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.

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.

Why share Pedagogical Purposes? Part 1

I have recently stumbled across a few ideas that I think make clear why I think the sharing of pedagogical purposes works. I will admit that I am no expert in these matters but I am interested in tuning them into useful classroom tools.

I have recently recieved a copy of John Hatties Visible Learning book, and like all good books poses far more questions than it gives answers. The first thing it made me think about was when a teachers pedagogical knowledge becomes most useful. So in no particular order

1. when a learner does not comprehend and discerning why



2. when a learner has made a mistake and discerning why.



3. when progress is being made by a student and discerning why



4. when to intervene with a student and when not



5. when to utilise alternative ways of teaching/ learning.



6. when dealing with alternative conceptions that students arrive with.

All useful thoughts but ones that require solid evidence from students to help make a decision. Soemtimes a gut feeling is just not enough.

The final one fits very well with the idea of the learning --> unlearning--> over learning sequence. Which appeals immensely, but, in which position do I leave my learners?

Again, the very idea of students arriving with preconceived ideas about their world, is another good reason to have activities that illicit these so that teacher and student can explore and change them. Ian Mitchell of the PEEL project corrected me once as I used the term misconceptions, insisting, correctly, that they are alternative conceptions as they work in their current state of learning. All the more reason to ensure students are involved fully in the process.

The next thing in John Hatties Visible Learning I stumbled into was Poppers three worlds of learning of surface, mental and ideas which led me to Blooms taxonomy. Now, I thought I knew this ( and the revised one with Anderson et al) but somehow the educational world I've existed in seems to have missed the Four Dimensions of Knowledge. Many ideas in similar areas but nothings as resplendent as this. Once,I saw these I got the feeling that these will prove much more use to me and my students in the years to come. They also indicated to me that the sharing of pedagogical purposes are a route worth pursuing.

These are given as

1. Factual knowledge



2. Conceptual Knowledge



3. Procedural knowledge



4. 
   
   Meta cognitive knowledge

What strikes me is the simplicity, balance and usefulness of these. They shout teach me. They are very much what should be taught as opposed to how we should teach. Part of the criticism in Visible Learning is that teachers/ education is too often aimed solely at Factual knowledge.
I've had a go at reviewing a science enquiry I have written and we are about to use with around 400 year 8 students in Science. This should produce some interesting data to reflect upon over the summer.

http://tinyurl.com/ngcr7p Available here for closer scrutiny.

Essentially the ABC's are learning outcomes (statements currently) which have been plotted across the Four dimensions and up through Blooms taxonomy. The words in italics are the science specific thinking skills I am trying to develop in the students . I will blog about these when I'm finished creating the assessment hierarchies that go with them.

Now what this review shows me is that in fact the lesson plan actually does TEACH in the four dimensions. I will admit that this was done by accident but is satisfying non the less(if it works!). But what really excites me is the only reason it does this is that each task the students will do has a distinct, planned and assessable procedure that goes with it. For example when searching for relevant factors that would influence the outcome, the lesson flows as follows. Everything in blue is a way of sharing the pedagogical purpose with students. It is clear the emphasis that this requires, although it is not necessarily a time consuming thing.

1. Teacher states why we are going to use Debonos Green thinking hat



2. Use hat to generate many possibilities.
   


3. Debrief the use and the benefits of the hat.
   


4. Introduce filter map, say why its being used
   


5. Use filter map



6. Debrief use of the filter map



7. Summarise the factors that will be controlled.

I am hoping that in subsequent enquiry lessons the students will not require me to prompt and debrief as often, as they take over the decision making process of choosing which tool and when to employ it.

A final thought about this new grid was that the top four are all factual, and I have no planned "activities" directed towards them. I then realised that in fact they are not that important in this lesson, and that the students are quite likely to pick them up as they go along as this is what they will be thinking about. It then struck me that most of my teaching experiences have been directed toward this factual realm with an assumption that the "rest" will follow. In reality more teaching needs to directed towards the "rest" and the facts will follow.