Some interesting approaches to building school cultures.

“Schools cultures that support excellence can look very different.” Ron Berger ^[1]

One of the more enigmatic findings in Graham Nuthalls work is his unpicking of classroom and learning cultures ,  not all of which are  positive and nurturing. Where the relationships between students determining largely whether they are supportive or not. Nuthall shines a light on this problem but gives (disappointingly - am I allowed to even think this? )little by way of practical solution. He suggests that to negate negative peer cultures teachers should  “subtly work with it to manage each students learning opportunities “ and to “ create a powerful classroom culture that overrides the natural peer culture”.^[2]  So what might a "powerful classroom culture" look like?  

Due to the complex nature of cultures, it may be useful to look at some case studies of how different institutions have set about tackling establishing a “powerful classroom culture” . The Expeditionary Learning schools, and Uncommon school may at first appear diametrically opposed being either student centric to teacher centric models. However, it is the commonalities that may provide more use in establishing our classroom cultures. I recognise strategies and approaches from both in my classroom, and that’s OK. It really is.

The clearest and most impassioned view of what powerful learning communities can look like can be found within the pages of Ron Berger’s inspiring book “An Ethic of excellence” If you haven’t read it, you must. Do it now. Go to a bookshop. Take my car. Just do it. In it, Ron shares his passion for high quality student work, which provides for him, and the teachers at Expeditionary Learning Schools, the mechanisms for building a supportive and challenging community. High quality student work encapsulates all aspects of how and what students do: from Maths work to how they communicate publicly. They make clear what the expected standards are for each aspect of school life and then relentlessly teach and model it so that students understand what they must do in order to attain it. It clearly makes for aspirational and motivated students who know how to provide one another with “kind, specific and feedback” during the act of learning.

At the heart of Expeditionary Learnings philosophy^[3] (and similar schools such as the High Tech High group of schools in San Diego) is that success is defined by getting everyone to the top of the mountain not just ourselves. The strength of the school resides in the strength of its community. Students are therefore obliged to think of others and their role with their community, and as a result see themselves as active participants in their education becoming “crew not passengers” ^[4] along the way. In fact, my first classroom experience at High Tech High saw me naively ask a student what they were working on. The student showed no signs of pity in his response, but did not show me his work, but showed me around the classroom describing in astonishing detail the work of his fellow students. It was clear that their work was his work, and as result he benefited from a deep understanding of the subject.

It is no surprise that these schools engage with the wider community as a lever for student responsibility and learning. In these schools, the students undertake public exhibition of their work. These high stakes, reviews of their learning and character occurs regularly throughout the year and becomes the motivational mechanisms for the students.

My first exposure to students exhibiting their work was at High Tech High in San Diego. The students had been building toys for first graders that involved using a cam in the toys mechanism. The first graders had been interviewed by the students to develop a design brief, allowing them to make a bespoke toy for the younger child. A dozen or so international visitors were lead into the exhibition hall by the Larry Rosenstock, CEO and founder of HTH, and Rob Riordan, the legendary Emperor of rigour. The hall was already a mass of parents, families and business leaders from local toy factories. This was quite a daunting audience. My eyes settled instantly on a student who appeared to have no toy on display in front of them. Approaching her, she smiled, and I asked “Where is your toy?”. She smiled again and said “I did not get it finished in time”. At this exact moment David Price, our party leader and very astute educator, interrupted and asked “Where is your work?”, “Again she smiled and began to explain again “I did not get finished in time, but I will get it ready for the first graders on Monday”. Just as I was about to ask what had happened, Martin Said, a true gent and master classroom craftsman, interrupted asking "Sorry, where is your work... This is a rather extreme form of student accountability. As extreme as this sounds, with three unknown adults, who are hugely interested in education, that have travelled thousands of miles to be there are grilling you on where your school work is.

