Wednesday 28 August 2019

Effective Planning: Tips for ITT and NQTs


As September looms there has been many posts on Twitter from teachers starting their ITT or NQT years looking for advice. I remember that period five years ago vividly, sitting at home wondering what I ‘should’ be doing to prepare. Many people gave the same advice that I would give now, which is to plan your first couple of lessons because anything you do plan will have to be changed and adapted as you go. I did the Teach First route into teaching, and like many doing other ‘school-based’ routes I was expected, quite early on to plan SOWs. I found this incredibly challenging and time consuming, as every lesson I planned took between an hour and two hours (if not more sometimes). This invariably means late nights at school and weekends spent working when I probably needed space and perspective more than anything else. One of the biggest lessons for an ITT or NQT is how to sequence a unit of learning and move away from planning individual lessons on a day by day basis. I remember looking at medium term plans and not being able to use these to help my own planning. It seems second nature now, but it is something I feel that I wasn’t adequately trained to do and if I was it would have helped my teaching and workload. Therefore, I wanted to write a blog, aimed at ITTs and NQTs that set out the process of developing a unit of work and the thought process I go through.
I’m using the example of the Lord of the Flies SOW I’m creating for my Y9 class.


The Blank Computer Screen:


The hardest thing, in any creative endeavour is the blank page/ screen. The feeling of ‘where do I start?’

At this stage it is important to begin at the end and plan backwards. Firstly, look at the end of unit assessment and work out what pupils will need to be able to succeed.

In Y9, pupils sit a ‘GCSE Literature’ style question, which will be closed book and will look something like.

‘How does Golding present the character of Piggy in Lord of the Flies’

On that basis pupils will need:

-          To know the key events, characters and themes of the book
-          To be able to use quotations and textual references to support their ideas
-          To analyse the use of language
-          To understand how context shapes ideas within the text
-          To be able to structure their ideas into topic paragraphs
-          To construct a line of argument
-          To express their ideas clearly in an analytical style
-          To write with accuracy


Secondly, and most importantly, I like to think about the ’30 year test’. What do I want pupils to take from this book that will stay with them until adulthood? I think it is important when studying a text to think about these in terms of ‘big questions’. By taking time to think about these in advance, this will  help you with your planning and focus throughout the SOW.

In Lord of the Flies the ‘big questions’ might look something like this:

- What makes a successful society?
- Are humans naturally good or evil?
- What prevents us from doing bad things?
- What makes a successful leader?


Skeleton Planning:


The next step I would take is to look at how many weeks/ lessons I have to teach the topic. As I’ll discuss later, you need to be flexible, but it is useful to look at where you want them to be on a week to week basis, so that you are not rushing at the end, or (the biggest sin) that you have time to finish the novel/text!

At this point, look at any requirements that your department has. Are there any ‘mid term assessments’ that need to be completed? If so, add these to your plan. If your school has a restrictive marking policy, work out at what point you will need to complete a piece of marking and add this. Try to be clever about this, it often gets out of sync but it is a good idea to try and ensure that across your classes, your extended marking doesn’t fall on the same week.

Once you have done this you should have a skeleton plan that you can sequence your lessons around it.

Sequence of Lessons:


When you begin planning lessons, it’s really hard to break the habit of ‘fire fighting planning’; planning individual lessons the night before and spending longer planning than it takes to deliver the lesson. In English, try to see learning as happening in a sequence that might span more than one lesson. For example, studying a chapter of Lord of the Flies or doing a practice question might take three lessons to be completed properly.

Now, I understand that in certain schools you might have some ‘non negotiables’ such as ‘four part lesson' structure or such other restrictive planning frameworks. You can work around these, but I would recommend doing what your school wants, as an ITT or NQT you are not in a position to fight the good fight on an issue like this and it is likely to end up causing you more stress in the long run.

You can work around this, have a bank of starters that are linked to literacy, or create a short recap quiz. These are good starters for challenging classes as they are not open ended. You can set a timer and check the work has been completed giving praise or sanctions as necessary. If you have a class you can trust, set a discussion point linked to previous learning and take feedback. Both these styles of starter can easily be added to the beginning of a lesson so that you can then carry on what you had started the previous lesson.

