Friday Gem #14 – YOUR ideas bout return to the classroom

Teaching and Learning Gem #14 –  Return to the classroom. Building Community; Finding Gaps; Knowing your students and giving voice to all

This is an ‘uber’ Friday Gem which collates and shares all your ideas from your breakout discussions. The level of thought and the deep exploration of our priorities for the classroom was humbling.

Please open and peruse the attached booklet of YOUR ideas.

 

Training: If you would like training on any of the digital tools discussed yesterday, please complete this form and we will set up some twilight.

A big thank you to our group facilitators: James Courtenay Clack, Dan Addis, Helen Sinclair, Alys Lloyd, Steph Harel, Lucinda Gilchrist and Claire Baty

A big thank you to the scribes: Holly Beckwith, Rebecca Brown and Jane Fawcett

Friday Gem #13 – emoji vocab retrieval practice

Teaching and Learning Gem #13 – emoji vocab retrieval practice

The final Friday Gem of the year comes from the Classics Department and is a great one for linguists. Mark Wilmore did a digital learning walk and shared with me a fun and fast-paced vocab retrieval game from Dan Addis. Whilst waiting for students to join the live lesson (not wanting to waste any moment for learning), Dan posted a Latin word in the conversation space. Students had to post an emoji/picture that represented it.

Here is ‘fugit’ (he/she flees) and ‘templum’ (temple):

Here is ‘timet’ (he/she is afraid):

Friday Gem #12 – meaningful personal targets

Writing

Teaching and Learning Gem #12 – creating meaningful personal targets

 

This comes from Helen Sinclair. She asked her Year 9 to write a reflection for their end of year assessment. However, as she watched them write it on OneNote, she noticed that some of the comments were rather vague. She therefore copied a range of different reflections onto the chat and asked the whole class to review them using the reaction emojis (being clear that a sad face didn’t mean it was bad, just that they thought it could be improved). Once they had done this, she then asked students to explain in the live call what made some targets more effective than others.

This is effective because:

  • It encourages students to be meaningfully self-reflective.
  • The collaborative nature of this makes it clear that all students have things to improve….it discourages perfectionism!
  • It emphasises the importance of making targets specific.

Teaching & Learning Gem #11 – Digital Exit Ticket

WimTalks

Teaching and Learning Gem #11 – Digital Exit Ticket

Ian Richardson added me to his Year 9 Computer Science Team as a student, so I get all sorts of reminders to complete Teams Assignments, such as quick low stakes quizzes to check my knowledge. He decided to use Forms and Teams Assignments to push out an Exit Ticket to all students at the end of the lesson. This allowed him quickly to see how every student was feeling about her progress and it enabled him to adapt his teaching going forwards.

As a student, this is what popped up for me at the end of the lesson:

And when I opened the Assignment, I could fill in my self-reflection about the lesson:

This is effective because:

  • Every student gets her voice heard: it creates a one-to-one connection between student and teacher.
  • Through the Assignments function, Ian can quickly click through the responses and check who has/hasn’t completed it.
  • Ian can adapt his teaching going forwards to cater to the learners.
  • Ian can put in interventions/differentiate if it is clear that some students need extra support.
  • It encourage students to reflect on their own learning and progress.

Friday Gem #10 – student collaboration using Miro

Teaching and Learning Gem #10 – student collaboration using Miro


We know how important it is to find ways for students to connect and collaborate during GHL. Clare Roper shared with me some videos of her Year 10s working together in real time using Miro – an online collaborative platform. She put students in groups using Teams channels so that they could speak with each other as they completed the collaborative task online. She could see exactly what was going on, to support and give encouragement live.

  • Fast and furious team competition about pollination

Teams competed to order the stages of the pollination process. This video is so fun…I think Clare has a future as a sports commentator!

  • Multiflow thinking maps about human influences on the environment

Clare was able to watch the different groups of students collaborating on their thinking maps and give immediate feedback. Watch here.

Miro has lots of different ways for students to collaborate. Click here to watch a short promotional video about Miro.

Friday Gem #8 – the power of digital RAG forms

Teaching and Learning Gem #8 – the power of quick questionnaires to get a picture of whole class understanding

This idea comes from Nicola Higgs, who created a digital RAG sheet for students using Microsoft Forms. Students rated their confidence about the topic of climate change (covered during lockdown) by using  ‘red’, ‘amber’ or ‘green’ . This allows students to reflect honestly on their Guided Home Learning AND helps Nicola understand which areas of this topic she needs to revisit in lessons.

Here is a link to what her form looked like.

Below are some of the results, quickly giving Nicola a sense of the whole class picture and what has been understood by students:



Here is the excel spreadsheet generated, allowing Nicola to dig down into the detail of particular students so she can support them/make interventions:

This is effective because:

  • It is quick for students to complete and gives all students the ability to share their feelings.
  • It encourages students to be self-reflective about their learning
  • It gives the teacher direction about where to focus their teaching
  • It allows the teacher to see which students need more support or intervention

Friday Gem #9 – Rubrics for effective and efficient marking

Teaching and Learning Gem #9 – use of rubrics in Teams Assignments for effective and efficient marking

Another top tip from Nicola Higgs and the Geography department, who have been using the full functionality of Teams Assignments to collect in and mark the work from her Year 7 assessment projects. The use of ‘rubrics’ allows for the marking criteria, assessment objectives and bands to be applied easily and clearly to student work.