The surprising thing for me was how well she coped with this. She smiled, listened  to our questions, communicated clearly, honestly responded to our queries. Infact, she excelled in this situation. Her work was actually finished, but she had run out of time putting a high-quality finish onto it, and was not prepared to put inferior work on show. Yet, she had a large ring binder file, overflowing with her learning, which she gleefully shared and explained. It was very clear that she had learned lots of physics, lots of technology and was getting to grips with how to be a very successful learner. The exhibition served as very productive reflection for this student.

Now, I know that at first glance this looks almost superficial with students standing next to their work in a kind of glorified show and tell. I know it also sounds risky, with parents and visitors coming in to view the quality of student work, ergo your work. Furthermore, I know this sounds a complete pain in the backside scheduling student work, writing letters and organising an event in an already bounteous workload. I know these things, yet I wholeheartedly recommend that you do this. If I can’t convince you then please speak to your Art department at school, who have always done this, and ask what effects it has on the students. It does indeed require a curriculum set up to do this to this scale, but even small extent it can raise the stakes for students on quality and importance of their work matters. A simple mechanism is to may be sit at parents evening looking at student work rather than just some numbers on a piece of paper.

These schools clearly and obviously value both academic and character building success, and provide the operational conditions that allow student to thrive here. Berger challenges us to imagine a school culture that for students to fit in they must do well academically and be kind. What would you have to do in your school and classroom to start to work to this end? To normalise academic success as “what we do around here” requires more than one teacher efforts being supported fellow teachers, sharing and using consistent language of practice and shared values are essential. We intuitively understand this, as part of what we rely on to work as teachers. Our challenge is to provide classrooms that students get to see this too.

On a visit to two expeditionary Learning schools I was struck by the consistency of language used by the teachers. Nearly every classroom exchange (and hallway for that matter) involved the language of choice that lead in making their own decisions. The notion that self-direction  is powerful in these communities, although it should be noted that students may not naturally provide such a supportive environment. Communities need building, and one such story comes from Kathy Greeleys’ wonderful book “Why fly that way?”^[5] The transformation of a disparate and fractious groups of students into a cohesive and supportive community is far from a straight story, beset with setbacks and slow progress. Greeley’s persistence and belief in keeping classroom culture at the heart of her endeavours and planning eventually works for these students. At times, she took the brave decision to shelve the curriculum until the issues in the class had at least been challenged. This will certainly ring true to a lot of teachers where either the students’ behaviour, attitudes and relationships must be addressed before they are able to productively engage with the curriculum. It reminds me that sometimes culture must trump content.

At the heart of Greely’s approach was the belief that rituals and routines can be used to value the qualities of the community they were striving to be. Her students were provided many opportunities to talk and share thought and feelings, as she sought agreement on the student culture, in circle time. Circle time- the act of sitting students in circles in order to talk may seem a little childish or even hippy-ish, but they do allow sharing without authority, hierarchy and the sharing of ownership, and in doing so help build relationships.

Berger, Greely, Expeditionary learning and High Tech high encapsulate much of what was defined as the conditions for “Powerful learning “ ^[6] The components as:

1. . What they learn is personally meaningful.
2. What they learn is challenging and they accept the challenge.
3. /What they learn is appropriate for their developmental level.
4. They can learn in their own way, have choices, and feel in control.
5. They use what they already know as they construct new knowledge.
6. They have opportunities for social interaction.
7. They get helpful feedback.
8. They acquire and use strategies.
9. They experience a positive emotional climate.
10. The environment supports the intended learning.

Uncommon schools

“Teaching is the best and most important work in our society” Doug Lemov 390

The first thing that strikes you about Uncommon schools is just how teacher centric their approach appears. They take this approach as a group of pragmatic idealists that didn’t chase educational equity in the abstract but pursue it relentlessly as instructional problem solvers in learning communities. It is based on a belief that students rely on teachers to create such environments. They started by looking closely, analytically even at what the most successful teachers did, the ones whose students were “joyfully engaged academically, working collaboratively as a team, and generating jaw dropping results”. In his book, Teach like a champion 390 Lemov identifies that teachers are not often serious about learning from teachers that are like this.

