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!

CPD Reflections: Practitioner Inquiries From ECT2s

By Ben Law-Smith, Ayah Malik & Will Glydon

This term some of our Early Careers Teachers (ECT2s) have been busy working on their very first rounds of "practitioner inquiry" as part of the Early Career Framework. This process empowers teachers to identify areas of the teacher standards they would like to develop further and carry out a project to explore this area and trial a new approach in their classrooms. The process can be broken down into the 4-step practitioner inquiry cycle (as shown below) and is an excellent model to make meaningful improvements to our own practice.

I asked a few of our ECT2s to share what they had investigated for their first inquiries and what they had uncovered:

Can peer-led seating plans lead to more positivity in the classroom, improve discussion and maintain teaching and learning outcomes? by Ben Law-Smith

One of my targets this year is to facilitate better classroom discussion - a key part of Citizenship lessons which often have more speaking tasks than other subjects. I noticed last year that seating plans tended to stifle discussion because they were primarily used as behaviour management tools and placed students next to people they didn't necessarily want to talk to. This was especially pronounced in Y10-11.

I have twelve classes from all KS3-4 year groups and I told students to 'sit where they liked' when they came in for the first time. Predictably, they reacted very positively to this instruction. In each class I explained they had an opportunity to show me they could sit next to their friends but that I would move them all to a prepared seating plan if necessary. To date, four classes out of twelve have remained in peer-led seating plans - my two Y7 classes and my Y10 and Y11 classes. The paired discussion tasks are noticeably better in these classes as students are more at ease and willing to speak to the person next to them. The T1 assessments will clearly show whether on track grades have been maintained or improved upon but AfL in the classroom, peer assessments and book scrutinies have been very promising so far.

Whilst it may not be for every class, experimenting with peer-led seating plans could encourage student-talk during paired discussion work and create a more positive atmosphere in the classroom, especially for KS4.

To what extent does parental engagement lead to the engagement and subsequent attainment of pupils? by Ayah Malik

I focused on a group of Year 8 pupils. I planned to build a regular channel of communication with their parents, through frequent phone-calls home, to see whether this would impact their engagement in lessons and attainment. After each phone call, I made a note of the behaviour and engaanding of key concepts in lessons which was made apparent to me through targeted formative questioning of the students and progress made in assessments.

Moving forward I would like to increase my engagement with parents of all classes where appropriate to ensure I am using this to the children's advantage in order to better their learning and understanding.

What factors impact LPA attitudes towards history? by Will Glydon

I decided to focus on my Year 11 class as I had noticed that in last year’s results, the LPAs in my class did not perform as well as the MPAs and LPAs did. I therefore sought to address this. 

To understand which factors were impacting the LPA attitudes towards history, I decided to do a student survey which I made as a google form. The questions had a wide range as I attempted to target many angles to see what the LPAs were struggling most with. The questions were as follows:

• What do you do when faced with a problem in history?
• Which do you find the most challenging aspect of history?
• How clear is the chronology of what we study (which events happen when)?
• How clear are the writing structures (PEL/COPA)?
• What is something that other teachers do that helps you in other subjects that would also help you in history?
• Which topic do you find most challenging and why?
• What would benefit you more in history lessons?
• What is your target grade?
•  What is the best way that I could help you in history?

The responses were interesting and varied. The list below shows the most useful responses and techniques that I am going to use moving forward to address the issues that came up: 

1. Majority stated that they wanted more quizzes and they find them useful for remembering content

• Add in more Knowledge recap quizzes for retrieval- ensuring a knowledge quiz once a week for Do Now 
• Set more Seneca as homework (every other week) 
• Work with LSA and ensure that they quizzing LPAs whilst helping them during lessons

2. Students are self-sufficient and don't use many metacognitive strategies

• Add in slides about BBC (brain, book, Chromebook) before asking the teacher
• Print out writing structures so they have the information clearly in their books so don’t jump to ask me
• Metacognitive modelling when looking at exam questions and other tasks

3. Remembering the writing structures

• Print out writing stuctures sheet for each question
• Include writing structure questions in the weekly quizzes

My LPA students showed in their responses that they are still quite reliant on me as a teacher to lead from the front and they do not deploy metacognitive strategies to aid their work. This inquiry helped me realise that remembering writing structures is difficult and the students need more support with this. Students had also highlighted how important they found quizzes in other subjects and that this needed to be better implemented into our routines in history.

Thoughts From A Trainee: My First Year At WA

 By Sally Ingram

This time last year was my final week of being a management consultant. I remember hosting a leaving party where my colleagues were describing my new job as ‘brave’ and a ‘big change’. I was so excited to leave the corporate world and start teaching that I hadn’t taken the time to process how much of a change school life was going to be. All I had heard from others was that teaching is a real rollercoaster but again I naively didn’t think too much into that as I was too excited to get started. I had no idea what to expect when I stood in front of my first class in September. All I knew is that I had a lot to learn. One thing I learned very quickly is that I should never tell a class that they are behaving like animals as all that will happen is they will all take on a different animal and proceed to make animal noises instead of speaking for the duration of the lesson. Another lesson was the importance of giving clear instructions when working with mini-whiteboards because if not I needed to be ready for all sorts of images and diagrams. It is definitely true that teaching is a rollercoaster full of ups and downs but I don’t think I was prepared for the extent of these ups and downs and how they are never steady. There have been times when I was riding from the success of a behaviour management strategy I had implemented to then have something out of my control come along and change the dynamics completely. At first I found these sudden changes would catch me by surprise and I was lacking confidence in my ability to adapt to them- I think it is hard to separate the idea that a bad lesson is not solely down to my teaching and that sometimes there are things that are out of my control. Reflecting afterwards helped me determine what was and was not within my power to influence and think of the best ways to respond. I have found myself caring more about each lesson and each pupil. I am still learning when I need to detach and put things in perspective, to avoid taking something too personally or feeling overwhelmed. I used to think I was quite resilient but now looking back I realise how wrong I was- you have to be a whole other level of resilience in teaching. I have noticed that teachers also have this incredible ability to go from a really tough hour of teaching where you can feel quite drained, to quickly resetting your energy levels and welcoming in a brand new class ready to go for another lesson. I also don’t think anything can prepare you for the brutally honest comments that kids share with you; there is nothing more cutting than 14-year-old asking if you are ill today because you look it! Despite these honest comments from the pupils, this is one of the best decisions I have ever made. Without sounding too cringey, it is so nice to have a job where each day you feel and can often see the purpose and value that you are adding. My old job had a very different purpose to help clients achieve their project goals but there is something so much more satisfying about helping children, even if it is teaching them they look smarter when they tuck their shirt in. The biggest reflection I have of my first year at WA is how grateful I am to have been placed here! I have really appreciated the support of the wider WA community, whether that is sharing specific pupil behaviour strategies, helping me to use the printer, or even PGCE assignment advice, it has all been really appreciated so thank you. A huge thank you to the science team for welcoming me in and being so patient helping me with my many questions and for making sure my practical skills are up to scratch. I have been lucky enough to co-tutor two brilliant but very different tutor groups this year, 11X5 and 11Z1, alongside Alice and Jenny. Thank you both for teaching me about all the different aspects that come with being a tutor. My final thank you has to go to my amazing mentor Dipesh. Thank you for all the advice, support and constant encouragement you have given me; I really couldn’t have gotten through week 1 let alone this year without it. Bring on next year!