The ABC of Curating the process of student work?

"I work harder showing the work than I do helping my students make it" - Jeff Robin HTH Unboxed Issue 1

"The key to excellence is this: It is born of a culture" Ron Berger An Ethic of Excellence.


Audience.

This post occurred to me during the Call of the Wild Project, when we showed the audience page of the blog we had set up to capture the process on Blogger to the students. Their response was complex; they clearly impressed themselves, they were THAT interesting, they realised that their learning was important to others, not just Sir and that they now had a responsibility to produce something of quality. This resulted in greater student motivation and engagement not only in the project but in the refelction of the process that it engendered. I believe that this experience has had a lasting effect upon the students.

As a result I wanted to capture this in future subejct based projects. So, I have simply repeated the process, although this time its one blog with three year 8 classes. However, the response of the students has been the same, just today the students entered the class and asked "how many visitors had they had?".

This reminds of a much repeated mantra at High Tech High, that students will only go to University as far as they have travelled. They therefore send them quite literally around the world. Obviously, I am not doing that, but these students are becoming more aware that there is a world out there. It's motivating.

The current Blog can be found here, it is has so far "set the scene" of the project and will hopefully develop with student drafts, critiques, and reflections. I think it captures some of the teacher planning that has went on before the project began.

I am hoping that it will create an authentic audience for their work.

Build 

The second role of this blog is to build a resource for students to use. Some of these will be blatant Science resources such as useful weblinks and useful Youtube clips. Some will be the work the class generates that aids learning and the production of quality, such as success criteria.

Other uses will be an aid to reflection, so that the process is clear and the progress in their learning and product obvious. It is a great way to use some Daniel Willingham's advice such as "Praise-Effort, not Ability" (I'm sure that's Dweck's) this made easy as student can SEE the effort they have put in, they will be able to see "The hard work paying off", and I am sure it will show how difficulties (and perhaps" failures) are a natural part of learning ".

All in all, I hope the public display of these things will be special, and create a useful memory hook of "what was I doing when I learnt that?" From the few student reflections on there already it is interesting that the content knowledge  has been prominent. My favourite being a quote by an unlikely student, who said "The most difficult part so far has been deciding where to draw the arrows to show where the forces act upon the object". If you knew this student, you'd be as pleased as I am. It is his longest response to date, and his understanding (and precision of his thoughts) are simply heartening. He impressed himself too.

"Self Esteem from Accomplishments. mot compliments" Ron Berger.


Care

...and not just for the final project. In fact, the project can look after itself in that regard, students think it's a useful, challenging and enjoyable thing to do. The part I really want them to care about is the process that they are going through.

When I consider why I value Project Based Learning, partly it's the control I gain over the content, but mainly it is our opportunity to develop (and value) the attributes and skills that society (well the non political part) values. So whether you are going to assess these or just encourage them, to use the dichotomy of the Buck Institute, then making them obvious and putting them on show is important for your students and the culture of your classroom.  It will play an important part of shaping how we want our students to be in our schools and eventually in our community.

http://www.hightechhigh.org/unboxed/issue8/want_to_get_home_on_time/ I hope Mark Moorhouse from Mathew Moss High School can forgive me in the hatchet job of my summation of his article.

"How we teach, the relationships we build and maintain are essential in the formation of communities which we (should- my addition) serve. We accept that academic success is vital but so are the people that schools and teachers influence."

I know the ABC's here are contrived and overlap, but curating a project blog values a neglected part of what I do as a teacher, and that's to build a culture.

 I hope you join us.

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.