This approach is remarkably similar to the Effective Teacher behaviour research of Reynolds and Mujis ^[7] we saw in chapter 7, in which we summarised effective teacher as:

Effective teachers are confident in their ability, and highly committed to the success of all students. Their interactions are consistently fair and respectful, inducing a sense of trust in their classroom. They have the ability to think analytically and conceptually allowing them to be flexible in their approaches. They act proactively and are constantly seeking out information to make good decisions. They set high standards, modelling them and hold others accountable. They have an overwhelming passion for learning and what education can do. They work in teams, understand the motivations of others and seek to influence them in positive ways. They communicate clearly and are inclusive. They employ a variety of teaching methodology that engage and stimulate thinking. They take an active interest in their own pedagogical content knowledge and use this knowledge to teach as well as they can. They create classroom communities that provide an ordered and civilised climate where students feel safe and suitably challenged. They teach and they learn and seek to model the behaviours that exemplify these noble pursuits.

The teachers the Uncommon Schools studied excelled at the parts of a teachers job we often take for granted, or consider to mundane: How we patrol our classrooms; How we ensure that all students are engaged; How we target questions; How we frame situations in a positive light; How we use time well; and how we strategically move students on . Uncommon schools take pride in “well delivered lessons [with] a heart of love, and [the] celebration of teachers for their impact on students life trajectories.” It sees itself as an organisation that is about great teaching and teachers most of all.

Their approach is based upon “sure fire routines, and a joyful culture that builds a productive platform for learning”. It is more than just really good classroom management with a critical focus upon a “culture of error” where it is safe for students to show their mistakes. A culture that resonates loudly with the themes of this book: students’ prior knowledge, their misconceptions and how we can use feedback well.

Teachers are portrayed as artisans, who use simple tools to craft learning and students. The tools may be simple, but things of beauty can be created . It is the focus on getting what may be considered the small things right, and much more. In perfecting the use of simple tools, we get to reflect upon the art of teaching too. Lemovs’ book, forms the basis of teaching toolkit for teaching well and ensuring all students achieve. Lemov insists on naming techniques so that a common language can exist to allow teachers to “analyse and discuss” the classroom, and perhaps more importantly be ready to “adapt and adjust” the techniques so their style, context and students are catered for as well as possible.

The problems of teaching are endemic, and therefore “entirely predictable” according to Lemov. You may have seen this approach alreadyon this blog, with PEEL’s “teacher concerns”. Similarly the Uncommon Schools approach seeks to align common problems with “specific, concrete and actionable techniques” . It is the skill of the teacher to select the right tool, for the right job at the right time.

The Uncommon Schools is neatly encapsulated in what seems to be a benign teacher action whilst issuing resources., in this case a worksheet. The teacher has the student practice handing sheets around the classroom so that it takes around 10 seconds to complete, rather than the usual  80 seconds, thereby saving a significant amount of time each lesson, each day and each academic year This allows the students to concentrate more on what matters: the cognitive work, and many of  their routine and rituals are used to build “strong learning habits”  and increase student autonomy so that the proportion of cognitive work increases. This may not sound that important to leafy suburban schools, but the structured approach and the accountability and autonomy the routines imparts have been seen as instrumental in tackling the achievement gap between the rich and the poor. The ethos of Uncommon schools is to focus “primarily on serving students of the greatest need”. These may well be the students who do not have the consistent and structured home lives that lead to good self-regulation and learning habits, so the orderly approach provides their experience of how this can help a person become successful.

Interestingly, the idea of culture in Uncommon Schools is linked inextricably to behaviour, once more reminding us that behaviour management is not enough, as Lemov rightly points out “order is necessary but not sufficient for learning, and culture is more than just eliminating disruption”. Lemov goes on to define what culture means in this context identifying five principles, that when “well balanced” can provide for a “strong” learning culture.

