An Invitation to Canons' First Curriculum Leaders' Network Day

Teaching 'An Inspector Calls'

Was there a PPT? A YouTube clip? Images? Music? None of the above. Simply paper, pens and copies of An Inspector Calls.

It was the second lesson in the scheme and I wanted an engaging and creative way of starting the play and getting to grips with the characters. For homework the previous lesson I asked the class to research any social or political world events between 1912 and 1946 (when the play was set and written). There were no constraints or limitations, I just asked each student to come to class with at least 3 events.

They arrived to class with slips of paper and quite eager to share their findings. Upon entering, they found the room rearranged with tables grouped in the centre of the room and enough chairs around. But I didn't ask them to sit down. Instead I told them to stand around the table and grab a coloured pen from the front. On the table was some flip chart paper with a timeline drawn on. Armed with pens, the students spent 10minutes plotting their events on the timeline. They had to move paper, pens and themselves to get to where they wanted and there was lots of discussion as they shared their findings. I sat back and watched. Some questions were thrown at me: is the invention of colour tv important? What about the Russian revolution? I just told them to get it all down and they did. In fact, at this point I was pretty invisible.

Once they'd finished we all sat around the timeline and looked at what they had produced: paper covered in different colours: wars, inventions, policies, tragedies. They hadn't just researched the obvious and, whilst I had asked them to think outside the box, I hadn't expected quite so much information. At this point I gave a brief introduction to the text, explaining the context and setting in a little more detail (we had covered Preistley's background and political beliefs in the previous lesson). The students then discussed which events they thought were most relevant to the play and why and they then created their own individual timelines to keep and refer to in their folders using the large one as a guide. I even got to drawing my own, something which the students responded really positively too, I think a sense of pride that I was using their work as a basis for my own, (I was teaching the same text to another class and wanted to use the current lesson as a model).

Next came the play itself. We started with the stage directions and the descriptions of the characters. The students created brainstorms for each character using evidence and then analysed the language and discussed possible interpretations. To get them started I encouraged them to discuss possible meanings and bounced ideas around the class, asking students to agree with possible interpretations, build upon them or challenge by offering alternative views (this ABC method is great and taken from @huntingenglish). Before the characters had even spoken, the students had a great grasp of personalities and relationships e.g. Birling was 'heavy looking' therefore he "was overweight and clearly well fed reflecting his wealth and capitalist lifestyle" but "maybe he's just a serious looking man with lots on his mind." Did I respond? No. Is there a right answer? Maybe. But the students were engaged and were eager to explore multiple layers of meaning and alternative views, something which I have been encouraging since September but which they only just seem to have grasped. The brainstorming continued as we begun to read the play and the students gradually took more control over the pace as their confidence grew. By the end of the lesson, it was the students who started stopping the reading to copy certain quotes and discuss multiple meanings while I worked to facilitate their discussions.

Five lessons on and we have only just finished Act 2 but this doesn't bother me. I'd rather them take their time now and get to grips with the text rather than spend frantic lessons before their exam trying to get them to remember everything they need to know. The thing that struck me the most after this lesson was how simple it was to deliver, making me question my practice last year when I taught off detailed PPT slides which explained everything yet allowed the students no opportunity to learn for themselves. Last year though I was doing the hard work. Now I'm quite enjoying being a 'lazy' teacher, guiding and encouraging their deeper exploration of this play.

Springing into A*ction

When asked to plan three sessions on English A* revision we knew we wanted to get the students to achieve flair and sophistication in their writing, but the question was how? How can you teach flair? Four of us met to discuss and plan our ideas for this and this post outlines what we came up with and how we delivered it to students in the revision sessions.

Creating a 'Spring' Theory:

The biggest issue for A* students is taking a risk, of moving away from structured paragraphs like PEELA (Point - Evidence - Explanation - Language Analysis - Alternative View) and creating a more sophisticated and interesting essay structure. My own top set students are able to write excellent PEELA paragraphs in isolation but ask them to write a whole essay and somehow they lose their way; the coherence disappears and they end up failing to actually answer the question. 
 

