Structured Collaboration

Two weeks ago I attended an INSET day on Kagan structures. I wrote then that I had been impressed and was keen to try out some of the strategies. I have always been a huge fan of collaborative learning but have been bowled over by the improvement these strategies have made to the quality of the students' learning.
The main strategies I have used have been Rally Robin, Timed Pair Share and Write Rally Robin. All of these are similar to strategies I have used in the past but the structure here forces students to play a full part in the whole process rather than let someone else do all the work.
Rally Robin - students take it in turns to say word on a topic is a great starter and surprisingly hard. On most occasions I have played too and I would recommend always trying to get involved in all the collaborative games you are playing.
Timed Pair Share I really like as students have 30 seconds to talk about something to their partner - their partner then paraphrases what they said. This is great for reinforcement and making the partner actually pay attention. I have thrown in a variation where the partner has to add something the speaker forgot. I find you need some variations to the formula to keep the kids on their toes.
Write Rally Robin is a brilliant way to build and develop the ideas students produce in groups. Students have a few minutes to work on a task. They then feedback to the group or the whole class - the other students tick it off if they thought of it and add it if they hadn't - a great way to make sure they all are involved.
I have used these techniques with all groups but they have been particularly successful with my Sixth Form groups. My year 13 group is only 4 students who are all naturally quiet so this has really helped structure and develop their discussion.
I am very impressed at how some really simple extra touches have made such a difference to my lessons. Looks like I may be adding the Kagan book to my Xmas wish list. At the INSET session some teachers were a bit skeptical and thought this was all too simplistic and silly. I hope they give these ideas a try - I am glad I did.


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Long week and new ideas

That was a really hard and long week. Lots of late meetings, Sixth Form open evening, after-school revision sessions and an INSET session. I wonder if there is any other job quite like teaching for throwing those kind of crazy weeks at you and knowing that next week will only be slightly less intense.
My lessons this week have been ok - not my best but some unexpected high points. A year 13 lesson on Germany in 1919 developed into an in-depth discussion of the merits and faults of democracy with the students showing admirable insight and perception.
The real highlight for me was an INSET day led by Elaine Brown from T2Tuk on Kagan Structures. I have to admit to being a little sceptical going in to this. I am a huge advocate of collaborative learning and students work in pairs, threes or other groups in virtually every lesson I teach. Rather arrogantly I went into the day thinking I had probably seen most of what would be presented. I was wrong. Whilst some of the ideas and techniques are already in my toolkit, most were slightly different or completely new. More importantly the ones that were slightly different were better than what I already do.
On Monday I will definitely be using Rally Robin, Timed Pair Share and Write Round Robin. I also appreciated that the presenter took the time to explain the psychology and pedagogy around the techniques she was using. This was more than just a bag of tips session.
It is testament to the quality of the session that at the end of a manic week I felt inspired and looking forward to Monday's lesson.
One other thing did strike me this week and that is that I am now being seen by others as a 'veteran' - and I think that scares me. I realised on Monday that on our College Leadership Team there are only 2 of us who had experience of teaching pre National Curriculum. During Friday' INSET one way of randomising groups was to create a line of experience. We had to arrange ourselves in a line around the room based on number of years teaching x number of schools worked in. Out of 100 people only 3 had a higher number than me - 23 years x 5 schools = 115. The only consolation is that in Gravity the role of the veteran is played by George Clooney - at last we have something in common.
Roll on next week


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Open Invites and the best test of the year

Some real highlights this week. My Year 11s are currently preparing for their Controlled Assessment on the Civil Rights Movement in the USA. Whilst trawling through the internet last weekend (a poor excuse for not really doing any work) I cam across a fantastic resource - a scan of the literacy test used in Louisiana in the 1960s to stop black people from registering to vote. I typed it up so it looked a bit more like the kind of test they are used to and gave them it cold at the beginning of the lesson. They had 10 minutes to complete it and had to get all 23 questions right to pass. Every single student failed including several who are targeted A*. The best thing was how annoyed they were at the test - the questions weren't that hard but they were badly worded, vague and in some cases - just weird. This is just one example:

15. In the space below, write the word "noise" backwards and place a dot over what would be its second letter should it have been written forwards

And it was fascinating to see how many got "spell backwards, forwards" wrong.
The test was great for helping students to understand why so few blacks were registered to vote in the 1960s.

