Assessment | Pedagoo.org

Testing the water #PedagooReview

December 22, 2012 in Assessment, English, Ideas, Pedagoo by David James

Feeling like a naughty student who has tiptoed into the office to steal coke from the bottom drawer, as a PGCE student I’m perhaps the least qualified person to be posting on this site, but I delivered what I felt was a good lesson. It was one that showed progress, differentiation and reflective learning. But, more importantly, I enjoyed it and got to crack one of my now infamous fat-teacher jokes…

The premise of the lesson was to give my Y9 students the opportunity to improve their PEA paragraph responses to the novel Stone Cold, focussing specifically on Reading AF5. They had produced several PEA paragraphs over the previous fortnight which had been quality marked with suggestions for improvement.

Connecting the Learning

As usual, my students were greeted by my cheery self at the door, at which point I handed them a PEA Paragraph Progress Pack (alliteration, I know). On the board were a series of rewards students could earn within the lesson based on their effort (I had seen this done by another teacher attempting an ambitious lesson, and lets face it, the opportunity to introduce chocolate into a lesson is always a good thing…). Within the PPP packs there were two questions about the novel, and a number between one and four on the top of the pack. Beneath each question and answer box was a table of AF5 success criteria for levels four, five and six. Students had to complete the first question in silence with very little support, although they could request hints and tips sheets to aide their structuring of the answer and some key literary terminology. Once students had completed the question I asked them to mark their work by ticking off the AF5 success criteria they felt they had met in their responses, as we had spent the previous lesson discussion their APP grids. Students seemed to enjoy the opportunity to critique their own work; however upon reflection they were perhaps overly generous. In hindsight I would have asked them to mark their initial responses AFTER the ‘New Information’ section of the lesson.

Learning Objective

Today’s mission was split into two key objectives to cover all aspects of what my students were learning:

What are we learning?

We are analysing how Swindells uses language to present character in a way that meets at least level 5 criteria.
We are identifying ways to improve and develop our analytical responses.

How are we learning?

We are working independently to improve our work.

Why are we learning this?

To make us all super-groovy, AF-smashing cats…

New Information

Perhaps the weakest section of my lesson, as confirmed when my tutor described it as ‘too much chalk and talk’. There was, however, no chalk. My intention here was to model to the class how we as teachers mark their work and identify the feature of AF5 to determine their current ‘working at’ level. Due to the time restraints of the lesson I made the error of simply showing the students responses on the board, and highlighting their differences to show them how to build their answers from level four through to level six. This would have worked so much better if I had given the students copies of the sample answers and asked them to mark it, but the students did (eventually) understand how to engineer their responses into the higher banding. Its at this point that I should have asked students to mark their initial responses, as they now had a much clearer insight into how to mark their work and how to identify the success criteria for AF5.

Searching for Meaning

This is the part of the lesson I had been most excited about, at the time I was absolutely terrified that it could become a HUGE disaster if the students lost focus and drifted completely off-topic. Around the room were four student support stations (another literary device, I know), each numbered one to four. Students then had to go the station which corresponded to the number on their pack, thereby creating four completely randomised groups. Students were given five minutes at each station to collect information that would help them improve their responses and in particular help them push into the level five and six success criteria. Students were able to personalise their learning to their own specific needs in light of their self-assessment and earlier quality marking feedback. The four stations were as follows:

The Term-Table: This consisted of about a dozen key literary terms such as onomatopoeia, metaphor and rhetorical questions. Students were able to learn about what the terms meant, the sorts of effects they can have on the reader, and they could also see several examples of each term, some taken from their novel, Stone Cold.
The Levelator: This was another opportunity for them to study how student responses are marked. I had put A2 size PEA paragraphs on the wall, all in response to the same question. I had then quality marked each paragraph, highlighting the AF5 criteria which had been met, as well as features of style that were worthy of recognition. Students used these examples to compare their own work to, to see if their answers could be improved using the formats on the wall.
Dictionary Corner: Students were given dictionaries, thesauruses and learning mats here, primarily to give them an opportunity to focus on their style. I encouraged students to reflect over their work to see if they could broaden their vocabulary and thereby improve their style. It also gave them an opportunity to clarify any terms or vocabulary they were unfamiliar with.
Interactive Question Map: Without question everyone’s favourite station. On the IWB I had created a mind map of topics that students may wish to ask questions about, anything from integrating quotations to analysing language was up there, students were able to touch the question they wanted to ask and then be taken to a page explaining how to tackle the issue. If students were still uncertain they could touch the information tab which would take them to a worked example. Students found this really useful, as alongside the complete personalisation it offered them, they were able to discuss with other members of their group how it had improved their understanding.

