Questioning techniques that worked for me

I recently took part in an inset, based on a Teachmeet style of sessions.   There were 8 different sessions that were focussed on improving challenge in the classroom, particularly for the most able in each class.  I took on questioning as I had been told previously in a lesson observation that I scaffold my questions well.  I nodded my head and acted like that was my intention.  Like any teacher, all I wanted was to just get more out of the students and enhance the level and quality of discussion.

I thought long and hard about what I would want as a teacher at my school coming to my session, I researched blogs, journals and internet articles on the subject and put together lots of techniques that teachers had used successfully in their lesson. The issue was that I hadn’t used any of these particular ones, like ‘Blooms’ and ‘Hinge’ and felt a bit of a phony standing up and saying how great these were when I hadn’t actively used them.  I started to speak more to other staff in the school, ask them about what they do and how they challenge the most able.  The conversations I had were really insightful and gave me a lot of good information. A lot said they don’t use techniques per se but open ended, higher order questions, getting students to explain their answers, reflect on what others have said and let the discussion flow, asking meaningful questions when they were needed. Again, I thought if I stand up there and say this, it doesn’t really give staff something concrete that they can take away.

One teacher talked about the ‘ABC’ technique. This is where you pose a question to the class, select a student to respond,then ask other students in the class, whether they agree, buildupon or challenge the response.  I thought this sounded a great idea and something similar to the basketball technique (student led discussion which moves around the classroom with little or no input from the teacher – you can actually use a basketball whilst doing this but my advice is not to do it in an ICT room).  I tried it in my classes and found it workedwell. I made sure students were informed of the technique first before carrying it in.  I also adapted the technique to involve all students in the discussion, for example, students had to listen to a person’s answer and ensure they noted down something for each ABC point.  This encouraged students toconsider all points and put together a well-reasoned argument. It actually started as something of a ‘connection’ or ‘starter’ and ended up being something that could structure a whole lesson. We practiced the technique in a discussion format and then students had a different question and had to build an answer around the technique in written prose considering all sides of the argument.  

The technique went down well in the inset. There were a few issues with subjects that are more fact based and teachers were asking how it could fit in there. My response was that this technique is not used for surface level knowledge, stuff students need to know, but when they need to analyse and evaluate. I use it at the end of topics in GCSE PE for example, we had just finished role models, sponsorship and the media and I posed the question, ‘is Cristiano Ronaldo a positive influence on young people?’ Students made notes under each section and then practiced their extended writing, including for and against arguments, including key words and linking together the three topics and how all can have a positive and negative affect.  

Another technique I introduced in the inset was something I named ‘Closing the gap’.  The technique encourages students to analyse their own answers in comparison to an exemplar and plan their own route for improvement and progression.  It is not a questioning technique that can be used in discussion, more a technique for how students can improve how they answer exam questions.  I am sure we all do something similar, this is just a technique I have found useful and it gives the students more autonomy over their learning.  Students are given an exam question.  The students will then write a response to the question. Instead of taking it in and marking it, you give students a perfect answer with highlighted key words or key phrases.  The students then analyse their answer with the one on the board and mark their own work. Afterwards, students then write WWW (what went well) and EBI (even better if) on marks they have achieved, key words included/missing and gaps in their 

knowledge and understanding.  The idea is that when you come to mark the book you are able to review targets and track whether students are making improvements on their exam writing.  This technique can also be done as peer evaluation or as a group activity.  It also enables students to know where they are in relation to the top grades and track their own progress.

It was my first inset and I really enjoyed it. I don’t think there is too much I would have done differently apart from maybe going to speak to more teachers about techniques that they have used which are effective in their classrooms, particularly maths.  I am far from an expert in questioning and these are only techniques that have worked for me in my lessons.  I hope this blog has given you some ideas or at the very least made you reflect on the questioning strategies used in your lessons.

DIRTy ToEs - Differentiation by Assessment

My main target as a teacher for this coming year builds upon the work I have done previously on using Taxonomies of Errors (ToEs) which you can read about in an earlier post on this blogsite. Although they are fantastic tools for sharing with students the common mistakes made by the whole class (to compliment the individual feedback given through my marking), these taxonomies do not of themselves cause students to make improvements to their practice. 

So, my target is to use DIRTy activities (Dedicated Improvement & Reflection Time for the uninitiated) in conjunction with my ToEs in order to ensure that the hours I spend on assessing an evaluating students' work are actually worth it. This post is my reflection on the first of my DIRTy ToEs lessons, with my Y12 Sociology class. 

The essay I had marked was one that I had asked them to do at home in timed conditions about the strengths and limitations of official statistics as a method for sociological research. 

In this follow-up lesson I wanted them to take the findings from an interview they had conducted with a family member on mortality rates and learn from their previous 'methods question' errors (individually and as a class) and act upon this learning. Having given them a whole period to feedback in groups and as a whole class about their positive and negative experiences of the interview process, comparing these experiences to the recognised strengths and limitations of the methodology, I then have them back their marked essays. 