This week I have introduced a new idea at school called Open Invites - asking staff to nominate some of their lessons where they are happy for anyone to pop in and observe for 15 minutes. Three of us volunteered lessons this week and several teachers popped in. I have to admit it really made me raise my game knowing that anytime someone could appear and expect to see something good - like OFSTED but without the fear. The lessons that were observed went well and I got some good useful feedback. The next step is to persuade more staff to offer up invites and to give up a bit of time to go and watch.

I also got back into podcasts this week by putting some revision podcasts on Emdodo for year 11 (and 25/39 turned up for revision lesson on Wednesday - hurray!). Year 13 also recorded their own podcasts on the effect of World War One on Germany. I am now thinking about doing some video podcasts on YouTube if I can find a few minutes.

Busy week coming up - looking forward to leading an INSET session on Assessment, marking and feedback on Wednesday, looking at how the Nazis used emotion to gain support and attending an INSET day on Kagan structures on Friday.

And I managed to blog two weeks in a row :)



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Revisiting, reviewing, reinvigorated

This is my first blog entry in ages and is inspired by a fantastic Teachmeet I attended on Thursday. Two of our young MFL teachers invited me to go to an MFL Teachmeet. I have to admit that I felt just a little apprehensive at the start - not only was I the only one who wasn't a languages teacher but it was also in the uncharted waters of Plymouth! I really was a fish out of water but quickly settled into a great evening of ideas and creativity. What is it about TeachMeets that can keep a room full of teachers interested and involved at 7.30 at night in early November?
All of the presentations were excellent and almost all of the ideas could be easily transferred to my History classroom. One of the things that struck me was that most of the ideas weren't new - lots of them were things I have done before but for some reason I have stopped doing (blogging being just 1 example). I didn't mean that to sound arrogant -as I have always said, I don't think I have ever had an original idea. I am just quite good at nicking stuff and converting it for my classroom. Over the last couple of days I have been flicking back through old lesson plans and folders for stuff I used to do and shouldn't have stopped. I used to always start lessons with an image and they were brilliant for generating interest and questions and I haven't done it in ages - but they will certainly be making a comeback next week.
The excellent Ben Rowe (@itsmerowey) from Saltash reminded me of the value of regular blogging. He recommended using it as a way to reflect on each week's teaching and I think that's a great idea. So I have dusted off Blogpress and hope/aim to post each week with some reflection on my lessons. Perhaps it's because I have stopped blogging and reflecting that I have stopped doing some of the things that worked best.
So this week has been a pretty good one - not brilliant but some good stuff. I do think I have been too content heavy though which has led to lessons being a bit dry.
Year 13 have had their first go at a historical controversy question on Germany's responsibility for World War One and I am very impressed at their research for coursework.
Year 12 have been looking at the rise of Sinn Fein and using the mini IPads for research. I still don't feel I have quite cracked using the IPads in the lessons yet though - they are part novelty and part distraction at the moment so I do need to think through how I am going to get the best out of them.
Year 11 are getting close to being ready for their Controlled Assessment and Year 10 are just getting to groups with Nazi Germany.

I am really looking forward to this week though. I have just found a copy of the literacy test which the state of Louisiana used to stop blacks qualifying to vote in the 1960's - I am going to get year 11 to try it on Monday to see if any of them can pass it. I don't rate their chances.
I am also doing one of my favourite lessons with year 10 which mixes Adolf Hitler, Derren Brown and NLP.

Also this week I am introducing Open Invites - so far 3 teachers have nominated several lessons this week that are open to anyone to pop into and observe. I just now have to convince some people to go and watch.

Hopefully, I will blog next week to reflect on it all.


