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Using Digital Technology to Teach Functional Skills

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Using Digital Technology to Teach Functional Skills

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Click on the image below to access the slides for this session.

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Digital technologies for the IoE - 01 Nov 2017 - Zeetings

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Using Learning Assistants Effectively to Support the development of maths skills

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Using Learning Assistants Effectively to Support the development of maths skills

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Click on the image below for the slides from this session.

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Slides - Planning for Flipped Learning in maths

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Slides - Planning for Flipped Learning in maths

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Click on the image below to download the slides

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http://www.et-foundation.co.uk/

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Ideas and initiatives  discussed in workshop 

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Ideas and initiatives  discussed in workshop 

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Slides to remind you of our discussion

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ALLOCATE SUFFICIENT TIME

How? - Allocate time in sessions for learners to: record and reflect on the purpose and personal implications of their learning
goals; monitor and evaluate their own progress and to seek help when needed; update personal progress records. Allocate time for practitioners to review and validate these.

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How? - Allocate time in sessions for learners to: record and reflect on the purpose and personal implications of their learning goals; monitor and evaluate their own progress and to seek help when needed; update personal progress records. Allocate time for practitioners to review and validate these.

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CETTAcademy (CETTa) has been contracted by the Education and Training Foundation to review current practice in assessing and tracking learners through their maths and English programmes. Our initial aim is to formulate Effective Practice Guidelines (EPGs) to mitigate concerns arising from research, inspection and from practitioners about the validity and reliability of initial and diagnostic assessment practices together with the use of ILPs.

You can watch a video introducing the project and the EPGs below:

The 12 draft EPGs have been distilled from current educational research, as well as a wider discourse relevant to learner engagement, motivation and resilience. Having undertaken desk review and consulted with the sector, we are confident that they capture the essence of the emerging evidence-base.

We have arranged the EPGs into three sections:

1. Who should undertake initial/diagnostic assessment and tracking?

2. What should be involved in undertaking initial/diagnostic assessment and tracking?

3. How should initial/diagnostic assessment and tracking be undertaken?

As a next step, between September 2016 and March 2017, we are piloting the EPGs with learning providers across England. We have developed some tools to support this process, which can be accessed here.

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CETTAcademy (CETTa) has been contracted by the Education and Training Foundation to review current practice in assessing and tracking learners through their maths and English programmes. Our initial aim is to formulate Effective Practice Guidelines (EPGs) to mitigate concerns arising from research, inspection and from practitioners about the validity and reliability of initial and diagnostic assessment practices together with the use of ILPs.

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'Can do' cards record sheet - writing

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'Can do' cards - example writing

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Hertfordshire learning links grade ladder speaking and listening

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Hertfordshire learning links grade ladder speaking and listening

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Hertfordshire learning links grading ladders reading and writing

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David Didau on marking vs feedback and DIRT(dedicated improvement and reflection time).

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UPDATE: After a lot of thought and reading, I'm no long convinced that marking is anywhere near as important or useful as it's often claimed. In fact, much of it is a complete waste of time. In this post October 2015 I explore the difference between marking and feedback and here I suggest that less marking might mean more feedback.
Have you ever flicked back through an exercise book and seen the same repeated comments followed with soul numbing certainty by the same repeated mistakes? There are few things more crushing to the spirit of hardworking teachers than this dramatically enacted evidence of the fact that, apparently, 70% of all feedback given by teachers to pupils falls on stony soil. I've seen my fair share of books like these. Heck! I've been responsible for more than my fair share of 'em!

I've always felt guilty about marking. There's always something to mark and when you're tired and stressed it's often the first thing to go. I got involved in a discussion on Twitter over the weekend in which someone suggested that if you've got your planning right, you shouldn't have to mark. Their point was that finding out what they've done wrong merely highlights what you've not taught properly. It's a point of view I suppose, but not one to which I subscribe.

I guess if you're marking like I used to, then it's easy to feel like this. But over the past few years, the thing which has improved most in my teaching is without doubt my marking. What was once an endless, dreaded millstone hanging around my guilty neck has been transformed from chore to, if not a pleasure, certainly a highlight of my working routine. Now, I look forward to seeing their eager little faces reading through my carefully crafted instructions on how to improve. Gone is the meaningless empty praise of 'Well done!" and gone too is the time spent fruitlessly scratching about for some meaningless platitude that I'm pretty sure will never make the slightest dent in pupils' almost wilful determination to misuse apostrophes and omit capital letters.