Students were totally engaged throughout the carousel, and were making sure that they squeezed every last drop of useful information from each of the stations. I also saw a more holistic transformation of my class. They had gone from a group of severely apathetic individuals who didn’t remotely care about PEA paragraphs, to a cohort of active custodians of their own learning, keen to share how what they were collecting was helping their understanding, and probing me for further information to drive them onto the higher criteria.

Demonstrating their newly acquired loaf

Once each group had visited every station they were invited back to their seats and given a few moments to reflect upon what they had collected and relate it to their initial PEA paragraph response at the start of the lesson. They were then asked to complete the second question in the booklet; using the information they had collected during the lesson to improve their responses. Again the activity was carried out in silence to make sure they focussed solely on demonstrating their progress. Once they had completed the question they had to mark their answer using the same success criteria from the start of the lesson so that they could see if they had made tangible, measurable progress in meeting the AF5 success criteria for levels five and six.

Reviewing and Reflecting

Students were given an ‘Exit Passport’ to complete in which they reviewed new things that they had learned, things they found easy and difficult and something they were still unsure about so that I could inform the planning of my next lesson. Students were given the merits promised at the start of the lesson as a reward for their fantastic work and then left, each ever so slightly more competent and confident with their AF5 abilities. For those 60 minutes, every one of these pupils became one of my groovy, AF-smashing cats…

This was by no means a perfect lesson, there were flaws just about everywhere. But in terms of a review of my pedagogical year it was a great lesson, as my students learned a huge amount about my subject, as well as huge amount about me and my pride at taking two seats up on the bus (allegedly…see earlier reference to fat-teacher jokes). I also learned a huge amount about them, perhaps more than I’d learned in the entire two weeks I’d been teaching them. I also learned a huge amount about what goes into to making a successful lesson, as it was arguably the first lesson in which I was able to act a professional, reflective practitioner.

Now where did I put that Christmas gin…

Tags: PedagooReview
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by Claire Young

Challenge and reward + making homework work #pedagooreview

December 21, 2012 in Assessment, Creativity, English, Ideas, Pedagoo, PedagooFriday, Professional Learning, Scottish Learning Fringe, SLFringe by Claire Young

The words challenge and reward are oft applied and sometimes over used in the attempt to sum up the experience of us teachers. Despite them being well worn, they’re two words that continue to mean a lot to me and they sum up a lot of what I have to say in reviewing my teaching year.

It has been a year of immense challenge, not least in striving to meet the high expectation of delivering consistently engaging, relevant and meaningful learning experiences that I, my school and the Scottish curriculum sets for teachers. There have been many moments of reward too – encouraging observations from students on their own learning or on their experience in my classroom, enthusiasm from other colleagues for the work we’re doing to develop our practice, seeing progress being made and knowing that my teaching has played some part in this being achieved. This year I’ve had the particular privilege of witnessing a couple of students reach a turning point in their own self-perception – realising that they are people of real skill, with the ability to work on and apply these skills and the power to make themselves successful if they so choose. These moments have confirmed for me that teaching is worthwhile.

There have been may strands to my teaching year: pushing to really embed co-operative learning in my classroom; connecting with more teachers in my own school and beyond to share and build on practice; not just believing in the growth mindset but teaching it to my kids; deepening my understanding of what assessment that really progresses learning looks like; learning John Hattie’s mantra of ‘know thy impact’ and continually trying to keep at the front of my teaching mind. The question of ‘is what I’m doing progressing my students’ learning?’ is now ever present, as is questioning what to do differently when it’s not. All these things have added challenge to my year but are things I’d recommend any teacher to try – with each there have been tangible rewards.

