Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 21st November 2011

Learning Walks

Week Beginning Monday 21^st November 2011

This was our final week of learning walks this term.  Thank you to everyone that has been visited.  I feel that we have learned a tremendous amount about the quality of learning and teaching at school.  I have tried to reflect what we have seen in a positive and open way, but at the same time raise the issues that we need to think about as we look to develop.  Hopefully this process and this blog have been informative and thought provoking to individual colleagues as they have been planning their lessons as well as for curriculum leaders.    We will return to our Learning Walks in the New Year. 

This week we have been visiting year 9 lessons to look at Learning Intentions, Success Criteria and Metacognition.  As with the last couple of weeks, this post will hopefully promote some discussion on how best we share our learning objectives and success criteria with students.  Suggestions and comments on how to develop best practice will be gratefully received.

Some really good quality practice has been witnessed this week.  Some learning intentions focussed really carefully on what was being learned rather than on what was expected to be done.  In the best cases, the language used to frame learning intentions explicitly focussed on learning as a skill and modelled the desired language that teachers were looking for pupils to use when discussing learning.  Successful learning intentions were able to unpack different layers of learning which helped sign post differentiation.  It was also good to see links to previous lessons and learning being explicitly shared with students.  Well constructed learning intentions helped frame what success looks like for pupils.  The role of classroom discussion was also well used by colleagues to regularly link tasks and thinking back to the lesson’s learning intentions; at its best this discussion focussed on learning as a process.  Good quality feedback was also witnessed in lessons and in exercise books, this feedback helped pupils make sense of how they were doing and what they needed to do to make progress.

However, although some excellent practice was witnessed we still have work to do to ensure that high quality learning intentions are a consistent feature of teaching across the school.  Some learning intentions still focus on the tasks we want pupils to complete rather than on what we want them to learn.  It is good to see that learning intentions are a regular feature to lessons, but we now need to think about how we develop and refine them.

Once again, thank you to everyone for helping in the learning walks process.  This week 14 lessons were visited.

Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 14th November 2011

Learning Walks

Week Beginning Monday 14^th November 2011

This week we have been visiting year 8 lessons to look at Learning Intentions, Success Criteria and Metacognition.  As with last week, this week’s post will hopefully promote some discussion on how best we share our learning objectives and success criteria with students.  Suggestions and comments on how to develop best practice will be gratefully received.

The practice witnessed this week was really impressive.  There were lots of really good examples of learning intentions being shared with students.  On the whole it is fair to say that in this learning walk the majority of students knew what they were trying to learn and what they needed to do to be successful.  On occasions success criteria were framed in the context of work being “skilled” or “excellent”.   In addition to this there were really good examples of students being encouraged to think about why work achieved a particular grade or about the reasoning behind taking a particular approach to a task or problem.  However, as a school we still have work to do to ensure that there is consistency to our practice.

18 lessons were visited this week.

We have one more round of learning walks beginning on the 21^st November then over the next few weeks we are going to have a break. This is to try to help create a little space to give everyone time to arrange and organise their lesson observations.  We would like all members of staff to have had their first lesson observation by the time we break up for Christmas.  It is important that we do this as it provides you with important evidence in support of your performance management.  We will return to our learning walks after the holidays.

Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 7th November 2011

Learning Walks

Week Beginning Monday 7^th November 2011

This week we have been visiting year 10 lessons to look at Learning Intentions, Success Criteria and Metacognition.  This week’s post will hopefully promote some discussion on how best we share our learning objectives and success criteria with students.  I am not sure that I will be providing many answers, so as with last week if you have suggestions on how to develop best practice; then please post a comment.

There were many examples of learning intentions and success criteria being shared with students. Most students were able to explain what they were doing and why they working on a particular task.  In addition they were able to talk about what they needed to do to complete this task successfully.  This was most common when activities were task or process driven.  Students were also able to talk about how tasks and skills related to their exam work or coursework.  The awareness students are showing regarding their course requirements is really good.

Students were less confident about explaining what skills they were developing and why these were important beyond the classroom experience, however, this was not the case in every lesson.   On occasions, teachers had clearly shared their learning intentions with their students, but the students had either forgotten or could not quite remember in detail what these were.  In lessons where students are developing a set body of knowledge, skills and understanding over a series of lessons, it becomes even more important to think through how the learning objectives and success criteria are revisited to keep these issues at the forefront of students’ learning.   How we solve this is a key challenge for us as it is not appropriate to have students copy learning objectives and success criteria down, nor is it possible to permanently have them displayed on a PowerPoint.  The goal is to enable students to know what it is they are trying to learn and to be able to evaluate how well they are doing this, without them having to rely on a prompt to be able to explain this. Students that can do this are developing their metacognative skills, and our challenge is to get all students to be able to improve their ability to become more independent learners.