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The rhythm of a lesson

Recently I have been watching a lot of lessons, particularly in Music, and also teaching a lot (even Assistant Heads teach a lot of lessons these days) and was thinking the other day about the natural rhythm of a lesson.
A really good lesson has a lot in common with a great piece of music. I was teaching year 10 today about the Cuban Missile Crisis and, as usual, used it as an excuse to play some of my favourite early 60's music - Sam Cooke, Andy Williams, James Brown, Marvin Gaye and a touch of Elvis. The best lessons start with a great opening which grabs the attention, hooks the kids in and maybe even catches them by surprise - think about the opening to Heartbreak Hotel.
There is often then a natural uptempo beat to the early part of the lesson where the teacher introduces the topic, skilfully draws in every single student to speak at least once in the 1st 10 minutes with focused questioning an answering.
As the 1st activity of the lesson kicks in a new louder beat takes over as students work with each other, talk, exchange ideas and settle into the pace of a new activity. This is where he really good teacher is like a songwriter or maybe a conductor - they know the importance of pausing and skipping a beat, introducing the breaks at just the right time to bring the students back to the focus of the lesson and make sure that some groups don't drown out the others.
The next section of the great song/lesson has similarities to he earlier part but is noticeably different. It may be a different voice or instrument - in the lesson it could be working with different students or in a different medium, writing instead of talking, turning ideas into images. In a song the chorus with the hook line or beat kicks in every now and again - in the great lesson the teacher keeps bringing it back to the focus of the lesson, the key question or progress target.
I guess the big difference, and where my increasingly stretched metaphor falls apart, is my belief that just about every lesson should have a period of quiet individual focus where the students work on their own, summarising, creating and making sense of the lesson. Too often I think this is the bit that gets missed out of lessons and yet I believe it is crucially important to check each students own level of understanding.
And what about the end of the lesson? I must admit I have never been a fan of the song which just fades away and I love a big finish. The best lessons I have ever seen finish with something new or surprising - perhaps a hint of what is to come next time.
The other similarity I guess is that great songs stick in your mind and you remember it for years singing to yourself. The great lessons can be just as memorable.
The playlist from today's Cuban Missile Crisis lesson was:
Wonderful World, Sam Cooke (how can I resist a song which starts "Don't know much about History"
Music to watch Girls By, Andy Williams
Chain Gang, Sam Cooke
Stuck on You, Elvis Presley,
Nowhere to Run, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
Can I Get A Witness, Marvin Gaye
Danger Heartbreak Dead Ahead, The Marvelettes
Hit The Road Jack, Ray Charles,
Trouble, Elvis Presley
James Bond theme, John Barry

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Collaborative Learning

Next Monday I am leading a whole staff INSET on collaborative learning. This blog is really about me getting my ideas together for the introductory session which will set out the case for collaborative learning.

I may as well set my cards out on the table right at the start. I am a fan of collaborative learning. I use it virtually every lesson with every year group and have done for as long as I can remember. To me it is one of the basic ingredients of every lesson plan and is my default setting for all student activities. Organising an INSET day on collaborative learning has been really useful to me because it has made me stop and think about what it is and why I use it - and to question whether just because I do it does that mean it was the right strategy?

Let's get the definition bit out of the way first. I prefer the title "collaborative learning" over "group work" simply because group work to me implies at least 3 students working together. Collaborative learning, I believe, is when students work with at least 1 other person to develop their own learning - it is pairs, threes, fours, fives sixes, tens, half a class or even a whole class. What is a whole class if it isn't just a big group?

I believe the benefits of collaborative learning are huge. I want the students in my classroom to do far more work than me. Me leading from the front of the classroom can be a very passive process - any form of collaborative learning puts the emphasis on them doing something. I have always felt that students are far more likely to remember a lesson in which they were positively engaged and active; in which they said and did something. Collaborative learning increases the chances of them doing something and therefore remembering it - the point of the lesson. (I speak from personal experience - I can remember most of the meetings in which I have said something: there are hundreds in which I was passive, they washed over me whilst I waited for them to end). Often I will follow up any short input from me with a collaborative task which is aimed at allowing students to process what I have just said and check that they actually understood it.

Despite learning styles going out of fashion with some people, I still like it and believe in it. Auditory learners benefit enormously from collaborative learning as it gives them an opportunity to think out loud and hear their own ideas - an important step in their process of understanding and learning. Almost every teacher I have ever met has known that teaching something is the best way of learning it - collaborative learning gives our students a way to experience that.