The big difference is DIRT. The idea that I should dedicate part or all of a lesson to Directed Improvement & Reflection Time in which pupils act on my feedback has been a revelation. All those hours spent marking now have a visible impact. I tell them how to improve and, By God! they do it. There's no trick to it, no gimmick, nothing clever or mysterious; just the embedded routine of high expectations.

At Clevedon School, this has been formalised into Triple Impact Marking:

Here are a few of my thoughts on how to change the way you think about marking and, maybe more importantly, how you go about it.

1. Dialogue - A pupil's exercise book can be an almost sacred space in which a teacher can gently prod their charges from ignorant caterpillars into the iridescence of knowledge and understanding. One of the many changes I've made to my marking practice is to encourage pupils to 'talk' to me via their books. Instead of making comments, I now ask questions: "Why have you done..." How could you improve...? "Is ___ correct?" And in return they can ask their own questions, make points of information or clarify my misunderstandings and assumptions. Some of what they have to say is profound and some is sometime witlessly banal. But I always try to respond. I've experimented with asking them to write these conversational gambits in particular coloured pens or to use designated parts of the page, but have settled on a mostly freestyle dialogue that unfolds when and if pupils feel they need or want it. But because lessons are constructed around giving and responding to feedback, these conversations take place far more than they ever did when left to pupils' ad hoc whimsy. For the record, I'm not a fan of www/ebi - it just doesn't seem to generate a dialogue.

2. Find Faults and Fix - I also give over lessons to making sure that work is well presented. In the past this wasn't something I cared about all that much but reading Ron Berger's An Ethic of Excellence changed all that. I now embrace his maxim that 'if it isn't perfect, it isn't finished'. Of course, the confines of classrooms and curriculums mean that there just isn't enough time to achieve perfection but that doesn't mean we shouldn't aim for it. I often direct pupils to find faults and fix them just before I collect books in. This means that the basics all have to be in place: neatly underlined titles and dates but also there is an expectation that pupils will proofread their work. My rule is that if they fail to proofread it, I won't mark it. Sounds Draconian, but it works. The same is true of sloppy work. In the past I'd often noticed a trend where the quality of presentation sharply deteriorated a few weeks after a new books was issued. Now, when kids hand in work which is clearly below their best levels of presentation I make them write it out again. You rarely have to do this more than once before the message sinks in: you should be proud of your work, and that includes its presentation.

3. Marking is planning - it is an inescapable fact that teachers' time is precious. I just don't have it to waste. If I'm going to commit time to marking a set of books I want that to be time I don't have to spend planning lesson activities. Now, because of DIRT, the marking is the activity. For younger children, 10-15 minutes of a lesson might be usefully spent improving work and acting on feedback, but for older children, I can easily get one or more lessons out of my marking. The more questions I ask and the more tasks I set, the more time they will be expected to spend in response. Dylan Wiliam says that feedback should be more work for the recipient than the donor and he's right. If it's taken me a minute to mark a piece of work, that should result in 10 minutes worth of improvement.

4. Marking is differentiation - I've said before that marking is the purest form of differentiation. There can be no better way to respond to the needs of an individual than to read what they have written and give them specific tasks to challenge them to be better than they currently are. This is really the same point as No. 3 but is worth making on its own just so the message sinks home: if you mark well, you really shouldn't have to waste time planning what to do in lessons. And you most certainly shouldn't have to waste time planning separate activities for pupils for different abilities. All most some? Kiss my ass!

5. Time savers - despite all the juice I try to squeeze out of my marking, there's always scope to save more time. I love Lisa Ashes' idea of using + - = to mark. Here's my spin on it:

and Joe Kirby has also written about how using symbols can save precious time. He says,

Don't write out comments. You end up writing such similar comments across the class, and they won't read them anyway.

Instead, get them to write them out. Choose three to five targets or questions before you start marking, then scan their answer, choose the best fit between the student's work and the group target, and draw an icon. One minute per book maximum. At the start of the next lesson, you write the targets on the board, students write their targets in their books. They get instant feedback and can take action on their target straight away.

Another favourite time-saving technique is to focus your marking on what will really make an impact. What if, instead of marking everything, we only marked the bits where pupils are struggling, where they've made particularly telling mistakes and where they really taken a risk? But surely it's impossible to find these rare nuggets without wading through the whole damn thing? The solution is to ask pupils to highlight those areas where they really want feedback. Ask them where they've struggled or where they've taken a risk - they'll generally know right away which parts they're most anxious about and this means you can hone in on the most crucial aspects of their work without burning out.