A similar approach can be taken with ‘plenaries’. However, to keep your marking down avoid getting them to write down unnecessary plenaries that can’t be self or peer marked, you will just be tempted to spend time marking it (waste of your precious time), or if you don’t an over zealous member of SLT might pull you up on it in a book scrutiny.

Power Points:


The more experienced I have become, the less I rely on Power Points. Yet, when I was an ITT an NQT I needed the structure of a Power Point to help remind me what I had planned to do next in a lesson. When I’m nervous or stressed, my short term memory is awful, therefore during early lessons, when I was constantly nervous or stressed, a Power Point really helped me. Some teachers hate Power Points, and I can see their argument but ultimately they are just a tool. If they help you, use them.

To help with planning, set up a Power Point with ‘template’ slides. These could include all the information that you need on a lesson by lesson basis. For example, you might want to set up the following slides:

- A slide with space for the title, learning objective, big question to display at the start of the lesson.
- A slide with 1-10 set out (for doing quick re-cap quizzes or literacy starters)
 A slide with space for a question and success criteria table

I find this speeds up the process of creating a Power Point for a lesson and every little helps at this stage!

Keep things simple:


When I look back at my early lessons one thing jumps out at me: I was planning too many little activities. Now, when I plan a lesson I try to ensure that the bulk of the lesson focuses on doing one thing well. In a Literature lesson this may mean reading a chapter and annotating key parts or designing questions to aid note taking. I use the Cornell note method a lot now- but this takes time to get right with a class. Do it together until the class understand how to do it properly (in my NQT year I gave up on this too early as I thought it wasn’t working- turns out I didn’t model it enough or give it a chance to embed. Good routines take time!)

In a Language lesson we might read the extract, discuss, model how to annotate a section then allow pupils to practise themselves. If there is time, or in the next lesson we might do a practice question where I will model the beginning of the response, pupils then practise and then self assess.
I cannot emphasise the importance of good modelling. If you have access to a visualiser- make it your best friend! However, you are just like a pupil in that you will not be an expert the first time you do something new. Don’t give up. These techniques take time and practice. When you observe experienced teachers they will make it look effortless (and for them NOW it probably is) but for you it will feel like a struggle. Persevere. Once you are confident in these techniques it will reduce your planning time and improve your pupils’ learning.


In a Nutshell: 


  1. Start at the end- be clear about what the end goal is 
  2. Work out what pupils will need to do to be able to get to the end goal 
  3. Think about the '30 year test'- what do you want pupils to remember in 30 year time? 
  4. Work out what assessments need to be completed and think about what pieces you want to give feedback on- space these out so you are not marking everything at once 
  5. Have a bank of 'starter' ideas that you can adapt lesson by lesson (recap or literacy) 
  6. Don't over plan- lots of little activities take hours of preparation and aren't always effective 
  7. Plan in sequences rather than by hourly chunks 
  8. Create a Power Point template so that you can quickly adapt for that lesson 
  9. Things like using the visualiser, modelling on the board and techniques like Cornell note taking will reduce your planning time but will take time for you and your pupils to become comfortable using them. Don't give up- it will save you time in the long run! 
  10. Don't plan too far in advance, you will usually have to change and adapt as you get to know your class- it is likely to be a waste of your very precious time! 


Books that helped me:


You will probably be recommended all sorts of books on pedagogy during your ITT year. None of the ones that were on the ‘reading list’ (which I dutifully bought) were useful. The following books, which I bought and read from recommendations on Twitter are the ones I found really useful in helping me improve my planning.

-Making Every English Lesson Count (If you can only buy one I would recommend this)

-Teaching Backwards (This is not English specific but I remember finding it really useful in my ITT year)

I’ve not got round to reading these two yet but both writers are amazing English teachers and have been highly recommended by others on Twitter so I am recommending in advance!


How to Teach English  by Chris Curtis 




Sunday 14 July 2019

Meaningful Self Assessment in English


This blog is based on the session I delivered at the Team English National Conference 2019. The full set of slides and handout are available at the end of the blog.

This is specifically focused on how we support pupils self assessing extended reading and writing responses. 

Why is self assessment important?

