Teaching and learning group

2020 vision – rising to the challenge

Andy Brumby, SNS learning consultant

abrumby@cornwall.gov.uk

07968 992462

Objectives

• To identify and analyse the ingredients of successful learning

• To experience and explore strategies that promote collaborative talk, higher order thinking, inductive learning etc

• To consider the implications of the above in the light of the Gilbert report, the 8 schools project and the QCA reforms

Just imagine…

• …a lesson in which all learners exceed your expectations by going beyond the potential you saw in them.

• Take a look at the learning wheel and see how many features of successful learning beginning with the letter C you can identify

• Distil your list down to the 5 most important Cs of successful learning

• Consider how you might use this in your planning and/or monitoring and evaluation of learning

plenary

• Name a food suitable for pickling – Branston

• Worms hold themselves together by the suction power of their little legs

• Large animals are found in the sea because there is nowhere else to put them

• Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this

C

Activity:

• What would you be looking for in your classroom to see if good learning is happening?

• What would you be listening for in your classroom to hear if good learning is happening?

• What would your students say helps them to learn well?

• What do they think are the barriers to learning?

The Gilbert Report sets out a vision for personalised learning in the rapidly changing world of the 21st Century.

It invites us to meet the challenges and opportunities afforded by:

a generation of young people which is likely to be less passive and deferential than in past generations

dramatic advances in the availability and capacity of technology which widens access to, and options for, learning

demographic changes related to age, mobility and ethnicity etc

Are pupils actively engaged?

Many pupils report that their experience of school is still marked by long periods of time listening to teachers or copying from the board or a book. Personalising learning involves changing – and challenging – such routines.

Too many children drift into underachievement and disengagement and fail to make progress in their learning

Teachers need to actively engage learners by:

• engineering effective discussions, questions and tasks that elicit evidence of learning

• providing feedback that moves learners forward

• clarifying and sharing learning intentions and success criteria

• activating pupils as the owners of their own learning

• activating pupils as resources for one another

Independent learners

Organise themselves

Identify, find and use resources and sources of help

Collect and analyse information

Review or evaluate the outcome

Reach conclusions or produce a product

Set goals or make plans

Generate ideas

Folk psychology of teaching…

• Knowledge is stuff

• The mind is a vessel

• Learning is stored stuff

• Acquisition only requires attention

• Learning involves transfer of information eg the teacher as the petrol pump attendant filling students’ empty tanks

Constructivist teaching…

• Requires students to form constructs that require them to form their own meaning or interpretation of the material being studied.

• Allows the learner and the teacher to detect misconceptions, errors and omissions in the learning and correct these.

Constructivist teaching strategies

• Use approaches that require students to make a construct

• Ensure all students are participating• Students to process information at a high high

level eg evaluation, synthesis, analysis• Ensure students make a product to diagnose

learning eg pair talk, card sort• Students to assess each other to check errors in

learning• Student to correct learning errors• Have fun in the process of learning!

“Mysteries”

Acknowledgement

• This presentation has been adapted from Crown copyright materials

• The original materials appear in Leading in Learning: developing thinking skills at Key Stage 3 (Handbook for teachers)

• Ref: DfES 0035-2005 G

• Date of issue 01-2005

Andy Brumby 07968 992462

“Mysteries” are designed to encourage pupils to deal with ambiguity, to make links between disparate, apparently unconnected pieces of information, fit them together to make sense of disorder, read between the lines, come up with a variety of ideas and evaluate them.

How does it work?

• In a mystery pupils are presented with between 15 and 20 information statements on slips of paper

• Each statement relates to a situation where there is a single open question or problem for them to resolve

• The statements can be general or background information, specific details and sometimes “red herrings” or irrelevant information

• Pupils work in groups to read and sort the statements, link information on different cards and come up with a solution to the mystery question

“Brains on the table”Pupils’ thinking is physically evident as they move the slips of paper around the table-top. That way, they can change their minds as they share their thinking – the moving actually helps them think.

The teacher can see the progression in their thinking in the way the data items are grouped and structured and by listening to pupils talking.

These stages have been labelled “brains on the table” and they do allow teachers a unique opportunity for diagnostic assessment.

“Mysteries”

Pendle is about 200 miles from London.

King James I was a protestant

Alison Device said that Demdike tried to heal a sick cow ,but it died Roger Nowell was

keen to please King James I

Poor people in England did not go to school in the early 17th Century

Demdike died in prison

The catholic faith was strong in Lancashire

Nobody in the 17th Century was sure about the causes of disease, not even doctors

Pendle was a remote part of Lancashire

Demdike confessed that she had met the Devil

Local people believed that Demdike had

special powers

James I became King of England in 1603

Question:

Why was Alison Device , a teenager, hanged at Pendle Castle in 1612?

