Why don't High Ability Students Make Progress & What Can You Do About It?

Anyone who has been teaching a long time will tell you that the main thing that used to matter was that every student gets at least a grade C in your subject.  The main reason behind this was for years the progress measures was only interested in students getting five Cs or above, and then more recently getting five Cs or above including Maths & English.  Whilst in real terms out in the real world anything below a C is often seen as a failure so getting a C was important, did these two factors really encourage us to push the higher end as much as we could?  I think, myself included, that our answer would have to be no! 

So, in more recent years, the progress measures have now been changed to actually look at student progress rather than just that final grade.  I’m sure that they’ll be those who’d lynch me for suggesting this, but I honestly think that in terms of pushing students to make the greatest amount of progress they can, measuring an end grade against a start point has been a good thing.  The biggest issue that this has caused however, is that it’s a lot more difficult for a higher ability student to physically make as much progress in terms of levels achieved.  This is one of the main factors behind the much greater focus on higher ability students as well as those students on the C-D boarder line.

Higher ability students are defined as a student who performs at, or shows the potential for performing at, an outstanding level of accomplishment in at least one domain, Maths, English or the Sciences, when compared to other students of the same age, experience, or environment and is characterized by exceptional gifts, talents, motivations or interests.  High ability students need to have educational experiences which help them meet their full potential.  So what does this actually mean?  I think it actually means that a student who is better equipped to make outstanding progress than others.  Basically it boils down to a few simple facts:

1. The student has a high reading age so is able to access high level content
2. Has an ability to understand mathematical problems
3. Is self-motivated so has pushed themselves during Primary school

The problem facing us now is, how can we ensure these students who enter secondary school with a high level of achievement maintain that level throughout, and achieve the high-level exam results which they should be capable of.  I quiet often find myself thinking about this question and maybe the start point should be to try and come up with some of the potential reasons that these high ability students aren’t making the progress they are capable of.

The annual dip in progress at the start of Year 7.  When students are in Year 6 they are a big fish in a small pond, so it may come as a culture shock when they start secondary school that they are now the youngest students.  Just to compound problems, the data that comes up from Primary school is often not with the secondary school for one reason or another at the start of the year.  This can lead to HA students not being put in the correct set which may cause them to become disheartened and damage their positive view of schools.  The last major problem is the way that teachers may view Year 7 students.  This issue arises when teachers (myself included) almost that we need to slowly ease all students in, giving them work which might not be as challenging as it could be. 

Differentiation within the top set where you find most HA students.  In most other classes, you will consider differentiation, possibly in how can I push the top end but more often what you can do to support the bottom end.  When it comes to a top set this doesn’t seem to happen as much.  What we need to be thinking about in terms of differentiation is, what we can put in place to really stretch the top end. 

A lack of stretch and challenge within lessons.  One of the main problems that comes up when you speak to HA students is that they don’t feel challenged in lessons.  In part this comes from the fact that often the teacher will feel that they need to impart as much knowledge as possible to HA students, so often fall into the lecturing trap!  This is possibly exactly the opposite to what HA student’s needs as they won’t find sitting & listening for a long period very challenging.

Peer pressure.  I could talk about this one all day however, there is already a wealth of research out there on this point.  For whatever reason, academic success is not something that often students want to exhibit to other students.  This often comes out as answering questions with “I don’t know” rather than stretching themselves.  Eventually this becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and students convince themselves that they don’t actually know.

Students may develop a lack of desire to learn over time.  Although capable of completing their school work to a high level, they lack the initiative or motivation to succeed.  These are students that can do the work, are highly intelligent, but have decided that there are other things that are more important.  In many cases, they are distracted by out-side factors, emotional issues or a variety of other factors that are out of our control.  I think that out of all the possible reasons, this is the most unfortunate as there is a limited amount you can do. 

These reasons are by no means an exhaustive list but it gives us start point from which to work from.  So, the most important question we need to ask ourselves is “what can we as teachers do to push those HA students to make the expected level of progress when it comes to exam performance?”  I don’t claim to be an expert but here are some of my musings on ways to approach this issue.

The first major thing that we need to think about is what pedagogies can be used to truly stretch and challenge HA students.  I think that the conclusion that most of us have come to is that the main thing that will push these students is to get them to be self-reliant and able to independently teach themselves and others.  There are a variety of methods out there to get students teaching each other ranging from taking a section of the content in a lesson and teaching it to each other I small groups, all the way to mentoring.  Here are a few outlines of some methods I have used:

Micro-teaching:  Students are put in small groups and either given content or asked to research a specific topic.  Once they have done this, get them to put short presentations together that they can use to teach other groups with.  Th really stretch students ask them to think of one question each to ask the presenting group. 

Mentoring:  HA students can be used to mentor other HA students further down the school.  As most student’s will start their GCSEs in year 9 now, this mentoring of the content to younger students can act as excellent revision for HA students.

