A poem is just like a square…

What can you me tell about this square? This was the question that awaited my Year 11 class on Monday. After critiquing their practice exams on the literature poems, it became apparent that they all avoided the topic of poetic structure like the plague. I wanted them to see that poetic forms, like squares, have simple recognisable structures; just as a square is recognised for its four equal sides and right angles, a sonnet can be recognised by its fourteen lines, ten syllables per line and regular rhyme scheme. The idea was, they would tell me that the square has these simple, easily recognisable features and that would lead perfectly to the idea that they could discuss poetry structures just as easily.

However, this class are high flyers. They are used to being presented with extended abstract questions and devising interesting and elaborate answers to blow my mind. Answers such as, “The empty space within this square represents the knowledge that we are about to gain throughout this lesson.” Began to roll out. Although these answers were given due recognition and I was very proud of them for their ‘out of the box’ thinking, we had to take it back a notch to get my metaphor. This led one student to ask, “What if, because you have taught us to be extended abstract thinkers, other people see our answers as wrong?” Good question!

 The Importance of Multistructural at Every Level

This class often already have the multistructural knowledge required to tackle much of the requirements of the AQA Language course. In Year 10, we spent a huge amount of time gathering our multistructural knowledge of language, techniques, writing forms, reading papers and so on, now that we are in Year 11, we tend to start straight in at relational. However, now that we have begun the Literature course, this has changed.  You can’t relate knowledge unless you have the knowledge to relate. If pupils do not understand poetic form, they are unable to relate it to poetry. Similarly, if pupils cannot relate knowledge of poetic form to poetry, they cannot create extended abstract ideas about it.

This realisation that they had begun to forget the importance of the multistructural phase led to the creation of the following lesson. Pupils needed to recognise that they were learning new things. They needed to take ownership over their new knowledge and see it building for themselves.

The Set Up

On pupils’ desks awaiting them was lots of information about poetic form (lazily cut and paste from the net; Jim would be proud) such as types of poem and their features, glossaries of structural techniques and contextual information on our poems. Pupils were placed into groups of three, all with the same printed information; the names of different structural features were on the board. I told them that each person in the group must become responsible for being the expert on just one of the named features. Each group member must ‘own’ a different feature from the others. They were then given a short amount of time to prepare their expert knowledge by sifting through the information and finding what was relevant to their feature.

Each One Teach One

Pupils were given a short amount of time to teach their expert knowledge to each other. The group members were (I’d like to say systematically but it got messy) rotated around so that they had the opportunity to teach their knowledge to as many class members as possible. There is nothing different or new about peer teaching; the difference in this lesson was that every time that the penny dropped and they actually learned something new, they had to recognise that happening and write their new learning onto a slip of paper to deposit in our multistructural box.

Search For Meaning

The multistructural box is usually full of information separated into unistructural chunks that I have created to support their learning. Now pupils were creating their own learning resource. They were recognising that they had learned new information, stopping to digest it and write it down in their own language. As they deposited their knowledge, I checked it for misconceptions and was able assist were necessary. This information will be collated and given back to them for revision.

Pupils had a unique number so I could reward excellent effort and thinking and tackle any misconceptions found

The conversations overheard left me delighted, “Ah, is that was that is?” and “Oh, I get it now.” Wanting to share this with the class, I told them at the end of the lesson that I had been so proud to hear their learning as it was happening. They were recognising their own learning as it happened. One pupil, renowned for ‘not getting it,’ stopped me to ask if it had been her I’d heard having a learning moment. I hadn’t actually heard her say the words but I had seen her deposit her learning in the box and could see how proud she was of herself so knew it to be true.

Reflection

To reflect, pupils were once again asked to discuss the shape of a square. Their answers had now evolved to things like, “You can easily recognise a square if you know what conventions it is supposed to contain. That’s the same as poetry.” They recognised the point in my metaphor and now saw poetic structure in a far simpler, more structured light. Further proof that they ‘got it’ came from their excellent exam responses, which were now at a relational and extended abstract level when discussing poetic form.

This lesson was followed up with a mirror lesson, this time with the focus upon language devices. As pupils were quite confident with language devices, I asked them to aim higher this time. More time was given over to teaching each other and now pupils not only came up with unistructural information about language devices, putting their learning into the multistructural box for later collation and checks for learning, but also deposited new learning which took place when they related the devices to poems, even better, when they evaluated the poet’s deeper meaning when using these devices. This information is going to make an amazing revision resource…made by them!

