Maximising higher order thinking in the classroom.

In order to maximise higher order thinking students need to feel challenged, excited, motivated and fully involved in the lesson.

Zoe Elder ‘Full on Learning’ has the tagline to her book: ‘Involve me and I’ll understand’. Zoë Elder starts (and ends) Full on learning with a metaphor about boat-building. It was only when humans were faced by a river and decided the best way of getting across it might be by floating, that we began having a go at constructing something to do the job. In other words, the skills involved in boat-building only came to the fore when they were needed. No problem, no skills.

She explains, taps into this ability to “learn new things as a way of overcoming problems.” It’s long been argued – from this site included – that we’re sending our students out into a rapidly-changing world and so it’s our duty to develop skills that will help them out there. Which is difficult when the only two things we can predict are “the unpredictable and the unexpected” (Full On Learning, p.4).

During last Fridays Teaching and Learning briefing, Tiff Partridge expertly demonstrated some effective strategies for how we can overcome these challenges and engage students in higher order thinking. 

1. Six Degrees of Separation: This activity is designed to give learners an opportunity to very deliberately practice creative and connective thinking. The activity can be developed and adapted in a multitude of ways - you can reduce the degrees of connection; you can place strict time limits on the activity to add a different kind of thinking pressure; you can insert your own topics/concepts/key words or you can add your own 'stop-off' points.


2. Speculation, Knowledge, Speculation:

With the speculative learning method, the idea is to try and have learners invent the future by employing and, in doing so, immediately contextualizing the variety of things they have learned to shape their speculation.
Basically, the goal is to answer the question every student has ever asked which is “why are we learning this?” 

Let's be inquisitive!

At which point is it in a child's life when they stop asking why? Whilst my own young children are endlessly questioning the world around them (to the point where I sometimes limit them to 10 'why's' a day), I have come to the conclusion that more of my classes are becoming increasingly less inquisitive, too accepting of the knowledge they are taught and are not always challenging me to explain the why.

This has led to some frustration on my part, and triggered some investigation into how to engage them into asking why. As a result, I present to you my top six strategies for how to make students more inquisitive in your lessons:

1. Who would have THUNK? Driving Questions are at the forefront of the Mangotsfield Way, stimulating the students interest and challenging them to think deeper to be able to answer a higher order question. However, THUNKs can be used alongside to challenge the creativity of our students - what does a rainbow taste like, if a tree falls does it make a sound etc? The key idea to this activity is to encourage discussion, with that idea that no one answer or person is correct.

2. Inference Diagrams. Give students am image, quotation, diagram, graph or table in the middle of a sheet of paper. Use a number of concentric squares around the stimulus working their way out towards the edge. Ask questions such as:

a) What does the source tell me?

b) What can I infer?

c) What does the source not tell me?

d) What questions do I need to ask in order to investigate the source further?

3. Goldfish Bowl Debate. A small group of students are selected to discuss ideas/summarise their learning in the middle of the classroom. Remaining students positioned around the edge of the room then observe and provide challenge at certain points. Roles can be reversed and students can take it in turns.

4. Fascinators. Place an image/diagram/graph on the board in order to initiate a discussion. Students given post it notes - what do you notice? What questions do you have? What do you need to know more of in order to understand the image/diagram/graph?

5. Q&A Turned Upside Down. Provide students with a set of answers (such as key vocab or knowledge checkers) and they have to write a question to match each answer. Extra challenge can be provided by asking students to write as many questions as possible for that answer.

6. Remove the obvious resource. When students are completing a task, remove the resource that students would normally rely on so that they must consider what else they could use. This might be especially useful if you would like students to use their notes rather than automatically refer to a textbook. 

Challenging Passivity and Engaging Students

Kagan Cooperative Learning Strategies embed structured group work alongside long term learning to make classrooms more effective spaces. These structures are instructional and designed to promote collaboration and communication in the classroom, boost students confidence and retain classroom interaction. They centre around the use of PIEs Principles:

1. Positive interdependence is the most well-established principle in the study of cooperation.  When positive interdependence is in place, individuals are almost certain to cooperate.  In the absence of positive interdependence, they may or may not cooperate.

