I'll be honest, before I became involved with Twitter, I rarely if ever, read 'Teacher' books. However, in the last two years, I have come across and read some excellent books. I thought it might be useful to share some of them as these are books that have had an definite impact on my practice. They are in no particular order.
1. The Secret of Literacy by David Didau - This book is a very engaging read offering lots of sensible advice about the teaching of literacy. It was through this book that I first came across the concept of Slow Writing which I have used in the classroom many times since with great results.
2. Oops by Hywel Roberts - This is a funny, practical book full of ideas about how to engage children in the curriculum using drama techniques and looking at things a little differently. Having met Hywel a few times, this book is a perfect embodiment of his personality. A wonderful book written by a wonderful bloke!
3. Teach Like A Champion 2.0 - This is written by Doug Lemov and is a collection of techniques that Doug observed the best teachers using. The best thing about this book is the way it provides ideas that you could use in the classroom the next day. There are also links to examples of resources and videos of teachers demonstrating the techniques. Although aimed at the American secondary audience, many of the techniques could be used in the primary classroom.
4. A Beginner's Guide To Mantle of The Expert - this is written by the wonderful Tim Taylor. It describes a concept first designed by Dorothy Heathcote in the 1970s. It is a brilliant book, explaining the theory and application of the technique along with resources to help you implement it in the classroom.
5. Making Every Lesson Count - By Andy Tharby and Shaun Allison. This is the best teacher book I have every read. It offers a wealth of sensible advice and practical strategies. It should be recommended reading for all teachers. The book identifies six key principles for effective teaching and learning and provides advice and ideas for delivering each.
If you start with these five, you can't go far wrong.
As well as these five, there are numerous teaching resource books I would recommend. For example, anything written by Mat Sullivan or Alan Peat will be extremely useful when preparing lessons.
Friday, 26 August 2016
Sunday, 9 August 2015
Piet Mondrian
Piet Mondrian was a Dutch painter who lived between 1872 and 1944. He was a contributor to the De Stijil art movement founded by Theo Van Doesburg. He developed a form called neoplasticism. This is a white background with a grid of horizontal and vertical black lines and the three primary colours.
He began to produce paintings in this form in 1919 while in Paris.
Here is a link to the painting for this week's Painting Talk discussion. It is called Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow from 1930. The series of compositions to which this painting belongs has been used in lots of other areas of culture such as fashion and even a Katy Perry music video. (Thanks Mike Watson)
Composition II in red, Blue and Yellow 1930
I have always liked pattern and order which is why I think this style of art work appeals to me. I like the contrast between the black and white grid and the bold primary colours. I like the apparent simplicity of it while at the same time being an impressive visual image.
He began to produce paintings in this form in 1919 while in Paris.
Here is a link to the painting for this week's Painting Talk discussion. It is called Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow from 1930. The series of compositions to which this painting belongs has been used in lots of other areas of culture such as fashion and even a Katy Perry music video. (Thanks Mike Watson)
Composition II in red, Blue and Yellow 1930
I have always liked pattern and order which is why I think this style of art work appeals to me. I like the contrast between the black and white grid and the bold primary colours. I like the apparent simplicity of it while at the same time being an impressive visual image.
Tuesday, 17 February 2015
The Problems With Peer and Self Assessment
Self and peer assessment is very fashionable and has been for a while. Ofsted seem to like it, teachers seem to like it and SLTs seem to like it too. Having used a variety of types of methods of peer and self assessment in my teaching career, I am yet to be convinced of the impact they have.
As teachers look for ways to cope under the crushing weight of complicated marking and assessment policies, peer and self assessment can offer a helping hand. If the children mark the work then the teacher doesn't have to. Crazily, I know teachers who mark it themselves as well. Why would you do that, defeats the object surely. This brings me onto the first problem with self/peer assessment. Teachers, who are under massive pressure to prove they are doing a good job, are scared to leave any piece unmarked by them. This means that the marking by the pupil during peer/self assessment becomes largely irrelevant.