The following table will hopefully illustrate the hierachy within these principlesand gives prompt s for teacher thinking and planning steps. 

Principle	Definition	Implications for the teacher.	Planning questions
Discipline	Knowing the right way to do something.	Students must be shown/ taught how the teacher wants each task done.	When and where do the students get to practice these routines/ techniques? How do you know when this routine has become a habit?
Management	Process of reinforcing behaviours	Relationship building is an essential part of this. Rewards and sanction become less effective over time.	How do you construct relationships that are ”non-transactional” i.e. contain no rewards or punishments. How do I link good learning behaviours and academic success?
Control	Capacity to cause someone to do what you ask	The power a teacher has to assert control over a class the more freedom can be given. Students are more likely to be controlled by someone they trust.  Being specific with language-e.g. instead of saying “calm down” rephrase to say “please return to your seat and start your work”	How can you phrase your requests so that they are more likely agreed to? How do you build trust with students/
Influence	Next step beyond control. Helping a student to internalise the thing you suggest	Aim of using influence is to get students to believe in long term success by wanting to behave positively. Often a failure to exert influence is what stops students from believing in classroom cultures designed for their benefit	How do you move students from behave to believe? How can you building in greater autonomy so that the students have greater ownership of the responsibility for learning?
Engagement	Engaging students in “important, interesting and challenging work”	How do we get students to do more of the cognitive work?	How do we transport students to “real scenarios?” How do get students to have a vested interest?

So, what can we learn about classroom culture from these institutions?

Most importantly, culture does not lie in the differences between these approaches, but rather in their commonalties. Just as we need to be able to explain the concepts of our subjects in multiple ways, we also need a variety of approaches to start, develop and maintain a productive classroom community. Kathy Greeley’s book- Why fly that way? – highlights that the answer will be different for different students in different contexts, there is no one right answer. But it is in the blend of elements that we can begin to understand.

Both emphasise high academic expectation as a central tenet to their approach, communicating that all students are capable of achieving highly. Students success is clearly correlated to teacher expectations. ^[8] However, this is easier said than done. Poor differentiation, along with teachers de-selecting concepts which they believe students cannot comprehend, even before the students have attempted them, ultimately cause our students to experience low expectations All too often we just hidebehind the claim that we have high expectations of their “behaviour”. Yet the mathematics here is simple:

Low Academic expectations + High Behaviour expectation= Low expectations

Our craft and skill here, is how we sculpt a culture that encourages student to be willing to tackle all that you throw at them academically speaking, and how we grant access to all of the content to students who are “less able” or in reality students who have impoverished prior knowledge. Lest we forget all students have the same capacity to learn, it is just the so called “more able” have a higher starting point when it comes to the attainment tests, that inform our opinions of ability. Our ability  to express high expectations begins with how well we can cater to their needs.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect that both approaches share is the prominence of the teacher. Without highly motivated and supremely motivating great teachers neither system would work. Do not be misled by the apparent student centric view of Expeditionary Learnings approach. There is a great deal of design, organisation relationship building along with brilliance in their teaching behind this successful school culture. Likewise, it would be folly to think that the teacher centric aspects of Uncommon Schools are the be all in and end all of their success. Their culture works because the teacher creates the environments in which students take increased levels of autonomy and responsibility in their learning.

Both organisations believe that the act of learning can be learned, so that students can increase their capacity to do more of the cognitive work of learning, which ultimately, they develop deeper academic understanding. Routines and rituals are ubiquitous in both approaches in order to provide smooth running classrooms and facilitate student work. It is the habit-forming nature of these ways of working that forms the basis of the students learning skill set and attitudes.

Routines and rituals require a common language and understanding. Sharing language with fellow teachers and with students allows the conversation of the classroom to be about learning, and how to do it. Learning becomes the culture, and how we use routines and procedures and their associated pedagogical purpose are what changes it.

