1 making learning and progress visible harnessing the freedoms of life without levels jenny short...
TRANSCRIPT
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Making Learning andProgress Visible
Harnessing the Freedoms of Life Without Levels
Jenny Short and Tim Sully
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We now DO have the freedom to:
• Design our own assessment systems to run parallel to our own unique curriculum
• Develop a range of strategies and techniques that are integral to teaching and learning, without the burden of unnecessary recording and tracking
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The Commission on Assessment Without Levels 2015
“Schools’ own approaches to in-school assessment between key stages should not necessarily emulate statutory assessment for accountability purposes.”
John McIntoshThere is no intrinsic value in recording formative assessment. What matters is that it is acted upon. Unnecessary recording of formative assessment outcomes should be avoided.
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Carpe Diem!
Freedoms await ……. but will you take them?
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The keys:
• Learners’ ability to articulate and to demonstrate their learning and progress
• Teachers’ ability to plan learning journeys that excite and engage them to do so well.
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Planning to master the standards
• Plan backwards – milestones and inch pebbles!• Plan so that the activities and the tasks generate a
wealth of assessment opportunities and sufficient evidence to support judgements
• Organise the journey so that learners have many chances to articulate their achievement and demonstrate what they can and can’t do (yet!)
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When planning units of work or lesson sequences:
CONCRETE
ABSTRACT
CULMINATION MOTIVATION
ASSESSMENT INFORMATION
PRODUCTION(OUTPUT)
RECEPTION(INPUT)
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Focus: Draw learners inDetermine their prior knowledgeSet expectationsSet goals and outcomes
Provide teaching and learning activities and tasks through which learners acquire knowledge and skills to master the performance IndicatorsFocus: Teacher input Pupil responses
Focus: Assessment through informal tests and observations of tasks. These are teacher directed and designed to yield information for teacher assessment. (Have they got it/not?)
Focus: Holistic , higher order tasks and performances where learners independently apply new learning to further demonstrate competence and deepen understanding(Products, processes and problem solving )
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Questioning
Short tasks to help understanding
Using the new learning purposefully often self chosen /self directed to produce something or perform something or solve a problem
Blooms: Remembering and Understanding
Blooms: Applying
AFL: Structured, scaffolded tasks. Use of success criteria and feedback strategies
AFL: The right questions managed for maximum engagement
AFL: using resources including each other
AFL: using resources including each other
When planning units of work or lesson sequences:
CULMINATION MOTIVATION
ASSESSMENT INFORMATION
Blooms: Remembering and making links
Blooms: Evaluating, Analysing and Creating
Longer tasks independently(products/performances in response to teacher directed task)
Independently With support
The point of sharing the map
•There were parts of the journey that were already known to me.•Those parts were memorable because there was an emotional/social context, for example the Diana Ross concert.•In planning for the journey, I pulled those memories to the front of my mind, I used existing knowledge.•In the new part of the journey I found a new landmark, Elton Hall - I would look out for that to show I am on track.•With ‘TomTom Tina’, all she ever gave me was the next 500m, so I didn’t engage with the journey at all. It was like a teacher unveiling their next day’s planning. I needed to know the whole journey.•When I strayed off the path, ‘Tom Tom Tina’ was quick to correct me and send me on my way using her interpretation of ‘correct’. In Bristol, my home town, I knew better!•As I teacher I would want to know why a child thought it was the ‘right’ way, that is great feedback for me to inform my teaching.
