1. Super Socrative

What is Socrative?

http://www.socrative.com/

Socrative is a student response system that allows you to design quzzes which your pupils can access from any internet enabled device. That’s ANY device. Their smart phone, iPod, Tablet…anything. Dead easy. The quizzes can be marked by Socrative and results exported instantly to Excel to be displayed and used as you choose. Here’s how I used it.

When I was first introduced to Socrative (by @aknill at TMEssex) I was blown away by it’s capabilities; especially the function to export all student responses to Excel in an instant. At the very least this gives you instant mark book fodder but also immediately allows the class to see where their individual and group strengths and weaknesses lie. Talk about instant target setting and clear AFL! Nevertheless, I was also a bit disappointed. I couldn’t immediately see a good use for Socrative in a subject like English where there are very rarely right and wrong / true or false answers. I temporarily dismissed Socrative as something I might use as a bit of fun with KS3 when it came round to learning and revision key vocabulary like poetic terms or to use for the odd spelling starter with letters to descramble etc. But then I had a revelation. A Geography colleague had also been at TMEssex and had used Socrative the next day as part of an end of unit test. He sent me an email to say it had gone brilliantly and to say he’d discovered that there was no limit to the amount of text you could put in a question and suggested that if I didn’t want Socrative to mark a quiz for me why not try it with open ended questioning. So I did…and couldn’t believe the results. Here’s how it went.

Y10 were a few lessons away from their Controlled Assessment on ‘An Inspector Calls’ – an analytical essay exploring the presentation of community and social prejudice in the play. They had just written their last essay on the text before moving on to their new Controlled Assessment title and I wanted them to reflect on their work using the GCSE assessment objectives to help them. I also wanted to tackle key areas of misunderstanding.

When they arrived in the classroom there was a simple set of instructions written on the board telling them to take out any internet enabled device they had with them (I also provided ipads for each table of 4) and instructing them how to log on to my socrative room. Once they got over the initial excitement of a teacher asking them to play with their phone / ipod etc. they were away and totally engrossed for the duration. The quiz started with simple right / wrong questions such as:

Which word describes Preiestley’s political views?

A. Capitalist

B. Socialist

C. Communist

Lots of them were muddling up these words in their essays and discussion around them room allowed them to iron out the definitions and lead on to them comparing these beliefs to the beliefs presented through different characters in the play and thinking about the context of the time the play was written. All without me saying anything; it was magical! Without knowing it they were developing their ability to synthesise ideas and reach new levels of attainment on the mark scheme. The quiz then moved into broader territory. Pupils had AQA Controlled Assessment mark schemes on their desks and I had typed up example points / paragraphs from their essays into the quiz and asked questions like ‘which assessment objectives does this paragraph fulfil?’ They had to assess the work and discuss it in depth and it was the first time I had really seen this group grapple meaningfully with the language of the assessment criteria. There were even a few ‘OH! I see what I haven’t been doing know’s and ‘So THAT’S what I was missing’s which was thrilling after weeks of writing the same thing on their essays over and over again. As ever, being actively involved in the assessment progress meant that the pupils were enabled to improve. The last questions in the quiz asked them to write better versions of some paragraphs and points using what they’d learned and discussed. Once the results were exported to excel and quick cut and paste of a couple of these allowed for a brilliant plenary in which the class (as part of some quite heated and excitable discussion) identified strengths of each answer and amalgamated them into a new model answer on mini whiteboards. Without exception everyone had improved. Fingers crossed this improvement will also be seen in their Controlled Assessment essays which they began just one or two lessons after this.

All of this would have been possible via old school methods. I could have stood at the front and read the questions, flashing up the example paragraphs on a powerpoint or even providing them on a worksheet but the beauty of Socrative (aside from the novelty value of using your phone in class, which shouldn’t be dismissed) was that students progressed at their own pace through the questions. They could have as much or as little discussion or debate as they needed and didn’t feel pressured. The ease and speed with which you can manipulate their responses into other forms and work with them allows for much more effective sharing than moving around desks or passing bits of paper and, above all, it was all independent work! I spend fifteen minutes (tops) making a quiz and 50 minutes watching them learn and improve without too much intervention on my part. I facilitated it, they did it.

