An example of Self Evaluation in Year 5/6

Last week, I observed outstanding practice in Year 5/ 6 Literacy lessons.

I loved this strategy that Mr Malley was using to allow the children to evaluate what they had learnt.

He gave the children a "taster" of the lesson but did not tell them explicitly what the objective was going to be- this was withheld purposely. The children wrote on post its what they thought they were going to learn in the lesson. After delivering an excellent lesson on identifying features of biographies, he then asked the children to write on another different coloured post it note what they actually learnt. It was fascinating to see the children's responses which initially had been very varied but on completion of the lesson, had been largely the same. It goes to show that if teaching and learning is clear, appropriate and very well planned and delivered, the children will know what they have learnt without needing to be introduced to an objective at the start of the lesson. Children will reveal all so if the lesson had been confusing or limited learning had taken place, we would certainly have known about it through this process!

Philosophy for children

Miss McSorley, one of my  relatively new members of staff and Year 2 teacher has started to trial and develop the idea of Philosophy for children in lessons. It delighted me when she approached me to say that this was something she was interested in developing as it has for some time been something that has fascinated me too.
Miss McSorley has carried out a trial set of Philosophy sessions with a small group of our Year 5s and is starting to integrate philosophical thinking into the topic planning in Key Stage 1. She accessed some weekend training last year via the P4C cooperative (Philosophy for Children) and has shared the basics of philosophy in teaching and learning with us as a staff.


P4C sums up on its website that:


The basics of philosophy for children are straightforward. Children, or older students, share some reading, listening or viewing with their teacher. The children take some thinking time to devise their own questions. They choose a question that interests them and, with the teacher's help, discuss it together. The teacher is concerned with getting children to welcome the diversity of each others' initial views and to use those as the start of a process of that involves the children questioning assumptions, developing opinions with supporting reasons, analysing significant concepts and generally applying the best reasoning and judgement they are capable of to the question they have chosen.

In the longer term, the teacher aims to build the children's skills and concepts through appropriate follow-up activities, thinking games and the orchestration of connections between philosophical discussions, life and the rest of the school curriculum.


I would like to share some images that I captured in Miss Pensom's Year 1/ 2 class which shows how philosophical thinking is starting to become an important part of children's learning in topic lessons. Here we see the children initially questioning what it would be like to live as apart of a tribe in the Rainforest. The learning also promotes wonderful, discussion and collaborative opportunities.

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR MORE PHILOSOPHICAL THINKING EMBEDDED INTO OUR LESSONS....

An alternative way to record research information

First of all, apologies for taking so long to re-engage with my blog this term. It has been the usual very busy but energetic start to the year in our Outstanding school and 4 weeks in, there is much to celebrate. I conducted a Learning Walk this week and observed some inspirational practice. One thing I did see which fascinated me, was the way that the children in year 5/6 had been given the freedom to record their research taken from several film clips of the Gold Rush, on the table itself! Miss Hinton took the plunge to attach permanent rolls of white paper onto the desks and encouraged the children to record their findings in whichever way they chose. I found it very interesting to see the number of different ways children chose to lay out their writing.

This sense of ownership, freedom and flexibility to direct their own learning, undoubtedly raised the engagement of the children. It gave them a chance to tailor-make their notes to suit their own learning style; some pieces of info were linear, some almost like a flow chart, some pieces were set out in bubbles. Without prescribing the way it had to be set out, the children chose ways which made more sense to them. Interestingly also, despite these notes being the "rough" copy of their writing, the  presentation and quality of handwriting was incredible- I wonder if this is because they wanted their "creation" to be fabulous; the heightened sense of ownership compelling them to take an increased pride in what they were doing?

I was also struck by the quality subject specific language that the children had identified and copied down ready to apply to their own compositions. The key to success here is ensuring that the high level vocabulary is used in the correct context and is highly fit for purpose. I can't wait to see the finished pieces.

Observe the quality of the language, which will be applied to the children's own compositions.

 

Subject specific vocab is expertly drawn out by the children

The impact of good quality Teaching Assistants

I have been marvelling recently at the quality of the practitioners we have in school to help to support our teachers in the classroom. There have been some mutterings from the Government and in various reports which suggest that Teaching Assistants provide very poor value for money. I am sure that in some settings this may well be the case, but not here at Robin Hood. I was delighted to attend an awards event recently which recognised the value of outstanding Higher Level Teaching Assistants. It was clear that each and every one of the nominees in attendance were unbelievably passionate about providing high quality education to children and understood both the huge part that they play in driving progress amongst our learners and being able to nurture and support children in a more pastoral sense. Higher Level Teaching Assistants bring expertise, knowledge and professional skills which add huge capacity to teacher's and leader's roles and it is with some sadness that this is not always recognised by the powers that be.

I was very proud to join Robin Hood's two HLTAs, Carol Wathen and Gaynor Cookson, to receive a certificate to show that they had been shortlisted for Outstanding HLTAs of the year. After a little digging, I was informed that literally hundreds of applications to recieve this award had been submitted in our region so to end up having BOTH of our ladies reaching the final 5 in the Yorkshire and Humber region, is something which makes me incredibly proud. I value all of our teaching assistants hugely; they bring skills to our school which I know have a huge beneficial impact on the learning and experiences of our children.

