Self-assessment and colour coded spreadsheets

An easy peasy guide to using student self-assessment checklists and colour coded spreadsheets to inform revision

Step 1: Create a checklist of success criteria for your specification (or just for one topic)

Step 2: Put it in excel and align the text as below so it rotates 90° (so you can see more of the success criteria across the screen)

Step 3: You can merge the cells above several success criteria to give it a topic title

Step 4: You need to conditionally format the cells so that they will change colour when you enter a number

Type '1' and select custom format

Select the 'fill' tab and choose green, then go to the 'font' tab and choose green as well

Then repeat step 4 typing '2' and selecting orange/amber and typing '3' and selecting red. When you type 1 in the cell it should go green, typing 2 turns it orange and typing 3 turns it red. Copy the empty cell across any others that you want this conditional formatting to apply to.

Step 5: Give students a printed (or electronic) copy of the checklist and ask them to rate themselves 1 (I completely understand), 2 (I need some help), 3 (I don't understand this)

Step 6: Transfer the student 1, 2, 3 ratings into the main spreadsheet

Step 7: Total all the numbers (red arrow) - a higher number (black arrow) means more students are struggling and so this would be a useful area to revise

I use a similar style of spreadsheet to keep track of whether student have completed homeworks, handed in books, etc.

It can also be used to track students as they complete work (I've used it to motivate BTec students to complete parts of assignments - when they start the work or get their first bit of feedback you can change it from red to amber and then change it to green as they complete it).

Action Research

I was introduced to action research as part of a session run by Zoe Elder at my school a few weeks ago (for a quick summary see her blog post http://fullonlearning.com/2013/06/15/tm-clevedon-workhop-engagement-courageous-curiosity/). This then linked in nicely with a session that I attended last week with the Teaching Leaders programme on action research and Building Learning Power by Bill Lucas (http://www.buildinglearningpower.co.uk/). In both sessions action research was described as practitioner led enquiry with the aim of 'becoming a better noticer'. Zoe Elder kindly stated that as long as you base your action research on your values as a teacher then you should be doing it right!

I've detailed the outline of my action research plan below using a combination of the 'Teacher Enquiry Action Plan' by The Expansive Education Network (http://www.expansiveeducation.net/) and the documents that Zoe Elder provided at our session. 

What is the stimulus for my action research?
What do I want to improve? After three years of teaching I feel comfortable with my subject knowledge and evidence would suggest that I know how to deliver an outstanding lesson which means that I can now start to really focus in on the students and the learning that occurs in my lessons. I've noticed that students are often overly dependent on using my teacher knowledge to help them when they are stuck. "Miss, Miss, Miss" from 30 students per class with just 100 minutes per lesson just doesn't work out in terms of time per individual student, and that's just 100 minutes a week (or 150 at post-16), what about all the other hours in the day when I'm not there? Inspired by "What's the Point of School" by Guy Claxton I've decided that my action research wants to work towards helping students to take ownership of their own learning and hopefully will allow them to become more self-motivated.

My hypothesis is that...
Maybe my students would benefit from helping themselves or helping each other so that they can develop better learning habits that will allow them to 'know what to do when you don't know what to do'.

What does the research say?
There were three areas that I've read a little into: Building Learning Power (specifically the 'resourcefulness' aspect'), Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck (in particular activity and action based feedback) and Visible Learning by John Hattie (the work on reciprocal teaching).

          

Building Learning Power (Resourcefulness) 

According to the literature...
"Resourcefulness is being ready, willing and able to learn in different ways - using both internal and external resources effectively, calling on different ways of learning as appropriate. Your resourcefulness is made up of... questioning, making links, imagining, reasoning, capitalising."

I initially thought about looking at the 'resilience' aspect of Building Learning Power but I now feel that the skills associated with 'resourcefulness' might be more beneficial to look at in my first bit of action research.

Growth Mindset (Activity or action based feedback)

Carol Dweck looks at the idea of talent vs. effort and suggests that we should praise effort rather than intelligence to encourage students to recognise that the experience of learning is just as important as the end result. I found at good summary at
http://login.rbwm.org/~queenanne/FOV1-00106CC6/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20A%20Guide%20to%20the%20Fixed%20Mindset%20V%20the%20Growth%20.pdf

Visible Learning (Reciprocal teaching)

Hattie ranks reciprocal teaching as 11th out of 150 interventions that have an impact on student learning. Reciprocal teaching occurs when the students act as teachers within a group, specifically predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising when reading text. A useful set of questions to scaffold this process can be found at http://www.readingrockets.org/content/pdfs/reciprocalteaching_handout.pdf 

What is my enquiry question?
Bill Lucas framed enquiry questions as:

What’s the learning power ‘y’ you are hoping to cultivate in your learners? 

