Thoughts from a DoL

I consider myself fairly tech savvy - afterall I'm a maths teacher - we're a bit geeky about technology, right?

However, the government announcement of closing schools within three days meant we had to adjust to remote teaching at what felt like lightning speed. It also meant having to support a team of highly capable teachers in the same process at the same time - being a leader means at the very least being experienced enough to be able to coach and mentor your team through this change. Only, the catch is that I've never done this before - we're all on an equal footing learning at the same time, and it's an exciting but daunting chance to be a novice again. This was going to be a fast-paced, multi-dimensional learning experience!

Elements of my practice I would normally feel confident about, and therefore have been able to coach others on, now needed re-thinking when looked at through the perspective of a purely technological approach.

So I challenged my department to try different technology mediums to work on:

- Assessment for learning

- Feedback - verbal and written

- Questioning

I was encouraged by the examples of innovation I saw (NB: these will be featured in future blog posts in more detail): 

• Teachers found ways of using the zoom chat like a mini whiteboard - by changing the settings so students can only message the teacher. This empowered students who would normally worry about incorrect answers to engage more actively, and gave the teacher the ability to praise and encourage participation. 
• Using Quizizz and Google Forms as a means of low-stakes assessment in the lesson in place of mini whiteboard questions - mixing it up with allowing the students to see the answers straight away or not so the teacher can go through each question individually.
• Converting worksheets into online versions, creating exit cards and assessed tasks, and setting them as assignments on Google Classroom to be handed in by the student to be marked and returned for follow up. 
• Live teaching using a whiteboard over zoom to model concepts and methods, recreating the classroom feel with cold-calling. 

At the end of a few weeks of experimentation I feel extremely proud of how my department has adapted their practice, and the dynamism they have shown in finding multiple ways to assess, mark and give feedback. As a DoL it has made me reflect on the balance between wanting consistency in how we give feedback and marking through having a schedule and collaboratively planned assessment tasks, and giving teachers the freedom to give feedback and mark in a more organic, less-structured but equally effective way. 

In terms of Leadership it brings up questions like:

• How would I monitor this more flexible approach to marking and feedback?
• When we are back in the physical building where is the balance between feedback using technology and feedback in books? If there's a book scrutiny how does the feedback get evidenced? Is that an important factor to consider?
• How do stakeholders (students, teachers, parents) feel about a more fluid feedback cycle? How do you ensure parents feel confidence in the feedback their child is getting if it's not in red pen in their books?
• How would this fit in with the whole school policy and vision for feedback and marking? A discussion with SLT would need to take place so having some ideas and solutions to these questions ready would be the ideal way to start the conversation.

It's a really exciting time to be a DoL at WA tackling these questions and how we see our teaching and learning move forward post-lockdown. 

Resources spoken about in the post:

Zoom - www.zoom.us

Quizizz - www.quizizz.com

Google Classroom & Suite