Better Inset? - from 'training' to 'doing'
A few weeks ago, I posted an initial plan for an upcoming inset day. Thanks to the thinking prompted by writing the plan in the first place and the subsequent feedback and comments received through twitter, we've pretty much ditched it and gone to plan B. Here, I'll outline the changes we've made and the reasons behind them.
Plan A:
The original plan was for a morning carousel of training activities, followed by an afternoon of collaborative planning in faculties, ideally involving application of some of the ideas and training from earlier in the day. There's a logic here and I think we would have done it well; the proposed topics were interesting and relevant, we have great people who would have worked hard to deliver them and I think our teachers would have, on the whole, had an enjoyable experience.
There are significant limitations to this way of organising the time. The primary risk, I think, is the danger that the moment that term starts for real, the interest, intentions and enthusiasm engendered would be immediately lost, washed away by the avalanche of 'urgent / important' tasks which dominate the working life of teachers. It's likely, therefore, that actual impact - changes which make a tangible positive difference to the learning of vulnerable students - would inevitably be small, sporadic and unsustained. So...
Plan B:
Essentially, we re-thought our approach to the day, moving from a 'training + planning' day to a 'day of action' during which faculties work on implementing and resourcing the sort of teaching practice that's most likely to help our vulnerable students. It's a day to do the things we know we want to do, but struggle to find time for because they require genuine collaboration - colleagues sitting in a room together for an extended period of time, discussing the detail and creating materials. We've approached the planning by identifying reasons why we think some vulnerable students aren't doing so well, and considering what we can actually do about it. The reasons that we proposed were:
- Students don't have a wide enough vocabulary.
- Students don't have a secure knowledge base.
- Students don't display sufficient resilience, or 'know how to learn'
- Students may have erratic attendance
Proposals for what we can do about the above, at faculty level, have included:
- Vocabulary development - specifying the types of Tier 2 / Tier 3 vocabulary that students need to know in order to access particular units or topics, and creating booklets which specify the core vocabulary to be taught in each fortnight. Alongside that, we'll write mini quizzes for use in class, and homework sheets for students, detailing what needs to be learnt, and how we expect them to learn it. In faculties taking this approach, there will need to be some training for teachers at the end of the day on most effective ways of teaching vocabulary and how to run and record the quizzes.
- Knowledge organisers - along similar lines, and building on the ideas shared widely on twitter, some faculties will spend time specifying the core knowledge that's needed for each unit. Again, this will be accompanied by writing quizzes to test the knowledge, and training for teachers on how and when to use them. There could be huge subsidiary benefits here, with potentially positive impact on homework, (in that homeworks become much more revision / learning focused, lessening our marking load and helping students develop skills of metacognition / memorisation), and feedback, in that rather than marking lots of extra 'stuff' that students have produced at home, feedback is instantly generated through the standardised quizzing. I like this one - thanks to Joe Kirby for sharing, and James Theobald for his depository of examples.
- Assignments organisers - borrowed from Tom Sherrington, some faculties will look at creating Assignment sheets to ensure greater clarity, consistency and structure in the teaching of units at KS3. This will involve re-writing and re-thinking of assessments, further clarification of knowledge and skills, clarification of what needs to be marked, when and why, and generating accompanying materials such as model answers and (no marking) homework tasks.
- Agreeing explanations / 'bullet proof' definitions - some of us will work on formulating and specifying exactly how we will explain core subject concepts, and produce resources to share with teachers. English have completed something similar recently by agreeing standardised wording for explaining what makes a sentence a sentence; as a result, we now have a far more coherent and consistent message and language in teaching this key area. This is helpful, as it means that we are able to work together more effectively in developing our own expertise and quality of delivery.
- E-learning videos - some faculties will add to our growing library of elearning videos (677,155 views in three years by the way); I wrote about this fantastic blend of the traditional and the modern yonks ago (ie traditional teacher direct instruction of key concepts, but filmed and stuck up on the internet) and maintain that sharing our explanations in this way is among the most powerful strategies we have to improve the performance of all. It's particularly advantageous to some students vulnerable to underachievement through absence, or who benefit from repeated exposure to explanations of key ideas.