In future use I would like to explore sharing their answers on a GoogleDoc and then allow them to work collaboratively to improve them and also getting students to set quizzes based on assessing each others’ work. Onwards and upwards!

2. Shakespeare and SOLO

I have now used SOLO in a few ways and enjoy the independence it bring to the students and the surety that progress will be made by everyone in the course of the lesson. It would take far too long to explain everything I did but you would be well advised to read these blog posts by the extraordinary @learningspy and have a think about how you can use SOLO in your classroom.

What is SOLO? http://learningspy.co.uk/solo-taxonomy/

SOLO – An Introduction to Shakespeare http://learningspy.co.uk/2012/05/26/shakespeare-solo-taxonomy-and-taking-risks/ and http://learningspy.co.uk/2012/06/02/shakespeare-solo-taxonomy-and-taking-risks-part-2/

I adapted this lesson to allow a Y10 class (not my own) to explore a whole play theme for the first time. The Prezi I used can be found here and the resources all used the same principle but the initial stage had quotes and references from the play and the additional information at the multistructural stage was on context – attitudes towards fate and the supernatural in Renaissance England.

It is hard to write a recipe for a solo lesson or explain how I used it exactly as the lesson changes depending on the students and their existing knowledge. Just read a lot and adapt it for your needs. I thoroughly recommend it.

So, Happy New Year everyone. Here’s to more brilliant ideas shared in 2013. 

Slow Writing is a fabulous resource developed by @David_Triptico (http://www.triptico.co.uk/) and some talented helpers like the awesome @learningspy and @KristianStill Not only is this resource an enormous help to me and to my pupils, it is also responsible for securing my collaboration with teachers at the other end of the country, (which has made me a better, more reflective teacher) and students’ responses to it have forced me develop more creative uses for it. Here’s a little bit about what I did….

This is my presentation on Slow Writing at Teachmeet Twist last week. Before you watch it, you should know one important thing…they throw a large stuffed camel at your head if you run over your time! Talk about pressure. So that explains my occasional dromedary related outbursts!

The technology at the awesome @NightZooKeeper’s offices was very sexy (all split screens and everything) which all worked perfectly until the link went down for a moment but hopefully I recovered ok. I hope some of you find it useful. There was a great buzz about the evening and I can’t thank the Zoo Keepers and @jodieworld enough for an inspirational few hours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJTi8dXj5bQ&feature=plcp

The Prezi that I was using can be found here:

http://prezi.com/-kn129nlms5_/slow-writing-fast-progress/

Next week I am very excited to be attending the Pedagoo XmasParty in Newcastle where the legendary @kennypieper and I will be presenting jointly about this subject in our enigmatically titled presentation, ‘You know, we’ve never actually met.’ This means that this week our students (in London and Glasgow respectively) will be assessing each other’s work and sending feedback via the web-waves. From an easy 5 minute starter, Slow Writing has blossomed into  full on scheme of work to improve writing towards section B of the English Language exam and English Language controlled assessment. Proof positive of the power of sharing ideas and making them your own and a big advert for being brave enough to allow the kids to criticise what you bring into their classroom.

Recent SOLO lessons with Y10 on went like this…
Lesson One: Define Solo.

Using the mighty @learningspy ‘s volcano model from the Clevedon Teachmeet ( available here ) the students got the hang of the idea remarkably quickly. Already well into Act Two of ‘An Inspector Calls’ (yes, I’m teaching it AGAIN) they cottoned on to the fact that they all had to at least be at the multi-structural level. Awesome. But how do we progress? Well, first we need to know where we’re going. We had a quick chat through how the SOLO levels related to the GCSE mark scheme and I asked them ‘Where do you want to be?’ The basic target was that we all wanted to improve and move towards relational thinking and we made a promise to improve by the same time next week committing to using SOLO to help.
Lesson Two: Hot Maps

I still have no idea why they’re called Hot Maps by the way…but they work!

