Batman and Robin CPD

Last year, I was given responsibility for CPD in English. Now we are lucky, every Wednesday afternoon, the students go home early and we have CPD from 2pm. This means there is an opportunity to use lots of different approaches to staff development. By far my favourite from last year was what we called 'Batman and Robin'.

My biggest problem with CPD is that, usually, you spend your time being lectured to and staring at a PowerPoint you are quite capable of going away and reading yourself. The irony smacks you over the head. Someone comes to speak to you about engaging students and they use a PowerPoint. Someone talks to you about group work and you are sat in rows. Someone talks to you about the value of talk in the classroom... they talk AT you.

The second problem I have is the 'one size fits all' approach. Having the enthusiastic NQT Maths teacher sat with the 30 year seen-it-all-before from the History department doesn't really seem to make the best sense to me most of the time.
We know that students learn best when they understand the point in an activity, they have some control over what they are doing and they can become masters of their own progress. Teachers are no different. This is where 'Batman and Robin' comes in.




The idea is that everyone in the department becomes a 'Batman'. Their strengths in a particular area are highlighted and then someone else, who would like to develop that area, volunteers to be the 'Robin'. They work together for about a four week period investigating, peer observing, researching, etc. At the end, they have a CPD slot of about 30 mins to teach the rest of the department. The areas chosen were things like: starts of lessons, using IT, showing progress, using AfL, teacher talk, differentiation and questioning.

This works extremely well. People feel good about being recognised for their talents. Here, everyone is. This in turn means you are more likely to volunteer to be a Robin to learn from someone else. Because you can choose the area, it tends to be one you think is important to for you to develop and, therefore, something you are motivated towards doing. In this case, nearly everyone volunteered to be a Robin in an area that directly related to targets from their PM observations. Finally, because there is the responsibility of feeding back to the rest of the department, the need to produce something of quality is also a driving force.

My favourite thing about it was that, rather than being talked at, nearly all the feedback sessions were based around modelling techniques and strategies you could take away and use the next day in the classroom. Because you get a chance to see them in action, you are much more likely to go away and use them. My measure of really good CPD.

Motivating underachieving boys

Tackling underachieving boys head on for the last 14 weeks of their time in Year 11 was not a prospect that filled me with joy, in fact I actually had nightmares about it. However, not one to back down from a challenge, I decided to have a serious think about how I was going to approach this group. Clearly, things were not working for them as it was, and more of the same was going to have no effect whatsoever.

The group was carefully selected. It had to be students who we thought had the chance to pass based on coursework and what we knew of their ability, but were underachieving by a grade or more from their mock exam or had failed early entry in November. I ended up with 16 boys: mostly disaffected, three on the verge of permanent exclusion and, all bar Ashley, a foot bigger than me.

The first thing I did was to let them know they were the most important group in the school, that they were my priority and that their achievement made a difference (they took some convincing). Self-esteem was rock bottom, so I then organised the group into 4 teams. Points would be awarded at the end of every lesson for things like homework, attending revision sessions, impressive answers to questions, and most crucially, work of a C grade standard and above. The winning team received a prize each week and the best student got a positive Friday phone call home and their name in a big star at the front of the room.

I was a bit nervous about this approach at first, but after Week 1, when Dwayne won, a group huddled around the board.

‘We don’t like that miss.’
‘What?’
‘Dwayne's name in a big star.’
‘What you going to do about it then?’

The answer was obvious and over whole 14 week period, 10 of the 16 won student of the week without (very much) fixing.

The other crucial thing was to introduce a zero tolerance approach. I work in a pretty average comprehensive, so behaviour can be challenging, but students are rarely aggressive towards staff. We have a 'Discipline for Learning' system which works on a series of warnings and consequences. I sold it along the lines of: ‘I’m not wasting time giving out warnings; if you are using up my energy to tell you off, instead of letting me teach then you’ll be out of the door.’ A few lessons in, Joe decided to push the boundaries, attention seeking and answering back -out he went immediately. The look of shock on his face was a picture, but the effect on the others was astonishing. They knew I was serious, and throughout the whole 14 weeks, I only gave 3 warnings total. This was one of the most astonishing things about the lessons, before the group was put together, I would have expected only 3 warnings per lesson to have been an achievement!