It is great to be able to think relationally and to be creative with your responses but no matter how good you get, you can never stop underestimating the importance of multistructural. There’s always more to learn.

What is SOLO?

How is SOLO different to Bloom’s?

How can SOLO be used to support learning progression?

As the sun rose on Glasgow’s Easy Hotel (recommended) this Sunday, my enthusiasm for my profession was as high as it has ever been and I remain full of excitement today! What a wonderful first ever Pedagoo Fringe! The atmosphere was amazing, the venue was amazing but above all the people who both organised and attended the event were and are amazing! In our reflection session we agreed to go forward and infect others with our enthusiasm and I certainly intend to do just that.

How could you not be inspired by this space?

Here is a brief overview of the discussion in the SOLO workshop and how we went about answering the above questions. We began by looking at what Bloom’sTaxonomy looks like in practice. As pupils gather knowledge and comprehension, much like the uni and multi levels of SOLO, they are gathering ideas on a topic (illustrated in the Macbeth example below). Application is using the ideas you have gathered in a task such as writing an essay on the topic. However, once you began to move on to analysis, you were once again gathering knowledge and then returning to applying that knowledge while synthesising.

The verbs and structure of Bloom’s Taxonomy are useful and can be organised into effective learning outcomes and effective questions by teachers (explained on the day in another workshop help by @GarethSurgey. Fantastic for us but not so easy for pupils to grasp.

Very Basically Bloom

SOLO is different as the steps are a far clearer path of progression for pupils. A number of people asked if pupils were put off by the terminology which, upon first hearing, appears to be a little space age. In my experience, pupils appear proud to be using the terms rather than put off. SOLO is to them something a little different but something they quickly get used to using. It creates a common learning language.

Anyone had this? I haven’t!!

One group discussed how the terminology is not important. It is the clear progression path that pupils can follow and understand that is the key to using SOLO successfully. Some people said they wouldn’t use the terms but would use the hand signals and symbols (particularly in primary schools). Others suggested allowing pupils to make up their own words for the symbols to give pupils ownership over using them.

Each level in a very basic nutshell

After sharing how my classes used SOLO in differentiated tasks and to become independent in their progression (found here) the worry over how much extra time would be spent planning using SOLO was expressed. Note that the example below seems to say that EA is the final level as though there is a roof that can be reached. This is not the case. You can never  be at the top of EA as you gather more Multi knowledge, you continue to make new connections. Thanks David Didau a very good point well made. 

Moving on up

Marking time is significantly reduced without removing any of the quality in the feedback. I can read the work and apply the symbol that best describes their current position – they do the rest. Also, once you have your head around each of the levels, it just becomes part of what you do and therefore time spent planning is just the same as before.

I also shared some generic examples of how this might really look and sound. Here is just one of these examples:

Example of SOLO in Generic Lesson

Pupils have been asked to create a presentation all about shoes. The teacher has asked for feedback and receives varied responses. Have a look at how the teacher uses SOLO to help each pupil to make more progress in this lesson.

PRESTRUCTURAL

As this means the pupil has missed the point there are no action verbs to accompany this stage

A PUPIL MIGHT SAY: “I know nothing about the topic; I have never heard of it before.“

AN EXAMPLE RESPONSE MIGHT LOOK LIKE: Shoes are worn on your hands.

TO MOVE ON: The pupil must begin to gather basic information on what a shoe is. 

UNISTRUCTURAL

A TEACHER MAY ASK FOR THE OUTCOME Name,
Identify,
Follow simple procedure

A PUPIL MIGHT SAY: “I know a little about the topic but I have not done much research.”

AN EXAMPLE RESPONSE MIGHT LOOK LIKE: Shoes are worn on your feet.

TO MOVE ON: To become more multistructural in their response, the student must conduct research into types of shoes and their different purposes.

 MULTI STRUCTURAL

A TEACHER MAY ASK FOR THE OUTCOME Combine, Enumerate, Describe, List

A PUPIL MIGHT SAY: “I know lots of different brands of shoes, types of shoes and their different purposes.”  

