Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 23rd and Monday 30th January 2012

This report will cover learning walks lasting two weeks.  This is because only two walks were carried out during the week of the 23^rd and it would be too specific to comment on those seen and this is not in the spirit of what we are trying to do.  By combining both weeks we have been able to visit approximately 20 lessons.  Once again thank you to everyone that has been part of our learning walks.  We are seeing some really high quality practice and the process is leading to some excellent discussion about what makes great learning and teaching across the school.  Well done. 

Over the last week we have seen plenty of lessons where students have been really engaged and are enjoying their lessons. It is no surprise that when students have been enjoying their lessons they have also been learning.  This is made possible by some of the wonderful relationships we have seen between teachers and their classes.  Students have been learning best when they have been supported by their teachers to become fully involved in their tasks, whether this has been a practical or academic subject).  This has helped students be more independent and solution focussed in their learning and was more effective than lessons where students were dependent on teacher direction.  This dependency often makes keeping a purposeful pace to lessons difficult.  We have seen some really good examples of AfL.  Some excellent examples have been seen of teachers using strong questioning to check understanding and using effective feedback to help pupils understand what they need to do next.  In the best examples of practice this positive criticism is reinforced with plenty of praise to encourage the students to keep working to make the next step.

The most common words from the record sheet that reflect the type of learning we are looking for are; active, purposeful, independent and opportunity.  However, the term task driven was recorded more frequently than we would like.

20 lessons were visited.

Learning Walks from terms 1 and 2 as a Wordle

Click on the enlage to enlarge the Wordle.

Alite learning walk form

The form we are trialing has now been added to the key documents list on the right.

Learning Walks: Week Beginning Monday 16thJanuary 2012

Here’s wishing everyone a happy new year.  We have started our learning walks again.  Please see this as an opportunity to let the students see staff working together and supporting each other.  The format will be as it was last term.  We are trialling a new record form for our visits; I’ll try to post a copy on the blog so everyone can see – but do ask if you have any concerns.  This term we are going to be inviting other colleagues to join LT from time to time.  Going on a learning walk is a fantastic CPD opportunity.  You get to see our staff doing an excellent job and it is a great way of picking up some top tips.  Once again; thank you for being so positive about welcoming colleagues into your rooms.

Last week’s learning walks gave a really positive impression of the school.  Many lessons had a very positive and purposeful atmosphere.  Pupils were engaged in their learning and in many cases clearly enjoying their lessons.  This was facilitated by a lot of hard work and careful planning by colleagues.  There were lots of good examples of learning objectives being shared with students in a way they understood.  As a result students knew what they were meant to be doing and what was expected of them.  Students were also witnessed having the opportunity to present their learning to others and to peer assess work.  The three most common features highlighted on our forms were; active, purposeful and responsive.  Well done.

10 lessons were visited.

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.