Teachmeet Stoke-on-Trent

TeachMeet Stoke-on-Trent

So, why put on a teachmeet for Stoke?
After taking to Twitter as my Personal Learning Network (PLN) back in August 2013 and quickly becoming addicted to my daily diet of virtual teaching and learning, I soon wanted to go to a Teachmeet. 
PLN? Having a PLN is just using social media to 'follow' other users and be inspired by the ideas and activities they are using in their classroom. The beauty of it is that you can quickly see what your colleagues in the next classroom or across the world are doing and they will freely allow you to
share all of their best ideas.  If you want to contribute and share your original or old activities that work, then your PLN becomes a powerful tool for your own reflection, but you don't have to if you don't want!    A teachwhat?  A Teachmeet is FREE, informal and innovative continuing professional development (CPD), and the main thing is hearing stories about learning from teachers; real narratives of practice that have made a difference in the classroom.  You can find out about all the events which are going on in the country through this website.
The closest teachmeets I could find were in Birmingham with a lot of action in the south of England and Yorkshire.  You'll notice from the link above that their are a few closer to home; Stockport, Warrington, Blackpool and the Wirral all have events coming up in spring 2014.

They say you never forget your first Teachmeet and mine was  "Teachmeet Brum at Xmas"  which was exactly what it said on the tin.  There was christmas food, free raffle prizes, networking and most importantly some great CPD:  I even picked up a few ICT tips for example putting filetype: ppt or doc or pdf etc on the end of your google search term to bring up all the files of that type.  So typing in crude oil filetype: ppt will bring up a shed load of power points on crude oil


Teachmeet Stoke-on-Trent will kick off with a great keynote speaker followed by a series of seven-minute micro presentations, three-minute nano presentations and some fantastic free raffle prizes and refreshments at break-time with networking opportunities.

Collaborative learning

Collaboration    the action of working with someone to produce something. (OED)

Cooperation      the action or process of working together to the same end.  (OED)

This post is the first of five posts which will chart my learning journey as I go all out on collaboration with some of my teaching classes and tutor group.

Post 1:  This is about how and why I will get my students collaborating.

Post 2:  Will be my own opinions on how it's going.

Post 3:  Will be my students thoughts on collaborative learning.

Post 4:  Will be about my preparations to deliver staff training.

Post 5:  This will be staff feedback and next steps.

I've had the idea for quite a while and it stems from thoughts about how children learn best in my classroom.  Quite simply, we know that children understand best when they 'do' and 'create' for themselves.  My favourite part of the job is when I appear completely relaxed at the side, back or front of my classroom..  This is when I can observe learning in action; students explaining to each other, debating over the format for a word equation, the correct method to heat calcium carbonate or which should be the top drawback for using nuclear fuel.  It's great when the chatter and noise is all about keywords and students discussing the current topic.  You know when students are on task and you also know when they are squabbling over something which has happened before they even entered your classroom or what happened last night on FIFA, Facebook or Grand Theft Auto.  It's clear that there's an energy associated with both situations but it's the former scenario which tells us that there's creativity and learning happening in the room.  All of us have a natural desire to engage with our peers through discussion and it is this energy that I want to encourage, harness and combine with other forms of communication to create an engaging, fun and powerful learning environment where students are free to create and collaborate.

Besides having the idea for a while, the reason I got started is the Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit which I am grateful to one of my colleagues in the maths department for showing me.  It is a summary of research, providing guidance on how to improve attainment of disadvantaged pupils.  It has 33 topics and for each one the average impact on attainment (including the strength of evidence) and relative cost is shown.  The topics include:  Feedback, Learning styles, Peer tutoring, Behaviour interventions and Summer schools.  However, Collaborative learning caught my eye as one of the most beneficial for attainment yet cost effective options around.  I have included some important and interesting  information regarding collaborative learning from this research at the end of this post.*

My description in the first paragraph, of learners fully engaged and learning from each other is rare in reality and I want to increase the frequency of these moments and make them more sustained than just moments and I want to do it by remodelling the seating plan in the classroom and teaching the skills needed for collaboration through a cooperative learning approach.  I'm also going to be implementing marginal learning gains wherever I can.  http://marginallearninggains.com The causes of any small gain in learning outcomes will be identified and embedded as I go along.