To share my concerns with the group I drew what their current essays looked like: 4 circles sandwiched between two triangles - each part complete on its own but disjointed from the rest. And, whilst our students are good at using connectives to 'link' their ideas, how effective is the word 'furthermore' if the point that follows doesn't link to the previous one? Despite being an English teacher, I couldn't quite articulate what I wanted their essays to look like so I went to the board again to draw my ideas. We came up with a structure that looked more like a spring with the essay being one complete strand looping around. These loops would take the form of their PEELA paragraphs but each one would need to link directly to the next (or former), not through the use of connectives, but by actually choosing certain points or quotes which could be referred to again, in a new and interesting way. And this is where we saw 'flair' come in, depicted through the use of flowers. These flowers could be alternative views or speculation or the effect on the reader. And then, to link these together we used bees (because bees pollinate flowers and therefore link ideas across the paragraphs). We came up with 3 different versions of the Spring theory which could be applied to the different English exams: prose, poetry and unit 1.

Hopefully, you can see from the PPT slides how our spring theory can help students structure and plan their writing. We worked hard to keep a consistent approach that could be used across texts but still with one aim in mind: clear, consistent writing which shows flair and sophistication. 

 

In Action:

We then delivered sessions to students aiming for A/A* using the spring theory. Some  found the concept easy, one punning, 'it's the beesknees' (I was pretty impressed!) whilst others found it harder to use. The day allowed for students to plan different responses using the theory and this practice helped them in their planning, structure and writing. With one group who were struggling, I explained how the theory was like an electrical circuit, the flowers and bees each being equally necessary components, that if left out or removed would break the circuit and cut off the flow of electricity thereby breaking the flow of the essay and the engagement of the reader. 

Here's what the teachers delivering the sessions had to say:

Alice Swain on Unit 1 Section B:

 "When it came to planning a spring theory session for section B of the Unit 1 paper, it was difficult to consider how you could teach the theory and get students to adopt it to approach a creative task. Our focus for this section therefore fell on the three most important parts of the spring theory: the main argument, the flowers and our bees, placing an emphasis on encouraging students to use their AFOREST techniques in imaginative ways and consistently link back to their main argument.

I started by writing an article myself, challenging Michael Gove’s proposal for longer school days and then we worked backwards, deconstructing the article together and exploring how the article posed a main argument which was consistently linked back to and interwoven throughout with the AFOREST techniques adding the flair. Giving students a model allowed them to see how an article or creative piece could be planned but still maintain a free structure as long as it considered one main argument throughout and discussed points which supported this main line of argument. From this the students then felt more confident to plan, in groups, their own spring theory preparing to write a persuasive letter to their local council arguing that the local youth centre should not be demolished in order to make way for a new Tesco.
Immediately the students identified three main groups (their points) who would be affected by this demolition, however, many of the students had failed to establish an initial main line of argument therefore running into difficulty when trying to think of their links between points and back to the task. The students then went back and re-considered their main line of argument, making it easier for them to look at their writing as a whole and plan a more coherent and logical piece of writing whilst still being able to write creatively. Their final plans provided an opportunity to showcase the spring theory as a concrete technique for creative writing tasks; one which students are more confident now using as a planning tool when approaching Section B."

 Sophia Klier on Poetry:

"As a group, we spent a significant amount of time discussing and developing our ideas about what we wanted to achieve in the A* sessions. We decided from the beginning that we did not want to simply revise content, but rather invest in developing the skills students would need in order to push themselves to achieve 'flair' and 'sophistication'. We also decided early on that we wanted a coherent system that could be applied across all different exam areas, over the entire day. I took on the session on Poetry. I wanted to spend time on both Section A (Conflict) as well as Section B, (Unseen), and decided to spend an equal amount of time in the session for each section. We began the session by applying the idea of Spring Theory to Poetry. We looked at one poem and applied the Spring Theory (specifically an argument/ point which runs through the entire argument, and thinking how to structure and analyse the points for their essay.) From this point we then used this to approach exam-style questions, which students worked on in groups. In the second part of the session, I assigned an unseen poem and also had the students plan an answer, again using Spring Theory. My conclusion is that applying Spring Theory was very helpful for the Poetry Exam. Instead of rushing in and simply beginning to write, it made students pause and instead spend valuable time planning and thinking coherently about their overall essay. This made essays much clearer with a more coherent structure. I am confident that students will be able to apply these skills during their exam."