What might you do – your ‘x’ – to bring this about?

In order to focus on the resourcefulness aspect of the 'learning powered mind' I have worded my enquiry question as:
"If I introduce the language of resourcefulness to A level students will they be able to show initiative in order to capitalise on learning opportunities around them?"

In my initial action research session with Zoe Elder we discussed considering student confidence and student willingness to take intellectual risks. I now feel like this is something that might need to follow on from initial action research on resourcefulness as I don't want to 'overload' my enquiry question.

What are my priorities? How does my research fit with the priorities of my school?
I am incredibly lucky to be in a school where we are focussing on action research as a whole school through our inspiring teachers groups which get together once a half term and also through the smaller group working with Zoe Elder that I mentioned earlier. Add to this the anecdotal evidence about teachers at my school being concerned that students struggle with the transition from KS4 to KS5 and it seems like I'm in a good position to start questioning whether we are preparing our students for the real world (either at University or in the workplace) in terms of their learning.

The intervention
When we discussed the intervention part of action research with Bill Lucas we considered that changes can occur in three areas:
1. The teacher as a role model
2. The language that we use in our classroom
3. The methods and tools we use in the classroom

Zoe Elder also gave the valuable advice to remember to reduce the variables, perhaps by making changes with the same group in the same lesson each week so that we can better notice any changes.

I wanted to find phrases and strategies that might help promote student resourcefulness and came up with four key changes that I would like to make.

Change 1: 4Bs before me 
Encouraging students to use their brain, buddy, book and the board before they ask me (the fifth B - Boss according to some sources!)

Change 2: Growth mindset phrases for praising effort
I want to start using phrases like: 
How did you do that?
That looks like it took a lot of effort
Are you pleased with what you did
I see that you... (be specific about an aspect of the work) 
Do you know why I'm saying it looks like you're confident with your learning there?

The last one is something Zoe Elder mentioned in our session so it's not strictly growth mindset but I felt like it fitted nicely with the other phrases.

Change 3: Identifying learning heroes 
I want to try and note down what happens in teacher/student and student/student dialogue as I circulate during a task and save up examples of resourcefulness to give as sentence starters or useful phrases for peer interactions.

Change 4: The language of Building Learning Power resourcefulness
I want to try and shift my mentality as a teacher a little more towards the language of building learning power.

Building learning power literature suggests that teachers should: 

• Recognise and reward good questions as well as good answers
• Encourage phrases like 'how come, what if, how might'
• Develop activities that require students to make creative use of a range of resources
• Use 'could be' language
• Create scenarios for students to visualise or mentally rehearse 

Teaching for learning power also requires teacher to explain (be explicit about learning power), commentate (nudge students and evaluate student responses), orchestrate (select and arrange) and model (react to being stuck and demonstrate learning aloud). 

I'm going to try and introduce one change per week with my A level Chemistry classes and build on each one over the next few weeks. I feel like change 1 will be the easiest to implement and so I will do this first before moving through the other changes which (in my personal opinion) are gradually becoming more difficult to implement. I'm also thinking about designing some kind of poster or bookmark to serve as a reminder of the changes for students. I might try and design something similar to the amazing creations by 'Design thinking' found at http://www.designthinking.ac/

Evaluation methods
Essentially the outcome of action research is "I tried this and a change I noticed was..." but Bill Lucas outlined some useful evaluation methods that can be helpful when trying to notice the impact of a change. The few that I particularly liked (and felt would fit with my enquiry question) are below.

• Holding an initial focus group to discuss the stimulus and hypothesis with students (this should be done before the intervention).
• Conducting an attitude survey (phrases where students choose something like 'never, sometimes, always' as an answer) before the intervention and then again at the end of term with the end of term survey including the original scores for students to make comparison to.
• Asking a colleague to complete an observation grid that would focus on the changes and the students and considering what the observer can see, hear and feel.
• Using critical incident review/student case studies, perhaps including photos of student work and videos of student interactions.
• And perhaps a little bit of school data just because I do love a good spreadsheet...

What is the time scale for my action research?
I have already identified phrases and strategies to encourage resourcefulness which I'm hoping to introduce to my classroom by Christmas before using the final evaluation methods by January.