AN EXAMPLE RESPONSE MIGHT LOOK LIKE: Shoes can be worn to exercise, to dance, for comfort, for style. Different types of shoes include, stilettoes, trainers, pumps, wedges. Different shoes were popular at different times.

TO MOVE ON: The pupil must begin to make links between the information they have found about different types of shoes, their purposes and when they were popular.

 RELATIONAL

A TEACHER MAY ASK FOR THE OUTCOME Analyse, Criticise,
Apply, Justify,
Argue, Relate, Compare/contrast, Explain causes                                                                               A PUPIL MIGHT SAY                                                                                                    

“I have an excellent understanding of shoes and their purposes;  I can see how modern shoes have evolved from a range of styles throughout the ages.”             

AN EXAMPLE RESPONSE MIGHT LOOK LIKE: Trainers are the most effective shoe to wear for exercise. This is a direct result of using a softer sole and adjustable straps to aid foot support. In contrast to this, a modern platform is more often used for style, having evolved somewhat since its first introduction to the high fashion scene in 1960…                                                                                          

TO MOVE ON: The pupil must begin to question further their findings. They should use their expert knowledge to create interesting and individual ideas about the future of shoes. 

 EXTENDED ABSTRACT

A TEACHER MAY ASK FOR THE OUTCOME Create, Formulate, Generate, Hypothesise, Reflect, Theorise

A PUPIL MIGHT SAY: “I am very confident in my exploration of shoes. I can use my expert knowledge about their evolution to theorise about the possible future of shoes and their uses.“

AN EXAMPLE RESPONSE MIGHT LOOK LIKE: The platform rose to the height of fashion in 1960 and evolved over time to become far more sleek in its appearance. Similarly, the humble trainer began as rather a crude creation with the simple idea of comfort at its heart. Indeed, over time shoes continue to evolve and adapt to become sleeker, more appealing and above all far more ergonomically designed. Could the future hold a pair of stilettoes that actually shape your arches instead of destroying them? Let us look to the history of stilettoes to investigate this idea further…

TO MOVE ON: The pupil should never see their work as done and should always seek out new ways to apply their learning. 

A powerful idea that was born from the discussion that followed was that pupils need to have a mirror held up to them to allow them to understand the learning processes that we all go through as human beings. SOLO helps this to happen as the pupils can see how one stage is necessary before another begins. Learning should not be “done” to anyone; that includes teachers! CPD should not be “done” to teachers…a thought I am taking back home to England!

To reflect on the initial three questions, we used the superb meeting room space and wrote all over the walls with our thoughts:

I would love to hear how everyone takes SOLO forward and cannot thank the Pedagoo team enough for inviting me to such an awesome event.

“Why won’t you just behave!!!?”

It has been brought to my attention that the following reflection could be harmful to a struggling NQT. According to Andrew Old, you may read this advice as entertain your kids, be happy all of the time and kids will behave. This was certainly not how I expected the post to be interpreted. I believe that quality learning should be at the heart of any lesson but if you are a struggling NQT you would do well to become the English teacher in this reflection. As an NQT mentor, I never expect my NQTs to sing and dance like entertainers; I do expect them to build good quality relationships with their pupils and learn how to create a positive learning environment. The following reflection is behaviour for learning advice that comes from my observations, practice and work with others. It was not aimed at struggling NQTs but rather anyone who wants to reflect upon their own behaviour in the classroom. 

Do you ever have dreams about classes that you just can’t control? I do! Every teacher dreads poor behaviour; one pupil in a bad mood is enough to throw all of your planning out of the window and a class full of naughty children can quickly become a daily dread. Luckily the dreams that I experience are just dreams and not my every day reality. However, for many teachers poor behaviour can dominate their days.

After the final year of my degree, I decided to dip my toe in the water of secondary schools before taking the teaching plunge; my first role was Learning Support Assistant. Part of this role meant that I followed a particularly unruly class from lesson to lesson. It was amazing watching their behaviour change.

In Geography they would be swinging from the fixtures and fittings; they would do no work and gave the teacher a really hard time. In English they sat for the whole hour like zombies completing pages and pages of rote work. In contrast, their Science lesson was an enthusiastic explosion of learning activity. They worked with their teacher to explore concepts and happily wrote up conclusions to experiments. There were no changes in the class register from room to room but they were a different group of kids wherever they went.