Finally, both approaches understand that it takes time to build a truly aspirational and supportive culture, and that the rules and routines are just the start points, and that we must proactively develop our classroom cultures.

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Some suggested Reading and References

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[1] An ethic of excellence _ Ron Berger.

[2] Graham Nuthall The Hidden Lives of Learners NZCER

[3] Now this section of the book is going to make me sound like some right jet setting Charlie, and for that I apologise. Although the sweet Maine lobster in Portland, and the view from the Pacific Beach Alehouse in San Diego make it ever so hard to be sincere with this apology.

[4] Expeditionary Learning Core Practices.

[5] Kathy Greeley Why fly that way?

[6] Ron Brandt http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/198179/chapters/Conditions-for-Powerful-Learning.aspx  Accessed 27/07/17

[7] Reynolds and Mujis 1999 The Effective Teaching of Mathematics: A review of research

[8] Speybroek et al: The Role of Teachers' Expectations in the Association between Children's SES and Performance in Kindergarten: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

Falling in love again...

I think I've gone and done it again, I have fallen in love with PEEL, although it's probably more honest say falling more in love with PEEL.
The reason is simple, the alignment of their good learning behaviours and Graham Nuthalls research. 

1. Checks personal comprehension for instruction and material.  Requests further information if needed.  Tells the teacher what they don't understand.

The idea here is, linked to his idea that teachers can not tell if students are learning or not from the wherewithal of classroom activity, this is a call for students to be OK with not knowing, and to share this with the teacher. Thereby granting us access to the third world of students private world.

2.  Seeks reasons for aspects of the work at hand.

This is a classic strategy to find out how and where to connect the ideas being learned to bigger questions or problems. This is Nuthalls third premise of effective activities being built around big questions. 

3.  Plans a general strategy before starting.

and this is Nuthalls fourth premise that effective activities are managed by the students themselves.

4.  Anticipates and predicts possible outcomes.

Two systems operate simultaneously when learning. One is the working memory the other is a reasoning system inferring and deducing information. It's why learning can happen even if students have only been exposed to the full set of information about a "concept" a couple of time, but have had partial a couple of times too. Check out page 126 of Hidden Lives. 

5.  Checks teacher's work for errors; offers corrections.

Is this the epitome of students managing their own activities? 

6. Offers or seeks links between

     - different activities and ideas

     - different topics or subjects

     - schoolwork and personal life

Nuthall talks at length about the schema formed in the long term memory, and how these are intertwined with "how" we know it. This is often a good start point to begin to tackle alternative (mis) conceptions. 

7.  Searches for weaknesses in their own understandings; checks the consistency of their explanations across different situations.

For learning to happen students must meet the information in different guises and contexts. Again, I feel this useful in undermining alternative conceptions ( I have been corrected both times I have met Ian Mitchell from PEEL, who deeply understands that these errors in understanding may well be rooted in observation and logic),which can be challenged by developing students' skills in a variety of contexts, e.g. using questions during fieldwork and practical demonstrations.( from Jane Dove) 

8. Suggests new activities and alternative procedures.

Ditto, fourth premise. Indeed this is a category used in the research, as students manipulate the task presented to them by teachers. 

9.  Challenges the text or an answer the teacher sanctions as correct.

Ditto, students managing their activities. 

10. Offers ideas, new insights and alternative explanations.

11.  Justifies opinions.

12.  Reacts and refers to other students  comments. 

The final three all tie in with the first premise that social relationships determine learning. Nuthall, does indeed highlight many of the detrimental aspects of social relationship and offers this. "Some teachers have overcome this, by developing powerful learning communities". If the interactions of my students were peppered with these three behaviours I'd really think I was onto something...

I am not on  commission with PEEL, although I should be.  You can find them here www.peelweb.org it is a bargin to subscribe and gain access to the 1500 articles and ideas on offer.

