see presentation for question prompts):

• Knowledge, Comprehension
• Application, Analysis
• Evaluation, Synthesis

2. I’m going to speak as……

• This was adapted from the training we had in September, which SS greatly valued. He has come up with 8 categories of individual to ‘speak as’ during lessons (Chief Designer, Head of Manufacturing, Client, Inventor, Head of Quality Control, CEO/Board Members, User, Head of Finance) which he has found work well. He encouraged other departments to think of similar categorisations for their subjects.
• This is particularly powerful when asking students to ‘speak as’ these individuals and encourages them to think about aspects they might not have done if just answering the question themselves without the roleplay.

3. Purple Pen

• Student responses to feedback recorded in purple pen
• Some students work is nearly perfect and so has little purple pen, others have added significantly following feedback. 
• All students end up with similar level of detail but it is clear who has had support or who has completed the task independently
• A good way of evidencing response to feedback

4. Feedback proforma

• SS shared a new proforma they are thinking of using in Product Design where the WWW parts of the work can be completed from a checklist and ticked whilst EBI feedback is then given in a more individualised way.
• Saves the work of writing the same/similar things on 20 pieces of work whilst still providing meaningful feedback as long as the criteria are sufficiently detailed – which they were!

Scientists May Have Found the Real Cause of Dyslexia—And a Way to Treat It

A bold headline for a study containing 60 subjects but this does make interesting reading. Many thanks to VW for pointing me in this direction.

In essence, they noticed that there are physiological differences inside the eye between subjects with and without dyslexia:

Just as most of us have a dominant hand, most have a dominant eye too, which has more neural connections to the brain. The study of 60 people, divided evenly between those with dyslexia and those without, found that in the eyes of non-dyslexic people, the arrangement of the cones is asymmetrical: The dominant eye has a round, cone-free hole, while the other eye has an unevenly shaped hole. However, in people with dyslexia, both eyes have the same round hole. So when they're looking at something in front of them, such as a page in a book, their eyes perceive exact mirror images, which end up fighting for visual domination in the brain. 

They go on to use a special lamp which helps to eradicate the problem.

Original blog post: https://goo.gl/6qrMcq
Guardian article: https://goo.gl/U9z6Rp

Spaced Practice, in Practice

Here is a post from another blog on the use of 'spaced practice' whereby topics/concepts are revisited over time along with low stakes testing to help the learning to be retained.
The original post describing the practice is here: https://goo.gl/8tt41d 

This newer post (https://goo.gl/55K9jQ) desribes how the teacher has achieved this in 'real life' rather than just in theory.

It begins:
"Firstly, we introduced ten-minute recall sessions at the beginning of every lesson. This meant that we could test students’ knowledge effectively without creating extra workload. However, using some of the principles of interleaving, these sessions would not necessarily be based on the text being studied in the lesson; they would be based on knowledge taught in the lesson, week, month, term, or even several terms before. So, the beginning of a lesson might involve a recall task focused on Macbeth, then the main body of the lesson would be focused on Jekyll and Hyde. With these ten-minute recall sessions in every lesson, we could have mini revision sessions for every unit, almost every week."

The 10-minute recall sessions took the form of:
1) Multiple choice tests
2) Filling in the blanks (from Knowledge Organisers) 
3) Filling in the blanks (quotations)
4) Quickfire quotations
5) Interleaving homework

Do read the full blog for more detail! https://goo.gl/55K9jQ