The main variable each hour was the teacher. It seemed that it was not the pupils’ behaviour that would affect the outcome of the lesson it was the behaviour of the teacher. Pupils react to you. In my above observations, the Geography teacher clearly dreaded the arrival of this class and would greet them with preconceived anger at their expected behaviour. Lo and behold, that expected behaviour emerged. The English teacher was super organised. The pupils were met with firm instructions and a very clear set of rules that they were able to follow; if the rules were not followed, consequences were dished out with no exceptions. The teacher knew their working at level and provided them with achievable reproduction tasks that could be completed in silence.

If I was a pupil, I would prefer to be in the Science lesson. The Science teacher greeted the class at the door with a smile and an interesting task. The rules of the classroom, like the greeting, were consistently applied. Pupils knew what was expected of them and knew what would happen if they broke the rules in a similar way to the above English lesson. The difference being that the Science teacher was far less stern and scary. Having authority does not always mean that you need to have a loud bark (in fact, the Geography teacher’s bark was the loudest and they had the least control). In the Science lesson, the teacher organised the learning but then stood back and facilitated rather than controlled. The pupils enjoyed the lesson and achieved something every time they were in there.

Effective Teacher Behaviours

The most effective teachers that I have observed have all employed the behaviours that are explained further below. If you are dreading poor behaviour on your first day back after the summer, spend a little time thinking about your own classroom behaviours and use the ideas below to guide you.

Be Organised

Make sure you have a lesson prepared that is worth the pupil behaving in. If pupils cannot see a point to learning, they are unlikely to want to learn. Whether the point is that they will enjoy what you have planned or that they have been shown the purpose of their learning beyond the classroom, you need to prepare this before hand and not hope that they will just ‘get it’. Use your learning outcomes to show them what they are learning, how they will be learning it and why there is a point to what they are learning.

Be Consistent

Have a routine in your classroom and stick to it. Implement the routine on the first lesson and remain consistent.  When pupils come to my classroom, there is always a connect activity waiting for them. This might be outside the classroom, on their desks or on the board but they know to look for it and get on with it. They know they must sit where I tell them regardless of whether they are in Year 7 or Year 11. Their seating plans change almost every week as we change topics, strengths emerge or weaknesses need to be addressed; pupils know this will happen and are prepared to move as it is all part of our routine.

Use Behaviour for Learning Steps

Our school use clear steps if poor behaviour occurs. If your school has a policy, use it! Stick to it! If your school does not have a policy, use the steps below to create a classroom policy and display it clearly so that pupils know what to expect.

PUPIL BEHAVIOUR: A pupil displays low level disruption such as talking when you are, throwing things or distracting others.

TEACHER BEHAVIOUR: Step 1:  Address the pupil privately by walking over to their table while other pupils are working and letting them know that their behaviour is not acceptable in your room. Tell them exactly which behaviour you did not like so that they are clear on what not to do again. Tell them they are being given a chance to change.

PUPIL BEHAVIOUR 1. The behaviour ends. Recognise this and reward with praise.

PUPIL BEHAVIOUR 2. The behaviour continues. Move to step two

TEACHER BEHAVIOUR: Step 2: Once again address the pupil privately but this time, formally log their poor behaviour. You may write this in their planner or on a designated board in your room. Let them know what they have done, how they may change this behaviour and then give them time to reflect.

PUPIL BEHAVIOUR 1. The behaviour ends. Recognise this and reward with praise.

PUPIL BEHAVIOUR 2. The behaviour continues. Move to step three

TEACHER BEHAVIOUR: Step 3: Again, in private, explain to the pupil that this behaviour is unacceptable. They have refused to follow instructions and they are now being issued with a detention. Log the detention formally with them and once again give them a chance to improve.

PUPIL BEHAVIOUR 1. The behaviour ends. Recognise this and reward with praise.

PUPIL BEHAVIOUR 2. The behaviour continues. Move to step four

TEACHER BEHAVIOUR: Step 4: We have staff members from our department available for time out every period. Each member of the department has a timetable so that they know who to go to if they need to use this facility. If poor behaviour continues even after two warnings and a detention, the pupil is removed from the room into time out and they complete their work alone.