Co-agency Trust
EverybodyUn-
predictability
Thinking in partnership
Asking questions
Feeding in ideas
Value different
ways of working
Capitalize on differences to inspire thinking
Listening not telling
Giving the staff the
freedom to make their
own choices and
judgementsUnderstanding that the
more freedom that
is handed over, the
more unpredictabl
e learning becomes
Keeping an open mind
Made by children and educators
working together
Children make connections
Understand what quality
means
Children find meaning in
worthwhile tasks
No-one is written
off
Teachers keep
looking for what will unlock
learning for children
Everyone is planned for
a valued equally
Children benefit
from the collective experienc
eEverybody can learn
and get better
Teachers expand horizons and
constantly offer new opportunities
No pre-set expectations
limiting access for some
Learning depends on
what learners
bring, think and do
Leadership
Children
•These four ‘pedagogical principles’ come from the work of the Learning Without Limits group. I cannot recommend their work highly enough.•As an authority, we first came across the work of one of the authors, Mary Jane Drummond, 12 years ago when she came to work with our network. She left me with a stone in my shoe (well many stones) and I have been limping ever since while I have tried to come to terms with what she was saying!•At first there were only 3 principles but most recently the last one, unpredictability, has been added. It is the one that excited me the most because I recognise that expert teachers (to borrow Hattie’s phrase) always leave the door open to new learning, so that learning is not prescribed. It is as if they are not satisfied - they want to gather more intelligence about the child and what they think, feel, believe, think they know and understand. They don’t want to write anyone off and pay little attention to labels.•These teachers believe in the brain’s plasticity and the capacity to improve. For them it is about transformability.Learning without limits: Susan Hart Open University Press (1 Mar. 2004)
Creating Learning without limits: Mandy Swann Open University Press (1 April 2012)
1. Make the learning journey visible
Expect to be surprised
UNPREDICTABILITY
•In this slide I talked about making the learning journey visible, like my map.•But, and it is a big ‘but’, making sure you expect the unexpected. And welcome it!•You could see Abby constructing a vertical journey, Yvonne and her paper plates, Philippa and her backwards journey.
You have to do the thinking for yourselves. You cannot make a looped
journey from externally purchased planning.“The burden being
lifted is the need to think. And it is
precisely the need to think that cannot be
lifted.”
Bibby 2011
Bibby 2011
From Creating Learning without limits: Mandy Swann Open University Press (1 April 2012)
2. Be prepared to hook the pupils in and keep them there (Dewey 1938)
Children will engage if the conditions are right
TRUST
•In this slide I showed you pictures of both primary and secondary pupils engaging in a ‘hook’ event. Sometimes schools call these WOW events. Sometimes teachers surprise their pupils to make them more memorable!•At the end of the journey there is the opportunity to engage in a ‘performance of understanding’. Our teachers found that these performances could take on many forms from a full blown ‘challenge event’ to a simple review of the journey. There is no prescribed way of doing things.
3. Be adaptable
Outcomes cannot be prescribed
UNPREDICTABILITY
•A reminder really that as much as we plan, there is always going to be something which comes up and we have to say, ‘WOW I wasn’t expecting that!’ So KEEP THE DOOR OPEN to the unexpected. It helps to plan the next part of the journey better. You can be adaptable and work around the children’s learning needs rather than shoehorn the children into the planning.•In the example I showed, the class T.A., Karen, noticed that some children were struggling with a concept. She brought that to the teacher’s attention and they added a mini loop. The T.A. knows that part of her role is providing feedback to the teacher, as Hattie would say, ‘Know thy impact’.•While I am on the subject, anybody doing P.P.A. cover or supply, will be able to see how today’s lesson fits the ongoing story. The big picture is always helpful.•Also, it is worth bearing in mind that a ‘loop’ journey might take two weeks or it might take a term. It entirely depends on what is needed to be learnt.•Sometimes a planned loop might be covered in half a lesson because the children have ‘got it’, sometimes it needs to be stretched out until they are secure.
4. Build the perception that effort leads to achievement (notice and label effort)
Can learn and get better
EVERYBODY
•We have realised that is very important to recognise effort. You have to be very mindful when you do this because you really don’t want to be saying that ‘I recognise you have worked hard on this’ when they haven’t. That is deeply demotivating.•It is a good idea to show how the children’s expertise has grown over time. How everyone has got better. You can include first drafts and final efforts, first attempts and solutions in maths.•For a while I used special printed Post-its with ‘I’d like you to notice’ printed on them. This was so children, who had worked hard on something and wanted their effort noticed, could receive that recognition. Sometimes we underestimate the hard graft that has gone into something when we just see the end result.
5. Capture moments of achievement
is planned for and equally valuedEVERYBODY
•This is my favourite photograph, they ‘I’VE DONE IT!’ photo. It is very hard to go backwards from being such a visible successful learner.•Make sure you have a camera to hand!
6. Encourage the pupils to become their own best teachers (include first draft and final
copy).
Helps children understand what quality means
CO-AGENCY
•I know I have mentioned having first drafts and final copies on display already but this slide was about a slightly different emphasis. This was about encouraging the children to use the loops display to teach each other. To post information which they think would help other people. This could take the form of Post-it comments, ‘thunks’, whiteboards photocopied or simply their work with feedback.•This policy would inevitably lead to the children posting their mistakes, a sort of ‘Don’t do what I did’ approach to teaching your peers. We called this ‘Our Amazing Mistakes’.
