Constructing and Demonstrating Knowledge.

The generic context of this post is derived from an understanding of what Hattie means by Direct Instruction. So please forgive the long quote from Hattie.

"Direct Instruction involves seven major steps:
1. Before the lesson is prepared, the teacher should have a clear idea of what the learning intentions are. What, specifically, should the student be able to do, understand, care about as a result of the teaching?
2. The teacher needs to know what success criteria of performance are to be expected and when and what students will be held accountable for from the lesson/activity. The students need to be informed about the standards of performance.
3. There is a need to build commitment and engagement in the learning task. In the terminology of Direct Instruction, this is sometimes called a “hook” to grab the student’s attention. The aim is to put students into a receptive frame of mind; to focus student attention on the lesson; to share the learning intentions.
4. There are guides to how the teacher should present the lesson-including notions such as input, modeling, and checking for understanding. Input refers to providing information needed for students to gain the knowledge or skill through lecture, film, tape, video, pictures, and so on. Modeling is where the teacher shows students examples of what is expected as an end product of their work. The critical aspects are explained through labeling, categorizing, and comparing to exemplars of what is desired. Checking for understanding involves monitoring whether students practice doing it right, so the teacher must know that students understand before they start to practice. If there is any doubt that the class has not understood, the concept or skill should be re-taught before practice begins.
5. There is the notion of guided practice. This involves an opportunity for each student to demonstrate his or her grasp of new learning by working through an activity or exercise under the teacher’s direct supervision. The teacher moves around the room to determine the level of mastery and to provide feedback and individual remediation as needed.
6. There is the closure part of the lesson. Closure involves those actions or statements by a teacher that are designed to bring a lesson presentation to an appropriate conclusion; the part wherein students are helped to bring things together in their own minds, to make sense out of what has just been taught. “Any questions? No. OK, let’s move on” is not closure. Closure is used to cue students to the fact that they have arrived at an important point in the lesson or the end of a lesson, to help organize student learning, to help form a coherent picture, to consolidate, eliminate confusion and frustration, and so on, and to reinforce the major points to be learned. Thus closure involves reviewing and clarifying the key points of a lesson, trying them together indo a coherent whole, and ensuring they will be applied by the student by ensuring they have become part of the student’s conceptual network.
7. There is independent practice. Once students have mastered the content or skill, it is time to provide for reinforcement practice. It is provided on a repeating schedule so that learning is not forgotten. It may be homework or group or individual work in class. It is important to note that this practice can provide for decontextualization: enough different contexts so that the skill or concept may be applied to any relevant situation and not only the context in which it was originally learned. For example, if the lesson is about inference from reading a passage about dinosaurs, the practice should be about inference from reading about another topic such as whales. The advocates of Direct Instruction argue that the failure to do this seventh step is responsible for most student failure to be able to apply something learned."

To summarise this quote Direct instruction involves
1. a teacher determining the Learning outcomes and sharing them with the learners.
2. a hook or and engaging mechanism to the learning about to take place.
3. an input of new infromation from or at least organised by the teacher.
4. a formative assessment of the undertsanding of this knowledge and reteaching where necessary. 5. Learners have an oportunity to demonstrate new learning.
6. A pleanary or review of the new infromation.
7. Another opportunity to practice this infromation is given.


In this post I would like to clarify between what I believe to be effective use of direct instruction. Firstly as I believe the learning taking place will probably have not manifested itself by section 5, as Nuthalls research on three (or four) exposures to the same knowledge has not yet been met. Secondly the vital application element to step 7 actually defines "learned" in many ways. It should also be pointed out that what is being described here by Hattie is an Accelerated Learning Cycle.

Two distinct sections.
The sections that are being considered here are the Construct and Demonstration sections. So how can we effectively use a construct and demonstrate part to lessons?

