An example of a critique.

My students in year 7 are currently working on a project where they have to analyse a basket of food items through the eyes of different characters for example a vegan, an althlete or a mum on a budget. They researched food items in a pre selected "basket" and found the nutrients, food miles and chemicals used in their production or manufacture, as well as creating character profiles for each of the "analysts".
After this research they were requested to make some art work based on this research and we then critiqued it around these questions. This was their first exposure to this technique and the feedback norms, which are find are encouraging a rigorous dialogue in the classroom.

1.Hard on content, soft on people.
2.Step up, step back.
3.Feedback must be kind, helpful and specific.

Next we began writing scripts for these characters, and these audio clips are from their second attempt at critqiuing each others work.
I requested them to make brief presentations with around 25 minutes to prepare. To guide them I modelled the kind of thinking required on an exerpt of work and set guiding questions. My students are increasingly aware of SOLO taxonomy and are beginning to refer to it, again I modelled this before they began.

Essential questions were set to encourage high quality feedback. Which are given below.

It is most pleasing to hear the students use them and make specific reference to them in their presentations, which helps them focus on the content and provide specific feedback. I feel the structure of a presentation also encourages all students to contribute too and also assist in getting the balance between student and teacher feedback. One of the great strengths of critqiues is that they help build a community of learners, where every student is aware of what the others are learning and are able to provide help to one another. This is true student voice in action,and it's all about learning.

http://audioboo.fm/boos/350706-an-example-of-student-critique-presntation

A teacher running a session must be confident in using wait time before and after students have spoken, resisting the temptation to jump in with an answer. I personally find note making helps keep my mouth shut and helps me go beyond the feedback that student have themselves given.

Here is an example of the students written feedback followed by an audio boo of them discussing the work. I conclude the presentation asking if the feedback was useful, and giving feedback on the feedback itself. Students need training in doing this, although for only their second attempt this is really rather good feedback.

The next audio boo is from a student who has just received some peer feedback which was very positive. She feels as though the feedback was not helpful enough, which allows me to reinforce the norms and prompt for some of the things that I thought she could do. This students is extremely talented, I think it was great for her peers to see her request guidance, it sends a clear message that success is not something that you have its something that you work towards. http://audioboo.fm/boos/350762-was-that-useful-feedback

The final AudioBoo is the students who have just given this feedback responding to the question "what have you learned by giving this feedback?". It is essential that critqiues are seen as being beneficial to everyone. This is often missed in peer feedback, the people who benefit most are the ones who give the feedback. Again listen for teacher wait time, which has students adding to what they have previously said and others actually joining in. It is a most effective technique.
http://audioboo.fm/boos/350767-what-have-you-learned-by-giving-feedback

A Social Experiment- An Enquiry Based Experience.

I have just spent two days in the University of Bristol Graduate School of Education taking part in a social experiment based around a model of enquiry. My role was very much that of a learner. I have a huge amount to think about analysing the processes involved, connecting this experience to that of my students and how to share this learning with colleagues. I have been hugely disciplined and recorded a large quantity of my metacognitive thinking.
The first thing I've learned is by being metacognitive I have been able to work on two levels, that of a learner being strategic in what I'm doing and secondly as a way of transferring my ideas in to my classroom and that of others. I am rather hoping that after analysis the key skills that I used will become clear, categorised and therefore "teachable". I'm also hoping that the reflection of my co- enquirers will broaden this knowledge base.
This brings me neatly on to my second point. How learning is a social construct, and that (although some knew each other) a disparate group of learners so readily shared, supported and critiqued the learning of others. The process led us to work individually with small forums for discussions a learning community struck up. This contrasts with the intense work I do with my classes to build a community. Maybe it was the shared vision, small group size or the intellectual sophistication of the group, but this happened without effort! Everyone was enquiring on a variety of different themes in a highly personalised way, but during the times we shared our thinking several commonalities arose, one of which was the social nature of learning. I need to critically reflect on the frequency and the quality of these occasions in my classroom.
I started my enquiry looking at trying to identify a Dragonfly that I'd seen, I will blog about the process in more detail. Everyone had a different theme but the consistency of the level and diversity of the creative thinking was astonishing. Especially considering no request to be so was made. Time, intellectual space, safety, and a prerequisite to think divergently facilitated this. I even wrote a poem, perhaps a first which I read out (certainly a first).

Dragonfly,dragonfly
You don't breathe fire
You don't even put me down with your ire
Fecundity is the name of your game
In your blue, green golden haze

Poor as this is, it does demonstrate the difficulty in teaching creativity, but the relative ease of facilitating creativity in an education setting. Another feather in the cap if enquiry based learning.

