If the view from the top is so spectacular, why would you leave anyone behind?

When you show students the summit, the top of the mountain, you explain how to get there, what skills and knowledge will be needed, how difficult certain terrain will be, they may get lost along the way. Some may find the going too tough and may reach their peak for whatever reason, but one thing we do know is that with belief, resilience and the right understanding, most of those on the path will manage to get there if they so desire.

Time to call it a day or do we aim for the summit?

According to this report, “A universal feature of high performing jurisdictions is a pervasive belief that all students can learn, and to high standards.” but commenting that “ We are concerned by the ways in which England’s current assessment system encourages a process of differentiating learners through the award of ‘levels’, to the extent that pupils come to label themselves in these terms. Although this system is predicated on a commitment to evaluating individual pupil performance, we believe it actually has a significant effect of exacerbating social differentiation, rather than promoting a more inclusive approach that strives for secure learning of key curricular elements by all. It also distorts pupil learning, for instance creating the tragedy that some pupils become more concerned for ‘what level they are’ than for the substance of what they know, can do and understand. This is an unintended consequence of an over-prescriptive framework for curriculum and assessment. It should be possible to do better, particularly in primary education where there is significant emphasis on establishing the foundations for later learning. By the end of secondary education pupil attainments are necessarily differentiated and will be certificated accordingly through the examination system. However, we believe strongly that before the end of compulsory schooling, the structures for assessing and reporting achievement on the National Curriculum should foster the possibility of high achievement for all, rather than constrain it.”

Amen to that Dylan Wiliam and chums. I have spent a fair bit of my Easter holiday and before that, trying to make levels work for my subject, Art and for project based learning. After some research, some excellent conversations on twitter and a look at what various schools are doing in the UK (thank you all) I have realised that levels, levelling and especially target setting using levels can go take a long walk of a short plank in the middle of a small lake infested with ravenous great white sharks who eat levels for breakfast, very slowly, with blunt teeth, and poor digestion, but with no chance of escape. In other words, I’m not that keen on them.

Not quite the Sarlacc Pit, but you get the idea

Giving a level to a piece of standalone artwork is, to be honest a thankless task. Looking at even the most simplified of level descriptors can still make the judgement very difficult to justify. For example. “I can explore ideas in different ways, collecting information and practical resources in order to make informed choices about my work.” Is a level 3 for the exploring section of the Art and Design levels. Whereas for a level 8, it says “I can develop, express and realise ideas, confidently exploiting what I have learnt from taking risks and from my understanding of the creative process.” So realistically, an average to weak Year 7 should be getting a level 3, an exceptional Year 9 should be achieving a Level 8. But if you think about these statements, they really are just saying the same thing. This is where the problem comes with generic statements for grading work. I see no reason why a Year 3 student couldn’t achieve a level 8. I would expect anyone, especially younger students to “express and realise ideas” and “confidently exploit what they have learnt from taking risks.”

It’s just a load of wishy-washy flim-flam. I think I would give myself a level 8 for technical use of words there too.

Dr Dylan Wiliam liked our obsession with levels to drug addiction. “Children are hooked on them like addicts, the teachers are the pushers and the parents are the co-dependants.” He explains further, “like any addiction, it absorbs attention, temporarily gives gratification, artificially inflates self-esteem and exacerbates the problem and seeks attention.” Williams concludes that “constantly giving grades actually lowers achievement. Not only that, but when comments are given alongside grades, children are so busy comparing what level they got, the use of and importance of quality feedback is completely lost.”

Quality feedback, Hattie states, is one of the most valuable ways for students to improve as learners. The ability for teachers to focus their attention on giving effective feedback and for students to do something about the feedback they are given will be lost. Indeed, at a time where many schools are looking for viable alternatives, or have already come up with more appropriate models of assessment, it seems the attention for my own patch of pedagogical land is being primed for genetically modified levels. Perfect rows of well organised crops, ready to be labelled for identification. It’s a sad state of affairs.

Surely our greatest concerns within schools should be the quality of teaching, the quality of learning and the design of our curriculum. Levels can and will take away these foci from departments and schools who may well become preoccupied with how and when to assess,how this will fit into the curriculum and learning will become a series of ‘hoop jumping’ activities which are determined by making progress from one level to the next and not about stretching students, not about delivering profound learning experiences and not about qualitative feedback that gives students the next steps towards greatness in your subject.