She has made an awesome 5 minute video explaining how her department have used rubrics in Teams Assignments, and why they are beneficial. Do take a look! Watch here.

In short:

  • You can create and reuse marking criteria which you can then apply at a click of a button to a student’s work
  • It makes it clear to the student what skills/knowledge they have shown.
  • This is a super time saving tool for teachers while at the same time helping students understand how to succeed in the assignment.
  • There is also a box to add a short, personalised comment, so you can recognise the effort/progress of the individual

Friday Gem #7 – STEAM-y Starter

This idea comes from Mari Nicholas’ Year 12 Chemistry lesson. She put an array of pictures on the board, and asked pupils to make connections between them. What I loved was how she introduced the task. She said: “The more esoteric, the more distant the link, the better. Don’t limit yourself to Chemistry.”

Here’s her slide…what links can you make? What pictures could you put up as a starter? They could be pictures representing ideas within a topic, or across different topics, encouraging students to ‘join’ up their learning and expand their thinking beyond the boundaries of the lesson they are in.

This is effective because:

  • It is a great way to introduce a topic by encouraging pupil curiosity.
  • It could be a fantastic revision task, strengthening students’ schemas, organising interrelated concepts in an efficient and powerful way that can be recalled from the long term memory.
  • The task allows for natural differentiation, with students choosing to make more complex or simpler connections.
  • It encourages a STEAM mind-set, with students exploring how broad and seemingly different ideas are interrelated.
  • It’s also a quick and easy task for the teacher to prepare.

 

Friday Gem #6 – probing follow-up questions

In two very different lessons, I saw excellent examples of probing follow-up questioning. Rather than asking lots of students quick fire questions, Holly and Raj frequently pushed the same student to go further in their responses. This allowed them to really explore the extent of a student’s schema and avoids students giving shallow answers. It’s also great differentiation for the more able.

  • Holly’s Year 13 History class were exploring the decolonisation of Africa. The lesson was in seminar form, so for the majority of the time pupils responded to each other in impressive student-led dialogue. However, Holly carefully intervened at times to ensure rigour of thought. After Aniya made a comment about the internal or external events of decolonisation, Holly asked her two follow up questions: what do you mean by ‘internal’ and ‘external’? How can we define these terms?” …and then after Aniya’s response she probed further…Is it as  simple as that?
  • Raj asked excellent follow up questions in his Year 13 Physics lesson exploring error in measurement. His follow up questions forced students to justify their logic and reasoning, and they often then corrected themselves. For example, when thinking about the confidence in measurement of a kinked wire, he pushed pupil reasoning with two follow up questions; How can you tell?, “Ok, you could use a flattening iron to make it easier to measure, but what would that then effect?

 

Why are probing follow-up questions effective?

  • To assess a student’s schema (network of knowledge) in depth, teacher’s will need to ask the student follow up questions.
  • Asking a variety of different students quick-fire questions can add pace to the lesson, but it can also lead to students giving shallow answers.
  • Rather than pupil sound bites, we want developed pupil responses giving them a chance to articulate and justify their thinking or to explain their logic.
  • Probing with follow ups is a way to avoid sound bites. It is also a good way to differentiate and challenge the most able.

Friday Gem #5 – Hexagon Links Revision

Book

John Parsons saw Nicola use this revision activity in a Year 11 Geography lesson last term. She borrowed the idea from Hannah. John said it was an “absolutely brilliant activity to help girls explore and remember links between concepts as they returned to a topic studied a year ago.” I love this activity – it feels like a more purposeful version of the quiz show game ‘Only Connect’ and it can be used across many subjects.

What is it?

  • There are key terms in each hexagon which are joined using a letter from the alphabet.
  • Students work by themselves or in pairs to suggest a link between the two key terms based on knowledge acquired previously in the course.
  • The key differentiator is to push students to really justify the link, perhaps using named examples etc.
  • The teacher then uses Q&A to further extend their ideas when sharing as a class at the end.

This is effective because…

  • By connecting ideas, students are building schema in their long term memory. Schema are like networks which organise interrelated concepts in an efficient and powerful way. When we need to use ideas from our long term memory, recalling schema allows us to be more flexible with the limited space in our working memory.
  • This task encourages pupils to understand a concept in multiple ways. Mentally tying together information/ideas is called ‘elaboration’. This is proven to enhance transfer into long term memory.
  • It requires pupils to pithily articulate their thoughts and to justify themselves, building confidence in their knowledge and understanding.
  • It’s fun and game-like!
  • For more information on building long term memory, click here: http://theelearningcoach.com/learning/long-term-memory-and-learning/