Secondly, there is the issue of time. Time has to be taken from lessons to complete self/peer assessment tasks. With the raised demands that come with the new curriculum, there is simply no time to waste. Ten minutes taken from a lesson to self/peer assess could be ten minutes used to further master the learning objective of the lesson.
Teachers have spent a lot of time training to be a teacher, they are professionals with a sound understanding of the subjects they teach. They are best placed to make decisions about whether a child has achieved a learning objective and what the next steps should be. I would argue that a pupil is not capable of making these decisions effectively or efficiently. A pupil can tell you whether they have found a particular activity easy or difficult. Does this matter? Does it tell you anything about their achievement? If you are teaching a child something they have not come across before, how can they decide whether they have learned it? Surely, this is judgement that must be made by a well-trained professional. Children can find evidence in their work to show they have met certain 'success criteria' but they cannot decide whether this means that they have achieved the objective.
Peer/self assessment forms part of a larger issue around pupil voice. I am not a fan of pupil voice even though it seems to be fashionable. In terms of assessment, that should be done by the teacher as the professional or if you really want to involve pupils as a discussion between pupil and teacher with the teacher explaining to the pupil what their performance in an activity means with regard to their achievement/progress.
As teachers look for ways to cope under the crushing weight of complicated marking and assessment policies, peer and self assessment can offer a helping hand. If the children mark the work then the teacher doesn't have to. Crazily, I know teachers who mark it themselves as well. Why would you do that, defeats the object surely. This brings me onto the first problem with self/peer assessment. Teachers, who are under massive pressure to prove they are doing a good job, are scared to leave any piece unmarked by them. This means that the marking by the pupil during peer/self assessment becomes largely irrelevant.
Secondly, there is the issue of time. Time has to be taken from lessons to complete self/peer assessment tasks. With the raised demands that come with the new curriculum, there is simply no time to waste. Ten minutes taken from a lesson to self/peer assess could be ten minutes used to further master the learning objective of the lesson.
Teachers have spent a lot of time training to be a teacher, they are professionals with a sound understanding of the subjects they teach. They are best placed to make decisions about whether a child has achieved a learning objective and what the next steps should be. I would argue that a pupil is not capable of making these decisions effectively or efficiently. A pupil can tell you whether they have found a particular activity easy or difficult. Does this matter? Does it tell you anything about their achievement? If you are teaching a child something they have not come across before, how can they decide whether they have learned it? Surely, this is judgement that must be made by a well-trained professional. Children can find evidence in their work to show they have met certain 'success criteria' but they cannot decide whether this means that they have achieved the objective.
Peer/self assessment forms part of a larger issue around pupil voice. I am not a fan of pupil voice even though it seems to be fashionable. In terms of assessment, that should be done by the teacher as the professional or if you really want to involve pupils as a discussion between pupil and teacher with the teacher explaining to the pupil what their performance in an activity means with regard to their achievement/progress.
Monday, 9 February 2015
Using F.E.A.R. As A Stimulus For Poetry
The song F.E.A.R. by Ian Brown has long been a favourite of mine. I thought that the structure of the song would mean that it would be good to use as a stimulus for developing poetry writing in the primary classroom. For those of you that don't know the song, thee verses and chorus all spell out the word FEAR e.g. Fantastic Expectations Amazing Revelations. The idea is that the children could replicate this in their poetry by generating their own words to fit FEAR. Also, it is a pretty cool song!
The lesson went something like this, with Year 4.
First of all, we listened to the song and I asked the children if they noticed anything about the lyrics. We quickly established what I mentioned earlier. Then we listened to the song a second time with the children jotting down on whiteboards any of the verses (or chorus) that they could pick out. Some of these were then written on the board as a scaffold. Next, the children generated their own four line verses to match F.E.A.R. This led to some silly attempts e.g. Fat Elephants Are Red. This in turn led to a worthwhile discussion about the mood of the poem and how we would try to choose words that would match the mood of the poem/song.
