foolfillment: the blog

I’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.)

Castellers by pepesaura [old skool pride]

Robert Jones did me the dubious honour of tagging me for this passion quilt meme. Actually it was a pleasure, most memes are a bit rubbish - just cheap content creation for blogs. This one was a refreshing change. Think of something you are passionate about teaching to your pupils, then find an image to illustrate that.

I love challenging young people to work together and create something remarkable, I first found out about castelling after seeing a a photo taken by my friend Diarmid when he lived in Barcelona, but I thought this photo illustrated this passion better because it is mid-construction and actually involves younsters. I suppose there is a point to be made about usefulness of what is created but, the sense of community that seems to abound castelling has got to count for something doesn’t it?

Now I have to tag 5 new people: Krysia Smyth, Robert Clements, Ollie Bray, Eddie Mack (no blog, yet), and Duncan Smeed.

Here are the rules:
1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

I visited Prestonpans Primary School today and I was taken amazed by what I saw. This was the first time I’ve been in a primary school since I was a pupil myself so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but I was fairly certain that I’d see teachers there showing me a thing or too about how to deliver great lessons: learning intentions shared along with negotiated success criteria, all the pupils active and collaborating; and colourful classrooms that are exciting places to be. This is almost exactly what I saw, I’m shattered now and I didn’t really have to do much - turns out observing in a primary school is a much more involving event than observing in a secondary. The energy that all the teachers put in to their lessons and the enthusiasm from the pupils was quite staggering, and I should take the chance to say a huge thank you to all of the staff who let me take part in their day.

Somewhere along the way from primary to secondary there seems to be something that removes so much excitement about learning, that stifles the boundless creativity that children have. I’m going back in to school tomorrow with a fresh determination to make every lesson count. Something that I find difficult in my subject area is making every lesson count in it’s own right as a learning experience. So often what I am working on with my classes is a project that spans over more many lessons, where the learning comes from practising practical skills, or where because of resources pupils all work on different things on different days, this makes teaching things to a whole group in 1 50 minute slot near impossible.

Something that was said to me the other week was that Graphic Communication is one subject where you can really work on your teaching skills, it is the subject where you can work on much smaller pieces of work and have a lesson dedicated to each part. It offers challenges to explain difficult concepts and procedures to a variety of different abilities. This idea came up because I was delighted to have regained an S2 Graphics class, I was sharing them on my original timetable back in August but lost them for a while when the timetable changed a few months ago. Thankfully I got them back the other week and I am thoroughly enjoying taking them again, I hope they are too! Now the challenge is to make every lesson with them count, to share those learning intentions better…to have them more active too I hope, I have some plans for this which you may see on the RHS CDT blog (if technology doesn’t let me down).

The first thing we did at the Learning and Teaching session on Thursday was to spend a little time on our own, quietly thinking about what our most intense learning experience was. No more detail than that, it was up to us to decide what that meant. I thought I might share what mine was and some of my thoughts about the task.

I had a couple of ideas, obviously to pick out one period in particular is hard, but I first thought about what the task really was. Is the emphasis on ‘intense’? (and what does that mean?) Or is it on the learning bit? A single experience? Initially I thought back to my first year at uni. I was studying Electrical Engineering and throughout the year had a number of assignments to do for maths. These were usually fairly short notice and a lot more work than anything else we got. The questions often seemed really distinct from what we had covered in lectures and tutorials so it was usually a fairly frantic time working out what the questions meant in relation to all the bits we knew and somehow piece them together to get the answers. It felt intense, but thinking back did I learn anything from them? It was tough and I was using things I had been studying, but can I remember any of it now? Certainly not.

What I might have learned from it is the value of working with others to solve problems, or some skills in breaking problems in to smaller pieces. In truth all that I learnt was that if you don’t know what the question means then just try something, anything, and if it still makes no sense then just try a few other things and hand in all of the different bits of work and you’ll get a handful of marks rather than none. Tactics, nothing more, nothing less.

The experiences I came up with that represent some real learning are both caving related. One was the first time I did SRT - this is doing things with ropes at the tops of things like cliffs. You have a harness and a whole range of bits of complex metalwork and lots of ropes. If you don’t use them properly then there is every chance that you will hurt yourself, and when you hurt yourself in a cave then it is usually very serious. So, the first time I went into a cave that required SRT I had to learn how to do it, and I had to learn fast.

