CPD Reflections: Collaboration with School 21

By Sophia Evans

Part of WA’s strategic focus is to develop the curriculum collaboratively, with a whole-school perspective. This term, the maths department was fortunate enough to engage in this process through collaboration with another school! Working with people from another school is something that most neglect once we qualify as teachers. We complete contrasting school placements as part of teacher training but rarely get the opportunity to go and visit other schools after this point. Working with others in different schools not only gives us the chance to think about new approaches to teaching and pedagogy, but also allows us to be validated in what we are currently doing.

Last week Michael and myself hosted 4 teachers from School 21, an all-through school in Stratford (East London). As part of their staff development, School 21 sends all teaching staff to visit other schools on their INSET days. Thanks to Ruhina (and our alumni Tom Holmes - their head of department) we were able to host their KS3 Maths Lead and three of their colleagues. During their time with us, they visited our lessons and fed back to our department our strengths and areas for improvement. 

It was useful to hear feedback and ideas on how we can add more stretch to our KS3 curriculum, something which is incredibly useful based on our feedback from previous departmental reviews. They shared suggestions of “mastery style” activities we can add as depth tasks during lessons, such as “how many representations of a fraction can you give?”. They told us that the behaviour in our lessons was great for learning (thanks to our school’s behaviour policy!) and that our use of language in lessons (e.g. emphasising the difference between a variable and constant in algebra) was something they were going to feed back to their department and wanted to implement in their lessons.

I particularly enjoyed talking about maths curriculum with their KS3 Maths Lead as both of us shared similar philosophies of teaching. We discussed approaches to teaching algebra with manipulatives, how retrieval can be embedded into lessons and assessment without being tokenistic, and how project-based assessments can allow students to explore a topic through a student-led approach. 

This process of working collaboratively with teachers from a different school with a similar context to ours was incredibly insightful for not only myself but other colleagues in our department. Hearing strengths and weaknesses from an outside source, as well as new suggestions on how to improve, left us engaged and focused on how we can improve both departments. I would love the opportunity to return the favour and go visit their maths department with some of our colleagues to help strengthen this relationship between our two departments and give us the opportunity to work together and share our passion for mathematics.

Bitesize Research: Adaptive Teaching

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week so far - and wishing you all a restful break when it comes along! We’ve been hearing lots about adaptive teaching as a new way of describing differentiation in recent times - this is the emphasis of the Early Career framework too in terms of meeting the differing needs of pupils as well as being the preferred term from the DfE. Going forward, I know we’ll be continuing to think about this going forward, as will the teaching profession in general. As such, this week, I was really interested to see an article in TES on adaptive teaching. 

Objectives: To suggest some ideas about effective adaptive teaching in school settings

Summary: 

• The author argues that adaptive teaching differs from differentiation crucially insofar as it starts on the whole class, rather than the individual

• The author suggests two approaches to adaptive teaching:

• 1) Proactive adaptive teaching - this is an approach that may look to perform small, inclusive adjustments to lesson organisation, and the author argues that this relies heavily on having strong teacher-student relationships. It may also look at modelling and giving instructions in bitesize chunks so that working memory isn’t overloaded. 

• 2) Reactive adaptive teaching - by way of using quick and ongoing formative assessment, this can be used to adjust teaching during the course of a lesson. In this respect, the author suggests a helpful resource from the Maximising the Effectiveness of Teaching Assistants group - see here.

How might this look in the classroom?

Expectations should be set high and tasks are challenging for all the students. Students are given a live example of WAGOLL - “what a good one looks like” and they have had the opportunity to follow the “perfect” thought process in problem solving

The main strategy for adaptive teaching is scaffolding; providing different levels of support for students whilst they all attempt the same task.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• What do I currently understand about adaptive teaching? What do I need to know more about?

• How do I look to do proactive adaptive teaching?

• How do I look to do reactive adaptive teaching?

• What additional support would I like with adaptive teaching?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you! 

Bitesize Research: Key Findings About Bilingualism

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week so far - and no doubt are looking forward to some well earned rest coming shortly! Earlier this academic year, we had a powerful keynote from the Bell Foundation about EAL learners, which has connected to our ongoing work on literacy, communication and vocabulary. As such, I was interested to see a recent Edutopia article about bilingualism  

Objectives: To bring together key findings about bilingualism. 

Summary: 

• The author highlights some of the recent key findings about bilingualism as follows:

1. Bilingualism strengthens executing functioning: As bilingual people are constantly changing between languages, they are better at multitasking and significantly more ‘grey matter’ in their brains which improves decision making, motivation and emotional regulation.  

2. Bilingualism can increase English and maths performance: There are lots of studies that show bilingual children outperform their peers in English and maths performance.

3. Bilingualism can increase earning potential and job opportunities: Bilingual employees, on average, earn 5-20% more than their monolingual counterparts. 

4. Bilingualism can prevent the negative impacts of disease and brain injury: Studies have shown that bilinguals have a better ability to recover from cognitive impairments caused by injury and that dementia had a later onset in bilingual people.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How do I celebrate bilingualism with my students currently?

• How do I bolster the confidence of bilingual students in my classes or tutor group?

• What more would I like to know about bilingual students?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Bitesize Research: The Impact Of Attendance On Academic Performance

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week so far. We are all aware of the important connection that attendance has with student academic achievement, and as a result we’ve all been doing lots of work on ensuring excellent attendance, particularly in the post-Covid landscape. Therefore I was interested to come across a recent study that looked at attendance, and specifically the reasons for student absence.  

Objectives: To understand whether the reasons for student absence make a difference to the link between absenteeism and academic performance.

Summary: 

• The researchers used data in Scotland, which requires schools to note the reasons for student absences.

• They looked to examine whether or not the reasons for absence made a difference to student achievement. 

• For all different reasons of absence, there was a negative impact on student achievement. The impact of some, however, was greater than others - truancy or sickness-related absence was highest, then absence due to holidays, then family emergencies. 

• The authors of the study suggest in their recommendations that schools build support plans that target the specific reasons for absences, and therefore help students make up their academic learning, feel a sense of connection to school and then get additional support outside of school where required.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How do I support the attendance of my tutees and students? 

• What are some of the individual reasons for absence?

• What support do some of my students need to help them?

• What support do I need to help with improving student attendance?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

CPD Reflections: Students’ ability to recall key knowledge through ‘Word Maps’

By Will Glydon

Why I chose this topic 

As part of the second ECT2 enquiry, I decided to focus on students’ ability to recall substantive knowledge. This has been present in my mind since the recent B11 experience, with some of the history students unable to simply communicate substantive knowledge from previous weeks and months of learning. Once this was highlighted by B11, I have been trying to quiz my students on core bits of substantive knowledge and have noticed for myself that their ability to recall this knowledge can be sometimes quite weak.

Is providing ‘Keywords’ enough? 

Through this, I started to wonder whether providing ‘Keywords’ for the students to copy into the back of their books is sufficient for the students to really understand the meaning of the words. For example, does writing a definition of ‘Empire’ really provide students enough to truly understand the meaning of the concept of an empire? 

Method 

After considering different methods to increase student's ability to recall knowledge, I settled on ‘Word Maps’. WA staff will be familiar with these, as during Inset 2, The Bell Foundation presented ‘Word Maps’ as a way for EAL students to access content and learn new words. I liked the ‘My Picture’ element of ‘Word Map’, which sets it apart from similar structures, such as ‘Frayer Models’. 

Investigation 

My plan was to use these for 5 weeks, every lesson, with all students across Year 7 in history lessons on the following key concepts:

Feudal System 

Sources

Barons

Monarch 

Magna Carta 

Student Interviews 

After 6 weeks of practising Word Maps , Jaya and I took students out of lessons for a “Ofsted” style interview, attempting to emulate the B11 experience, which the students struggled in. We questioned them about the key substantive concepts, which they had produced ‘Word Maps’ for, asking them questions like: 

• Describe what the Feudal system is

• Who is on top of a feudal system? 

• Can you draw a feudal system?

• Give me an example of a source

• How would you describe what a source is?

• What is a source that you have looked at this term?

• Who had power in Medieval England?

• What does monarchy mean?

• How did the monarch have power in Medieval England? 

Do ‘Word Maps’ work in helping students to recall substantive knowledge?

There were certainly plenty of positives of using Word Maps. Most pleasingly, students' ability to recall knowledge was good on the whole and showed a decent improvement from when they were questioned by B11! 

There are, however, some tricky elements to embedding Words Maps into the lessons, as they can be quite time consuming and present a new routine for students and Year 7s, in particular, can find this difficult. If you choose to use these, be prepared to have some stretch tasks up your sleeve, as student pace can vary massively too!

We, in History, have continued to use ‘Word Maps’, but are still looking for other methods to enable students to recall substantive knowledge at their fingertips! If anyone has any other ideas, please get in touch!

Bitesize Research: Talking To Students About Misogyny

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week so far. A few months ago, Sophie and Anita led an INSET session about how to address some of the challenging misogynistic ideas presented by students. I know that YCs are also doing some further training to help empower their tutor teams on this too. In particular, with Andrew Tate recently being arrested, there has been lots of public discussion on this and about how schools can work with young people effectively. As such, I was interested to read an article in the TES magazine outlining some strategies for this.

Objectives: To understand key strategies to use when speaking to students about misogyny  and Andrew Tate. 

Summary: 

• The author identifies some of the difficulties with tackling these views in a school context. He suggests five strategies when working with young people on this topic:

1. Avoid silencing boys - the author argues that some well-intentioned attempts to shut down misogynistic conversations actually entrench the problems and worsen them. The author argues that teachers should reframe these as ‘teachable moments’ and give boys a space to have their ideas listened to and challenged by ‘calling them in’ rather than ‘calling them out’ (as the latter very rarely creates attitudinal shifts).

2. Understand the reasons why boys are susceptible to these ideas - allured by his lifestyle and wealth, many boys see Andrew Tate as a role model. The author argues that when boys realise that his wealth has been created by ‘incendiary content sharing’ they will begin to understand he is not as glamorous as he appears to be.

3. Use assemblies or lessons to challenge - the author argues that teachers should not fear mentioning Tate, but that they should use opportunities to highlight and challenge his views. He argues that male teachers doing this is particularly helpful.

4. CPD - the author argues that staff can be given the right tools for this through CPD.

5. Avoid focussing just on Andrew Tate - the author argues that putting misogynistic views into a wider perspective is helpful

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How confident do you feel with addressing some of these issues?

• Which strategies are you currently using? Which do you need more support or practise with?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!