2. In the cooperative classroom, there is an “I” in team, and that “I” stands for Individual Accountability. In the cooperative classroom, students work together as a team to create and to learn, but ultimately every individual student is responsible for his or her own performance.

3. Equal Participation:  In the cooperative classroom, students participate about equally.  Participation is an integral part of the learning process.  Students learn by interacting with the content and with fellow students.  For equitable educational outcomes, we need participation to be relatively equal.

4. Simultaneous Interaction Active engagement increases student learning.  If students are off task, they are less likely to learn.  If students are only occasionally engaged, they learn less than when they are regularly engaged.  Simultaneous interaction is the most powerful tool we have for increasing active engagement.

Following Hetty's excellent INSET session, we might find it useful to remind ourselves of examples of Kagan Structures that can be applied to multiple classroom scenarios but most importantly as strategies that can be used to challenge the more passive learners we might face. There are multiple strategies but the first five are outlined below.

1. Timed Pair Share - superb for debate and discussion themed learning and ensuring all students are accountable for sharing their views.

2. Timed RoundRobin - encourages the depth of discussion that is not always possible in paired work, in a structured manner.

3. All Write RoundRobin - great for decoding subject specific vocabulary, exam questions or key themes/concepts in a supportive mixed ability environment.

4. Rally Coach - vital when embedding collaboration or supporting peer assessment into lessons.

5. Stand-N-Share - perfect for that 'hinge' point when you want all students to demonstrate their understanding whilst ensuring collaboration.

For further information regarding Kagan visit https://www.t2tuk.co.uk/ or speak to RSC if you wish to borrow the books!

Welcome Back!! Lets challenge passivity and engage our students.

Despite a mini hiatus, Mango Moments is back to brighten up your Teaching and Learning lives. We start with a bumper edition of ideas, with thanks to the research completed by the Love of Learning group as well as CPD and INSET sessions. Remember, we must challenge the students passivity and explain the deeper why if we wish to engage them in their learning journeys.

Please take some time to read through the new posts, including this NATSA bitesize research newsletter written by our very own John Bowyer in which he discusses the 'Are there things you can teach without words'? A great discussion centering around the use of synonyms in lessons.

Steps to Ditching Differentiation

Our final look at T&L ideas for the year focuses on how we can change the differentiation narrative towards a less prescriptive teaching style that does not involve planning individual activities for each ability. It focuses on the drive to 'teach to the top and then scaffold'.

We need a profession-wide acknowledgement that differentiation does not mean doing different things. https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2018/10/15/ditch-differentiation/ via @TeacherToolkit

1. Don't bolt on challenge - build it in.

Make sure learning time is devoted to students securing their subject knowledge as opposed to stretch tasks that are seen as an add on.

2. Plan for the top and scaffold in.

Make the main activity sufficiently challenging - ask one student in one way and another student in a different way how to model their response.

3. Stop thinking differentiation = different routes through the lesson.

Teachers should expect all students to do the same thing whilst accepting that some will do it better than others.

To keep our workload manageable and get the best out of every pupil these are the steps we need to take:

• We need to stop bolting-on ‘stretch tasks’. Instead, we need to build in the challenge.
• We need to say no to outcomes: ALL/MOST/SOME, VAK, etc. Instead, we need to just give everyone the same success criteria and, if required, scaffold from the top down.
• We need to stop thinking DIFFERENTiation = different activities, worksheets, etc.
• We need to ditch our guilt.

Highlights of the year - by you!

Thank you to all who have supported the inaugural year of our T&L blog and I hope you have all taken something away from the fantastic ideas and strategies that have kindly been shared. To conclude this year, I requested your thoughts on what has been either the highlight of your year T&L wise or a specific moment from your classrooms where the learning just 'clicked' or the students were enthusiastically engaged! Here are some of your thoughts - thank you to all who have shared.

"I was 'wowed' by the power of using oracy as a teaching strategy earlier in the year, when a student who rarely writes anything down was able to articulate the most thoughtful and energising speech in front of the class. It reminded me that although some students find expressing their ideas on paper really difficult, the thoughts are still there in their head and we need to find a way of allowing them to express them! Hearing this student give his speech so confidently is one I'll remember".

Tiff Partridge

"I think that the strategies that have become part of my everyday teaching this year are linked to ideas from Cognitive Load Theory and Vocabulary Teaching. 

