Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 14th May 2012

This week twelve different lessons were seen.  The best learning was active, purposeful and challenging, giving opportunity for analysis and reflection.  This was good to see.  Some lessons could have been more effective with:

§  less teacher talk

§  more challenging activities for students

§  further planning for questioning activities to prevent students from being passive during discussion work

The effectiveness of learning varied between lessons, therefore we have to work hard to ensure that we have as much consistency as possible as we try to ensure that all students have first class learning opportunities. 

We have a really clear learning and teaching policy that we have branded Agile Teaching.  This can be found in our Agile Teaching Handbook.  This is a really useful document that not only sets out our policy but also gives guidance on PLTS and sets out teachers’ and students’ expectations for learning entitled Cheney Expects.  Further to this document we have updated our homework policy.  These documents are available on Agility the Blog! http://cheneyagility.blogspot.co.uk/   

In addition we have tried to supplement our own learning and teaching initiatives by distributing multiple copies of Jackie Beere’s The Perfect Ofsted Lesson and Jim Smith’s The Lazy Teacher.  I am raising this because I believe that Learning Walks are evidencing that learning happens best when we apply the principles of formative assessment sometimes referred to as assessment for learning.  This is the approach to teaching that we have adopted through Agile Teaching.  Thus it is important that we are all familiar with our policy and build its principles into our planning. 

Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 7th May 2012

Thank you again to everyone for their hard work so far this year.  Everyone is working hard as we prepare for exams and as we try to finish off BTEC folders.  Fewer lessons were visited this week and the length of this post will reflect this.

The question of how best to motivate our students is a key issue we all face.  Preparing for an exam or finishing off a course often provides a little extra motivation which helps us keep students focussed and involved in their work.  But this is not always possible; particularly if you are teaching Key Stage 3 where you have no such external motivators.

What is clear is that our students are most engaged and learn best when they are encouraged to get down to tasks quickly, when they are set challenging activities and are encouraged to be independent.  Admittedly this is no easy task, but colleagues have had success by:

§  finding ways to make things fun such as introducing games to promote learning

§  introducing competition and teamwork

§  finding leadership opportunities for students to take control of tasks or give feedback on tasks

§  being relentlessly positive, aspirational and by giving lots of praise

Learning has been less effective when there has been a lack of pace or challenge to lessons or when activities have not been matched to the abilities of the students.  In such circumstances students have passed up the learning opportunities made available to them.

If you have any top tips, fail safe games that could be used or anything that will add a bit of fun into a lesson then please post your ideas the comments section below.

Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 30th April 2012

This week’s learning walk focussed on 6^th Form. Once again I would like to thank those staff that had us visit their lessons.  It has been a really informative experience and it was great to see so much good practice.

Good practice was witnessed in terms of exam preparation including the use of individualised tasks, for example:

§  students working silently on different tasks depending on their personal progress through preparatory assignments

§  students being encouraged to reflect on their preparation and self-rate their readiness

§  analysis of exam questions focusing on collaborative decision-making regarding what ideas to employ (rather than actually answering questions – enabling students to cover a large number of questions and ideas quickly)

§  clear evidence of detailed understanding of the requirements of exam questions in the questions posed by students.

§  In some lessons fast-paced teacher-led whole-class teaching was clearly engaging more able students, and eliciting plenty of evidence of their progress, but seemed to leave those with less confidence unsupported. This gives us some things to think about.

Therefore, the 6^th Form learning walk does raise questions on how best we support students to become effective independent learners.  In particular how we develop practice to ensure that students are being given the targeted feedback they need to move their learning forward in a way that they are able to digest and take action on.

There was variation in the visibility of feedback on students’ work in their folders. There were some very good examples of marking in some subject folders – linked to assessment objectives, clear targets for improvement and reference to overall trends in improvement of an individual student’s written work. Often marked work was not prominent in students folders though; perhaps during exam preparation the relevance and usefulness of work with teachers’ feedback could be emphasised, with students encouraged to keep marked work in one place in their folders for ease of reference when working on new practice questions.  There was an excellent example of intervention in response to concerns over independent study in an AS subject where, a student who underperformed in a progress test was given a tracking sheet on which to log hours of work to be done out of lessons, with parents informed.  The result is that students weren’t always able to clearly articulate what they needed to do in order to improve their work, or how feedback from their teachers helped them to do so; although this was generally a strength across the lessons observed.

We probably need to do some thinking about how effectively we use our lesson time.  There were several examples of students working in silence on exam questions.  In many ways this is a purposeful use of time, the student has to do the question under supervised conditions and the teacher can monitor how they seem to be using that time.  For example, how much time do they spend planning, writing or day dreaming?  However, this work does come at the cost of ‘lost’ teaching time.  Also well motivated and organised students often create mock exam conditions to work on answers independently, but less organised students often need a structure to help them to this.  Once suggestion has been to provide a supervised study room which could be booked by subject teachers for classes to do mock questions at set times.  This might be a more effective use of time, but the subject teacher would lose the ability to make judgements by watching the students work.  Please put any thoughts on the comments section.

Finally, thank you for everything that you are doing, everyone is working hard and wants the best for their students.  This learning walk has thrown up some things for us to think about and by airing these ideas it will help us try to further develop and improve our provision.

Week Beginning Monday 16th to Friday 27th April 2012

Learning walks are up and running again and thank you to all colleagues that were visited over the last two weeks.  This term the leadership team will try to encourage colleagues to come round with us so you may find that you have two of us in your room.  We are doing this because we are trying to create more opportunities for teachers to see what happens outside their subject areas.  It is also a good opportunity for us to discuss what Leadership are doing when we are on a learning walk.  This is an attempt to make the whole process more transparent and hopefully it will help stimulate discussion about good learning and teaching.

I have merged the feedback from the last two weeks as we only did a limited number.  I also apologise for being slow in publishing our observations; I will try to be quicker next time.

There has been a lot of really good practice seen.  Lots of active and purposeful work is being done by students.  We have seen some really good examples of Learning Objectives and Success criteria being used.  Literacy has also been at the forefront of colleagues work with teachers ensuring that students understand subject terminology and key words.  It is clear that some students are having an excellent experience.  The challenge for us is to try to ensure that all students are active and engaged in their learning.  In several lessons it was the same pupils answering questions during discussion.  Here we need to try to use strategies to encourage all students to take part; this could be achieved by using a random name generator, lollypop sticks, getting students to nominate the next person to answer a question or simply only allowing a pupil to answer one question. Be confident about planning in some wait time and using no hands questioning techniques when holding discussions.

Finally; well done I really appreciate how hard everyone is working and how much of your time you give to your students, particularly those who are preparing for exams.