Teachmeet Cumberland Arms

Teachmeet CLV Festival 2014

Pedagoo Christmas Party- Unfortunate Acronyms

Take one.......
Among the ramblings are Nuthalls difficulties in making learning visible, how random numbers are a hindrance not a help to learners, the reason why teachers need to claim back the word progress, the usefulness of SOLO taxonomy for tracking learning and the necessity of pre-assessing content. Oh, and lots of puerile acronyms.


I think this video makes the myth of activity and learning clear. It shouts know your pedagogocial content knowledge, look for those misconceptions. Equally beautiful are these posts by David Didau http://t.co/SpV59jCO and Kev Bartle http://t.co/JCqaweDc It appears we really are claiming back the word progress and focusing where our students need us to bve. Focused upon learning.

A change to the definition of learning.

I've just used the define function of Google for the word "learning". I really wish I had not. So imagine my disappointment when I searched "learn".

To be fair my search for a working definition has been as long one. I'm not after an academic, convoluted all encompassing one, just something I can use to spot it taking place in the students in my classroom. Graham Nuthall has wonderfully documented how difficult teachers find this.
I think I have come to clarity recently with a one word definition. That word is change.
If someone has learned something it will manifest itself in one of three places.
Most obviously is the acquisition of new knowledge, students will know a new fact previously unlearned, or added to an existing idea which deepens or broadens a concept.
This may also culminate in the second area, which is a change in an opinion. For this to happen it may or may not involve new knowledge but could be down to recognising the significance of a piece of knowledge.

The final are is probably the most complex. This is the student confidence in their knowledge. Students could move from "I think the answer is..." to " I am certain that it is..". The reason for this is the students are linking a piece of knowledge to evidence of its validity or truth. So it is possible that learning results in the student becoming less confident. In a world where it is necessary to unlearn and relearn it is vital that the student thinks about why they know something and verify that they have sufficient evidence to believe it. This is rather counter intuitive. I thinks it's probably worth spending a moment to think about how you could help students manage this loss of confidence and see it as a part of the learning process.

This route however allows students to unlearn your misconceptions or eventually be more confident in it, if/when they find the reason something is true.

So to summarise my working model of learning is a change in knowledge, opinion and/or confidence.
Incidentally, the Internet is saved as I searched for "definition of learning Graham Nuthall" and I stumbled upon Artichokes blog, and there too the word change appears in the definition. In such company I feel vindicated! Huzaah!

To clarify the use of italics for the phrase piece of knowledge as I am unsure of the piecemeal nature of knowledge. I'm sure Nuthall phrases it as "item" for completeness.

Metacognitive Wrappers

Metacognitive wrappers on Prezi

All a metacognitive wrapper is a task that is completed at the beginning and at the end of an activity or lesson, that is designed to help students plan or at the very least consider their thinking over a lesson. The positioning of these tasks is importan, firstly the integration of teaching thinking skills in real content is well documented in John Hattie's Visible Learning. He also highlights a couple of studies that back up the wrapper nature. Lavery states that strategies aimed at forethought and that encourage evaluation have the biggest impacts on learning. While Huang when studying the metacognitive behaviour of self questioning measured the biggest effect before the lesson, and slightly lower after the lesson. It was much lower during the lesson. Common sense would suggest that trying to be self questioning during a lesson could be distracting to all but the most able learners.

I always field a few responses and record them on the board, and thereby make their thinking visisble. There is no need to sanction any responses as right or wrong at this point. I stumbled across these a while back, and instantly saw their use in engagement and in the development of true metacognition. It is essential that student metacognition goes beyond just thinking about their thinking and actually facilitates them being able to control their thinking.

So what prompts or questions are useful, through trial and error I arrived at the kinds of things to ask, and have recently began to discover the research that explains why this strategy works. I always make a point of making it absolutely clear what they are about to learn. This gives the gives the scope to ask something about what they might already know? I purposefully leave it as might as this makes all ideas to be valid, at least at the beginning of a session. I think it is important not to close any thinking avenues in the first five minutes of a lesson! It also gives students the chance to come back to their original ideas at the end and see if it has changed, have they added new knowledge, modified an existing idea or become more confident about what they knew. (Although becoming less confident in their knowledge is just as valid a response, as they could either be unlearning a misconception, which is a difficult process or be questioning why they believe something rather just accepting something is right.)

The phrasing of the questions is vital, it must embody the kind of thinking you require of them and phrased in such away that its sounds mutable or learnable. So adding phrases like at this point in time or today, are useful signals.