The definitions of cooperation and collaboration are very similar as you will have noticed from the Oxford English Dictionary definitions the top of this page.  Kagan cooperative learning is widely used at the school where I work and I'll be using activities from the Kagan cooperative learning book.  However, I will be focusing on student collaboration  and the difference for me is that collaboration is happening when a community of learners are finding out information and understand things for themselves as opposed to cooperative learning which, for me, works best when learners have already been taught or given the content and are applying and practising the use of it.  By focusing on collaboration rather than cooperation, I want learners to learn from each other; I want learners of all ability levels to be empowered to help others.  So my idea is that we'll get collaborative learning when firstly, learners are in the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky), meaning they can do the task but only with support, and secondly we have peers of lower, higher or similar ability empowered to help them.

So, my first job tomorrow, the first day of Spring term, is to share the new seating plans with my classes; they are heterogenous as far as possible along the lines of ability, sex and ethnic background.  I have to admit that I didn't stick rigidly to the seating plans I had in place back in September.  Very slowly they changed despite my knowledge that this should be one area of teaching with the least room for compromise.  Interestingly when I revisited the seating plans recently I noticed a very direct correlation between two things: 1) those students who had presented low level disruption so far this year and 2) those students who were not in the places set for them in September.  I was amazed at how very direct this correlation was and would never have noticed if I hadn't carefully rearranged the seating!  I will never let my carefully planned seating arrangements slip again! Hopefully not anyway.  How did I allow this to happen? The usual requests:  Sir, x is away today is it ok to just sit next to y for a today?  Of course, but remember to move back next time.  Sir, can I work with x just on this piece of work so you can see how well we work together?  Okay, just for this work and then please remember to move back to your seats at the start of the lesson when I will be way too busy trying to get the lesson off to a good start.

Once in our new seating arrangements, I will start each lesson with a fantastic team building exercise  (here is a version http://martinabex.com/2012/02/24/literary-team-windows/)  from Cooperative learning by Dr Spencer Kagan (section 8:4) where the team come up with their own team name by investigating their commonalities and uncommon commonalities.

My two initial steps into collaborative learning will then be firstly, to deliver existing teaching resources in the Co-op Jigsaw II format and secondly, to get teams using the team work self evaluation form  (19:13 and 19:8 respectively in the above mentioned book).  In theory the jigsaw format should allow learners to capitalise on the work of members of their own team as well as members of other teams.

If you're interested, you could google 'jigsaw cooperative learning' to find out much more, or even start with this great site  https://www.teachervision.com/group-work/cooperative-learning/48532.html. 

And finally, *Information from Sutton EEF research (collaborative learning)

What is it?

Collaborative or cooperative learning can be defined as learning tasks or activities where students work together in a group small enough for everyone to participate on a collective task that has been clearly assigned. This can be either a joint task where group members do different aspects of the task but contribute to a common overall outcome, or a shared task where group members work together throughout the activity. Some collaborative learning approaches also get mixed ability teams or groups to work in competition with each other, in order to drive more effective collaboration. There is a very wide a range of approaches to collaborative and co-operative learning involving different kinds of organisation and tasks, but this summary does not include Peer tutoring which is reviewed separately

How effective is it?

The impact of collaborative approaches on learning is consistently positive, but it does vary so it is important to get the detail right. Effective collaborative learning requires much more than just sitting pupils together and asking them to work together; structured approaches, with well-designed tasks lead to the greatest learning gains. There is some evidence that collaboration can be supported with competition between groups, but this is not always necessary, and can lead to learners focusing on the competition rather than the learning it aims to support. Approaches which promote talk and interaction between learners tend to promote the best gains. 

What do I need to know?

• Pupils will need support and practice to work together; this does not happen automatically.
• Tasks need to be designed carefully so that working together is effective and efficient, otherwise some pupils will try to work on their own.
• Competition between groups can be used to support pupils in working together more effectively within their group, though over-use of competition can focus learners on the competition rather than succeeding in their learning so it needs to be used cautiously.
• It is particularly important to encourage lower achieving pupils to talk and articulate their thinking in collaborative tasks as they may contribute less.
• Managing effective collaborative group work is challenging so professional development or collaborative professional inquiry is likely to be helpful to support effective use of these approaches.