   

Theeus Devitt on Modern Texts:

       "Teasing the nuance of an A* from an A* student is one of the challenges most difficult to concretely master as a KS4 English teacher, so it was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that I set about teaching the Easter revision classes with this newly devised spring theory. The session that I worked through was geared towards our students' two primary texts: Of Mice and Men and An Inspector Calls. The students have spent a long time studying both pieces of literature so their inability to achieve an A* was not a lack of knowledge, but the ability to expressive the knowledge in a cohesive essay robust with flair. 

I decided the best way to do this would be to break them into groups and have four separate questions at tables around the room. Each group developed a main argument which was the backbone the essay for the question in front of them: the string that ran through the essay, as well as three points to support that argument which would make up the body paragraphs of the essay. Once this was completed, the students moved from their first question to the next table, which had another group’s question and essay framework: main argument and 3 supporting points.  As a group they developed the next stage of the essays which remained at the table by finding evidence from the text to support the main argument and supporting paragraphs. Again they moved to a new question and essay at the next table where they explained how the evidence gathered by the previous group supported the main point established by the first group. At the final table the students were asked to link these already constructed paragraphs to the main argument with flair. Then as a whole class we picked apart each group's constructed essay plan to see how effectively they had utilized the spring theory."

Since these revision days, students have been able to use the spring theory in their revision and essay planning. I have also used the theory to help show students how to construct their answers and see links that can be made between paragraphs including structuring shorter responses for Unit 1 Section A. Overall, the department have found the theory extremely useful, so much so, that it is something we are looking to introduce lower down the school across all abilities.

Role-modelling learning

Once every half term at CHS, the Pedagogy Leaders organise a Teacher Learning Community (TLC) meeting for our staff as part of our continuing professional development. Staff have a choice of six TLCs to join, and we have already met for three sessions so far this academic year.

TLCs provide a unique opportunity for cross-curricular collaboration and discussion about stuff that really matters (AKA Learning and Teaching), and the group of staff that I work with certainly bring a lot to the table. What I really love is the diversity of experience in the group: different subject backgrounds, number of years in the profession, approaches to teaching, classroom priorities, positions of responsibility, shoe size… basically everything! These wonderfully quirky differences all contribute to highly textured and thought-provoking conversations about all things pedagogical. Over the course of the year, the aim is to share existing good practice and learn from one another by drawing upon others’ experiences, whilst paying close attention to improving literacy across the school and raising the number of A/A* grades.

One of our meetings focused specifically on ‘role-modelling learning’. In true Accelerated Learning Cycle style, the ‘Connection’ came in the form of two video clips from YouTube of how to make a tuna sandwich. Please feel free to get in the spirit and click on the links to watch them yourself!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mOSTDOiEBl0

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vmKNeWyeYxM

Afterwards, we thought about the following questions: 1) How important is it to role-model learning? 2) What makes for effective role-modelling of learning?

Research has shown that modelling is an effective instructional strategy in that it allows students to observe the teacher’s thought processes. Using this type of instruction, teachers engage students in imitation of particular behaviours that encourage learning (Bandura, 1986). According to social learning theorist Albert Bandura, ‘learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behaviour is learned observationally through modelling: from observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviours are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action’ (Bandura, 1977).

Following the sharing of some useful input and personal experiences from members of the group, attention turned to five distinct types of modelling for the ‘Activation’ portion of the TLC:

• Disposition modelling - teachers and students convey personal values or ways of thinking.
• Task and performance modelling - the teacher demonstrates a task students will be expected to do on their own.
• Meta-cognitive modelling - this demonstrates how to think in lessons that focus on interpreting information and data, analysing statements, and making conclusions about what has been learned.
• Modelling as a scaffolding technique - teachers must consider students’ position in the learning process. Teachers first model the task for students, and then students begin the assigned task and work through the task at their own pace.
• Student-centred modelling - teachers can often call on students to model expected behaviours or thought processes. In student-centred modelling, teachers engage students who have mastered specific concepts or learning outcomes in the task of modelling for their peers.

In pairs, staff were assigned one of these types of modelling, along with a clear definition of its purpose, and were given around 20 minutes to design a learning activity to be delivered in the style of their given approach. This task was quite open-ended, except for the fact that the activities needed to be something that they could actually use for a real lesson, rather than basing it upon a hypothetical classroom situation.

