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.

Thoughts From A Visiting Teacher: University of Leiden

By Luca, Britt, Doris, Lola and Myrthe

We are students from the Netherlands in our second-last year to become teachers at the University of Applied Sciences Leiden. Last November 15^th we visited Westminster Academy to experience the differences and similarities between the British and the Dutch school systems. We were excited and learned a lot. We had a great time because of all the nice people we met. 
 
The first thing we noticed are the school uniforms. In the Netherlands it’s normal to wear casual clothing to school. Teachers are required to dress presentable, but whether you do that wearing a dress, a skirt or jeans doesn’t matter. Children are allowed to choose how to dress. To us it was a new experience to see all the students wearing uniforms and for all the teachers to be in business dress.
 
Another concept we are not familiar with, is the houses. Houses and house points are things we only recognise from the Harry Potter books. To see it in real life was a special experience for us. Something we noticed about Westminster Academy is the self-made lessons that are taught. In the Netherlands it’s normal for a school to have pre-made lesson plans. Teachers don’t usually make their own lessons. In the Netherlands they are trying to encourage teachers to find a balance in making lessons and using the pre-made lesson plans. The teachers at Westminster Academy showed us the joy of teaching self-made lessons and that the children can really benefit from it. 
 
After we had seen a few lessons, we also noticed that all the children are taught on the same level (i.e. mixed ability classes). In the Netherlands, especially in secondary school, there are different levels for children to learn at (i.e. students are streamed in all subjects in Secondary education). The level impacts the amount of lessons you have, the amount of years you spend at the school and the difficulty of the teaching material. This is a big difference to what we are used to in secondary school and is more similar to the Dutch primary schools. 
 
And maybe the biggest surprise to us, might be a silly one. We were really surprised to see that the children can get a warm lunch at the school. There were even different things to choose from. The lunches in the Netherlands are simple, cold and you bring them from home. The most common one is a slice of bread with some butter and cheese on it. It really felt like a special meal to us.  
 
We thank all the people for the great care we received at Westminster Academy. We had a great time! 

Bitesize Research: Effective Peer Assessment

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a great week so far. As part of our work around assessment, I was interested to come across a recent Edutopia article about effective peer assessment.

Objectives: To consider the barriers and strategies for effective peer assessment 

Summary: 

• The author argues that effective peer assessment has a large number of benefits including enabling more time for low stakes assessments and independent practice, as well as ensuring greater degrees of accountability from students.

• The author argues that one of the barriers to effective peer assessment is that sometimes adolescents can be sensitive to criticism and that they can worry about critiquing the work of their friends. To combat this, she argues that scaffolding the process of peer assessment and ensuring a safe and secure classroom is essential. 

• The author goes on to make six recommendations for effective peer assessment practice:

1. Focus on reflection on correction - in particular, encourage students to give their peers very clear next steps about how to improve

2. Create feedback partners - which ensures that adolescent social dynamics do not impede impactful feedback

3. Offer choice - this could include different prompts or sentence starters based around common mistakes or areas for development

4. Specificity is important - emphasise the idea that feedback needs to be constructive and precise

5. Model effective feedback - verbally or using sentence starters

6. Harness deeper engagement - consider how you can use starters such as ‘I wish, I like, I wonder’ rather than getting students to focus on spelling, punctuation or grammar errors. 

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

• What is important about peer assessment to me? For my subject? For my classes?

• Which of the 6 recommendations am I currently doing well? Which would I like to learn more about and implement further? 

• What opportunities are there for me to use these strategies with my students?

If you would like to discuss this further with me please get in touch! I’d be delighted to hear from you

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!

Collaboration & Group Work

 By Flo Rayner

“I hate group work!”

It’s possible that the above statement could be heard coming from both students and teachers alike. Group work and collaboration are often approached with caution and apprehension by both leaders and learners in the classroom. However, it is an essential element of classroom teaching, particularly when considering a student-centered approach.

Why? It seems that lots of students are averse to working in groups during lessons and this could be due to a range of concerns:

1. It is possible that students may worry that they will undertake the majority of the work required and so view it as unfair that other members of their group will benefit from this.
2. There may be a level of anxiety for a young person about who they are working with; are they friends, have they had experience (good or bad) working with this person before, will they feel their voice is being heard?
3. Many students, particularly high achieving and independent learners may simply feel that they would just do better if they worked on their own.

It’s not only students that are opposed to group work. Many teachers feel apprehensive towards group work in the classroom for a number of reasons: Relinquishing control in the classroom could present behavioural challenges, particularly with early career teachers, there is a fear that students will not cover the required material/content if they are not fully focused, as well as teachers feeling out of practice after a long period of teacher-led learning due to Covid restrictions. Why is group work important? Having considered these concerns it is important to discuss why we need to push through these barriers and continue to include collaborative learning and group work opportunities in our lessons.