Excellence for all?

Some schools are now looking at a whole variety of more productive, useful ways of assessing work, which focuses on high expectations for all, rather than vacuous prescribed levels of achievement. I was really inspired by this article by the legend that is Mr Ron Berger. I want every child I teach to know that with the right mindset and the right support, that excellence can be achieved, no matter what their social background or previous school experience is. You don’t have to settle for a target of a 4b by the end of Year 8. Who would want that? Why do students not care to question why this is their target? If one student can achieve excellence through the sheer character of that student, then why not all? Or at least more than that one. Why not spend that time we devolve to levels and target setting to get students to think and act like intrepid explorers, all capable of reaching a particularly spectacular summit, rather than just labelling them with an expectation of where they should end up. Students just need to be shown the summit of excellence. As Berger describes, “The student work in my giant black suitcase is exemplary — beautiful and accurate, representative of strong content knowledge and critical thinking skills — but it’s not from “exceptional” students. It does not come from gifted and talented classrooms or from high-powered private schools. It’s the work of regular students in typical schools around the country. The difference is that these students’ teachers have helped them develop the skills and mindsets necessary to produce work of exceptional quality, and have built classroom and school cultures in which exceptional work is the norm.”

So where to go from here…

Co-construction of success criteria

For students to fully understand the process of assessment, they need to be involved in the construction of what achievement might mean dependant on their approach and learning outcomes. At the beginning, or indeed during a project, a success criteria should be developed with the students. A rubric which focuses on the standards of learning driven by consultation. Giving students the understanding of what would be an outstanding outcome for a project, will always drive higher expectations in students. They need to see what this is, how they will have to work, what they might do to exceed it, and what would fall short of this.

This standard needs to be incredibly high. The problem with levels is that if you dissolve this criteria into so many levels and sub levels, you dissolve the understanding of excellence. Hattie’s work on ‘Visible Learning’ could not make this more apparent. He states that students should be made incredibly clear what the success criteria are for a lesson/project/subject. There should be discussion about this among peers and that the learning objectivesshould be explicit and above all, just out of reach of the learner. This is pretty much thereverse of the cumbersome, vague criteria which we are supposed to be working with.

This is something we already do for Pebble. It works really well. It motivates students to achieve as high as they can. I always ask students who is aiming for the top grade, time after time, students will put their hand up for the top level. Funnily enough, many of them get there, they understand fully what’s expected, how much effort will needed to be put in and they just do it. And, funnily enough, I don’t predict if they will achieve a pass, merit or distinction. It’s their choice what they achieve. For some, it may be twice as hard as others, but they will have learnt twice as much for how to get their next time and make understand how to make further progress.

After a lot of deliberation, this is the template I have come up with to help my department co-construct a meaningful, valid and accessible assessment tool. This would be done at a point in the year, where students are ready to develop an ambitious criteria for successfullearning, using their understanding of a subject, exemplar work and obviously a rigorous input from the teacher. The questions in the boxes are for teachers to use to instigate the rightdescriptions for each level. I have given a separate column for the ‘learner description’ as a nod to the PLTS or 5Rs etc, to help students understand the dispositions needed to succeed.What they should ‘see’ in themselves or in others to achieve the highest possible learning outcomes. So, I make no apologies for its simplicity, I am an Art teacher after all, but this is my contribution to how to assess progress, without making a mountain out of a mole hill (see what I did there).

Why would you want to leave here? It’s not just the beaches like this! 

The school playing fields

I have been teaching in Jersey for 14 years. When I came to the Island, I was amazed at the bright, healthy young kids put before me for indoctrination in the ‘Jones school of Art’. I was then, and I hope always will be a hardworking, hopefully inspiring and highly motivated teacher.

As soon as I started working here, I was inspired by the ‘no fear’ attitude of the Head teacher, who always encouraged and cajoled me into trying new things to deepen the students learning. Inset was regularly provided to question best practise and develop thinking. I was coming to school, constantly searching to improve and develop the best experiences I could for the students I was teaching. That freedom to nurture the very best learning experiences I could muster was so liberating.