All of these strands have woven themselves together in a change I’m making to how I use homework with my classes. The change was inspired by Neil Winton’s (@nwinton) session at the Pedagoo Teachmeet in Glasgow (to go http://nwinton.wordpress.com/ for an overview) . He shared with us the work he was doing to free up how students can show their learning. It was pushed further by reading about Tait Coles’ work to develop Punk Learning (see http://taitcoles.wordpress.com/ or follow @totallywired77 for more). This was something I found out about thanks to the world of teachers on Twitter and was serendipitously picked up on at a similar time by a colleague of mine in science: a fact that we realized not by speaking to each other in school but again through the platform of Twitter.

All of this in itself sums up the way that my own professional development has changed (I hope irrevocably) this year thanks to Pedagoo and the general enthusiasm of teachers who love to teach. The momentum created by these folks setting up their own structures through which to share pedagogical ideas and approaches (teachmeets, #pedagoofriday, blogging…), circumventing more traditional models of how to share teaching knowledge and expertise, has given me so many new perspectives to use in my own teaching and delivered them in such a way that I have the energy and brain space to put them into practice.

And what is my new bit of practice? I’ve experimented with setting open questions or tasks for homework, linked to the key idea of recent learning and challenging students to respond to these in anyway they so choose. So, after my S1 class had been developing their research skills, while learning about the growth mindset, they were set the task of creating a resource that would help other 12 year olds to learn about their learning (bearing in mind that a lot of the sources we’d been using in our own research were geared more towards adults). My S3 class finished reading Frankenstein and then had two weeks to create a response to the question ‘what makes us human?’

From both classes they were responses worth waiting for. Students came back with videos they’d made, going out and sharing their learning with other friends and family, with animations created on websites I’d never heard of, with pieces of creative and non-fiction writing that spoke with their own voice and with models and posters. The minute the homework responses arrived I realised that first time round I hadn’t planned properly how to give the work the audience that it deserved. It needed to be seen by more folk than just me. It was also homework that I was genuinely excited to mark, not least because my students where sharing with me what they really thought and felt about what were learning, rather than simply parroting back set, pre-planned responses. It was also homework which let my learners show how they liked to learn and show me where the limits of their learning were – taking ideas as far as they could in the medium that they felt most comfortable in rather than producing a limited response to an overly structured task. It was fascinating.

This is not to say that it was all reward and no challenge. As already mentioned, I realised instantly that I needed to do more to integrate homework like this into the wider class experience. This is needed to recognise, celebrate and hopefully deepen the effort and learning that goes into students’ responses. Also, although many students really engaged with their task and produced something that was authentic and interesting, I felt a few used the open structure to do the least they could rather than show the most that they could and some continued to find it hard to hand in anything at all. So, I’m continuing to think about how do to things differently to broaden out the enthusiasm, care and deep learning that a lot of my students have already shown as I move forward with this. Having launched two individual approaches in English and science, in the new year I’ll be embarking on a more collaborative approach with my colleague.

I know that I’m not there yet with getting the best learning that I can from this approach but I’m excited to be part of it. Also, through deciding to give this new idea, picked up in a 30min session, a bash I feel that I’ve inadvertently set myself off on a new path, exploring what my learners are learning and how my learners are learning. Further, it’s challenging me to think carefully about how I lead their learning to make sure that they’re learning for themselves and have the enthusiasm, energy and opportunities to push themselves to their very limits, maybe even beyond (to use some more well worn words).

I have found the challenges of this year hard. Pausing to think through my experiences though, has made clear to me that as challenge is what I want for my learners it’s what I need to embrace for myself too. Further, I teach in the hope that the progress that comes from embracing perpetual challenge is reward enough.

Tags: PedagooReview, tmslfringe12
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by Fearghal Kelly

Unleashing the Complexity

October 28, 2012 in Assessment by Fearghal Kelly

Assessment in the new Scottish Curriculum is still a hot topic for all involved. Obviously there’s the looming (or present for some schools) implementation of the new National Qualifications, but there’s still a lot of head scratching going on around assessment in 3-15. Whilst there are obviously many issues around the new approach, there are a particular group which interest me. These are around the complexities which arise from the new model of assessment in 3-15. I’ll broadly categorise these as…