Putting together revision videos:  This is something of a new phenomenon in education, but as the technology is there it should be used.  Providing that the students aren’t physically filming themselves or others they can use diagrams and talk over them to produce revision videos for each other.

Open ended research tasks:   This one might not be appropriate for every subject, however, in many there should be an element of self-directed learning where they can explore their own interests within a subject.  One example which I’ve tried before is letting my Year 11 students who also take History to look into how the Haber process was exploited to enable Germany to make explosives and why Fritz Haber was convicted of war crimes.

The start point to many lessons centres around discussing concepts with students.  When pupils share their opinion with you, or with a partner during discussion, push them to explain what underpins that opinion. Do not let unsupported assertions escape without asking “Why?”, “What reasons do you have for thinking that?”. You can even train your pupils to start asking these questions of each other.  There are a few ways to help students do this but the easiest way I use is to let students choose who they are going to ask questions to rather than you as the teacher choosing.  This helps enable HA students to take ownership of the lesson so feel like they are in a small way in control of their own learning.

Avoid Worksheets:  One thing that is almost as bad as death by power point is death by worksheet!  For years one of the main approach to differentiating for the top end was to provide more worksheets for if they finish tasks early.  The main problem with this is that if students are finishing tasks a lot earlier than you would expect your pitching your tasks too low!  Nothing will bread resentment in your HA students like giving them more worksheets to do if they finish early as it can make them feel like they’re being punished for doing well.

Meaningful Homework (less is more!) The topic of homework can often be divisive among teachers as most of use can’t come to a consensus on how to set it.  There are several ways to set homework, you may set exam questions or revision tasks.  There has been a lot of talk about flipped learning over the last year, and after giving it a go I’ve found that it can work really well for HA students.  Flipped learning basically is an instructional strategy and a type of blended learning that reverses the traditional learning environment by delivering instructional content, often online, outside of the classroom. It moves activities, including those that may have traditionally been considered homework, into the classroom

Innovation:  Think out of the box!  HA students are extremely able so it’s an ideal opportunity to try all those innovative techniques that you’ve never dared try before.  In terms of lessons for HA students, they’ll really appreciate it and you’ll really enjoy teaching them.

Writing exam answer mark scheme or questions to use:  For those of us who are used to teaching exam groups every year, we all use exam questions especially when it comes to revision.  The question is how can we spice using exam questions up to ensure HA students are really engaging with them?  One method that I have used is to allow students to act as the examiner.  There are a few of ways I’ve found to do this:

1. Give students a variety of model answers and get them to mark them using a mark scheme.  Once they have done this you can question them about why they have given the marks they have.
2. Students can be given an exam question, then asked to construct a mark scheme for it.
3. Students can be showed the answer to a question, then asked to put together a question for that answer.

So, in conclusion here are some of my closing thoughts in the subject and what you need to consider before teaching any HA student.  Identifying the student’s next steps and creating cognitive dissonance.  This means being aware of exactly where you need your students to be heading and how you can enable them to get there. Injecting elements of novelty and variety into the learning experience.  This will help students keep that love of learning and so helps enable them to make progress without realising that they are working hard.  Offering opportunities for independence and self-direction.  You need to ensure the tasks you are setting are open ended so provide real opportunities for students to stretch themselves.  Providing opportunities to work with like-minded peers.  This is a bit of a no brainer.  The main thing that’s going to enable HA students to make progress is to enable them to teach themselves and others using group work. 

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for how you can stretch and challenge your HA students.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

What is independent learning & how can I use it in my own teaching?

One of the buzz words of 2016 was independent learning but the question I found myself asking is what is independent learning & how can I use it in my own teaching?  Independent learning is defined as when an individual is able to think, act and pursue their own studies autonomously, without the same levels of support you receive from a teacher at school.  So, what does this actually mean?  When I think about independent learning these are the main things that come to mind.

Independent learning helps stretch higher ability students.  This is because when students are working independently they need to be self-sufficient.  Often the skills they need to develop in order for this to happen go hand in hand with higher order thinking skills.

Independent learning helps students develop a growth mindset.  Dweck defines growth mindset as “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment”

When planning independent learning tasks, try, and enable students room for manoeuvre so that they can be creative, think out of the box or both.  There are a few ways round this. When setting homework tasks that will .really stretch the independence of students, give them options to choose from.  In lessons think about tasks that are going to challenge your students and cause them to have to access the lesson content in a way that they will have to be able to explain it to another student if they have to.  

If students are working independently then they must be doing something by themselves.  This was the first main misconception on my part as what I’ve come to believe is that what independent learning really is, is any sort of learning where I’m not directly responsible for what students are learning.  This also means that students can still be learning independently when working in groups or pairs.

If students are working independently then they will by divine intervention, make more progress!  The second realisation I’ve had is that even though independent learning promotes higher level thinking, you don’t need to try and crowbar it into every lesson as it’s not always appropriate.  A more important point is that there is no rule that says that even if you have set an independent learning task there’s no reason that you can’t still give your students guidance or a framework to work within.