I was having a conversation about blogging with a teaching colleague the other day and mentioned that I feel like blogging has been a really good opportunity for me to reflect as a practitioner as well as being somewhere to record ideas (like this outline for my action research) that might otherwise get lost amongst the seemingly endless piles of paper in my classroom. As my action research progresses I'm hoping to 'RED - reflect, evaluate and develop' through my blog, with my colleagues and with those in the twittersphere that would like to read and comment so that I can consider whether my changes are working (and how do I know whether they are working!)

Can smarties make you smarter?

Well, they can do if you adapt the general knowledge quizzes on the back of the mini packets into a literacy starter.

For my middle and lower sets I wrote the questions and got students to write the key words in their books before going through the answers and getting students to self-assess (you can get them to use green pen to mark the parts they got correct and red pen to make corrections if you're feeling keen!)

For higher sets and my mixed ability sixth form classes I asked students to write five of their own and then swap with their partner to answer their questions, before returning the questions to be checked. I gave a couple of examples and explained that I wanted them to write questions in the style of "what <insert letter here> is ..." where the rest of the question will allow others to guess what the letter, or letters if they used a phrase, would stand for. It took some students a little longer to understand how to write the questions than others but it's definitely worth persevering with and I'm hoping they'll remember the next time we try the same activity! When I asked one sixth form class why they found it difficult they said it was "because I had to think"...

I've used this to recap learning from the last lesson, or to start a revision lesson. If you have classes where students don't all arrive at the same time due to lesson changeover then having about 8 questions (with an extension task of writing your own) is a great way of getting students settled.

Some examples:

C1.5 AQA Core Science

Answers: Cracking, Heat, Catalyst, Saturated, Unsaturated, (it turns) Colourless, Fermentation, Hydration (of ethene)

C1.6 AQA Core Science

Answers: Crushing, Pressing, Filtering, Steam Distillation, Energy, Nutrients, Higher, Attraction, Miscible, Immiscible, Emulsion

Manageable and meaningful marking #blogsync October

http://blogsync.edutronic.net/

I challenge you to find a single teacher that actually enjoys marking. After three years I'm still not a huge fan but I've tried to find ways to make my marking manageable but, more importantly, meaningful. I was given the opportunity to run a session on feedback for NQTs this term alongside one of our Assistant Heads and this (combined with the October theme of 'marking' for #blogsync) seemed like a good time to reflect on my own practice.

What do I mark?
As an NQT I would spend hours trying to mark every piece of work and it took a lot of repetition from my Head of a Department before I recognised the value of only marking selected pieces of work. I now try and set certain pieces of work with the intention of marking it (as opposed to looking through student books after the event to try and pick a piece) and make sure that students know what I will be looking at. See the brilliant post by @MaryMyatt "Should I be marking every piece of work?" for more on this.

How do I mark it?
In order to make my marking easier I try and share the specific success criteria with students so they have a checklist. Recently I've been printing off these checklists so that they can be stuck in and I can tick and cross each criteria instead of writing out the same few WWWs and EBIs for students. The time that I save on re-writing the success criteria can then be spent writing a question or giving a hint to students on how to respond to their feedback (see my post from 29th September for an example). I also love the 'purple page of progress' idea from Danielle Kohlman (@kohlmand), a great way of making feedback stand out and become more useful for learning.

Why do I mark it?
There are so many answers to this one: because I'm supposed to, because I'll be criticised in our department book scrutiny if I don't, because one day Ofsted might pick up one of the books during an observation... I think the best reason for marking books can be found in David Didau's (@LearningSpy) blog post "Marking is an Act of Love" - we mark because we want it to have an impact. I couldn't agree more with David's argument (and that of many other bloggers on this topic) that for marking to be effective we need to give students DIRT time (dedicated improvement and reflection time). This is something I've tried really hard to fit into my lessons this year and I was amazed when I marked my books for a second time to see that nearly every student had completed a 'learner response' to their EBI. This certainly didn't happen in my books last year, and I doubt it would have happened this year if I hadn't given students DIRT time or made them aware that they have the resources (their own exercise books, their peers, the textbook, the internet on their tablets, me...) that will allow them to improve their work. I also think it is really important to acknowledge that students have completed their learner responses, perhaps with a snazzy sticker like we have at Greenford High. This continues the (written) student teacher dialogue and might even encourage students to have a quick look back at their work and remember what they did two or three lessons ago.

I'm still not saying that I love marking books (especially the part where I found out that between me and my partner my Toyota Aygo doesn't have enough boot space for us both to fit our half term marking in...) but I certainly feel a lot more positive about it knowing that it will take me a maximum of an hour and a half per 30 books and knowing that the marking allows students to make progress.