These two neighbouring sections of the Cramlinton learning cycle (and TEEP) can at times be confused as some activities could be used for both. In simple terms what we mean by the “activity section” is time within a lesson to help students make sense of new learning. While the Demonstrate part of the cycle is there to allow students to show and provide evidence that they have learned something new. Learning requires time, so that thinking about, questioning and connecting of ideas can take place. Imagine attending a lecture on a new educational directive. You have sat, listened carefully and occasionally made notes and as soon as it finished you were asked to give a presentation to the whole staff on what implications this will have for your school. Many of us would simply feel stressed, go blank, maybe bumble through and when we had finished remember several important ideas that we had not included. Everyone would find this task much easier if they had time to prepare and think about what was important.

 In essence this is the Activity  part of the lesson, a chnace to construct your own meaning. The teachers role during the construct part of the lesson would involve circulating the classroom supporting the students as they learn by providing alternative explanations, asking lots of leading questions and highlighting key bits of information. The information I get from my students during this section would not be used in planning my next lesson with them,but to inform our route through the remainder of the lesson. I expect mistakes to be made here as that is a sure sign that students are interacting with and thinking about the topic being studied.

In contrast the Demonstrate section I would plan my next lesson on the information I received from my students. Do they understand? Yes, so we can move on or No, lets review this aspect before we tackle the next step. This section should be highlighted to students so that they know they now have an opportunity to show they have learned something new. This is an important motivator for students as it allows them to prove not only to you but themselves that progress is being made. It is therefore essential that the activity used for this section matches exactly the outcomes shared at the beginning of the lesson, so that students don’t feel like they are being tested on something that they have not had time to think about, and you can measure the efficacy of the learning. (Has the plan worked?)  During this part of the lesson I would again circulate, but this time I would be prompting, guiding the students to parts of their notes and encouraging them to think convergently before applying this knowledge. The main reason being that this is the section I would mark from that lesson, if I provided the answers to this section all I would effectively be closing the formative assessment loop. It is also important to note that these tasks need not involve a written response, as a variety of activities including group tasks are valid.

Lesson examples.
It is sometimes easier to plan two separate activities. For example in French when teaching the structure of questions, the construct part of the lesson could involve students using colour coded cards that indicate the type of word it is, for example a noun or a verb. The students firstly build sentences that are provided in English, with the colour code helping they begin to see the structure of the sentence. They then construct questions to each scenario prompt. The students work in groups so that they can discuss their understanding. To support the students the teacher helps them distil the structure with questions like “Where is the verb in the sentence? Does it move?” and “What element of the sentence does not move in a question?” To demonstrate that the students understand the students are then asked to create their own questions. The teacher provides some words to use that which are not colour coded so that the students must apply their understanding. The students are in fact creating something new using a newly learned skill. The teacher supports the students while they do this by leading them through the sentence structure, something that they are familiar with, however how to a question is different. Contrast this with a teacher giving readymade meaning by saying things like “this word would be first”.

In A-level P.E. the students must understand three different energy systems in the body, and in which situations they are used. The teacher supports the learning , using a role-play so that the students gain understanding of how they work and what they do. To apply their new learning, the students work in pairs to integrate the three energy systems to different sporting activities showing how energy is produced at the various intensity and duration of exercise. Their knowledge is being applied to new situations and is not merely a regurgitation of facts. The students are supported with a list of the key terminology they must use, but not explanations of specific sporting situations.

A good example of a construct activity is the “artist easel”, a chunk of written information that the student has to interpret into a series of images. These images only have to mean something to the student and no one else, not even the teacher. The teacher will spend their time helping the learners understand the information, and student thinking and constructing meaning. The information that the students use as their “muse” can be easily differentiated for students of differing abilities so that access to relevant information is gained. This activity can then be turned into a resource for a student to refer to in the “demonstrate” section. The teacher can circulate the class asking questions to test understanding whilst covering up the writing, The type of question asked will determine whether the quality of the understanding is tested. A simple question like “what do you pictures mean?” will encourage regurgitation of the facts that you provided, where as a questions like “How does the plants trap the sunlight?”, ” What is the name of the reaction?” and “Why would two plants growing in the same field where one was shaded and the other grow different amounts of biomass?” These are questions that extend students thinking so that they have to apply their knowledge to a new situation to show that they understand. Again, these activities can be differentiated for students.