The end results were tremendously creative. The ‘Demonstration’ element showcased activities ranging from the modelling and eventual assigning of specific roles to students working collaboratively in an art lesson, such as a Resources Manager and a Timekeeper (inspired by @thelazyteacher and his handbook – thanks Jim), to the teacher showing eager students how to use a microscope correctly for the first time.

Even after the TLC meeting had come to an end, days later in fact, group members were clearly still thinking about the conversations from the session, and were kind enough to get in touch and share with me what they had been developing in their departments since we met.

Over in economics, for example, SWh commented on her use of meta-cognitive modelling to translate information in a text (past paper) to economic theory.  The students were required to explain clearly what economic theory would predict what will happen in a given situation, such as bad weather will damage crops.  There is a step-by-step sequence of events which can be demonstrated graphically, so this sort of modelling was adopted to talk through the steps while doing the graphs.

In another economics lesson, JGb showed his students a model answer, which was followed by a detailed discussion of what students would include in each paragraph and what graph would need to be drawn before it appeared on the board. The students then attempted a similar question which required the same structure in their answer, and the majority produced a good answer having already gone through the thought process of how to answer the question.

Now over to the MFL department. HTl and JGl had developed graded modelling activities for the purpose of scaffolding learning, aiming to simultaneously build up students’ confidence in using the target language and focus on consolidating their written literacy. Firstly, students were provided with a model paragraph describing their school in Spanish, and were asked to make it a higher quality paragraph by adding or improving the variety of connectives within the text.

Secondly, students were provided with jumbled sentences that they needed to re-order in order for the paragraph to make logical sense.

This was followed by a cloze text activity, further differentiated by either showing or concealing a choice of words to fill the gaps.

The final activity was more open-ended. Students had a set of Spanish sentence starters (with English translations) and were encouraged to invent their own endings, with the added option of using vocabulary lists or dictionaries to support them if necessary.

The wonderful thing about all of these superb examples of supporting and advancing students’ learning through modelling is that these sorts of things are going on in classrooms across CHS all the time. Of course, what had been discussed and demonstrated in the TLC helped remind staff of how powerful effective modelling can be in the classroom, and perhaps sparked a renewed emphasis on its importance and on-going development to help make marginal gains. But it was great to hear from the teachers in the group that this session had helped confirm in their minds that what they were already doing in their lessons was truly making a difference to support their students to make meaningful progress. The ‘Consolidation’ phase continues...

Ultimately, this TLC was not about requiring teachers to re-invent the wheel. Rather, it was an opportunity, a space, an hour of reflection, to help make explicit and reiterate the importance of the little things that we do instinctively every day; the things that regularly make a real difference to the learning that takes place in our classrooms.

Subject Specific Literacy INSET

On the first day back from Christmas break we had an INSET designed around ‘Literacy for Life’.  As one of the pedagogy leaders at our school I took a seminar on using key words to structure and develop writing.  I teamed up with a pedagogy leader from last year Rebecca Howard and not only did we co-lead the seminar; we are also co-writing this blog.

We wanted to make the seminar as accessible for everyone as possible and make staff at our school consider their own subjects’ literacy and what was important to them.   There are many whole school literacy approaches which are very effective but as a teacher in our school I thought the most important thing to me would be to consider subject specific literacy. Focussing on the specialist terminology and getting students to sound like a specialist in their particular subjects.

We started the session by getting teachers to write on post it notes, the key literacy aspects of their subject , and sticking them on ‘literacy umbrellas’ followed by a discussion on the key literacy areas to improve in their subject.

The discussion went from spelling, punctuation to structuring essays and student’s ability to read and understand questions. Staff also shared some of the best practice they used in their departments. Some of the most common ideas were exam question practice; having students review a range of exemplar answers, helping the students structure their answers; one teacher’s mantra was ensuring students always considered Clarity, Accuracy, Detail, often used in conjunction with PEEL – point, evidence, explain, link, repeating and reviewing key words through own teaching and the use of a key word glossaries; some had designed their own which they gave to students, some gave space to the back or front of the books for key words to be updated as and when. I knew there were going to be so many good ideas that people in the school had that I purposefully left extra time for tables to discuss and share with the whole group.