Once this had been established, the children came up with some fantastic choices e.g. Find Enemies and Ruin. The children put their ideas together to make a poem of several verses interspersed with the chorus from the song (For Everything A Reason). This could be extended by giving the children other words e.g. love, hate, excite etc. Some children performed their poems and filmed them, creating a movie in iMovie.
All in all, the vocabulary generate by the children was better than they had produced before and I think the structure and mood of the song helped with this. They also developed a better understanding of creating a mood in their writing.
A word of warning. If you are going to use the official video to the song, stop it after about 2 minutes as there is a dodgy bit after that. There are also videos made of the song where the lyrics are displayed on the screen. You may or may not find this helpful.
The lesson went something like this, with Year 4.
First of all, we listened to the song and I asked the children if they noticed anything about the lyrics. We quickly established what I mentioned earlier. Then we listened to the song a second time with the children jotting down on whiteboards any of the verses (or chorus) that they could pick out. Some of these were then written on the board as a scaffold. Next, the children generated their own four line verses to match F.E.A.R. This led to some silly attempts e.g. Fat Elephants Are Red. This in turn led to a worthwhile discussion about the mood of the poem and how we would try to choose words that would match the mood of the poem/song.
Once this had been established, the children came up with some fantastic choices e.g. Find Enemies and Ruin. The children put their ideas together to make a poem of several verses interspersed with the chorus from the song (For Everything A Reason). This could be extended by giving the children other words e.g. love, hate, excite etc. Some children performed their poems and filmed them, creating a movie in iMovie.
All in all, the vocabulary generate by the children was better than they had produced before and I think the structure and mood of the song helped with this. They also developed a better understanding of creating a mood in their writing.
A word of warning. If you are going to use the official video to the song, stop it after about 2 minutes as there is a dodgy bit after that. There are also videos made of the song where the lyrics are displayed on the screen. You may or may not find this helpful.
Friday, 6 February 2015
There's An App For That.
There is much debate as to whether schools should spend large amounts of money on buying iPads. Some schools have 1:1 devices while others have very few devices at all. This post is not about making the case for iPads in school, rather it is written with the intention of providing some hopefully useful ideas.
Having used iPads in the school where I teach for a couple of years now, I have been able to experiment with a range of apps. My aim has always been to use iPads in order to complete tasks that could not be done without them rather than copying a task that could be done with pen/pencil and paper.
A comment made by a presenter at the Google stand at BETT recently made me reflect on the apps we use in school. He said that rather than looking for a Science app or a Geography app, we should look for apps that can be used across many subject disciplines. To me this makes sense for at least two reasons.
First of all from a purely financial point of view. You would buy one app that can serve many purposes instead of a whole myriad of subject-related apps that may only be used within that subject. Secondly, subject-related apps tend to tend us and children into 'consumers' of technology rather gazn really using it to enhance learning and achieve what I stated earlier was my aim. Having said this, there are some very useful 'consumer' apps such as Battle Times - a free times table app. Times tables are probably best learnt through regular practise and testing. This app enables you to do this with a competitive element. Indeed the are also certain subject specialist apps that can be used to enhance learning effectively.
Going back to my aim, I have put together what I think would be an ideal gathering of a few apps that could help to enhance learning across the curriculum and allow our pupils to complete tasks that, if used thoughtfully, could not be done without such technology. My collection is by no means exhaustive but will hopefully be useful to those starting out on the iPad journey.
I must note hear that all the apps below are apps that have been recommended to me by people such as Lee Parkinson (@ictmrp) and Mark Anderson (@ictevangelist) both of whom write excellent blog posts about using technology to enhance learning. Here are five apps I have found very useful.
1. Explain Everything - A superb app that is very versatile. It is a bit like having an interactive whiteboard on your device. Many, many used across all subjects.
2. Book Creator - Can be used to create books incorporating sound, images and video. Books can be added to iBook store. Very easy to use.
3. Comic Life - Creates eye-catching comic style documents. Can be used ina variety of ways in many subjects e.g presenting research of key historical figures.
4. Minecraft - This app has so many uses it is impossible to list them all here. It also taps into children's interests as many play it at home anyway.