Independent learning doesn’t just mean homework.  For years, this was a common misconception made by many teachers across the board.  You can plan independent learning tasks into your lessons.  The most important thing to think about when doing this is to start with the independent learning task you want your students to do, then construct your lesson around it as your students will need to be pre-equipped with the tools they need to complete the task effectively.   

Independent learning should help increase student’s confidence and motivation in lessons.  Because student’s are taking responsibility for their own learning they will be able to help direct the direction they take.  If students are helping to choose how they are learning they should become more motivated about their own learning.  If students are engaged within their learning it should make them more confident about explaining what they are learning.

The final realisation I’ve come to believe about independent learning is that it allows students to work at their own pace.  And with that in an ideal world you’ve discovered the holy grail of teaching.  A pedagogy that allows differentiation, the stretches the most able students, that frees up the teacher in the lesson to help support less able students and that allows students to be creative in their own learning.  If only it was that easy.

The question that I heard asked time and again is “how can I effectively use independent learning within my own teaching?”  This is a question that I’ve been wrestling with for a long time, and I think that I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Below I have tried to outline some of the methods and activities I use to help independent learning both within and outside of my lessons. 

Get students to teach each other using micro-teaching.  Micro teaching involves students teaching each other ideas & content during a lesson.  There is lots of evidence that shows that students make the greatest amount of progress when they have to explain ideas & concepts to each other. Below I have outlined how to carry out a micro teaching activity with students and have tried to detail some of the possible preparation that needs to be in place to ensure that this activity has a meaningful impact on student progress.

The first stage in any micro teaching activity is to enable students to gather the information for themselves.  If students have to find things out for themselves they will make more progress than if they are just spoon fed it.  This can be done in many different ways.

• Flipped learning:  Before the lesson you can let students know what they will be teaching and then set appropriate videos for them to watch. Students can then use this to make notes on the content they need in preparation for the next lesson.
• Directed reading:  Students can be given the content they will be producing a micro teaching presentation or short lesson on.  This method works most effectively when students have to pick out key information from the text and then have it taken away before they start interacting with other groups.
• Use exam questions:  During revision, different groups of students can be given different exam questions that they need to explain to other students how to answer.
• Information hunt:  Before beginning the micro teaching activity, put key information around the room that students will need to use.  Give students some time in small groups to go around and gather the information they need to carry out the micro teaching activity.
• Once students have collected the information they need, they need to put together a short lesson or presentation on a particular concept.  This can take the form of a traditional short presentation or a short lesson where students have prepared some simple resources to help them teach.  
• Once your students are ready set them up work around rows of tables as shown in the pictures below

After students have worked around all the other groups you can carry out more traditional AFL to assess how much progress students have made. 

Open ended homework tasks:  These do pretty much what it says on the tin, they provide students with an opportunity to expand their own learning outside of the classroom in a direction that interests them.  There are a few ways to approach this form of independent learning:

1. Set students a general inquiry question that they must research then produce some sort of report on.
2. Set homework tasks which allow students multiple routes to get to an outcome.
3. Allow students to collaboratively to produce a video on a certain topic

Modelling activities:  When getting students to build models to explore concepts you still need to start with the content, however, you don’t necessarily need to stand at the front of the class and physically teach it.  The first step in allowing students to construct models is to allow them to collect or put together the information they need to help them build the model themselves.  This can be done in a few ways; you can use flipped learning and set students a series of youtube videos to watch & make notes on to help them, or lay out a range of information and allow students to gather what they need in small groups.  In some cases, you can give students a sheet with the content on and allow them to highlight what they think is relevant. 

Once students have the information they need, don’t assume they will automatically know where to start.  In many lessons where students are given a chance to build models to explore concepts there isn’t just one correct answer, however, there will still be a range of criteria that students need to incorporate into their models.  Before students start building their models don’t forget to give them a rough frame work to help them structure their ideas that they will incorporate.  In some cases, when you are giving students a task to complete where there is lots of scope for interpretation, it is worth showing students examples to help them get going.

Allowing students opportunities to feedback on each other’s work.  Peer marking is often a contentious method. Using it relies on students understanding what the correct answer is and that they will be able to mark answer without being overly harsh or generous.  The other major problem with peer marking is the quality of the feedback that they give each other.  If the feedback they give doesn’t aid progress has it been worth the time it has taken them to give it?  The way that I think effective peer marking should be carried out follows a few key concepts.

Firstly, if I’m getting students to do any peer marking I get them to do it in green pen.  If students do their marking in green it is easy for them to distinguish between their marking and mine.  It also gives an opportunity to easily comment and give feedback on the quality of peer feedback.

