SOLO and connectives lesson reflection

My year 8 students are currently studying a module called " Do we still need fossil fuels?" which culminates in an extended writing piece in response to this question. They will peer critique (review) in small groups producing a journal collecting 5 different articles.This is part of our school wide focus on developing literacy.


As part of the preparation for this writing, I wanted to share with them useful connectives that would not only develop their literacy but also their thinking within the article. An opportunity presented itself with our use of the Electrocity SIM game. The Electrocity game was to be part of their on going research. before they started gaming each group had to name their town and come up with its priorities/ principles/mission statement. This serves two purposes, it establishes a narrative at the start of this enquiry of things they are interested in and secondly tells them that they can use the game as a way of researching what "will happen if...." scenarios.
I came up with the idea of listening into student conversations,recording on post it notes the the connectives used.I planned to debrief the students frequently, around every 7 minutes or so, ranking the connectives against SOLO taxonomy,thereby creating a just in time need to be taught about using connectives to develop our thinking.This was primarily achieved by understanding that their initial game playing session would involve a combination of "how do i play" and ""Hey we are playing games distraction. I knew that much if the conversation would be Prestructural at this point, with comments along the lines of "Cool you can build a stadium" or " Get a wind farm" So the second part of the debrief would be about compiling the connectives that they knew and I (surreptitiously) offered and again ranking them against SOLO. We were providing the next step.

Note how SOLO has been added as students started using returning to the SOLO feedback unexpectedly .

Another vital part of this session was the non judgemental feedback provided against observed use of resources. The helpful resources that we had made in previous lessons such as the "info scrolls", their notes, the information on the EON and Electrocity websites. All were highlighted at the beginning of the session, with a clear expectation the they should be used to inform decisions. Of course they were not, but this would change simply by counting usage and feeding it back. As can be seen in th ephotograph above.

The procedure was repeated once the students had settled back into game play. Notes were made on a different coloured set of post it notes to allow us to see progress made.It was pleasing to see that nearly all groups were now dipping into the resources albeit tentatively. The conversations began to change and they began to at least give reasons for the choices they wanted to make (i.e. the prevelance of "because" became noticeable). Many students returned to the principles they set up at the beginning with statements along the "we wanted to be as green as possible so we must use the wind turbines", demonstrating the power of establishing a narrative in enquiry work.
Again the students were gathered and their comments assessed against SOLO taxonomy. It was obvious with the different coloured post it notes that progress was being notes. NB; I am fully aware that the students were able to play the "Connectives" game and say the things they thought I wanted to hear. However I am unconcerned by this "imitation" work as they are actually practising the use of connectives. Exactly the point I was making.

I was very fortunate to have  @JamiePortman and @Gwynap visiting and acting as observers with me. So the of connectives was practiced consistently by all throughout the lesson. Although, the progress the students made over the whole lesson suggests that they had began to use these as their own. They had learned to use them through practice.

The following picture can be read as follows . The left had side is what the students had said i.e they current position. The post its on the right their next steps. SOLO taxonomy made this very easy to do for both my students and me. Orange Post Its were used in the first attempt mainly Pre and Unistructural. Blue the second attempt which is mainly Relational but with some Prestructural and Unistructural showing that some students required more practice at using this (well I never! Graham Nuthall correct AGAIN) and the final attempt in Green which interestingly had nothing below Relational!
I think what this shows is that SOLO taxonomy is a great way of giving and structuring feedback, and how by sharing the progress they are making can lead to more progress due to greater engagement.

Metacognition of an Enquiry

Following on from my experience at Bristol. I have compiled all the recorded metacognitive thinking I did during this experience. In the hope of finding patterns in the thinking that one needs to do to be a successful enquirer, in order that I can provide tools and structures for my students. This is a work in progress. Any comments, analysis, ponderings are all gratefully recieved.
https://docs0.google.com/document/edit?id=1GIE1NPtznOTnNKs8_8yUDea2kBEftfOMlljjRJNzxBQ&hl=en&authkey=COm4r74L#

Narrative- a learning connector

These are more thoughts stemming from the social experiment at the Graduate school of Education at Bristol University.

