T & L Bulletin | ISSUE 2

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T & L Bulletin

In this edition: • The Woodlands Way Jigsaw • Plan For Error • Wait Time • Revision Strategies • Cold Call • Images to reflect upon • Think and Participation Ratio • Recommended Reading • Enterprise Day • Teach Like a Champion

Placemat

The Woodlands Way has been our driving force behind Teaching and Learning throughout this academic year. It has been the focus of Learning Walks and drop ins with all staff given clear action steps based around one of the eight areas

These areas are the focus around which all CPD is targeted. Over the course of the first term it became clear that each term should have a focus and the foci for the Spring Term

are

Challenge and Differentiation by starting point, SEND and PPG. In order to create clarity around the differentiation element this has been effectively rebranded as “Challenge for ALL”.

The Woodlands Way has been created as a jigsaw to become a template for lesson planning.

Departments have begun to take ownership of how our focus areas look to create bespoke subject specific puzzle pieces in order for each department to build their own Woodlands Way.

The Individual Pieces Michelle Pearce

Teaching and Learning @ Woodlands

Welcome to Edition 2 of our Teaching and Learning Bulletin. This aims to reflect and highlight the strategies and techniques being effectively implemented at Woodlands.

The Woodlands Way

1. Engaging Starts to lessons 2. Challenge 3. Clear Learning Journey 4. Differentiation by starting

point, SEND and PPG 5. High Quality Questioning 6. Assessing misconceptions and

intervening 7. Assessment and guidance 8. Progress for all pupils

The Woodlands Way The Teaching and Learning Team

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Question: What makes us human?

By the time you have read this question teachers often expect an answer. Would you be bale to give a worthwhile answer to this question in that time?

Allow students time to think before answering. If they aren’t productive with that time, narrate them toward being more productive.

Wait Time Michelle Pearce

INSET DAY WORKSHOP 18th January 19

FACTS

• The average wait time after asking a class a question is 1 second

• This limited wait time encourages hands up

• Pressures students to give their first thought rather than their best one

• The lack of time to think produces poor answers and then wastes the teachers time trying to develop these poor answers into a useable response

The Benefits of using Wait Time

• Allows more students to get involved

• Enables the less able thinkers to participate

• Supports more rigorous answers

• Prompts cognitive development

• Decreases the fail ratio or “I don’t know response”

• Increases the use of evidence based answers

• Saves time in the long run

Practical Strategies

• Narrate hands – normalise participation, address motivational issues (say how many hands are up, build momentum and say how many hands up you are looking for) Give students more time to find the answer and then try again with hands up – this pushes students to answer and reinforces your expectation that students will answer questions and gradually changes the culture.

• Prompt thinking skills – turn wait time into thinking time and guide students on what they should be doing during this time to be most productive – “I’m seeing people thinking and jotting down thoughts”. “I am seeing people going back to the text to look for the evidence or scene”. “I’m waiting to see if anyone can link this information to something we have studied before”.

• Give real think time – stop talking and give the students real time to think (this is really hard to do) counting silently to yourself can help you to do this or walk around the room or use the clock

• Make wait time transparent – Tell students how long you are going to give them and why. “This is a hard question so I am going to give you 30 seconds so you can think of some specific examples to support your thoughts”

HELPFUL HINTS

If using a timer ensure the timer does not distract or draw attention from the process of thinking

WHAT DIFFERENCE HAS THIS MADE IN YOURCLASSROOM?

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Plan for error is a technique that is often forgotten when planning lessons but when done well the impact on progress can be astonishing.

The idea is that you spend a few minutes before you lesson anticipating:

1. What your students are likely to get wrong or misunderstand

2. What you’d do about it if they did make the error in question and change your approach if they struggle.

A teacher must never mistake activity for achievement

The questions below tests for common misconceptions through one simple question

PLAN FOR ERROR – TLAC TECHNIQUE #7

Neil Pearce

INSET DAY WORKSHOP

KEY POINT:

Never miss an opportunity to use a misconception to your advantage. If one learner makes an error the chances are that others will at another time. Deal with it now and test student mastery.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

PRECISE LEARNING – what exactly do you want the individuals to learn during that part of the lesson? The section could be 5 or 25 minutes but do YOU know exactly what you want them to know?

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Prof John Dunlosky

He and his colleagues reviewed 1,000 scientific studies looking at 10 of the most popular revision strategies

• Rereading

• Highlighting key points

• Use of post-it notes around the room to remind you

• Quizzing yourself (verbally/written) or others (covering up information, test yourself, then reveal)

• Mind maps/diagrams to explain

• Doing past paper questions

• Cue cards/flashcards with key info on them – testing yourself

• Rhymes/mnemonics (SOHCAHTOA)

The 5 least effective techniques

• Summarisation

• Highlighting

• Keyword mnemonics

• Imagery use

• rereading

So what does work?

Two of the methods which came out on top……..

Spreading study out over time

• Spreading your revision out over a longer period of time proved to be very effective. So get started as early as you can with revision and avoid cramming in the days before an exam.

Self-testing

• According to Prof Dunlosky, "students who can test themselves or try to retrieve material from their memory are going to learn that material better in the long run".

This does not mean that highlighting and underlining are completely useless

It means that students are not highlighting and underlining effectively and are not being guided to do it well

Ideas

REVISION STRATEGIES Helen O’Leary

INSET DAY WORKSHOP

Massed practice versus distributed practice

• Students believe massed practice works best for them

• Only by distributing practice can students, at a later stage, see what they haven’t remembered

• Takes more effort = more likely to be remembered long term, but disliked by students for this reason

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So where do we go from here?

• We model revision strategies to our students so that they can then go on and use them themselves

• We use recall techniques to ensure we revisit the same material (possibly in different contexts) to evaluate what has/has not been learned

Food for thought- Images to reflect upon

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Think and Participation Ratio

Where are you now?

Are you here yet?

Reminder of Techniques

• Cold Call • Wait Time • Do Now • Plan for Error • Show Call • Stretch it

Recommended Reading

Strategies to improve T&L – see the Placemat later in the bulletin for a summary of all 62 techniques

An excellent place to see the most effective strategies for Disadvantaged pupils through research.

See case studies from other schools.

The implementation guides are very clear

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On Thursday 24th January, we were lucky enough to hold an enterprise challenge day for our year 9 students hosted by local company Unloc. The day was filled with a range of fun, team-building activities such as: a big-brand relay hunt; survival of the fittest; and guess the logo. The main event of the day was a product design task in which all teams had to compete to design a tower, which would rival the Spinnaker Tower. All teams began by designing their tower before being given the opportunity to build with materials purchased from the stock shop. The stock shop worked in a similar manner to a stock market, so pupils had to work together to not only decide which materials were essential, but also when was the right time to purchase. It was immediately apparent that we have some risk-takers amongst year 9 and it was a joy to watch the more cautious students attempting to stop them blowing all of their capital in one hit! The day concluded with each team presenting their final design and we were very impressed with the overall standard of the presentations. The day was a resounding success and we hope to be

lucky enough to host a similar event next year.

Enterprise Day Year 9

24th January

Kellie Barratt

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