7. Where possible include meta-cognition
•We decided to include ‘thinking about thinking’ because we thought it would be helpful to engage children in thinking about the thinking they were doing.•Again, we didn’t prescribe what it should look like. People used thinking hats, or Key Skills depending on what would work best for them and their class.
8. Represent everyone’s best thinking at that moment in time
Benefit from the collective experience
EVERYBODY
•The example I showed you was from year 2. The class decided with the teacher to depict their journey as a road. It was a little girl from this class who said, ‘You look at the board and you see...and you just do it!’•The ‘loops’ display has representations from all children, the principle of Everybody is very strong. Everybody’s learning is of equal value. We are all on the same learning journey, we may be a different places in that journey but we have equal value.•The children themselves liked to see what everybody else was doing. There was no longer a mystery about the top set (the was no setting) and to see the learning of those children who understood more and could use the concepts more effectively, placed alongside everybody else, was marvellous. Especially when they also shared their mistakes!
9. Give value to the display by saving the thinking
•I have had the privilege of seeing some wonderful displays, and I have also seen them taken down and put into volumes for children and parents alike, to enjoy.•In a wet play, children will get the books out and find themselves, their thinking and comments. It is a positive experience!•Of course there is always the opportunity, just before the display comes down, to invite next year’s class in and spread the word (and the expectation) about what learning looks like in ‘our’ class.
10. Include deep learning, near and farLinking different areas of the curriculum
Making connectionsCO-AGENCY
•This is something that Jan Dubiel also talked about in a much more knowledgeable way than me!•The point I would like to make is that the coffee pot analogy is so real and important. We have a tendency to ‘rush on’ rather than allow learning to ‘steep’ like the coffee. This overwhelming urge to cover and show progress has led to, let’s be honest, a predictable shallowness in the curriculum and children’s understanding.•The young people themselves will engage in deeper thinking if that is made an expectation. They will also support each other in gaining a level of mastery, as much as they can, if that is made a central pillar of your classroom. Once again the pedagogical principle of ‘everybody’ is so important.•When the class decides that the ‘loop has been achieved’, it is a very special moment.•Children will readily make connections between different areas of learning if we allow them to and don’t make the connections for them. Why do something for a child when they can do that themselves?
11. Discussing where to include an assessment opportunity and what that might
look like
Pupils discussing loops
Children can make good decisions and choices
TRUST
•This thinking is, I admit in its early stages. We have to teach the children to test out their own best thinking and choose the best moment to do so. After all if they went to the skateboard park, there would come a time when they would want to try out a trick sequence! It is natural. So maybe, they could be invited to join in with the thinking about where best to test their knowledge and what that might look like.
Incorporating models
•In the next slide you will see how some teachers have tried to incorporate models from last year from the class that has just moved on and the class that has just moved up. The thinking around this was to say really that children just like you have done wonderful work for you to act as inspiration and aspiration and let’s not stop there, you may well move beyond our current thinking about what is best, who knows?•There is also the sense of competency. You have already done work like this and I have examples which shows a level of competency (mastery). You are each of you on a journey to improve on what you have previously regarded as your previous best. Let’s take this opportunity to challenge ourselves and each other.•As a result of this thinking teachers have begun to save many more examples of completed work and work in progress to share with future classes.
Year 4 Literacy LoopsWrite a story from another culture
Examples from when you tried it last year when you were in year 3
Examples from my year 4 class last year to give you an
idea
Space for your beautiful work which I know will be at least as good, if not better than,
last year
WAGOLLs, WADEOLLs acting as signposts and paying ‘tribute’
to previous thinking•WAGOLLs (what a good one looks like) and WADEOLLs (what a diamond encrusted one looks like have all helped build a picture of quality but as the children themselves have shown, if you leave the door open, they will move on from the model to create their own version of ‘best’.•We have found Ron Berger’s An Ethic of Excellence to be an inspiration and as such would like to share his use of the would ‘tribute’ and paying tribute to another child’s thinking by doing your best to incorporate those ideas in a respectful way. Also, if you haven’t done so already, do look up Austin’s Butterfly on You Tube.
All this would not have been possible without the thinking of the ‘free range teachers’ of North
Somerset who are brilliant at thinking for themselves.
It was a privilege to share it with you.
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Making learning visibly obvious at Oldfield Park Junior
School
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Making learning visibly obvious….
….at the Hayesdown First
School Anglo-Saxon Village