Having been a fan of @learningspy ‘s ‘learning journey concept (read about it in his awesome book available here ) we started the next lesson by considering what we were learning. The journey displayed was supposed to show ask them to think about how Priestley’s Socialist views coloured his portrayal of each character and the effect he hoped to have on the audience of 1946. Some great creative thinking and discussion led students to make great relational links and begin to evaluate in the extended abstract even without knowing it!This then allowed greater confidence in what followed.

I then displayed the question on slide two about comparing Sheila and Birling’s views and we key worded the question with solo symbols.

1. We have to know stuff about each person’s view (multistructural)

2. We have to compare (relational)

3. We have to evaluate Priestley’s intentions (extended abstract)

Then, using a SOLO Hot Map for analysis based on the model in Pam Hook’s helpful ‘Solo Taxonomy: A Guide for Schools’ ( available here ) students set about developing ideas step by step. This methodical approach helped them to think about each stage of a point in isolation and have more chance of writing something sophisticated rather than just asserting something they knew about a character. The visual layout of boxes encouraged this and students found it easy to make their ideas better and better. A sort of super charged version of the ‘thinking maps’ we know and love. The best bit? Not once did anyone say the immortal words…’I'm stuck. I don’t know what else to write!’

The next stage was obvious….get it down in ‘proper’ writing. Students wrote an extended paragraph in answer to the question and tried to incorporate the ideas from their Hot Map. The results were great. All 24 kids had managed to demonstrate good relational thinking and some had managed extended abstract. Target no. 1 achieved!
Lesson Three: Reflecting and Target Setting

Reminding students of the question and SOLO key wording I handed back their paragraphs. These had been very lightly marked, highlighting in different colours on example of multistructural, relational and extended abstract thinking as appropriate. If a student hadn’t managed extended abstract I wrote a tip for how they could have achieved it in the same colour. Having handed them back and given students the chance to reflect we looked at SOLO verbs on slide three. From that discussion I asked them to use mini whiteboards in pairs to define what relational thinking and extended abstract thinking meant with relation to writing ‘An Inspector Calls’ essay. The results were staggering! Every pair was able to provide a specific definition for a successful essay. For example:

To reach extended-abstract thinking consider the big picture. Evaluate Priestley’s intentions and link them to the quotes you have discussed and analysed. For example, think about his opinion of community in the war and his desire to retain a more socialist outlook in England.

A discussion of key words on several boards provided an awesome focus for the lesson.

Next, students used the SOLO evaluation sheet shown on slide four to record evidence of having reached each level from multistructural upwards. This could be from my highlighted evidence or from elsewhere in their writing identified by them and discussed with me. This led to further self assessment and evaluation. Where students could not provide evidence they had to work with the others on their table to combine my hints and tips to create an example of extended abstract thinking. They wrote this in a different colour. All that done they set a target for their next essay containing at least one SOLO verb and a specific content aim. For example:

In my next essay I will evaluate the effect of Priestley writing for a 1946 audience but setting the play in 1912 and consider the effect he wanted to have on the audience with the language I have analysed from quotes.

I have never seen such confident awareness of how to improve. Of course, the proof of improvement will be in the pudding of the next essay to be set this week…but I have no reason to doubt SOLO will continue to help this middle set improve and achieve great things.

Not once in these for lessons did I tell them how to think. In fact, I told them very little at all! Nevertheless, in considering how they might hone their thinking processes (some of which were, of course subconscious to them) to allow them to demonstrate their innate skill I unleashed far better results than I might otherwise have seen. Teenagers know how to think but they sometimes need help marshalling thoughts into words and teachers much use their skills to get that thinking on the paper in all its glory!

So three cheers for SOLO and for sharing ideas! Thank you Tweachers and inspirational bloggers for breathing new life into a tired text and for helping me to give me students confidence in their own abilities.

Brilliant teachers understand the importance of energy, openness and focus.

