Tag: Teaching

Colour Coordination: Highlighting those Skills

On By Aimee HorsleyIn Essay Tips and Techniques, Teaching, Learning and AssessmentLeave a comment

BossI am obsessed with highlighters! I never use to be, I could teach a whole lesson without the words ‘grab a highlighter’ but now this is not the case. Why? Because they are the best thing to help students focus on the task at hand. Now as many of you know I am a huge Inner Drive and Bradley Busch fan and find their research into metacognition extremely interesting OIP (1)(see The Science of Learning if you would like to know more).  However they do not advocate the use of highlighting as part of effective learning. I wish to disagree. Here are some ways that using highlighters can be very effective for learning:

Assessment strategy:

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  • Students highlight the key words from the question in their answer. This will guarantee they have focused specifically on the words in the question and have adapted their essay answer to what the examiners have asked. An excellent or top mark essay will use the words in the question throughout an answer. Note: whilst students might think they have answered the question, only by highlighting the key words will they know for sure.
  • Give an essay and remove the question. Can students work out the question by highlighting the key words that are used throughout?
  • Highlight A01 and A02 in different colours.
  • Students use the examiner’s mark scheme to self assess their own essays by highlighting the relevant criteria that applies to their work.(See Improve Your Essays Using Mark Schemes for further help).78637489_2556535761294327_7496363354965934080_o

Feedback:

  • Using  general or whole class feedback given by the teacher, highlight your essay/ work where the comments apply to your answer. Then make the relevant changes.
  • Rather than writing the same thing throughout when marking a piece of work/ essay use highlights to draw attention to different things e.g. spelling in one colour, misunderstandings in another.

Revision:

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When ‘Stretch’ becomes too ‘Challenging’

On By Aimee HorsleyIn Teaching, Learning and AssessmentLeave a comment

As part of my role within the GROW Team (a team of teachers who support staff with their professional development) we facilitate in-house themed CPD sessions. My session focused upon developing differentiated strategies to promote stretch and challenge. My aim was to discuss a variety of strategies that could be used with different students/ subjects, which meant that stretching all students in a lesson was less challenging on the teacher.

I started the session with a mix and match worksheet where staff had to link the key words to the online definitions:

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This opened up a lot of initial discussions over the terms and their meanings. What I found surprising when researching for this session, was that most of the definitions on a general Google search for Stretch and Challenge, focused upon the students stretching and challenging themselves not the teacher. This flipped how I saw stretch and challenge in my mind: it is not the teacher driving it but the students recognising what they want to achieve, taking ownership over their success by stretching themselves.

I then moved on to a short ppt which highlighted three main problems with differentiated tasks for stretch and challenge with possible solutions:

After discussing each one, what we would like to try/ have already tried etc. we finished  with a plan of action sheet – basically a check list of what are you going to do:

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“Put your mobile phone away!”: Are you Kidding?

On By Aimee HorsleyIn Teaching, Learning and AssessmentLeave a comment

Some educational institutions have a  very clear rule: no mobile phones in lessons.  I’m not disagreeing with this. What I am doing is taking a reality check. Students are literally… 13557800_1416481335035387_4218592803150921702_n

So rather than wasting time as a teacher constantly telling students to put their phones away or students thinking harder about how they can read their latest message without been spotted rather than the lesson itself (by the way teachers know the book tilt to cover the phone or the interesting light up lap stare – who are you fooling!) why not use mobile phones as part of the learning?

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“You haven’t done the reading!” How to avoid Flipped Learning Flops

On By Aimee HorsleyIn Teaching, Learning and Assessment1 Comment

Let me start by saying that I’m not really sure why it is called ‘Flipped Learning’. At the end of the day the learning has not been flipped because the students should have always been doing the learning. What has been flipped is the working roles, by which I mean who is doing all the work: student or teacher?

With flipped learning you are placing the responsibility for learning the material onto the students, rather than the pressure being on the teacher to cover the material (and teach the content, set activities, engage all students, differentiate over abilities, ask a variety of different questions and assess that learning has actually taken place …not to mention all this with new linear specifications and intense content coverage.)

So why use Flipped Learning?

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Bringing back the Red Pen: Effective Feedback

On By Aimee HorsleyIn Teaching, Learning and AssessmentLeave a comment

If you type into goggle ‘red pens in schools’  you are bombarded with newspaper articles of red pen.pngschools who proudly declare that the use of red pens are BANNED! My response: I think education has bigger issues. So why is this move deemed necessary? Well some believe that marking in red pen appears more threatening (like writing in capitals), demanding attention from the reader in a warning manner (you don’t ignore road signs in red for example). Well I don’t mean to be blunt (but I’m going to be anyway) but that is exactly why I mark in red pen. Marking students’ work is one of the most significant ways that they improve their independent essay writing technique, so I want them to take notice of my comments.

I can see the benefits of marking in different colours such as green for praise or highlighting spelling mistakes or grammar errors but I want actual feedback for improvement to be as blatantly obvious as possible. Look at me, read me, take me on board!

So here are some tips for handling ‘red pen marking’:

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Who said ‘you can’t teach teachers’: TeachMeet

On By Aimee HorsleyIn Teaching, Learning and Assessment2 Comments

I attended my first TeachMeet event at Scalby School recently and it was fantastic. Don’t get me words.pngwrong I love teaching and learning anyway but after a long day at work and three more hours of ‘school’ it has to be pretty good to engage me. And it did! The buzz of sharing ideas through quick, snappy sessions was structured and organised (my favourite sort of learning) but more than that I picked up a hoard of teaching ideas that are just golden! Ideas that are so simple you immediately know which class and topic you are going to try them with. So here is my summary of the key ideas from the evening:

Learning Menu
Differentiated classroom activities written as a menu with starters, mains and desserts comprising of differentiated tasks and extension sides. This technique enables students to develop independent learning through challenging themselves.Revision Clock
Using the face of a clock, split the sheet into timed segments to focus revision on short, snappy pointers. This technique maintains focus and pace when revising. I’ve already tried this!

 

revision clock

Achievement Display: Inspiration Board
Straight forward really – reward the little things (best piece of work, most improved) rather than just top performances.

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