• Life long learners: By working as a team, children can develop important skills such as listening and leadership whilst also developing their confidence, skills which they will use forever.
• Engagement: When taking an active role in their learning students will be more engaged, which will, in turn, lead to higher attainment.
• Ownership: With this student-centered focus, learners will be able to take more ownership over their learning and take pride in their successes, a feeling of autonomy has been proved to have strong links with increasing the motivation of learners.
• Authenticity: Collaboration will allow students to discuss new ideas in a low-stakes way with their peers, facilitating a more authentic process of production, as well as exposing students to a wider range of ideas and thought processes than just that of the teacher.

What might we consider when setting up group work in our classrooms? Grouping: When selecting groups or pairs, it is important to think carefully about these arrangements in advance of the lesson to both help a smooth setting up of the task, as well as to ensure students can work together. You could think about grouping by ability, keeping ability groups separate, or ensuring mixed ability groups to allow support and stretch for all students. It is important to consider class dynamics; are students likely to work with people they are friends with or is it more important to separate potential behaviour pitfalls? Instructions: Clarity is key. Keep the instructions short and simple. It works well to have 3 or 4 clear instructions, displayed throughout the task to help remind students of the expectations and goals. If they are unsure of what to do next they have something to refer back to. Assigning roles: It could be helpful to have set roles for each member of the group. This helps learners to feel empowered about their particular area of the task and avoids any potential ‘freeloaders’. Leonie Hall also discussed the possibility of allowing students to work independently on their own area of the task, but insisting that each separate part must fit in cohesively with the other members’ work at the end. Accountability: Several theorists argue that the most important part of successful group work is the idea of accountability. If students feel like something is at stake, this will increase their motivation to complete the task. Are they going to have to present their work to the rest of the class? Are they going to be graded on their group work? Is there a prize for the most successful group? It is important, however, to tread the fine balance between providing an element of accountability and removing some anxiety for any students who feel like their overall grade could be brought down through no fault of their own. Timings: Limiting the time of tasks and making this visible to students creates a sense of pace and urgency for the task, which in turn helps keep students engaged and should help avoid students going too far off task. How can we include collaborative opportunities?

• Think, Pair, Share (Short and snappy, students are asked a question, they have time to think, time to share with the person next to them before sharing with the teacher)

• Mini whiteboards (Similar to above, students can write their answer, then compare with the person next to them, then they can present their answer to the teacher)

• Treasure hunt (This is good for recognition or comprehension. Students can be paired or in groups, they are presented with questions or things to find. A number of texts / images are pinned around the room which contain the answers. Only one student is allowed out of their seat at a time, they find the answer around the room and bring it back to their team. Like a relay, another member of the team can then leave and find the next answer. 3 simple rules: 1 student out at a time, no shouting across the classroom, 2 yellow cards and you’re out).

• Running dictation (Similar to above, but they have to retain information from what they have read around the room and report it back word for word to their partner/team. The team which is first with the correct transcription/translation wins.)

• Teach the rest of the group (The best way to consolidate the learning of something is to teach it to someone else. Groups of students could be assigned a topic, and present this to the rest of the class. A whole host of assigned roles could be employed here. Could work as an introduction to a topic using research as well as a revision exercise).

• Why? (This is an idea used by Leyla Marasli, who has highlighted the benefit in any group work of having a ‘Why?’ person. This person’s job is to ask why at every step of the task to ensure that all students in the group can follow the thought process as well as ensuring students can explain how they reached a certain conclusion. A very low-stakes way to include all students and to ensure stretch and depth of learning.)

Further reading:

• Sharan, Y (2015) ‘Meaningful learning in the cooperative classroom’, Education 3-13, 43:1
• Lehraus, K (2015) ‘How to integrate cooperative skills training into learning tasks: an illustration with young pupils' writing’, Education 3-13, 43:1
• Isaac, M. (2012). "I Hate Group Work!" Social Loafers, Indignant Peers, and the Drama of the Classroom. English Journal, 101(4), 83-89.

Bitesize Research: Creativity In Classrooms

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s having a great week! Continuing with our theme on student-centered learning for T3, I was interested in some research conducted by Gallup into creativity in learning. The research was conducted about the USA. Objectives: To understand the current uses of creativity in US classrooms, and how this impacts students, and their parents. Summary:

• More pressure and emphasis on external accountability on teachers had led to more traditional forms of teaching instruction
• The report's authors argue that this does not equip students for the modern world, wherein they are required to be more creative than ever to solve complex problems.
• Creativity in teaching and learning fosters positive outcomes for students which include better criticality as well as creativity. These positive outcomes are particularly heightened when technology is used.
• Students spend less time than previous generations doing creative activities in schools.
• A supportive and collaborative school environment enables teachers to better use creative approaches to learning.
• Students and their parents generally support the idea of more creative approaches to learning.

How does this impact me and my practice?:

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

• How different is this US study from a typical UK experience in your opinion?
• How do you foster creativity in your lessons?
• How do you use technology in your lessons to support creativity?

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.