When getting students to make each other’s work don’t presume that they will automatically know how to do it.  It’s been my experience that most students have no idea how to mark a piece of work.  The way to get around this is to give students a strict framework to mark to.  If you want students to mark for SPAG, give them the key words that need to be spelt correctly.  If you want students to mark for specific content get them using a mark scheme to allow them to see what the correct answers are.  Using peer marking takes some time to get right as your students will need some training, however, it’s a useful tool to have I your arsenal.

Allow students to set their own tasks:  This one does come with a little health and safety warning, I would only use it with a class that I felt confident with, and which I’d already set a relatively strict framework for students to work within.  The first thing to do is to ensure that you share the lesson outcomes with students so they know what they need to achieve by the end of the lesson.  From there it’s up to them to set their own task to get there.  Put students in small groups or pairs to do this and then ask each group what they have decided to do to make sure that they will achieve what you want.

Group brain storming activities:  This is a short activity that can allow small groups of students to feed off each other’s creativity, therefore helping each other to expand their own learning.  Start with giving your students a topic to work on expanding it with as much as they can think around it.  Then rotate students around each other’s work and get them to expand on what’s already written.  Continue this process until students are back at their original work, then get them to use the information to compete some sort of collaborative task.

Interrogating the text:  Students are given an unfamiliar piece of text.  In pairs or small groups they are asked to:

1. Formulate important questions the text should be able to answer, or they hope the text will answer.
2. Read the text, highlighting key points,
3. Discuss the key points and agree answers to the questions formulated in ‘1’.

This is by no means a complete list of the things you can give a go; however, they are some of the methods I’ve given a go and have worked pretty well.  I hope that these ideas have provided some inspiration for how you can use independent learning within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

What is Differentiation & How Can It Be Used?

Over 11 years ago, I heard the phrase differentiation for the first time.  I found myself asking “what is differentiation?”  I found myself thinking back to when I was at school and realising that at the time everyone more or less got taught the same content in the same way.  Thinking back to then in comparison to how I teach now, you come to realise contrary to what the press would have us believe, things are much better now.    In part that is to do with a greater degree of differentiation within schools and especially within lessons.

The definition of what differentiation is:  Differentiated instruction is the way in which a teacher anticipates and responds to a variety of students' needs in the classroom. To meet students' needs, teachers differentiate by modifying the content (what is being taught), the process (how it is taught) and the product (how students demonstrate their learning).  What I think this actually means is that you don’t need to treat every student the same.  Because no two students are the same, should we teach any two students in exactly the same way?  After 11 years of teaching the only conclusion that I can make is “NO!”  So, the challenge is “how can we differentiate effectively without having to teach 25 lessons at once.”

Over the last 11 years the face of differentiation has changed drastically.  At one point differentiation consisted of producing a range of individual tasks or activities for each student to work through and then to mark each individuals work using a different set of criteria.  Whilst this seems like the ideal situation, in the world of full time teaching you physically don’t have enough time to do this without killing yourself or building a time machine.  Below I have tried to outline some of my ideas about how I differentiate and a few different approaches I use.

Know your audience:  I know that this can be easier said than done, however, over time this is what everything else I do with differentiation is built on.  On taking over a class it’s important to make sure you know what level your student’s should be working at, and if you get the opportunity, talk to their previous teacher to help you get a feel for them.  There are many important advantages to knowing your audience in term of differentiation:

• You can sit your students in specific groups based on their ability.
• You can direct specific questions to different students based on how much stretch they need to get the most progress out of them.
• If you are working with students that have been put into sets based on their ability range, you can either increase or decrease the difficulty of the content you include.
• It allows you to differentiate by task as you’ll get to know what works for your students.
• Using various Edtech, it allows you to set individualised homework for those students who need that extra bit of challenge to enable them to hit those top grades.

Objectives:  A few years ago, there was a point where every objective needed to follow Blooms, be levelled so that progress could be shown against the objectives and needed to follow the all, most, some model.  Whilst this seems like a good way to construct differentiated objectives, it never quite hit the spot for me.  The issue with focusing too much on blooms was that I focused too much on trying to fit the model rather than on the content of the objective.  The problem with having all my objectives levelled was that students would often only work to their target level instead of trying to push themselves to a higher level.  The biggest issue however, is the all, most, some part of objectives.  The problem was that lots of students did the all part, then didn’t go any further.  So, the question is how to use objectives to enable differentiation within a lesson?  The trick I use is to have reasonably generic objectives based on the content but without telling students differentiate my expectations of student outcomes to tasks based on my objectives in accordance to the level that individuals should be working at.