As a school, we clung onto Hargreaves deeper learning experiences and used this to develop where the school was going along with regular visits from the demi god that is Paul Ginnis. It was and still is a really inspiring place to teach. And at the end of the day, I can walk on a beautiful, relatively deserted beach. I have a fairly good standard of living, though my mortgage would make most people choke on their cornflakes. So yes, life as a Jersey teacher is pretty fab.

School sizes are relatively small, especially primary, as are class sizes. There is a real sense of community and understanding of the children in our care.

There is no doubt that the curriculum and expectations of teaching and learning are fare less prescriptive than England. We can have direct access to the Minister for Education and the Director of ESC (Education, Sport & Culture). In fact, we are positively encouraged to have our say in shaping the islands educational future; all teachers had the opportunity to contribute to a green paper about the future direction of educational policy.

Teachers and schools are free to adapt any UK policy to suit the requirements of learners. And what tops this off? What allows the autonomous approach to developing teaching and learning in our schools? Well.. There is NO OFSTED. No threat of inspections, judging my teaching in a twenty minute toe dip experience. No number slapped on me for the pedagogically empty shop window.

This allows me to benchmark my teaching against my ever growing knowledge of teaching and learning. It allows me to develop schemes of work which are slow, about real learning, not shallow performance. But it does also leaves the profession over here in some kind of limbo. Who is there to judge us? For the committed teacher, our own self-critical ability to reflect and ‘keep, grow, change’ what is needed, through being professional, it’s a wonderfully positive environment. But we know that we are not all like this don’t we?

There are times where I wish there was a more professional layer of accountability, because I think it would help some teachers question whether this is the right job for them, or at least further question their teaching ability. I cannot go into too much detail here, for threat of undermining what is essentially a very positive, trusting environment to work in.

 I also read so many outstanding blog posts about learning, but there is almost always a veneer of ‘Ofsted speak’ encroaching on the most eloquent and inspiring reads. It is, however you lot look at it, a huge influence on decision making, lesson design and ‘progress’ in English schools. I read the horror of Ofsted ‘gone wrong’, of potentially great teachers crumbling under the weight of it all. And it’s all down to levels. Levels everywhere. Levels of teaching, levels of health and safety, levels of leadership, levels of value for money, levels of bloody progress. Somewhere in there, learning is poking its head out screaming for recognition, but often it’s lost. The stifling accountability bus is knocking out the Helsinki attitude for so many teachers whom enter the profession, often with such high aspirations.

 The Ofsted regime has lead to some schools adopting a culture of seeking approval, rather than seeking what is really needed for that school, that community of learners. It has also, clearly lead to high levels of pointless stress and worry for some. I read constantly of effervescent young teachers being subjected to over-bearing levels of stress. I guess one of the main reasons teachers don’t leave here is that they know they have the potential to find their own path, not trudge down the well worn path of Ofsted expectations.

The staff car park

But what about exam results, they must be awful without all those strict measures put in place by the government? Well, as an Island, we are usually above the national average. Not by much. And that is a whole other story, which I won’t go into now.

 So, the unavoidable conclusion to the teaching community being a happy place? A relative lack of overbearing stress provided by a local government which trusts teachers to be professional. We are trusted to be the best people to ensure that the children of Jersey are receiving an education which is the best it can be. Of course we are all about that banal phrase ‘Raising Standards’, but we are entrusted to do this through our own development of our pedagogical ideals. Countless, pointless levels of accountability, initiatives and the ‘What Ofsted want’ mentality could not be further from my mind.

Why do teachers NOT leave Jersey? It’s not just the beaches. It’s the lack of pointless pressure and an acceptance that teachers are professionals. Lucky me.

Ok, so we have just finished the third major project for Pebble, ‘The Creative Timeline’ asks students to delve into their own memories of their lives so far and use this as a stimulus for creating some brilliant conceptual artwork. As ever, the week before the project starts proper, the students unpick, explore and understand the PLTS we are focusing in for the next project. Funnily enough, it was ‘Creative Thinker’. We used Ben Keeling’s book as way in for students to look at some of the skills needed to be an effective creative thinker. (Link for the resources for this skills week project here.) Here are my classes results.