A little conversation.

Context: Year 8 Science students have been invetsigating the truth of the 5 Second rule.  Writing hypothesis, carrying out fair tests, using aseptic technique, analysing the data and drawing conclusions based upon the evidence.

Purpose: The aim of this sequence of practical lessons has been to develop the students notions of the independent and dependent variables. A very useful abstract concept, but will serve to transfer the science skills being learned.

Start Point: The students have completed four lessons and two homeworks in this lesson sequence. I have marked their work focussing on the "Controlled Variables" , the "Graph" and the "Conclusion" (that has been structured around a P.E.E paragraph structure. The students have just spent 45 minutes or so responding to my feedback, which is focused around the use of the Independent and Dependent. variables, they are in the throws of completing this task.They are reaching the point where, they are tiring and its that moment wher you notice they beging to beome off task, and classroom noise becomes audible and different.

Confronted with this situation I had six simple choices

1. Be Ineffective. Ignore it.Whinge and call it a crisis.
2. Be Busy. Circulate to re-engage those of task
3. Be Negative. Say its too noisy in here, be quiet and get on with your work.
4. Be Positive. Prsise the efforts of the students so far, encourage them.
5. Be Crafty. Change the task that the students.
6. Be Purposeful. Develop Self regulation.

I plummed for the Self Regulation, as Children are more focused and self-controlled when teachers listen to them and emphasize the positive rather than the negative. I've kind of wrote about this before here.   Here is how I decided to deal with it.

The conversation:

"What might I be concerned about, right now?"
"We are noisier"
"Mmmm, OK, What else?"
"The work rate is a bit slower?"
"And?"
"We are getting more distracted?"
"What else?"
"That we are understanding how to use the Independent and Dependent varibales?" ( I don't know why, but I'm still a little taken a back when my students know what they are doing!)
"Exactly, I can see you have worked hard practicisng , 'cos that's what we are doing here! Let's remember why we are doing this, and that it is a difficult skill to master.You have all put a big effort into getting this right . Can you identify the Indpendent and dependent varaibles? Can you say how the Independent varaible affects the dependent?" 

The Crux: A series of questions we then asked"What can we now do as a result of our effort? How do we make the most of the effort you already made? What happens now to make sure you complete this task to standard you are happy with?  "

The students went on ask for more time to complete this task, and refocused on quality within  the task. " I need to rephrase conclusion to put the independent variale before the depednedent" "I've made the scale too small on my graph." A seemingly generic intervention led to subject specific reflection.Remarkably, this conversation has happened in two different teaching groups, almost word for word. Would this have happened with options one to five?

My view: I had noticed that after 40 odd minutes of hard slog, the students were tired, and a few were infact doing the things they identified as negative. The initial reason I stopped the class was to manage their learning behaviour, I wanted to prolonge this sustained effort. "Telling them off" for being off task may have been counter productive.

By framing my repsonse in terms of what was being learned ( if it had not emerged I would have told them, and then asked why?) I want the students to connect learning with sustained effort, it was important to catch the students working hard, even if some had went just beyond this and were in search of a much needed break. Secondly, as with all teaching activities, students become distracted by the task at hand, it is easy for students to forget the reasons the work is important duirng an activity. "I'm doing me work Sir" as opposed to "I am learning how/ about/ why ", it is why the children behaves, teacher tells model has failed us. Despite the obviously charm of such as simplistic model, it simply does not work. Students must be engaged in the process, if we can do this students choose to do the hard option, in this case to continue and improve their understanding.

So, even behaviourial responses can be educative, in this case both Content and Process driven. It is worthwhile considering what the other three options would have brought about. In this instance I did use praise, but only after we had identified the (potential) problem. Being busy and being negative would have worked me, but not necessarily the students nor impacted upon the quality of the student work or learning. Being crafty would have avoided the  challenge and distract from what I wanted them to learn.