Differentiation by task:  Would you teach a top set using the same lesson as you would a bottom set?  As much as I’d love the answer to be yes, I think I’d have to say no!  If you work in a school where students have been put into sets based on their ability then you need to consider what extra support you need to put in place to support lower ability students, and how to step up your activities to challenge higher ability students.  Below are some things that you might find helpful to think about when differentiating the tasks within your lesson:

• Not all your students will learn in the same way so you need to plan a range of different tasks that will enable all your students to access the lesson.
• Use open ended tasks.  By using tasks that have more than one solution you can allow lower ability students to access the content whilst at the same time allowing higher ability students to stretch themselves.
• If your using exam questions with students, especially long answer ones, break the question up into smaller pieces with advice on how to answer each piece.  This works well with low ability students.
• Consider the level of questions you are using.  If you use a programme like exampro, the exam questions are levelled 1-3.  If you have a lower ability class you might want to use lower levelled questions, and with a higher-level class vice versa.
• Consider the content you are teaching students.  There is very little point I trying to teach high level concepts to low ability students as they will become disillusioned when they struggle to understand it.  At the other end of the spectrum think carefully about how you can use the content to stretch students.  Do you have to teach them everything or can you challenge them to find things out for themselves?
• The pace of the tasks within your lesson is vitally important.  With some classes, you’ll need to keep the pace fast in order to stretch you students, whilst with other classes you’ll need to take it more steady to enable them to access the content.  With low ability students, don’t be worried about spending longer on tasks even if it runs into the next lesson.
• Think carefully about your Power Point.  Lower ability students will find a slide with lots of writing on difficult to access.  In terms of differentiation, you need to change how you present content dependant on your audience. 
• Each student has a preferred learning style, and successful differentiation includes delivering the material to each style: visual, auditory and kinesthetic and through words. Not all students require the same amount of support from the teacher, and students could choose to work in pairs, small groups or individually. While some students may benefit from one-to-one interaction with a teacher or classroom aide, others may be able to progress by themselves. Teachers can enhance student learning by offering support based on individual needs.

Questioning:  Possibly the easiest way to differentiate is by questioning.  Once you know the level that your students need to be working at you can target them with specific questions.  You can use open questioning to stretch higher ability students, or can use closed questioning to often help convince lower ability students that they are making progress.

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for how you can differentiate within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

Top tips for AFL in lessons

When you teach for long enough you’ll see many ideas and acronyms come and go, and for the most part with good reason.  Anyone who had the misfortune of having to experience APP will be relieved that particular concept came, and disappeared just as quickly.   One idea that seems to have stuck however, is the concept of assessment for learning.  Assessment for Learning is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there.  In short, it is used to assess how much progress your students are making. 

The most traditional form of AFL is marking; this doesn’t give you any real-time evidence for how students are progressing during the lesson.  I’ve found that lesson based AFL is one of the holy grails in teaching as when used effectively can be used to hang your lessons on.  Below I’ve tried to outline some innovative ways of using AFL which you can use within your own practice.

Simple class responses when questioned how much they know

The whole point of AFL is to get an idea about how much students have understood.  There are a few different ways of doing this throughout the lesson that take little or no planning or resources.  Some of the methods I have used are:

• Thumbs up or down:  The way I use this method allows students to angle their thumbs to show where on a scale their understanding is; thumbs up meaning completely understands, thumbs down meaning they understand nothing and anywhere in-between.   
• Coloured cards:  Students can have red & green coloured cards that they can have out to show if they have understood a particular part of the lesson.
• Stand up or sit down:  This method can be used by asking students to stay stood up if they understand what you have been through.  You can then ask the students questions who have stayed stood up. 

Literature Games

One key point in any lesson is how you use literacy within it.   In my opinion nearly every lesson should have some aspect or activity where students must read something to cover an area of content.  As it’s been proven that the more students read the higher their reading age becomes, and the higher their reading age, the better their chances of achieving higher exam results.  The trick is to firstly get students reading without any innate barriers going up, and secondly checking that they have read what they have been given.  This is where AFL comes in. 

There are a few ways that I’ve found work well in regards to assessing how much students have understood from what they have read.  So, the question is “how do I get students to work through a series of questions on what they have just read without realising that they are working through a set of questions?”  The conclusion that I have come to is to place the questions that you want to ask in some sort of game.  Some of the games I use are snakes & ladders, battleships, pacman, various grid games and many more.  Once students have had chance to work though the game and answer all the questions you can carry out a bit of AFL.  The easiest thing to do is direct the questions from the game to specific students and check the answers you get.

Dice games

Every teacher should have a big bag of dice in their class room that can be used for a variety of reasons.  AFL often includes a range of questions based on what students have just covered.  If you simply give students a list of questions to work through their likely to get bored as they probably spend a fair amount of their week just answering questions.  The solution to this problem is to use just six questions that students pick to answer by rolling a dice.  By doing this they don’t naturally equate it with answering questions and you can still assess how much they have understood.

The use of the letters A-D

One of the more baffling things I’ve found with the new structure of A Level papers is that the first few questions are multiple choice.  I have however, discovered that for whatever reason my students find answering this type of question harder that long answer ones.  As of late I have been trying to drop in a couple of these types of question into lessons which act as AFL questions for the content you have just worked through.