When I mark essays at A-Level I scrawl my immediate thoughts on the essays as I read them, but then type up my overall impressions of strengths and areas for improvement on Fronter. I do this so that my comments are un-loseable and to enable the students to look at the comments I have made over time to see if any comments recur again and again. As this was their first formal feedback I printed these off and attached them to the essays. Here's what one of them looks like for Student A. 

After giving the students time to consider my comments and marking I then spoke with them about the Taxonomy of Errors for the whole class. As usual I categorised these into low level errors (ones that stop students achieving a pass), mid-level errors (ones that get in the way of a C) and high-level errors (ones that might prevent the awarding of the highest grades). This is what they looked like this time around.

At the lower level the issue of 'lifting' came about because I asked them to complete their essays at home and, being new AS students, they were more than reliant on the textbook. It's a problem that needs nipping in the bud, and the taxonomy approach helps greatly with this. 

At the mid-level, where most students found themselves, there is a greater array of errors. At this stage in the year, however, I am always keen to address the issue of wasted words (hence the point about repetitive conclusions) and the lack of examples to support points.

At the high level I was keen to stress the need to develop their understanding of 'validity' as a key theoretical construct for the subject, as it lags behind their understanding of 'reliability' and 'representativeness'. The other key point I wanted to focus on was students not accepting a supposed methodological strength or weakness without evaluating it or challenging it. 

The next step was to set them DIRTy activities that asked them to 'put right' an error from the class taxonomy that also featured on their individual feedback sheet. For those students who over-relied on the textbook the task was to rewrite a section in their own words. The students at mid or high levels of errors were given a little more choice to reflect the greater variety of errors that were made. 

The tasks they were given were:

Student A (whose feedback was shown earlier) chose to add a section on 'validity' from the higher DIRTy ToEs tasks. Her improvements looked like this:

All well and good. Not perfect but an improvement on what had gone before. 

Where the lesson really worked was in the main task that followed the DIRTy ToEs activity. 

In this activity, students were asked to go beyond the mistakes that they had already made and aim to skip the mistakes that those who had achieved more highly than them had made. If you want to strive for rapid progress, then this is the way to go!!!  Because Student A was already at the top of the taxonomy (do I need an even higher category for the highest level mistakes that haven't yet been made?) she had another stab at the validity issue and provided something much more coherent than even the DIRTy ToEs task. 

But Student A wasn't the only one to really improve the quality of her work in this lesson. Student B had made the mistake of copying chunks from the textbook, as this shows. 

 

She was required, by the DIRTy ToEs activity to take this section of her initial essay and rewrite it into her own words. This is what she produced. 

Much better!  And note the further addition of a sentence, showing evidence of evaluation and improvement. For her new essay Student B decided to focus on the following targets from the Mid-Level ToE. 

The section below shows how she managed to address the second of these targets. Notice the use of the qualifier 'can' used more than once in this paragraph. 

A third student, Student C, was halfway between A and B in her original essay, and her errors were at the mid-level of the ToE. 

As you can see from my marking in the picture above, one of the things that she needed to focus on in order to move closer to a C grade was to add specific examples of official statistic datasets to illustrate her general points about the method.  She responded wonderfully well to this in the DIRTy ToEs activity. 

As with Student B, C elected to retain the addition of examples from the mid-level ToE, as well as adding targets from the high-level ToE. 

She never managed to explore the term validity as she hoped, preferring instead to consolidate on her use of examples. 

This isn't a problem. When I feed back to her next time I will remind her of the unmet target and before then I shall be addressing the whole class's understanding of validity as a key issue that needs to be addressed. Remember that this post-DIRTy ToEs activity was about aiming to avoid mistakes that others above them had made: very much a stretch activity. The fact that she has addressed a significant issue for her and then consolidated it in a second piece of writing is good enough for me. 

Conclusion: Next steps on DIRTy ToEs

The addition of DIRTy activities to my already well-established Taxonomy of Errors technique has helped my teaching a great deal. 

Without the DIRT, my ToEs would simply be lists of what did and didn't work with a hopeful assumption that students follow up on these in their own time.  Without the ToEs, my DIRTy activities would be undifferentiated and decontextualised from the needs of the students. 

I shall be continuing to get my ToEs DIRTy in the coming months because the learning that was done this lesson, and the consequent improvement made by students, was exceptional. It took almost all of a triple period to get the students to that point, though, and I don't want to have to invest that amount of time in the future, so keeping it regular is going to be a key challenge for me. But I am also aware that repetition is a double-edged sword and, because of this, I want to look to vary the DIRTy activities as much as possible and even look to see how I can modify the ToEs too. 

I'll let you know how I get on. 