Learning does not happen in 20 minutes, it requires sustained, clever, engaged effort, and sometimes students can provide these conditions for themselves.

Why is PEEL the Barry Cryer of Education?

Why is P.E.E.L the Barry Crier of Education? from DKMead

Some favourite PEEL procedures.

Using peel to turn passive learners active from DKMead

An old workshop presentation (from 2007!). These procedures are all useful for either changing the dynamics of a class, as a formative assesssment strategy or encouraging purposeful interaction with the content being learned. More detailed procedural ideas of these can be gained from the Peelweb.org website.

 

I think most of the procedures here stand alone, apologies if they do not.

SOLO taxonomy, planning and progress..

Today, a group of year students have been completing an extended writing task based around the wonderful PEEL strategy "fact in fiction". Since we had not seen each other for a week I structured a few tasks to remind them of the content ( and resources) and to facilitate the connection of concepts.

First, was a group task that had them as a list key ideas about the Immune system, a chance familiarise themselves with the content once again. A pure multistructural task.

Next  they were to define and distinguish between some key vocabulary. Words I knew they had struggled with in the previous lesson. The distinguish element to this was to ensure a relational understanding.

Another relational task followed, but this time choice was given  either comparing two ideas using a comparison alley or using an analogy map to create mental models for how these two ideas work. I was pleased to introduce choice as some of the analogies were very revealing. I particularly enjoyed the students likening lymphocytes to a bottle of  bleach as they release a chemical against pathogens.


All of these tasks were designed to be about five minutes in length and very much focused on the content. The next one was more complex but I'm hoping will lead to a detailed sequence. Again a relational task but required several pieces of complex information being used. The keywords here are the conceptual parts of this content.

The final task was to complete the fact in fiction task. This involves writing a fictional story inserting relevant facts along the way, but the clever bit is the insistence that the facts are underlined along the way. This encourages the use of key vocabulary and regular reflection. It is obvious when work is lacking in the content, this visual nature makes it easy for the students to see omissions and flaws in their work. There are opportunities for students to work in an extended abstractt way here and at the very least it encourages relational thinking. (See below for an example) 


SOLO taxonomy has helped the planning by making it easier to see the increase in the demand of each task and focus on the key connections important for understanding this topic. It is in this way that knowledge and understanding can be built, and teachable moments found and then focus upon what matters, in understanding and for the students at that time. Simple everyday tasks are easily sequenced to plan for (more) complex responses in student work. 


 An example of Fact in Fiction task

A weary travellers tale.

 (A fact in fiction writing task)

 Bob and Billy are twins. Identical twins the same in every way. They have just returned from holiday in China. Bob is jet lagged but is generally just dandy! Billy is not. He is feeling unwell. He has a fever, diarrhoea, and a rose coloured rash. Five weeks before they went, they had an appointment to be vaccinated for Typhoid and Malaria. Unfortunately, Billy had double booked with a hair appointment. His hair look superb on the plane, even the air hostess said so! 


 Your task is to complete the story of Bob and Billy outlining how Billy gets better with the help of his immune system. You must use as many scientific facts as possible. Underline them as you go. Make sure you include the following

•  How the white blood cells in Bobs body are working to protect him. 
•  Name the two types of white blood cell
•  How they immune system will fight the disease
•  What its means to be immune 
• What a vaccination is and how it works. 
• Which disease Billy has, why you think this and what type of microbe is causing it

 Good luck.

Student work using fact in fiction 

Establishing Pedagogical purposes

Pedagogy should at its best be about what teachers do that not only helps students to learn but actively strengthens their capacity to learn David Hargreaves, Learning for life, 2004.