In our activation section I shared my conversations with other subjects around school and the types of techniques and strategies that other departments were using. These built on the best practice from the discussion and gave staff a whole school picture of subject specific literacy. Rebecca then shared the techniques she has used in History. 

Over to Rebecca:

As Tom has mentioned we considered the most valuable part of the session to be teachers sharing and discussing their own excellent practice in terms of literacy. Therefore we wanted to provide our session’s participants with an opportunity to discuss and share strategies and ideas after having scrutinised the collated resources from both Canons and current pedagogy, for example blogs and twitter links. With this priority in mind I contributed to the activation section of the session with a few strategies that we use in Humanities to develop, support and challenge students’ literacy skills.  Below is a summary of the main points made during the session.

When discussing a focus for the session Tom and I began with the idea of using key words and phrases to help develop students’ writing. Writing is a complex process involving several stages, as Geoff Barton (Don’t Call it Literacy! 2013) states, writing involves :

•         Modelling (the teacher sharing information about a text)

•       Joint construction (teacher and pupil working together to create a text in the spirit of collaboration)

•       Independent construction (pupils constructing a text independently)

Barton also goes on to highlight five crucial areas that ‘every teacher ought to know about writing’:

1. Remember The Matthew Effect: ‘ The [word/literacy] rich will get richer and the [word/literacy] poor will get poorer.’ Therefore deliberately teaching writing skills will decrease existing inequalities.
2. Presentation matters.
3. Demonstrating writing matters. This means modelling and demonstrating, making mistakes and correcting them.
4. Structure matters. This means mastering paragraphs, sentence structures and connectives.
5. Vocabulary matters. The precision and complexity of the words we use marks the difference between the amateur and the expert. Teaching complex words to pupils you may consider less able is crucial as they may be the ones who benefit the most.

I wanted to focus firstly on strategies relating to the last point: ‘Vocabulary matters’ and ways in which we teach students to value and develop their vocabulary in Humanities.  I am certain these ideas are neither unique nor the best, however they have proven invaluable to us in Humanities, especially for students undertaking the rigorous study of History where literacy and language mastery are the absolute cornerstone of becoming expert in the subject.  Some strategies we use in this area are:

1. Key words and glossaries

Highlighting relevant, complex and /or subject specific terms at the start of (and during!) every lesson helps to develop students’ vocabulary. All students use the back of their books as a glossary of key terms. More recently we have begun to use half termly glossary quizzes or key word bingo to further consolidate understanding and enhance impact by referring back to previous new words.

2. Key word boxes

We always endeavour to make more complex vocabulary explicit, visible and easily available to students when they are tackling a written task. We actively encourage students to use them in their speaking and writing.

3. Key phrases

In a similar way to key words we make more complex phrases explicit, visible and easily available to students when they are tackling a written task as well as actively encouraging students to use them in their writing after experimenting verbally.  We have found that new vocabulary and phrases can help students (especially our students, who mostly speak English as an additional language) to express existing ideas for which they do not yet have words. In addition this helps students to develop new ideas which they did not previously hold.  For me this highlights our crucial responsibility to commit to making such this a priority for our students.  (Inspired from James Woodcock’s Teaching History (119) article: ‘Does the linguistic release the conceptual?’)

In History, we want our students to think and write like expert historians, employing subject specific language confidently.  This required careful consideration and research into the kind of language and phrases expert historians use in order to share these with our students. We concluded that in order for students to be able to think and write like historians they often need to demonstrate an air of uncertainty about the points they can make from the evidence they have been presented with. They also need to be able to make appropriate judgements that they can substantiate.  

Below is an example of a resource developed to support students in developing such tendencies.

3. Key phrase mats resource: How to make beautiful (inspired by Berger!) judgements in History.

Making judgements that can be substantiated is a crucial skill we want our students to be able to develop. It challenging to weigh up both sides of an issue or claim and formulate a judgement therefore such skills are often seen at the higher end of mark schemes.

We find our students make such judgements cognitively yet do not always have the appropriate langue to be able to express their understanding. We wanted to give students appropriate and expert phrases to help them express such ideas for which they may not yet have the vocabulary.

In History  (as in many other subjects) a key feature of our questions require students to make a judgement on the extent to which they believe something, or how far they agree. Some common question stems are below:

• How certain are you about…..?
• To what extent….?
• How much do you agree about…..?
• How far does the evidence suggest….?
• How effective/reliable?
• What rating would you give?