GCSE project qualification

I was thinking how I could fit G&T into my T&L role.   How about a project qualification, completed by students, and is equal to half a GCSE?  This would extend and enhance any area of the curriculum already being studied. 

I have previously been involved with the EPQ at A’ level (equivalent to half an A' level).  The necessary research and project management skills sessions would be delivered to students, and staff involvement would be facilitated.  I know there are schools where each member of staff successfully supervising a student is paid a small sum of money on completion. Year 10 students could start their project and sessions around Easter, with the majority of the project being completed over the summer and then finally submitted in January the following year.

The link below takes you to the Edexcel project qualification page.  AQA also have a version outlined below.

http://www.edexcel.com/quals/project/Pages/default.aspx

  

Specification at a glance

The Level 2 Higher Project is a Level 2 qualification introduced in September 2008. Learners may choose to take the Level 2 Higher Project Qualification as an extension of studies for any other qualifications at Level 2 (GCSE, VRQ, BTEC, other academic or vocational qualifications including Modern Apprenticeships).

The Level 2 Higher Project will develop and extend from one or more of the learner's study areas and/or from an area of personal interest or activity outside their main programme of study. It will be based on a topic chosen by the learner(s) and agreed as appropriate by the centre.

Delivery of the Level 2 Higher Project Qualification in centres will involve some teaching of the necessary skills, supervision and assessment of the learner's prpgress. It will involve extended autonomous work by the learner. It will require in total 60 guided learning hours.

Learners are required, with appropriate supervision, to:

·         choose an area of interest

·         draft a title and aims of the project for formal approval by the centre

·         plan, research and carry out the project

·         deliver a presentation to a specified audience

·         provide evidence of all stages of project development and production for assessment.

#Nurture1314

#Nurture1314

OK, it's been a while since I've put anything on here (I hadn't noticed, I hear you say) but I'll explain more in my Education based #nurture1314 list below:

If you are reading this and don't know,  Nurture 13/14 is a trend on Twitter to write 13 things you are proud of or did well in 2013 followed by 14 aims/hopes or ambitions for the year ahead.  The idea came from @chocotzar in December 2012 with Nurture1213.

1. January.  I relocated to Cheshire due to our first baby been born, and our need for us to move from London to Cheshire to be closer to my father in law, who has MS.  I started a new job as a science teacher and teaching and learning leader.

2.  Managed to move classrooms with only a small amount of controversy!  I moved myself out of an old-school style laboratory with just three rows of awkward long benches, which I would previously have adored with its fume cupboard, full water, electricity and gas connections, and into a 'science studio' which previously I would have hated!  I had quickly arrived at the conclusion that in comparison to the students at my last school, these kids need to learn to love learning and not as previously, to be taught chemistry.  The science studio actually does have one working gas tap and one working water tap, in other words a demonstration bench at the front but the benefits weigh-in as follows: free standing tables meaning I can arrange them how I want, currently with students sitting in groups of fours (why have I only just done this!?!?!?); more display space; balcony doors onto the roof terrace (nature's own fume cupboard); break-out computer area, printer, toilets and team-room all just outside the door.  I know, I'm jealous of myself, surely the dream has to come crashing down any moment #toogoodtobetrue.  The downside, of course is that you aren't forced to get around the building!

3.  Became a teaching and learning coach.  I co-launched a coaching programme across the school which aims to help teachers to move from good to outstanding lesson observations.  We had a very good uptake: 21 members of staff joined our confidential list and we have started working with nearly all of them.   However, pursuing this project has given lots to think about; about what outstanding really is, what we need to do to be holistically outstanding, being more open and what it is that Ofsted are looking for in 2013/2014, but I'm plan to write more about that in another post soon.

4.  Began to use Twitter.  In August, just before going back to school, my fairly dormant Twitter account which I had held since 2010 notified me that my school's Vice Principal had tweeted that he was going to be himself on Twitter and await the response, I had never considered using Twitter in this way but it's got me gripped.  I believe only around 5% of teachers use Twitter as a personal learning network but I think, like many others, it is going to become the norm and that it will become essential for all innovative teachers wishing to develop their own practice.