Not another essay: Still loving literacy but providing opportunities for creative assessment at KS3

Not another essay: Still loving literacy but providing opportunities for creative assessment at KS3

Literacy and providing ways for our students to communicate effectively through writing beautifully is imperative because of its transformability, indeed to quote inspirational colleague: @Renniesherrie) ‘it [literacy and language learning] is currency’.

We are not all English teachers, however we are all teachers of literacy. Perhaps in our context this is even more acute given the nature of our wonderful, multilingual students at Canons where ‘a high proportion of students speak English as an additional language, of whom a small number are at an early stage of learning English.’ (Ofsted, 2013) This ‘high proportion’ equates to around 80%. 

Supporting our students to write as academic historians and to acquire their particular tendencies and employ them within their own writing is absolutely imperative to us history teachers.  (See link – Language of historians, Historians and their language Common characteristics of historians (sixth From College, Farnborough version, Laffin, 2013) Similarly, developing students’ literacy skills, both generic and subject specific language is a strong personal passion. Indeed supporting writing, in a ‘scaffold, not a cage’ (Lee and Shelmit, 2003) way, for me is the bread and butter of my thinking about students’ learning.  Writing should therefore be preceded by ‘talk’ and facilitated by modelling and opportunities for redrafting.

In history at Canons, literacy is an important and explicit focus of every lesson and we do a fair amount of essay writing at KS3, however we also felt that having an essay as the outcome of each and every historical enquiry is neither necessary, nor conducive to inclusive, engaging and meaningful schemes of learning. Of course writing is crucial, witnessing students’ progress in their writing is very special and important. However, for those of us who have produced umpteen thousands of words by means of a dissertation, an A4 page may seem a walk in the park, yet do we as teachers always remember that writing can place severe demands on students? Indeed, the emotional demands of writing are just as challenging as the cognitive demands. It can lead to stress and feelings of intense anxiety for students.

Consequently, our first assessment for our Year 8s is creative: no essay required (although students are welcome to produce a written explanation if they wish and a significant majority do).

The scheme of learning itself, my first enquiry planned as a student teacher, is not perfect; it has developed over the past three years, continues to be slightly modified and there is still room for further refinement and improvement. Similarly, it is nothing radically new, in fact it is a common feature on many a Key Stage Three history course. The conceptual focus is change and continuity and the historical content is the English Reformation and the subsequent religious changes under the Tudors. The overarching enquiry question aims to force students to explicitly focus and wrestle with the nature of change and continuity: What sort of change was the English Reformation?

What it does do however, is provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of religious change and continuity under the Tudor monarchy in a creative and meaningful way as, in a nutshell, the outcome of this enquiry requires students to design or create a rollercoaster to really reflect and demonstrate what sort of change it was.

Assessment task handout:

 

We wanted to move on from the more simplistic Tudor religious roller coasters and instead to get students to design something that requires them to have thought critically and  meaningfully demonstrate their understanding of the complexity of change and continuity. A particular inspiration for this was Rachel Foster’s 2008 Teaching History article ‘Speed cameras, dead ends, drivers and diversions: Year 9 use a ‘road map’ to problematise change and continuity’ where her students used the metaphor of a car journey and designed a road map to demonstrate their understanding of the process of change in the American civil rights movement as one of her students explained: “...and now the NAACP is a dead end, so the Montgomery bus boycott has to begin on a new road...’ (Foster, 2008) For me this demonstrates wonderful thinking by the student enabled by Foster’s metaphor. I wanted to provide the same opportunity for thinking and qualifying for my students.

What did we want students to get hold of and demonstrate through their creative rollercoaster designs?

The National Curriculum in England (2008) requires us as teachers to provide opportunities for our students to  ‘.... analyse the nature and extent of .... change and continuity within and across different periods’. This enquiry meets the first criterion, the question with its focus on ‘what sort of change’ requires students to consider the nature of change: was it sudden, bumpy or scary? Was it actually fairly ‘uneven’ as it did not affect everyone, everywhere in the same way? Such questions I would ask students and hoped students would ask themselves and each other.

 Christine Counsell’s guidance on ‘Teaching about Historical Change and Continuity, 2008’ Link to SHP website and Christine Counsell's guidance,  was particularly pertinent for this enquiry especially points 5, 6 and 7 of Counsell’s ‘Twenty strategies for helping pupils to get better at discussing and analysing change and continuity’:

5. Give them different ways of analysing or characterising change . ‘I want you to focus on type of change, not speed of change’. ‘I want you to focus on extent of change’.

6. Model the thinking involved in reflecting on change and continuity. Think out loud to pupils as you do your own reflecting on whether change did or didn’t occur, how much changed and for whom. Find the right language to characterise the change as precisely as possible, showing them by example that you mean change in ‘states of affairs’ and that you are not treating ‘event’ as a proxy for ‘change’.

7. Teach them to qualify and modify statements for thinking, talking and writing about change . ‘Was the change steady, gradual, gentle?’ ‘Was it swift, sudden, seismic?’ ‘Was it uneven, bumpy, jumpy?’