Most teachers would recognise that it is important for pupils to be able to self assess their work; pupils need to be able to evaluate if their responses are successful independently, especially in a world of 100% exams. Self assessment is also important in regards of teacher workload. We cannot give meaningful feedback on every piece of work that a pupils produces. Time spent ‘marking’ everything is time which is then not available for thoughtful planning. Teachers’ time is not an infinite resource. Work-life balance is important and happy teachers are better teachers. Therefore, we need to ensure that pupils can meaningfully self assess their own work. Yet, this does not happen without careful thought and planning on our behalf.

Problems and pitfalls with self assessment

-Pupils don’t have the knowledge and skills to evaluate their own work effectively
-It is seen as less valuable than other forms of marking/ feedback
-It is rushed (usually at the end of the lesson)
-It is not carefully planned/ part of the curriculum/ SOW

Showing pupils the ‘why’



Often pupils don’t ‘buy into’ the concept of self assessment. It may be that pupils see the ‘what’ before the ‘why’. Simon Sinek in his TED Talk argues that in marketing, companies often fail by focusing on ‘what’ they do rather than ‘why’ they do it. He argues that customers buy into values and beliefs rather than the end product. Therefore it is important for companies to ensure that they are clear about the purpose of what they do. Is this true of teaching? With self assessment pupils are aware of the product- picking out targets or writing what they need to do to improve- but don’t necessarily engage with the purpose of this.

As teachers, I would argue that we need to be much better at articulating the purpose of self assessment- the ‘why’.

The self assessment culture in the classroom



Ultimately, the culture of a classroom drives the behaviour and behaviour produces results.
It is important to reflect on the culture of self assessment and consider whether this culture drives ineffectual behaviours and therefore produces ineffectual results.

We need to keep articulating the core purpose of self assessment for pupils:

‘You need to be able to take ownership of your learning so you can spot success independently.’

Self assessment is essentially metacognition

To undertake meaningful self assessment we need to show that it is a process that is intrinsically part of the whole process, not just something done at the end of a response.
Broken down, the process needed might look something like this.



A misconception may be that this kind of metacognition is something which is independent from the teacher, however, pupils are unlikely to have these metacognitive processes innately, rather these thought processes need to be articulated and modelled explicitly until they become behaviours.

How can we plan to support effective self assessment?

Take the following question based on an AQA Paper 1 Q2. It is important to think carefully about what we skills or knowledge pupils will need to demonstrate to craft a successful response.



As experts, we can assess a response and make an accurate judgement as to whether pupils have met these criteria. However, as a novice a pupil would struggle to do this. However, we can reword these concepts in a way that makes it much easier for a pupil to recognise success. It will never replace the value of your feedback, but if they are able to do this it will most likely enable them to produce a much better response than if they didn’t.
Therefore, for this question I might design my success criteria in this way:



With repeated modelling and practice, pupils will be able to use this to improve their answer.
The process I would follow in my lesson might look something like this:



Therefore, the process of self assessment should not be seen as merely a ‘plenary’, but an active part of the whole task.

Self assessing writing

I would argue that pupils find it more difficult to self assess their writing. Yet, being able to proof read and improve their writing is a hugely important skill. For writing I take a slightly different approach.

Here is an example of a self assessment criteria that I use for descriptive writing:



As with a reading response, I would model and annotate any of the features I expect the pupils to demonstrate on the board and pupils would copy this down as a model they can refer back to.

I would also give pupils much more time to self assess a piece of writing, ideally as a starter during the next lesson as having time away from their work helps build the critical distance necessary to assess their own work.

As pupils get more confident with this I allow pupils to create their own ‘success criteria’, or annotate their work with the technique they have used and the effect they were trying to create. This helps pupils see the connection between being a reader and a writer.