Having a time out option is far better than sending pupils into a corridor and forgetting about them. Pupils get used to the steps that they will go through if they misbehave. Certain pupils will always try to test these steps out a few times to see what kind of reaction you will have to their poor behaviour. This is a necessary process as they come across so many inconsistent teachers in school that they need to know how you will behave. After any incident, allow pupils a fresh start. Do not hold grudges and let them try again. They will soon stop testing.

PiP and RiP

Finally, you will notice that in all of the above steps you should speak privately to the pupil. Do not publically berate poor behaviour. Remember the Geography teacher had the loudest voice and the least control. Poor behaviour in that classroom was a circus show and the pupils loved to wind the teacher up. By Reprimanding in Private, you are avoiding humiliating the pupil (which could result in them holing a grudge) and humiliating yourself by losing your temper. If you Praise in Public, pupils will get used to your classroom being a positive environment. They will see that positive behaviour is rewarded.

Good luck with your new classes in September and I hope the scary school dreams don’t start for a few weeks yet.

Last week, I set a mock Language exam for my class; I needed to diagnose their strengths so that I could teach to their weaknesses. As I read the papers, shining out to me like a distress signal was a significant lack of understanding for AQA Higher question 2; how does the text use presentational features? Almost unanimously, pupils had ignored presentational features and began discussing the language features used: “The main title uses alliteration ‘dead dinosaur’ to capture the reader’s attention.”

The following lesson was my response to the problem…

UNISTRUCTURAL

As pupils entered, they were faced with three large desks. They were told that they were working as part of a large study group to tackle an issue with question two. I put one member of each team in charge of ensuring that everyone participated in the task and warned the leader that the consequences would rest with them if any of their group misbehaved. I needed more eyes and ears in the room than just my own and this tactic usually does the trick.

The new room layout

The group’s first challenge was to answer a unistructural question. Can you identify what a presentational feature is? I gave them one minute to discuss and then took feedback. The answers (surprise, surprise) were all correct. Headline, image, tagline, secondary image, colour, font, size etc… So I asked them another question: “Why, if you all know the answer, have you discussed language features in your responses…?” Await uncomfortable silence.

MULTISTRUCTURAL

I explained that the next step, the most important step on the road to improving their responses, was to gather multi structural knowledge. Each table were given an array of magazine articles to analyse as a group.

Example texts

 I had purposefully blurred the writing so that they focussed on the shape of the paragraphs rather than the content. I also gave them a tub full of slips of paper with a range of presentational features, exam responses and ways to discuss features written on them.

I told them that the information in the tub was multistructural knowledge that they needed to interpret. They were to apply what was in the tubs to the example articles to find new ways of discussing presentational features and their effect upon an audience.

Very Visually Multistructural

At this point, I also let them into the relational task that they would be completing. They would need to gather as much multistructural knowledge as possible to be able to create their own mock up design for a magazine article. I would be choosing the audience and purpose and they would need to relate their understanding of presentational features to its creation. Here are some of the idea pupils found in the tub:

Heading, sub-heading, logo, photographs, map, use of colour, range of fonts, timetable, bold print, slogan, Paragraph size, Organisation, Colour, Font, Image, Secondary image, Basic font, Stylish font, Childish font, Guides the reader’s eye, Text is formal, font is formal, Text is childish, font is childish, Text is comical, image is comical, Image represents the text, The heading is in a large red font, the word NEW is written in capitals to attract attention, signs are used, signifiers are used, original and different, This helps to organise the information so that the reader can follow it more easily, Bright colours such as red, yellow and orange are used in the leaflet to make it more attractive, to separate different bits of information, Other information is written in white, black or blue print on a coloured background, The leaflet includes photographs of animals, map and a timetable, The photographs of different animals make the reader want to see them, particularly the parents and babies, There is also a logo and slogan on the leaflet, In order to, To infer, To create a sense of, To develop, To expose, To enhance, To attract, To avoid, The effect of this is, The consequence of this is.

Around fifteen minutes was spent searching through the papers and applying them to the examples. Pupils were discussing, taking notes and, it seemed, really quite enjoying the freedom of the study group experience.