A central, recurring tenet of the enquiry I took part in was that of narrative. To start the enquiry we were tasked to find an "object" in Brandon Hill nature reserve to enquire about. We were firstly asked to describe it , then think of a story why we connected with it, before thinking divergently creating a multitude of questions.
My initial thoughts were slightly dismissive, doubting the likelihood of discovering something that delighted my curiosity and that I had a personal connection with. After all why should I find something 300 miles from home in a place I had never been before. And I'm a butch , scientific, aesthete of a Geordie to boot.
So my initial findings were what you'd expect. A tree, a fence, an object. I saw and thought nothing above the ordinary. Yet on asking myself why I connected with them quickly turned choosing one thing to enquire about into being spoilt for choice. The tree was suddenly a Lime tree also known as a linden tree, so memories of drinking cold Lindeboom beer in a student bar many moons ago came flooding back. The fence around Cabot tower reminded me of the now restored Saltwell towers in my local (resplendent) park which lay derelict for most of my life, which I also used to eat my lunch beneath of a seldom seen friend.
A warning sign that read "Water Hazard" reminded me of playing Wii with my son , and his ability to read. The family trip which took through a golf course which saw him demand "so which bit is out of bounds?!?!"
This process amazed me, the amount of emotion that it stimulated was astonishing, in fact was too much at times and steered me away from certain choices. But, the positive influence this had impacted over the following two days not only in engagement with the process but also with sustained motivation.
On hearing my colleagues choices and their reasoning my experience was obviously far from unique, in fact it was the norm. All had personal, emotive reasons for their choice, all had chosen to reveal ( or not) something of themselves by doing so. Our narratives began to entwine here, helping to form that all important community of learners.
The very nature of enquiry based learning, with its valuing of the process taken, is enhanced by this narrative as it tessellates the original connection with the subsequent connections made whilst learning. The experience is all the more rich for that as everything resonates with personal value, and it all stems from a simple task, choose what you want to do just think about what it means to you.
The questions this raises over how learning happens? How learners become engaged ? What implications this kind of learning experience has on structuring a curriculum? Are difficult and worth persevering with.

Just as I was about to press publish I realised that I have not even states what my choice was. Nor the narrative that led to it's choice or how this narrative developed. I'm not even sure of the importance in doing so, therefore I won't , as the my learning here is all processed based and not restricted to enquiry based learning. Making or more importantly allowing students to make that personal connection with what is being learned is not an educational luxury it's a necessity.

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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

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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?

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!

Twelve tips for starting Enquiry Based Learning.

Over the past year I have been developing a model of Enquiry based learning, although the journey is infact much longer. The elements I have used come from multiple sources such as Problem Based Learning, The Critical Skills Programme, TEEP's ideas on collaborative problem solving, Learning Skills In Science (which I piloted with the Wiezmann Institute), Learning to Learn, PEEL's ideas on learning processes, a generic Enquiry cycle, a science specific hierarchy of different kinds of structures (search for Carl Wenning at Illinois State University), and Science in the classroom from the How Students Learn series by the national academies press in the US. This list of inspirations are indicative of the difficulties in defining enquiry, but highlights why having a pedagogical purpose in our teaching.