3 post-it notes to improve learning at our school

I guess the most important part of a skills week is to agree on a common language for that skill. This is individual to each group and is assessed in their passports, which I spoke about here. The Friday session, where we learn from the actual activity helps students begin to understand their strenghts and weaknesses in each PLTS.

Students started the process of exploring how to create something of real value by looking at descriptive writing. Students investigated an excerpt from Dickens and analysed the imagery used to ‘paint the picture’ of the scene. They were brilliant at this. It really helped with the next stage. Students were then shown a range of visually rich images, such as a fairground, a haunted house, you know the sort of thing. Then they had to fill in the box below to start to describe what they could see.

Then students used their list to create a short descriptive story about what they thought was going on in this scene. From this, students were then asked to explore one of their earliest memories, using their understanding. End of the first session.

Carousel  Activity.

Onomatopoeia writing about journey on the boat to come and live in Jersey

Differentiated worksheets, here looking at calligrams and visual story telling

every 20 minutes, we moved tables and shared our writing

On the Friday, students were then asked to explore a range of different writing styles, which might suit particular memories better than others. Folders of differentiated resources were placed on tables and students moved onto different writing and artistic tables to begin to build up their understanding of the different approaches open to them.

Over the next two sessions, students developed their writing, created a simple timeline of their most profound memories and begun to think about what they might create for their own timeline. Then, with a great deal of freedom and some examples of beautiful work from last years students, and my own monster version (I am quite a lot older than them=more memories) and the co-constructed rubric of what would achieve a Pass, Merit and Distinction, off they jolly well went. They had two weeks of lessons (10 hours) to create their marvelous (or not) final products. Some students set themsleves incredibly challenging ideas, which, due to extraordinary dilligence and clearly countless hours outside of the lesson came to fruition. To be able to judge their work, students had to have a deep explanation into their decision making process. Colour, texture, writing style, font, size, material, everything had to be considered. Throughout the process, students explored the skill of the creative thinker. The ability to have divergent ideas, to play with ideas, to be inspired by others, to create work of depth and value, to take risks and to find new ways of solving problems. This project certainly delivered on this. As for the results, well, for Year 8, it’s pretty good, some were excpetional.

This students dad recently died after a long battle with cancer. He cricled words to create a very moving, personal obituary to his dad.

He included a copy of Ziggy Stardust, to be played whilst reading the newspaper. He included a box stuffed with obituaries from the local paper and a concrete poem entitled, Dad.

A student came up with the idea of creating a magical staircase to a bedroom of wonderful memories, at the bottom, locked away, were her sad memories, in the cupboard under the stairs.

complete with bunk bed and carpet. An amazing use of different writing styles on this one.

Detail of the veins in the heart of the day her mother suffered a heart attack

There were many more truly brilliant pieces of work, but my computer is taking a STUPID amount of time to upload images at the moment. Students were invited into each others classrooms to comment on their work. This was done with great respect. Students were moved by each others profound events and inspired by the creative efforts of their peers. The best work from each class was then selected for exhibition.

the lost cat! Poem wrapped around the body.

complex idea, full of emotive writing

holiday of a lifetime in Mexico, using jam jars

exhibition coming together

a mish mash of marvelous memories!

catching memories

The resources for this project, if you are interested in adapting for your own school are here. Thanks for reading.

Right. Keep this under your hats but this is my initial ideas. Would love to get a group of teachers together to work on this… Let me know if you want to be involved.

CLICK HERE FOR PDF LINK

It has been a week or two since my whirlwind visit to the UK. I managed to fit in a day of discovery at Clevedon School, followed by Teachmeet Clevedon and then a day at the City Academy in Easton, Bristol for Independent Thinking’s big day out. I had a gut feeling before hand that this would be my time to discover whether I was on the right track with my thinking over in little old Jersey or whether my thinking was 10 years or more out of date. I was also exceptionally apprehensive about meeting so many top tweachers and edu-gurus all in one place at one time. I really wanted to see what an outstanding school was like and whether I would find my holy grail of teaching nirvana. Not much to ask I thought. (High standards you see…)