('What, How, Why' taken from Zoe Elder (@fullonlearning), one of the books on my half term 'thank goodness I finally have the mental space to be able to read this in depth' reading list... Other books include 'Mindset: How You Can Fulfil Your Potential' by Carol Dweck and finally finishing 'What's the Point of School?' by Guy Claxton)



Mary Myatt http://marymyatt.com/2013/10/12/should-i-be-marking-every-piece-of-work/

Danielle Kohlman http://magpieandtry.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/26-purple-pages-of-progress.html

David Didau http://www.learningspy.co.uk/assessment/marking-act-love/

Why I will be striking on October 17th

Tomorrow I'm going to take the difficult decision not to go into school and teach the students that I care so much about in order to try and win a longer term improvement for their education.

The union will be claiming that the strike is over pensions, pay and working conditions and I agree but I think more needs to be said about the impact that the changes to pensions, pay and working conditions will have on our students. Our core purpose of improving the life chances of the students that we work with day in and day out is being threatened by rapid and ill thought out change at government level.

Pensions

If you make teachers pensions worse (even though the current system works and is apparently in credit) you are less likely to attract the best people into our profession and so students will not have the best teachers in front of them. Making teachers work until they are 68 is virtually physically impossible if they are expected to keep up with the current demands of being in the classroom and providing high quality learning experiences. Forcing older colleagues out of the profession also means that students are missing out on valuable expertise acquired over a lifetime in teaching.

Pay

Performance related pay is not about paying good teachers more, it's about paying more teachers less. The overall budget hasn't changed so for every teacher you pay more, another one has to be paid less. This will lead to negative competition between colleagues in schools and will start to erode the community of support that our students have around them from every subject teacher, every pastoral worker and every member of senior leadership that cares about them. In addition the best teachers will avoid the worst schools because they won't be able to guarantee the performance that will get them a pay rise. This means that students from socially deprived backgrounds will be further deprived by not having access to the best teachers.

Working conditions

I love my job. I love the students that I get to work with on a daily basis and I love watching them learn. If I'm honest though I often struggle to be as good as I want to be for the students because my PPA time every week is nowhere near enough to plan the amazing lessons that I want to do, never mind trying to fit it all the marking and other professional duties that are expected of me. I want to do all of these things, I'm not being lazy and trying to get out of them - I genuinely want to do everything that I can for my students, but I can barely manage it now and I certainly don't know how I would do this if my PPA time was taken away from me, or if I was told to be in school from 7am until 6pm, or if I had to cover lessons for colleagues and invigilate exams. All of this could happen and all of it will directly impact on the quality of learning that is able to take place in our schools.

I couldn't agree more that our education system needs reforming, that we need to reconsider our curriculum and examination system and that perhaps our payscale isn't perfect in the current form. I also know that we can't fight for positive changes to be made when we are desperately trying to cling on to what we have already fought for.

I don't want my students to miss their lessons with me tomorrow but I feel like Michael Gove has left me with no other way to fight for the future of British education but to go on strike. I know that I couldn't live with myself if I found myself in a classroom in five years (or even in a year) thinking "I wish it wasn't like this" and knowing that I didn't stand up for my students against the changes. 

This week I've tried... The self-development edition

Last week I think I experienced many of the 'continuous professional development' opportunities that the education system has to offer, all that was missing was a TeachMeet and maybe some whole school training... I was asked by @benton_clare on Friday (after discussing the toll that being so ridiculously busy has taken on us!) which I thought was best and it made me think that I should take the time to reflect before it all passes me by.

This week I've tried...

• Masters in Science Education King's College London "What makes a good dissertation"
• Leading our Coaching Programme in department meeting
• Teaching Leaders Middle Leadership "Navigating your team through change"
• Being observed by HOD
• Observing a colleague
• Action research group with Zoe Elder (@fullonlearning)

In true teacher style I've gone for the traditional WWW/EBI approach, although I'm not sure if I'll be able to persuade some of the parties involved to do their 'learner responses'!

Masters in Science Education King's College London "What makes a good dissertation"
WWW I now have a clearer focus for my dissertation topic, we looked at examples of abstracts from previous dissertations and it was useful to have the opportunity to discuss ideas with a variety of other Masters students (some full time, some part time but teaching in different subjects, or in primary)
EBI A disappointing lack of 'practice what you preach' from King's College - too much teacher talk and nowhere near enough time for discussion on the practicalities of how to get started or setting action points for our next steps

Coaching in department meeting
WWW The gift of time! 30 mins was kindly given by our HOD for discussion in coaching pairs and I got to witness the realisation by the two colleagues I was working with that coaching provides an opportunity to discuss concerns and come to your own solutions by having someone listen. Observing the interaction in pairs and giving feedback on how to improve the coaching process was interesting as well.
EBI If I had maybe put people in groups of three or four so that they could all observe the coaching process instead of just leaving people in their pairs. I also want to set up an anonymous survey to see whether all colleagues found the process useful or not.