 

How wonderful that our HLTAs magnificent contribution was recognised publicly and properly.

Truly well deserved, ladies.

 

Resilient learners

We promote and encourage resilience in our classrooms. I began this week with my assembly which focussed on "success in failure". I shared a real life story with the children (my own!) that involved several major knock backs in the journey to success. I am lucky enough to be in a profession which I absolutely love and relish a challenge so it was easy for me to talk about the journey to get to this point. The children listened as I explained how I had not been a Level 5 pupil at Primary School (not that there were such success measures around in those days, but if there had been, I know I would not have been operating at that Level!). At best, I consistently achieved at age related expectations and academic "success" came at a price of having to work relentlessly hard to achieve anything. The subjects in which I excelled (Art and Languages) even took a nosedive during my A Levels, meaning I didn't get into the University that I wanted to. The children were interested to hear that I found my passion for teaching by accident as I desperately clung onto a way to pursue a degree in Art in any way I could (the Education route with specialism). Sharing this with the children was not supposed to be self indulgent, but a way of showing them that passions can be discovered as part of a journey to be great at something. I truly believe that it is a persons mindset, positive outlook and determination not to give up which contributes mostly to success and happiness.

This brings me on to what I would like to share with you now.Mrs Mistry brought Jacob in Year 2 down to my office earlier this week, with 5 drawings- each one increasing in complexity and accuracy. The final (and rather brilliant) one was the result of Jacob's utter refusal to give up before he had produced something that he was less than very happy with. He recognised that he had to "fail" first in order to improve and that tied in PERFECTLY with my message in assembly at the start of the week. An inspirational learner!

 

Here is Jacob's journey to success.

THE FINISHED RESULT!

A display to show effective feedback

A display recently created by Mrs Mistry to exemplify the quality of our Key Stage 1 writing and how effective feedback is central to that

 

We routinely see displays in schools that exemplify the best outcomes created by children but how often do we get to see the feedback given by the teachers that has formed part of the fantastic learning journey that teacher and child have been on? Post it notes with personal targets- feedback against criteria for success- positive praise- double ticks where targets have been met- are all part of a consistent marking policy for writing across school.

 

The Ofsted School inspection handbook (2012) includes in it's grade descriptors for outstanding teaching that "Consistently high quality marking and feedback from teachers ensures that pupils make rapid gains".

Jackie Beere (2012) , a leading educational trainer and consultant backs this up by stating that "specific feedback needs to be present in students' books and in theclassroom dialogue, otherwise students can become demotivated, confused or misled".



Mrs Mistry has a very innovative approach to creating displays and this one has an added layer of value as we get to see the journey of the teacher and child when producing writing outcomes.

 

The images you see here are perfect examples to show you the time that teachers invest in making sure that children are rigorously supported in their writing; that they take ownership over aspects of their improvement by self evaluating against success criteria and by engaging with feedback given as a result of teacher's in depth knowledge of each individual child's needs. This style of marking is consistently implemented across school but worth noting is how impressive it is, that even some of the youngest children in school can engage with such sophisticated strategies for improvement.

 

 

Click on the images to see them up close and the detail of the feedback...

The power of collaborative learning

Last week, I was teaching a group of Year 6 children in my office. Nothing unusual there, but what I did notice was the incredible learning behaviours. I have been in this profession, for over 16 years now and I don't think I have ever experienced such positive learning behaviours as those that I witnessed last week. I simply asked the children to look back at a previous test they had done for Level 6 Maths and given that they had a further 3 months of learning under their belts, asked them to tackle the problems they had previously got incorrect. I did not want them to do this alone, however; I wanted them to use each other's understanding to collaboratively solve the problems. I asked this specifically because I wanted to see how the children worked together, to listen to who could ask the most efffective kinds of questions to their peers, and to see who could share their knowledge and strategies with others. But more than anything, I wanted to see whether the children solved the problems more or less effectively than if they had been asked to do this independently. I sat back and took stock of the situation, listening and watching intently, taking notes of what the children were saying out loud.

For at least 15 minutes, there was an audible buzz of interaction, a sharp focus from each child which faltered for nothing and an excitement in their achievements which was touching to see. Verbal interactions amongst the children included:

"What did you get for that?"
"This is how I worked this out"
"I can't believe I got that one wrong!!"
"I haven't a clue how to tackle that one- show me how you did it".
"I got that one right, let me show you what I did"
" I can definitely solve this one now- look!"
"We all got that one wrong, let's tackle it together"
"Ooooooooh yes, I can see that now- thanks"
"Would I use the grid method for that?"
"YES! I did it!"
The level of accuracy improved dramatically.

This is a great example of how collaborative learning is powerful and effective and impacts on the depth of the children's understanding. This approach to learning is something that Year 5 and 6 teachers are implementing more and more, especially with the higher achieving children.