After teaching a full day, I got the plane over to Bristol and with the help of my sick to the back teeth of everyone tweeting about my map on his timeline brother, picked up 3 A1 copies of the map to give to @ICTEvangelist, @fullonlearning as a small thank you for accommodating me at their school and one for @gwenelope to say, well thanks for being such a jolly awesome tweacher.  After a good nights sleep, I set off for Clevedon from the other side of Bristol in the dark, thinking I’d get lost several times. 20 minutes later, I arrive at the school, full of hope, wonder and expectation to be greeted with… well nobody. I was early, very early. Most teachers at the school were clearly still in bed whilst I eyed up their 60′s build. SO…. This is what outstanding looks like. I rang Mark Anderson to see if he was out of the shower. No answer. I gave it another ten minutes or so and rang again. Finally, the overslept (but all the better for it) Head of Digital Learning pulled up in the car park. Even more dashing than his avatars and twice as jolly. We walked into the school and I got myself a badge on the way to the coffee machine. A proper full size Nespresso machine. SO THIS is what outstanding looks like I thought to myself… Proper coffee first thing would be on my marginal gains list of how to improve great teaching for sure.

After a brief chat and a few intros in the hallowed corridors, I was whisked into their house assembly. This was really impressive. I loved the fact that it was started by a student who reminded all about uniform and went through all the boring stuff on the bulletin with great confidence. The assembly itself was like many others I’m sure this term, highly influenced by our Olympic achievements. I was amazed at how long it was (not that it seemed to go on forever) which helped the message of how hard work brings reward in a more worthwhile manner than the usual 10 minute drop in. The students seemed to really take in the message. I certainly did, despite the speakers stinking cold.

I meandered back to Mr Anderson’s room for a longer chat about IPad’s, educational thinking and all that stuff. This was fantastic, but little I couldn’t have got from Twitter on an evening with the great @ICTEvangelist. He really does know his onions. What I was more interested was what made this school tick; Why are there quite so many great teachers in one school? Did the ethos of the school live and breath in every school corridor? Every conversation with a student? The atmosphere in the lessons? No pressure…

Mark seemed to know practically every student in the school, talking personally with many of them as we walked through the corridors. I love this. Never a ‘them and us situation’ with Mark. I had a tour of the school. There were some really impressive parts of the school; the new Science block, the DT facilities, but it was also clear that this was a school that could do with some serious bits of rebuilding too. There was a real sense of learning taking place wherever I went though. Students always seemed full of purpose and highly motivated. The discovery centre was a really interesting idea to allow students to work independently when teachers are away. Work projected on the wall and a huge bank of computers for students to use as they see fit.

I was getting the impression of a school which takes independent learning as a natural requirement of a student’s experience. That learning can happen with or without the teacher dictating the rate of progress. Outstanding? Quite possibly.

Ofsted were in that day, as well as teachmeet happening in the evening. Anywhere else I would expect panic, but here, the whole system seemed to manage this in it’s stride. Not sure if this was a swan moment or just a school who feels it can cope with whatever is thrown at it. Outstanding? Probably.

Mark took me over to Art, where I was going to see the buzz of Mrs Kelly Hawkins doing her thang or so I thought. 10 minutes later I was teaching a lesson to a lovely bunch of Year 7′s who are working on my Year 7 paint project. This I have to say was a very strange experience, to see how another school adapts to my thinking. I was so impressed with the starters and organisation of the class. They seemed so up for it and gave some great explanations about Van Gogh’s work. Further proof that this school is building students as highly capable, passionate learners.

The rest of the day was taken over by talking to some incredibly passionate teaching staff, who, like all of us are all on the journey to understanding what outstanding teaching and learning looks like. Throughout the day, I was constantly impressed with much of what I saw. A confident, happy and focused student body. A confident, happy and focused staff who were very accommodating to me.

Did I see what I was looking for? A curriculum, staff, student body and environment which fills every pore of the school with excitement and anticipation to learn? An environment which challenges, supports and enables the very best out of every person who walks through their doors in the mornings? Well…. prbobaly not. I saw some great things, spoke to some quite exceptional students and teachers, but it was a school, which like any worth their salt was on the quest. The never ending quest for enabling brilliance from everyone. Some sad people call this raising standards.