Directed questioning

This type of AFL doubles up as a type of easy differentiation you can use within your own practice.  This method relies on knowing your audience and the level that they are working at.  After you have finished working through an activity or in some cases during it, simply ask specific students differentiated questions based on what they are covering.

Peer Marking

Peer marking is often a contentious method. Using it relies on students understanding what the correct answer is and that they will be able to mark answer without being overly harsh or generous.  The other major problem with peer marking is the quality of the feedback that they give each other.  If the feedback they give doesn’t aid progress has it been worth the time it has taken them to give it?  The way that I think effective peer marking should be carried out follows a few key concepts.

Firstly, if I’m getting students to do any peer marking I get them to do it in green pen.  If students do their marking in green it is easy for them to distinguish between their marking and mine.  It also gives an opportunity to easily comment and give feedback on the quality of peer feedback.

When getting students to make each other’s work don’t presume that they will automatically know how to do it.  It’s been my experience that most students have no idea how to mark a piece of work.  The way to get around this is to give students a strict framework to mark to.  If you want students to mark for SPAG, give them the key words that need to be spelt correctly.  If you want students to mark for specific content get them using a mark scheme to allow them to see what the correct answers are.  Using peer marking takes some time to get right as your students will need some training, however, it’s a useful tool to have I your arsenal.

The last main way to carry out AFL in a lesson is to listen out for what students are saying.  By just listening you’ll pick up on how much students have understood.  I hope that this has given you some inspiration about things you use for AFL within your own teaching.

If you have enjoyed reading this, you can find me on Facebook @teachlikeahero and on Twitter at @teacherchalky1

Thanks for reading

David Chalk

Top tips for inquiry based lessons

Over the last few years, especially if you work with universities or student teacher, you’ll have struggled to avoid the idea of inquiry based lessons.  Ask yourself “what do we mean by an inquiry based lesson?”  The idea behind it is that a lesson starts by posing questions, problems, or scenarios, rather than simply presenting established facts, or portraying a smooth path to knowledge.  As far as I’m concerned within my own teaching, this means less chalk & talk, and a greater emphasis on students either finding things out of working things out for themselves.

The most important aspect of any lesson that you are going to build around an inquiry question is to have the right question to work with.  When starting to plan your lesson, I think as with any other lesson that it’s important to start with your lesson outcomes and work from there.  By taking this view point you’ll keep your focus on what your students need to be able to do by the end of the lesson, rather than running the risk of going off at a tangent.  Once you start to put together your inquiry question there are a few important things that you therefore need to consider:

Does your question fulfil what your students need to achieve by the end of the lesson?

How easy is your question; will it provide enough stretch & challenge for your students?

Is what you are asking you students to do achievable?   This one sounds a bit daft but over the last few years I’ve seen students asked to work things out that have been too high level for them or unrealistic within the time-frame they have been given.

Will your question engage students?  If your question is phrased like any other question then it probably won’t, however, if it’s phrased in a way that will make them feel that they should make a discovery you’ll be onto a winner.

The other main way that I’ve found that you can approach the structure of your question, especially if you are feeling brave, is to present students with a problem and then allow them to develop their own inquiry question.  I’ve found that this method can work particularly well when getting students looking at or constructing their own equations.  In these types of lesson, I like to start with discussing some form of primary data with students, getting them to describe patterns in it and if they can see any connections.  From this initial discussion, they can then start to put together their own question about what they need to find out. 

Once you have an inquiry question in mind you can start to think about building your lesson up around it.  Remember that in this lesson you are there as the facilitator.  It’s your task to provide students with opportunities within the lesson to help them make connections and ultimately answer the inquiry question by the end of the lesson.  The big key idea at this point is that students need to be able to answer the inquiry question by the end of the lesson.   This means that you do not need to start every lesson by asking students to think about the inquiry question as implied by many universities teaching new teachers.

The big idea behind most inquiry questions has some form of literature behind it that students at least need to be aware of before being able to access the inquiry question you want them to be able to answer.  The start of the lesson is an ideal time to allow students to research this information for themselves.  This does not mean sitting students down at a computer, telling them what to look for and setting them off!  Some of the sloppiest lessons I’ve taught have been when I’ve asked students to find something out without giving them some sort of frame work or pointing them in the correct direction.  Whilst it’s important that students can carry out their own research, for what you need them to be able to answer it’s not required.  I therefore make a habit of giving students the information I want them to have work through and then carry out an activity that ensures they have.  There are a few ways that I’ve found work well to do this.

• You can give students a game with questions in it for them to work through.  You can then ask students a few of the questions they should have answered.
• Give students an exam question based on what they have read to answer, then peer assess
• Students can work in groups asking each other questions on what they have just read
• Students could discuss what they have just read and you could help facilitate this by asking open or closed questions to specific students.

