Love of Learning Book Reviews - Outstanding Teaching, Engaging Learners

Laura Markwell kindly writes:

Over this period of time where we have had extra hours in our day (if we are lucky enough) I have been reading ‘Outstanding Teaching: Engaging Learners’ by Andy Griffith and Mark Burns (published in 2012). The main theme that the book covers includes redressing the balance in the classroom so that students take more responsibility for their learning, as a class can be skilled and motivated to learn without a teacher always having to lead. Engaging learners in this way unpicks intrinsic motivation, the foundation that underpins a productive learning environment.

The love of learning strand of the Mangotsfield Way is exactly what this book links to, as it provides an array of different strategies to use in the classroom to engage learners. The book provides many examples of how one engagement strategy could be used in multiple different subject types, making it easy to put into practice immediately.

As part of the Love Learning Group I chose to make my research topic based around engagement of pupils, therefore my research area complemented this book title. For me, the main reason I wanted to focus on this area for my professional development was linked to how I felt my classroom environments displayed themselves. I often feel that I have 50/50 engagement in my lessons, with half the class being fully engaged, however half the class is only ever partly engaged and that is due to teacher persistence. Therefore I was intrigued as to how to master the art of gaining whole class engagement in a lesson, without having to work harder than the students and undermine what the students have the ability to achieve.

My top three strategies from this text include:

1. Learning grids (see image) – Learning grids require a class set of dice.  Students will roll the dice twice – to give them a number they can use for the horizontal and vertical line (for example 2 across and 4 down). Within it could include key words and topics, therefore when a student lands on a grid square containing a key word they must provide the definition and when a student lands on a grid square containing a topic they must provide a short explanation.

2. Snowballs – Each student receives a piece of paper on which they write their name. On the same piece of paper each student writes a question based on either a current or previously learnt topic. The students screw their piece of paper into a ‘snowball’ and throw it in the air. Each student then has to find another snowball, unwrap it and add to the questions. This can be done a number of times before each paper is returned to its ‘owner’. The students then answer the questions created on their original ‘snowball’. 

3. Connect Four – This will look similar to the learning grid, however each grid square could contain a question. Students would work in pairs to answer the questions, allocating themselves a colour each. If a student gets a question correct they would colour the grid square (or use a counter). The aim is to achieve four grid squares in a row of the students colour (exactly like the game Connect Four).

My next research venture is to look at ‘Love to Teach: Research and Resources for Every Classroom’ by Kate Jones, to discover more creative and engaging strategies to use in the classroom.

Love of Learning Group - 'When the Adults Change Everything Changes'

Tiff Partridge kindly writes: 

I have been reading, ‘When the Adults Change Everything Changes’ by Paul Dix (https://whentheadultschange.com/). The book first came to my attention through my children’s primary school. The head teacher there had introduced some changes to whole school policy as a direct result of reading the book. My children came home excited about ‘fantastic walking’ (one of Dix’s strategies), and so my interest was spiked.

The main premise of the book is that if you want to improve the culture of a school you need to first look at the adults in the school - their behaviour is the only thing over which we have absolute control. It’s an entertaining read which is easy to follow and has many strategies that you can take away and use in the classroom. 

The book focuses on behaviour management but by doing so it provides readers with tried and tested approaches to engage learners in the classroom. It makes the link that once learners feel safe, respected and understand the boundaries set out by adults they can truly begin to develop their love of learning.

This book appeals to me because it takes an issue that is relevant to every teacher and every school. I often work with teachers in a coaching capacity and this book shares best practice in a way that is positive, non-judgemental and insightful. The book gives a real insight into how developing a positive ethos and culture across the school, whereby adults treat behaviour with consistency and kindness, can have huge impacts on the quality of learning that takes place. 

1. Visible Consistency, Visible Kindness: In summary the idea that what every teacher/adult in the school does matters. In order for shifts in school behaviour to take place, everyone has to play their part in a consistent approach.
2. A recognition board: Choosing the behaviour you want to focus on in the lesson. When you see the student using that behaviour you write their name on the board. The aim is to have everyone’s name on the board at the end of the lesson. No prize, over recognition - just a realisation that the class are a team where everyone’s behaviour matters.
3. Parent on the shoulder: I loved this expression that was given as an anecdote in the book from a deputy head teacher, it went...if you want to regulate your response to poor behaviour from the students then just imagine the child’s parent on your shoulder and you won’t go far wrong. This was in relation to a chapter that focused on the way adults speak to children and a reminder that as adults we need to not get over emotional! 

What have you been reading? Further CPD findings and musings....

First and foremost, I wish to extend my thanks to the Love of Learning group this week who have taken the time to provide some very detailed synopses of their CPD reading. Below I will share with you the findings from Ryan Smith's chosen text 'How to Teach: English' by Chris Curtis.

Ryan kindly writes:

I chose to read 'How to Teach: English by Chris Curtis'. The depth and range of ideas supplied in this book will hopefully add to a love of learning for my students and the fact that they are all English-focused will allow a higher proportion of them to be usable for me as opposed to a more generic text.