The final learning that leaps out from my experience, which is the power of narrative. This helped me make a personal connection to what I was learning and intertwined the process and content I was learning throughout the two days. It was a powerful connectivity tool.

So these are my initial thoughts, with many more to come, which will be more focused around the translation of this into classroom practice.

Simple Enquiry Based learning structures

Firstly, I will point out that I don't think this lesson is a true enquiry, but a stepping stone towards enabling students and me to reach that goal. This blog post is all about the processes involved. In the previous lesson the students had experienced a similar structure whereby they moved around our open learning space, with simple experiments, experiences or demonstration for them to observe/ do / reflect upon. The received non judgemental feedback on their "on taskness/ learning".

The lesson began with a simple circle time, with the students asked if they needed to add or change their what good learners do poster. They were then given the challenge to produce a brief lesson to teach Conduction, Convection and Radiation and the structure of the room and resources was explained to them. They were also given the big picture of the process too.

We then came up with the success criteria for their lesson plans. Asking the students what they thought success would be like, gives clarity to the task and ownership of the task to the students. This example, is basically a recounting what they know goes into a lesson, a recap (and subsequent application) of our learning to learn course.

They then picked numbers from a pot to find a partner, the novelty of this technique threw up a couple of interesting exchanges. Firstly, two students who I would never place together came up. They looked at me and said is it OK for them to work together, I lied and said " Of course I trust you to be productive". To their credit the issues I had managed throughout the year did not manifest themselves and the students responded with a high level of responsibility. The second came from a quiet student, who offered in the debrief that he had "enjoyed working with people he had not done with this year... it helped me think in different ways". I was spell bound, I will use this randomisation again.

The classroom was arranged in the following way.

The sofas had been pulled up in front of a whiteboard and the PC had three videos on the this topic for them to watch through our school version of Youtube. On an a joining whiteboard a sign in system asked the student to record what they watched, if they recorded notes and if they had subsequently went onto use the information.

Four laptops were set up on one desk as a research station. Students had to again sign in and state the question that they we going to search an answer for. They had a time limit of 10 minutes per person, although this was used flexibly as a way of providing non judgemental feedback on time management. This was designed to remove the random googling that my students do and for them to consider how much time they spend on tasks. Students too often passively research, and glance at web pages gleaning non related facts, this strategy forced them to identify the thing they wanted to learn about before addressing a resource. I hope the limiting of IT access does not seem too controlling especially in this age of IT ubiquitousness. The aim of this session is the development of the student skills to use these effectively. The structures were chosen to facilitate this. I also find it useful to consider a sliding scale from teacher to student to control where the responsibility lies for each decision. This session is this light a slight nudge towards the students in this regard, but one that I hope will allow them to take up the reigns themselves.

A further book based resource island with six general school text books was set up in one corner of the room. The limiting of this resource was to encourage sharing of resources and hopefully discussion of the information.

One final area was set aside with pens and paper where the students gathered to plan and create their lessons.These were circular tables to encourage good communication rituals.

The students set about this task, I took a back seat and circulated with a sheet of flip chart paper noting down what they were saying and doing. I noted the time at which these observations were made. After about 15 minutes or so I pinned these to the wall and invited the students to gather around. As they did they bean to read what I heard, after a few initial chortles the students settled down and looked a bit brow beaten. I remained impassive doing my best man waiting for bus impression, I did not want to show any sign that I had made a judgement. You can clearly see that the behaviour was not as on task as it could be. I asked for an opinion and the consensus was that they needed to be more focused.

Lesson feedback

View more presentations from DKMead.

As the lesson proceeded these sheets clearly demonstrate the students becoming more on task. Again the same impassive strategy was used to pass this praise on. This is so important as it allows them to build their own intrinsic motivation rather than be reliant upon mine.

The students worked to a deadline to create their lessons and then were again randomly paired with another group to teach each other. The students were very focused and confident in their conversations here, asking questions and challenging one another. I must say it was a pleasure to see this happen.

The end of lesson debrief started with the question "What has helped you be successful?" Implying that they have been successful and probes to find out why. This metacognition is vital in this style of learning experience to highlight the process and the transferable skills used, as things like content and we worked on computers tend to dominate the student experience. The students were very aware of the reasons they were successful. They came up with
1. Learner attributes- "we were on task", "we helped each other when we got stuck"
2. Learner skills " I found the success criteria told me exactly what to do ?"