In light of this, the enquiry requires students to focus on the type, kind or sort of change; would model the thinking and support the development of students language to characterise the sort of change as precisely as possible and encourage them to use statements about the kind of change through language. Critically, this would hopefully lead to students being able to qualify their statements drawing upon their historical knowledge therefore bringing skills and content into their natural unison.

For this particular enquiry it is important for students to have the opportunity to wrestle with:

• Specific examples of changes that occurred under each Tudor monarch. 
• Grasp the concept of continuity: some things e.g. beliefs, attitudes stay the same as well as changed.
• The experience of change for those living through it and the kind of change that it was
• Experiment with words to describe what kind of change it was.
• Challenging prior conceptions about change, i.e. Change is not the same for everyone, everywhere.

Throughout the enquiry, students used a learning log to record their understanding of specific changes. The learning log was designed to support students in meeting the objectives of the enquiry in addition to being something for them to use when preparing for the creative assessment.

How were students prepared for the assessment?

The learning log was used, sometimes as a homework and other times as the consolidation phase of the lesson in order to keep the conceptual focus tight and to provide several opportunities for students to consider and practice using language to describe the sort of change the English Reformation was.

Although students were aware from the outset about the enquiry’s outcome, (the joy on some faces when they are told they will not be writing an essay!) it was the final lesson that most explicitly provided students with the opportunity to reflect and discuss how they would create their rollercoasters.

In the final lesson consolidating their understanding and preparing for the assessment, I began by showing a YouTube clip of a rollercoaster link to clip and getting students to discuss words and feeling associated with the ride to reintroduce the kind of vocabulary I wanted to see in their final outcomes: ‘bumpy’ ‘sudden’ jerky’ ‘scary’, ’shocking’, in their discussions and responses students were using the exact language necessary to characterise and describe change.  

Once the final outcome was reiterated and the SOLO marking criteria was explained, in groups students then discussed and mind mapped ideas about how they could really demonstrate what they knew about the nature of the English Reformation prompted by a series of questions some of which are below:

• How could you demonstrate a rapid change on your rollercoaster?
• How could show a gradual or steady change?
• How could you demonstrate a violent or confusing change?
• How could you show the people who were experiencing the religious changes?
• How could you show those people who refused to change their religion and became martyrs?

Students became even more creative than I’d expected, engaging in thoughtful discussion with one another:

‘For Mary there could be a sudden drop going back to Catholic and ending in a fire tunnel to represent what happened to the Protestant martyrs’,

‘But what about that she gave them a final chance to change their minds the night before they were to be burnt? Would there be two tracks- an option for the Protestants?’

‘There could be a colourful track for Henry and Mary to show the Catholic beliefs in decorations and a plain track for Edward’

After these vibrant group discussions students were given time to plan their rollercoaster, it was great at this stage to question the choices students were making in order to gauge their understanding. I intend to build in some further time at this stage in future for some Berger style critique between students during the planning stage.

Please find some examples of students' work below:

 This enquiry is far from perfect however it does prove challenging, enjoyable and genuinely provides students with the opportunity to analyse the nature of change and continuity. I hope it has has embedded skills they can draw upon in future questions about historical change for example the change in relations between the Soviet Union and the USA, changes in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, continuity of practice between the old and new Poor Law. In terms of impact, it is difficult to judge, however the enquiry has certainly helped to embed a sense of the period, for example when we begin the next enquiry on interpretations of Cromwell we start by looking at the famous image ‘World turned upside down’  image (below) to question whether the world really went mad in the 1640s? Last year students discussed and were questioned on all the strange things they could see and why this image may have been made. After this there was evidence of students drawing upon their previous learning: ‘perhaps it was made to show how confused people were by the religious changes at the time because the church is upside down’ which indicates the enquiry had a lasting impact on students sense of period.

The next step is to enrich and illuminate the enquiry with the historical literature of Eamon Duffy, either The Stripping of the Altars or The Voices of Morbath. 

Canons Careers - Our First Dedicated Careers Newsletter

 

"Are we there yet?": Pedagogy Leaders & The Art of Backseat Driving

I have a number of words for it:  Organic is my favourite, but I also like Bottom-Up, and Classroom-Led is always a winner too.  Recently I have begin to conceptualise it in terms of Guerrilla Teachers and Trojan Mice, but for the purposes of this post I shall call it Backseat Driving.

What I am referring to with all of these terms is an approach to the development of teaching and learning at Canons High School that doesnt come top-down from one or more members of SLT with an 'AMAZING IDEA!!!' but instead emerges from the experiences and insights of those true classroom-heroes who teach around 4 out of 5 periods every day.