In the vast majority of cases we found that students were responding with answers that demonstrated understanding but where mastery of academic language was missing.  Common student (verbal) responses to the aforementioned questions were for example:

• ‘It’s about 50/50’
• ‘About 50%’
• ‘Half –half’
• ‘I’m 25% sure’
• ‘It’s 100%’

Therefore to support students in developing more academic language and inspired by researched literacy mats including Dale Banham’s, we developed a literacy mat to help students get better at making expert judgements. We wanted it to enable students to consider the strength and validity of their arguments and the strength of the evidence they have been presented with. The result is the resource below, kindly spruced up and laminated by Dan Fowler. It has been such a valuable resource and we use it more than even expected. In an ideal world we want to move to having these permanently  stuck to the desks to consistently support speaking and writing.  To hear students in year 8 respond verbally with answers such as ‘ this profoundly indicates that….’ has been really rewarding. It has also made a positve impact in students writing and students often ask for them specifically. 

Please find below some visual examples of the resources we use. The judgements mat is the first item below.

Next we focussed on Barton’s second of his ‘Five things every teacher should know about writing’: Structure matters. A key theme of the INSET and good practice in general in terms of literacy appears to making strategies we already employ to support literacy that may be implicit, really explicit to students. With this in mind we looked at some Humanities resources that exemplify this, where scaffolding and sentence starters are used and explicitly referred to before students write to reinforce expectations.

Making the implicit explicit (Didau, 2013) : Scaffolding and sentence starters

We initially discussed how resources that we already use for writing can be easily altered to make the development of academic literacy more explicit through, for example, scaffolding, the use of sentence starters and giving examples of key phrases needed for particular purposes.

We looked at a basic and fairly typical resource used for writing, where students investigate a range of options in order to evaluate how effective something is.  We then discussed how we could alter this resource slightly to:

(a) support students in structuring their written responses

(b) encourage students to use more academic language

Please find the two resources used in the session below. The latter being more explicit and signposting exactly what is expected from students’ writing with sentence starters and encouraging them to refer to the judgements mat.

As I am sure you aware there was a lot to take in.  For the consolidation phase we had prepared many different resources from various places including literacy maps, journals, blogs, subject specific research material on literacy strategies and ideas on how to improve literacy in various subjects.  We gave staff a chance to peruse and then they completed a sheet on the area they wanted to improve and the strategies they would take from the session.  In hindsight I wish we made more of an effort to fully engage staff with the resources and it was something to improve on for next time.

The session was really useful for me and even though I was leading the session I was able to take a lot of ideas from other more experienced teachers.  I am going to increase the amount of practice questions we do and spend more time explicitly teaching the literacy of the questions, focussing on key words and students’ understanding of the question.  I am very passionate about subject specific literacy and think it is very important that this is improved alongside whole school literacy approaches.

Canons Creative Writing Club

The Creative Writing Club at Canons was set up several years ago to provide a space for students to develop their Creative Writing skills. I have taken over the club during this academic year, and from the very beginning have been amazed by the talent and work being produced by its members. These are students who come to have fun, but are also interested in crafting and developing their skills, and they return faithfully every week in order to work on their writing. They also enjoy writing creatively in a structured school setting with no concerns about mark schemes and rules passed on from an exam board. Students find it freeing to be able to take their work in any direction that they might choose.

Since my tenure began, we have worked on different mini-projects together. I have tried to vary these projects in order to appeal to different members of the Club. It is not simply a case of the students turning up and writing in silence- I also want them to read different examples of literature, and learn different approaches to writing creatively.

We started the term by reading the short story The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs. The students used the story as a basis for their own short stories about wishes going wrong. Another reason for choosing this story in particular was to get students to read a piece of 19^th Century fiction with words they might not have come across before, in order to help them to develop their vocabulary.

Members have also made up three different ‘elements’- for example ‘a stolen ring, a fear of spiders, and a sinister stranger’- which another student had to use for inspiration for a short story or poem. This gave students a chance to think outside the box, and use their imaginations fully.

Students often enter National Competitions and have their work printed in the School Newspaper. I also plan to create an Anthology this year of their work. The other great positive with Creative Writing Club is the friendships that have been formed between students from different year groups. They all have something in common- the sincere wish to write.