We’re not as sure about where pupils are at. Without the National Assessments how can we be sure which level a pupil is working at? This for me is the wrong way of looking at it. Could it be that we were never sure? Perhaps the National Assessments provided a false sense of confidence as they papered of the complexities that were always there? People are complicated learners. We will never know precisely where one learner is on their journey and any categories will always be imperfect. This will be especially the case when the categorisation is achieved through a limited piece of assessment. Isn’t it the case that the 5-14 levels were originally supposed to be assigned by the teacher based on a wide range of evidence with the National Assessments used more as a secondary benchmarking tool? That sounds much better than the way it appeared to have ended up in many cases. If we are ever confident that we have a system that can simply and easily categorise something as complex and lacking in understanding as learning into a number of boxes, then we have gone seriously wrong. Learning, and learners, are complex. Assessment and judgements of progress should therefore be complex also, we should worry if they are not. We need to try and relax a little and revel in the complexity.

What do we do with pupils who haven’t achieved a level? Let’s ask this another way…what we do with pupils who haven’t progressed as much as others? This isn’t a new problem. Surely the issue of pupils progressing in different ways and at different rates didn’t arrive with Curriculum of Excellence? I’m not claiming that the issue of differentiating in a classroom is easy, I’m just trying to suggest it’s not new. It has, perhaps, been brought more to the fore as a result of what I’ve already discussed above. If complexities of progress have been brought out due to a more holistic approach to assessment, perhaps this is more likely to lead to the identification of a differential of progression in a class. Again, although this isn’t easy to deal with…surely this can only be a good thing from the pupils’ perspective?

How can we report to parents without “robust” evidence? For me, this question reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of reports to parents. We are not the SQA. Our job is not to “assign” grades or levels which need be backed up with tons of rigorous evidence. The purpose of a report to parents should be to communicate progress in such a way to allow parents to support their children to make whatever next steps are required to improve. As such, I think it’s more important that the comment in the report reflects the complexities of the young person’s learning, than providing some sort of “reliable” level. In which case we need a holistic approach to assessment which allows us to validly access all the different forms of progression and not over rely on one particular form of summative assessment in our quest for reliability.

These thoughts reflect my own developing understanding of assessment in Curriculum for Excellence as a teacher and CfE Development Officer and I’m sharing them here in the hope that they help other teachers…however, I also appreciate that until those that hold us to account take a similar approach to assessment and progression we’ll always be a bit up against it. But, that’s not a reason to give up. We need to keep embracing the complexity and pushing others to do so too. Otherwise, we risk selling our learners short.

Tags: assessment, cfe, change
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by Judith Weston

Further Adventures in ELearning – Mainly Scrabbling in the Dark…

September 17, 2012 in Assessment, ICT, Ideas, Involving Pupils by Judith Weston

Edmodo – this much I know

I have been using Edmodo for a wee while now and at the request of others I’m jotting down what we have done with it thus far. I make no claims to discuss the impact of the platform as yet – this is merely an informative piece, with some observations thrown in for good measure.

I have decided to start with my S3 and S4 class. My S4 class are a tremendous bunch-articulate, fun and high achieving. They have really taken to Edmodo, in a way I never saw with Glow. It’s encouraging. I really want ICT to be an interactive process, rather than a passive one, and Glow was incredibly passive, because it was counter-intuitive.

One of the great joys of Edmodo is the user name and password process. When we went to log in for the first time, I insisted my class submit their email addresses. They can log on using these and are able to have their password reset to that address. Most of the teenage Facebook junkies have access to an email account which they check regularly (indeed have their Blackberries connected to them) this proved not to be a problem. No more “Miss, my password isn’t working!” nonsense any more. Woo hoo!

Then you give them a code. The code is not complicated-merely a combination of 6 letters and numbers.

So, once logged on, we were off. Dead easy. They could navigate their way round the site with ease. They love that their classes are down the left, their resources are along the top and that they can ask their teacher questions. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Edmodo sees online learning through the eyes of the pupils, not the region. They are the top level. That’s the most important element in its success.

What have we done, I hear you shout? Well, it’s a wee bit boring, but somehow brilliant. The students read a book over the summer and had to write a review. I modelled my review in class and stuck all the resources online for them to review. All the book review work was to be done at home, over a three week deadline, and they had free rein to check their work with me as they went along. Cue some heavy use of Edmodo. Pupils were attaching bits of their reviews for checking as they went along. Some sent them directly to me for feedback. Others, rather bravely (or foolishly) posted their paragraphs to the whole class. It was tremendous. Pupils could go on and see what questions were being asked and then check the answer. I have one pupil, in particular, who asks all the right questions – the class adore this! AifL was in action all over the place.