Perhaps part of this might have been down to a shift in attitude I had to make too. Approximately half the group were from a black African, or black Afro-Caribbean background. Before I started teaching the group, I did some research on teaching strategies specifically aimed at boys, and black boys in particular. Lots of the advice I found was basically what I consider to be good teaching anyway: a range of activities, competition (with themselves as much as each other), some visual and kinaesthetic approaches, clear time limits, clear success criteria and clear sanctions and rewards.

However, one thing I read really stuck with me from Dr Jawanza Kunjufu. Apparently, one of the reasons for black students frequently getting into trouble for low-level disruption comes from the way families communicate at home. It is not infrequent for families from Afro-Caribbean families in particular to speak at the same time in conversation. This means they develop the skill to process and understand many voices at the same time.




This really struck home. I have a teacher-habit of asking students to repeat what has just been said if I think someone isn't listening. Just the other day, Dwayne had managed to repeat it back word for word, despite having another conversation at the same time. My middle-class, white expectations were that if you are listening, you can't talk at the same time. In my world it was good manners too. The classroom can't function if everyone shouts out and talks at once, so not seeing that kind of behaviour as deliberate disruption, bad manners, or defiance is quite difficult. But the minute I was able to understand my values are not necessarily shared, I was able to react to and handle this behaviour much more successfully.

The impact of my change of mindset, competition and rewards they really valued improved behaviour no end, but my concern was still that I had to get as many of these boys to pass as possible. I went back to the exam and basically took the questions apart. Lessons involved short bursts of activity following a very similar format:

• Focus on one question type.
• What does it mean?
• How do you answer it?
• Write a model answer together.
• Identify the key words to use in an answer linked to a C/B grade.
• Same question type, different text, timed answer in silence.

They responded brilliantly to this focused routine and the marks began to climb. Every week, after we had done a section of the exam, I showed them how their improvement was affecting their overall grade and where they still needed to focus using a traffic light system on a spreadsheet.

The other aspect of lessons which they really enjoyed was taking over control of the display. I gave them the entire back wall of the room to turn onto a learning display.
They had to co-operate as a class and in their groups. Nothing could go on the wall until the value of it had been explained and the group agreed it was worthy of display. They decided that the focus had to be the language, vocabulary and structure of answers and then set about finding their own examples. One group even decided to write their own D and C grade answers from scratch and then annotate them showing the differences.

Far from being the group I had nightmares about, they became the group I really looked forward to teaching.

The proof of the pudding, however, is in the eating. What you really want to know is whether it had any impact on results. Well, it would be lovely to have a fairytale ending where they all got C grades, and I had a film made about me, but there is only so much you can do in 14 weeks. I am really proud of the fact that my bunch of underachievers all improved significantly from their November exams, all got a D grade or above, 7 got their C grade (another 2 missing it by less than 5 marks), 7 achieved their UQ and 1 exceeded it by a level.

Perhaps the closest I've come to an 'O Captain! My Captain!' moment was when several came back to see me to say thank you :)

Marginal Gains

INSANITY DEFINED: Doing the Same Old Things & Expecting Different Results

Totally inspired by @fullonlearning on Monday night, I decided to ditch introducing King Lear to Y13 on Tuesday and do a lesson on bicycles instead. Well... not literally.

If you haven't read her posts about 'marginal gains', you should probably stop reading this and read those first. They are much better.

I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do, but turned up armed with outlines of wheels and two online articles to hopefully inspire the students to think about how to apply the idea of marginal gains and improve their grades. The first was one of many on the success of the British cycling team at the Olympics:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19174302 the second on marginal gains in everyday life: http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/sleeker-richer-faster-happier-how-marginal-gains-can-change-your-life-8045909.html . I gave them to the students to read and then asked them to apply this idea to themselves. It was an ideal time for the group to be thinking about this approach. They had got respectable results at AS, but on the whole are not producing the work I know they are capable of due to an inability to do homework and meet deadlines!