I've pretty much cleared the front wall of my classroom so that there are no posters, just the whiteboard and nothing to distract students from it. I've cut out all the fancy fonts and pictures from any power points that I use and, when I give the children a slide with writing on it, I give them time to read it in silence before I say anything about it. I've also learnt more about the power of the worked example and I might often design a slide so that a worked example is on the left hand side (e.g. a text to analyse and annotate) and, on the right hand side, there is an example for the children to do independently. This means that they can access the worked example as their do their own work.

I think that, in the past, I have focused too much on the minutiae of what the exam board is looking for in a good answer, and giving the students a framework to match that. I have moved to teaching the children a range of vocabulary which will enable them to express their views or make a point in a formal way. So, now I will tell students to use three of these words in their answers rather than insist from the start on a certain paragraph structure. 

An example of a students' work from this morning is from a Year 10 student. We had learnt the words: amused, disgusted, indignant and questioning. Students had been given several goes at using these words before they wrote an analysis of two articles. One of them I had annotated myself as a worked example and the other had been annotated by the students independently. 

In contrast, Emma Brockes starts as amused saying 'one leaned over and snatched the dummy from the other ones' mouth.' This is all sweet innocent and harmless. However Emma soon changes her mind when she found out about parents who have 'pepper sprayed and locked [their children] in cupboards for forgetting their lines'. This makes her feel disgusted and indignant for the kids as well as that the parents do it because its 'making their parents sizeable incomes' which makes Emma question if its safe to put a harmless innocent video of her kids up.

She needs to develop greater control over sentence structure and to analyse language in depth but I am really pleased by the way in which she has confidently expressed the views of an unseen text and embedded quotations without any framework or sentence starters. She is also beginning to use more 'attitude' vocabulary of her own since learning certain works in class.

I'm always looking out for ideas or research which will help me to develop my teaching but I think an emphasis on worked examples and vocabulary teaching will stay firmly within my day to day practice"

John Bowyer

My highlight of this year has to be the school show "We Don't Need No Education". Students demonstrating creativity, independence and resilience by the bucket load!

Helen Wooltorton

Always show enthusiasm in every thing that you teach as it motivates and engages the pupils immediately. Yes it can be tiring but it can make a world of a difference to your classroom environment, something I am very passionate about.

Laura Markwell

"The highlight of the year has been when the driving question has permeated everything in the lesson and has 'done what it says on the tin', i.e driven learning and thinking. Students have had their curiosity wetted and it has really moved learning on".

David Spence

And my personal favourite:

"The installation of the new laser cutter in DT"

Joe Williams.

Communication and Interaction Difficulties - Mike Marsh explains!

Speech and language needs do not always involve students struggling to say words or phrases correctly. The majority of our students have difficulties with their expressive language - their ability to use language to communicate effectively, to find the rights words to convey meaning, or receptive language- their ability to understand spoken language. 

Although I will go through more detail the key phrase is ‘Say less, show, slow, stress.’ 

I’m always struck by how fast we all talk and the range of instructions we give out, ‘Sit down, coats off, write the driving question, today's date is…’ students struggling to process this information will get lost. 

So, what to do? 

· Slow down

· Repeat important phrases or instructions

· Break instruction down into chunks

· Cue the student in by giving advanced notice of a question, use their name before asking them something.

· Back up instruction of key sections with written re enforcement. (Write on the board the key instructions)

· Key words lists and knowledge organisers are vital here- they allow students to process the words at their own pace, they provide clarity for the key words used in lessons and they are an opportunity for students to pre learn key terms before a lesson.

· Think about the clarity of you language; say things you want to happen as an instruction not as a question- eg ‘Sit Down’ rather than ‘ When are you going to sit down’.

· Pause and then check for understanding- ‘Tell me what you need to do please.’ 

Further reading, the IDP document below has several simple strategies to try. 

http://www.idponline.org.uk/psslcn/slcn/pages/media/docs/idp_slcn_key_strategies.pdf

http://www.nasen.org.uk/resources/resources.webinar-slides-speech-language-and-communication-needs-in-the-classroom.html

http://www.nasen.org.uk/resources/resources.top-tips-for-effective-adult-language.html