So what I'm intending to do is list some teacher thinking required to construct enquiry experiences within the classroom. These are not in any particular order.
1. Teachers need to see enquiry as intergrated to everything that they do, it's not an add on. So that normal everyday lessons will share strategies, tools or develop attributes that will allow students to be independent enquirers. This is what I mean by pedagogical purposes.
2. A note on tech, this is not a substitute for pedagogical purpose. Infact, Tech requires extra planning, so that's purposeful, and develops what you want to develop. It does not mean that if students are using say Etherpad that they actually collaborating, in enquiries the process of collaborating is important and will require feedback.
3. Be aware that students (and tempting for teachers too) will be product focused, very much at the expense of the process. Teachers should let them make this mistake, and use a combination of non judgemental feedback and rigorous debriefing to tackle this. Students will progress on this teachers or more accurately facilitators need a geological view on this.
4. Students require multiple metacognitive activities during this as well as time to make their own mistakes and do their own learning. Teachers need to be observant. Post it notes with praise, prompts or interjections are a non invasive way of influencing the route the lesson is taking.
5. Teachers will find it beneficial to make detailed notes on who said and did what. Tallying how many people are engaged in discussion, the number of points,nods, smiles all help provide a full picture of the process the students have and / or are undertaking.
6. Long term planning is essential not only how the locus of control can be assumed by the students,but also how the afore mentioned tools and strategies can support the students with this.
7. Students will require a structure to research. My students have found Read----> thinking tool----> notes. As a way of genuinely learning from their researching.
8. Students will need training on how to ask questions that can be persued. The right stimulus that may have been tested to asses it's fruitfulness,is essential.
9. Teachers are facilitators and should constrain their influence. They must provide high quality, frequent feedback. The classroom environment they provide should be safe to allow risk taking and failure with confidence. This does not happen overnight.
10. Teachers should not lose the focus of why enquiries are a useful experience and become product focused. This focus allows them to create the time needed for students to reflect on successes and experiences this should be augmented by a thorough debriefing process. Therefore a shared language is needed to do this.
11. Beware of the word fun, everyone has a different perception about what this means. Learning experiences can be satisfying if the students are appropriately challenged, stimulated into thinking for themselves and feel as though they are making progress. The design of the enquiry should consider these parameters first.
12. There are many enquiry models available some generic and some subject specific. Choose a flexible one that you can adapt to you and you're students needs. These structures are essential early in the students enquiring training and plans should be made on how you can withdraw them over a year or more if you need.

A good start point for Further Reading is at Futurelabs Enquiring minds project as well as the sources of inspiration mentioned above.
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Self Assessment- What value does it have in Enquiry based learning?

I'll start by saying I am not a fan of the Assessing Pupil Progress (APP) chart, I feel it gives tasks to do rather than describe the thinking behind how to do the task. Presented here is a Science example although, I think this will be true in all subject areas. I am sure the interesting and useful learning points contained within the APP are not the completion of these task but the thinking necessary to be able to do these independently. So for my subject how to think like a scientist is more important than being able to draw a line graph.
So, I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to plot the thinking behind key scientific skills. Although these examples are subject specific I would hazard a guess that all subjects will be able to plot out the developmental thinking that a student needs to take to make progress within these skills. I have broken these down into 24 seperate thinking skills. Some of these are sub divisions of different kinds of thinking. For example Logical thinking has three parts:- Using data to support theories, deriving ideas from other ideas and linking cause and effect. Each one has been placed into a level ladder so that students have some form of pathway to follow.This has been a time consuming task, I have read a ridiculous amount of academic texts trying to find developmental hierachies. I am not saying what I done is accurate, but, they have given a clear focus to my teaching and have also broken down the skills into steps, so that clear targets can be given. I have also correlated these across the APP so that they have a concrete link to the levels ladders.

This example show with * where the criteria matches the APP, with strand 5.

Students have recently completed a Scientific enquiry, designed around some of these( 8 of the
24 skills). This was an open ended Science Enquiry, requiring students to do a lot of thinking for themselves or at least make some decisions after being guidded through the thinking.At the end of this task they self assessed with a teacher discussion and guidance to grade their work/thinking during the enquiry. Many were able to justify the levels they awarded themselves.

This is what they tell me about

1. How accurate are they at levelling their own work?

2. Is there any difference between ability groups in this?

The following based upon a random sample of 38 students work, producing 200 self assessed levels over 8 of the APP style criteria.