Working with the idea that 'if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got', I gave them an example of how I had used marginal gains myself. Thoroughly jealous of a friend of mine who always has an impeccably tidy house, I asked her how she found the time to keep everything so neat. She told me her secret: advert breaks. Whenever the advert breaks come on the telly, do a job. Put something away, clean the shower, bleach the loo -it all adds up. She was right. Our house soon turned into a veritable palace... for about 3 weeks until we reverted to our old, advert-watching ways again...

Anyway, the students each came up with ways to improve their approach to their studies. They were far better than anything I could have prepared to tell them, as each was tailored to their own personality, interests and needs.

Danni's suggestion: Write your essay on Day 1. Day 2 look at structure. Day 3 look at spelling. Day 4 punctuation. Day 5 vocabulary, etc. She felt it would be easier to make marginal gains breaking down the focus for redrafting.

Jordan's suggestion: Cut X-box habit of 1 hour 30 mins a day (I suspect it is much more) by 10 mins to release 70 mins extra a week to spend reading.

Brandon's suggestion: Walk to the station instead of getting the bus. He felt this would help him get some exercise to improve sleep and concentration, and also enable him to listen to King Lear on his headphones at the same time.

Lisa's suggestion: Download a newspaper app to her phone to expand her general knowledge.

I added arriving at lessons on time...

They were also really interested in other things the articles mentioned: eating sensibly, sleeping properly, and having the right equipment. They admitted these things weren't easy to do, but understood that the point of a marginal gain was that it didn't have to be something huge. A small decrease in the negative things that they did, which created barriers to achievement, could be mirrored by small increases in the positive things. Like drinking less alcohol and more water! They even pulled out from the article the idea of washing your hands properly so you get ill less often. As Libby said, "Every day you miss off school, is 6 hours of learning".

Perhaps the most interesting thing they started thinking about was what we termed 'dead time'. Where could you find 10, 20, or 30 mins where you could do something productive and not miss out on other things. They had all sorts of ideas from reading in the bath to recording lessons and listening back to them on the bus. Most couldn't really account for the period after they got home and before tea, and so left determined to use it more productively.

Once they had some suggestions, we collected the ideas in pairs on the wheels. One for general study skills:

And one for English specific gains:

This second one was less successful than I'd hoped, so we went back to the exam we are preparing for (bearing in mind we haven't started the play yet!). I got out copies of the question and mark scheme and together we produced a wheel that showed all the different areas marginal gains could be made as they prepare for the exam:

So, that's as far as we've got. I'm thinking about adding something which shows progression up each spoke so students can track their progress when they get essay feedback, maybe A-E grade skills. That way we have a starting point for looking at each aspect and how to improve.

GCSE English - what went wrong?

I have worked harder this year with my English GCSE groups than ever before, so it hurts that the results are not what I'd hoped for. As a department we did numerous interventions, changed groups, put on extra classes, pulled students from other subjects and generally made ourselves unpopular!

It didn't work.

Now, it could be that we got it wrong, the quality of teaching is to blame, but if that is the case, it seems a bit odd. Our department staffing hasn't changed; it has 2 ASTs, the kids are roughly the same ability as previous cohorts. That doesn't explain the sudden downturn to my satisfaction.

So what IS new?

Well, the course changed. That means several interesting factors beyond our control come into play:

http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/files/2012-05-09-maintaining-standards-in-summer-2012.pdf?Itemid=144

The above link explains how, when changing from one type of GCSE to another, in the first year, they set out to achieve 'comparable outcomes'. This suggests that there is a quota for this year's exams based on last year's results.

No problem, you would think. We should have got the same results as last year then. Seems fair.

Not at all.

And for the main reason: January entry.

You will have noticed the huge differences in the C grade boundary between January and June. On Unit 1 it is 10 marks different, and on Unit 2 and 3, 3 marks each (16 marks in total). So, basically, it was a LOT easier to get a C in January.

And, looking at the papers we got back from January, I was amazed that some of our students had been awarded a C after producing work well below the standard I would expect from previous years. Some of those students re-sat in June, got higher marks on the paper, but lower grades overall. How do you explain that one to angry parents and upset kids? Did AQA Pass too many students in January? Were the boundaries far too low? If they did, and they had a quota to work to, then it would explain why it was so much harder to pass in the summer.