This backseat driving vision was spearheaded from 2010 onwards by our Outstanding Pedagogy Project (OPP), a group that identifies an area of pedagogic focus that they wish to explore in order to pave the way for an eventual whole-school approach.  OPP is a self-nominated group of teachers whose aim and membership changes annually based upon what the focus for innovation is.  So far they have looked at 'Pedagogy as an art, craft and science', the 'Accelerated Learning Cycle' and 'The use of tablet devices to improve collaborative learning'.

All was going well with this organic approach to T&L but then in April 2012, as part of an action plan about building the schools' capacity to fully engage with the Teaching School movement, we decided to light the rocket boosters under the process and created the posts of Pedagogy Leaders.  Designed to mimic the structures of Teaching School Alliances and Challenge Partnership Hubs we wanted Pedagogy Leaders to function as pivotal figures within the school leadership structure, providing expertise in teaching, to fashion a coherent whole school approach and to demonstrate skills in coaching to support colleagues in implementing this whole school approach: the Canons Pedagogy.

We advertised the five fixed-term, outcomes-oriented, project-management Pedagogy Leader posts in time to appoint and deploy them from Easter 2012, and were astonished with the level of interest that they generated.  Rewarded with a significant allowance but no weekly time (we choose to cover more utilitarian blocks of time as necessary instead), eighteen of our colleagues elected to apply for the post.  There were only two qualifying criteria: that they had been outstanding in a recent observation (or teach an outstanding lesson on demand for the post) and that they submit a letter of application explaining an area of focus for teaching and learning that they wanted to implement.  The selection process was simply an analysis and evaluation of whose personal visions for pedagogy at the school were most compelling and how these visions might be able to interlock or dovetail most effectively for the benefit of the school.  It was the hardest selection process I have been a part of, and yet the most rewarding.

And then they were in post: six of them (why stick at five when you can have six?). Comprised of two NQTs, an AST, a Key Stage leader and two Heads of Department their first term's task was to build on the work of the OPP group, bringing together a coherent and compelling pedagogical model for the school, and introduce it to the staff. After an introductory day offsite to really think through their work - a day in which they ejected SLT members from the room whilst they chose to ignore the task we had asked of them - they wove together the Accelerated Learning Cycle, their own priority themes and some specific teaching strategies to form the core of our Canons Pedagogy. Then they constructed and delivered their own INSET day to introduce staff to their pedagogical model, showing the whats, the hows and the whys in a way that was indeed compelling if the startlingly positive freeform evaluations were anything to go by. 

Their second term in role saw them outshine the irrepressible Alistair Smith whilst running a second INSET day that deepened staff understanding of the Canons Pedagogy through the use of cross-curricular planning time saw some of the Ped Leaders (by now the shortened form of their titles had stuck) robustly challenged by their peers, as school leaders should be. They rose to that challenge as they have risen to all challenges and persuaded or adapted as appropriate. Nobody bailed them out, partly because nobody needed to but mainly because distributive leadership requires the distribution of both professional autonomy and professional accountability: they needed to face the flak for any unpopular actions or ideas. 

In this second term in role the Ped Leaders also took on the responsibility of leading our Teacher Learning Communities.  These TLCs are small-scale action-research peer-to-peer groups which we aligned with the six areas of focus identified by the Ped Leaders in their application letters. Amongst these are groups looking at 'Language for Learning', 'Interdependent Learning' and 'Questioning for Learning' and it is in these groups that the Ped Leaders have been able to practice and develop (in themselves and others) the coaching skills that underpinned the third  of our pedagogy focused INSET days. 

After the Christmas break the Ped Leaders created their third INSET day, but showed great awareness of the needs of their colleagues in devising a programme (on the theme of in-class evaluation of learning) that was all about staff choosing what they wanted to do, rather than being subjected to a one-size-fits-all day. In order to make this possible they had to do what I and my Assistant Head colleague had had to do with them; LET GO. For the first time they (by now the front seat drivers) had to invite their back seat passengers to become drivers. That INSET day saw over twenty colleagues deliver sessions to their peers and the introduction of our first mini-Teachmeets. I suspect pedagogy-focused INSET days at Canons will never be the same again. 

That Spring term also saw the Peds (as they had by now become known) put together our first Student Pedagogy Day, something like an INSET day for students in years seven to ten. This involved them creating a rich and varied programme, to be taught by all of our staff, that introduced our students to the same pedagogical structures, themes and techniques as our staff had been introduced to on their INSET days. The day was a great success but not without it's challenges. It is to the credit of the Ped Leaders that they were brutally honest in their own analysis of the day and incisive in their evaluation of what will need to be retained and what will need to be changed in any future student learning days. 

All of which brings us careering to the current term and the work of the Peds that is happening now. Because we had front-loaded our INSET provision this term is about the consolidation of the work that has been done across the year. This involves our no-longer-backseat-drivers drawing together the work of their TLCs, engaging with new processes for peer-coaching and sharing of best practice, evaluating the impact of their work this year, responding to an ever-increasing amount of requests from colleagues who have seen how good they are, and beginning to show to the outside world what they have done this year through blogs on this site. 