How the data works. Each SAT level is divided into 3 parts ( for example 5c, 5b 5a leading to 6c,6b,6a). So a score of 3 is one complete SAT level. All levels are compared against end of year reported teacher derived SAT levels.

Despite students only awarding themselves the correct SAT level ( level 5, 6 etc) 26% of the time the students were overall fairly close to their reported SAT levels. From the 200 levels derived by this method 37% were the same as the teacher levels. They underestimated them by a factor of 2.02, meaning that they were around 2 division of a SAT level, for example they said a 5c and the reported level was 5a.(this would be a scoreof 2, as would a 5a and a 6b).The spread of the student self assessed levels is 2.5 so that all students are on average within one level of their reported level, backing up the previous measure. So, it is okay to trust the data produced by students.

This underestimation is not a concern and I am tempted to consider it of value, suggesting that the students have thought about where they have rated themselves. Pleasingly it also suggests the levels within the ladders are of some accuracy ,contain real challenge for the students and in some way are a rigorous form of assessment. Consider a set of data that completely matched their teacher assessed levels, would you firstly trust it? I wouldn't. It would also be impossible to identify areas to work upon to improve.

Inevitably some of the Skills identified will be more difficult to do than others, especially when the students have never previously been asked to think like them. So, I think the data asks a lot of useful questions about how to go about developing these skills and their genuine importance in the learning of Science. I am hopeful that these level ladders will help, as students have identified themselves across the board, on each of the 8 skills in this sample.

A few interesting pointers have also come to light when looking at how the consistency of the students across the ability range. Although the same size is slight homogenous, and therefore prone to skewing effects, there is some genuine food for thought.

Firstly that the level 5 students correctly identify their SAT level 40% of the time and the levels 3 and 4 students 33%. Compared to only 21% of the level 6 students. ( No difference was seen with the top end level 6 compared to the low end). Why is this? Could it be due to the more able students being more reflective about their learning? Could it be down to these students understanding the criteria better? The data suggest yes, the students who most undersestimate their grade is the level 6 students, by a factor of 2.65, gladly still within one level. The level 5 students underestimate by a around half a level (1.8) while the level 3 and 4 overestimate their ability by a small amount (0.33) or for example from 3a to 4c. Another possible explanation is that this form of assessment may actually be testing genuine student ability. Its test what a student can do not what they can remember or have the ability to write down. I hope so. Oh dear I'm beginning to defend the APP!

The big thing I'll take from this is that the first draft of my version of the Science APP is just that a draft. Some of it will need rewriting to make it more accessible for lower ability students and clearer in making it explicit between the levels. But, it does seem to be close and the evidence suggests its a useful thing to have in the classroom.

I have fourteen of them written and in need of refining, four crudely done and six that have not been started! If anyone is interested in giving me a hand let me know!

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.

Some Teacher Benefits.

The Purpose of a "purpose" is that it will lead you some where, something must change, something must improve. So, if you don't set an agenda, how do you and more importantly, your students know what they trying to get better at. This is also true for teachers to develop their own skills and knowledge. So, part of the reason I want to establish pedagogical purposes in my lessons is entirely selfish. Geoff Petty in Evidence Based Learning summarises these teacher benefits succinctly as..

A. If you understand why a teaching strategy works well.

B. We can then adapt the strategy if we know why it works

C. If we understand the general principles we can use these to evaluate our own teaching methods and to design new ones.

My priorities for my students in the last three weeks of term have been:-



1. Appropraite use of IT in lessons, tail and dog stories
2. Increase independance and decision making
3. Increase the amount of higher order thinking.

4. Developing a specific Science thinking skills.



These are based pretty much on gut feeling and several formal reflections about my teaching, my students learning and the curriculum that I am teaching too. (Which can be seen above in an enquiry cycle.) Some of these ideas I have already blogged about. So what benefits will I get by challenging my students to these targets? I will scrutinise the first two to highlight how and why I am attempting to do this.


