Learning Journeys
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. [...]
Is there a case for summative 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 [...]
Questions every teacher should ask every day
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 [...]
Easy vs Hard
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 [...]
What can engineers teach us about 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 [...]
Should we stop doing good things?
Surely doing good things is something we should do more of? Especially at school. I have seldom met a teacher who is not interested in doing the best for their students and therefore pretty keen to do good things. Good things are, well... good. Aren't they? Having just watched Dylan Wiliam's keynote speech at the SSAT conference in 2010, I'm not so sure. The speech was provocatively titled, "Stopping people [...]
Knowledge or skills?
Skills, knowledge, who cares? I'm a huge fan of the implementation of Personal Learning and Thinking Skills as part of the English National Curriculum and feel confused and concerned about the current government's stance on knowledge & skills. see here for an example. Last week I had a really thought provoking conversation on this subject with Cristina Milos (@surreallyno) on Twitter which I think unpicks some of the issues: CM: When teenagers can't locate [...]
Back to school
What I really like about going back to school in September is that it's a new year with no mistakes. The students' books are graffiti free and and all the dates and titles have been neatly underlined. There is nothing to mark and my lessons are inspirational and well planned. the annual rot has yet to sink in. I also like deciding on my new school year resolutions. I have [...]
Differentiation: to do or not to do?
Of all the impossible tasks expected of poor, over-worked teachers, differentiation is the most troublesome. Why? Because on the one hand, if you did it properly every lesson you'd be reduced to a dribbling wreck in less than a week. T'other hand though is that it's really really important. Therein lies our dilemma: we know we should be doing (a lot) more of it but we just don't have the [...]
More DIY learning
Following Kenny Pieper's wonderful guest post yesterday, I was inspired to put his ideas into action today. The most difficult aspect was geting hold of some netbooks. The DT had some which they warned me were a bit creaky and the head of music leant me three iPads. Sorted. To introduce the lesson, I used the idea I got from Darren Mead's site Pedagogical Purposes on having a visual representation [...]
Do It Yourself
There is a certain amount of irony in the title of today's post in that I haven't written it myself. Instead it comes from the typing fingers of the marvellous Kenny Pieper. His excellent blog Just Trying to be Better than Yesterday is well worth a read. There are two reasons for this: 1. I'm knackered after the first day back at school - even though it was only an [...]
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