Later this term, on June 21st, they will be presenting their journey (and our school's journey with them at the steering wheel of teaching and learning) at the prestigious Keynote Zone of the SSAT's Achievement Show at Twickenham. In the continued spirit of fully distributed responsibility they have complete autonomy over what and how they present on that day. We hope to see many of you there. 

But what does the future hold for our Pedagogy Leaders?  Their term of office is coming to an end but they have done such a fantastic job for Canons Hogh School that the role is now seen as invaluable for us. We have just advertised for a second generation of Peds with a new brief that will build upon the work of the first generation by extending it and deepening it. The current postholders will all be more than welcome to apply and I've no doubt some of them will do so. Four of the six current postholders have achieved substantive promotions in the meantime and may choose not to do so, but if that is the case it will be regarded as a success of the strategy not a failure. 

There will, however, be others that apply to become our new Pedagogy Leaders and it will be good to see who they are, what animates them and how they want to strike out in new and unexpected directions and how these are reconciled with the work that has been done so far. The one thing that will remain certain is that once the new team are formed they will continue to have significant freedom to drive teaching and learning forward from the front seat rather than be seen as passengers to be carried along. It is a model of staff development, deployment and influence that I can't recommend highly enough to any and every school leader with the will to make it happen. 

Using a 'Taxonomy of Errors' to Enhance Student Responses

I am writing this post to outline and to describe a technique I learnt some years ago from a long-forgotten colleague that has had a very positive impact on my teaching and the learning of my students:  the Taxonomy of Errors.  As well as describing the technique I want to show how I have developed it in recent weeks, how I have used it proactively with my students and what impact it has had on their written work.  Hopefully it may be useful to one or two of you.

In essence, the Taxonomy of Errors is a response to that perennial problem faced by teachers of dealing with a class that are all making the same mistakes.  It is a method for trying to ensure that students learn from each others' mistakes as well as from their own.  It is a method for trying to ensure that when they next attempt the same task, they will improve markedly rather than incrementally because they have addressed a range of foibles in their work.

In practice, the Taxonomy of Errors is little more than a summary of all the feedback that you have given to the students as individuals with a focus on the comments you have written time after time after time.  Sometimes I have even been known to rank them in order of frequency!!!

This is an example of a Taxonomy of Errors (ToE) for my top set English class.  I took them over two weeks ago and immediately got them to complete a full practice exam for me so I could see what they could do in the heat of battle.  This is the ToE for the important question on the Writing Section, which requires them to analyse language across two non-fiction texts and make comparisons.  As you can probably guess this response was not perhaps their finest hour, mainly because they had forgotten exam techniques in ensuring that they performed well in their controlled assessments.  This strategy is part of my portfolio of tools for getting them prepared for their exams later this month.  You will notice that the vocabulary is negative.  Although I sometimes write ToEs positively (there is an example later) the intention is to be bluntly honest about what went wrong, and the fact that the list is based on the whole class makes it easier to be so (although I am bluntly honest individually too!).

Here is another example of a Taxonomy of Errors, this time in response to a collection of timed essays from my AS Sociology students.  In this ToE I made an attempt to separate out the basic errors (at the top) and the more complex error (at the bottom) to ensure that they understood the things that they really ought not have done, regardless of their ability, and the genuine areas for further learning.  I always find that at this time of the academic year students facing imminent external examination make all kinds of foolish errors and they need to be scuttled in order to allow them to get at the more important stuff that will genuinely allow them to achieve higher grades (we always call them the Sheep Grades because they are B, A, A* - Geddit?). I always present this feedback at the very start of the lesson after I have marked the work and am increasingly linking the feedback directly to the activities of the next lesson so that they improve upon their work immediately.

Here's my latest feedback to my Y11 English students, and in it I have focused even more on the creation of a genuine Taxonomy of Errors (that may have been how it was intended and I have just found my way to it the long way around!!): from the basics that are genuinely beneath this groups of students, to the intermediate and advanced.  This feedback was from an essay on An Inspector Calls where the students were (to a greater or lesser extent) all guilty of simply trying to rewrite their controlled assessment work on Arthur and Sheila rather than respond about the Inspector as they had been asked.  I was therefore able to show them how the error at the intermediate level was preventing them from accessing the higher grades, and thereby making the feedback on higher level errors virtually redundant (most students achieved only between 17 and 21 marks out of 30 because of their intermediate errors).

Here is a very typical response from one of the students that led to this Taxonomy of Errors, and was even one of the better ones because he made sure to refer to the Inspector on four occasions.  In the end, though, his best observations were reserved for the character of Sheila and he would be reliant upon the leniency of the examiner at best and, at worst, reliant upon another question coming up that allowed him to crowbar in his understanding of the character of Sheila.  In response to the ToE then, I devised a sequence of activities that was focused on using 15 minutes of their 45 to plan effectively to answer the actual question, not the one that they wish had been set.  This involved brainstorming what they knew already about the Inspector, selecting apposite quotes (ensuring that at least one of these was from the stage directions to allow the response to include reference to stagecraft - from the Advanced section of the ToE), exploring the language of the quotes for dominant and subversive interpretations and then evaluating the quotes in light of the essay question.