17 lessons were visited this week.

Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 31st October 2011

Learning Walks

Week Beginning Monday 31^st October 2011

Over the next few weeks we are going to be exploring the use of Learning Intentions, Success Criteria and how Metacognition fit into lessons.  Hopefully this feedback will help us develop and build on the work done in our TLCs.  Most of the lessons visited this week were year 7 classes.  Where year 10s were seen this information will be fed into next week’s learning walk.

There were some really good examples of learning intentions and success criteria being used in lessons.  These were often shared with students at the beginning of lessons.  However, there were few comments from colleagues conducting the learning walk about how learning intentions and success criteria were constructed; there was also little reference to what was more or least effective.  This is something we need to explore more deeply.

When a lesson was in progress and the teacher had moved on from sharing learning intentions; students were asked the following types of question to try to work out how well they understood the learning intentions and success criteria for the lesson.

·         What was it they were learning?

·         What skills were they developing?

·         Why were they doing a task?

·         How did they know how well they were doing?

Clearly these questions were not asked in a rigid manner and were part of a conversation about their lesson.

What seems to be coming through from this week’s learning walk is that the students were often very clear on what they were being asked to do.  They also tended to be able to explain what they had to do to complete a task and how they would know when the task was completed.  They were less clear about why they were being asked to complete a task and what skills they were developing as they were working. 

Some tentative thoughts from this are that we need to ensure that we share the bigger picture with our students.  It helps them to understand why they are learning something and how it fits into the course or into the skills they will need to be successful in life.  We should also be looking to try to share the reasoning process on why we might take a particular approach to solving a problem.  This might be achieved by allowing students to come up with different approaches to solving a problem, then exploring which approach was most effective and working out why this was.  Finally, sometimes students might not have been clear on what the learning intention was because it was displayed at the start and had then disappeared as other information was put on the board.  I am not sure how we solve this one.  It seems that students would benefit from being able to refer back to their learning intentions but equally I think imposing rigid system for sharing learning intentions or making students copy these out would be a backwards step.  If you have any ideas on how to solve this one, please do offer a comment.

12 lessons were visited this week.

Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 17th October 2011

Learning Walks

Week Beginning Monday 17th October 2011

Thank you to everyone for their hard work over the first half term.  It has been a really good start to the year and overall the feedback on students’ behaviour has been really positive.  Again for the final week of this half term the focus of this learning walk has been on behaviour.

Once again the standards of behaviour observed by the team have been really good.  Students have shown high levels of engagement and standards of uniform have been really good.  Students have been engaged in a variety of tasks including discussion work, practical activities and silent writing.  Teachers are using a range of strategies to foster positive attitudes towards learning and behaviour including:

·         modelling respectful ways of speaking to others

·         using really positive language to set high expectations

·         developing pupils ability to empathise with others

·         giving clear instructions

·         finding strategies to promote discussion

·         rewarding enthusiasm and positive behaviour

22 lessons were visited this week.

Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 10th October 2011

Learning Walks

Week Beginning Monday 10th October 2011

The focus of this week’s learning walk was behaviour and this was another really good week with a lot of strong practice being witnessed.  Again I would like to thank everyone that was visited.  I am doing my best to share out the learning walks so that everyone is seen a similar number of times, but it is not easy to do this and I apologise if you were seen more than once, but, I’ll do my best to even things up over the coming weeks.

The students’ behaviours observed this week have been overwhelmingly positive and this is due to really thoughtful planning by colleagues.  Thank you for being tight with students’ uniform; it has been really good and has not been a significant issue in this week’s learning walk.  The following features have been witnessed in several lessons and all contribute to positive attitudes and behaviour:

·         teachers having high expectations

·         clear instructions being given

·         students being told explicitly what is expected and what they need to do to be successful

·         good use of prompts to encourage students to focus their attentions e.g. ‘3-2-1’

·         emphasis on listening skills and insisting on silence during teacher talk or discussion work

·         thoughtful planning for students’ seating arrangements

·         reinforcing high expectations with praise

We are now coming into the last week before the half term holiday.  It is tempting as we near the end of the week to relax our expectations as we all get tired and look forward to the holiday.  Instead can I ask that we ‘dig deep’ to continue to reinforce our standards and make sure students do what is expected.  If we can keep our standards high it will make things easier for us all when we return to school.

29 lessons were visited this week.
Click on the link for a wordle view.

Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 3rd October 2011

Learning Walks

Week Beginning Monday 3rd October 2011

Thank you once again to everyone that was seen teaching last week.  The atmosphere around school was really positive and a lot of high quality learning and teaching has been witnessed.  We are continuing to monitor behaviour around school and will be until half term.  If anyone has suggestions for the focus of the next round of learning walks, then let me know.

Although there were some instances of poor behaviour these were by far and away the exceptions.  A common theme was the calm, friendly and positive atmosphere in classrooms.  It is clear that it is well worth taking the time to set to get our teaching environment right, to have well thought out seating plans and to be ready to welcome our groups as they enter the room.  There were lots of good examples of teachers having high expectations of their students, and using humour and praise as a technique for reinforcing good behaviour.  The following strategies all contributed to positive behaviour:

·         insisting on silence during teacher talk

·         giving clear instructions

·         setting tight timescales for tasks

·         using the traffic light cards in planners to indicate when students were beginning to struggle

·         early teacher and TA intervention to support students that were beginning to struggle

·         praising and rewarding students for positive behaviour

Across the school more students are meeting our expectations but there is still room for us to be more consistent in enforcing simple standards and in establishing good routines.  For example, in some lessons some students still had earphones visible and bags were still on the table.  These two issues provide easy distraction for students and students that don’t put headphones away and bags on the floor should be challenged.  If students are refusing to co-operate over simple issues such as this please use the support of Heads of Department, College Leaders, ASC and Leadership Team.

21 lessons were visited this week.

Learning Walks Documentation

I thought I should post the documentation that I shared at the beginning of the year in case anyone would like to refer to it.

Click on the links below to access the documents.

What are learning walks?

Learnig walk form

10 tips for learning walks

Learning Walks

Week Beginning Monday 26th September 2011

Once again a really big ‘thank you’ to everyone who was part of this week’s Learning Walk.  The Learning Walks are really helping give us a better understanding of day to day lessons at Cheney.  Due to interviews for the English post and our INSET day we saw fewer lessons this week. 

Again we have been really impressed with the positive attitude and behaviour seen in the great majority of lessons.  There have been lots of examples of students being really interested and engaged in their work.  Excellent practice has been observed with teachers using positive strategies to reinforce high expectations and standards; for example, ensuring students keep to the seating plan, insisting on silence when giving explanations and ensuring coats and bags are placed on the floor.  It was also good to see really positive relationships between teachers and students where laughter was a feature to lessons and where pupils felt confident about being able to ask questions.

Let’s continue to try to be consistent about promoting the highest standards of behaviour and expectations.  We still need to be consistent about challenging students when uniform is not correct, about expecting pupils to have their bags and coats on the floor and having planners and equipment out at the beginning of the lesson.

This week we were able to visit 12 lessons.

Learning Walks - Week Beginning Monday 19th September 2011

Learning Walks

Week Beginning Monday 19th September 2011

Thank you to everyone who allowed the Leadership Team into their lesson.  It was a privilege to see so much high quality teaching and it is fair to say that we have learned a lot. We were really impressed by the range and quality of practice in our classrooms and although there are some suggestions for us to think about and to develop, the picture has been overwhelmingly positive.

The focus of this week’s learning walk was behaviour for learning.  We were not only looking at whether students behaved well but also at whether behaviours facilitated or limited their learning.  We also chose to focus on years 7 and 11 as we felt it was important to support colleagues set the right tone for the coming year with these key groups.

It was clear that across the school the majority of behaviour was very positive.  Lessons were calm and settled and teachers have been able to focus on good teaching.  Most students were engaged and motivated by their learning.  In the lessons visited, students being poorly equipped and being distracted by mobile phones and iPods was not a significant issue.  There were lots of examples of students working in silence but also working well in groups; where there was a real buzz about the lesson.  Many examples were seen of teachers being well organised at the start of lessons.  Positive student behaviour was facilitated by:

·         teachers giving of clear instructions and reminders of what students are meant to be doing

·         having activities ready for students whilst the teacher took the register

·         insisting on silence for teacher explanations

·         having well established routines

·         good use of praise and rewards for meeting expectations

Although the picture across the school was very good there are always things we can do to sharpen up our practice.  For example:

·         we need to be consistent on enforcing uniform.  Not all offending students were challenged

·         developing success criteria or being explicit about what success looks like for a particular task could help motivate students by making success feel more achievable

·         further thinking about questioning techniques and how ensure everybody is given the opportunity to or is challenged to contribute, this could be achieved by choosing respondents randomly through the use of lollypop sticks

Overall 27 lessons were visited.