An exciting example from food technology involves the students constructing their understanding and applying their understanding in different lessons. In the first lesson the students make scones by differing recipes and methods for example more liquid or a lower cooking temperature. They then analyse these scones for appearance, texture, smell and taste, enabling them to understand the impact different cooking factors will have.In the next lesson the students apply this knowledge to design their own scones. This example clearly illustrates the difference between the two parts of Direct Instruction, firstly an opportunity to explore and develop new understanding and then a chance to apply this in a different situation not just regurgitating information, but application to create a real and tasty outcome!

Summary.
To summarise it would be unreasonable to ask our students to show that they had learned something before they had a chance to think about it. The time to construct and organise knowledge is vital. If the teacher moves off to quickly all could be lost with no learning taking place. The demonstrate section, should be seen as fiercely independent and unlikely to repeat back what you tell it. It will however tell you when learning has happened or if it hasn't providing feedback that a teacher can use.

The Pedagogical Anatomy of a lesson.

I've recently done a demonstration lesson in a school that I support, the purpose of which was to show strategies to engage and stretch the most able. as this was in a different school , with students I've met briefly I needed a strong lesson structure both in terms of practical organisation ( which love it or hate it PowerPoint facilitates this, it also allowed me to reflect on each part of the lesson planning) but also in terms of pedagogy. The lesson is planned using the TEEP learning cycle. This piece aims to explore the structures and the reasoning behind each strategy. The reasons have been italicised.

The opening slide was a starter activity, students here practice something they had done in a previous lesson and connect to a concrete fact that the lesson was aiming to explain. This helps prepare the student to learn and (using Hatties words) "build commitment and engagement. Challenge is added here by getting the students to establish the FACT, and by using technical words like correlate c.f. whats the pattern?

Next the studenst completed a ranking activity as to the likelihood of these statements being correct, this is primarily an teaching input, but trying to get the students to speculate whats really going on justifying their position. This is a higher order thinking skill and thereby increasing challenge. The questions quickly establish alternative conceptions of the ideas about to be learned. This student to teacher feedback information can then be acted upon. These also provide a focus for the incipient teacher input.
Since the students have been processing on their own so far, it is important to review not only the content but also the meta cognitive processes. Again this is structured so that they workout the facts for themselves. Question 3 is a "seed" question? I sell it as the question you can use to demonstrate mastery? It is given as soon as possible, to allow time for the students to think about it.

The learning intentions are planned using SOLO taxonomy, meaning that from the top the learning intentions are simple recalling of factsand this progresses to extended abstract demanding the students to make inferences based upon abstract ideas and prediction about hitherto unknown substances. The unistructural intentions are in fact essential learnings that the rest of the learning is built upon. This is not done by accident but through careful thinking about the pedagogical content knowledge of this topic, allowng specific intentions to be defined. John Hattie describes the use of SOLO as being "most valuable both in developing models of teaching and learning and also in our understanding of assessment". I have to humbly agree.

This then leads into a brief teacher input. The input has been delayed until this point to allow the teacher access to information available on student thinking on this subject. This allows accurate decisions to be made about pace and pitch, again this allows differentiation to take place. The input is carefully plotted to give a step by step method to perform the task and to emphasise the key and new language. This is brief around 6-7 minutes to allow maximum time for students to create meaning for themselves, thereby taking into account the age old saying - "it doesn't mean I said that they have learned it." It also allows the teacher to model the kinds of thinking and the connections that are necessary to fully understand the topic. This teacher input can be justified by the following quote from John Hattie " sometimes the deeper concepts need more specific and direct teaching". Infact the structure of the lesson is built around the notion of effective direct teaching employing the TEEP learning cycle

