Learning and Teaching Session. Please share your ideas.
5:15 pm on the 29th of April, 2008I’m looking for your ideas in this post.
A quick summary first: Today saw the final training session for this year’s probationers in East Lothian. Training really isn’t the right word for it as it was more an informal afternoon with the focus being on sharing and exploring our ideas about the Learning and Teaching that is going on in East Lothian. There was another focus - recently all the probationers took part in a sector shadow where secondary teachers watched primary classes for a day then swapped over - so this gave a lead to the discussions.
The final activity we took part in was particularly useful - both for sharing ideas but also to justify what we do to other professionals. This is where I’d really appreciate your comments.
There were two headings under which we had to describe something that we think is great practice and we want to implement or continue to do when we take up our next jobs. We then mingled and shared ideas with each other. It opened up my eyes (even further) as to the variety of things that are going on in Primary schools that are just fantastic.
The first heading was Formative Assessment/Learning Strategies.
I wrote something along the lines of: Peer Assessment - evaluating each others work, pupils are much better at praising/criticising each other’s work than their own.
The second header was Management of Learning.
For this I wrote Starter questions/exercises at start of every lesson.
I’d love to hear you share anything that you consider to be essential to good learning and teaching so please leave a comment. It needn’t be much just a few words describing something that you think works.
( I toyed with the idea of writing this as a meme, so feel free to write up on your own blog and link here, or even to tag someone else.)
Tags: East Lothian, formative assessment, learning, learning-and-teaching, nqt, probation, strategies, teaching
April 29th, 2008 at 9:21 pm on the 29th of April, 2008
I adopted the formative assessment tool of sharing learning intentions, just using a whiteboard to the side of the main board. I found it helpful, and I notice it’s commonly used in primary classes so many S1s will expect it. You’ll even hear them talking about LI’s in their podcasts!
http://edubuzz.org/blogs/macmerry/2007/11/25/formative-assessment-world-war-ii-podcast/
This provides a bit more on the practice:
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/assess/for/keyfeatures/sharingcriteria.asp
Be careful with WALT and WILF though: I found out recently they’re out of favour, following the discovery that children paid too much attention to the characters!
April 29th, 2008 at 10:04 pm on the 29th of April, 2008
Unconditional positive regard (as Don blogged about recently) is useful if it is genuinely felt. Humour can be very powerful but it can too easily be used to reinforce power relations. Finally, work towards giving your pupils your best but don’t make promises that you might not be able to keep.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:56 pm on the 3rd of May, 2008
I try to bear in mind that the pupil in front of me has a life outside school that I really know little or nothing about. Parents too may be struggling with circumstances which, in their position, I might be overwhelmed by.
Hold back on quick and easy judgements.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:49 pm on the 6th of May, 2008
All good ideas, thanks. I purposefully left it a while before replying, hoping a few more people might chip in.
David Gilmour, this is a favourite of mine and something I try to do as much as possible. Having a separate area to share them in is also really useful as it gives them their own space and importance.
David Noble, as I’m sure you’ve read this can be a tricky one to manage, but an essential part of building up good rapport with a class. Several times this year I’ve come across the attitude of ‘Sir, you don’t like me do you?’ or ‘Sir, Mr xxx is always picking on me, he hates me’ and I’ve found it a really difficult one to counter - you can’t really say that you do like them - ‘like’ being the difficult word, far too subjective.
Dorothy, great advice. I find it quite easy to forget this, even the different lives that they lead within the school. I remember at the start of this year I got to observe quite a few 1st year classes and the huge change in their behaviour throughout the school was astounding to me at the time - perhaps naively?
I think showing the pupils that you also have a life outside of school is really useful. I (think I) have a really good relationship with the pupils who know I coach at the local swimming club. It’s more than just having an external life but also showing that I’m doing my bit for the community other than ‘just my job’.
To finish off this wordy comment I’ll jot down some of the ideas that I stole from the other probationers. These are brief statements that I collected, on their own they may seem quite blunt or clumsy. I’ll try to explain better if you prompt me!
Formative Assessment/Learning Strategies:
- classes creating their own tests/marking schemes
- yes/no spectrum within the class. Pupils move to where they think the answer is to a difficult topic, or as an active traffic lighting exercise.
- Individual white boards - laminated paper with a felt tip, used as a cheap alternative to an interactive voting system.
Management of Learning
pupils can have their name put under any heading, a prize for those who have a +3 rating, punishment for those with -3 rating at end of lesson.
- follow your lead, to quieten a class. Teacher puts hand on head and waits for rest of class to do the same and be ready to listen.
- Question of the day, more suited to a primary setting but could be applied to a series of secondary lessons
- Smileys
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