blog.mrstacey.org.uk

We’re having a big push on the VLE during gain time. This involves:

1. I’ve set up courses for each department. As a basic they’ve got for each key stage they teach. In some cases we’ve done for one for each year group and where asked, we’ve done some for specific topics. They’ve all been set up to a common format, with all the teachers from that dept given teacher rights on those courses.

2. I’ve created the following framework to guide me (and the staff) in terms of rolling this out. After our experience with Kaleidos I’m keen not to overload people:

1. How to add resources to a page so students can access them
2. How to set up ‘assignments’ so students can upload their work
3. How to set up ‘quizzes’ and other forms of assessment, some of which can be self marking
4. How to create an online ‘classroom’ that encourages students to collaberate and communication online
5. What else can I do with this thing?

3. I’ve written a ‘Big Friendly Guide’ to step one in the list above. Although 90% of the content in the same, I’ve produced one that’s slightly different for each department, listing the courses they have had set up and showing their departmental homepage. While this has taken longer that producing just one I’m trying to make this process as much like a conversation as I can (as opposed to another initiative that people need to do)

4. I’ve set up a course on Moodle to host all the guides and other resources, including a text introduction, a mindmap and a 5 minute introductory video I made using Jing. I’ve opened it up to guests and it’s here. Help yourself if there’s anything there that’s of use to you.

5. Drop in sessions for people to come and work in room with me, Nick or another of our more experienced uses there for consultaion. This isn’t a ‘training course’ where people come, sit and listen. What it is is some protected time where staff can focus just on this, in a supportive environment where they can ask questions if they want.

So far, there’s a bit of a buzz about this at the moment. I just hope we can capitalise on this in the next few weeks to get widespread use of the VLE over next year!

A quick add-on to yesterday’s post about timely interventions during student-led projects.

It’s worth mentioning that some of my colleagues have been experimenting with what Paul Ginnis calls ‘observer servers’, but one what one of the SMART team christened ‘Mini-Nick and Margaret’ - students who leave their groups and whose job it is to go and observe the workings of the different groups. They then deliver their verdict during a plenary session.

Feedback from those who used it is that is very effective both in focussing students during the task (’they all shut up when X appeared with his clipboard’) and during the plenary, being a lot more direct than many teachers would (or could?) be.

Our year 7 SMART classes have just finished their very successful SMARTprentice project in which each form was split into two groups, and each of the 22 groups ran a small business for two weeks. All the profits will be donated to a charity of the groups choosing.

I’ll come back and fill in some blanks on the practicalities of this on another occasion, but one area that has been bugging me is the balance between ‘instructing them’ (an approach we are trying to move away from as much as possible) and letting them get on with it.

Let me explain. In a few cases groups were extremely successful, one group raising several hundred pounds. Most groups however hit problems, solved them as best they could and did ok, raising between £10 and £25. I have explained in several debriefs that this was fine, what we expected and that we would rather that people failed to an extent because they learn from their failures. Except I’ve been thinking about this, and wondering if we’ve missed a trick. You see, talking to the students many of them don’t seem have worked out what their failures were and I’m not convinced that if we repeated the project now many would do that much better. These are, after all, 11 and 12 year olds!

I can’t remember what planted this seed, but I think it might have been this Stephen Heppell video that I came across yesterday. I’m wondering if there might be a middle way. Each group works with an adult who acts as a critical friend, asking questions and prodding answers for possible holes. The final decisions would rest with the students, but this might get them to challenge their thinking at a time when it can make the most difference.

I’m working on the evaluation of the SMART programme for this year, and I think I might make that next year’s key idea for our new staff - be a critical friend.

Yesterday I wrote about my plans for handing some control of the curriculum in my year 9 History classes to the students and the first of three activities, the personal project on any 20th century topic. Today, I’m going to look at the second activity which didn’t work quite as well!

In our revised schemes of work for this year one of the topics we have reduced the time for is World War One. As a result of this, as well as the range of issues and topics that it raises, I thought it would make an excellent topic to try my second idea, student led, mini-lesssons.

Following two lessons on the courses of the war, and an overview lesson in the form of the textbook challenge, students came up with a list of topics linked to the war that they would be interested in studying. They then spent five minutes walking around the room trying to find people with similar interests to form groups. These groups then agreed a topic and had two lessons to research and plan a mini-lesson of around 20 minutes. We talked (too) briefly about what makes a good lesson, and some of the ideas they could use. I asked each group to make sure they included some kind of starter, a main section which could include activities and a plenary that looked back and checked their classmates learning. At the end of each mini-lesson each group produced a brief evaluation.

Across the three classes we had an average of six groups ranging from two people to seven, and a full range of topics, including various aspects of technology, the war at sea, the home front, the effects on women, and the impact on professional sport. In each class it took three hours to get through all the lessons, some of which were considerably better than others!