The other one was a little later when I learned how to rig caves for SRT, not just going in and using a rope that someone else has put there but being the person who puts the rope into place. Again, make a mistake here and someone could get hurt, or worse. The difference was the person who gets hurt wasn’t just me any more but other people too, now that is responsibility.

In both of these situations I was safe because I was with someone who was teaching me how to do things properly and would stop me before I made a mistake, but I still had to make sure I knew not just what to do but also why I do those things. Without an understanding of all the equipment and knots then I would not have learned how to do things safely, I wouldn’t have learnt anything except how to cope if I found myself in the same cave in exactly the same situation. Instead I worked out what knots to use when, why you route the rope that way in this cave and when you would do similar/different things in other caves. How to go through a procedure of checking in a way that means I am safe and so are those with me. A huge number of things that all fit together into a much bigger picture.

What links these experiences, and what made them intense experiences is that I had a big responsibility, if I didn’t learn then things could have gone horribly wrong if I were to get to a cave in the future without support and realise I didn’t know what to do, or worse thought I knew but got it wrong.

These are very personal experiences, and they were situations where I learned because of a stick more than a carrot. I had to learn so I did, it was that or make both a physical and psychological retreat. The question is how does this relate to my teaching? Of course I can’t put my pupils into a situation where they have to learn else lives are in danger. I think the idea of advance or retreat is important. I learned because I had to but also wanted to. The aim is to find a way to make pupils want to learn rather than to make them learn.

I was at a Learning and Teaching session for NQTs this afternoon led by Don Ledingham. What a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon it was. I left feeling challenged, positive, and invigorated. Most of all though I felt completely sure that I am in the right job in the right place at the right time.

I wanted to write something up tonight before I being to forget bits, as I write it up though it is turning into a bit of a long post, so I’m going to give a brief overview of some of the challenging questions we were asked then focus on one part. Don has already written a short post on his thoughts on the session.
What was your most intense learning experience? What made it so?
What was your best lesson? What did you do in it? What are some keywords that sum it up? And what about yesterday, how did those lessons compare? Could they have been similar?

In typical Scottish fashion we found it hard to find examples of a good lesson at first, but they did come eventually. It was great to hear the different stories that people had. Some common themes cropped up: shared intentions; collaboration; interaction; discussion; tangible success for the students - which they define.

I don’t think I heard anyone say their best lesson included times where they went off at tangents. For me one of my best lessons was last year. I had a ten minute slot to fill, like a warm up act for the class teacher. I had been asked to introduce timber to some 1st years - cue the groans. “Why on Earth would we want to know about different types of tree!?” Well, I began by asking about the types of tree they knew. Christmas tree inevitably came up. Good, everyone knows the shape of them so it’s easy to talk about identifying softwoods. But what about hardwoods? Do they have many branches? Can you climb them? No, you can’t easily climb them - not that any of them realised that at first, nor why. I showed them this picture which I took in Romania on a caving expedition.

We were doing some SRT* practice above ground - the only thing we could attach a rope to was a huge tree, but it’s branches are way off the ground. I didn’t explain how we got the rope up there… But after that they did know lots of ways of telling apart hard and soft wood trees, they found a way of linking the trees to the types of timber you get from them. They thought about how that affected the possible things you can use different timber types for. They thought about where different trees grow. Why, for instance did none of them know about climbing hardwoods? Because they don’t see them, yet they are surrounded by hardwood timbers in their homes and in the school, in particular the workshops they work in which were kitted out in beech benches and cupboards. (The likes of which PPP schools can only dream of.)

“What about uses for wood?” I asked.
‘Paper’
‘well done’
‘tables’
‘very good’

Then I asked
‘What about for drinking from? What about making every single thing you own from wood?’ This didn’t really make them happy - “how could you possibly make everything from wood? That’s crazy talk” I showed them some photos I took in the Peruvian Amazon Jungle…

I also showed them a photo taken on the floating islands on Lake Titicaca (teehee) where the islands and almost everything on them are made of reeds that grow on the lake bed.

My 10 minute slot over-ran a bit, because they were so engaged with something that minutes earlier they had no interest in whatsoever. They were full of questions and stories, what did they learn? They thought they learned that you can get Mr Meldrum to go waaay off topic just by asking him about travelling, but they also learned that different types of timber have lots of different uses, they learned about sustainable development, they learned about appreciating different cultures, they also learned a bit about respecting the environment around you and the wildlife within it. If they’d pushed in the right directions I could easily have gone on to talk more about SRT which would have given them a huge opportunity to learn all about cams, pulleys, friction, and a host of other mechanical systems/properties that otherwise wouldn’t have been covered in their 1st year of school.