Some people have said that they haven't got time to do collaborative learning because there is too much content to get through. Personally I have always found that I can get through more content this way - particularly some of the dull stuff (I know that may come as a bit of a shock to find out that even history has some dull bits in it - League of Nations still makes my heart sink every year). Collaborative activities like Home and Away groups, Market Place and World Cafe (my 3 go-to collaborative activities) allow you to get through far more content because groups of students research different aspects and feedback to other students. They sort out the key bits of information for you.

In my new role as an Assistant Headteacher for Teaching and Learning I find that I now do a lot more lesson observations. Collaborative learning is great from an observer's point of view because it gives me an opportunity to actually talk to kids. I can talk to small groups without interrupting or distracting the teacher, ask about targets and previous lessons and have a quick look through books. Any teacher who is looking to get outstanding on a lesson observation will want the observer to talk to the kids - collaborative learning lets this happen. It also makes it much easier for the teacher to show differentiation and how much progress students have made - again key criteria for getting that "Outstanding" tick.

Fear about behaviour management often comes up as one of the main reasons some teachers have for not using collaborative learning. Again I have always used it as a behaviour management tool. Splitting students up into small groups makes it easier to identify who is actually misbehaving. Often I will move students into groups simply to break up 1 group of students without a confrontation. It also makes it a lot easier to have a quiet word of warning with some and encouragement with others.

I believe that as teachers we have a duty to develop our students' skills in collaborative learning - they will need to be able to do this in the future. Even with new technology most careers require us to be able to collaborate with other people and know how to share ideas and improve them. Personally I think that many of us secondary school teachers are the weak link in this process. As an AST I had the pleasure of going into a lot of primary school classrooms and in almost all of them collaborative learning was the norm. It was deeply entrenched in the day-to-day routine of the students and they are highly skilled at it - a huge compliment to their teachers who have put in hours of groundwork to develop this. For many students arriving in Year 7 we send some strange messages about how we expect 'older, more mature' students to work and behave. We put them in rows (do any primary school classrooms work in rows?) and have them facing us - are we not sending a huge message that they have grown out of group work? That's what they did when they were little. I know I am generalising here but I wonder if there is some truth to this. Year 7 students are very keen to fit in with their new school, new environments and new friends - many of them seem to forget how they worked so successfully in Year 6. But I suspect many secondary school teachers encourage them, perhaps unconsciously, to forget. I have heard some teachers at my school say that some of our students lack the social skills to do group work. I don't believe that is true. I have used collaborative learning since my 1st day at the school in September and haven't had to do anything special with the students. They have worked in groups as well as any students I have worked with - even ones I have 'trained'. And if it is true that some of our students lack the social skills - they are never going to develop those skills by not working on groups.

The key to successful collaborative learning for me is to be clear and specific about what is happening. I always select the groups - sometimes by random numbering, sometimes by subtle ability groups. I always make it extremely clear what the task is that the group has to do and what role(s) each member of the group has. I make sure that there is something for everyone in the group to do. I make it clear how long they have to complete the task. I move around every group quickly in the first few minutes to check everyone knows what they are doing. I stop them all to check progress or give new instructions. I randomise feedback so everyone in the group has the responsibility of representing the group. Collaborative learning might mean they are doing the work - but it is also the time when I am busiest.

There are of course times when collaborative learning is not appropriate. I am equally in favour of students becoming independent learners - in fact I believe the two states are fundamentally linked. A good independent learner knows the value of collaboration. Almost all collaborative tasks begin with a minute or 2 of independent work so that every students has at least 1 thing to contribute - otherwise the loudest student tends to dominate. I often end collaborative learning tasks with individual time so that students have the opportunity to make their own sense of what they have just done. To me collaborative learning and independent learning are part of the same process.

So those are my thoughts on collaborative learning. I have to say I am looking forward to Monday's INSET because I am hoping to pick up some new ideas from other staff for group work. Although I use collaborative learning a lot I do have a stock 3-4 strategies that I probably over-use. I am also nervous about it - I know there will be some resistance and not every one will like how I have set out the day. I do aim to make the sessions as active as possible and to smuggle as many collaborative activities in as I can - and I have ordered some nice pastries for break time. Now it's time to finish off the resources and PowerPoints - I think I have at least worked out my own thinking on collaborative learning. I will let you know how it goes.
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