1. Appropriate use of IT.
This big irritant to me, I too often find that students will spend hours being totally distracted by the use of IT in my lessons. I am not talking misuse of the IT, like gaming, as this is less irritating, as it is a behaviour issue and I will deal with it as I would any behaviour issue. The two biggest worries I have are firstly, that most stuudents think that being on Google is actually researching, and that it is a thinking tool to help them research and learn. What a ridiculous proposition. Consider this all too real dialogue.

Mead: What are you doing?

Student: I'm researching about fair trade food.

Mead: and what thinking tool are you using?

Student: I'm googling, sir!

Mead: (In head. B*#lls another one!) Would you mind me having a look at your search criteria.


The student clicks back to reveal a not unreasonable input.

Mead; I agree with what you've typed in, but how does 69.5 million hits help you?

Students: ( Silence)

Mead: ( Good use of wait time, so, even more silence)

Student: So shall I use the webpages you have recommended?

Mead: What will that allow you to do?

Student: Find out what I want to know?

Mead: (raises eyebrows) Why were you on Google then?

Student: Errrrr.. I just was.


This is not what I imagined when I planned this lesson. Where are the conversations like this..


Mead: what are you upto?

Student: I'm researching about fair trade food.

Mead: how are you doing that?

Student: I'm using a PMI at the moment, I'm reading about a Ugandan Coffee farmer and what his daily life is like?

Mead: Learned anything new?

Students: I've decided that Fair trade is definately worth a few extra pence, and what Organic food is.

Mead: What helped you decide?......



The second problem is more insiduous, despite the instruction that "we are researching2 and a clear overview of the lesson plotted out on the board. Inevitably,I find half my class are on PowerPoint , while another quarter are choosing fonts for their wordart titles. Modern day colouring in. I'm not having this.

Strategies to help.

I have a few ideas that may help me out. Firstly, it is the relationship I have built with my students, so that I can give them honest feedback. I know that some students will actually follow my instructions, so I make a point of stopping the class to see "good practice". I also know that large numbers will head of into Google land and Font world, so I am planning a ten minute blitz at the beginning of the lesson. Again stopping everyone with yells of "Wow! everyone gather around to see what Giles has done!" Before then actually being more helpful but encouraging the class to give constructive feedback. After this ten minute spell I will return to the analogy of the tail wagging the dog. Other strategies include making clear the process of research with a over view of

Read/watch -------> Thinking Tool--------> Research.

and having explicit success criteria of "use a Thinking Tool of your choosing".

Finally and probably most important is to build in this problem and solution into the reflection. I will blog about this when I have compiled their responses.

So what are the benefits to me in overcoming these IT barriers to learning?

Well, I have spent an inordinate amount of time planning this lesson/ experience. I want to know if it works, have I structured it in a useful way? are the resources good enough? what tools do I need to reinforce in class? am I teaching the students the way I want them to do enquiries? is the content coming across? In a way I'm in the process of doing what Geoff Petty describes at the start of this blog.
Secondly, I much prefer to be useful during lessons, guiding prompting, questioning and providing mirrors for students to reflect about all of the above. I don't want to be solely responsible for keeping the students on task and not just busy. Ambitious I know but its a journey worth taking and its a lot more fun than being solely responsible for 25-30 peoples learning.

Which leads directly into the second item on my learning agenda.

2.Increase the students independence and decision making

I hope it is obvious that these things are connected and in fact entwined. So part of the problems I have been dealing with IT, are actually part of this. I can now ask the questions what decisions have you made today that has helped you learned, and seriously expect to get a considered answer. And decisively I can give praise for doing so. If a student has acted independently and avoided a distraction they will feel like the success is theirs, and that I have just caught them doing it. I feel they will be more likely to continue this positive learning behaviour than if I had of DEMANDED they do it my way. I also feel that these methods speed up and strengthen the trust between student and teacher. A worthwhile pursuit.