This in a sentence is what pedagogical purposes are all about. The benefits are clear, greater teacher clarity, improved student teacher relationships and improved metacognitive thinking by students. These feature prominently on Hattie's table of effect sizes in positions eighth, eleventh and thirteenth respectively. The following quote from Ruth Deakin Crick bears this out and eloquently highlights the benefit with having a clear learning agenda and the sharing of pedagogical purposes.

there is evidence that the key themes which form the necessary conditions for building learning power in classrooms include the quality of the relationships between teaches and learners, the quality of dialogue in which listening to the ‘other’ is central to questioning and debate, the development of a locally owned language for naming these processes, student choice and voice, and resequencing the content of the curriculum, which involves problematizing’ and ‘contextualizing’ the content so as to create  challenge and meaningfulness  Deakin- Crick et al 2002.

 For me there are three ways of quickly establishing a culture of sharing pedagogical purposes in our classrooms. I think the enquiry based and Project based learning may be a more comprehensive way of doing this. However, the three strategies can be categorised as,

1. Using specific tasks to stimulate a discussion around the act of learning.
2. Stating and debriefing the pedagogical purpose of each "task"
3. Increasing the number of metacognitive strategies used.

A splendid example of a task being used to stimulate discussion is the PEEL projects "Dirty trick" strategy (a full description of the strategy can be found on their website). Whereby students are asked to copy a set of notes, which are filled with errors and general nonsense.I like to distract them form this by titling them "Everything you need to know about..." and the like. Here's an example with living rocks that they never notice!

An example of Dirty Trick

Responses can be quite emotive- so use sparingly

I only use this sparingly as students could feel cheated, I love this example as it shows this student cares about what they learn. . If like me you spend a long time building up trusting relationships you wouldn't want to use it inappropriately, so a brief task of no more than 5 minutes is best. However, it does open up discussion about active and passive learning and responsibility. The students tend check and question information before they make notes and some even start to challenge the information I present. I always throw in a few silly ideas into the following lesson to check that they are questioning the information.


Increasingly, my lesson plans that I write that others use  highlight the strategy being used and how to debrief it. This helps turn a complete this task/ worksheet style of approach to developing student knowledge of possible strategies they could choose to use when working on a project or in a more independent way. The debrief of each of these tasks is vital. I normally ask the following questions.

1. How did you go about using this tool?
2. What was difficult about using it?
3. What does it allow you to do? or Why would you use it again?
4. Where would you use it again?

Question 3 and 4 are obviously there to facilitate transfer of the tool or way of thinking.

This AudioBoo highlights how readily students take to this, I love how they try to persuade doubters to the value, and is a chance for them to show how much they enjoy and care for learning. These students had just used a Whole Part Map for the first time. I think it also shows how it is necessary for the teaching of learning strategies to have a content/ real learning basis.



I always find this table useful in analysing the tools I use during my teaching.


Developed by Jill Flack.(PEEL)

 The final way of establishing pedagogical purpose with students is to increase metacognition. This can be inextricably linked to the debrief above. Although, I find that specific tasks as render positive results too. A favourite are the metacognitive wrapper tasks asked at the start of a session to prime the kind of thinking wanted (including content) and at the end to see how that metacognition had changed or improved their thinking. Again spending a small quantity of time discussing these often brings out generic strategies that some students use, allowing others to mimic their style of working.

A lot of these strategies can be framed through the use of SOLO taxonomy. It has a clear pedagogical purpose, to highlight what high quality learning woudl look like and providing structure and guidance to get there. The shared language mentioned in the quaote from Ruth Deakin Crick, is clear and unambiguous and readily picked up by students. And, through the clever linking of specific tools to the levels will add another dimension to the student debrief on the tool by asking "Where on SOLO taxonomy does this tool help you think at?".

So why should we share pedagogical purposes with students? This is succinctly summarised in the closing quotation.

‘Effective teaching … should aim to help individuals and groups to develop the
intellectual, personal and social resources that will enable them to … flourish … in a
diverse and changing world.’ ESRC TLRP Evidence-informed principles for teaching
and learning: No 1, March 2006