Setting up a Creative Writing Club is relatively easy, and the rewards and growth of the students are well worth it. I now pass over to some of the members of the Club, with their own thoughts:

 

Student S, Year 10

I’ve been at the club since the beginning. When I first heard about the club, I thought that it would be a great way of having the opportunity to express myself through creative writing. Ever since then, I’ve always enjoyed coming to Creative Writing Club because I find it easier to write next to fellow creative writers. I wrote this haiku poem which is about how words can create worlds and characters that transcend reality:

Pen clasped in one hand,

Black ink sprawled against thin sheets,

Lives and worlds are made

                   

Student L, Year 9

I was introduced to the Creative Club by our Librarian, Miss Franklin as I was waiting to take a book out of the library. When I met the club members for the first time we all became friends. After that I introduced one of my friends to the club and then we started to make our memories together. This poem is about all the things that I remember and happened at the Creative Writing Club and what it means to me:

Miracles in Room 1

We meet each other in room 1,

Where the miracles are written.

We salute each other with a big smile and say,

“Nothing will come of nothing.”

If there are no hopes and dreams,

There will be no ideas to create miracles.

 

 

Promoting Positive Behaviour

Like most NQT’s, I was eager to learn and eager to improve my teaching. I wanted to become a consistently outstanding teacher. However, as observations of colleagues and regular staff training gave me more and more new teaching ideas to consider, I quickly found myself becoming overwhelmed and unsure of how I could implement all of these concepts at once. I soon realised that I needed to focus on one aspect of my teaching at a time.

A formal observation that I had as part of my application for the Ped Leaders post soon gave me a focus. My lesson was judged to be good with outstanding features. I was disappointed not to have achieved an outstanding, but agreed that my behaviour management was not as effective as it should be. There was one particular class with whom I felt behaviour was a problem. I had actually begun to dread the lessons I had with them!

I consequently began to ask colleagues about behaviour management strategies that worked for them and found out about ideas that I could try with my class. I regularly observed colleagues from a range of subjects who were renowned for their outstanding behaviour management and made it the focus of the fort-nightly coaching conversations I had with one particular colleague. Discussing the issue was not easy, as I felt embarrassed.  In truth, it is rare to come across teachers who confess to having problems with behaviour, as I suppose teachers fear that they may be judged as being a ‘failing teacher’. I really did feel that I must be the only person struggling to deal with the behaviour of my students.

Never the less, for each of my lessons I would come up with a grand plan for ‘taming’ this class and would feel optimistic that I would finally crack it. One week I would use the schools ‘ladder of consequence’ but when that didn’t work, the following week I would focus my attention on the handful of well-behaved students, showering them with praise in the hope that the more challenging students would follow suit in order to gain my attention. However, behaviour remained a problem and I would come away feeling a failure, not sure of what to do next. Each lesson, I tried something new.

I couldn’t help but feel frustrated. I had trained to become a teacher for four years and had learned about effective behaviour management strategies. Clear boundaries, high expectations, consistency, challenge for all, seating plans, warnings followed by sanctions. Each of these strategies was so straightforward on paper, but in reality I felt unsure of what to do!

I spent more time reflecting on the lessons I had taught this class, and after yet another conversation with a colleague about how I could tackle the problem, I realised that in attempting to improve behaviour, I was failing to be consistent, as I had been trying different strategies in every lesson. When things were going really badly, I wasn’t even enforcing strategies for a whole lesson, let alone a series of lessons.

I realised that it was about finding what made this particular class ‘tick’. What could I enforce that would make them want to change their behaviour, that would make them want to avoid sanctions? For this particular class, I discovered that it was not just about having sanctions for the class as a whole but also for individuals focused on their love for the practical element of PE. Throughout every lesson, I now tally up the minutes of a chosen activity that every student in the class will do at the beginning of the practical session, as a result of poor behaviour during the first hour of theory. I have found this to really improve the focus of students. It provides them with a challenge that immediately engages them, particularly as it involves an element of competition and also enables them to see progress week on week. Individual students are given a warning and then miss ten minutes of practical, followed by removal from the lesson and then detention if the warning has not been sufficient.