Although this is not my biggest tool in achieving the above, which is to teach my students how to enquire. I know this is not a quick thing, and have plotted two years worth of stepping stones to help them do so. But, the small things will add up over this time.Here's hoping!

A moving on map.

I have been covering a lesson on a fortnightly basis for around two months, to be honest I don't know the students that well. They have been working on a enquiry, based around the question "Are you what you eat?" The purpose of this is to teach the students the enquiry cycle we would like them to use in subsequent enquiries, and obviously develop the skills needed to learn independently. Since I don't know these students I have been finding it difficult to "pitch" the lesson correctly.

Today's task was to write a script for a range of characters who are giving their opinions on a basket of food. First, I explained the task and process to be done and set them away. The first five minutes were consumed by a string of students following me around the room saying "I'm stuck" "I don't know what to do!". The antithesis of where we want them to be. I didn't jump in with answers and spent alot of energy praising those who were stuck. A good first step, create a positive attitude to learning.

Next, since I was now getting odd looks and a general feeling of "He's not helping us!"( tudents need this feeling, which can only be created by stepping back for a short while, to truly feel independent and become motivated to do something about being stuck).it was then that I gathered them around a desk and started scribbling on a piece of flip chart paper. I love that stuff, it's so organic and encourages interactions. I started at the bottom with the word STUCK" and moved straight to the top and asked what is the end product of this activity. A student quickly responded with record a MP3 for your speeches. This is at the top.

So, I now asked what their choices were now that they were stuck, the students said get unstuck and suggested some generic ways of getting unstuck such as C3B4ME. "Or?" I asked and got "you could just sit there and get distracted" and a yelp of "STAY STUCK", I think this is when they could see I was now going to help them.

I asked what they would need to do to get unstuck and complete the job. Strangely (or perhaps not) they came up with write a script and practice it before they came up with the next step. These task go just before the completion of the task. This strategy is a more specific example of a moving on map developed by the teachers involved in the PEEL project. After a small re-explanation of the situation they found themselves in, they then thought reviewing what they already knew. So they did listen at the start! This then led to a planning strategy and student said " how do we generate ideas?"

I then gifted them the idea of thinking tools. After a painful couple of minutes I reminded them that they had used PMI, in a previous enquiry, which received recognising nods. So, then gave them an alternative of a Frame of Reference organiser, modelling how to use it. I must admit that I have never had such an enthusiastic take up of a thinking tool, may be because the generation of the characters opinions was the actual task they were finding difficulty, but I actually think it was because the tool had a context and a pedagogical purpose.

After a final discussion that enabled us to complete the stepping stones between where they were and where they wanted to be, I set them off. The atmosphere in the class was tangible, with the LSA I was working with recognising how much more they were on task.

Around ten minutes later, I asked the students to "place a dot on the map to tell me where you are, when you get a chance!" which they did. Three students where still stuck . So this was actually great feedback for me to start to target a few students with a bit more guidance and questioning.

I requested a cross on the map around fifteen minutes later, which was great as it clearly demonstrated that they were making progress and provided an opportunity to praise genuine improvement. Many of the students were up to generating the ideas to include in their speeches. One student was particularly methodical about this, so I gathered the students around so he could share what he was doing, I asked the class once he'd finished, are they doing this? two replied yes, then I asked who is going to do this? with a chorus of "great idea" the student raised his arms skywardin celebration !

One final check about fifteen minutes before the end, this time with squares, made it very easy for the students to plan what they need to do next lesson. The conversations I was now having had changed from, "I'm stuck what should I do" to "I'm going to draft the script at least twice because I'll add more detail".

I'm chuffed, and the reason, I did very little, the students took over as they were allowed to, as they had a structure that they had helped devise, they felt safe to take risks and the plan had obvious improvement chances and the activities had a clear and shared pedagogical purpose.