Teaching Leaders Middle Leadership "Navigating your team through change"
WWW Considering 'what does successful change look like?' as a group. Looking at the 'personal transition curve' for those leading the change, but also for those being affected by the change (http://www.businessballs.com/freepdfmaterials/processoftransitionJF2012.pdf). Looking at the Kotter 8 step change model and applying it to a change that I am currently attempting (http://www.kotterinternational.com/our-principles/changesteps) 
EBI More time had been spent on how to effectively implement change/overcome the barriers and strategies that would allow a team to move on along the 'personal transition curve' 

Being observed by my HOD
WWW Seeing the impact of thorough planning and positivity on a C/D borderline class - my HOD commented that he'd never seen a class where every single student was engaged all of the time. I feel like this is the ultimate goal for a teacher - if our students are engaged they'll learn more.
EBI Don't wake up at 3am in a panic about being observed. Being (uncomfortably) aware that if I had time to plan all lessons more thoroughly they would be better...

Observing a colleague
WWW My colleague recognised that they wanted to improve their teaching with this set 4 class and we discussed strategies before agreeing to a follow up observation in a couple of weeks - I love working in a department where everyone is always trying to improve so that they can provide the best for their students.
EBI Wishing I done this as a 'developmental' observation rather than a 'judgemental' observation - the teacher, and more importantly the students, might have got more out of it. I feel like I've seen something about this on twitter, or read about it somewhere - now I'm going to have to research it! The conversation @benton_clare and I had with @fullonlearning on Friday gave me some excellent starting points though.

Action research group with Zoe Elder
WWW Collaborating with colleagues, beginning to understand the principles of action research, considering potential enquiry questions for my own action research, creating a 'web' with colleagues and spotting the links between our potential action research plans, being given time to be able to do all of this!
EBI Every school got to do this! I'm not sure whether action research would appeal to all teachers but by being selective perhaps there can be a 'trojan mouse' effect across a school (http://dailygenius.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/bring-on-the-trojan-mice/)

I think I would find it hard to pick a favourite from the list above, they all had value in terms of improving either my teaching, the teaching of others or improving my leadership and management skills - all of which should directly impact on the students. I loved the Action Research Group for bringing me back to the core purpose of being a teacher - the learning but I also really enjoyed working with colleagues in my own department through lesson observations and the coaching programme. That's not to say that the Masters or Teaching Leaders sessions weren't valuable, they're just a little more removed from the day to day classroom but ultimately they're still linked to the bigger picture of providing better teaching and learning.

A quick final point: One of the things I noticed that came up as I was writing this is the fact that I always want more time for something! As a fourth year teacher I feel like I'm starting to get slightly better at maintaining a work-life balance but I wonder how long that will last if Michael Gove gets his way with our working conditions...

This week I've tried...

A slightly belated post from the activities I tried last week...

Summary spirals
This can be done with scrap paper - students cut out a circle and then cut into and around the circle to make a spiral. They can leave a slightly larger centre to put key words in and then write their summary from the centre outwards (if they run out of space they can just turn around and write back towards the middle!)

I then got students to move around the classroom and pair up when I said 'pause' so they could show off their spirals and award a sticker to the best one (each students gets one sticker - see 'gallery critique' in a previous post)

Scrunch and throw
Again, scrap paper is fine to use for this. Students write down everything they can remember from the lesson/from a topic before (loosely!) scrunching up the paper. Don't forget to get students to put their name on or getting the right sheet back to the original owner will be a nightmare, as I discovered the first time I did it... Students then throw the paper (not at each other, not at me) and pick up a new one. They they add more information from their own knowledge in a different colour before scrunching and throwing again. On the final 'unscrunch' they are allowed to use textbooks/exercise books/other resources to add new information in a final colour.

Speed dating
Students stand in two lines facing each other (see the lovely picture of my year 13 Chemistry students - they were very excited about being in a blog post!) One student asks the questions and is allowed to use the textbook if they need to and the other student answers. After a minute or two you move one student from one line to the opposite end of the line and everyone else moves one place to fill the gap. Then switch sides for the students that are asking the questions.

In other news: I'm very excited about teaching lessons the 'lazy way' after our amazing inset by @thelazyteacher, will try and get the best ideas down in a blog at some point - if only there were more hours in the day!