And here is the response that the same student generated during this double lesson in response to the activities I had set; activities which had been informed by the Taxonomy of Errors (at this stage of the year my lessons are almost entirely planned in response to their emergent needs). I'm not claiming that it is a startlingly better response, but it does tackle the intermediate error of not focusing on the question to ensure he has a chance at the top marks.  Further to this it addresses the advanced error of a lack of reference to stagecraft and deepens his use of language analysis from a straightforward discussion of the word 'horrible' to a more convincing analysis of the words 'taking charge masterfully' in a better quotation that, again, had more resonance with the actual question he had been asked to answer.

So there you have it.  In my classroom the Taxonomy of Errors is used for three purposes.  In its most simple guise it tells the students what mistakes have been made, by others as well as themselves, so that they can get a sense of their achievements alongside those of their peers.  At a more sophisticated level the Taxonomy of Errors allows me to rank the impact of different errors on their marks and/or grades by showing them how basic or intermediate errors can undermine work that in other ways might have the potential to achieve highly.  But the Taxonomy of Errors is at its most effective when it informs my planning so that students are taught (or re-taught) the knowledge or skills that had been demonstrated so poorly in their submitted work.  The Taxonomy of Errors is at its most potent when it is used in this way and results in the students being asked to edit or rewrite the error-strewn original in a conscious attempt to improve it.  The Taxonomy of Errors is at its most rewarding when it helps make marking have a genuine impact on learning.



How I came to find myself building a website.. http://canonsmaths.co.uk/

Flipped learning @CanMathsDepartm

In KS4 we've been trying out flipped learning with varied success! As the Monday 11th March blog: 'Improving my written feedback' pointed out, sometimes it's even difficult to get staff to 'do their homework' and watch the video clip.

As one of the guilty ones I've been looking for a way to get my classes onboard with it.
At KS4 we've been using Fronter (a VLE) to upload small video clips on to. Students are set a clip on the relevant topic for their flipped homework. They're expected to watch the clip and try out the practice questions.
Sounds easy right?
The first problem is getting students to remember their login details, find the relevant clip and make sure it plays on their computer. Some teachers (CMm & ASm) have had admirable success with getting their classes over this hurdle, however in my opinion it's still not possible to see what the students can really do on their own outside of lessons because the practice questions shown in the clips are swiftly followed by model answers.
I've been trying to think my way round this problem with CMm and we came up with a couple of solutions that I'll discuss now.
Firstly we could upload the PDFs of practice questions that go along with each clip but crucially don't give the answers away. This definitely solves one of the issues as it actually allows students to show what they can do independently. I've been giving out hard copies of the practice questions for students over the last few weeks alongside taking a register (see pic. below) of who has been given the homework and who's handed it back in. The result: homework handed in has shot up dramatically!

I still have problems with students saying they can't login or the sounds not working on the clip. Fortunately, CMm and I had a timely visit to King Solomon Academy recently to see Bruno Reddy (@MrReddyMaths & www.mrreddy.com) and what he's been doing with his version of flipped learning called 'time shifted learning'.
This is where the building my own website idea comes in.
Bruno's stripped the process down and tailored it to bring out the best in his mixed ability classes. Through creating his own website he said he was able to cut out the login process for students completely. He then created and uploaded clips organised by week and topic. Students watch the clips that use his style, preferred methods and key language. After they've watched the clip they answer the questions below that Bruno's embedded in the page using a simple Google Docs form. When a student hits  'submit form' their results are collated in a Google Spreadsheet and emailed to Bruno along with a time stamp saying when they did the work. This can then be kept as a record  and used to inform planning and identify areas that the teacher needs to go over in class with individuals/groups.
The results so far have been really encouraging. The obvious drawback is the time involved in making material for the website and maintaining it. I've got over the first hurdle already though which was to bite the bullet and actually have a go at building my first ever website (feedback and any technical issues spotted welcome!).
What's next?
This half term I'm going to develop and share the website with my classes and department. I'll let you know how we get on!

http://canonsmaths.co.uk/


Ed Salton

Maths

 

                                         Homework record sheet: 

 

 

Cross Curricular Coaching Triad

After a lesson observation by our Assistant Head teacher I was selected along with another teacher at the school to be a part of a coaching triad working with other schools in the borough to improve our teaching and learning.  In our triads we each observe and give feedback to one another with a particular focus area, decided upon in the first meeting.  The triads are made up of teachers from different schools, different subjects and different age groups in Harrow. 