~ Invisible Teaching, Dave Keeling and David Hodgson

This week, I have been reading ‘Invisible Teaching’, a quirky little book that has some useful things to say about creating a positive learning environment. The introduction speaks about the need to develop both focus and openness in pupils and gives a range of practical tasks to try out. What I particularly liked was the fact that the book encourages students to consider how they work and create what Keeling and Hodgson call flow! Flow – the degree to which we are ‘in the zone’ during specific activities but they ask teachers to think about this too. This is their checklist – The Flow Test.

1. Did you have a feeling of ‘this is the real me’? 
2. Were you excited
3. Were you disappointed when you’d finished?
4. Did you think about ways to develop your skill or experience within the activity?
5. Did you feel energised rather than exhausted?
6. Did you lose track of time?

Whilst it might be a scary thought to offer up your lesson for such scrutiny by children (if they didn’t achieve optimum flow surely it’s your fault…?) I think it might be essential to open ourselves up to just that. It might not be that your activity wasn’t good and well planned but that children need to think about how they approach it or why they did approach it in a certain way. This can surely, only lead to better planning and better learning? This said, I haven’t been brave enough to try it yet but promise to report back when I do!

In the meantime, I thought I would apply the checklist to a lesson I recently enjoyed with my A Level students. Enter…Dorcas the sheep!

During Chapel that morning, the Rev had been talking about the parable of the lost sheet. aided by our puppety friend pictured above. On a whim, I decided to steal the puppet for my Year 13 lesson, in which we were revision the pastoral scenes in ‘The Winter’s Tale.’ My initial thought was simply that it would make them laugh, nothing more. I imagined some hilarity followed by discarding the sheep to watch from my desk whilst we cracked on with the real business. What transpired however, was quite different…

The very fact of having a sheep puppet on my arm meant that the students were extremely engaged in discussion – the increase in eye contact alone made for a hugely positive atmosphere. However, the sheep lead us to talk about the shepherd in greater detail than I had planned and then the Rev popped his head round the door to see how we were getting on… On telling him that the sheep was now called Dorcas (after one of the Rusitcs in the play) the Rev suddenly lit up. ‘There’s a Dorcas in the Bible’ he cried and scurried away to find the reference. A quick squiz through Acts Chapter 9 allowed for some insightful new comments about the pastoral genre and the problem of a pagan play written in a Christian era. The surprise element of the sheep had lead to greater learning. My frivolous joke paid off in unexpected ways! 

So.. back to my checklist

1. Did you have a feeling of ‘this is the real me’? – Totally! My imagination is as good as any five year old. The sheep sparked childish enjoyment in all of us.
2. Were you excited - Very, especially by collaborative learning.
3. Were you disappointed when you’d finished? - Disappointed might be a bit far but I certainly could have gone on.
4. Did you think about ways to develop your skill or experience within the activity? Yes. I will tackle those scenes differently in class from now on.
5. Did you feel energised rather than exhausted? Totally.
6. Did you lose track of time? It flew by

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that as well as a balance between focus and openness or energy and focus there must also be room for the element of surprise! Never be afraid to take risks in the classroom – they usually pay off! As Keeling and Hodgson say

Being a teacher is a real challenge – it’s exciting , satisfying and scary. Flow happens in environments where our skills are constantly tested and we are in situations where we have to raise out game.

.. perhaps too, in situations where we harness the element of surprise!

The Lesson I observed was a French A Level Literature lesson and the aim was to get students to make more discerning decisions about the content of their essays. They were preparing for an essay on themes and motifs in Camus L’Etranger.

The starter was making paper snowballs, writing down themes, motifs and key events from the novel, scrunching them up into balls, throwing them, collecting a new one and adding more. I was familiar with this but it was great to be reminded that a little chaos is well worth it. It was great to see students learning from each other and developing ideas.

The second activity though, has loads of potential I think. Students had to take each theme in turn from the snowballs and catagorise them into positive, negative and interesting. The positives were aspects of thematic ideas they thought worked well and the negative those that did not within the context of the book. Discussion of these would get them B standard essays whereas ability to distinguish what is ‘interesting’ and apart from the ‘easy’ interpretation was A/A* thinking.