5. Tellagami and iMovie - These are both brilliant film-making tools. Free version of Tellagami only allows 30 second recording so iMovie can be used to collect a few of these together which can them be edited into a film.
If you have these apps on your iPads at school you will certainly be able to make a start on your journey into iPad use.
Sunday, 25 January 2015
BETT 2015 - My experience
On Friday I attended the BETT show for the first time. Staff from the school where I work had been in previous years and I was looking forward to going. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect.
Entering the show, I was quickly accosted by a rep from a major IT company, badgering me about managed printer services or something. He then told me in hushed tones something that he said he shouldn't be telling me but... No doubt, he had probably told the same information to thousands of people over the previous two days. It turned out that the 'secret' information was the fact that a new model of the firm's printers was due to be released. Great.
Continuing my walk around the dizzying array of exhibitors, I continued to be approached/accosted by reps. It reminded me of an 18-30 holiday I went on in my early twenties when reps would try to entice you into the 'best bar in town'. At BETT this phrase was replaced with 'the market leader'. I adopted the same approach I did on that dusty road in Corfu, I shuffled along with my head down trying not to make eye contact with anyone.
Some of the products/ideas I saw were fascinating and a smaller number could even prove useful in our school. In fact I jotted down quite a few app ideas from +ICTEvangelist during his presentation. There was also the ubiquitous range of companies promising to solve the problem of assessment after levels. All of these seemed scarily complicated to me and I consider myself quite good with assessment. I would imagine they weren't exactly cheap either even if they were the market leaders.
The BETT arena was a sectioned off area of the show where a quick-fire programme of presentations took place. These were compered by someone who gleefully told us he was the voice of Siri in the UK and had been the voice of the Weakest Link for 11 years. The presentations were too short to be of any real value considering the large issues being discussed in them. I left each presentation I sat there for feeling a little cheated as I wanted to know more. The presentations taking place in other areas of the show were more useful as they were more specific and included ideas to be used directly in the classroom.
I was glad that I didn't have any school money to spend as it would have been easy to be taken in by the shiny, precious things. Having said this, I did enjoy my visit to BETT as I saw enough ideas that I liked and will hopefully return next year.
Entering the show, I was quickly accosted by a rep from a major IT company, badgering me about managed printer services or something. He then told me in hushed tones something that he said he shouldn't be telling me but... No doubt, he had probably told the same information to thousands of people over the previous two days. It turned out that the 'secret' information was the fact that a new model of the firm's printers was due to be released. Great.
Continuing my walk around the dizzying array of exhibitors, I continued to be approached/accosted by reps. It reminded me of an 18-30 holiday I went on in my early twenties when reps would try to entice you into the 'best bar in town'. At BETT this phrase was replaced with 'the market leader'. I adopted the same approach I did on that dusty road in Corfu, I shuffled along with my head down trying not to make eye contact with anyone.
Some of the products/ideas I saw were fascinating and a smaller number could even prove useful in our school. In fact I jotted down quite a few app ideas from +ICTEvangelist during his presentation. There was also the ubiquitous range of companies promising to solve the problem of assessment after levels. All of these seemed scarily complicated to me and I consider myself quite good with assessment. I would imagine they weren't exactly cheap either even if they were the market leaders.
The BETT arena was a sectioned off area of the show where a quick-fire programme of presentations took place. These were compered by someone who gleefully told us he was the voice of Siri in the UK and had been the voice of the Weakest Link for 11 years. The presentations were too short to be of any real value considering the large issues being discussed in them. I left each presentation I sat there for feeling a little cheated as I wanted to know more. The presentations taking place in other areas of the show were more useful as they were more specific and included ideas to be used directly in the classroom.
I was glad that I didn't have any school money to spend as it would have been easy to be taken in by the shiny, precious things. Having said this, I did enjoy my visit to BETT as I saw enough ideas that I liked and will hopefully return next year.
Saturday, 3 January 2015
Homework: What's the point?
Having read some comments and discussion around the piece in The Telegraph quoting Tom Bennet's article about most homework being pointless, I thought I would write about my thoughts on the subject.