In our first meeting at Park High school our group decided to focus on slow independent deep learning. This was something that had been thrust in front of me in our most recent inset (@Kevbartle) and I really liked the idea but wasn’t too sure what it would look like in lessons.  In our triad we discussed some areas of focus and went away and researched some more to get a better understanding.

I decided to focus on universal skills in lessons which can be used in all walks of life and put this to a year 7 class a few lessons prior to the first observation. In a badminton lesson we discussed deep learning and the G&T in the class really grabbed onto this idea and came up with some great answers in relation to real world skills.  During the connection phase students talked about the benefit of our activities and an improvement in their hand eye co-ordination to help them with their writing in class. By the end of the lesson students were able to use their own success and failure to talk about much bigger messages such as taking the easy way out, persevering and people’s different approaches to challenge.  Students in the class really liked how we were linking other areas into our PE lesson and asking them to think more about how skills are inter related with everyday life.   It is getting them to think more and they are all enjoying this new angle to their lessons.

I taught the first lesson of three in our triad and taught a lesson on teamwork.  Having just been to a teachmeet, I was full of ideas and enthusiasm for the lesson. I started with a silent brainstorm regarding key words related to teamwork and then got the students to decide upon their own focus in the lesson  They were split into four groups and each group compiled their own list of key words. The groups fed back to the rest of class and then decided on one word in particular that they thought was the most important.  These were: trust, co-operation and communication. Students then graded themselves by my making an ‘A, B or C’ with their hands on each of the key words.  I split the hall in two and had on two identical obstacle courses set up on each side.  Classes would complete the obstacle course with three students blindfolded and three students guiding them round, in their teams they would decide on the best strategy to get their team round. Each group was timed to add an element of competition. The two groups not participating observed the groups and made notes on WWW in relation to the three key words.  These groups fed back and the active groups were able to feedback to me what they thought they needed to improve on based on the peer evaluation.

The groups rotated and were able to adapt the skills they had learnt from observing first time round.  In the consolidation phase students then graded themselves again using their hand signals and we focussed on some of the key skills for each of the key words and some of the improvements that had been made.

The lesson went well and I made a real effort to not rush activities and for students to give effective peer observation so there was slow independent learning.  I wanted students to know exactly what their strengths were and what they needed to do to improve. Unfortunately, we did run out of time to consolidate as well as we could have but in the next lesson I picked up where we left off and students quickly linked back to the last lesson. The feedback from the triad was really good and opened my eyes to other areas to improve on such as cross-curricular links. Both colleagues who observed me talked about how students should be able to use language from Maths and English to communicate better with each other and were surprised that the students themselves hadn’t made the link.  This is now one of the focuses in my lessons and I am constantly challenging students to make links with other subjects in the activities which students are now starting to do quite effectively; improving both their literacy and numeracy in PE.

The following week I observed a Maths teacher. The lesson was very good and the students made clear progress but there were also some structural elements that I thought could be improved on.  During the feedback, the teacher was very receptive to ideas and genuinely wanted constructive feedback on how he could improve. We discussed some of the areas that could be worked on. One of them was the use of two different topics in a lesson instead of focussing on one and breaking it down into smaller chunks.

 In the lesson the teacher discussed ways to be resourceful such as dialogue with the person next to you, sharing ideas and using your book to help solve the task/challenge.  He included this in his lesson objective but there was little assessment of this in the lesson and focussed mainly on how student’s solved the tasks.  I have been guilty of this before and it can be so easy to focus on your main objective in the lesson.

In the final week of the first round of observations I observed a Year 5 lesson it was a very different atmosphere to a secondary school (with much lower ceilings). The students were excited to have us in the classroom but quickly focussed when the teacher started the lesson.  I really enjoyed the lesson, there was a lot more use of touchy feely resources (jam, toothpaste, vegetable fat, pictures of objects) which really engaged the students early on. This is something that I am trying to incorporate more with the use of fascinators (connection activities) in my lessons.  The students worked exceedingly well in groups to find the difference between a solid, liquid and gas.  Their passion for finding the answer was evident as well as their ability to work interdependently: they all got stuck in and were very into the task asking each other challenging questions and investigating solutions themselves.

The pupils were so keen to give their answers and got very excited, as you would expect the noise level went up but only because of their eagerness to let the teacher know what they had found out. This was something that was discussed afterwards and strategies such as using their hands to grade themselves (A,B,C) and having somewhere for students to contribute answers, such as post it notes or writing under key words on A3 paper would give students an outlet for their answers.

As a coaching triad we are now half way through the process and it has been fantastic. I have learnt a lot from the other teachers but it has also given me an opportunity without the stress of a formal observation.  I feel much more driven to improve that area of my lessons (slow, independent, deep learning) and have more confidence in the direction I am heading with my teaching.  Having a clear focus has allowed me to make marginal gains which are so crucial and which  are benefitting the rest of my classes, giving me more motivation to improve my teaching.  I am really looking forward to the next phase and am strongly behind the power of coaching.