Basic version of worksheet is attached.    pni

There are obvious literary analysis things we could use as English teachers here, but I also thought this would be really helpful to teach writing to review or non fiction writing. Possibly also a good way into unseen texts. Any other ideas out there?

In the face of end of term whinging about how lethargic the pupils were and how much they needed / wanted spoon feeding, I redoubled my efforts towards independent learning and bucking the ennui trend! The result? Amidst manic musical preparations for Christmas which culminated in a stunning Nine Lessons and Carols from my chapel choir, I lead some hugely enjoyable lessons and the kids did some pretty awesome learning. What follows is a description of some of the things I did with my year 9s and 11s. I’m currently not at home so all resources will be attached later.

General Strategies that created a positive vibe!

After the success of my QR Code reading lesson discussed earlier in the blog, I decided to make QR Codes a regular feature. Each week I put a new QR code on my classroom door. Sometimes it’s a hyperlink to an interesting or useful article, sometimes a poem or a quote and sometimes a reminder about prep tasks. Because it changes kids want to know what will be hidden each week and bother to look.

Google Challenge

This has been brilliant and dead easy. One notice board, covered in Post It Notes and the words ‘Google Challenge’ overhead. The idea is that every time a student comes across a word or phrase they don’t understand when reading, they are responsible for independently finding out its meaning and writing it up and a Post It. This way, others can look at the board when they are stuck, learning from the research of others. Commends are given to those who bring definitions in from home when they have done their private reading. It’s brilliant and a wonderfully low maintenance but colourful display!

Year 9

Using Thinking Maps

Models for these can be found at http://www.thinkingmaps.com I was sceptical at first about using graphical plans for creative things but I confess that it worked like a charm.

The students were studying ‘Wild Places’ by Robert Macfarlane (an amazing text btw) and in particular a chapter in which he relays the life of a soldier named W H Murray. The idea was to use this as a spring board for studying some war poetry and doing some non fiction writing. The next few lessons went like this:

1. Using the comparative thinking map they had to note down everything they knew about the First and Second World Wars and think about similarities and differences. Having done this in pairs they then repeated the exercise in groups of four to double knowledge. The results were astonishing. I needed to do absolutely no teaching whatsoever once they’d shared some key info with the class. Note to self…never under estimate the knowledge that children bring with them to the classroom! Children then made a fact file by using the appropriate chapter of all the info the could find on W H Murray before studying ‘The Soldier’ by Rupert Brooke and discussing attitudes to war.

2. Students given a booklet of four poems, two about or from each war. Group investigations followed and a timed comparative essay on two of their choice. Note. These were great lessons and great essays but not the focus of this blog post.

3. Time for the second thinking map. The multi flow map! Having looked at an obituary of a similar man (The late, great Canon G W Markham) we did some work on deducing and inferring and vocabulary choice. We were focussing on the idea that from a fact the obituary writer had conveyed the information so as to convey much more about the deceased character. They used the thinking map to do the same. In the left column they wrote a fact from the fact file, the middle square was his name and the third column contained what this information might lead us to deduce about Murray’s character. We also added another set of boxes and in this they wrote words or phrases they might use in their final writing – an obituary of W H Murray. This all worked very nicely indeed and apart none of it involved me carping on at the front. I was free to roam the room and work with / help groups or individuals. The framework is also self differentiating – winner!

Year 11

These guys are tough nuts to crack! With the pressure to meet grade predictions on, they are only interested in the right answers and extremely reluctant to be independent. However, with mocks behind us I was able to sell the importance of independent learning based on the amount of unseen stuff in the new GCSE Spec.