Once students have an idea about where the inquiry question has come from, you can introduce the inquiry question to them instead of going through the lesson outcomes.  I feel that this is an important step as if you told students what the outcomes are it defeats them trying to work something out for themselves.  The question that I ask myself “how am I going to allow students to explore the question without giving them the answer?”  At this point I apologise to anyone reading this who is not a Science teacher as I’m going to become a little subject specific.  If students are going to work something out for themselves then the easiest way to do this is experimentally. 

When planning this part of the lesson don’t try and rush it.  Now that the course work component of the course has been removed it’s a good bet that lots of practical content will be in the final exam.  It’s therefore important to take opportunities for students to explain a practical in the way they may be asked to.  SO, for the practical you ask students to work through it’s important to think about the following:

• Ask the students to make a hypothesis that they can test using their inquiry question
• Go through with students what the variables they are going to be using
• Ask students to discuss the method they are given, or construct themselves
• Look at constructing a risk assessment for the practical they are going to carry out
• Talk through some key terms such as reliability, reproducible, repeats ect…
• And finally get students to work through the practical taking readings and then doing some results or data analysis

Once you have reached this point students will now have enough data or information to answer their inquiry question.  As with the end to most lessons this can be done I a variety of ways, however, the choice of assessment I tend to use is to allow them to work through an exam question based around the inquiry question.  Once they have answered this they can then peer assess their answer so in turn see how they have done.

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for how you can use inquiry questions within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

Difficult Physics! How to Teach Braking Energy

Why do formula 1 cars need better brakes than a normal road car?  This question was the start point to how I taught my students about braking energy and the key idea that I hung the rest of the lesson on.  In terms of teaching, breaking energy was something new to me, so gave me the opportunity to dip my toe into untested water and try out a few new ideas.  Once I realised that breaking energy is the same as work done, and that the work being done by a break must be the same as the kinetic energy of the car, the structure of the lesson evolves almost by itself.

Pre-Starter

The first thing that students must get their heads around for the rest of the lesson to make sense is what breaking energy is and some of the factors that affect the amount of breaking energy needed to stop an object.  Youtube to the rescue!  At times, I think that Youtue has made me a little lazy, but used sparingly and at the right point in a lesson, can be very powerful.  I found a range of different clips of different sized cars stopping under different conditions and start speeds ect and as a class we discussed what effects braking and how that is related to breaking energy.  This was a important activity as it ensures that everyone in the class is at the same start point so that no-one is left behind.  I’m not a great lover of how differentiation is crowbarred into lessons, however, this activity differentiates itself, and allows your higher-level students to help any lower level students.

Starter  

The first equation that students need to be able to use is how to work out kinetic energy.  Historically in my experience this is always the equation that students seem to get wrong since they type it into their calculators incorrectly.  So, how to force them to type it in correctly?  The only way that I’ve ever found to help with this is to write the process that they need to use up on the board, and then go through a few examples with them to make sure that they’re not missing steps out or trying to be overly clever with how they’re typing things in.  The way that I always explain to they to type the variables in is as follow; First work out what velocity times velocity is then press equals, times this by the mass then press equals, finally times this by 0.5 then press equals.  If students follow this methodology every time they should get the correct answer each time.

Once your student’s have gotten their heads around using the equation it’s time to give them the opportunity to have some practice at using the equation for themselves.  If you “gamify” the activity, then students will be happier to work through a series of calculation without moaning that they’ve just been given a list of equations to work out.  The activity that I use is to give students a 6 by 6 board with different variables in each square for them to use to calculate kinetic energy.  I then allow students to randomly pick questions to answer by rolling a dice twice.

The main part of the lesson

Now that students have been reminded how to calculate kinetic energy which is arguably the hard part, you can start to get students thinking about how they can work out breaking energy.  The first step I took was to connect the main part of the lesson back to the starter by quickly getting students to calculate the kinetic energy that different F1 cars have when travelling at different speeds.  This first activity will begin to let students start to build up a mental picture about what braking energy is in terms of the maths behind it.

The second activity during the main part of the lesson centres around allowing students to connect the equations for work done and kinetic energy for themselves.  By allowing students to work things out for themselves it will help them see why the equation works and why breaking force needs to be calculated how it is.  Depending on the level your class is working at will alter how much help or guidance they’ll need.  Show students the three equations they need to think about and they let them work through how to connect them together.  Once students have a single overall equation, allow them to calculate the breaking force needed by each of the cars travelling to break.

Plenary

Once students have calculated the breaking force for each velocity you can finish off the lesson with some data analysis as this will tie everything together and help stretch your higher ability students.  All my plenary activity asks students to do is quickly draw a graph of velocity the car is travelling against the breaking energy needed to stop it.  After students have a graph drawn you can ask them to describe what the results show and have a discussion which connects it back to the start of the lesson.

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for things you can do within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero , and you can download this lesson from my shop at  https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/chalky1234567

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

Top Tips on Collaborative Learning

As we move into the new year I find myself thinking about the exam session which is rapidly approaching, and find myself asking “how can I change my revision strategies to get students to be more independent?”  The holy grail in teaching is to get students to teach each other allowing teachers to take a step back an act as facilitators.  One method that has been discussed lots over the last couple of years is collaborative learning.  In this blog I have tried to discuss my experiences with it and some of the ways that it can be used day to day.

