Why some schools excel

Ofsted have just published a report that showcases twelve schools in challenging circumstances that have been rated as 'outstanding' in at least two inspections and examines the elements that have created this success.
To find out more go here.

Working with Gifted and Talented pupils

Teachers TV has a new programme that examines how one school in London supports its Gifted and Talented pupils across a range of subjects. Their strategies could be used and adapted in your own lessons. Watch the programme here.

Help!

If you are finding your job particularly stressful you may like to know that help is at hand from the Teacher Support Network which describes itself as: "a group of independent charities and a social enterprise that provide practical and emotional support to staff in the education sector and their families"
If you go to their website, here, you can access information, and personalised guidance from professional coaches.

Creativity and education

Ewan McIntosh is a Scottish educator who who produces a blog on Education, ICT and other related matters. He has recently written in response to a new book by Sir Ken Robinson on Creativity in Education which raises some challenging ideas about the role of the teacher and schools in promoting creativity. To read more go here.

From good to oustanding

Teachers TV have produced a series of programmes that are designed as case studies of how to improve the quality of teaching and learning. They cover a range of subject areas and Key stages. Check them out here.

National Strategies

The DSCF have gathered all the National Strategies for schools on to one site. As they say:
The National Strategies have brought together all their web materials to one place to make it easier to access resources, particularly through improved search capabilities.
The new area of the Standards Site has been developed taking account of user feedback and now provides a consistent experience, no matter what area of guidance you are looking for.
In addition the site enables users to:
communicate and share knowledge with colleagues;
create an account and build their own personal profile; and comment on all content and help shape the National Strategies' future work.

Users can also add bookmarks to personalise the content so that repeat visits take them to areas of specific personal interest.

You can find the site here.

BBC Class Clips

The BBC has been providing educational resources via radio, TV and, latterly, the internet for years.
They now have a website that allows you to search for video clips linked to different key stages and subjects.

Check it out here.

Thanks to Sarah Golley for the link.

Preparing for Inspection

Teachers TV has a new programme available online which addresses the topic of preparing for inspection. They describe it thus:
Former HMI Inspector Roy Blatchford speaks to three secondary headteachers who have recently been visited by Ofsted, and offers his tips on the inspection process.
You can watch the programme here.

e-learning

I have mentioned the work of Doug Belshaw in previous entries. A History teacher in Yorkshire, Doug has been pioneering the use of web based applications to enhance learning with his students. He was recently given responsibility for e-learning at his school and has produced a blog to highlight useful applications. Check it out here.

Learning and Thinking Skills

The Teaching Expertise website allows you to sign up to regular e-bulletins on a variety of topics. One of the latest ones is Learning and Thinking Skills (linked to PLTS). To sign up go here.
Below is a section from the latest bulletin:

Welcome to the new Learning and Thinking Skills e-bulletin. Every fortnight we will provide you with strategies and guidance for effective learning and thinking at key stages 3 to 5. Topics will include: learning preferences, thinking skills, creativity, problem solving, group work and more.

This week's e-bulletin continues our in-depth focus on developing 'independent enquirers' – the first of the six areas of the QCA's Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills framework – by looking at the value of enquiry tools when organising and making sense of information..

The model of enquiry shared in issue no. 4 – the Enquiry Wheel – shows the main stages of a generic enquiry process as well as linking them to related 'thinking tools' to support each stage. These thinking tools can be used as practical, structured activities that help make the skills of enquiry 'visible' and explicit to students. As students grow in confidence, however, and become ready to take more responsibility for mapping out the process they will follow – choosing relevant tools and resources – the Enquiry Wheel can also serve as a useful toolkit that students can learn to use independently. (See enquiry progression model shared in issue no. 3)

In our last issue, we looked at strategies relating to the first prerequisite of any successful enquiry - creating a 'need to know', including tools to help students devise their own enquiry questions. In this issue, we will look at three thinking tools specifically designed to help students make sense of the information they uncover. All three tools help students to process new information more effectively – ordering and organising it so that it becomes both more manageable and more memorable. These tools are:
* Relevance Checker
* Knowledge Mapping
* Concept Mapping
Taken together, they involve students in collecting then sifting through information for its relevant to the area or domain of enquiry (Relevance Checker); constructing categories that provide conceptual control over territories of information (Knowledge Mapping); and exploring relationships within that domain (Concept Mapping).

Enquiry Tools for Organising and Making Sense of Information

Thinking tool no. 1: Relevance Checker

This thinking tool is designed to help students filter the information they have gathered for its relevance in relation to their enquiry question. Many students find it difficult to discern relevant from irrelevant information, particularly when browsing the internet. The nature of the question chosen – open, closed, broad or narrow in scope – will affect the criteria they will use for making judgments about relevance. As with all three tools, it is crucial, therefore, that students have first identified the enquiry question that will guide their research. The Relevance Checker also encourages students to look at degrees of relevance; prioritising ideas and information on the question, and discussing justifications for their choices.

Relevance Checker: Instructions
1. Students can work individually, in pairs or groups, at a board or wall space on a large sheet. Alternatively, groups can work around a table using A3 or A4 sized sheets.