Top Tip No. 1 If you haven’t used Class Dojo yet (just google it) do so! The assessment criteria are easily edited and all of my positives were for insight, analysis, helping others and independent discovery etc. The fervour that ensued as they competed for points was extraordinary! I linked it in with our commend system with the student with most points getting a commend after each lesson and the most in a week getting small bag of Haribo! As a result my classroom full of previously terse and grimy Year 11 has been blissful! I can’t recommend this brilliant bit of free kit enough

Top Tip No 2 My heartfelt thanks to Kenny Piper for this one. He suggested I try a ‘get out of jail free card’ system for this group. Brilliant! They have one card a week which entitled them to ask me for information. It would be fun if they all had their own cards but my lot would lose them or develop black market trade instantly. So I have an electronic tally instead. Instantly gone are all those annoying questions like ‘how do I spell…’ and ‘what page is….’ as they judiciously save their card for more appropriate use! Thank you thank you Kenny!

Asking Questions

Unseen poetry is one of the hardest exam elements for my guys so in the last week of term we had a real blitz on it. We started by devising a list of questions we would like to ask a poem. They then used these to analyse a given poem in groups and feed back to the class on the understanding that I was NOT going to go through the poem from the front – they were responsible for each others’ learning. Excellent results and once we evaluated questions and finalised them, they were printed out for everyone’s folders,

We developed this idea by asking questions to the painting associated with the Sister Maude story. This gave the pupils great insight into the poem before study meaning I had to do absolutely zero explanation. This was followed by a summarising activity to give them some context which again, made them think about the information they were assimilating rather than merely copying down and saving for later.

To conclude, I had a manic but marvellous end to term trying out these and other ideas. It reminded me of what I have always believed but what is easily forgotten when up against it at the coal face… Trust the kids more. They want to learn, they know more than you think and you need to give them chance to share it.

Onwards to 2012 comrades! May it be full of independent learning, free thinking and creativity!

Following on from last post – here are some great things I’ve found that have inspired me to be creative and think about thinking this week:

1. Make your own mind maps with a hide and reveal feature on www.mapmyself.com

2. Diagrams to encourage specific types of thinking when processing information: www.thinkingmaps.com

3. Beautiful little animation – could be great for teaching narrative or creative writing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZJDNSp1QJA

4. A great high res picture for when you’re using Bloom’s Taxonomy: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Blooms_rose.svg

5. Good for doing some anthropomorphic activities: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=csX&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=peter+brookes+nature+notes&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1420&bih=744&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

6. If you liked Wordle you’ll love this, Wordle on speed!: www.tagxedo.com

7. Tony Ryan’s brilliant ‘Thinkers keys’ – use the download here free link. Great for starters: http://www.thinkerskeys.com/

To be honest, it’s hard not to be disheartened when reading ‘Out of Our MInds’ however accurate or inspiring the book might be. Especially so when, in the last week I have been forced into the defensive teaching corner by the never ending pile of badmin (hence blogging drought)  but also coming out of certain meetings that have been centred around problems in achieving something rather than encouraging positive cloud thinking. Such meetings mean, even in a week when I feel like I’m flying (the “Ofsted? Yes! Do come in, this is how it’s supposed to be done! feeling) it can be demotivating to feel that you are in the minority. You might be nurturing stella moments of creativity and independent learning but student feedback includes:

“But we need the right answer for the exam miss, it doesn’t matter what we think.”

Or

“Miss / Mr X is a great teacher. She / He just talks at us all lesson and we know what the answers are without having to discuss it.”

It is hard not to feel alone. You scream (hypothetically) “but this is how it should be!” but no matter how strong your convictions it is sometimes hard not to think your efforts futile. How can we produce an educational model that has ‘creativity at its centre’ if our SLTs (close to home) or our government (at a national level) don’t acknowledge or actively promote creativity because society is obsessed with performance statistics? But do they really think it’s ok that our lessons are boring if our A*-C ratio is above average and reflects well on the school? I don’t believe they do. But I do think some leadership teams have stopped investigating the content of lessons and are no longer proactively ensuring or promoting creative and independent approaches. They perhaps just hope it’s all happening. So will the enthusiastic teacher continually pushing for more inevitably become frustrated? Is this why teachers end up in menopause corner? Must we gracefully accept our fate?