Here is an example of a piece of transactional writing completed by one of my Y9 pupils:














‘Top tips’ for effective self assessment

-Start small- get pupils to assess a few things well
-Keep the format the same to reduce cognitive load
-Allow enough time for the task to be done properly
-Model the process
-Allow for repeated practice
-Use metacognitive language- articulate your thought process when assessing work
-Be careful with your language- don’t just reward success, success is also being able to spot errors

But… we need to support an effective self assessment culture in school

-HODs and SLT need to be on board
-School leadership needs to value this as a form of feedback and support teachers
-Book scrutinies/ policy need to recognise this
-Teachers need to share what works well and be trained in what effective self assessment looks like
-Effective self assessment doesn’t happen on its own- it takes hard work but is valuable



An electronic copy of the slides and handout are available here. I am happy for you to share as long as I'm credited for the work: 

TENC2019 Self Assessment Resources

Sunday 17 March 2019

Organising a TeachMeet: Taking Ownership of Subject Specific CPD


It is clear that one of the characteristics of a great teacher is the ability to reflect and improve on their practice. However, the nature of teaching does not make that easy. The slings and arrows of the job, the planning, marking, data entry, extra curricular activities, to name but a few, often mean that opportunities for self reflection and improvement get pushed to the back burner, the last thing on a seemingly never ending to-do list. Yet, when we are able to make time for improvement the benefits are huge, not just to our schools and our pupils but to ourselves. When I reflect on when I’m happiest and most satisfied at work, it is when I feel like I have some autonomy on my practice and am able to take some ownership over my role within school.

One of the best pieces of advice during my ITT year was to join Twitter. Without a doubt Twitter as been the biggest source of inspiration, innovation and support. As an English teacher, having access to a network of amazing practitioners through ‘Team English’ is like being in the biggest most innovative team meeting. There are so many, too many to mention, fantastic teachers who have helped me immensely, particularly when I began teaching A Level Language (having had no experience of studying let alone teaching the subject). Being the only A Level Language teacher in my department was very isolating, yet having access to a wealth of experienced Language teachers on Twitter, who willingly shared resources and gave me advice, meant that I was to cope.

Clearly there are issues with school based CPD. Often, when done badly, it is merely a ‘tick-box’ exercise to show that it has been done. This breeds resentment with teachers who feel that there very precious time is being wasted. While there is a place for ‘whole-school’ CPD, there seems, in my experience, far too much generic CPD which focuses on contexless pedagogical ideas, rather than high quality, subject-specific CPD. Why is this? Perhaps it is the nature of how CPD is organised, often by one lead within a school. There also seems to be a lack of trust in teachers, that it is difficult to ‘monitor’ the effectiveness of CPD if teachers are given autonomy to direct their own CPD. This is frustrating but understandable. Whilst some teachers within a school would jump at the opportunity to lead their own CPD, there would be others no doubt who would not. Yet surely there must be a balance that can be struck?

Similarly, a lot of subject-specific CPD is often delivered through exam board training. While this is often necessary and useful, it is important to recognise that this does little to improve our subject knowledge. Yes it is important to understand the specifications and exams that we teach at GCSE and A Level, but by having such a proportion of our subject based CPD skews our experience, leading if not careful, to a focus on teaching to the exam, rather than reflecting more broadly on how to teach our subject effectively across all Key Stages. The lack of focus and thought which goes into many KS3 curriculum is a symptom of this approach.

What is the solution? In an ideal world all teachers should have access to the wealth of experiences of other teachers in other schools as schools and departments can be very insular. Therefore, the TeachMeet format is an excellent way of delivering teacher-led, subject-specific CPD.

In this blog I hope to share with you some of the lessons I’ve learned from organising my first TeachMeet and encourage more people to take the leap and organise their own.

Organising a TeachMeet:

Venue:

Perhaps the first consideration you need to think about it that of a venue. Some questions to consider:

  • Is your venue easy to get to via public transport?
  • Is there parking onsite or nearby?
  • Will it be open after school hours?
  • Are there facilities for making tea/ coffee?
  • Is there going to be enough space for the amount of attendees? 
The first port of call would be your school. I didn’t ask my school because I had already had the offer of hosting from Sheffield Hallam and this was an ideal location as it was near to the train station. However, when I told my head teacher about it in passing she was very keen to support by hosting the event. Therefore, it is always worth asking as schools are usually very supportive of this kind of event.

Timings:

If your event is going to be after school you need to consider that most people will be coming straight from work, therefore you need to get the balance between giving people enough time but not starting too late (there is nothing worse than having to wait around if you’ve had a long day). We decided to run the event between 6-8.30 which seemed a good balance. It may be worth planning to start the event around 15 mins after the scheduled time to allow for late comers.

