I’ve got a while pile of half finished blog posts I had hoped to finish during half term week, but with the failure of the school servers at county halls, it’s knocked out our access to Google Apps as well, so I can’t get to them!
Instead, I’ve spent a bit of time reflecting on how this whole ‘rebooting’ thing is going, halfway though the year.
In a tweet
Love it. More enthusiasm from me and students. Collaboration a big plus. Still need better Qs, more public outcomes plus investigate frameworks like KWL and SOLO
In more detail…
WWW
- I feel like my teaching is more focused, more relevant and more enthusiastic than it has been for a few years, and without driving myself into an early grave by making worksheets for everything.
- Having the class blog / edmodo have been great and have given the whole thing a backbone without which I suspect things wouldn’t have worked so well.
- Having the ‘logbook’ at the front of KS3 books isn’t working as I’d planned (we just don’t get the time to fill it in each lesson), but is making a great vehicle for recapping every few lessons and drawing out the main points again.
- My marking is more focussed
- Finally took the plunge and created a blank wiki for my sixth formers to turn into a revision guide. Probably one of the highlights of this last half term – Why didn’t I do it sooner?!?!?
Even Better If
- I want to find a way to put most of my assessment input mid way through a project where it can have most input. I need to redesign a few of the tasks with this in mind.
- Need to look into other frameworks (Eg SOLO and KWL)
- Need to make more little videos to support extended writing.
- I still need to turn my marking around faster – and contain to aim for the kind of ideas expressed here
- More work on questioning – especially moving to a completely no hands up rule for teacher led Q&A and aiming for more basketballs and less ping pong