TLC 3: Questioning

Micky, Kaljit and Kirsty. A really positive session presentation focussing on resources and tools which enable teachers to clearly establish understanding as well as allowing learners access to differentiated levels of the lessons.
https://pic.twitter.com/U6ygfcCSLj
https://pic.twitter.com/MUEQ84GkFE
https://pic.twitter.com/PVcGJYZT8K

Brendan and Sue shared a wealth of ideas including question formulation technique and solo stations:

Gavin, Jo and Huw presented an interesting combination of fun and engaging traditional strategies, with kinaesthetic techniques designed to engage challenging learners as well as web based questioning solutions.

/sites.google.com/site/inquirymaths/home/Picture2.png
http://www.inquirymaths.com/home/Regulatory-cards

 Overall a great session with a combination of inspiring resources and ideas. One last one from me...

TLC 3 - Questioning - Dan Bird's group

This was no the third and final opportunity for the this group of staff to collaborate and share their experiences of questioning. An opportunity to discuss what they have experimented with and the impact that this has had on both their teaching and learning within the classroom.

PAIR REHEARSAL

This method allows students to work with their table or shoulder partner to discuss and agree a response before answering. As a result of allowing this additional time for students to collaborate their answers students feel more confident in their responses as well as offering a more detailed responses with higher order thinking. It is also clear that it increases student engagement and interaction.

ENGAGEMENT CARDS

This method puts the emphasis back on the student to either pose a question or offer and answer, of merit, within the lesson. This 'challenge' creates and environment where students think carefully about the quality of any questions that they may ask as well as the quality of their responses. The cards create a focus for the students, creating an emphasis on quality rather than quantity.

POSE-PAUSE-POUNCE-BOUNCE

This method places emphasis on the teacher to allow enough thinking time for students to generate an answer before pouncing on a student for a response. The impact this has on learning is an increase in student engagement as well as improved student response. After pouncing on a student for a response, the model requires a bounce to another student to improve and develop the answer previously offered.





Onwards to the next meeting on the 7th January 2014, where staff will be able to share this practice with members of their own faculty.

TLC 3-Feedback. Kirsty

TLC3: Feedback

 

 

This TLC meeting focussed on consolidating all the great work staff had been doing over the past couple of months both in and out of TLC meetings. It started off with an engaging, fun activity of feedback bingo, with descriptions of feedback apps and Ofsted criteria that linked with the use of feedback and marking.

 

Once the prizes had been handed out, we got onto the main task in hand! Each group had to produce their own presentation to show the group as explained: 

Some really great sharing of resources and ideas happened over the next hour. Perfect examples from all different faculties and departments were discussed and the trios/ quads worked together to create a visual display of the feedback ideas they had incorporated into their lessons since the first TLC session on feedback.

The first trio created a presentation using keynote to display their ideas. Some of the ideas they shared are as follows:

Another group created an educreations to show the progress they had made in regards to using feedback effectively to close the gap in lessons:

Overall, so many ideas have been tried and tested within lessons, with the 'take a risk' culture being incorporated into lessons and the rewards of this are clearly demonstrated within the presentations above. Feedback has become an integral and effectively used part of lessons at Rossett, with the gap being closed upon receiving and acting upon feedback. 

TLC session 3- Feedback- Richard/Michaela

TLC session 3- Feedback- Richard/Michaela


We started with a game of bingo to connect the session and link back to what we have worked on in the previous sessions. Each TLC memember filled their bingo card with different forms of feedback and then the bingo caller (TLC leader) called out descriptions of how different feedback can be used, and the TLC members had to tick off any methods of feedback that would be suitable. I.e. This method could be used to give oral feedback whilst editing a photo of a pupil's work...The answer could be Educreations. Of course, there was the possibility of more than one answer but the point of the task was to recap the different forms of feedback and their uses in a fun way with a sweet prize for the winner...chocolate (always a winner)!

We also refreshed people's minds regarding DR ICE and the key ideas behind it. Feedback from the group showed that they found this useful and it helped them think about how their feedback can be used to "cover a lot of areas" and how they "feel inspired" to achieve the DR ICE principles in the future.


The TLC memebers fedback that they most enjoyed "sharing their presentations and getting feedback from colleagues about what they could do to further improve". As there was enough time allocated to sharing what we had done and giving feedback and suggestions, people said they got a lot out of this part of the session. Having enough time to really share ideas and talk about how things had gone was something that coleagues had commented on last year and therefore allowing enough for sharing in this year's sessions has proven to be popular.

Following the 3 sessions in our individual groups, we would like to think that the colleagues in our group will be able to gain and impart inspiration and motivation when they go on to work with other colleagues and that they will continue to use the various methods of feedback to improve teaching and learning. Here's some of the feedback we received:

TLC 3: Sharing Ideas on Differentiation

This was an excellent session in which all staff contributed a wealth of ideas on differentiation.

Differentiation by task was popular, for example offering students a choice of questions to attempt. Some departments labelled these bronze, silver or gold, good, great or amazing, or linked them to grades. Solo Taxonomy is being used across many departments to encourage independent learning. In Drama, students are allocated very specific roles which allow stretch and challenge. Differentiation by outcome allows students to show their learning in a style which suits them, iPads are a great tool for enabling this. In Art students have presented their artist research in a huge variety of ways including Prezis, leaflets, boxes and even a 3D gallery. Homework tasks offer a good opportunity for differentiation by outcome. Differentiated assessment helps students to act on individual feedback. A good example of this in action:

Differentiated support is used very well, for example by MFL:

Differentiated target-setting can be teacher-led but students can also self-select, for example choosing which task to attempt. All staff have high expectations and make these clear to students.