Thinking skills addressed

“Mysteries” stand out as a strategy in that they are good for all of the National Curriculum thinking skills, indicating both their flexibility and power as a teaching tool

Information processing

Reasoning Evaluation Enquiry Creative-thinking

“MYSTERIES”

How “Mysteries” support the 5 National Curriculum thinking skills

Information Processing

Reasoning Enquiry Creative thinking

Evaluation

Locate and collect relevant information

Give reasons for opinions and actions

Ask relevant questions

Generate and extend ideas

Evaluate information

Sort and classify

Draw inferences and make deductions

Predict outcomes and anticipate consequences

Suggest hypotheses

Judge the value of what they read, hear, do

Sequence Explain what they think

Test conclusions and improve ideas

Look for alternative innovative outcomes

Develop criteria for judging the value of work or ideas

Analyse part/whole relationships

Make informed judgements and decisions

Italics = to a lesser degree

Progression in ReasoningPROGRESSION

Pupils select some data items that may be relevant, but cannot develop an explanation that addresses the question

Pupils select one or two data items that are relevant and develop an explanation, but it does not fully address the question

Pupils select several relevant data items and develop an explanation but it does not fully address the question. There may be some limited linkage between data items but they are not all linked together to reach a successful conclusion

Pupils select several data items, which are likely to be grouped in some way. The explanation has clear causal connections linking the data items together using connectives such as “because” and “meanwhile” appropriately. The question is answered successfully.

Pupils use wider knowledge to help interpret the information and make more general abstract statements. They are able to entertain more than one possible solution and are more likely to identify flaws in their own reasoning.

Thinking skills• In the early stages of carrying out a

“Mystery”, Information-processing skills are likely to predominate

• As pupils make progress in processing the information Reasoning and Evaluation skills will become more dominant

• Eventually, given sufficient time and support, pupils will begin to use Enquiry skills, such as predicting outcomes and anticipating consequences and improving and refining their ideas

Reasoning

Evaluation

Enquiry

Information-processing

Planning to use the strategy

The first step in planning a mystery is to identify a topic where there is opportunity for uncertainty and ambiguity and where one wants pupils to think really hard about the causes of events.

Example, Year 8 History:

Alison Device, a teenager, and Chattox, a widow, lived in Pendle, Lancashire in 1612. They were both hanged at Lancaster Castle. Why?

Designing the 15 to 20 information slips

To design the mystery, think in the following terms:• A story line or narrative – there need to be some slips

which describe characters and what happens to them in a particular scenario

• A place/time context – these slips usually provide the subject knowledge background for the mystery

• Potentially ambiguous data items - these open up the possibility of different interpretations

• Some deliberate red herrings - these can lead pupils down the wrong path if they are not prepared to evaluate

Story line Place/timeAmbiguous data

Red herrings+ + +

Explanations

• When pupils have had 15 – 30 minutes working in their groups to come up with an answer they need to be primed to be able to explain their answer, so it is valuable to give them a few minutes to rehearse their explanation

• They should be able to use the physical structure of the data items to help them construct their answers

Therefore … because … but … however …

Variations…

• A variation on the approach is to get one pupil from a group to swap with one from another, so that ideas and explanations can be put under scrutiny – it is important to set ground rules and give clear instructions for this. This can really help to develop pupils’ reasoning skills.

Yes, but what if …

So what you’re saying is…

Creating the right level of challenge 1

• To support lower-achieving pupils you might:• Simplify the “mystery” – begin with fewer

cards and more concrete data• Suggest headings for the groups of cards• Encourage pupils to explain their ideas to

you and/or build in interim plenaries where groups with more advanced or refined thinking share their ideas with the rest of the class

CONCRETE DATA

Creating the right level of challenge 2

To challenge higher-achieving pupils you might:

• Make the mystery more complex by including data items that are not easy to classify, more red herrings, or more abstract information about which they need to hypothesise and infer and generally think more creatively

• Require them to suggest headings for the different categories of information as they group them

Troubleshooting

Possible difficulties Possible solutions

Pupils cannot picture or “get into” the scenario Show some photographs or video of the scenario or read a contemporary account so that they begin to get a picture in their heads

Pupils are overwhelmed by the data and are slow to make a start

Reduce the number of data items and model the process, perhaps using an OHP or whiteboard

Some pupils cannot classify the statements into groups

Pull out one statement and point out a key word on it, then ask pupils to find another with the same word

Pupils do the task quite well but don’t evaluate their theories or consider alternatives

While they are still working, challenge them with a statement which doesn’t fit into their theory or tell them that another group has a different theory, to sow some doubt

Metacognition

• Questioning for metacognition helps pupils to “unpack” what and how they have learned and what they might do with this learning. The questions below can be used to encourage pupils to be metacognitive about reasoning

How did you start doing the task?

We started by spreading all the cards out and trying to see if there were any obvious connections between them…

How is this like the work of a detective?

We are piecing together the evidence and trying to make connections… looking for motives

How did you continue?

We started to group two or more cards together like “James I was a protestant” and “The Catholic faith was strong in Lancashire”

Bridging scenarios

Most events and accidents in life and history have short- and long-term causes. Why did David Beckham move to Real Madrid? The short-term cause is that Madrid put in a big offer and he was prepared to go, but what are the long-term causes? Madrid wanted to sell lots of shirts and build up a fan base in Asia where Beckham is a huge star. This allows them to develop the club as a global brand. It also fits with Beckham becoming an international fashion icon. And much more besides.

Learning: where next for your school?AfL/thinking skills development and implementation

Monitoring and evaluation

What is going well?

What could be better still?

What aspect(s) of learning will you focus on next year and why?

What support/development/resources will you need?

How do you know? What evidence have you gathered?

What are the blocks?

How will you ensure that all learners benefit?