At this point a quick review is used to clarify the thinking, after the input. These questions were considered difficult ten minutes ago, but now the answers are obvious to the students. I was using a random name generator to select students ensuring that all are paying attention and that I don't focus the questioning on the 25% of students with their hands up! Since I did not know these students, I colour coded their names by their target grades, so that I could phrase the question in appropriate manner (differentiation): An "A" grade student would get something like so what's your opinion on these statements now?- While a "C" grade would get the more structured " So why do you now think that statement 2 is hogwash?". Research shows that a ration of 10 minutes teaching should have 2 minutes worth of review.

The students are then given a choice of which level they want to tackle. The colour coding seen above was not revealed in to the students, and is added for the benefit of showing planning progression and a confidence building trick. During the lesson the students are given the choice of easy, hard and"uber"-difficult. In reality this is not the case, as can be seen above with the order of difficulty going from yellow, orange, red, blue then purple. This was designed into the lesson in full knowledge that the purpose of this exercise was to allow the students to assimilate and practice the previous teaching, and allow the teacher to gain useful information on the alternative conceptions, sticking points and confidence levels within the classroom.Hattie describes this part of the lesson as "independent practice" but i would go further as this is THE opportunity for the teacher to personalise the experience for each student by providing support and challenge as appropriate.

It was hoped that the students would gain confidence by completing an easy one and the take the bait of a (unreal) difficult one. This gets the students to think that they can do this task. I like to make full use of the saying "whether you think you can or whether you think you can't = you're probably right!"

Since the demonstration nature of this lesson was stretching the most able, the above task was designed to give the same information in different ways, and introduce new language to the students. For example the inclusion of Sodium oxide is there to challenge the idea that covalent compounds are solely made from non metals, some have names and not formulae and vice versa. The most difficult one actually requires modification of the model provided during this lesson. Anyway enough Science.

Again since 15 minutes has past by the students are encouraged to review their learning. This activity actually serves two purposes with the second being to demonstrate their new learning. The task has been phrased to encourage generalisation of the key learning points. This is to help the students reach the highest levels of SOLO taxonomy as per the learning intentions. Reviewing should refer back to these to demonstrate progress, and this will allow student to self report this.

This is the point in the lesson that could involve a change of direction, I call this the " What if? " point, as in if what do I do if thye do not get i! This activity remained unused as the information in the classroom suggested that the students had progressed. This activity was designed to go back over the basics from a slightly different angle/ starting position, with a little more structure. It was then planned for the students to re attempt the previous activity.

This task is tantamount to another teacher input albeit a connecting one. The task is an activity called " X" marks the vowel, a task I invented to encourage students to interact with text. For a detailed write up of this teaching strategy please visit the wonderful ww.peelweb.org. The challenge in this activity is three fold. Firstly, the students are not being told the content being learned but are encouraged (and structured) to work it out for themselves. Secondly, the text needs to interpreted from having X's in place of the vowels, whxch xs stxll xxsy tx rxxd xf yxx cxncxntrxtx! And finally the questions the have to answer move from comprehension to comparasion and finally to inference. The final question is the third time the students have come across the notion of the boiling point of waterand relating it to its structure. Graham Nuthall's inspiring research tells us that students learn when they have three or four exposures to an idea in different ways. This is also a reason for the design of the What if activity.
By answering these questions the students also begin to demonstrate new learning. As a teacher I am less interested in the comprehension question and more interested in the questions where they have to apply new knowledge.

A major "content" plenary is then planned using a rather natty animation from the BBC. A task of listing seven key points, based on the brain based research that we find it easier to remember 5, 7, 9 items rather than say 10. This summary also enable the students to come across the information needed in another (different) way. This also allows for the uniqueness of student learning to be seen by the teacher. Graham Nuthall's research shows that student learner is fairly unique with up to 80% of the items learned being learned by only one or two students. This information is vital for a teacher to see, as this will give a crude measure of what has worked and not in the lesson and for future planning and differentiation.

