Effective Papers For learning

Final of this trio of presentations - a very Willingham-y, and probably quite 'you had to be there' Year 11 revision evening. Might be some bits of interest if you are doing one yourself.

So - another quick presentation - this time on modelling, the focus on which over the last 4 years has hugely improved the clarity, accessibility and challenge of our lessons. At the heart of teaching - taking care and paying attention to the way that we model key skills and content.

Had a great time at TLAB again this year - another really high quality event. I spoke about trying to create the conditions in school which help teachers learn, focusing on aspects such as domain-specific TLCs, the importance of conscious restriction of focus, and being vigilant to 'playpumps' - initiatives which look like they are going to be great, but don't turn out to be. A key theme of my talk was about the difficulties that teachers have finding enough time and headspace for reflection, alongside some ways of trying to manage this as leaders. Would blog more but marking calls (see last slide...).

Tim Brighouse in his  'four ways you know you are in a good school' , suggested the following four indicators of success:  “Teachers talk about teaching, teachers observe each other’s practice, teachers plan, organise and evaluate their work together rather than separately, and that teachers teach each other.”. The final three are offshoots of the first, and in this post I'll describe ways in which my school is trying to develop conditions in which teacher dialogue about the detail of classroom practice is regular, supportive and influential. In the past, one of the methods we've tried to use is the 'Teacher Learning Community' model, whereby INSET time is dedicated to placing groups of colleagues together for the purposes of discussion and  professional learning. In theory, this ticks all of the Brighouse boxes and when launched a few years ago, was received with optimism from school leaders: 'teachers', 'learning' and 'communities' were...

Lesson observations can be a profoundly positive or negative experience; I've seen teachers rejuvenated, inspired, depressed and infuriated by the process, alongside others who just tolerate the whole thing as a wearisome but probably unavoidable chore, like a routine visit to the dentist or getting a haircut (although I was astonished to learn from a colleague recently that some people actively look forward to visiting the hairdressers. I kid you not. My own view is that only one criterion applies when selecting a 'coiffeur': how quickly can they do it? My guy is FAST - admittedly he can be a bit choppy-scrapey at times, and there's often some blood, but when the time expended on the whole sorry exercise is more or less the same as filling the car up with petrol, who's complaining?).  Anyway. It's important of course that we put sufficient thought and reflection into making lesson obs as good as it can be - I've written in a previous post about how we are ...

So - no judgements at our school on lesson observations from now on. We've joined the revolution - it was quietly exhilarating last year to witness the swelling of opinion from twitter (at least as I experienced it), with Chris Moyse' ground-breaking blogs kicking things off, followed by much exciting debate and discussion. It felt like a genuine moment of innovation, a point at which we could waft away the stultifying spectre of Ofsted and take control of our own destinies (and spreadsheets). It was perversely irritating, therefore, to have our moment of innovation somewhat gazumped when the big O themselves decided to join in and stop the practice themselves. For those of us who had the intention but had yet to make the leap, this created the annoying impression that we were once again being led by Ofsted like puppies and rather pulled the rug of innovation from under our, erm, paws, but there you go. It should be great - a real step forward. As exciting a prospect as it is,...

English teachers - help me out with this one. I finally got a chance this week to have a good look at the F Tier AQA English Language paper. It was basically what we were expecting, and the questions looked reasonable on the whole, but I'm baffled by question 4. For the uninitiated, this question asks students to 'compare the ways that presentational features are used for effect' in two non-fiction sources. The sources this year were a page from an information book about the Titanic, aimed at children, and a pared down and adapted version of this article  about a brother and sister who survived a recent boating accident. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/26/brother-sister-swim-boat-sinks My confusion stems from the fact that to me, it seems utterly bereft of meaningful presentational features - on the paper insert that the students get, most of the presentational conventions of the genuine website are removed, so there are no comments, share buttons, different colou...