Then they submitted their essays. Around 2/3 of the class opted to submit via Edmodo. That’s incredibly easy too. A quick glance at the work shows an annotate button – so I did. There’s also a place for a grade but, as we all know, add a grade and no one looks at the comments, so I’ll leave that for now, ta.

A bit functional, but amazing. And now? Well, we’re onto travel writing and already, unbidden, one of the bunch has submitted her work for me to have an ongoing look at. Outstanding.

You know, by the way, that your pupils are already doing all this at home? They Facetime each other, ask questions on Facebook, take photos of their solutions…Edmodo merely allows them to include you in this extraordinary resourcefulness and enterprise. There’s an Edmodo app too. For someone who would have her IPad surgically attached to her left hand if she could, the app is really convenient. It looks good too.

Next? A link to a video as I try to flip my classroom. I need to get my S3 class up and running (so far they’ve just asked “When do we get to watch the DVD of “Of Mice and Men”, Miss?”) and I think my Higher class too. It’s also a solution to the thorny subject of e-portfolios…

And, I forgot! There are badges. The class adore them – they’re like online stickers. I’m not going to tell you how to award them because anything else you need to know, you just ask the Scottish Teachers group. You know what? You’ll need to code to join it – it’s 3ajhwl.

Go on. Give it a go. You know you want to!

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by Martyn Call

The Pick of the #pedagoofriday Tweets 04/05/12

May 4, 2012 in Assessment, Creativity, PedagooFriday, Professional Learning by Martyn Call

What a week guys!!
Is everyone shy? I think we need more videos next week. I’m working on a good one – but I need to get all made up first.

Yr 11 poetry revision: '30 seconds to list poems that feature power/loss/isolation/identity etc' whiteboard ready, timer on! #PedagooFriday

May 4, 2012 8:39 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@nicnacraph

Nic Raphael

#pedagoofriday drawing pies charts of the 4 themes and their significance so far as connect in year 9 English #manglish

May 4, 2012 7:40 pm via Twitter for Windows Phone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@thinkpink33

Laura

#PedagooFriday had INSET & had time to step back at look at how far we have come on CfE journey. Deserved a pat on the back as dpt doing FAB

May 4, 2012 5:59 pm via webReply RetweetFavorite

@isis_sister

Lynne

#pedagoofriday Pupils own assembly about the four capacities - focus: bottletops they've been collecting to raise money for wheelchairs

May 4, 2012 4:18 pm via webReply RetweetFavorite

@missjillyteach

Jill Adams

Tried out Video #PedagooFriday today featuring @ClassDojo Amazing what you can do with an iPh*ne and a spare min http://t.co/BSkHRe0w

May 2, 2012 7:22 pm via TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite

@fkelly

Fearghal Kelly

Download | YouTube to MP3

S2 science classes did 'three line' write ups for gravity experiments.Setup.Observation.Explanation.#pedagoofriday

May 4, 2012 10:45 am via webReply RetweetFavorite

@drewburrett

Drew Burrett

This week I created first lesson using TED-ED flip a video platform. Can't wait to use in class #pedagoofriday

May 4, 2012 8:27 am via Twitter for Mac ReplyRetweetFavorite

@hectpowles

Hecto Powles

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by Alan Hamilton

Leave the delays to Scotrail… #CfEontrack

March 24, 2012 in Assessment, Curriculum, Involving Pupils, Technologies by Alan Hamilton

My S1 Enterprise class is becoming the highlight of my week. The class comes for a double period of study (one of the changes we brought in as a result of Curriculum for Excellence) and they leave exhausted (them and me!).

I used to see first year for a single period of ICT. Using the 5-14 guidelines pupils learned how to edit text and sort data. They worked at computers on their own. If they were stuck they put their hand up and I told them what to click on. The room was generally quiet and the pupils were engaged. Talking was frowned upon and the learning was rote.