Before teachers can foster positive interdependence, we must use new techniques, skills and strategies which involve:

• Planning activities and tasks in advance – including how they will be assessed
• Forming different kinds of groups for different purposes
• Using different methods to compose and recompose groups
• Having ground rules with students
• Training peers to teach peers
• Using a range of techniques (e.g. carousels/jigsaws)
• Taking time to give feedback on the process of learning as well as the product of learning, and how well students worked together

One key thing when starting to use collaborative earning within your lessons is how your classroom is set up.  Some of the main things which you may want to consider are:

• The objective of room arrangement is proximity. Zones of proximity can create good behaviour.  Can you stroll/loop around the room to be close to all students in the minimum of steps?
• Can all students see the whiteboard?
• Can you see the faces of all the students in the room?
• Can students access resources?
• How will you seat genders?
• How will you seat abilities?
• How will you seat for behaviour?
• Do you need flexibility to ‘snowball’ – individual/twos/pairs/ fours etc?
• Do you need to move between activities e.g. from a circle to individual writing?

The first stage in any collaborative learning activity is to enable students to gather the information for themselves.  If students must find things out for themselves, they will make more progress than if they are just spoon fed it.  This can be done in many ways.;

• Flipped learning:  Before the lesson you can let students know what they will be teaching and then set appropriate videos for them to watch. Students can then use this to make notes on the content they need in preparation for the next lesson.
• Directed reading:  Students can be given the content they will be producing a micro teaching presentation or short lesson on.  This method works most effectively when students must pick out key information from the text and then have it taken away before they start interacting with other groups.
• Use exam questions:  During revision, different groups of students can be given different exam questions that they need to explain to other students how to answer.
• Information hunt:  Before beginning the micro teaching activity, put key information around the room that students will need to use.  Give students some time in small groups to go around and gather the information they need to carry out the micro teaching activity.

The simplest form of collaborative learning is to let students work in pairs.  As most of the time students will already be sat in pairs it takes very little organisation other than being careful that you sit students next to each other that work well.  The way that I use this is to give students the opportunity to discuss the answer to any questions I’ve asked with their partner before they answer.  By doing this, students are able to reassure each other so when they are asked for an answer they do not feel like they are being put on the spot by themselves. 

Micro teaching involves students teaching each other ideas & content during a lesson.  There is lots of evidence that shows that students make the greatest amount of progress when they have to explain ideas & concepts to each other. Below I have outlined how to carry out a micro teaching activity with students and have tried to detail some of the possible preparation that needs to be in place to ensure that this activity has a meaningful impact on student progress.  Once students have collected the information they need, they need to put together a short lesson or presentation on a concept.  This can take the form of a traditional short presentation or a short lesson where students have prepared some simple resources to help them teach.  Once your students are ready set them up work around rows of tables as shown in the pictures below:

Explaining large concepts to each other:  This is something that I have only tried out with A level students but I don’t see any reason that it wouldn’t work across other year groups.  I give each group a large concept model that they need to start off by putting together.  Once students have put together a model like one shown below they need to be able to explain the model to other students.  As this activity is used for revision, I like to get students to video themselves explaining the model and then share their videos with each other to aid with revision.

Revision hexagons:  This is a method that I have used a few times during revision with students for the first last year and it really helped them make connections between lots of different concepts.  How I ran this task was to produce a hexagon for a number of different topics with different questions relating to that topic on each side.  Students then needed to add a hexagon with the answer to a sides question to each side.  They then needed to write their own question relating to that topic on the other sides of their hexagons.  Different students then add their own hexagons which results in a large amount of interconnected hexagons.  Once there is enough information for a topic down students can then make concept maps using the hexagons.

Constructing exam questions:  Due to a lack of multiple choice questions available for the new A Levels this is an activity that I have tried with my Biologists, however, I see no reason that it couldn’t be used elsewhere.  The way that I’ve used it is to give each student a revision topic to focus on, then write four multiple choice questions for that topic.  After they have all written their questions they swapped topics and had a go at answering each other’s questions.  Towards the back end of the lesson the student who wrote the questions highlight the correct answers and the other students can then mark their own answers to see how they have done.

Collaborative exam question answering:  This is something that I use at all stages of different lessons as it can be used for a starter, main, plenary or during revision.  The way that this task is carried out is to have a number of exam questions printed out, one per sheet of A3 paper.  Each pair of students start off with a question and are given two minutes to start answering it.  After this time the students need to pass their question to the next pair and they need to continue answering it.  After the point when all the questions have been answered, the last pair to answer the question need to mark it using a mark scheme and then feed back to the rest of the class on how well the question was answered.  

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for things you can do within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk