I've been asked by PN to revive the Teaching and Learning blog, which is one of the reasons why I am making this post. I'll be sending a reminder about the blog around to all members of the T & L Workshop, to ask people to post any information. If you want to become a member e-mail me on my work e-mail account, and I'll add you.
In addition, I'm going to 'blog' what has happened at each workshop. Members are invited to add their own contributions, comments, suggestions, etc.
We had our first proper meeting this evening as the first one earlier this month was an introduction. PN asked us to think about things that we were looking forward to this year, at which point virtually everyone went quiet, and looked at the floor. It's not that I don't like my job - I actually think it's great - but sometimes when you are in the thick of it it can be hard to really appreciate why we are doing it. Largely I enjoy it on a day-to-day basis when you actually have a great lesson, or a kid thanks you, or comes along in the lunchtime to finish something off. I don't actually look forward to marking a huge great pile of coursework in the spring - although I suppose I do enjoy supporting the students through their work.
Fiona said that she is looking forward to having taught the whole of the A level syllabus, so that she really feels confident with it - which I can relate to, then Gwyn talked about a new initiative with a school in Spain. Christian said he was looking forward to getting all the GCSE coursework completed, but Richard then went and talked about the trip to China - which made us all green with envy.
PN asked us to fill in a questionnaire about assessment strategies we use, which once again made me feel a bit unhappy, as it challenged me to think about how I am assessing learning, and whether the ways that I am doing it are actually as good as they could be. I'm confident about some of the ways, but am I being as effective as I can be? We discussed other ways of assessing learning, and Marie mentioned the idea of getting students to text a quick summary of what they had learned in a lesson. This is BRILLIANT, but I'm going to get my A level students to TWITTER their summaries instead - this will give them just 140 letters, and I can do it all on-line.
We decided on our rules for the TLC, many we consider as givens, however, our key points are:
- to improve student learning by using AfL strategies
- be open to learning new things and be willing to give up old habits that might not be as effective as we like
- use descriptions to discuss student and teacher work, avoiding judgement
- be honest about where we are 'shining' and where we are having difficulties (ie. its always important to share the good things)
- appreciate that different approaches work for different teachers and don't expect everyone to do the same as you.
I am going to work on Twitter with the A level students to reinforce learning as well as being another way of assessing understanding. I did think that I'd do some work on providing sample work of different grades, but Christian said that he is going to work on praising students. As he was talking about it this just seemed so important that I have decided to do this too. I do recognise that there are going to be some problems - like managing to praise a student who is just behaving badly - but I'm going to give it a go, especially in KS3. I thought for a long time that students know how good their work is comparatively, and if you praise some really poor work, then they will think that you are being patronising, but actually, I don't think that they do know that the work is poor. I think that a lot of them have considerable difficulty in seeing how good their work is compared to some standard.
I've now got to arrange for Ian P to come along and watch me praising a class.