Penultimately, and importantly the students are asked to speculate, which is a high order thinking skill, as part of a preview of next lesson. This activity allows students to meet one of the learning intentions and also provides a learning bridge to the next set of related content.

The final act brings closure to the lesson.The students then mark their progress against the SOLO learning intentions this is essential not only for motivation and the creation of a sense of pride but also in consolidating the important points within the lesson. John Hattie makes clear the effectiveness of self reporting grade as it helps build up an accurate picture that will inform their "prior" achievement.

Graham Nuthall's research can be found in his book "The Hidden Lives of Learners"

John Hatties meta analysis of achievement outcomes can be found in his book "Visible Learning"

A Simple task with big Impact.

The activities I would like to highlight here all take place within the first 10 minutes of a lesson commencing. Two of them have long been hard wired into my practice and I some what take them for granted. So the one I want to highlight is something that I picked up in Geoff Pettys inspiring "Evidence based teaching." It's not something new, in fact it is standard practice on any TEEP course I run, but, it has not made it into my classroom on a regular basis until this year. The beauty of Geoff Pettys book is that it gives activities a pedagogical purpose and backs up if effectiveness with evidence from either Hattie or Marzano.





The strategy is very simple, the simplest of the three by some way. All that is required is a visual representation of the learning that is about to happen.My interpretation of this can be seen in the examples I have used in the last two days. Anecdotaly the impact of this is profound. during one course a teacher complained that (since she had been late and missed the overview of the day) she could not see the overview as it had been obscured by another display and that she felts disorientated, as she not know what was going on. I have noticed my students increasingly asking me "are we now onto X ?", and I regularly see their eyes glancing up and down it.I feel it is well used, no less by me who uses it to clarify lesson plans in the morning, so that I have a very clear purpose and direction to the task chosen and in planning for managing transitions during the lesson. The effect size of this strategy is 1.27 . Needless to say this is a positive result. If you need more information on effect sizes you need to buy either Geoff Pettys book or John Hatties "Visible learning". In fact I would say every teacher needs these inspiring books.



The other two strategies are on the surface just as simple but in reality some of the most difficult tasks a teacher must do. Firstly is setting goals, or learning intentions or learning objectives. This is so hard, research shows tht teachers tend to write these as tasks rather than what will be learned. The effect size for this is 0.51. Again a worthwhile pursuit at the beginning of a lesson.





Finally a task issued at the start at the beginning of recalls prior learning. Petty recommends using questions here but any cognitive task will help, for example rank in order the most important facts from last lesson, as opposed to a word search of keywords. It is the connection and the search for meaning that is important not the simple recall. The effect size for this is 0.91.



When I read Petty the word "Wow!" stumbled from list as he points out the doing all three has a total effect size of 2.66. All in the first five minutes! Since reading this at least 90% of my (non enquiry) lessons begin in this way.

I believe it is the combination of these help students throughout the lesson: Where have they been, where are they going to and how are they going to get there. It's the foundation of comment only marking on a whole class basis. If I now ask my students what are they learning about then most of them will look to the graphical representation of the lesson first and then look at the outcomes displayed. It's very presence is giving them a pedagogical (albeit content based) purpose to each activity. Again consider an anecdote, if you want the students to do a presentation or a test, they know from the beginning and it' not just sprang upon them, they know from the start and in the context of their learning. It's all there for them in Technicolor!

My Learning Agenda

With the new term beckoning, and a summer of pondering, I have finalised what my learning agenda for my classroom will contain. This will be the purpose of all the pedagogical decisions I make. this year. I have based it upon two things. Firstly, where I want my students to be at the end of the year in terms of them as learners, not as what they have learned but how they learn. Secondly, I have considered where my students currently are, I am fortunate enough to already know over half my classes for the next year.