5.  Got inspired.  These are the people on Twitter who have inspired me the most in the four months since 'getting on it'.  @teachertoolkit @leadinglearner @ICTMagic @A_Weatheral  @ASTsupportAAli and finally, I was inspired to jump on the #nurture1314 band wagon by @rlj1981 and her own #nurture1314 post.

6.  Started blogging.  It didn't take too long before Twitter, yes Twitter again, encouraged me to  start blogging!  To be more precise, I was reading the blog of @davidfawcett27, who should also be mentioned in number 5, when I found the inspiration to start blogging.  From a personal view it is a great way to reflect on the past (the good bits) and look forward to the future (with hope).  It really focusses you when you think someone else could be reading your scribble.

7.  Joined a triad.  I am chuffed that my school takes seriously teachers learning from teachers as this is one of the most valuable and easiest ways to improve each other.  We are asked to arrange our own observation triads and are given time to meet with each other and observe each other's lessons.  Even better for me, I'm with an Assistant Vice Principal and Teach First colleague, both of whom I rate highly because they have been very proactive in arranging meetings/observations and talking in depth about the focus of our observations.

8.  Explored SOLO taxonomy.  I saw a presentation on SOLO taxonomy in science at #TMBrumatxmas, the one and only TeachMeet I have ever been to(Dec. 2013) but I was encouraged to find out more about SOLO and this is when I came across @leadinglearner and his excellent blog posts on SOLO. Also see number 7 below.

9.  Had the idea for a TeachMeet Stoke-on-Trent.  More in this post.

10.  Went to my first TeachMeet: This was in Brimingham;  I didn't get as far as volunteering to speak at one but that's on the list for 2014, see number 8.  #TMBrumAtXmas was organised by @danielharvey9  and included festive fayre, a free raffle and fantastic speakers and workshops with plenty of networking opportunities.

11.  Started a pedagogy library which I talk about in this post.

12.  Tried and failed to get onto the Teaching Leaders Fellows.  I got through to the interview day and was then unsuccessful  :(  This was like nothing I've ever done before and so  I have taken a huge amount of experience from the entire process and on reflection, I feel like a completely new learner.  It was a very full day: A presentation, one hour on to one interview, team data exercise and role play with professional actors.  This elearning module on difficult conversations has helped me to understand that there were things I just didn't know which I wish I had known when I had the dreaded role-play part of the day.  The whole experience made me step back, clarify my own achievements, previous roles and impacts in my own head and RELAX!  Overall, I'm glad I failed; it made me stronger and I look forward to much more failure next year  ;)

13.  Saw my son take his first steps.

14 Good intentions.

1.  Blog more.  See number 6 above.  I've already got one blog idea: The one month update of Nurture1314 but I'll be working on the title for a little bit longer before publishing that one. Maybe I think too much about it. . . .JUST START. . .  When I first started a blog, my target was to keep it going until the end of September and I achieved that by producing approximately three posts, hardly impressive but now my target is to post at least once per week!  You can't eat an elephant all at once:  This time next year I'll be a prolific blogger.

2.  Relocate again!  Fingers crossed baby number two will be born happy and healthy at the end of January and we will move to a new house in February or March, our dream 'forever home' sort of thing and also five miles closer to school so I can cycle more often.

3.  Organise TeachMeet Stoke-on-Trent.  This will be amazing, and hopefully provide some great FREE continuing professional development.  I need to get enough people signed up to deliver some amazing sessions and enough people wanting to sit back/join in and be enthused, amused and inspired to love teaching and share more.

4.  Encourage more teachers to use. . . .last time. . . . . . .Twitter.

5.  Coaching.  To see if we can encourage the coachees of the good to outstanding lessons coaching and put on a 'show and tell-cum-TeachMeet' style presentation to share our journeys, experiences and ideas.