So, that was one of my best lessons, and I think the best bit of it was that I had the scope to go off on a tangent and follow up on the things that the pupils engaged with. I was able to give them not just knowledge in discrete packets, but to give them a meaning and context to those packets of knowledge. I don’t think I heard much talk of tangents today, are probationers all scared of being unprepared? Do we all over-plan? I know I am and do.

I’ll write up more on this, I found it a hugely enjoyable and worthwhile session. I just wish there’d been more time for discussion/debate at the end.

*Single Rope Technique - a way of gaining or losing height in caves and other hard-to-access areas using a system involving one fixed rope and a guddle of bits of metal and other short ropes.

I’ve been quiet here for a while (how many times have I started a blog post like that?) but it’s now the end of the October break and I’m ready to get back to school.

I thought I’d write a little about things that I’ve been thinking about over the last few weeks. In my last post I linked to a few things that I was going to try with my S4 Graphics class, the lesson itself went fine but a few things happened as a result of using some social web tools that surprised and disappointed me. My over-riding feeling to came out of it and other related events was that at Ross High we aren’t doing enough to prepare our pupils for the world where everyone has an audience, everyone is a contributor, and everyone leaves a trail.

I really wanted to get along to the Internet Safety training event at Musselburgh Grammar School that Ollie Bray ran. While I didn’t manage to make it Neil Winton thankfully did. He wrote about the evening and has since also flagged up a few things I’d like to take into school tomorrow and talk to people about. I know that there are Ross parents hoping for a similar evening to be run for them.

This morning I made the time to watch Ewan McIntosh’s keynote from the ULearn07 conference. Once again there was lots to think over, but this time it was the idea of fear of failure, and over-planning. I’m going in to school tomorrow with a renewed enthusiasm to try some new things without the fear that I think I’ve been trapped by in the first part of this term (if I can’t try some new things when I’m on 0.7 will I find the time when I get a 1FTE contract) and I’m going to try and show off a few ideas to other teachers in the department to see if they can take them somewhere further.

On the invitation of Guinea Pig Mum I went along to see about helping our at Tranent ASC on Thursday and Friday night. I had been meaning to get in touch with my old coach for a while to see about getting involved in swimming at some level but I was waiting for school to settle down then see just how much time I would have to commit.

Going back to the Loch Centre for the first time in about 6 years really made me think back, on two levels. First, the building has barely changed in all the time I’ve been away so I found myself slipping back into what is basically an old habit or routine - taking the stairs in the same way by swinging round the banister at the bend, using the same changing cubicle, standing/sitting in the same old places - it was as though nothing had changed. I even found the swimmers using a kickboard that was covered in doodles and names of people I used to train with.

On another level it made me think about how you teach people. I can only remember how I swam aged 16 not aged 8, likewise I can’t remember what my coaches did to progress my swimming when I was 8, those memories have all been replaced by those of what happened later.

I know I have all this knowledge about how to swim well, but I don’t know how to get it out. I could take a session of swimmers who are at a similar level to me when I stopped, but younger than that I don’t know where to begin.
Yet, this is what I do at school. I switch from teaching 1st years to sketch to teaching 4th years how to draw complicated measured perspective drawings. I go from showing a senior to cut a mortice and tenon joint to showing a 1st year how to hold a saw.

I suppose it is all about breaking everything down into its component parts in my head, going back to first principles then building it up from there. How do I do that in swimming though? It feels like I need to try to forget everything I know and teach myself from scratch.

It’s almost the end of the first week now, just a half day tomorrow. One bit of advice that kept coming up during our induction days last week was ‘don’t let teaching take over your whole life’ and boy do I know what they meant now!
As well as all of the teaching and preparation that goes with it there is also a whole raft of paperwork I have to be keeping up to date with for getting Full Registration, that is what I think I’ll be spending this weekend doing.

teaching’s taking over my life already, I’ve got lots of things I want to get done tonight and over the weekend, and more long term projects that I haven’t even looked at beginning yet. I’m hoping that these first weeks are a bit exceptional and that soon enough I’ll be on top of it all, but for now I’m busy all hours.

I’m really enjoying it though!

The second presentation was from my course’s very own Eddie Mack with a talk entitled Driving the software is a start but where to next?

Eddie as I say is a teacher on the BTechEd course at Glasgow Uni, he’s taught in schools until very recently and has a speciality in graphics.