Possibly my most informative 30 minutes was spent with the learning spy himself, David Didau. Never have I come across a teacher who must fill his head with 30 things at the same time and still manage to hold a conversation, pick up litter in several classrooms, speak to each member of his department, fix the blind I broke, make me coffee, show me every room in the English department, speak to the caretaker about some suggestion boxes and convince him not to blow up his century box, speak on first name terms to every cleaner, stand in the corridor at the end of the school day and ask every student to do their top button up as they headed out the door. In the midst of all this, we spoke about project based learning and how we approach things differently. No wonder he managed to write a book, keep a blog, get a new job…. you get the idea.

What clicked whilst talking to David was that we are all on this journey, we are all approaching it differently, but we all have one thing in common; a shared desire to equip every student we teach with the skills and knowledge to be even better than they were yesterday. There is no special potion, no elixir which one can take for your school. Just good thinking, shared thinking, good understanding, common understanding and a lot of soul searching, failing and failing better to be the best school you can be.

I hear Gove is hiding in the next village…

Mr Anderson, Mark, ICT Evangelist or the chosen one as he likes to be called, deserves a  medal for letting me traipse round his school on a day when OFSTED were in AND… far more importantly TEACHMEET was about to take place, bigger, better and braver than ever. It was an honour to see this outstanding school in action. Thanks all at Clevedon. You rock. Literally.

Teechmeet was another one of the seminal moments of any teacher who writes a blog from Jersey who doesn’t get out much, especially to schools in the UK. You know THOSE moments…

All dietary requirements were catered for..

With all the pizazz of a 1970′s game show, Mark, pretty much single-handedly whipped up a frenzy of excitement not expected by several hundred jaded, end of term teachers into a pedagogical party the like of which I sincerely doubt I shall witness in my lifetime again. Speaker after speaker got up and spoke with great eloquence and passion about their own ideas to fill my brain with some truly outstanding cutting edge practise. ‘Twas an absolute joy to be there, not only to be so inspired with ideas, but to meet so many map members who were just so damn lovely.

My seminar was with El Quiff. Also known as @totallywired77 also known as Coles, Tait Coles. A more sharper Leeds/Bradford man have I ever met? A resounding NO. Great talk on Critique as the missing link in many a teacher’s toolkit. Brilliant, brilliant talk.

The night ended down the boozer, where I got to speak again to some truly awesome teachers. A long. long day, but so very worth it. Thanks to all the staff and students at Clevedon and thanks to all the speakers and thanks to the rest of you too. You know who you are.

As for the quest.. I now know that the quest belongs to everyone who work in schools who care deeply about what affects children’s education. And that the holy grail probably belongs in San Diego, High Tech High. International teechmeet anyone? I know a great presenter who could do an amazing job in a gold suit…….

Quite a few tweachers have asked me why did I create the map? So I thought I’d do a quick piece on what its all about, why I did it and why I REALLY did it!

Several weeks ago, I was having a conversation with the rather wonderful @fullonlearning also known as Zoe Elder, writer of the quite dazzlingly brilliant book ‘Full On Learning’ about an article I read on the BBC website about the design of underground maps across the world, following the publication of a book by psycologist, Dr Maxwell Roberts. He states,  “A nice map in front of you says ‘you can go anywhere and do anything and here’s how to do it”. That quote really stuck with me. I ADORE the tube map. It’s probably my all time favourite piece of design. It reads brilliantly for pretty much everyone and has influenced so many other map designs across the globe. It makes what might seem a complex, difficult journey seem as easy as ABC.

So, as I said, a few weeks ago, I created a simple twitter map, using the central area (zone1) to link some of my important twitter friends together. It was ridiculously popular. In fact so popular that I spent several days emailing a copy to pretty much everyone on there. Anyway… A few weeks after that, I took the plunge and created the entire map, including overland routes, over 360 stations and created The Tweacher’s Map. What was an incredibly long slog….Deleting all the old names of stations, redrawing all the blue lines and grey and white background areas took scores of hours to do, but I guess I wanted to do a proper job this time round.I filled in as many of the stations as I could with the magnificent people I follow. I am not and will never be highly organised, so of course I had no check list of who was on there, who was missing that really should be on there, but I got to a stage where about half of it was finished. I then tweeted where I was up to and asked for people to get intouch to fill the spaces. I looked at blogs, tweeted with new followers to ensure they were right for the map. Finally after probably 100 hours work, the map was finished. Special mentions were made to the first inspiring tweachers I met and the rest as they say is… well on the map.