The next element is a target setting one that could be the visualisation of a success criteria, the setting of a self reward for success (could this be a way of tapping into the intrinsic learner motivation? Findlay and Cooper demonstrated that those students who are internally motivated perform better than those who delegate this responsibility). This element could equally be determined by the usefulness of what is being is learned.

Strategic thinking is an essential part, helping students structure not only their thinking but their work too. So getting students to plan out a step by step method on how to solve a problem or planning out an assignment are two of the top four in Hattie's list of most effective metacognitive strategies. In fact a properly planned wrapper will hit all four.

The final element to a wrapper is to focus on a learner attribute such as motivation or being resourceful in their learning is probably the quickest win for the students and for the teacher . Even if at the begin if they say "I'm not motivated today " they have already engaged in the type of thinking you require. I have been surprised by the consistency of improvement at the end of each session when returning to this question. By indicating these attributes within a specific learning activity adds importance to them and makes them visible. It makes them metacognitive.

So to conclude, learners must return to the task, I change the tense to things like Was the knowledge you had useful, or did your plan help you structure your work etc and I again discuss their responses, looking for and praising them controlling their thinking or changing their mind. As change is learning.

The Hidden Lives Of Learners

These are the slides I used during my TeachMeet NorthEast Presentation on Graham Nuthalls work.
On the surface Nuthalls work is very simple. He assessed prior learning, wired each student and teacher for sound, used classroom observers to note interactions and resources, assessed again, interviewed learners about their learning experiences and finally correlated learning with this data. But what you get is so much more. An inspiring synthesis of the hidden lives of learners!. Even the methodology employed has a useful message for teachers, we must listen and look out for the learning that is taking place.

Hidden lives of learners from DKMead

The concept of the three worlds that a learner exists in is instantly a useful planning and reflective tool for teachers. Another neat way of thing about it is Pam Hook's question "What is happening at the ampersand?" This book gets to the heart of the confluence between teaching and learning.

The question posed is illustrative (but not definitive) of how messy the business of learning is. The first posing is difficult unless you know the answer. The second is easier by virtue of your prior learning. This allowed you to deduce what the answer is, but not that you have learned anything!
Students learn what they do.

Consider the amount of learning forgotten by students, especially that crammed for an exam. Nuthall makes clear that students do not become content experts but experts in classroom procedures that is imprinted upon them lesson after lesson, day after day.

So when it comes to seeing learning teacher and students can find it difficult. In fact Nuthall makes it clear that when asked what learning looks like teachers describe good behaviour, not even learner behaviours as opposed to seeing the process of learning. The next few slides prove that I too have failed to see the dichotomy. I have blogged about this previously. Fortunately my PEEL Good learner behaviours display rescues me intermittently.

Three exposures

The seemingly random picture of the Queen, an anagram and a choice of number. Is used to demonstrate a key finding of Nuthalls work. Students need 3 or 4 different exposures to a fact in order to commit it to their working memory. This is the second exposure to the content to be learned from the questions asked earlier.

Evidence

The first of the graphs (slide 26) see the students increase in ability from left to right. It is unsurprising to see the more able students be more successful in a module of work than the weaker ones. This is typical. What is a little surprising is the influence of prior learning. The more able arrive already knowing more, and this is the sole difference in their success. The amount of learning by all students is equivocal, independent of ability. This probably explains why Finland's schools are considered so successful. This is the reason I celebrate performance against target, rather than "grade" with my students. Again I have blogged on this.

The graph on slide 28, is a source of comfort for teachers, and again typical. It highlights that the majority of the learning in the class has come either directly or indirectly form the teacher. The weaker students are more reliant upon the teacher than the more able, and are more reliant upon direct teacher input. A clear call to arms for effective differentiation if there ever was one! It is also important to note that the learning from the choice of teacher designed activities, will also be influenced by the peer culture and social status systems our students construct in and out side of school. On top of this,there is still a significant amount of learning that is self or peer derived. hence the warning from Hattie! Students require training and structures in giving effective feedback.

The one that I do not know

Is a quote from one one of my students, directed at his peers, who persistently ignored him.I intervened and was lucky in my timing in two ways. One that I overheard his plea, but also in that my lesson plan, the ensuing conversation that we had was the third exposure to the information he was struggling with. Now, he knows the what he doesn't know, and when asked the content and the action of learning are linked. So, when I ask whats the one that you don't know he replies "condensation!", the right answer.