So that's it - as ever, I'd be interested in views (we don't have time for a Plan C though); we feel more confident that organising a day in this way will prove a better approach. I suppose there's a shift in emphasis from training which focuses on delivery, to focusing more specifically on curriculum content - what are we actually teaching them - we'll see how it goes.
Plan A:
The original plan was for a morning carousel of training activities, followed by an afternoon of collaborative planning in faculties, ideally involving application of some of the ideas and training from earlier in the day. There's a logic here and I think we would have done it well; the proposed topics were interesting and relevant, we have great people who would have worked hard to deliver them and I think our teachers would have, on the whole, had an enjoyable experience.
There are significant limitations to this way of organising the time. The primary risk, I think, is the danger that the moment that term starts for real, the interest, intentions and enthusiasm engendered would be immediately lost, washed away by the avalanche of 'urgent / important' tasks which dominate the working life of teachers. It's likely, therefore, that actual impact - changes which make a tangible positive difference to the learning of vulnerable students - would inevitably be small, sporadic and unsustained. So...
Plan B:
Essentially, we re-thought our approach to the day, moving from a 'training + planning' day to a 'day of action' during which faculties work on implementing and resourcing the sort of teaching practice that's most likely to help our vulnerable students. It's a day to do the things we know we want to do, but struggle to find time for because they require genuine collaboration - colleagues sitting in a room together for an extended period of time, discussing the detail and creating materials. We've approached the planning by identifying reasons why we think some vulnerable students aren't doing so well, and considering what we can actually do about it. The reasons that we proposed were:
- Students don't have a wide enough vocabulary.
- Students don't have a secure knowledge base.
- Students don't display sufficient resilience, or 'know how to learn'
- Students may have erratic attendance
Proposals for what we can do about the above, at faculty level, have included:
- Vocabulary development - specifying the types of Tier 2 / Tier 3 vocabulary that students need to know in order to access particular units or topics, and creating booklets which specify the core vocabulary to be taught in each fortnight. Alongside that, we'll write mini quizzes for use in class, and homework sheets for students, detailing what needs to be learnt, and how we expect them to learn it. In faculties taking this approach, there will need to be some training for teachers at the end of the day on most effective ways of teaching vocabulary and how to run and record the quizzes.
- Knowledge organisers - along similar lines, and building on the ideas shared widely on twitter, some faculties will spend time specifying the core knowledge that's needed for each unit. Again, this will be accompanied by writing quizzes to test the knowledge, and training for teachers on how and when to use them. There could be huge subsidiary benefits here, with potentially positive impact on homework, (in that homeworks become much more revision / learning focused, lessening our marking load and helping students develop skills of metacognition / memorisation), and feedback, in that rather than marking lots of extra 'stuff' that students have produced at home, feedback is instantly generated through the standardised quizzing. I like this one - thanks to Joe Kirby for sharing, and James Theobald for his depository of examples.
- Assignments organisers - borrowed from Tom Sherrington, some faculties will look at creating Assignment sheets to ensure greater clarity, consistency and structure in the teaching of units at KS3. This will involve re-writing and re-thinking of assessments, further clarification of knowledge and skills, clarification of what needs to be marked, when and why, and generating accompanying materials such as model answers and (no marking) homework tasks.
- Agreeing explanations / 'bullet proof' definitions - some of us will work on formulating and specifying exactly how we will explain core subject concepts, and produce resources to share with teachers. English have completed something similar recently by agreeing standardised wording for explaining what makes a sentence a sentence; as a result, we now have a far more coherent and consistent message and language in teaching this key area. This is helpful, as it means that we are able to work together more effectively in developing our own expertise and quality of delivery.
- E-learning videos - some faculties will add to our growing library of elearning videos (677,155 views in three years by the way); I wrote about this fantastic blend of the traditional and the modern yonks ago (ie traditional teacher direct instruction of key concepts, but filmed and stuck up on the internet) and maintain that sharing our explanations in this way is among the most powerful strategies we have to improve the performance of all. It's particularly advantageous to some students vulnerable to underachievement through absence, or who benefit from repeated exposure to explanations of key ideas.
So that's it - as ever, I'd be interested in views (we don't have time for a Plan C though); we feel more confident that organising a day in this way will prove a better approach. I suppose there's a shift in emphasis from training which focuses on delivery, to focusing more specifically on curriculum content - what are we actually teaching them - we'll see how it goes.
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