Differentiation by resource is also done very effectively:

One final point to remember is that it's important to consider differentiation when rewarding success. It was brilliant to see and share so many great examples. Differentiation can be explicit or invisible, it can be teacher-led or self-selecting by students, it can happen in the classroom or as part of homework. A huge thanks to all staff who shared their excellent work.

TLC 3 - Questioning (Amanda and Scott)

Examples of questioning techniques presented by the group:

Ensuring think time for answers. 

http://teachertoolkit.me/2011/11/04/pose-pause-bounce-pounce/

You say we pay! To develop questioning within a class.

Mike Sweetman using Tellegami App in classes and for hw:

http://youtu.be/mlhNB-cRSOc

John Clemitson using a customisable question generator to understand ICT terminology.

Vanessa making blooms taxonomy obvious to classes to show how to deepen thinking.

TLC 3 - Feedback - Mr Bulmer's Group

The aim of today's TLC session was to...

And the staff began by looking at their use of feedback and linking it to the DR ICE model with the following results.

The staff were split into groups of teachers and presented their findings so far based on the following outcomes:

Philippa, Tom, Stuart and Danielle

Rowena, Dani, Sharon and Dave

http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/tlc-presentation/13369437/?ref=appemail

Anton, Surinder and Leila

Written by guest facilitator Dave West

TLC 2- questioning.

During this session, the focus was on discussion and feedback if questioning techniques and strategies that we have used successfully, as well as picking up new ones. We used post it notes to jot down a few of the techniques that we had already been using and stuck them on the board.
Staff then returned to the board to select some techniques that they haven't encountered before and were curious to explore.
A few examples can be found below:

http://learningspy.co.uk/2011/09/24/questionable/
http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/strategies/teaching-strategy-question-fo

http://learningspy.co.uk/2012/02/04/how-effective-learning-hinges-on-good-questioning/ 

This lead to a really fruitful discussion about what types of questioning strategies have been successful in the past, how we can adapt tasks and activities to develop questioning, and how questioning can be applied in different parts of the lesson as well as for different subjects.
The interesting thing was how many of the cross curricular activities could be adapted to subjects unexpectedly; PE strategies could be adapted for Business Studies or Maths for example. I thought this was a real benefit of the session.
It's clear questioning is a tool we are all using in a variety of ways to challenge, extend and support our students. Staff left with a post it note containing more strategies that they will be trying to incorporate into lessons over the next few weeks, the results of which will be fed back during TLC 3. We'll be discussing the impact of these strategies then.

TLC 2 - Feedback (Kirsty, Mich, Mark and Richard)

We chose to look at e-feedback in this session and shared different methods with colleagues. 

We discussed various apps/websites and how they could be used, such as:

Edmodo (written feedback, clear workflow)
Explaineverything (class feedback, great for differentiation- allows students to work at their own pace)
Showbie (media-based work, great usability)
Socrative (aids planning, quick feedback)
Google Drive (peer assessment)

Furthermore, we put the ideas in practice by trying out different methods within the session, such as Explaineverything.

Colleagues noted that of course, some of these methods could be substituted by the traditional written feedback in exercise books etc, but they appreciated how many of these methods were more appealing to students and had other benefits such as being able to share the resources with colleagues and use them again in the future. Furthermore, that some were more useful than others, depending on the subject. 


Comments from colleagues are shown on the attached photo:

 

Colleagues set themselves targets to try out a form of efeedback before the next session and we have already had examples of this shared amongst the group, such as:

http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/as-bio-mini-mock-commentary-q2-4-6/13083859/?s=TlrZuW&ref=appemail

TLC Differentiation session 2

The aim of this session is to feedback on the differentiation techniques we have used and how they have closed the gap. Additionally, we wanted to look at using differentiation to stretch our more able pupils without resorting to giving 'more of the same' or 'busy work'.

Connect the learning

For the starter, we encouraged our groups to get into their groups and discuss what differentiation techniques they have tried and what impact they have had on learning.

This proved to be invaluable as colleagues were able to share and critique ideas. One good idea came from colleague who demonstrated how he used direct task differentiation with his A Level class to ensure he stretched the top pupils while supporting the bottom. This can be seen below

Share new information

For this section, we all researched new ways of differentiating using the website seen below. 

 This inspired staff to think about and use different ways of differentiating 

Search for meaning

We then discussed different ways we could use differentiation and encourage staff to research areas to stretch the more able pupils, in order to close the gap.

This activity resulted in some in depth discussions about ways in which staff at Rosset could effectively differentiate for the high achieves in order to give them the best possible chance they can to achieve, and exceed, their target levels. 

One colleges summerised the idea of differentiating as such:"education is a journey and all pupils reach their final destination, it's just the more able sometimes need to be pushed into taking a different path". 

Demonstrate understanding

For this section we introduced another website and asked colleagues to discuss ow could these ideas have impact  education and to critique and reflection upon how their use of differentiation could have more impact. Again, this sparked some really good discussions with colleagues commenting on how they planned on using new ideas and how they could reinvent tried and tested methods to further close the gap.

            http://www.slideshare.net/acoleman/differentiation-for-high-ability-learners-presentation

Review

To end the session, we asked staff to continue researching and implementing different ways if differentiating and to come to next session prepared to present their findings.

Overall the three TLC groups found the session useful as it provided an arena for the sharing and collaborating of ideas that could then be taken away and implement in their lessons.