Where's your head at?

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whether I was on the right track with my thinking over in little old Jersey or whether my thinking was 10 years or more out of date.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.

For the skills we are learning in Pebble to be internalised, understood, reflected upon and improved, we have for several years tried to find the best way of making sure that the evidence for this is created in a way which forms a coherent dialogue between teacher and learner. I think, at last we might have just about got it right!

We use the PLTS as our focus for each Pebble unit, but the same could be done for any learning skills or dispositions you were focusing on. Students embark on a skills week before recording their understanding. This allows students to explore, try out and understand what this skill is.  Firstly, we use a questionnaire- the sort you might find in a teenage magazine. “Your group have to give an embarrassing talk about contraception in PSHE. Would you (a) hide behind a picture and giggle, (b) Think I know this might be embarrassing but, …..” you get the picture. Students get a score dependant on their answer. Each question helps explore different elements of the particular PLTS. They add up their scores and begin to build a picture of their ability in that particular skill, where they are now and what they might need to change to become better.

Students build on this understanding, discuss what they think the key skills of an effective self-manager are and think of examples of how those skills are used. For example ‘Taking Risks’ as part of being an effective self manager. “an example is when you are not sure what to do, try things out and see if you can do it for yourself and if it doesn’t work out, learn from it.”

As a class, we distill the understanding and agree on the skills we believe relate to that PLTS and type this up on the passport sheet.

Students participate in a task which tests their approach to the PLTS on our Friday session, to help them further understand it before their first project.  For the self manager task we design and create personality hats, a task which has a few twists and turns to test their adaptability as well as organisational skills. At the end of this rather fun task, we unpick the skills we have used and begin to map the evidence as you can see below:

I stamp their passports, when I agree that this skill has been demonstrated, but leave if the evidence does not connect to a particular skill.

Here, I have added my own comment about how a student has used a particular skill. Parents are also encouraged to write down evidence if they have seen particular skills being used effectively at home.

The students have responded brilliantly to this document. It makes them analyse the skill carefully and reflect on their own learning incredibly effectively. This passport will now be used throughout first project ‘A Personal History’ where students investigate and create a family tree or a memory book about one of their ancestors. A great project to focus on the key skills of a self manager.

AND…. If that wasn’t enough of a meta-learning paradise, I am using the rather wonderful ‘Class Dojo’ to reinforce the evidence whilst they are working. When I see the particular skills being exercised, I can click on them using my IPhone or PC and add a point, which comes with a nice PING noise! I can also add a negative BOING if they are not showing those skills. Every time students here the noise, they look at the whiteboard to see who’s got it and for what. Funnily enough, students then come to me thick and fast and try to justify why they should get a point. If they use a quality language of learning to explain why, I may yield… IT’S FANTASTIC!!

Just one click from my phone- so simple, so utterly brilliant!

Click below for a PDF of our Passport to Perfection.

passport self manager

Having created this, I can see a direct use for developing a ‘Marginal Gains’  approach to improving learning and understanding. Something to work on…

Also, being a fairly decent reflective practitioner, I have realised the questioning should include a question like;

“If you were an outstanding self manager, what would your learning in and out of school look, sound and feel like?”

Followed by a Scale of good self manager from poor to outstanding, for students to place themselves on.

Followed by, “why have you placed yourself here? What is your evidence? and what do you need to improve on to move closer to outstanding?”

Will add that for Independent Enquirer, our next PLTS focus.

Anyway. Would love your thoughts on this and share what you do in your schools to analyse skills development.

I have designed this for my department to use as a tool to analyse what is going on in lessons, what we should be seeing if we are as good as we say we are (not just basking in our amazing GCSE results and thinking we know it all). I don’t expect to see all the evidence all the time, but I do expect to speak to students about their experiences, I should feel the buzz of learning happening and always see the little bleaters being constantly stretched. See what you think. Obviously done with Art in mind but easily adapted to any department or whole school for that matter. Click on the PDF link below.

Monitoring the learning experience in our classroom