6.   My own CPD.  Making more learners love learning.

7.  SOLO Taxonomy.  I am going to get my students to learn to recognise when their understanding is at a unistructural, multistructural, relational or extended abstract level.  There will be a post on this soon.

poster: @totallywired77

8.  My first TeachMeet presentation.  I'm going to make my first presentation at a  TeachMeet!!

9.  Look out for new opportunities.  Find five things in January to complete this list.

10.  Just seen this:  Great blog post by @TeacherTweaks.  I will read around 500 more blogs than I did in 2013 which was probably only 6 or 7; this is still very new to me!  I have never been a writer; I left school without a grade in English GCSE  (if you have read this far, you you have probably guessed that already) but I know reading improves writing and this blog post by teachertweaks is just another example of beautifully written thought provoking writing available for free.

11.  JUST START.  I saw this recently........

12.  Encourage more collaboration.  See my post on Student collaboration.

13.

14.

Pedagogy library

As I am embarking on a whole school teaching and learning project I thought it would be useful if we had a pedagogy section in the school library.  Having only joined the school this year and not having  time to join the school library myself, the first job was to see if we already had a section: no we don't.  So now, shall we buy some books and chance that they will gather dust and go out of date on our shelves? No we won't.  What I did, three weeks ago, was to email and bulletin all staff with my intentions and to see if anyone wanted to loan books to the library. The response was brilliant; in total six teachers donated around twenty books, the librarian catalogued them and arranged a brilliant display and within a day, two teachers had been, selected books and opened library accounts.  Unless they're stocking up on fuel for the imminent cold weather, we have a blazing success!

Onenote v Evernote v TesPro

Keeping my new T & L blog alive means I must get super-organised; so this post is about my investigation into Microsoft's Onenote, Google's Evernote and TES's TesPro.

Very recently I signed up to TesPro so that I could become more efficient at organising my resources and therefore save loads of time, which in turn could be allocated to the benefit of the students in my classroom.  As I began tinkering with it, I realised that this would require yet another logging on procedure and the only real extra benefit (I could see) over other storage solutions is organising your resources into a calendar.  This got me looking at the calender function on Microsoft Outlook.  I thought, if I already use Microsoft Outlook for email then why not put my timetable into the calendar function and link the resources I need when and where I need them.  You can enter your timetable easily and make lessons recur every two weeks if needed.  This is where I came across Onenote and remembered that I probably don't need resources linked in a calendar; I need the resources and, in fact, all documents for each class together class by class.



  After all, I know my timetable, I have a paper diary and the same resource is frequently used again with the same class so why link the same resource to several lessons.

On the screen clip above, you can see the tabs along the top for my classes and the function menu above those.  The two most useful menus for me have been insert and draw.

Before committing to Onenote, I gave Evernote a blast as I use Google for email and cloud storage so I thought this may be a way to integrate the Google Drive with Evernote.  Not even in the same league.

Onenote is like having all the resources you need spread over your work desk but you can tidy and spread out a whole set of other resources in one click.  This is also what one of my colleagues noted when I presented Onenote to the science department today.  Another colleague said that they would be interested in using it to replace Active Studio, as you can draw anywhere on the page by using the 'draw' menu, very handy!  No one in the department had used Onenote before and there was lots of evidence to suggest they where impressed and may give it a go.  Since writing this post, several have.

I did have a few problems trying to access from home etc but overall, I think it is a game changer.  Seriously.

Learning activities

So, here goes!  I've decided to start a teaching and learning blog to gather my ideas and thoughts on pedagogy  in one place.  I was inspired after discovering the joys of twitter this week, which led me to read a lot of other blogs about education and thought this might help me reflect on my own practice and hopefully get involved in sharing ideas with other educators.

I'll start with an activity I tried at the end of last term:

This is taken from The teacher’s toolkit byPaul Ginnis.

Ambassadors:  This worked really well when the lowest ability student in each group of four went on a 'mission' to observe the science technician demonstrate a precipitation reaction.  Each student came back with notes essential to helping their group to achieve the main task.  

The second time I used this activity (with a younger group), the 'ambassadors' took a question sheet and gathered answers by watching the technician use a range of different pH indicators and again they brought back information vital to the group. 

Timing can be pretty important with this activity and of course, a technician who is happy and willing.   Lucky to have a technician who is both!

 There are details below on how this can be used across the curriculum, too.  Hope it's useful.  

My aim is to regularly write about activities I will be trying during the Autumn term and beyond.  Steady!     First challenge:  a post a week throughout September.