Twitter has completely transformed my perceptions of what I do everyday. I have always been (I hope) a fairly decent teacher, who likes to constantly reflect and adapt my teaching. Joining Twitter has allowed that journey to become a shared experience and I have gained SO MUCH from reading fellow teachers blogs, tweeting with truly awesome teachers from across the globe. It has been transformational for me. So… The map is my way of saying thank you to all the brilliant teachers, educators and thinkers on Twitter who have helped shape my thinking far more than I could have hoped to do in a lifetime of teaching by myself. Having only been tweeting since early Summer this year, I cannot get over how much I have learned from so many people. I am sure by this time next year, I could fill ten tube maps, but it’s probably time to hand the baton over to someone who knows what they’re doing…. Using illustrator. I hear it’s being used for inset, on staffroom walls, offices and even in homes, such is the love for my map!

When I first read the article I mentioned earlier, I was transported back to something I created a few years back using the map called ‘My Brilliant Future’ a sort of NLP mini book I made for my form, which used the map to discuss some ideas. It also made me think of Zoe Elders work on the PLTS in her book, where she mapped how projects can be designed, integrating the PLTS (personal learning and thinking skills for my non-UK readers). I started to think about how the map could be used to record learning or to explore characters in a book and a whole range of education applications.

I have what I think could be an awesome idea for creating an app which you can draw your own map, creating interactive ‘stations of learning’ which could house a whole range of evidence, but I will save that for another post once I’ve done some further thinking… and tweeting….

For now, let me leave you with the new phenomenon of London stations being overtaken by their new tweacher identities …

I recently had to give a seminar to a group of students about the growth mindset and why we are doing our project based learning course Pebble.  As always, I wanted a hook to allow their understanding to link to something more than just my words.

Being an Art teacher, I am often faced with students explaining that “I can’t draw” or “I can’t paint”,  which of course is rubbish. I can see teachers reading this thinking  I struggle to paint a wall with a can of dulux and a roller, let alone paint a landscape on canvas. But it really is just RUBBISH (sorry keyboard, didn’t mean to tap so hard).

It doesnt have to be like this!

One of the first, and most liberating acts we do as a young child is to learn to draw. In fact, for most of us, we start to draw about the same time as we begin to communicate verbally.

Move over Picasso… There’s a new kid in town.

At  first, we watch the magic of a piece of paper turn more readily to colour as the wax crayons are clumsily strewn across the page. But we soon move on to more defined scribbles, a couple of dots, which represents eyes (aha!) and before you know it, we start to make sense of what’s important to us: a face (mummy/daddy), before moving on to a few with little stick bodies (the family) and then a house with a sun usually in the top left corner (my home and if it’s sunny, I play in the garden). Fabulous stuff to fill the art gallery which is your fridge door for years to come.

And as parents, we love, cherish and adore every piece. “Oh Charlie, that is just WONDERFUL!” usually followed by “what is it?” Instant gratification is something our adoring little learners are brought up with every day. At this point I could bring up potty training and how we get so potty over every wee done in the right place, but I’ll save that as a ‘hook’ lesson for my classroom. It is true that as young learners, we are pampered, protected and perceived as perfect little geniuses every time we put pen to paper, but as we get older, we begin to realise that we might not be as good at some things and better at others. We build up a picture in our minds what our strengths and weaknesses are as learners and often this picture remains unchallenged by the grownups.

Worse still, learners see little point in putting in effort when they feel something is beyond them. For my children at the moment, this is the skill of tidying their bedroom.. Learners will see their peers around them producing work of a far higher standard and think how on earth have they done that? Some learners will also start to see others around them improving their skills whilst they seem to stand still, compounding the feelings of hopelessness.

There are some learners however, who recognise something they feel might be beyond them but will embrace the challenge anyway. They will see that if they care, think, analyse, reflect (let’s call it ‘putting the effort in’ shall we) that they will improve as a learner and understand how to do something a bit better than they did before.