The vast majority of CPD books or articles I have read have not been subject-specific. I know that as a result of this I will choose ideas that are similar to those I already use or that easily fit within my teaching style. My theory is that by having a book that is focused towards my subject I might feel more willing to try things that are more outside of my pedagogical comfort zone.

When considering 'what is my greatest take away or strategy learned from this text' then it has to be the really good ideas on trying to create ‘formulas’ for writing. I do something like this in text analysis, but haven’t got round to trying to make it work for creative writing. I like this because it seems like a more useful alternative to sentence starters, while giving students enough structure to feel like they have help. As they’re formulas, you can practice them in class too,

so they will have a sense of familiarity to students, even when applied in new contexts. I feel this would be particularly beneficial to my current year 10 class of boys.

The second idea I liked was to start discussions from a ‘negative’ stand point, giving students a sense of having to defend themselves or someone / something they like.

Finally, I wish to highlight this strategy centred around having students write about a specific object or idea, but write trying to create different feelings in the reader. This forces students to consider how their writing is making their readers feel and to really consider the effect of their writing and teaches them flexibility in their writing. This avoids me giving students a topic that lends itself to the feeling I want to create, which is the easier and usually chosen option.

The first thing I will be doing is creating knowledge organiser type documents using some of the formulas for creative writing to act as ‘learning mats’ for the students. Again, this would be aiming to bridge the gap between no help and sentence starters. I’d want to add some of my own to this too.

Curriculum Development - it's forever, but not how you think!

All departments are heavily in the midst's of curriculum reviews to ensure we have departmental curriculums that are framed around our whole school principles. These are aimed at ensuring our curriculum is ambitious, knowledge rich, culturally broad and inline with National Curriculum principles. 

The strongest curriculums are born from a process or 'discussion and disagreement' where 'discourse leads to distinction' (Rosalind Walker 2020). I stumbled across this wonderful blog post, after Mark Enser (a leading light in the Geography teacher world) shared it on twitter. For me, it summed up superbly the reasons and rationale behind curriculum reviews and redesign. Never should we say our curriculum is complete, it is always a work in progress as we should be debating and discussing with one another how it should grow and evolve. 

As Tom Sherrington and Oliver Caviglioli's recent research states 'Knowledge is empowering, unlocking doors, providing a foundation for achieving success. The more students know, the more they can learn' (Teaching Walkthrus 2020). This ties so specifically with our Mangotsfield aims to develop a knowledge rich curriculum - but how can this be done? I would like to refer back to this post from a year ago by Alex Quigley (https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/eef-blog-what-do-we-mean-by-knowledge-rich-anyway/). He summarises that we must first:

1. Identify the invaluable knowledge we want students to know - if we strip away time from our subjects, what are the immoveable pieces of knowledge they have to know?

2. Consider how we are sequencing the learning of this new knowledge - i.e. spaced learning and retrieval practice.

3. Make sure that time is given to developing 'networks' between the powerful knowledge -  considering how we think and how we use that knowledge to commit it to long term memory.

In a nutshell, whilst we're deep in our curriculum reviews, let's not lose sight of the discussion elements that will make our curriculums more robust. Don't be afraid to debate, disagree and argue - this professional discussions build stronger curriculums in the long run.

If you would like to read the fantastic article that inspired this post further then please click on this link. A summary by myself does not do justice to the eloquence of this article:

https://rosalindwalker.wordpress.com/2020/04/24/curriculum-is-forever-but-not-how-you-think/

Retrieval Practice Revisited!

Huge thanks to Caroline Bates for this addition to my earlier post on Retrieval Practice. By chance, Caroline had chosen to read the same book as me (Retrieval Practice by Kate Jones) and wished to share one of her key findings from the book. She has already produced her own version of this specific strategy which she is kindly allowing me to share with you all.

The strategy is called the 'Retrieval Practice Revision Menu'. Many of our students neglect the science behind revision, the need to mix up tasks, challenge their short and long-term retrieval of information and layer their revision over spaced time. 

It is important that all students are familiar with all of the tasks on the menu, it is worthwhile therefore using them in a lesson to ensure they have the tools to be able to complete them at home independently. This is Caroline's RS version:

The other element of the book that is worth sharing with regards to this revision menu is Kate Jones mantra for READ, RETRIEVE, REVIEW, REPEAT. This four step plan can be embedded into any lesson with the following stages: 

1. What keywords are connected to the topic? 'List it' is great to use here as well as a 'brain dump' where students must purge every last piece of knowledge they can recall from their memories.

2. Explain what the keywords mean in your own words? 

The Kagan structures of Quiz, Quiz Trade or All Write Round Robin are useful to support LAPs with this stage.

3. Can you list the main concepts or pieces of knowledge that are connected to this unit?

Throwback Thursday or Flashback Friday are great ideas for this stage - if you are lucky enough to teach your classes on these alliteration inspired days! At the end of the week, ask students to write ten facts they have learned from your lessons that week and build this knowledge bank overtime.

4. Apply this knowledge to an exam question on this topic. 

Fairly self explanatory but all formative assessment must lead to summative in time.

