Folk theory update- Does displaying success against target motivate students?

With the next set of topic tests complete, I can now start to measure my theory that displaying students who beat(or match) their targets increases the numbers of students meeting their target! This being due to increased motivation and the in built fairness of the system.
What i mean by fair is not just celebrating the learning of students who get the highest scores, but seeing learning happen in all.

The first measure showed that one class had 8 students meeting the targets, and the second 4. As I said to these students "Every time I use this strategy the lists get longer and longer, more students meet their targets!"

So I am relieved to say that 10 (6 first timers) students in the first class and 7 (6first timers) in the other have met their targets.

This is not evidence (yet), but certainly encouraging.Anecdotally too the signs are good with more students asking the question "What do I need to do to improve?". As starting points go I'm happy with this.

Students DO make progress with SOLO Taxonomy.

It is a fine feeling when your gut feeling has a concrete and real basis. This is a reflection of my first terms use of SOLO taxonomy.

The graph above shows a year 7 mixed ability Science class working over four SOLO and assessed tasks. It clearly demonstrates that my students are making progress up the SOLO Taxonomy scale in a measurable fashion. I think this graph also shows my progress in using SOLO in providing quality feedback. I am aiming to reflect on some of the processes and discussion that occurred in between these points. (I will dedicate the final paragraph to explaining how this data has been compiled.) Although, I must point out that the scores discussed here are solely for analysis and reflective purposes and the students have not and will not have it reduced down to a number. SOLO taxonomy provides a framework for discussion of work during lessons, for comment only feedback and for self assessment for the students.

Although the first two points clearly show progress form a score of around 0.5 to 1.0, I believe this is only establishing a useful baseline assessment of my students as they enter their new school. I think it also shows the lack of my skill in using this tool, as 0.5 indicates that half the class are operating on average at a prestructural level. and that the progress made suggests that on average everyone is working at the unistructural level. In reality two students had progressed to the Relational level while not one single student recorded a multistructural level score on the first task. So, I am not overwhelmed by its immediate impact, but it's certainly seemed to move the students in the right direction. I must also confess that my strategy to introduce a generic SOLO was very much by stealth. It was visible in the class ,but, only gradually dropped into the conversation when opportunity presented. The first two pieces of work were self assessed by the students using a content specific criteria using the SOLO structure. No attempt was made to introduce the language straight off. I don't know if this was the right thing to do, but, I felt that the students had a lot to cope with managing the transition to a new school.

The third activity here was a group presentation, so I feel that this has skewed the data a little, as some of the weaker kids scored their highest scores in this activity. This makes me want to underplay the progress here, as this suggests that on average the class is now at Multistructural and the raw data shows no one has remained prestructural, pleasing as this is it is not assessing individual performance.

However the value of this activity is significant, as it is this stage that I and my students began to fully come to terms with using it. The students made a presentation that required using several pieces of information/data to draw a conclusion. I listened to them and made notes and then together we used the evidence gathered to assign their group a level. This generated great dialogue which I believe has had a lasting impact. Some students were even saying things along the lines of " If we had of said this ......would we have get the next level".

Following this activity I made a presentation at the Teachmeet Northeast, about SOLO taxonomy where I came up with an analogy of its use. I decided to use it with my students and formally introduce SOLO taxonomy . It went down a storm with some students even recognising and identifying the levels before I had explained them, maybe stealth works as a teaching strategy. The students were also provided with a large copy of the taxonomy for their desks as they worked as a reference. The students went onto complete the fourth activity in this review. Half way through I took several statements from student work and asked them to assess where they thought it was, and how to improve it. I felt at the time this discuss was useful so I photographed the examples. Whilst marking the students scripts I was especially pleased by the amount of crossing out, arrows to add new details in and squashed sentences into gaps that really were not there. Pretty no, but indicative of reflection and demonstration of their understanding of not only the content of the lesson but of SOLO taxonomy too

So, overall this activity yielded a score of around 2.5 on this scale indicating that the majority of the students where working at the relational level albeit within small bits of content. This has been the thrust of my feedback about broadening out teheir knowledge base so that more and a wider range of connections could be made. All in all this set of data demonstrates the students making progress through the use and structure of the SOLO taxonomy, in a relatively small period of time.

How the data was produced.

Each SOLO level was assigned a score from 0- 6. (I have meddled with the structure slightly.)
The number of students at each level were tallied for each activity and multiplied by that score.

The score was then divided by the number of students in the class to give an average score per student.

The score has then been plotted against the order of these SOLO assessed tasks.

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.

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.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Stepping stone activity- a consequence of student to teacher feedback

This strategy, which I will call stepping stones, is a transferable technique that may help turn an abstract idea into a more concrete one. it may also be a fun way of sequencing a lot of similar (but purposefully different content). I'm sure this idea is described in Paul Ginnis - Teachers toolkit.

The reason I'm recording this strategy is actually more to do with how my class arrived here. They have had a lesson on this topic and the evidence I collected lead me to reflect that they had not understood several of the ideas I was trying to help them learn. To find out exactly what they did I designed a quick, mid-module test that pin pointed the precise concepts they could not do. I quickly asked them at the end of this test to raise your hand up if you found question 1one the most difficult, and so on. They overwhelmingly identified this concept, that this stepping stone activity is based around. On marking the test, I agreed with them! I must trust them more on making decisions about what they do and do not.