This strategy works effectively with this particular group. However, with another class it does not. Instead the use of a stopwatch to tally up the time they waste is what makes them ‘tick’. The class remain behind at the end of the lesson for double the time accumulated. Whilst they stayed behind for seven minutes the first time I tried this approach, they now average just eighteen seconds per lesson.

I am now finally seeing an improvement in behaviour with even my most difficult class, and can see that ‘consistency’ when it comes to behaviour management does not necessarily mean a one size fits all approach.  Strategies need to be tailored to individual classes. Once the most effective approach has been found, it is imperative that the teacher is consistent with it.

Now in my second year of teaching, I can finally see why those with more experience say that teaching becomes easier with time. Having worked for just over a year at improving my behaviour management, I recently received an outstanding judgement for a formal observation, where positive comments were made about my effective behaviour management. Both delighted and relieved to have made progress, I of course realise that there is still room for improvement and this will continue to take time and effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Literacy and oracy in a Mathematics Classroom

Literacy and oracy in a Mathematics Classroom

Why is oral literacy in the classroom important? What does literacy mean to students? And as a teacher what are our expectations of our student’s using literacy and oral literacy in our classroom? These questions could be asked to any teacher, teaching any subject.  As the reader of this blog I pose a question to you, what do you expect the answers to be?

Below you can see the following answers I obtained from different teachers. I will not identify which subject they teach, but will wait for your comments and any questions you may pose.

Teacher	Why is oral literacy in the classroom important?	What does literacy mean to students?	What are our expectations of our student’s using literacy and oral literacy in our classroom?
x	‘To assess the students’ understanding’	e.g. ‘Writing in full sentences’	‘When speaking in the classroom they should use standard English’
y	‘Students' ability and confidence to express their ideas clearly is vital if they are to progress and challenge each other’	‘Students' ability and confidence to express their ideas clearly is vital if they are to progress and challenge each other’	‘To be confident speakers in the classroom’
z	‘Many students are not exposed to subject specific language outside of the classroom’	‘Many students are not exposed to subject specific language outside of the classroom’	‘Answer in full sentences. Use and record keywords, definitions and terms’

Teacher ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ both felt importance of literacy in the classroom were the same as what literacy means to the student, could this be a common thought or maybe the questions were not clear enough.

We as teachers are labelling the communication between our students, their subject knowledge and the teacher as literacy and oral literacy. However to students they do not label the way they communicate or illustrate their thoughts. They simply call it ‘explaining’. I strongly believe we should not disregard students’ thoughts nor the way they are comfortable with expressing themselves. Instead we should implement the mathematical language into their ideas bridging communication and understanding between the teacher and student.

In my Mathematics classroom, I feel it is absolutely necessary that students use both the English language and Mathematical language correctly to develop their skills. When introducing the topic ‘Averages’ in my year 7 class I wanted my students to create their own definition, something that makes sense to them which they  can use  to apply their knowledge.

I wrote these key words on the board (see below). I asked the students to discuss what these meant (Think-Pair Shared) and asked them to explain how they remembered the definitions or how they were able to work it out.

 

In preparation for the next lesson I looked through my students’ books to see what they had written. I collected all their ideas together and created this card sort task as a starter for their next lesson.

Students were asked to arrange the cards into groups; they were not given any direction on how many groups or my expectations. I was more curious about how they thought and how I, as their teacher could draw conclusions on their perception of these keywords.

 

Below are a few examples of how the students sorted the cards. The most interesting aspect for me was not how they did it but their responses to the task. I asked my students to give a title to each of their groups; below you can see their thoughts.  One student said to me ‘Miss, I know it’s wrong!’

 

 

 

They had labelled one of the columns as the wrong way to define it and the other as the right way. I feel it is important for students to know it is acceptable to be wrong in a lesson. However this was a rare occasion, were the students actually wrong? Nearly every other table in this class had the same groupings. What could this possibly mean?

Students were aware that both definitions meant the same thing. However they refused to accept that both were correct. Reassuring ‘It is OK to be wrong’ students were given the opportunity to express their thoughts and discuss with the class a suitable name we could give these columns. As a class they labelled the columns as shown below.

 

 

We should not disregard the way students think. It helps them to express their opinions and become a confident speaker in the classroom. “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” - George Washington.

If we as teachers are confident with the use of literacy in our classroom our students will rise to the challenge themselves.