One of the first questions I ask when students come to ‘big school’, is who likes Art, who’s good and who’s not? Children, when they come up to secondary school, at the age of 11 have decided that they are no good at something, that as a learner, they have gaps which they feel they cannot fill. (Hence my hard tapping of the word RUBBISH earlier).

So. Back to the growth mindset. I wanted a ‘way in’, a way for students to ‘hook’ their learning on the understanding ‘peg’.

The buzzer game, which back in the day was a staple of many a fairground, before the spew inducing, ear ripping madness of those crazy rides today (how OLD am I?) It tests nerve, judgement, a steady hand and above all belief.

I asked our rather wonderful DT technician if he could knock one up for me. Duly obliging with record speed, I was ready to promote the growth mindset to my little learning sponges.

I unveiled the mass of wire and battery under a sheet to a mass of hands shooting up. “Oh, me Sir! Let me have a go! I’m brilliant at this”. First victim. James came up, then saw how small the ring of metal was to hover round the house. So to a hushed, focused and discriminating audience, off James set on his journey into mindset exploration. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! Went the ugly buzzer after about 1.5 seconds. “oh.” Went James. Now was the time to see how he accepted advice. I gave James some words of encouragement and words of wisdom, which I think he listened to. Again, he got a bit further before.. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!  The audience chortled at James’s misfortune of realising he wasn’t quite as good as he expected. I asked James if he wanted to try again. He declined and I asked him to sit on the left of the screen. Several more students came up to have a go. Most gave up pretty much straight away after they realised how difficult it was.  One student seemed far more determined, he continually asked for advice and kept going back for more. Dan got all the way round the tricky chimney and was the most successful. Funnily enough, he constantly responded to criticism, and kept going on something which was near impossible. I placed him on the right of my screen. Lastly, Sophie, who openly admitted she found things like this incredibly difficult, but said ‘I’d love to give it a go and see what happens. She must have had 8 or 9 attempts before I pulled the plug. Again, she went to the right of my screen.

At this point I explained to them the fixed and growth mindset. I made sure that the idea of ‘effort being the path to mastery’ was the key point that they must take home and plant on the understanding peg. It resonated with them. It really did. We all have the growth mindset- just look how students playing on FIFA or COD will spend hours and hours mastering their skills, constantly learning from their mistakes. But often, when it comes to mastering the effort which we need for becoming an excellent linguist in MFL, the effort needed to develop the skills of excellent essay writing, the effort needed to become a good runner, we often decide we either can or cannot. We build this picture of ourselves as being good at some things and poor at others, without recognising the effort needed to truly master something.

As teachers, we need to criticise and confront the apathy students have towards learning. If we question their effort, the construction of their own mindsets, their beliefs and values they hold for their learning capacity, we hold one key to challenge the door to learning mastery. This is a key which often isn’t used regularly in lessons or in the construction of schemes of learning. If as a school, our core aim was to nurture the growth mindset to all students, an aim which permeated every lesson, every challenge, the walls, corridors. If students were constantly challenged about their learning beliefs, what might they become?

There was a fascinating piece of research done in the 60′s, where classes were given a standard IQ test. Teachers was told that this test actually had an ability to predict which kids were about to be very special — that is, which kids were about to experience a dramatic growth in their IQ.  Actually they were all pretty much at the same level, but unknown to the teacher, the students they thought were about to burst with learning greatness were asked much more challenging questions about their learning and pushed much further than others in the class. Those who were challenged, ended the year demonstrating much more understanding than their peers and importantly, a more positive belief in their abilities as a learner, despite their similar test scores at the start of the year.

So as teachers, our key to unlock learning capacity is exceptionally powerful, if we are prepared to unpick the fixed mindset traits so commonly held by the learners in our class and allow students to invest in the belief that ‘Yes we can!’ they see that the effort to learn, to improve really can pay dividends. It might be very, very tough, but it is possible.

So the game is just a bit of fun, but it was a great way of demonstrating the traits of fixed and growth mindset.  Something they will refer to again and again as they feel their way through the challenges faced on our PBL course.

My year 9 students are starting portraiture at the moment. A classic case of ‘I can’t draw’ if ever I heard one. I used the preventative medicine of the buzzer game. Again it has really made the learners sit up and think about what they can do if they see effort as the most important rule of improvement. Long may this continue.