RELATIONAL

Using the notes that they had taken in the multistructural phase, pupils broke off into mini groups to create a mock up design. I gave them the audience of theatre lovers and the purpose of reviewing a recent production of Macbeth. I put up a count down timer of only ten minutes so that they did not spend too much time colouring in or creating perfect pictures. This task was more about understanding choices not colouring in.

No work of art...

EXTENDED ABSTRACT

Finally, I asked pupils to put their expert hats on. They needed to take a step back from their work and use post it notes to explain the choices that they had made as designers. Because the pupils had experienced making the choices, they were now able to discuss why these choices had been made. They were no longer talking about alliteration but now about signs and signifiers to their chosen audience, the choices made while positioning a piece of text or image and how fonts represented the content.

REFLECTION

...but it did the job

I gave them back their mock exams at the end of the lesson and asked them to review what they had done. This lesson built from identifying presentational features to deconstruction of examples using clear multistructural signposts to a focussed application of ideas to a task, finally evaluating using the expert knowledge that they had accumulated throughout the process.

Pupils now recognised that they had not paid attention to the creation of the text; they had fallen back on language as this was comfortable for them. To build upon this, I am going to give them the multistructural information to take away for their own revision and ask them to relate it to exam answers.

Next…SOLO and Literature revision

As the end of this academic year draws ever nearer, our GCSE pupils may be in need of a little guidance in preparation for their forthcoming English exams. I can remember being unsure how best to revise for English when I was at school. It is not always as simple as learning facts and regurgitating them in order. Once you know that poem or that story, what do you do with that information? Once you have the names of all of the writing types and their language features under your belt, what do you do with them? Having spent the last year teaching pupils how to use SOLO effectively, I am now using SOLO as a tool to help them revise. I will share as many ideas as possible over the next few days including: reading, writing, contemporary texts, poetry and finally some in class, last minute revision ideas. I hope you find it useful.

Writing to…

During the AQA English Language exam, the pupils will be expected to produce two writing responses one demonstrating their ability to inform, explain or describe, the other to persuade or argue. I am going to provide them with a simple to follow preparation structure that can be used to create any written response. The idea is that they plan using this structure every time they practice writing (I will also provide them with a list of potential questions). Planning in this way should soon become second nature to them and so they will be able to quickly form a plan in their writing exam, avoiding the age old problem of “I just don’t know how to start.”

I call it the three point plan as it has three main actions to put into practice: identify what, preparing all necessary elements and linking work as a whole. I demonstrated this earlier in my ‘using SOLO in writing tasks’ blog. However, in exam conditions, pupils have far less time and therefore need to adapt the plan to be brief while still using it effectively to create a well constructed response.

STEP ONE UNISTRUCTURAL

Pupils write the question as the centre of their plan to remind themselves that this is at the heart of everything that they do. They must then quickly identify the GAP and LIST (genre, audience, purpose, language, information, style and tone). It is important that I provide them with a range of potential exam questions to practice their unistructural responses to ensure they are not surprised by anything they are faced with in the exam. This step should be quick and simple. I am writing an G -article for A -  Teenagers to P- Inform them how to be polite. If they feel confident in completing this first step, they will have broken that frightening barrier of putting pen to paper and they will be on their way to success.

STEP ONE OF THREE - identify question - GAP LIST

STAGE TWO MULTI STRUCTURAL

Next, pupils need to think of clear paragraph topics, ensure that they plan to use appropriate language features for the writing type specified and ensure sentence structures and punctuation are factored in too. I always see the multi structural phase as being the most important as this part is where the vital details are added. If this phase is skipped, paragraphs tend to be less well formed and the over all direction of the writing is less clear. If you get the multistructural step right, you are planning for perfection. I ask pupils to identify specific language devices that they will use and list them; they also list punctuation to remind them to use a full range. A few ideas about content are added to each paragraph so that they know what they will be writing about and how they can fit it all together. No longer than five minutes should be spent on planning so a brief idea of each paragraph is all that is necessary.

STEP TWO OF THREE identify topics and details

STAGE THREE RELATIONAL

As pupils are creating their paragraph topics during the multistructural step, they will automatically be creating links between paragraphs: “This one comes first, then I will say this and finally I will say this.” However, well linked paragraphs say more than just “firstly, secondly, thirdly, fourthly…” Although linking like this does lead you through the paragraphs, it is forced and boring. Pupils should be looking at how the topic of each paragraph leads into the next and how their last and first sentences could work together to create cohesion. This can be added to the plan as an arrow between paragraphs and the link that will tie them together identified. Linking the first and last paragraphs in some way can also help to create a nicely developed piece of writing and this should be tackled during this stage too.