I have a confession to make. We stopped using the 5-14 guidelines a few years ago. Before CfE (there, I said it!). We gradually made the switch when we realised that we needed to teach young people more than the menu commands in Microsoft Word. It was refreshing to see that the driving force behind Curriculum for Excellence was “to help every learner develop knowledge, skills and attributes for learning, life and work, which are encapsulated in the four capacities”. We were onto a winner, vindicated that we had been doing the best for our young people for the previous few sessions.

This ‘new’ style of teaching is hard work. Enter my CfE classroom on a Tuesday morning and you will see chaos. There are groups of young people everywhere. Some are working at a PC, others are planning on the board, some are even holding a meeting with their peers outside the classroom in our flexible learning area. I’m not always in control and setting the direction of travel. Pupils have carousel mindmaps scattered over the desks, they are checking each others work, discussing (sometimes arguing!) over who is doing what. Two of my S1′s stand at the front and ask for silence! They are the editors of the magazine the class are producing (on the topic of Sexting) and they are not quite sure at what stage everyone is at. They inform the class that they will shortly be coming round to check who is doing what. If someone needs help they suggest who they should pair up with. I sit back and hope they will meet their self imposed draft 1 deadline (they did!).

We hope to have the magazine finished next week. They have all uploaded their work to their Glow group for peer assessment:

They have kept me updated with their progress in the forum every week:

They are learning new skills all of the time. They are used to me pointing a camera at them. They are used to me challenging them. They have chosen the tasks to complete. They have demonstrated team work, meeting deadlines, using new software, encouraging others, compromise. And more. Their fellow pupils in S2 are doing the same. They are getting used to the new way of being assessed. I am getting used to the new way of assessing! We are learning together, using topics, skills and experiences which we enjoy. They will continue to enjoy learning as they progress through the school.

If we give them appropriate opportunities to develop at level 3 and 4, then appropriate courses which continue into National 4′s and 5′s, who cares what the exams look like.

We signed up to the experiences and outcomes. Nobody is arguing that Curriculum for Excellence is not the correct approach. Nobody is saying that we needed more time to develop courses in S1-S3, but mention qualifications as some colleagues wobble. Right across Scotland, schools are delivering on the experiences and outcomes. The draft Nationals (1-5) show the clear progression from the experience and outcome levels. Internal assessment will be driven to meet the needs of our young people. This is our opportunity to put learning first. The exams have driven the learning for too long. That is why I believe we need to leave the delays to Scotrail, and get on with delivering the track we all set out on together.

Cross posted from learnerham

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by Callum Mitchell

New world, same old study plan

March 16, 2012 in Assessment, Ideas by Callum Mitchell

At this time of year, as courses are completed and exams loom closer, the focus for many secondary teachers shifts to revision. This often amounts to a couple of lessons on past papers and *shudder* mind maps before students are despatched to study-leave knowing that they’ll get good grades if they would only “read their notes.” Now, I left school when there weren’t quite as many distractions as there are today and, even then, the prospect of spending an evening in my room with only a tattered school jotter and a textbook for company was hardly enticing. For today’s teenage Twitter-ers, BBM-ers, Facebook-ers, checking-mobile-every-2-minute-ers it’s no doubt comparable to staring at a wall for an hour. Yet yet yet. Why not though? It’s what we were doing in 1994, and we did alright. Problem is….. this isn’t 1994.

As well as that approach to studying being archaic, it’s also directionless. Students may be applauded when they make study plans, but they usually consist of English 2-3pm; Chemistry 3-4pm, etc. I believe that teachers should be providing much more guidance for home study. Of course, the jotter and past papers shouldn’t be thrown out of the window, but there are a ton of resources available and they should be utilised. The teacher has to be the filter though, directing students to e.g. websites, videos and providing activities that can form an interesting programme of study for a 21^st century child. Jotters and textbooks may have got us this far, but the way that people access information has changed since most of us were at school: it’s fast, it’s flicking between screens, it’s scanning, it’s 3 minutes of this, then 2 minutes of that. There’s much to be said for having the discipline to sit down and read something for an hour, but many adults struggle to do this now without checking their mobile or favourite internet pages every few minutes. Expecting children to do so is unrealistic. It’s 2012. Sod “read your notes.” Give them something that will actually make them want to study.

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by kennypieper

Excuse Me? Can I Have a New Tail to Wag My Dog?