3. Collaborative learning , with one student in particular being astute " Working with someone new, was really helpful, He helped me look at the problem in a different way, I would have described what was going on, but we actually talked about why it was useful, I wouldn't have done that on my own".

4. Content Knowledge- Several students referred to "last lesson" , "what we did last lesson" and "my notes from last lesson"

The pride from the students was palpable, not only in their successful learning, but in the way they had achieved it. To celebrate this I asked them to identify the one thing that they were most proud of, to think about what it feels like and how they might get that feeling again. I specified that they would not be asked to share this, it was just for them. I gave them a minute or so of silence to reflect on this.

I then asked them to identify one person who had impressed them and share how they had done this. I gave them a minute to think about this and then started with a volunteer, as I felt confidence would be important in building momentum, we then progressed in a clockwise fashion around our circle. they did this very well, giving specific praise, identifying resilience, creative, detailed explanations, thoughtful questions, patience and pleasingly every student was named at least once. Some were praised more than others, but none the less everyone had impressed someone. The reason for this was to reinforce the good learning behaviours, make it clear that it's not only me who sees what is happening in our learning space and vitally consolidate our learning community.

Debriefing tools for Enquiry Based Learning

I have compiled a list of ideas to help teachers get the most from the debrief of enquiry based/ experiential/ open ended learning activities. If you have any more I would love to here from you to add to this resource.

A brief guide to debriefing


The major responsibility for conducting successful enquiry based learning rests with the debriefing phase of the exercise. The debriefing is an important process designed to synergize, strengthen, and transfer learning from the experiential exercise. The most successful way of doing this is through non judgemental feedback

Developing the willingness to be debriefed

At the very start of the learning experience it is vital that an overview of what the session will look like is important for learner. This must be done and valued regularly. It must include and highlight both a reflection and debrief session: reflection should be a quiet individual time and debriefs will tend to be whole classes or at least large groups.
The agreement of success criteria at this point is invaluable, whether it is a skill or an attribute. This will encourage students to buy into the process, value the feedback and change their practices (ie learn)
The quality of debriefs is dependent on trust, so the better you know your students the better their response will be. Therefore plan to increase the intensity of them over an academic year.
Debriefs do not always occur at the end of session and short punchy “refocus” style one shouldbe planned in. It may also be beneficial to host responsive ones to change the direction ( whether it be a behavioural or content problem) , although it may be better in the long run to allow a mistake and its consequences manifest itself before intervening. A longer term view should therefore occasionally override a short term management issue.

Health warning

When debriefing ,especially when sharing data or feedback on performance the emotional state of the students and the emotional impact of this feedback should be considered. Emotion is an important feature of any learning experience, so this is not something to be avoided but use in a positive manner. Remember and highlight that you can probably learn more from mistakes is a way of addressing this educatively.

Questioning

Planning for debriefing cannot be reduced to a set of simple instructions. Trial and error and perseverance are necessary. It is important to think about the questions that you ask, encouraging pupils to give longer answers. Teachers need to plan the analogies, stories and contexts to be used to encourage transfer.
Teachers should also encourage students to ask the questions, so that overtime the proportion of teacher questions reduces. This may not become equivocal, as the teacher will always have the overview and purpose of the enquiry in mind.

Below I aim to exemplify useful questions that can be used to debrief an activity. These are not sequential and you may decide to focus on only one area of questioning? You students or at least their actions will inform of this. Each and every question could be proceeded by asking why? Or How? Although a simple “Go on” will add to the open ended nature of debrief, and allow students to think about their own learning and experience rather than answer a teacher question.

Content questions

The table includes a few (overlapping) questions to draw out the learning that has taken place. The teachers role is to a) check and challenge accuracy b) clarify and highlight key learning points c) connecting ideas together d) compile the learning for the class. “Flipcharting” the ideas can help make this learning visible to all. It may also provide a start point for the next session .for example highlighting misconceptions

What have you found out?
What fact has led you to learn more facts?
What’s been the most useful thing learned in developing your understanding?
What have you learned that you did not know before?
What facts can you now link together?
What’s the most important fact learned?
What have you learned that has changed how you think about this problem/ idea/ concept?
Did anyone find a similar thing?
Did anyone find something different?
Do you still think that’s right?
What questions do you still want to ask about the concept?
What have you seen? what does it tell you?

Process /Learner skill question

What tools have been useful? How?
What was your most useful questions?
How did you go about reading the information?
Did you think of the questions first or did you allow the information to “guide” you? Do you think that was the most helpful?
How did you interact with the information?
What conversations helped you learn today?
What was the moment when you realised that you had learned something/ corrected your previous ideas?
Did anyone double check their work, see something missing and go back to correct it?How often did you reflect?
How did you attempt to join ideas together?
How (often) did you use the success criteria?
What strategies have been helpful? Eg drafting

But these can be more specific about a particular skill.

