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Yearly Archives: 2011

50 ways to lead your lesson

2013-07-20T12:33:38+01:00October 9th, 2011|English, learning|

The problem is all inside your head", she said to meThe answer is easy if you take it logicallyI'd like to help you in your struggle to be freeThere must be fifty ways to lead your lesson...Paul Simon Last week the inimitable Kristian Still challenged the good people of Twitter to amass 50 different ways to introduce learning objectives. Well, after much cajoling and exhortation from Mr Still we managed it! 40 Ways to_introduce_learning_objectives_ from David Didau I thought it might make an interesting experiment to see how well they each work. I reckon I can cover most of them before [...]

The Learning Pyramid

2021-12-11T15:14:55+00:00October 8th, 2011|myths|

Consider this little gem that periodically does the rounds in education circles: (This is just one of the very many variations on the Learning Pyramid doing the rounds on the internet. For more examples visit The Corrupted Cone of Experience.) Seductive, isn’t it? The false sense of security comes from the fact that it bears out and validates our experience as teachers: we get to know our subjects so much better because we teach them, so it follows that the best way to retain new information is to teach it to someone else. And look: there are some numbers [...]

Going SOLO

2011-10-05T23:22:52+01:00October 5th, 2011|learning, SOLO|

A few months ago I wrote about some of the concerns people have had with ubiquity of Bloom's Taxonomy and that there were other, perhaps more useful taxonomies around. Well, since then I've been quietly experimenting with SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) developed by Biggs and Collis. Biggs says As learning progresses it becomes more complex. SOLO, is a means of classifying learning outcomes in terms of their complexity, enabling us to assess students’ work in terms of its quality not of how many bits of this and of that they got right. At first we pick up only one or few aspects of the task [...]

How to have a successful life

2011-10-01T15:08:18+01:00October 1st, 2011|learning|

This week Mr Phil Beadle graced us with his towering presence and 'edutained' 60 Year 11 students. I was going to call this post "Beadle's About" but I'm sure he's heartily sick of any comparisons to the bearded prankster Jeremy (no relation) Beadle. To be absolutely honest, I hadn't heard of Mr Beadle before I was bullied into reading Dancing About Architecture, his fantastically leftfield book on creativity in the classroom. For sheer bloody minded buffoonery it beats the hell out of anything Sir Ken has written and I would unhesitatingly recommend to anyone wanting to liven up lessons with some [...]

Reading should be our top priority

2011-09-28T20:55:52+01:00September 28th, 2011|English, literacy|

I've just read a sobering piece on reading in UK schools from Mike Baker's website written by Roy Blatchford, a former headteacher and Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools, and Director of the National Education Trust. Here it is: Provisional figures for 2011 indicate that, in England, one child in five reaches age 11 unable to read confidently. Confident, that is, to access the secondary school curriculum they are embarking on this month. History suggests that those same children will struggle over five years of secondary schooling to achieve an English grade C at 16+. The latest GCSE tables indicate that thirty [...]

Reasons to be cheerful

2011-09-26T21:31:49+01:00September 26th, 2011|learning|

So, it's now the fourth week back and despite been plum tuckered (I've a vague notion that this means tired) I'm still smiling. I've just read Kenny Pieper's latest post on how he's feeling after (in his case) six weeks back and thought it timely to read over my Back To School post written on the first day back after bathing in the rosy glow of creativity that my wonderful faculty had induced in me on hearing about the splendid variety of good things they intended to forge ahead with this year. In order to maintain the mad-eyed positivity needed to [...]

Forget the answer, what's the question?

2011-09-24T16:37:17+01:00September 24th, 2011|learning|

We all know the value of effective questioning, but should it be the students rather than the teacher doing a bit more of the asking? After reading about Question Formulation Technique (getting students to think of their own questions rather than just answering mine) a few weeks ago I was really keen to give it a whirl. Tait Cole However, Dylan Wiliam's SSAT 2010 keynote is still ringing in my ears: we (teachers) should not waste time on self indulgent gimmicks if it causes us to move away from AfL and other proven high impact teaching & learning strategies. [...]

Learning Journeys

2011-09-21T22:00:27+01:00September 21st, 2011|learning|

Last month I wrote a post asking whether there was a point to starters. Luckily for me, Darren Mead got in touch to tell me about what he has termed Learning Journeys. Ever since I've been absolutely smitten. The idea is incredibly simple: at the beginning of the lesson, provide students with a visual representation of the learning which will take place during the lesson. That's it. A visual learning objective. Geoff Petty in his book Evidence Based Teaching shows that using this strategy along with a traditional learning objective plus an activity which links to students' prior learning has an effect [...]

Is there a case for summative assessment?

2013-07-23T08:40:56+01:00September 19th, 2011|assessment|

I've written a lot on the importance of formative assessment recently and feel pretty clear in my own mind of its efficacy. In contrast I see summative assessment as existing only as an external measure of success or failure. I know it exists, and I know it's fairly important to my students' life chances. It's also one of the primary means by which my professional practice is judged, so I'd better take notice of it. This seems like a necessary evil, not something to be celebrated. Cristina Milos and Jennifer Borgioli have challenged this view and asserted that actually, summative assessment [...]

Questions every teacher should ask every day

2011-09-18T22:03:26+01:00September 18th, 2011|learning|

I've just read David Warlick's blog post on Transformative Questions and am feeling pretty excited about it. In it he challenges teachers to "create a culture of learners that thrive in the 21st century." He says that learning should include the following qualities. They should : - be responsive to learners' needs - provoke conversation, - inspire personal investment - be guided by safely-made mistakes.   He has come up with these questions to challenge us when designing lessons: 1. How might I alter this assignment or project so that it “Responds” to the learner? How can the experience “Talk Back?” 2. How might [...]

Easy vs Hard

2011-09-16T18:39:45+01:00September 16th, 2011|Featured, learning|

We choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard. - JFK We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle A teachers' job is not to make work easy. It is to make it difficult. If you are not challenged, you do not make mistakes. If you do not make mistakes, feedback is useless. - John Hattie - Visible Learning Our attitude to effort is embedded in our language: easy does it, hard luck, easy on the eye, don't take it so hard. Why is it that [...]

What can engineers teach us about assessment?

2011-09-14T20:49:26+01:00September 14th, 2011|assessment|

If, like me, you thought the answer to the above question was almost certainly nothing, take a look at this: Pretty neat, huh? I think this really makes the point that a lot of what we do in schools and call AfL isn’t. Here are a few handy reminders about what exactly formative assessment is: We use the general term assessment to refer to all those activities undertaken by teachers—and by their students in assessing themselves—that provide information to be used as feedback to modify teaching and learning activities. Such assessment becomes formative assessment when the evidence is actually [...]

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