What Went Well

• In some cases students were able to explore areas that were outside the traditional scheme of work, and certainly wouldn’t have been covered in a reduced version
• Some of the activities were excellent - one group brought in plasticine and made each group of students build a model of a trench as part of their lesson. Another gave a series of battlefield senarios and asked students to work out where they would focus their troops, or which weapons they would use. A third brought in headscarves and asked groups to produce 30 second commercials to get women involved in the war effort.
• There were some very good uses of Powerpoint to support talks (rather than as large print scripts), one group included a video clip that they had created and another had a flash starter that one of the students had created
• I suspect that the long-term recall of the topic they explored would be higher than had I taught this traditionally and many groups got to develop their communication and team work skills
• One student at least admitted to having a new found respect for teachers!
• In one case one of my SEN students ended up on his own for one lesson due to the absence of the rest of his team. I was able to work 1:1 with him for part of the lesson to help him write his script. He then decided to do a match up cards activity which he created and I copied, and then for homework he produced a powerpoint of images to go along with his talk. That 1:1 intervention to set him up led to an excellent talk for which he got lots of credit for from the rest of the class.

Even Better If

• Students time management of their lessons was poor and we wasted a lot of time over these three lessons. This is turn led to problems of disruption which led to further interruptions and slowed things down further. This led to a slightly negative feeling over the whole thing by the third lesson.
• Too many students relied on the same, relatively low impact methods, including word searches. And if I have to sit through another round of badly organised splat I think I shall scream!
• Too many students still insist on reading out their powerpoints
• There were a few cases of students ‘forgetting’ materials or having people missing. Despite my warnings that they would have to do it anyone, I had to improvise 30 minutes of one lesson when none of the groups were able to carry on.
• In some cases there were factual mistakes made, or only surface level learning seemed to have taken place. In one case a group had planned to show a film clip. From World War 2.

Would I do it again?

Yes, and no. Not in it’s current form, there was too much lost time and not enough focus, but I still think that the idea of letting students explore an issue they are interested in and take ownership of is a powerful one. If I was to do it again, I think I would make the following changes:

• Reduce the expectations from a ‘three part lesson’ to a presentation with activity. This will hopefully allow students to focus on the important points and get one good activity
• I would spend more time talking about what makes a good lesson and produce more structured success criteria to help guide students.
• Provide more focussed resources. Although I provided old text books, too much of their research was internet based and then parroted back with little understanding. Now I know some of the likely topics I can produce some ‘fact cards’ to help give them the basic information, and let their additional research fill in any blanks they have.
• I also need to think about getting students to break the process in half a little more - work out what’s important and then work on how to present it. Too many groups prioritised the presentation overt the content
• Set time limits and have a very visual clock for students to time themselves against.

Nick and I were approached by our Assistant Head for some kind of ICT / E-learning tip that he could send out this morning. In the course of one car journey we managed to come up with the following four ideas:

1. To address the issue of students at KS4 and 5 missing lessons due to other activities, all lessons from September will be automatically recorded and added to the school website for those pupils to access. It will also be a great boost to other students who will be able to recap any parts of the lesson they didn’t quite understand in their own time. The microphones will be added to classrooms over Easter

2. We will be giving all students a laptop from September. These will be on a lease / purchase option, parents will pay a small weekly amount and at the end of three years the student owns the laptop. For those students whose families do not want to take part, school laptops will be available.
Obviously this will require a review of schemes of work and a new ‘laptop’ logo added where ever opportunities to make use of these resources.

3. As part of the new WAG drive for parental inclusion in learning, we will start fitting some classrooms with webcams over Easter. Parents will be issued with logins, and they will be able to view their students classes. This is a precursor to giving them access to SIMS to view their children’s academic progress. If the scheme is sucessful webcams will be rolled out across the school over the next 12 months

4. Many of you will have heard of ‘Skype’, the free internet video phone service. From today we’re having it put across the network. This will mean that when you are away on inset courses you will still be able to communicate with your classes to start lessons off, answer questions and lead plenary sessions. Obviously this won’t be practical for every lesson, but while you are travelling and during lunch and coffee breaks we feel this can be a valuable tool to maintaining the quality of learning even during staff absences.
From today onwards, when you are submitting applications for inset, you will need to complete a new form indicating which lessons you will be able to ’skype’ in to.

In the end, this is the email that was sent. I think most people saw through it, but I did have one very angry teacher stop me in the yard and asked if I knew anything about it!

• All colleagues should have received a letter from the GTCW - we are all entitled to up to £650 worth of training. Experience suggests we need to get our requests in quickly - before the pot runs out!
• Many thanks to those colleagues who have agreed to be part of the webcam experiment. All being well, the webcams will be fitted over the Easter holidays. The reason for this general notice is that there are still two webcams that are in need of a location. Any further volunteers? The webcams - which are designed to record each lesson - are funded by WAG and are part of the drive to pupil inclusion (hence the funding).It does look as though positive feedback will lead to all classrooms being ‘web-cammed’ sometime next academic year.
• Nick Francis and Dave Stacey will be running e-learning twilight workshops shorlty after the holidays. Watch this space.