It turns out that next door were filming an advert for Asian TV yesterday. This was quite exciting at 8pm, but far less exciting at 11pm, when the little boy drummers for the advert were still banging their drums. It became rather annoying when they began taking down the sets at 1am. But I got really cross at 4am when they decided to have loud conversations on the phone, outside. Grrr. Also, apparently on Sunday morning they had had a huge row with the people who live on the other side, which woke everyone up too. Naughty neighbours. I was very close to opening my window and shouting out "this isn't a council estate, please be quiet", but then realised that was probably inappropriate, so instead tossed and turned in bed. Consequently, was rather late into our training day this morning, whoops.
Good thing really, managed to miss some of the warm-up introductory speeches, but caught the rest of the day. Was quite good, they had another educational consultant in, this time to talk about "stimulating teaching, exciting learning, and assessment for learning". He was a good speaker, kinda like a stand-up comedian, lots of funny anecdotes and chatter, which warmed up the crowd. Plus, rather than trying to get us to brainstorm and group discuss and all those other standard INSET activities, he just cut out all the nonsense and told us his ideas straight up. Despite the vacant look I carried for most of the day, I appreciated this.
He suggested lots of things for stimulating teaching:
He did similar things for learning, emphasising that students are more excited about learning when they feel confident and clear about the work. He suggested using open ended activities that have a degree of creative control but that require understanding rather than just a search for the "right answer". He also encouraged the use of stimuli e.g. videos, sound clips, pictures, writing frames etc. to support work. He said that good writing requires purpose, product and audience. He was very anti-SATS and OFSTED, which surprised me, but which appealed to our staff I think.
Finally, with regards to assessment, I particularly paid attention to his talk on feedback and feedforward. He said that targets and assessment criteria should be shared with the class and put into more friendly language so that students are clear on what they need to achieve (without dumbing the language down too much - students need to be able to speak the language of assessment). He said that we shouldn't mark too much work, but that we should give clear written feedback on the work we do mark, and also give feedforward i.e. targets that pupils should work towards in their next piece of work so that they have something explicit they can do to improve.
So yes, we learnt quite a lot today on our last INSET day of the year. However, bad news too - next year five of our nine INSET days will be spent moving into the new Academy, which doesn't inspire me too much. Further we are expecting HMI next term PLUS a ULT inspection. Rubbish. I better make the most of this half of the term, before things go all crazy again.
In other news, tomorrow I have my last subject studies day, in which I think we are doing some kinda maths trail in London, exciting stuff. Also, I have an interview at MyBnk on Weds after school for a summer internship - I really wanna work there, it's a great idea, very inspiring! Will let you know how that goes.
And if you have time, check this out. Hahaha, pirate chatter, shiver me timbers.
Good thing really, managed to miss some of the warm-up introductory speeches, but caught the rest of the day. Was quite good, they had another educational consultant in, this time to talk about "stimulating teaching, exciting learning, and assessment for learning". He was a good speaker, kinda like a stand-up comedian, lots of funny anecdotes and chatter, which warmed up the crowd. Plus, rather than trying to get us to brainstorm and group discuss and all those other standard INSET activities, he just cut out all the nonsense and told us his ideas straight up. Despite the vacant look I carried for most of the day, I appreciated this.
He suggested lots of things for stimulating teaching:
- classroom management - starting as you mean to go on, seating and displays, ground rules, roles in group work, processes to get activities started
- group work - managed through roles and clearly structured tasks
- visual mind maps with interactive links
- sharing learning objectives
- confidence through understanding key vocab
- matching card games
- blockbusters - using software based on the game show
- snowball - this is a great idea - basically start the class off by asking them to think of one of something e.g. one factor of 120, then get them into pairs and challenge each pair to find 4 factors of 120 i.e. double what they already have. After this, the pairs get into fours and they have to come up with 8 factors between them. I like this very much, will try it as a starter soon
- true or false using show-me boards
- question time - pick a group as the experts, give them ten mins to prepare their knowledge, then the rest of the class challenge them with questions
- pass the question - in pairs pupils write the question on the top half of a piece of paper and the model answer on the bottom half, rip up the top halves and pass them around the pairs, who then have to figure out the model answers
- reviews - support groups, revealing answers on IWB, matching dominoes, assessment review e.g through ActiVote (we have these sets in the maths department, I really wanna learn to use them, they seem ace), celebration review e.g. through issue of merit stickers, learning logs with specific targets for each pupil breaking down learning objectives into little tasks so that progress can be easily monitored
He did similar things for learning, emphasising that students are more excited about learning when they feel confident and clear about the work. He suggested using open ended activities that have a degree of creative control but that require understanding rather than just a search for the "right answer". He also encouraged the use of stimuli e.g. videos, sound clips, pictures, writing frames etc. to support work. He said that good writing requires purpose, product and audience. He was very anti-SATS and OFSTED, which surprised me, but which appealed to our staff I think.
Finally, with regards to assessment, I particularly paid attention to his talk on feedback and feedforward. He said that targets and assessment criteria should be shared with the class and put into more friendly language so that students are clear on what they need to achieve (without dumbing the language down too much - students need to be able to speak the language of assessment). He said that we shouldn't mark too much work, but that we should give clear written feedback on the work we do mark, and also give feedforward i.e. targets that pupils should work towards in their next piece of work so that they have something explicit they can do to improve.
So yes, we learnt quite a lot today on our last INSET day of the year. However, bad news too - next year five of our nine INSET days will be spent moving into the new Academy, which doesn't inspire me too much. Further we are expecting HMI next term PLUS a ULT inspection. Rubbish. I better make the most of this half of the term, before things go all crazy again.
In other news, tomorrow I have my last subject studies day, in which I think we are doing some kinda maths trail in London, exciting stuff. Also, I have an interview at MyBnk on Weds after school for a summer internship - I really wanna work there, it's a great idea, very inspiring! Will let you know how that goes.
And if you have time, check this out. Hahaha, pirate chatter, shiver me timbers.