Of course, what makes this whole thing ridiculous is that students who are more able than others have lower grades because they were entered in June and not January! It makes a mockery of the whole thing. A system supposed to be fair is exactly the opposite.

This is speculation of course, but if the schools who have dropped 10% or so waited until the end to enter their kids it would make sense. We did some and some. There are students with D grades who got better marks than some who got Cs. How can that be allowed to happen?


Schools are hardly going to request a re-mark to move their students down, exam boards are not going to remove Cs from January in order for students to receive the grades they actually deserve for the standard of work, so I guess we are stuck with what we've got.

Of course, the other significant problem teachers have faced with the new course is not knowing where the boundaries were for CA. AQA support meetings told us more than once that a C would be 'somewhere in Band 3'. Most people thought that meant a folder of 8s and 9s would be good enough. In January it was. Not even close in June! To scrape a C in Unit 2 you needed 9, 9, 10. That is not really 'somewhere in Band 3', is it?

When the results were published in January, we felt a bit more secure. Now we knew where the goal posts were. Or so we thought. I wanted to play it safe and aimed a little higher before thinking my students were ok to stop sitting new CAs. Unfortunately, I was way too conservative in my predictions of how far the boundaries would change. We now have the awful situation of having students who thought they were on a C based on January grades ending up with Ds. Fortunately, I'm not stupid enough to make any promises about final grades, but it still stings when you know the individual students behind the headline statistics.

So, why did the boundaries change so much?

Everyone else was working just as hard as we were -interventions, extra classes, changing groups! Teachers moved the boundaries higher by 'playing it safe'. If there is a quota of C+ grades, rather than a quality standard, then ironically, we should all agree to work less and the results would stay the same. However, if you 'know' 25 is the minimum for a C in Unit 2, then you aren't going to stop pushing kids until they have 26, or 27. Just to be sure... you know. If everyone does that, the boundary has to move.

This could explain the Speaking and Listening increase in particular- how easy is it to shift those CA marks up one or two? Our Speaking and Listening marks are below other schools. If you met our kids, you'd know how ridiculous that is. We clearly did not over-reward our students!

So, does any of this stop me thinking there was something else I could have done? Does it stop me feeling gutted for those kids we thought were safe who missed their C by 1 or 2 marks?

No, of course it doesn't. I'm a teacher.

It also won't stop me from pushing those boundaries higher next year by doing everything I can to help my new Y11s. God help them!

SOLO and Teenage Voice

So the proof of the pudding...
Commissions:
A national project – C21st UK - wishes to collect from young people writing which reflects life in the UK in the C21st. Your writing should focus on aspects of young people’s lives which you feel are important. You can choose the form of the writing e.g. journalism or narrative.












Not satisfied with the pressure of having to prove my new lesson plan works, I decided to have my PM observation on a Friday afternoon and also have my first observation using SOLO taxonomy... oh yeah... and it was videoed.
So, here is the plan (names of students have been changed):




The resources were:

Extracts from the books above (it is actually possible to find bits that are not too graphic!)
SPLIT the text worksheets (Structure, Patterns, Language, Imagery, Themes)
A student response
Venn diagram comparison thinking tool (each circle represents a text)
A1 sugar paper and felt-tip pens
SOLO display and post-it notes

Students showed their progression at the start, middle and end of the lesson by moving their post-it. I questioned target students (identified on the plan) about their choices and also students who felt they did not want to move. By the end of the lesson, it looked like this:




At the start no one had put themselves beyond multi-structural. An student absent from the previous lesson was able to show progression from pre-structural to extended abstract thinking!
And here is the feedback:

Planning for Progress

If I had my way, the perfect planning template would be a blank piece of paper. That way, people could just put down what they found helpful in a way that meant something to them. And if they didn't need to, then they didn't have to. In that world, all the teachers would be amazing and not need a scaffold, or prompts to remind them of someone else's agenda!
The biggest problem is that, in order to include everything we know makes a good lesson, you have to write a book. It simply isn't possible to show everything you can do with a group, so signposting to the observer where you want them to look is essential.
Added to that you have the problem of different subjects, agendas, educational theories and trends, skills, objectives, outcomes, assessment, feedback, taxonomies and so on. Also, people like to plan in the way that suits them, nine times out of ten focusing too much on the 'what', rather than the 'why'.
At school, we had a perfectly serviceable plan based on the Accelerated Learning cycle. This saw us through two Ofsted inspections, but as the goalposts have recently shifted, it needed looking at again. It also suggested that there was only one cycle in every lesson, when we know that one lesson could have several cycles, or one cycle take several lessons to complete, depending upon what you are doing.
So, after feedback from lots of departments and researching how it works in other schools, is is the result:




The key thinking is that starting with the question: What progress do I want students to make? And then planning the activity, AfL and differentiation alongside it, helps you to plan a really good lesson AND demonstrate clearly to an observer WHY you are doing what you are doing. Homework gets the same treatment to ensure it isn't tagged on as an after thought.
With the lesson plan comes a group plan:




On here you can put target levels, actual levels, which groups students belong to (G&T, SEN, FSM, etc.) and make it clear how you are targeting underachievement. I colour code it red and green. It forces me to work those students into the lesson plan if I've highlighted them for an observer! Once completed, the boxes can be dragged to create a seating / group plan very easily, taking all that student's info. along with them.
And finally, the crucial checklist: the ABC of Lesson Planning:

ABC of Lesson Planning

View more PowerPoint from Liplash_mason

The Politics of School Car Parking

As I approach my 40s, as a teacher, my thoughts naturally turn to joining SLT, ditching my partner for one ten years younger, and buying an Audi.

It would also be nice to have a reserved parking space for my shiny new Audi at work. Some people already do have one at my school, but I'm not talking about the head or deputies here, I'm talking about those people who reserve their own spaces. In a manner similar to the politics of staffroom seating and the borrowing of coffee mugs, parking in someone else's self-appointed space can cause ridiculous amounts of stress in school. It is all about territory.

The fundamental problem seems to be that most schools weren't designed at a time when every teacher had a car. On top of that, you have early starters and late finishers. From my experience, those who come in late usually stay longer after school, and early risers leave closer to the bell. Well, unless you have ample spaces for everyone, or a turntable in your car park, that simply doesn't work, does it? I'm not a morning person, I live 2 miles from school because I'm not a morning person and I scrape in just before half-past eight, because I'm not a morning person. As a result, I have two choices: park on the mud and risk having to be towed off, or block someone in and face their wrath later in the day.

Imagine if you will, the panic that sets in when it's dark and cold, and you are one of only a couple of cars left on site and you are stuck in the mud. Wheels are spinning and digging you in deeper and deeper. The situation seems hopeless. Images of being airlifted out wrapped in tin foil start to flood your mind when, out of the darkness comes your hero.

"Can I give you a push?"

You suck back the tears of panic/frustration and grab desperately at this hand pulling you away from the precipice. Together you pack the wheels with cardboard from the skip and finally sit back down behind the wheel to give it one last go... and you are free! The only problem being the horrible guilt when you look in the rear view mirror and see your Samaritan covered from head to toe in the fountain of mud sent up from the spinning wheels.

Not something either party needs on top of a full day of teaching.

In fact, just having somewhere to park your car doesn't seem to be asking too much to me. For a start, we only have one space marked in our car park and that is a disabled space (which someone regularly takes as their reserved space on the days the disabled member of staff isn't in). For some reason, people don't take it as a guide for where other cars should park and you get the frustration of people leaving a three-quarter size gap not even the most determined male PE teacher can prove his spatial awareness (and therefore manhood) by squeezing into.

Because yes, there is a difference between men and women when it comes to parking. And it is largely women who use the most annoying 'trump card' of all for parking badly: child care. Apparently, if you have children, you gain the right to park in the same place (note place, not space) every day, block the way out, and block people in by double parking. No thought for other people who might have to leave early, or have meetings elsewhere during the day. Perhaps I should review my comments about turning 40, forget about joining SLT, stick with my trusty Corsa and just get pregnant instead. 'Reserved' parking space here I come.