For me Eddie’s talk followed very nicely on from Steve Stott’s. The theme of it was getting started with using Inventor (or any parametric software for that matter) and moving along a spectrum of heavily led tasks to complete freedom for the learner. Eddie has delivered a great number of inservice days for teachers this year and thinks he’s hit upon a pretty reasonable order for introducing the software.

His premise was that the aim when teaching the software should be to allow the pupils to model/design anything they can dream up with little or no help, but to get to that stage quickly the pupil needs to be given a series of very heavily led tasks with specific instructions.
I’m not going to go through them blow by blow, mainly because I can’t remember them all, but it was roughly starting out by modelling some form; then adding holes; then adding dimensions/constraints; then introducing features like fillets and chamfers that can give a bit more interest.

He argued that to be truly free with using the software the key thing to understand is when and why you might need to create new workplanes, which most of the audience seemed fairly agreeable to.

This was another good presentation with lots to think about for next year. Unfortunately time was a bit short so there wasn’t chance to have much discussion afterwards, one big point though was the importance of getting away from teaching from a workbook that simply gives step-by-step instructions on how to create exactly the same object as everyone else in the class/year/school. Instead to find a way that suits you to teach the skills that allow pupils to model whatever form they can dream up. Aim to get to the stage where you can just release you class onto the PCs and let them get on with it and all of your teaching is to do with the subject rather than the software (which will change in 6 months time anyway).

Chris Munro followed up this talk and happened to have with him an example of exactly the sort of thing that bores teacher and pupils silly - a 40 page A4 booklet showing every step in how to model some artefact, allowing for no creative input from the pupil whatsoever.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that Eddie will put his slides on slideshare soon. If he does I’ll link to them from here.

First talk of the afternoon was from Steve Stott of Autodesk. Several of my year had seen Steve present a short session at a conference in Dunfermline last year, this session was an extended version of that. He has a background in engineering where he worked in workshops for around 15 years, he has also been a university teacher and a school teacher. His role now is with Autodesk - the company who make AutoCAD, Inventor, various other Computer Aided Drawing/Modelling/Manufacture products. The chances are that wherever you are you can see a product or building that was worked on in some wy with Autodesk software.

The main points throughout his talk were on trying to encourage teachers and pupils to get away from designing products by looking at existing products. To stop pupils going straight for catalogues for their inspiration. Rather to take inspiration and ideas from elsewhere and to change them into something different.

One thing that stood out for me was the superb quality of his images. He showed a huge number of drawings and photos of anything and everything, much of them at the start abstract things, beautiful shapes that could be anything. What do you feel? What emotion does this throw up? What is it? These questions so often just fall on their face in schools but with images like these the job is much easier.

He took us through a couple of products that he had designed right from the initial stages of looking for inspiration. One of which was a table top lamp which started out from images of starfish, another a toothbrush holder from images of athletes.

One theme throughout was the idea of an iterative design process rather than a simple linear approach. This is something I really agree with but is not something that easily fits into most design projects that are out in schools I have been in.
What allows such an approach in the way that Steve taught it is one of the big differences between Scotland and England - in England there is far more opportunity for computer aided manufacture (CAM). This in itself does not mean that an iterative approach couldn’t happen in Scotland but it does mean that in a project that is going to be made using CAM all the designing must be done before the manufacture starts, where as in most schools I’ve been in the design part is a folio that gets completed alongside the manufacture, thus removing most opportunities for creativity.

There was a big selection of the models he had made with classes, and a lot of images showing the designs evolving and these were pretty inspiring. They were almost all CAM made plastic models though and while they looked pretty good and showed a lot of creativity, I did feel that they were all a little too form based with not a lot of functionality. That’s perhaps a personal point of view, and maybe there were other projects that were towards the function end of the spectrum. He did take quite a bit of time talking about how he came up with the toothbrush holder and how it was made stable, but as far as I could tell (I didn’t get chance to see the model close up) it wouldn’t have been stable at all in the way he was saying. It would have been nice to see other models that had been made, ones with other materials perhaps.

I found it interesting that even though he was there with his Autodesk hat on he made very little mention of the products and showed very few screenshots of it in use with his designs. The majority of the design process that he showed us was of good old fashioned pencil renderings and annotations. This is really important because the designing is what’s important. We shouldn’t be throwing our pupils into a 3D modelling package too soon if they’d be better just drawing on paper - let their imagination be the limit to their creativity, not their ICT skills.