How did you set about...
How did thinking like that help you....
What made you decide that this skill was going to be helpful?
How would you get better at..

Or even Science specific.

How do you know your test was fair?
Why do you trust the data you have produced?
How do you know your data answers your question?
Was your data precise enough to be helpful?
Does the evidence support each
What assumptions have we made?

Learner attribute questions

How did you get unstuck?
How did you avoid/manage distractions?
How did you plan your work?
How did your motivation change over the session?
How did you respond to problems?
How did you get yourself interested in this work?
How did you manage your time?
How did your behaviour affect your own/ others performance?

Metacognition

Although a lot of the strategies and question here are metacognitive in nature, specific strategies will only enhance your students experience.
Specific questions that run along side a particular procedure or task, can facilitate this. For example while taking measurements asking How accurate are you being? How many decimal places have you recorded? Have you recorded the data accurately? Will train the students to do this greater confidence and accuracy?

Wrapper activities, ie those that you start and end the session with can be used for a wider range of tasks. So asking What knowledge might be useful?
• How motivated are you today?
• How might you work out things for yourself?
• How will you mentally link what you see and what you are learning throughout the lesson?

Will help set the students of in the right direction, rephrasing these at the end will help students visulaise the strategies used.

Teacher observation and record keeping

Teacher time should be split between supporting students and observing students. Observation should be intense and detailed notes should be kept for debrief purposes. These should include quotes, who was interacting with who and how. What resources where being used and how? What questions were being asked and who were they asked of. Collecting numerical data, also provides a reflective mirror for students to consider the learning taking place. So number of students on task, number of procedural questions asked, number of smiles/points/ nods of heads can reveal something useful to the students. The timing of the activity should also be recorded, as this will help contextualise the feedback. An occasional snapshop picture of what each individual is doing will also bring a different perspective. Likewise the use of video and photograph to capture behaviours and interactions are invaluable . Before and after feedback scenarios can be used to demonstrate the progress being made by the class.
This allows spontaneity and responsiveness to the situation unfolding around you, but also had grist to your mill when debriefing students. It also ensures that you feedback is non judgemental, an important emotional.
Classroom structures and procedures
It important that students are debriefed together, so arranging the furniture to facilitate the conversation will help. So a circle of chairs is the obvious answer. Ensure that all students are included is important, do not start the debriefing until they are quiet and included.
Ideally these will become self managing in some respects but teachers need a purpose to each debrief, although allow space for other ideas to come to the fore. Praise piggy backing on ideas, and encourage the use of protocols to manage this situation. For reticent students (or groups) you may occasionally want to take turns around the circle, allowing a 30 second think time after ask a question will reduce the stress of having to respond. Although I would not advertise it, accept a pass from students, expect them to contribute to the classroom community. Teachers therefore need to establish a No Put down Zone so that they are free to express their opinions.
The simple procedure of asking a question before nominating a student to respond, encourages all students to think and reflect and prepare to respond. All the usual good practice of wait time after a question has been asked and a student response should be utilise by the teacher and trained into the students.
Intervening without interrupting
Post it notes with either prompts or observations can be placed in front of students. These can reinforce or challenge behaviour ( in its widest sense).
Alternatively, hosting small meeting with groups of students will allow you to pass information on which is then disseminated by these students. This can be content or procedural.
Simply writing down quotes and displaying them in the class can provide ongoing feedback to the learners. Although you may want to discuss ways forward from this.
Ticking, crossing or smiley facing pre agreed success criteria can also provide ongoing feedback. By placing this in a prominent position students can quickly be sensitized to its use and the feedback being provided.
Reflective practices.
Teachers may want to set a selection of questions for students to respond to in writing on their own, before a debrief takes place. Students will therefore be better prepared to respond, and less likely to adhere to a response a peer has given.
Alternatively giving students a choice and encouraging extended writing can also be very productive.
1. Describe your experience of....
Now respond to at least 2 of these questions:
2. What thinking processes did you use?
3. Were you successful? Why?
4. What problems did you overcome? How did you do this?
5. Did you think creatively? How did you do this?
6. What skills have you developed over this challenge?
7. If you were to do this again what would you do differently?

Target setting questions

The final part of a debrief should look to move the students forward.
What’s the next step in this project?
What will you do differently next time?
What do you need to make this task easier?
How could you solve these problems?
What areas are you still finding difficult?
Do you need to redo any sections?
Do we need another point of view?

