When we sat down as the Pedagogy Team we thought about what staff would want to get out of the day. We didn't want staff to feel their time could have been better spent so we incorporated time to plan independently and then also time to share what had been planned with their departments. We asked staff to focus on a lesson they want to plan to teach over the next couple of weeks, and the only other requirement was that the lesson could be used by others in their department. Therefore, by the end of the day they would have a lesson for next week already planned, and other lessons they could use to help cut down on planning time.
The first half an hour of the day began with an inspiring speech by our fantastic Deputy Head focusing on pushing forward with the aspects of our already established 4 pillars (Independence, Engagement, Challenge and Feedback, encompassed with Digital Learning) with greater precision, subject specific focus, quality, reciprocal collaboration. The two aspects that stuck with me were that what we do every day can change society. In our current Year 11s we could have the next Prime Minister sitting in front of us. The clip we were showed by Dylan William "Every Teacher Can Improve" also struck a chord with me. I spend so much of my time convincing students that it is ok to make mistakes as that is what learning is all about, but can be very hard on myself if something doesn't go quite right. It just reminded me that this is what the job is about, and that whenever I feel like something isn't going quite right I am dedicated to making it better. That process is what excellent teaching is all about.
We then went back to our departments and discussed which lesson we would like to focus on. I chose my Year 12 Core Maths unit on Standard Deviation because I have just taken over leading this course and really wanted to spend some time getting my head around the topic having not taught it before, and producing some great resources that would capture the imagination of the students. My NQT @Reggggy would then have a sequence of lessons he could teach next week as we have parallel classes and so would benefit.
The first workshop of the day was our "Buzzroom", We set up the hashtag #HCCBuzzroom to encourage people to collaborate and share what they had done throughout the whole day. Every member of staff had this workshop on their timetable where they could sit (on beanbags!) and just look through twitter and other websites and share.
We also have whiteboards in the "Buzzroom" so could share anything we had found this way. After convincing half of my department how fab Twitter was I decided to hijack part of one of the whiteboards and gave them a list of great Maths people to follow:
I could have stayed in that room all day and gone through all of those tweets that you like and retweet then struggle to find time to then go back and look at, or read those blog posts. I often get distracted by reading blog posts on a Sunday afternoon when I should be planning! It was great to see so many staff engaging in it, and so many good ideas were shared instantly between colleagues. I absolutely love the power of Twitter and the majority of my inspiration comes from the great people on there. It really has enriched my teaching.
The next two sessions were led by myself and my amazing partner in crime @harrietlambo. Our focus was on Engagement, and we always feel that when we go to whole school CPD sessions it is often difficult to apply what we have seen to Maths, It can be a funny subject that way, and can be quite unique in its delivery. For that reason we wanted to provide versatile ideas that could be easily adapted to any subject. Our sessions included 4 ideas:
1). Settling students with an activity to music. We gave staff a crossword for them to complete to the tune of "Don't Stop Me Now". They had until the end of the song to complete it. This is a great motivator to students, and dancing around them trying to distract them from the task just makes them work faster!
2). Taboo. We got staff to sit back to back and gave them a Taboo word on the board. They had to describe it to the other person without using any of the words written around it in red. Their partner then had to write the word they thought they were describing on their mini whiteboard. this is a great activity to help students practise key terminology in an engaging way. We then extended this to drawing a picture using only geometric shapes. It was interesting to see how difficult the staff found it not to cheat and give one another feedback which they weren't allowed to do. The first time I tried this with a top set year 8 class they found it very frustrating and couldn't understand why their partner found it so challenging to understand what they were saying!! Specifically to Maths I would then go on to give students an exam question they had to answer on the board. The person facing the board couldn't tell their partner anything about the question but just gave them the lines of working to write down, and their partner just had to write down what they said. This encouraged students to really think carefully about what they were writing for their working out and make it make sense.
3). Clever Catch Balls. You can buy either subject specific Clever Catch Balls for this activity or just buy a white beach ball with some super sticky post-it notes to stick on them. Get students to come up with questions and stick them to the ball. Throw the ball around the room (to an unsuspecting recipient!) and where their right thumb lands get them to read out that question and then answer it. For large classes it can be difficult to get all students engaged, but students could be making up more questions of their own whilst the ball is being thrown around.
4). Plickers. I absolutely love Plickers because it only relies on one electronic device. It takes a bit of setting up, but I have a set of cards already laminated (can be used for multiple classes) which I just hand out to the students each lesson. I found by sticking the cards in their books the QR codes get worn away, or they get lost and as the students numbers don't change it is quick to hand them out. The aspect of this I like the most is that students can't cheat as they can't tell what each other is putting, and they can't hide as everyone must give a response. Once you scan the room with their responses you can immediately see which students are incorrect as it flashes up red on your device (the students don't see this) so you can then target your questioning effectively. The app works very efficiently, they have developed it a lot since I first started using it a couple of years ago and picks up the student responses very quickly. You can also now include images with your questions too. As everything is saved to the app it provides you with class data. I have also used it as pupil assessment of learning by putting success criteria on the board and asking students to respond with which they are most confident and using this data to inform the planning of the subsequent lesson, so it is very versatile! I tend to get my questions from Diagnostic Questions, but although there are other subjects on there it is mostly focused on Maths.
The workshops were a great success and everyone was very positive about them. We got some great feedback too (even through Twitter!) and Harriet and I were glad people found them useful.
The remainder of the day was spent on individual planning time, then we had time at the end of the day to feedback to departments on what we had planned which I found really useful to bounce ideas off the rest of the department for my Standard Deviation lesson. The next step is for the Pedagogy Team to drop into some of these lessons to see what staff have come up with, and I'm really excited to see this.
The day was not only a great success but the 'buzz' around Teaching and Learning from everyone all day was really positive. even at lunchtime everyone was discussing pedagogy!
Credit to the fantastic @Smith_EL101 for leading the Ped team on such a great first project!
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