2. Each student brings along one or more sources of information that they have discovered during their research, which they think might help them/their group to answer an enquiry question. Depending upon the teaching focus, ability level or stage of the enquiry, the information shared could be:
* A book, article or website
* A single piece of data or data set
* A key idea, argument or interpretation or
* A picture or diagram
The information can be written on separate cards or post-its. Pictures and longer pieces can be labelled, numbered or coded. Longer pieces can also be 'tagged'; in other words, the key ideas within the source are extracted and written on separate cards in preparation for the Relevance Checker activity.

3. Students are given a Relevance Checker Template and should write their key question in the centre. Alternatively, students can draw their own template.

4. Students work through the information they have uncovered, deciding which items are relevant or irrelevant to the key question. If they decide that an item is relevant, they must consider the degree of relevance in relation to the question and place it at an appropriate place within the template.

5. Students then give feedback on their decisions, justifying their choices and decisions.

Relevance Checker: Teaching tips
For students who would benefit from more 'structured' enquiry – the first stage of the progression model shared in issue no. 3 – each group could instead be given a pre-prepared set of cards with words, pictures, short phrases or longer extracts, each representing both relevant or irrelevant information for a given enquiry question. Students then work through the cards, deciding whether each one is relevant or irrelevant to the key question and placing relevant cards in an appropriate place within the template. If all groups are working with the same data set, they can then give feedback on their decisions, justifying their choices if they happen to contrast with the decisions of another group.

The Relevance Checker is also a useful revision tool for exams, as it encourages students to think about the most effective and relevant responses to questions.

Relevance Checker: Talking about thinking
Students may find the following words useful to help them talk about their thinking:
* relevant
* irrelevant
* useful
* reliable
* important
* significant
* criteria
* judgement
* decision
* evaluate
Other talking points might include:
* How did you decide whether an item was relevant?
* How did you decide upon the 'most relevant' items?
* Can an unreliable source be relevant?
* When might 'deciding what's relevant' be a useful skill to have in everyday life?

Teaching and learning blog

There's another blog on the theme of Teaching and Learning here. It's produced by Tony Cassidy, Leader of Teaching and Learning at Kirk Hallam Community Technology College in Derbyshire, as a resource for staff to share their views and experiences of teaching and learning.

From Good to Outstanding

Teachers TV has produced a programme with the above title. They describe it thus:
Sydney Russell School has rated secondary English teacher David Pollicutt's lessons as 'good'. His challenge is to gain an 'outstanding' rating in just three weeks, using the help of a range of experts.
School inspector Clare Gillies assesses one of David's Year 8 lessons on characterisation within Great Expectations, and highlights some clear areas for improvement.
David heads off to get some one-to-one CPD and to work on pedagogy advice with English advisor Sabrina Broadbent, and received more tips from voice and communications expert Ulrika Schulte-Baukloh.
David then has just three weeks back in the classroom to put their advice into action before the inspector returns to observe a second lesson and deliver her final verdict.
Will David succeed in raising his game sufficiently to go from 'good' to 'outstanding'?

Find it here

The Journey to excellence

Scottish Educators have been exploring Assessment for Learning for some while, as mentioned on an earlier entry. They have recently updated their AfL Self-Assessment Toolkit which provides some documents to assess how well schools are using AfL. Check it out here.

What is learning?

The Scottish Educator Euan Macintosh reports on the work of a school in the US where pupils are pushing the boundaries of learning - they're taking part in a project to create a new type of biodiesel which would be more efficient than existing methods. The class applied for two patents this year, and two communities in Guatemala are developing the product to provide fuel for real.

Planning is undertaken along these five structures:
Desired results: where do you want to go
Learning objectives
Understandings: the big ideas - why are we teaching or learning this?
Essential Questions: The throughline - what do we keep coming back to throughout the inquiry?
Skills and Content: What is the stuff that we have to know to get to those big ideas?
Assessment
If, after a period of learning, you assess by giving out a test, you are not doing project-based learning. Tests and quizzes are but a dipstick, a quick snapshot of where everyone is at. The projects themselves, the projects that are the creation of the students themselves, are the main assessment tool.

Read more here.

Better presentations

For anyone who has started to glaze over during a Powerpoint presentation, there is some extremely helpful advice here about how to make them more effective.
There are links to practical tips here.

Teacher Resource Exchange

This site may be old news to some but it's worth checking out as a place to share and borrow ideas and resources with teachers across the country.

New media and AFL

There is an interesting account here of how a Scottish teacher of MFL is using new media to successfuly support Peer Assessment.

Linited choice

The Teaching Expertise website produces a regular bulletin that focuses on Behaviour Management. A recent issue looked at how offering pupils a limited choice can help to improve behaviour in the classroom. Check out the article here.
Thanks to Claire Fleming for the link.

Blooms' resources

There are a lot of resources for using Blooms' Taxonomy in the classroom as a tool to develop pupils thinking skills at this website here.

Thanks to Zoe Newbery for the link.

Thinking skills online

Futurelab have produced an online resource that they describe below:

Exploratree is a free web resource where you can download, use and make your own interactive thinking guides. Thinking guides can support independent and group research projects with frameworks for thinking, planning and enquiry. We’ve provided a set of ready-made guides which you can print out or use online. All of the guides are completely customizable or you can start from scratch and make your own! You can share them and work on them in groups too.

You need to register first. Check it out here.