I am Au courant that the agenda I set must be manageable and actually improve my teaching/ creation of learning opportunities and develop my students as learners. I am confident that I am not creating extra work for myself bur in fact making my job easier.

So here are my priorities, which may change over the discourse of the academic year. ( and so they should if need be!)

1. Develop independence of students during enquiry based learning tasks.
2. Develop quality work, through quality feedback using the SOLO taxonomy.
3. Plan all new lessons and Enquiries based around Blooms Four learning dimensions.
4. Increase reflection in Sixth from students.

So what strategies am I planning to use to achieve each one.

Developing independence

What I really mean by this is ownership. Ownership of the learning and ownership of the learning strategies employed in doing so. To do this I will make clear every time the class is using a strategy, giving it a name to aid the development of a shared learning vocabulary. Each strategy will be displayed, labelled, annotated and classified as part of the reflective and meta cognitive process.

So when we get to work in a more independent environment (such as during enquiries)the students will find it second nature to choose to use a tool or a strategy to help them, rather than being passive learners they will seek and organise knowledge. If this happens currently, its lineage invariably involves me. I want to be increasingly out of these decisions.

Isaac Newton provides suitable inspiration for this one. When asked who made his telescope and where he got his tools he responded by saying " If I had (..) other people to make my tools for me, I had never made anything of it." This is exactly what I want my students to appreciate.

Developing quality work

The SOLO Taxonomy is based upon how students use knowledge and encourages students to apply and link concepts. Consequently, students operating at the upper reaches of the taxonomy are producing high quality work that not only has breadth but depth too.

My day to day assessment and feedback will not only focus on the content but look to assess the use of their knowledge. I have constructed a large wall display to place these qualities at the heart of my classroom and assist in making the language of the taxonomy part of everyday dialogues. I have planned an introductory activity and a self assessment opportunity in the first week that utilises the taxonomy. I have also planned large assessment tasks for the second week back that is based on the SOLO taxonomy which has specific content attached to each level, so that the taxonomy will also be seen with a subject specific context. I am aiming to do this regularly, as I can see the quality of my feedback improving too.

Research into the impact of the SOLO taxonomy demonstrates that it not only affects academic success but also the meta cognitive too. Students are more aware of their learning and how to improve. I want this for my students.

Planning using Blooms Learning Dimensions

Nothing fancy here, just a statement of principle. The balance that the four learning dimensions of factual, conceptual, procedural and meta cognitive knowledge will give to the curriculum of my classroom is just irresistible. It just make sense. Hattie ranks meta cognitive strategies as the 13th most effective "strategy" relating to achievement. This is clearly something I can do something about by planning to teach how and when to do it and not just giving students meta cognitive tasks. This will not just happen, I need to plan the development of these skills.

Increasing Reflection

As far as I am concerned Sixth form students do not regularly sit back and reflect upon what they are doing and why. Our school also dedicates a lot of the Sixth form curriculum time to independent study, although difficult to set up, manage and to make effective it does have a hugely positive impact on student success. (Hattie quotes its at around d= +0.75.) So the pedagogical purpose of prioritising reflection is to indirectly improve the students ability to learn independently.

Now, as a self confessed and very proud and cognisant Luddite, I am embarrassed (a little) to admit that I am intending to use Blogging to encourage this reflection. Although lets make this clear, with all the Web 2.0 shenanigans going on in education at the moment, that Blogging is not in fact the tool being used here. It is merely a way of making the student thinking visible, it is presentational. It allows me, an educator, to make a decision on what support, guidance or task my students do next. So, with this in mind I have planned strategies such as PEELS reading log to actually develop and engage my students in meaningful reflection. It is essential that students do not blog in superficial way or just write what they think I want. They need to learn how to do this. This is why teacher knowledge of pedagogy and teachers having a purpose to their teaching is much more important that teachers knowledge of Web 2.0 applications.