When I was an NQT our school had an OFSTED inspection. Some parents duly filled in the parent questionnaire. One thing many of them asked for apparently was more homework. In response to this, my very experienced year group partner promptly printed off masses of homework sheets to send home the following week. This pile of work would have taken most adults a week to complete never mind 8 year olds! Did it have any positive impact on the children's learning? No, not one jot. Parents also began to complain that their children were getting too much homework!
Therein lies the crux of the matter. Homework is in many ways a no-win situation. Set too much and parents, teachers, children buckle under the strain. Set too little and parents, OFSTED think you aren't doing your job properly. So what to do?
I recently read Harry Webb 's (@webofsubstance) blog post about preparing the children we teach for the future. He argues, quite correctly in my opinion, that we should teach that children "that which endures" rather than trying to second guess the knowledge that children may need in the distant future. I think this approach could be applied to homework. In primary this could be just asking the children to work on reading, spelling and times tables when at home. These are key skills that are the foundations for learning. This is the approach taken at the school of Angela Bell (@bell111_a) as she was determined to look for a way to reduce teacher workload without having a negative effect on learning.
Then I started to consider something that Rob Smith (@redgierob) of Literacy Shed fame said about homework. He suggested that any activities that get children and parents discussing learning in some way must be beneficial. I have to agree with this. The problem comes when 'project' homework becomes a competition between the parents. One way round this is maybe not to mark the project homework but instead give children equal credit for handing it in. Another alternative, which is used at my wife's school is to give the children a range of suggested activities that they can choose from. Therefore, cutting out the competition over one project.
The danger with setting times tables and spellings for homework is that teachers will rely on this as the children's main method of learning these things. For it to be effective, the homework needs to be practise of skills taught in class. After all, it is our job as teachers to teach this stuff. That is what we are paid for.
In conclusion, I don't think there is an easy answer to the homework conundrum. Avoiding pointless tasks is certainly a must. Also avoiding making homework an onerous task for parents, teachers and most importantly, children is also a must.
When I was an NQT our school had an OFSTED inspection. Some parents duly filled in the parent questionnaire. One thing many of them asked for apparently was more homework. In response to this, my very experienced year group partner promptly printed off masses of homework sheets to send home the following week. This pile of work would have taken most adults a week to complete never mind 8 year olds! Did it have any positive impact on the children's learning? No, not one jot. Parents also began to complain that their children were getting too much homework!
Therein lies the crux of the matter. Homework is in many ways a no-win situation. Set too much and parents, teachers, children buckle under the strain. Set too little and parents, OFSTED think you aren't doing your job properly. So what to do?
I recently read Harry Webb 's (@webofsubstance) blog post about preparing the children we teach for the future. He argues, quite correctly in my opinion, that we should teach that children "that which endures" rather than trying to second guess the knowledge that children may need in the distant future. I think this approach could be applied to homework. In primary this could be just asking the children to work on reading, spelling and times tables when at home. These are key skills that are the foundations for learning. This is the approach taken at the school of Angela Bell (@bell111_a) as she was determined to look for a way to reduce teacher workload without having a negative effect on learning.
Then I started to consider something that Rob Smith (@redgierob) of Literacy Shed fame said about homework. He suggested that any activities that get children and parents discussing learning in some way must be beneficial. I have to agree with this. The problem comes when 'project' homework becomes a competition between the parents. One way round this is maybe not to mark the project homework but instead give children equal credit for handing it in. Another alternative, which is used at my wife's school is to give the children a range of suggested activities that they can choose from. Therefore, cutting out the competition over one project.
The danger with setting times tables and spellings for homework is that teachers will rely on this as the children's main method of learning these things. For it to be effective, the homework needs to be practise of skills taught in class. After all, it is our job as teachers to teach this stuff. That is what we are paid for.
In conclusion, I don't think there is an easy answer to the homework conundrum. Avoiding pointless tasks is certainly a must. Also avoiding making homework an onerous task for parents, teachers and most importantly, children is also a must.
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