But even if we persevere and shout about creativity until we’re blue in the face and someone listens and we set up a committee to look in to it … don’t we just have another problem? If creativity becomes a whole school agenda does it become counter productive – is it no longer creative? This week I attended an excellent inset given by Steve Garnett and Dragonfly Education called ‘integrating thinking skills in the classroom.’ Steve introduced us to ‘thinking maps,’ ‘Venn diagrams’, ‘living graphs’, ‘anthropormorphism’ and more. It was an Inset well worth the considerable chunk of budget and every idea or resource designed to foster the best kinds of independent and creative learning. At one point I wrote in the margin of my notepad: ‘why not use thinking maps across curriculum for uniform approach?’ Perhaps because if everyone used them, the outcomes would become formulaic and  no longer result in the creativity we were seeking? Of course, teaching is all about balance and there is certainly a place for didactic methods but in trying to cage creativity within our institutions are we crushing it at the same time? How do we innovate without incapacitating?

I don’t propose to answer these questions but simply post them into the virtual universe for consideration. Because, on reflection, I believe that it is forcing yourself to tussle with these pedagogical problems that enables good teaching. We won’t always get it right. We won’t always manage  brilliance – some weeks the badmin will win! But simply twisting ourself in knots around the question of creativity may well ensure that we achieve a higher ratio of what Steve Garnett calls ‘Ahhh moments.’ What’s an ‘Ahhh’ moment?  An ‘ahhhh moment’ is one in which a child is emotionally engaged in the moment of learning. Either a stimulus (persuasive text featuring abandoned puppy for example) makes them go ‘Ahhh’ and so they are more effectively engaged in the learning by being emotionally invested or a moment in which they finally understand for themselves a concept, idea or skill… ‘Ahhh!’ I witnessed the latter this week when one Y11 student finally submitted to independent analysis of a poem cried ‘Miss! I can do it! And I really like poetry…it’s all about ideas and my ideas matter.’ And with that, one teenage boy dispelled my lingering sense of futility. So I think… Just as companies used to say ‘oh! You speak Viking? You must come and run our factory?’ So we, the teachers, should say ‘oh! You don’t know all the answers but like asking questions? You must come and teach in our schools.’

With that, time to scuttle off and plan some lessons that involve me doing very little and them doing very lots. Three cheers for tying yourself in knots and for the young man that sparked my creativity this week! Happy Monday mornings to you all. May it be a new sheet of paper and a challenge worth accepting.

A couple of weeks ago, this link was sprinkled like confetti all over the mighty Twitter.

http://www.trailsoptional.com/2011/10/persuasive-writing-and-web-2-0wikis-and-wordle/

I am currently revising key skills with my Year 11 in preparation for their mocks and decided to use it. I set up a Wiki page on Wikispaces (surprisingly easy), set them all up with user-names and passwords and wrote the following instructions.

The results were fabulous! First and foremost, EVERY student improved their writing having identified weaknesses with the Wordle starter. Seeing the words in pictorial form helped them identify what they needed to change about their language choices in order to better meet the brief. The Wiki encouraged them to think much more precisely about editing their work because they knew their friends (and me) were logged in and watching what they were doing. There was a real buzz about the place. Every time a new post came in there was a little yelp of excitement. Best of all, the class barely needed me there to achieve. This was true independent learning. I was definitely facilitating rather than teaching!

One pupil (usually quite unmotivated) even found some internet links about writing to persuade and started an additional discussion topic where he pasted them for his friends to use. Awesome! Even more awesome, when I started a discussion forum entitled ‘what have you learned from your friends today’ many of them excitedly posted specific skills they had improved, which demonstrated that they had really engaged with the assessment process and thoroughly understood how to improve.

At the end of the lesson, one pupil went to give me their original piece of writing to mark and then took it back and said:

‘actually Miss, you don’t need to mark this now do you? I already know how to make it better. I reckon I can get an A next time!’

That’s got to be a mark of success! Thoroughly recommend Wikis and Wordles to all.