Once again, thank you to Caroline for taking the time to share her key strategy and to encourage me to revisit the 4R's this book delivers on. Please do continue to send me the highlights of any books/chapters/ blogs that you have been exploring. The more we share, the more time we have to spare!

Lockdown inspired CPD - what are you reading?

Another morning waking to the birds chirping, the sun peaking through the clouds and my phone loaded with notifications from twitter of key educationalists and their overnight musings! Whilst we are all getting used to this new normal, I wanted to utilise our Mango Moments Teaching and Learning blog to focus on the opportunities we have to pursue research into areas of our profession we have the desires to develop.

Like many of you, my working days have taken on a new guise, with two small children it has been a balancing act to find the time to read, let alone blog, but I am hoping in time that some of you will be willing to share synopses of the books you have chosen to read so we can all share the load!

To begin with I opted to read 'Retrieval Practice: Research and Resources for every classroom' by Kate Jones. Its billed as 'smart and sustainable recommendations and resources that can shape retrieval organically into your classroom'. Whilst, like many other departments, we are in the midst's of a curriculum review (all be it via zoom), it was important for me that this book deliver quickly on specific strategies that we could build into our new spiral curriculum where now, more than ever, we are building in opportunities for students to revisit learning across three years. I was delighted that within minutes, I was presented with a plethora of techniques that were easily adaptable.

My highlight was 'Challenge Grids'. In Geography we start every lesson with a retrieval exercise, mostly low-stakes quizzes or concept maps, so this presented a positive alternative which I know our students will enjoy. This task combines retrieval, spacing and interleaving. You decide how much time is allocated to this activity in the lesson, and that is dependent on the number of questions you ask as well as the depth of retrieval you wish to go into. An alternative twist is that students create their own challenge grids and alternate them around in the class. 

The grid contains several boxes, each one colour coded for the time when students first encountered and encoded the new knowledge. The grid can be self or peer assessed, lead to teacher or class led
discussions and form a hinge point to allow you to identify gaps in knowledge and the ability to move forward. 

Dylan Wiliam (https://www.tes.com/news/dylan-wiliam-nine-things-every-teacher-should-know) once wrote 'if you make learning too easy, students don't have to work hard to make sense of what they are learning, and as a result will forget it quickly'. However, if you make it too hard then students can become disengaged - I truly believe these grids strike the right balance, embed differentiation throughout and as Wiliam put it 'present difficulties to children that are accessible and desirable'. 

The other strategy I wish to share from this book is the Retrieval Relay Race. This task is designed to promote retrieval whilst also stretch and challenge students to remember as much information as they can, but without repetition. For each relay race there must be a key topic, event or individual idea that is posed to the class. Pose, Pause, Pounce, Bounce questioning can be used here to formulate an initial discussion, as well as other Kagan Structures to support the LAPs primarily. 

There are then four boxes, representing the four members of the team. In the first box, the student writes as much as they can recall about the specific topic. They then need to find three other members of the class to complete the next three boxes, they key being that no repeated information is allowed. Similar to an all write round robin, this task requires the students to carefully read and retrieve what has already been written by their colleagues to ensure new knowledge only is stated. 

To conclude I will finish with a quote from Oliver Caviglioli (2019, Dual Coding with Teachers) 'The more organised the information is when it is encoded, the easier it is to retrieve it and transfer to working memory'. My belief is that this also applies to the retrieval phase - the more organised we are in providing opportunities for our students to retrieve knowledge, the more likely they are to retain it in their long-term memory whilst managing their cognitive load.

I will be making contact in the near future, with the hope that others wish to share synopses of the texts you have chosen to read. In the meantime, keep an eye on the blog as I will be sharing links to key curriculum planning thoughts in the near future, as well as opportunities for further reading. Stay safe, stay well and look after your loved ones.

NATSA Newsletter - Term 2 by John Bowyer

Please check out the latest NATSA newsletter, written by our very own John Bowyer. With a specific focus on SEND, his bitesize research focuses on how we can best support our SEND students moving forward.

Within our classrooms:

Cognitive Load Theory 

1) Students gain a lot from studying worked examples and this reduces cognitive load. Before you ask students to complete a problem or a task for the first time, pair it with an answer to a near identical question. The aim is to gradually increase the independent student practice as the students become more proficient. 

2) Cut out all inessential information and present all essential information together. For example, if you are presenting a step by step approach to students on PowerPoint, ensure that all the steps are visible together on one PPT slide and not spread over several. 

3) Talk over pictures to describe them to students but not over text. Students will not be able to read and understand the text on a board while the teacher is talking to them. 

Dual Coding 

4) One suggested way is to use dual coding with students when revising materials. For example, when coming up with a flow chart on the lead up to the First World War, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand could be a note on the chart and a simple drawing of a stick man being crossed out. The idea is that combining words and visuals gives the brain two ways two remember something and improves retention. 

Children won’t gain a complete understanding of probability by playing dice, for example. But, if children learn in fits and starts and we leave off teaching something until children are able to understand it perfectly, we might be leaving it too late.