STEP THREE OF THREE ensure coherence

EXTENDED ABSTRACT?

In twenty five minutes, it is going to be difficult for many pupils to have an absolutely original idea that will blow the examiner away. However, as part of the revision process, I am asking pupils to end their plan by reviewing it for originality and perfection. They should spend a moment asking themselves, is this bog standard and boring? Could I add any extra flair? Of course, extended abstract is about being an expert on a topic and as experts, pupils should be able to identify if the writing type requires that extra flair of originality such as adding an extended metaphor or looking from an entirely different perspective or, if it is a more functional piece of writing, they should recognise that perfect precision is actually enough.

…tomorrow…the reading exam

Origins

The best advice that I have ever been given to help me create good quality summative comments when assessing pupils’ work came from Darren Mead. He explained that if the comments made are kind, specific and helpful, the pupil will be able to progress to the next level. If the comment is just kind: “I love your work!” the pupil will not know what to do next. Similarly, if the comment is just specific: “you have created a simple, compound and complex sentence in one paragraph,” you are stating the obvious and you are not providing feed forward that will allow the pupil to progress.

These three key words were accompanied by Darren’s excellent explanation of it in practice during a bird watching project at Cramlington Learning Village, during which, pupils were asked to critique each others’ work. As the famous willow warbler image, used to explain this method to me, is no doubt being framed ready for its move to the Tate Modern, this reflection will show you how this idea was adapted for use in my classroom.

Fish

During my A Level Art course, I drew some fish. I loved these fish but I had previously never found a place or a use for them. They only existed in a forgotten part of a cupboard in a pile of other useless junk; that seemed to be their likely resting place forever until…Darren’s willow warbler image, created by a student for their bird watching web site, had reminded me of the process that I had gone through to create these fish.

Removing the image from its forgotten place, I set to work drawing two other images, images that could have been a first and second attempt on the road to my aquatic masterpiece. Images complete, I was ready to make feed forward and peer assessment visual for my pupils.

Method

The outcome of this demonstration was for pupils to know that peer assessment should provide not only summative comments but also an insight into achieving better work. The lesson began by me showing them my first set of fish:

My first attempt at drawing fish

I asked pupils to think of kind, specific and helpful comments to allow me to create a more realistic set of fish. The pupils recorded as many ideas as possible at this stage so that we could use their answers to find excellent examples of kind, specific and helpful advice.

We spent time categorising their answers into:

• Kind responses: “I like the colours that you have used.”
• Specific responses: “Changing the outline of the fish to be a more realistic shape could help improve your drawing.”
• And helpful responses: “You can improve by adding stronger colours to the fish.”

Of course, we had to categorise the ‘none’ examples too so as to avoid this kind of response. We sifted out:

• Unkind responses: “I think that they look like a two year old drew them.”
• Vague responses: “Something’s wrong with the fish.”
• And unhelpful responses: “I would start again if I were you.”

If you want to avoid a pupil getting something wrong, it’s good to show them what wrong looks like.

As pupils had now thoroughly critiqued my work, I showed them that I was able to now produce image two:

Getting better...

At this point, Pupils began to see the merits in feed forward as opposed to summative comments such as “good work” or “well done.” These comments are kind but not specific or helpful enough to make a difference to someone’s work. They can see clearly the difference between the images and how their comments could have caused that difference.

Following on from this, the second fish are used to get pupils to practice this newly acquired skill. They were asked to respond to the second fish and help me get even better. Pupils began producing responses such as:

• “Adding scales could help this picture to become even more realistic”
• “A bolder colour can help to make these well shaped fish stand out even more.”

Once I was happy that they had provided me with enough feed forward, I produced my final fish:

The final product

These fish are a metaphor for the work that pupils produce in class. They have proven to be an excellent tool to teach the merits of good quality summative comments when peer assessing each others’ work. For me, the fish help the pupils to visually make sense of what they should be helping their peers to create in their books; however, it is important that they are allowed to put these ideas into practice on real assignments in order to make sense of the connection between assessment and fish.