I am now off to put some quality time between me and work but I am looking forward to developing my discoveries this week into more concrete aims for the rest of this term. Thank you THANK YOU to all my Tweacher friends and my colleagues at school for their interest and encouragement in the past couple of weeks. It’s so nice to be buzzing about teaching. We are lucky to do what we do!

Happy bonfire night!

http://justtryingtobebetter.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/the-right-to-read/

I recognised a familiar problem. My students though are 13+ and can all read, most of them very fluently, but very few of them seem to enjoy reading any more. They don’t sit cross legged on the carpet and puzzle over what the words are but they do struggle excruciatingly to find meaning or enjoyment in the imagined worlds provided for them by some of our greatest authors. Why is this? And why am I so intolerant of it?

In our fortnightly library lesson the other week, I set about observing my Year 9 group David Attenborough styley whilst they attempted the seemingly arduous task of reading for pleasure. “Here we see 25 angsty thirteen year olds sitting in various relaxed poses on sofas, chairs and on the floor. About five are thoroughly engrossed, eyes slightly glassy with absorption – they are far away in a world of words. As for the rest, they are the children that have not been taught to love books as a child. They’re the child that fidgets, that looks anywhere but at the words on the page.”

Favourite Miss Sutherland sayings during this everlasting (for some) 50 minute lesson:

I think you will find the words on the page, not on the ceiling.

 

Do you know how happy I’d be if someone gave me 50 minutes just to read?

 

If you can’t sit silently then sit separately.

 

… repeat ad nauseam

In short I was boring myself. How quickly we forget how hard it can be for students to submit to things that they find genuinely difficult. How easy it is to forget that we (the ones who can suspend out disbelief and relish the world of fiction) are the lucky ones – that being taught to treasure books is a privilege not a rite of passage. So I shut up moaning and reassessed why these kids find it so hard to read for pleasure.

This half term we are using ‘Wild Places’ by Robert McFarlane as our class reader. I decided I would try something new to get them engaged. I ventured into the wonderful world of QR codes.

McFarlane’s book is all about the importance of place and the secrets held by landscape and their significance to the human experience. My idea was for the class to set about finding out secrets about me and engage them in a whispering, gossipy excitement around the room. A little (carefully selected and innocuous) personal information can be a powerful tool after all! We would then talk about our reading experience and then read together with hot chocolate served as a treat because I would tell them about going to a tea shop with my mother as a child and choosing a new book each Saturday. One of my happiest memories. This is how it went:

1. Remove all tables from room, scatter chairs. Posters with pictures and QR codes scattered around the room and one slide displayed on IWB with all four codes and the question: How many secrets can you discover about Miss Sutherland?

2. Greet students at classroom door and tell them to leave everything outside but themselves and their phone. (Instant excitement) Students enter room and quickly work out what they need to do. Not all students have phones or the right app so they have to talk to each other and spread the secrets – builds great atmosphere.

3. Massive sheet of paper on the floor on which students start to build up a picture of me. What they have learned. This includes what they have inferred from only a very short piece of text. (See me sneak in some analytical thought.) Class discussion and I share the point of the lesson and my experience of reading. We discuss the possibility of a book as an enormous QR code. It isn’t just the story but the perspective and emotions of the author, his personal history and the social context in which he is writing. Isn’t that exciting?

4. Handed out books and invited students to spend quality time with the secrets of an author. Students read for a full 20 minutes (armed with hot chocolate) and I could hear a pin drop! Brilliant!

One student said ‘Miss, this was a seriously cool lesson.’

‘Even with all the reading?’ I asked.

‘The reading was the best bit’ she said.

Score!

Next lesson we are going to look at the info from the QR codes and use Twitter as a way of crafting writing that invites the reader to deduce and under. Students will then make their own QR codes about places special to them for homework and these will be displayed on our class wall.

I am looking forward to experimenting with more exciting and sophisticated ways to use QR code but what I loved about this was the use of trendy methods to get a successful traditional result. Progress is an good thing!