Tickets:

For planning reasons it is important to know how many people who are likely to attend. There are lots of ways of doing this but we used Eventbrite. The pros were:
  • Very easy to set up
  • The site sends you notifications of when people sign up
  • It is free to use if your ticket is free
  • You can send out emails to all people who have signed up
  • You can set the amount of tickets available
  • It sends reminders of the event automatically
  • It has features which shows you where the traffic to the page has come from (eg Twitter, website etc)
The cons:

If you do want to charge for the event it will take a percentage of the ticket price so you will need to factor this in.
  

Pricing:

When I set up my event, I felt very strongly that the event should be free as I know the majority of teachers pay for such events out of their own pocket. I was also lucky in that Sheffield Hallam were providing refreshments and I had managed to get freebies for goody bags and raffle prizes. However, on the night over 20 people who had signed up for a ticket failed to attend without cancelling their ticket or notifying me. This meant that we had to radically change the format of the evening without notice. This is understandable, people are tired and circumstances change, however it is very disheartening when you have put a lot of effort into organising something voluntarily.

Therefore, if I was organising another one I would put a nominal charge on the ticket (such as £4) so that there is a bit of a psychological incentive to attend and people would be less likely to sign up unless they were genuine about attending. I would use any money to put towards raffle prizes or a small gift for those that volunteered to speak.

Speakers:

Obviously the strength of such an event comes from those that volunteer to deliver short presentations. To support this I decided to give the event a specific focus. I had picked three areas of practice that I felt would be particularly relevant to English teachers:
  • Strategies for Y11 revision
  • Reducing the burden of marking and feedback
  • Improving KS3 
I felt this was a good approach as it gives people an idea of what they could deliver a presentation on, however if someone has a great idea then there is still scope for that too. It also gives people a flavour of what the event would be about. I was fortunate that I had three volunteers who all delivered fantastic presentations. If you are struggling to get speakers then this may be the time to call in any favours from colleagues and other teachers you know! I found that most people would love to help and sometimes just need the nudge or a little support.

Format of the night:

You need to be flexible about your programme as things do change and you need to see what interest you have from people wanting to deliver presentations. If you have enough people sign up to deliver speeches then you might just want to do a traditional programme where you have a list of speakers deliver their presentations one after the other. If you want to break this up or make it more interactive you could do the following as well:

Breakaway sessions:

Depending on the layout of your venue, you could build time into your programme for breakaway sessions. Here, you get the attendees into smaller groups and give them questions to discuss on a certain topic. Below are some examples for a session on ‘Marking and Feedback’:

  • Have you or your school trialled any strategies to reduce the marking/ feedback burden in English?
  • How can we support pupils so that they do meaningful self assessment?
  • Does Peer Assessment work in the English classroom?
  • How do you ensure that pupils respond to feedback in a meaningful way? 
Troubleshooting Panel:

Another way you could open up participation is by hosting a troubleshooting panel. Ideally you would have a three or four different teachers (from different contexts) sit on the panel and then allow the audience to ask questions based on problems they may have encountered in their classroom, department or school. This is a great way of getting different perspectives on a problem, especially due to the insular ‘we’ve always done it this way’ nature of some schools.

Raffle prizes/ Goody bags:

I found that if you ask you often get! It is worth approaching educational companies and published authors on social media to see if they might be able to support your event. The worst that can happen is they say no.

Top Tip:

Be flexible. Whenever you organise something that relies on people goodwill, people will drop out (usually at the last moment) and you need to have contingency plans. Likewise, due to the ticket sales we were expecting a much bigger crowd and had to change the programme on the night to reflect the numbers in the room. Don’t let this faze you. If you are willing to adapt and think on your feet you will have a much more successful event.

Would I do it again?

Don’t get me wrong, organising an event like this does involve a fair bit of work and organising alongside your already busy life but the answer would be a most emphatic yes!

The event, like most events of this nature, has given me a much needed boost of inspiration. I would like to thank Jess Mason, Jennifer Webb, Jennie Flounders and Rachel Black for helping out and delivering some amazing thought-provoking sessions.

If you are considering organising your own #TeamEnglish TeachMeet and want any specific advice or support, please feel free to send me a DM on Twitter @MrsDuffyEnglish