Why share Pedagogical Purposes? Part 1

I have recently stumbled across a few ideas that I think make clear why I think the sharing of pedagogical purposes works. I will admit that I am no expert in these matters but I am interested in tuning them into useful classroom tools.

I have recently recieved a copy of John Hatties Visible Learning book, and like all good books poses far more questions than it gives answers. The first thing it made me think about was when a teachers pedagogical knowledge becomes most useful. So in no particular order

1. when a learner does not comprehend and discerning why



2. when a learner has made a mistake and discerning why.



3. when progress is being made by a student and discerning why



4. when to intervene with a student and when not



5. when to utilise alternative ways of teaching/ learning.



6. when dealing with alternative conceptions that students arrive with.

All useful thoughts but ones that require solid evidence from students to help make a decision. Soemtimes a gut feeling is just not enough.

The final one fits very well with the idea of the learning --> unlearning--> over learning sequence. Which appeals immensely, but, in which position do I leave my learners?

Again, the very idea of students arriving with preconceived ideas about their world, is another good reason to have activities that illicit these so that teacher and student can explore and change them. Ian Mitchell of the PEEL project corrected me once as I used the term misconceptions, insisting, correctly, that they are alternative conceptions as they work in their current state of learning. All the more reason to ensure students are involved fully in the process.

The next thing in John Hatties Visible Learning I stumbled into was Poppers three worlds of learning of surface, mental and ideas which led me to Blooms taxonomy. Now, I thought I knew this ( and the revised one with Anderson et al) but somehow the educational world I've existed in seems to have missed the Four Dimensions of Knowledge. Many ideas in similar areas but nothings as resplendent as this. Once,I saw these I got the feeling that these will prove much more use to me and my students in the years to come. They also indicated to me that the sharing of pedagogical purposes are a route worth pursuing.

These are given as

1. Factual knowledge



2. Conceptual Knowledge



3. Procedural knowledge



4. 
   
   Meta cognitive knowledge

What strikes me is the simplicity, balance and usefulness of these. They shout teach me. They are very much what should be taught as opposed to how we should teach. Part of the criticism in Visible Learning is that teachers/ education is too often aimed solely at Factual knowledge.
I've had a go at reviewing a science enquiry I have written and we are about to use with around 400 year 8 students in Science. This should produce some interesting data to reflect upon over the summer.

http://tinyurl.com/ngcr7p Available here for closer scrutiny.

Essentially the ABC's are learning outcomes (statements currently) which have been plotted across the Four dimensions and up through Blooms taxonomy. The words in italics are the science specific thinking skills I am trying to develop in the students . I will blog about these when I'm finished creating the assessment hierarchies that go with them.

Now what this review shows me is that in fact the lesson plan actually does TEACH in the four dimensions. I will admit that this was done by accident but is satisfying non the less(if it works!). But what really excites me is the only reason it does this is that each task the students will do has a distinct, planned and assessable procedure that goes with it. For example when searching for relevant factors that would influence the outcome, the lesson flows as follows. Everything in blue is a way of sharing the pedagogical purpose with students. It is clear the emphasis that this requires, although it is not necessarily a time consuming thing.

1. Teacher states why we are going to use Debonos Green thinking hat



2. Use hat to generate many possibilities.
   


3. Debrief the use and the benefits of the hat.
   


4. Introduce filter map, say why its being used
   


5. Use filter map



6. Debrief use of the filter map



7. Summarise the factors that will be controlled.

I am hoping that in subsequent enquiry lessons the students will not require me to prompt and debrief as often, as they take over the decision making process of choosing which tool and when to employ it.

A final thought about this new grid was that the top four are all factual, and I have no planned "activities" directed towards them. I then realised that in fact they are not that important in this lesson, and that the students are quite likely to pick them up as they go along as this is what they will be thinking about. It then struck me that most of my teaching experiences have been directed toward this factual realm with an assumption that the "rest" will follow. In reality more teaching needs to directed towards the "rest" and the facts will follow.