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Changes I have made using mini white boards, to my starters and to my questioning.

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3 changes this year. I have been teaching since 2008 and in that time I have made some small and some large changes to my teaching. However, I have been consistent in my methods for the past three years, until this year. Throughout this year I have made three changes to my teaching that are detailed in this blog. The major one is the way I use mini whiteboards (MWB). Previously these were used in my classroom for instant feedback (and still are). I read one of Craig Barton’s three top tips which detailed how to use these as an aid for starter questions. Before this change I would leave four questions on the board, take the register, ask the students to do the questions, walk around the room and then stand at the front and try to gauge understanding. Now the books are left in their boxes until later and I just have MWB and pens on the students’ desk. I have two questions on the board (it would be better to just have one question on the board, but I have two as I still need some ...
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Lesson template as a PowerPoint - example ppt,

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Lesson Template as a ppt

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I have found myself changing the way I try to present ideas to students and how to check their understanding regularly, sometimes even weekly, after reading ideas on Twitter or reading PD books. As well as changing the way I approach my lessons I have found myself forgetting ones that really resonate with me when I do read about them. I often try an idea, find it useful ad then after planning a few more lessons I try a new idea and forget the original one. For these two reasons I decided to make a lesson template that I have saved as a PowerPoint. My thoughts behind doing this is that I can include a number of slides that have place holders for ideas that could be used in lessons. I do not have to populate each slide, if there is an idea that will not work for that lesson then I simply delete the slide. I consider this PowerPoint document not to be completed as my intention is to incorporate new ideas that will invariably come along as I continue to find wonderful ideas on edutwi...
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My High Five

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Thank you @mathsmrgordon for the nudge I required to write this blog regarding new ideas I am now using at in my classroom. I have tried to order them into how effective I think they are, but this is not necessarily a fixed order as I am constantly changing my mind. What I can say are the following 5 ideas are new to me in the past year and I have experienced them in my classroom. I would also like to point out that these are new ideas and therefore any data is empirical, based solely on my thoughts and observations, with some feedback from my HofF and a trainee teacher that occasionally is with me in my lessons. I also need to say before starting that these are not my research ideas, I have magpied them from other sources (which I think is the point of the My High Five) and that my interpretation of these ideas might not be correct, but I have used them and like them in the way I am going to describe. 1. Rosenshine's principle of instructions. What did I learn? When working th...
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Changing my lesson structure.

I came across the following tweet (1): and it has got me thinking, in fact so much that I have changed my lesson structure accordingly My lessons' general structure post-Bjork: Retrieval practice: 10- 20 mins Feedback on it: 5-10 mins Last lesson recap : 10 mins New idea/nugget: 10 mins Practising new idea: 10 mins My new lesson structure follows this format closely, with only the timings that might vary. I have decided to keep a blog on how this new structure impacts on my students and their learning. There are three outcomes that I can envisage for the new lesson plan: i) it is successful and the students retention and versatility improve; measured by exam scores. ii) either my own feedback or feedback from my students convince me that this is not the way to structure lessons. iii) I am observed and told that this structure is not suitable, change it now. The first question must be why did this structure appeal to me? I am a fan of retrieval practise, my belief b...
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CPD ideas from Twitter Part 2

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More CPD ideas from Twitter. This blog follows on from my previous one (0) and discusses some other ideas that I have implemented using CPD that I have gained mainly from Twitter. Starters and Feedback. I have updated my starter questions to encourage retrieval of past work, and I do this by mainly setting low stake quizzes. However, I do feel as I have missed a trick here. I appreciate the importance of feedback but by allowing the class to mark the work themselves I have allowed them to write down the workings and the answers as we were going through it as a class. From Effective Peer and Self-assessment. (1) “ If learners can reflect accurately and honestly, the evidence can back up teacher’s judgements and give an insight into pupil thinking. ” Unfortunately not all my students were reflecting honestly. This is a hard thing for me, as a teacher to write, as I have always thought that I could trust all my classes, but it has become apparent that some of my students a...
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CPD ideas from Twitter Part 1

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This is my second blog, and it made sense to write it on the CPD that has mainly come from using twitter (as well as any other resources). These ideas are CPD that I have introduced into my lessons myself, there are obviously other ideas that have come from school CPD sessions. Not Enquiry Based Learning: The first module on my MA course was  Learning Through Enquiry Using ICT at the University of Hertfordshire. I have taken the following definition for Enquiry based learning (EBL): “ EBL  describes an environment in which learning is driven by a process of enquiry owned by the student. ” (1)    I immediately did not like the idea that a student learns best through the enquiry, and I still do not. My biggest misgiving was that just because a student finally works something out for themselves does not mean they have learnt anything, they might quickly forget how they reached the end point, especially if they took many routes to get there. Seco...
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