With a designed test and a clear reflection activity, they give me all the information I needed to plan the next step in their learning. I have made the reason for doing this activity clear to my students by referring to their input. I really want to reinforce the idea that they influence what I plan for them to, education is done with them and not to them.

My current year 8 have struggled conceptually with word equations. They need to know the following

1. what reactants and products are
2. metals and air
3. metals and water
4. metals and acid


I'm only describing this to highlight that many ideas can be developed at once . The students need to be distinguishing between the ideas at times and combining ideas at others.


The session runs something like this:


Students are given an overview sheet with all the words available.

They are asked to plot as many reactions as possible through this grid, trying to explain as they go. Allowing access to books and each other. This planning time gives time for micro teaching and will allow students to participate in the actual event, they simply couldn't without this time.

Then gather them around an open space with the words arranged in the same order as they were on sheet on the floor. One by one get them to step across verbalising what they are doing. eg" I'm starting on sodium its a metal, then I'm moving to....." This makes it a great kinesthetic activity and this helps turns the abstract notion of a word equation into something tangible.

Train the audience to give subtle feedback for example as "gasp" when the "stepping stoner" is wrong, and a quiet "chapeau" when correct. A little bit of peer assessment, which just happens to be very revealing to the teacher. Who is confident enough to say "you're wrong" or "you're right". By making them subtle signals it makes it more fun and requires less conviction, increasing speculative assessments, which grow with reinforcement.

Anyone who is struggling or needs pushing simply ask for another more complex equation. To up the ante for everyone try it twice with the first attempt with the sheet and then again without.

The students seemed more confident about this, although everything is fresh in their mind, I suppose they will only reveal their true understanding in the end of topic test. Am i really looking forward to marking exam papers?

Solo Taxonomy Assessing the Quality of Learning

I have been getting increasingly excited and frustrated with the whole idea of Solo's taxonomy of learning. Like all tools before I use it with my students I need to get my head around it. This process has been difficult as despite never hearing about it! There are lots of really amazing teachers using this with students of all ages, but mainly in New Zealand. So, I have spent an ages reading and thinking about how to use this.

Details of the Grid is available here http://tinyurl.com/l2hhxc

the following sources have been the most inspiring



http://hooked-on-thinking.com/ follow on twitter http://twitter.com/hooked_on_think


http://www.youtube.com/user/Chokearti#play/uploads/6/N63TXAHDgkE. The young students are amazing at describing its use


http://www.slideshare.net/jocelynam/solo-taxonomy


But the most useful thing I've done is trialled it in my lessons, firstly as a self assessment tool and then as a structure to base conversations about the quality of the student work. Both times I have shared what I was doing and asked for feedback. My students have responded in spades, some obviously finding even my crudest attempts useful.





This piece of student work was marked together discussing where on the taxonomy she thought she was. It uses the original language which I have changed, but will probably change back! You can see I am still going back and forth on this one. I have added a couple of extra levels to act as stepping stones. I will find out if they are need.

So my plan is to use the wall display to help permeate as many aspects of my teaching as I can, I will design assessment scheme for specific pieces of work based around this, use it as a self assessment tool, try to correlate it with the National Curriculum levels, refer to it in my feedback to students both verbally and written and I will also with students display exemplar pieces of work at each level. I think this tool with a purpose has legs. Now, I just have to go and use it!

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.

Metacognitive Musings

While my class worked away on a research task today, as part of an enquiry style project. I pondered on how they were setting about the task, having been, if not clear fairly insistent that they read and then use a thinking tool to record their research notes. I have spent an inordinate amount of time asking the same inane questions "Why are you using PowerPoint?" and "When did I ask you to Present your findings"

Here lies my problem with ICT, it is a huge distraction to the thinking students need to do to learn. The metaphor "the tails wagging the dog again" is a regular battle cry in my room, and is the the reason for me insisting on the students using a thinking tool to process the information found.

So despite my class looking very busy i was curious.

Having read a very interesting article by Paul Pintrich, in Theory Into Practice.http://tinyurl.com/lxfl7y , which subdivides the strategies used to learn into three parts, Rehearsing, Elaborating and Organising together with metacognitive strategies (about the strategies used) and strategic problem solving. I simplified these and hope their do not loose to much of their meaning in the translation.



I drafted up a table to help them reflect on the processes they were using and armed them with a post it note. Asked them to write what strategies they had used so far and classify them against this grid. In other words what did they think the strategy helped them do with the information?







So here are the responses summarised. I have categorised them as either a strategy or not using smileys. I then discussed the original responses with the class, and hopefully the influence of this meta cognition can be clearly seen.

So, what do I think it tells me.

Firstly by the end of the session the students are commenting on more process at the expense of content with five less responses. Indicating at least some understanding that the process is important.

Secondly that the idea of research can be a noun, they can produce it by using a variety of processes. Although I don't think they are yet sophisticated enough to be specific in describing how, they have identified research as an actual strategy to research with less! Hoorah!

Thirdly, despite only getting one more strategy in the second half of the lesson, I was particularly pleased by the improvement in quality. For example students realising that they had to plan research, that they should consider what they and they peers already know. These are mainly meta cognitive strategies which did not appear at all in the first reflection. This is exciting.

So not bad for an hour. I think this simple strategy has raised the issue of meta cognition and pedagogical purposes for these students, a first step maybe but one that had to be taken.