Giving Feedback on the process of learning.

Once in a while it is so nice to talk with students about something other than what they could be examined on, even when what you talk about is actually more important than the exam. The learning process is one of those things. This technique is applicable across these skills, and can transform what your classroom environment is like.

The first step to having this conversation, was the designing of an activity that would bring the key issues to the surface. In this instance the focus was how students collaborate. A simple of trick of asking the whole class (25 students) to do a task that would be easily completed by a smaller group, say 5 students. The pressures of working in a large group are much more acute, it's almost like setting them to struggle ,as the pressure ( and previous experiences) will see them focus on the content rather than the process. The students in this lesson where asked to construct a food web out of 25 organisms.

The lesson began with the students and I compiling a list of what they think good learners do when they collaborate. This list is theirs and I always ask permission to provide feedback on it using a thumb up for agreement, a level thumb for something they can live with and a thumb down if they want to amend the list before I use it for feedback. The list has now turned itself into success criteria.

The students then "do" the activity, and I write down observations snippets of conversations, counts of number of points, the number of people who are talking at the same time etc. I use one Post it note per statement, and in this lesson I did it for 15 minutes. A tight time scale is another way inducing students to forget about the process and make the mistakes that may not always be an issue in smaller groups.

At the end of the challenge, I give feedback and ask questions about the content of the activity and gather the students around their previously agreed success criteria. At this point I ask for permission to add a "disappointments" column, adjacent their success criteria. I then read out my observations one by one stressing that I am not making any judgements, just giving them factual feedback. I ask them to direct me in placing each statement on either the success criteria it matches, (for example " Great idea Tom!" May be placed on we encourage each other) or in the disappointments column.

The students really pay attention to this, I think they feel a little empowered. They also feel a little chastised as they are a lot more critical of themselves than a teacher ever could be. This is why a safe and trusting classroom environment is needed. For example some quiet students will not force into this kind of activity preferring to keep silent. Some members of the class will feel it i their fault, but others will see the groups responsibility to invite everyone to participate. This is kind of dialogue that find this strategy engenders and that changes students view and participation in the activities.

It is not just collaboration that this works on you could have questioning, decision making, reasoning, risk taking, the list goes on, but the strategy works.

For a more detailed read about this technique in my classroom please search it out on http://www.peelweb.org/. typing in author search MEAD.

Supporting the limitations of a web 2.0 tool- A Wrapper activity

Etherpad is probably the best web 2.0 tool for the classroom, with the addition of the Time slider function. This allows a skillful teacher to debrief the process taking place afore their very eyes. Most Web 2.0 tools do not have this essential focus on the process, and are merely presentation tools for content. Infact it may be argued that they make new content to distract from the process of learning.

For years teachers have sent students off to work as groups, "work together to make a poster" and provided that the students got the job done have assumed that collaboration has taken place. In fact the product has been such a focus that it has over riden the collaboration. In the real world the fact that some students can produce a poster is not useful or remotely interesting, but if they can genuinely support each other in a learning community, then they can head off and be successful anywhere.

So how can a teacher go beyond just debriefing the process and hand over some control of this metcognition to students? . Metacognition is vitally important, unfortunately overlooked component of learning, too often masked by content or the medium. Effective learning involves planning and goal-setting, monitoring one's progress, and adapting as needed. All of these activities are metacognitive in nature. By teaching students these skills - all of which can be learned - we can improve student learning.This is an example of a "wrapper" activity that is issued at the start of the activity and returned to at the end.

I had put the key questions of the lessons onto an etherpad document, and set up a wallwisher to run concurrently with it. The Wallwisher was focussed purely on the process, while the etherpad was solely content.

The focus of the Wallwisher was collaboration, which I broke down into the following categories to help the students define how they collaborated. The students were challenged to provide examples of how they helped others learn, using these categories.

1. Where they corrected someones work.

2.Where they questioned someones ideas.

3.Where they contributed an idea.

4. Where they have built upon or expanded upon someone thinking.

5. Where they have supported someone elses idea.

After the completion of the task the students returned to the wallwisher and added their examples and classified them under the correct catogory. They found this difficult and spent most time trying to figure out who they had supported during the lesson, so at the very least they did relflect on the process and not just the content. By doing this before using the Time lIne function the students were able to respond to this with things like " What I was trying to say here was" and "yeah, I couldn't think of the right word, until you typed it in!"

Next time I think I'll make a conscious effort to ensure that the Wallwisher is genuinely concurrent, so that the process is more to the fore.