‘What Does This Look Like In The Classroom?’

This is a good book which attempts to bridge the gap between research and practice. In this blog post, some strategies from the book are described and how they went. In particular they focus on questioning, assessment and feedback.

Do take a look if you can:

http://www.teachergratitude.co.uk/2017/11/24/experiments-with-strategies-from-what-does-this-look-like-in-the-classroom/

Principles of Instruction

Often there can be ideas in Teaching and Learning which are not well-researched or evidenced which can be frustrating. I cam across this article from a few years ago which looks at principles of instructions which are evidenced as being effective. The summary is below if you are short on time, but the article is well worth a read.

https://headguruteacher.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/rosenshine-2.pdf

The five forms of feedback I give to teachers most often…

Tom Sherrington, an influential ex-headteachers details the five pieces of feedback he most frequently gives to teachers.

These might be useful when reflecting on our own practice. Follow the link (https://teacherhead.com/2018/01/14/the-five-forms-of-feedback-i-give-to-teachers-most-often/) for the original blog post but the five categories are:

1) Behaviour:  Be more assertive; establish what you want to establish
2) Questioning:  Ask more students more questions; involve everyone.
3) Marking and Feedback:  Make all marking an instruction for action
4) Knowledge and Recall:  Specify what students should know; check that they do; give time for practice
5) Setting the standards:  Define excellence for any task.

https://teacherhead.com/2018/01/14/the-five-forms-of-feedback-i-give-to-teachers-most-often/

Mini TeachMeet 10

1. Differentiated Starting Points (JR)

• JR shared an example of where the students choose the appropriate level of challenge for them. This is because she has students in Y7 who have had greatly differing exposure to coding already - some are brand new to it, whilst others are already quite proficient
• she notes that students are generally very good at choosing the appropriate level, but the novel approach here was in having a statement suggesting what they need to be able to do to start at each level e.g., “I can skip challenge 1 if I can …..”
• she also asks students to record why they have chosen a particular challenge and to put this in writing and this ensures they have thoughts carefully about their starting point

2. QR Codes and URL Shorteners (DO)

• A QR code (quick response code) is similar to a bar code
  
• can be scanned by any smartphone/device using built in camera apps or by specific apps
• A URL Shortening website (e.g., www.goo.gl) will reduce the length of a web link down to a manageable length i.e., https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GhPVubCBg4sWJ-2En0qKv71e56QrsvdVD_lH5ojP3UA/edit?usp=sharing becomes goo.gl/daxzGN 
• Applications for education:
• Homework feedback sheet with 4 QR codes or short URLS with links to e.g., Youtube video explaining a misconception, consolidation worksheet, extension task / material
• Link to any Google document you create by using shareable links
• Feedback – links to further online tasks, support materials or resources
• Add videos to worksheets
• Links to support material on worksheet to provide differentiation
• Links to Strive material to provide challenge on worksheets
• Students to insert into their work/projects
• Links to model solutions