The table shows the frighteningly uniqueness of learning. The numbers in the final column, ranging from 44- 89% are the amount of learning that is exclusive to one or one and a single other student. This too is independent of ability. I have not yet assimilated this into my pedagogy, as fully as I expect we can, but I do engage level ladders with a range of suggestive ability indicators. I annotate these with code, for every students, sampling them frequently. So BM is book marking. MMT a mid module test, TQ a teacher question etc. i revisit them when I am unconvinced that a student has not learned them. This way I can (crudely) track the learning taking place.

Finally the ISBN, and the forth and final exposure to the previous answer. The Hidden Lives of Learners. Read it, Think about, Reflect upon your practice, but most of all enjoy it.

Teachmeet North East - SOLO Taxonomy presentation.and the pedagogical purpose of the slides.

Waaoo And The Little Pigs

View more presentations from DKMead.

This is not a script, but, the pedagogical purposes behind the decision I made in creating my Teachmeet micro.

Click the link to watch the presentation.


The first two slides have the purpose of providing an emotional hook into the presentation and pose the conundrum about how we see and measure learning in the classroom. They are about how my son, and how he has developed his language skills from the omnipotent Waaoo to being able to read the word Mango without ever been taught to do so. This journey is visible and unmissable to every parent, but do we see this in our classrooms.?

I think SOLO Taxonomy is a way that we could do this for every student.

The slides tell the story of the increasingly knowledgeable pigs who are using increasingly sophisticated thinking to escape the clutches of an evil wolf. The bricks to house simile is on its own a powerful (not mine) way to visualise SOLO's taxonomy.The choice of a story makes it more memorable , engaging and more familiar, we learn by making connections to what we already know.We have all known the story of the three little pigs from childhood. The slides highlight how bricks of knowledge can be linked and built into more complex forms of demonstrating learning. The uses of different types of buidling materials for example roofing tiles, just adds to this image. To be secure the pig needs to use different materials in a coherent and coordinated way. SOLO taxonomy does exactly this.

In the background I use a range of what appears to be abstract images, a dot, a line a series of lines etc. These are a subconscious link to the real structure of SOLO Taxonomy. My students recognised this when I did this presentation with them. It is designed to give that familiar aahhh feeling during the video that appears later. As I have just said the brain likes to make connections with things it already recognises.

About half way through the story I indicate that something may or not be true. The pedagogical purpose of this is to pass the decision over to the audience. I have manipulated the SOLO taxonomy, but do not know if it is a valid change. I'm learning too. So all I am saying is I'm not sure here please think about it. Its that same as responding "maybe" to a student who asks if an answer is correct, they really go away thinking about it, which would not happen if you said "yes" or "No".

So when I show the video of the frankly outstanding primary students talking in detail about the SOLO structure and their learning with not only confidence but in an extended abstract fashion ( do you notice the consolidatory use of the SOLO taxonomy language there!) the symbols that are used are familiar.



I set the video up by hinting that the video may be from Biggs, the creator of the Taxonomy, by using the word expert. This was done for three reasons, firstly the students give a concrete version of the Taxonomy that I did not, secondly a little bit of humour makes a useful hook and that these students are truly inspiring. If i had of chosen another form of presenting the overall structure it may of appeared that it was useful for bright older students, but by using these young geniuses it clearly demonstrates that it is useful to all students. They really do provide a wow moment, as they show their genuine understanding of and appreciation of the Taxonomy. This was palpable during the presentation inducing a spontaneous round of applause. They did everything I could not do, making teachers want to get their students to be like them.

The next few slides just show classroom examples, for the simple reason that when you see a hierarchy or taxonomy it is not always evident how you can apply it in the classroom, so these just show a couple of real examples of its application and its impact on progress, despite only being introduced by stealth. I am only just beginning to fully develop these ideas with classes.

The final slide was not used, but was put in to potentially start a learning conversation at the Teachmeet, so some are a little facetious (well, most), others argumentative and other down right silly. The plan for using this slide was to display it as I walked of, leaving behind a list (too long to read ) of unanswered questions. Too many, to contrast with the lack of words in the presentation: a list as different people will start reading at different points, and the fact that it was impossible to read them all, in the hope that it would make it easy for someone to approach me to ask "what was that on the last slide.....". I wish I used it now, when is the next Teachmeet......So I guess its of to Hookedonthinking.com for more inspiration. Please check it out.