February 26, 2012 in Assessment, Curriculum, Ideas, Qualification, Uncategorized by kennypieper

I’ll probably not make many friends by writing this post but it concerns something that has been burning inside of me for a while. Exacerbated by the increasing ‘doom and gloom’ scare stories over the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland, I really feel the need to let this one out. Strap yourself in. Here goes. If you were to ask me what my concerns were over the eventual qualifications system of CfE in the upper stages of school then I would have to say, at this point, I don’t really care. There. I said it. I feel better already.

Alongside the dreary negativity which is churned out whenever the subject is raised in the media – a negativity which does not compare with my experience – there is an almost gleeful exuberance at times when a teacher, a parent, an individual expresses their hatred of the new curriculum. Don’t get me wrong; it isn’t perfect. I’m no cock-eyed optimist. There is still a long way to go to really assess its success. I just don’t think it is constructive to constantly snipe at something which is here and here to stay.

As for qualifications, the amount of times I’ve heard teachers say to me that if we teach the children well they will pass any exam we put in front of them suggests that others would agree with me. That concept, however, seems to be slipping away now we have the opportunity, in many ways, to put it into practice. This needs to be a time where, as individuals, we are embedding our practice with outstanding, challenging, creative teaching. We should be developing the wonderful things we already do, enhancing those things with real life experiences and stretching, bar raising tasks. And, for the most part, I think that is beginning to happen. For example, no English teacher I know sees the Curriculum for Excellence as an exercise in dumbing down, an excuse to avoid the prickly subject of grammar, or proclaiming spelling to be a thing of the past.

However, before you label me as some idealistic lefty who thinks examinations are outdated – you might be right but that is not what I’m saying here – I do think the qualifications will have their place. But if we are to wait until they are embedded before we can be comfortable with change then what does that assume about the profession? That we do indeed teach to the test? That we do indeed believe that passing school exams is the be all and the end all? If that is so I think we may well miss the opportunity of a lifetime.

A teacher said to me the other day, ‘why can’t they just tell us what the exams will be like so we can just get on with it?’ My heart sank. If we teachers are truly to make the best of the most significant change in curriculum probably in most of our careers then we need to forget about what the examination may become and start to ensure our classrooms are challenging, creative, collaborative spaces which raise the bar for every student in our care; and we need to start now. Our society deserves young people who are successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and an effective contributors. It is our job, our duty, our raison d’etre to ensure that happens.

At this point I can understand that parents and pupils want to know about the exams; schools should always be working closely with them for the best possible outcomes for children. However, as the curriculum is not new any more – it is what we now do every day – my questions is this: do teachers really have to?

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by Kenny O'Donnell

A little bit of random goes a long way

November 27, 2011 in Assessment, Creativity, ICT, Ideas, Involving Pupils, PedagooFriday, Social Studies by Kenny O'Donnell

A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted about a lesson where the style of demonstrating learning was chosen by students from a random list. I’ve been fortunate enough to have the invitation to talk about this in a little more detail here, and should probably begin with removing any credit for the idea. I was simply using John Davitt’s Learning Event Generator, which has become something of a staple in my classroom over the last wee while and is well worth trying if you haven’t already. I find it lends itself well to making researching a topic more interesting (which is how I used it for this group of lessons) and moving away from having a powerpoint and kids talking from a page as the means of showing what they have learned. I think it also requires a deeper understanding of their topic to pull it off succesfully, and I can hopefully show some examples of where the students in my S3 geography class have been able to do this.

To set the scene, we were covering a key part of the physical geography in Standard Grade, features of glacial erosion. This is often the type of lesson where teachers (myself included) are guilty of just ‘telling’ classes the answers without any real thought process, as in our minds, how landscapes have been formed doesn’t change, so neither does the learned answer for exams. In effect, the students often never really have to think about what they have written in jotters until they are trying to rote learn it for an assessment. Over the past few years, I’ve been trying to move away from this approach. A couple of weeks ago, I told the class that we would be learning about a landscape feature called a U-Shaped Valley. We shared the important terminology that should be used if we were to explain their formation successfully. Once we had established these, we moved on to how we would show our learning. I gave the students access to various materials which would provide the neccessary information and then showed the learning event generator. Students worked in groups of 3 to 4 and first of all had to decide which event they would present. We ended up with the following:

U shaped valleys as a childs book

U shaped valleys as a recipe

U shaped valleys as a hanging mobile

U shaped valleys as a Dylan card sort

U shaped valleys as a 3D model

U shaped valleys as a board game

U shaped valleys as a shopping list

U shaped valleys sung in the style of Bohemian Rhapsody

Although the students picked their own event, I’ve used this in the past as an entirely random assignment. I find that by giving the choice instead, the activity loses none of its fun appeal, motivation is high and the engagement of all groups in this instance was outstanding from the outset. I’ve selected some of the students work, much of which is already on our Marr Geography twitter page.

Video of the Dylan card sort

This was a mini homage to the Bob Dylan short film which accompanied his ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’. The boys in the group decided to pick what they thought were the key words to remember and Calum, the narrator, carried this through unscripted, using only the cards as a prompt – in effect, how some students revise.

Some images of the childs book

This was a nice piece of creative writing where some girls in the class borrowed from the ideas behind earlier river stories in June and used them to illustrate glacial processes. I have argued with classes in the past that glacial landscapes are nothing more than a story anyway, with a clear start, middle and end. A great advert as well for how literacy is not just something to be developed in English. I’ll make a small apology here for the extra pictures – as a blogger user, I had a bit of a fight trying, unsuccessfully to remove the pictures of the mobile (next).

The hanging mobile

This was my favourite piece of work, purely because of the amount of effort and creativity that went into it. We had been using dried spaghetti in class a day before with an S2 class, making earthquake proof buildings. The group of girls doing this exercise gathered some unused bits to form the frame of the mobile, from which they hung diagrams of the valley formation using paper clip chains with full explanations before taking an age to work out the balance!

The board games

Some classes created board games last year in S2, and I think this was maybe a ‘safe’ option which nevertheless gave the option for groups to show a real understanding of formation sequence. The most difficult part of this exercise was the framing of the chance card style questions and meant that the students doing this had to truly understand the content so that they could understand what they wanted to ask.

Conclusions

Although I haven’t shared all of the work that we completed, hopefully this gives a flavour of how this type of activity could be used in almost any scenario to show evidence of learning. The most satifying aspect for me was the recall after the activity, and I feel confident that knowledge and understanding is significantly stronger than if I had taken control of the content and delivered it all myself. Moreover, it was really pleasing to witness a class full of students who seemed to be enjoying what they were doing, were motivated to learn and collaborated purposefully to meet the learning intentions. My former PT at my previous school, an individual who I admire greatly, used to always say that kids liked to work to established routines and, though I know what he was saying in terms of expectations and so forth, I think this is a valid example of where breaking from routines can create some of the most rewarding learning experiences.

Tags: creativity, geography, random
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by Fearghal Kelly

Do the project first!

September 30, 2011 in Assessment, Curriculum, ICT, Science by Fearghal Kelly

In June of this year I was lucky enough to attend the Cramlington Learning Festival, something I’ve already mentioned here.

One of the sessions I attended was led by the inspiring Darren Mead, who shared his Project Based Learning mantra with us: “Do the project first”. In other words, if you’re going to set a project for students to complete then we as teachers should be trying it first and showing this to the students at the outset. Darren showed us one he’d done. Whilst it was impressive that he’d gone and spent all that time making his project, one of the things that really surprised me at the time was that it wasn’t perfect – at one point his young son was doing the camera work! On reflection, I think this is fantastic. It would be potentially devasting to show the students unobtainable perfection and then ask them to try to do their own projects…

As we’re redesigning our S2 courses currently, we’ve been trying to diversify the opportunities for learning and assessment – and using these to help engage the students in the topic. For example, in our new Genetics & Reproduction topic we’re planning to ask our students to produce a documentary aimed at couples who are planning to try for a baby at the end of the topic. We’re going to share this task with them at the start of the topic, but use this to structure the actual lessons:

The six questions in the list slide provide the titles of each of the lessons in the topic. But, since Darren’s session I’d been thinking…should we be trying this first? Should we have a go at producing the documentary and ask the pupils to assess it before we start the topic…so a colleague and I went for it – remember, it’s a long way from perfection – but deliberately so…