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:

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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