Bitesize Research: Financial Literacy In Young People

 By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s having a great week so far and can start to see the light at the end of the T4 tunnel! There have been some really interesting discussions about the personal development and pastoral curricula looking ahead to next year. In light of this, I was really interested to see some recent research from the UCL Institute of Education about financial skills and literacy. Objectives: To examine the financial skills and understanding of students between ages 7-17. Summary:

• This study wanted to measure the understanding and abilities of students with respect to finance - including looking at tax, interest rates, inflation, spending and savings.
• This study worked with 3,745 children.
• The study found that the financial skills of 15-year old students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, were equivalent to 11-year old students from the most advantaged backgrounds
• 33% of 11-17-year-olds from low socio-economic status families could not work out the amount of money they would have in their savings account with an interest rate of 2 per cent. This is compared to just 14% of children from more affluent family backgrounds.
• There was also a difference in the number of students reporting about learning about financial literacy - students from more affluent backgrounds were much more likely to explain that they had learned about ‘working out change from shopping’, ‘saving money’ and the ‘difference between things you need and things you want to buy’.
• This study also spoke to parents. Parents from all backgrounds believed in the importance of speaking to their children about money, but more affluent parents had a greater degree of confidence in doing so.

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• What is the value of students having good financial literacy?
• How do I support this work in my lessons or in my tutor times?
• What do I want to do to support this further in the future?

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

Bitesize Research: Formative Assessment

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s having a great week! Lots of people across the WA community are thinking about assessment practice. In light of this, I was interested to read a new study that looks at embedding formative assessment and its impact on student outcomes. Objectives: To understand how formative assessment and training in formative assessment practices improve student learning and outcomes Summary:

• Formative assessment is defined here as activities that enable teachers to assess what students know and then shape their teaching thereafter to meet student needs and improve their outcomes
• Traditionally, improving these practices at scale has been challenging and therefore research literature has hitherto been limited to small-scale studies
• This research showed that a focus on embedding formative assessment in 70 schools across the UK made a positive difference to student outcomes - equivalent to two months of pupil learning
• It also showed that the size of the effect was higher on lower prior attaining students

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• How am I currently using assessment - formative and summative - to inform my teaching practice?
• What would I like to improve in my assessment practice?

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

CPD Reflections: Seeing Trauma-Informed Approaches In Action

By Lauren Swain

‘Be curious, not furious!’ I hope everyone is having a great week! In term 3, a group of us were lucky enough in our PLC to have the opportunity to visit St Augustine’s School in Kilburn. It was an eye-opening experience that showed us how trauma-informed approaches can be applied to a school in a broader sense to benefit all students, not only those who may have experienced trauma. The opening quote is one that I think is incredibly powerful and something that has been taken on at St Augustine’s; are we ensuring that we are curious and not furious? Are we making sure we are asking the questions as to why behaviour is happening so we can address it at the root? In this post I am going to outline a few of the things I learned on this visit and share how I think we can use this in our ongoing journey to apply more trauma-informed approaches at WA.

What was clear from the start was the calm atmosphere within the school. Outside every classroom was a sticker that showed both the zones of regulation and suggestions of how students might cope with those feelings. It was clear that teachers feel empowered to have a calmer approach as there were reminders of helpful strategies such as lazy 8 breathing. Students who were having a minute out of the lesson to regulate were greeted by teachers on the corridor with a caring non-confrontational conversation, which often referred back to the zones of regulation, such as “What colour are you?”. Starting the conversation in this way enabled staff to support students in regulating, resulting in them often being able to return to the classroom and learning quickly. A second idea I saw on the visit was the use of reflection sheets during detentions. Asking students to complete a structured reflection can help them think more deeply about their behaviour and the positive and negative impacts this can have on their learning. Jojo Laber, Axelle Diot and Ben Law-Smith have all been trialling these recently and have noticed that students have responded very positively and it created a way for students to learn from their mistakes in a more meaningful way. A WA example I made can be found here if you are interested in trying this with your own students. Another simple, yet easy thing to implement is a trusted adult list. A form was sent to every student in which they were asked to name 1-2 staff members they trust or would go to if they had something to disclose or report. This can then be utilised if students need support or are not responding and is also a great resource to help with restorations or difficult conversations. Alongside this, there was also a staff buddy list. This was for staff to have someone they can go to for support, to regulate with, and to have support in specific classes if needed. This allows for the support of staff and gives them a space to be calm for the students. The key takeaways were that we are adults. We need to model adult regulation for them and use positive language. This does not mean letting students get away with things, but it means having conversations in a way that helps mentor and coach students. Allowing our students a safe environment to learn how to regulate and to have conversations gives them the preparation they need to enter society and be thoughtful and considerate individuals able to regulate and engage in society fully. I hope this was enjoyable and please grab me if you would like to chat about this further!

Cross-Curricular Collaboration In Science & Maths

 By Jenny Scott

“...just like you do in maths!”

But is it just like they do in maths? In the science department recently we’ve become acutely aware of the importance of maths within science, and how we teach this to students. The Association for Science Education (ASE) published in 2016 “The Language of Mathematics in Science”, in which they identify ten different mathematical “‘kinds of things we do in science’:

• Collecting data
• Doing calculations and representing values
• Choosing how to represent data
• Drawing charts and graphs
• Working with proportionality and ratio
• Dealing with variability
• Looking for relationships: line graphs
• Looking for relationships: batches and scatter graphs
• Scientific models and mathematical equations
• Mathematics in the real world

Each and every one of these has links to the maths curriculum - we know that students are taught these things in maths, but we found that we didn’t know when or how they were taught them! 

To support our students in using their maths skills in science, we decided to launch a cross-department project to make our science and maths curricula more cohesive. This started with our KSCos and DoLs meeting to compare our curriculum mapping to simply identify when certain skills are taught in maths, and when those same skills are taught in science. This was eye-opening as we found that some skills which we were taking for granted in KS3 science (e.g. rearranging an algebraic equation) were not taught explicitly in maths until Year 9!

Our next step was to enlist the help of our whole departments in a joint department meeting to create a ‘STEM Dictionary’ in which we included common mathematical words and were able to discuss their definitions and uses in both maths and science. The maths department also modelled how they would teach certain skills. This was a really valuable experience as we were able to identify several areas of maths in science where we tend to approach it in a completely different way to the maths department - which must be confusing for students!

We are now in the process of adjusting our teaching of mathematical skills in science to reflect the methods used in maths (“equation triangles” are banished forever!), as well as the maths department working on including more science-based examples in their teaching. Overall - an ongoing but exciting project!

Bitesize Research: The Value Of Subject Knowledge

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s having a great week! This week’s Tuesday CPD is on the theme of subject knowledge and pedagogy, and when thinking about this, I was intrigued to see the publication of a new book about the place of subject knowledge in teacher education. This volume includes the work of researchers working in Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK across a variety of subject contexts. Objectives: To look at the place and the value of subject knowledge in teacher education internationally Summary:

• The book as a whole uses a concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ to categorise knowledge that is most valuable for students in the modern world
• In a Geography context, authors argue that teachers need to use a strong combination of conceptual, contextual and procedural knowledge to ensure that their students become good geographers
• One chapter looks at how in a Maths context, one type of specific mathematical knowledge is argued to be central for unlocking students’ thinking and learning of maths
• Other subjects, including Religious Studies, are explained in the book to have roots in multidisciplinary approaches. They therefore argue that teachers of RS need to understand how these different approaches come together before they can successfully teach RS

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• What is my own relationship with subject knowledge? How much do I aim to maintain or extend it? And in what ways?
• How does better subject knowledge support your subject pedagogy?
• What might ‘powerful knowledge’ be in my subject?

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

Bitesize Research: Children Owning Books

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s having a great week! Continuing our thinking about literacy and communication, and in line with forthcoming plans we have for World Book Month, I was interested to see this research summary released by the National Literacy Trust about children and book ownership. We are planning to give every child in the Academy their own book (more details to come) as part of our first-ever “WA’s Big Read” and we are excited for them to be reading and exploring these in TTBs later in T4! Objectives: To look at trends and correlations between children’s book ownership and other important measures Summary:

• Children who own at least one book are much more likely to be engaged with reading, and six times more likely to read above their reading level
• 6% of children in the UK don’t have a book of their own at home
• A greater proportion of Pupil Premium children have no books at home (9.2%) compared with their non-disadvantaged peers (5.3%)
• Ownership of books at home also correlates with reading frequency and enjoyment

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• How does this research make me reflect on my role as a teacher and as a tutor?
• How often am I discussing reading with my tutees?

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.