And what about this absurdly simple strategy taken from Doug Lemov's blog? The 'Dot Round' is explained thusly:

The idea is that you assign students independent work and, as they are working, circulate to observe their work. If their work is wrong, you put a dot on their paper. Very subtle, not a permanent "wrong" mark, just a reminder that there's something that needs checking. And here's the best part - that's ALL you do/say. The idea is that the dot reminds students, subtly, to find their own mistake and, in time, encourages self-reflect and self-correct. You could even then ask students to discuss: who got a dot and found it? who got a dot and didn't.

One final thought: I'm regularly asked how often teachers should mark books. This depends. As an English teacher, rich in curriculum time and with an admittedly light time-table I try to mark books after every lesson. However, this is unrealistic and unsustainable for main scale teachers. I'd tentatively suggest that making once every four lessons is a reasonable ratio. This would mean that core subjects mark once a week and RE teachers aren't too swamped. Of course this isn't always going to feel possible and there should be some leeway built in. But setting aside an hour a day for marking (which is what I do) is time well spent. And as you get used to it, the more efficient you'll become.

So, that's it: my thoughts on how to make marking matter. Hope they're useful.

Update: Inspired by @shaunallison, here's a first go at creating a Feedback Flowchart:

And for many more excellent posts on marking, please refer to the October blogsync.

Related posts

Work scrutiny: what's the point in marking books?
The joy of marking
Making feedback stick

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Marking is an act of love - David Didau: The Learning Spy

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UPDATE: After a lot of thought and reading, I'm no long convinced that marking is anywhere near as important or useful as it's often claimed. In fact, much of it is a complete waste of time.

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English, Mathematics and ESOL, Literacy and Numeracy Network (emandeln)

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See all the wonderful things English, Mathematics and ESOL, Literacy and Numeracy Network has made

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Headings in tracking systems such as Promonitor need to closely follow the underpinning skills of the course. Without this, tracking systems don't get used to inform planning and, therefore, can have little impact on teaching and learning: they are assessment of learning . With this, these systems can become part of the learning itself: assessment for learning or even assessment as learning

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All resources 'magpied' from others with special thanks to @Team_English1 

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Approaches and resources to teach 9-1 GCSE English 

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Approaches and resources to teach 9-1 GCSE English 

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ETF Foundation online learning English modules

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ETF Foundation online learning English modules

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Vocational Revitalisers= and Vocational Revitaliser Plus Programmes

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Vocational Revitalisers= and Vocational Revitaliser Plus Programmes

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Whole Organisation Health Check Tool: To aid the effective development of learners' maths and English skills (October 2019)

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Our Whole Organisation "Health Check" Tool for the effective development of learners' maths and English skills is designed to support providers to identify critical success factors for a strategic approach to the delivery maths and English. It can facilitate informed discussion and prompt providers to critically evaluate their approach to maths and English.

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Scroll to the end of the page.

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Ideas to develop English across the curriculum

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Ideas to develop English across the curriculum

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Peer observation by English teachers of vocational sessions to give advice on embedding

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Peer observation by English teachers of vocational sessions to give advice on embedding

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Joint planning sessions - reviews of Schemes of Work and assignments to identify embedding opportunities and link the English and vocational curriculum

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Joint planning sessions - reviews of Schemes of Work and assignments to identify embedding opportunities and link the English and vocational curriculum

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Develop a reading strategy cross college.

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Develop a reading strategy cross college.

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Cross college marking annotation supported by training for vocational teachers.

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Cross college marking annotation supported by training for vocational teachers.

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Offer vocational teachers opportunity to take Functional Skills/GCSE English exams - support with CPD sessions or online learning (see Foundation Learning online free English modules)

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Offer vocational teachers opportunity to take Functional Skills/GCSE English exams - support with CPD sessions or online learning (see Foundation Learning online free English modules)

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Provide English resources to use in vocational lessons

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Provide English resources to use in vocational lessons

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For example, dictionaries, SPAG mats, bookmarks with marking schemes

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Posters illustrating key concepts in English e.g. parts of speech, writing techniques etc.
Posters illustrating how English can be used by students in vocational subject (study and work)

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For students in English - in vocational areas. For staff in supporting English in vocational areas.

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Using vocational specialist vocabulary - providing a framework for vocational teachers to do this in every lesson.

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Provide a short guide/top tips for embedding for vocational teachers.

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Short burst 10 minute CPD/demonstrations for vocational teachers in English skills in staff meetings.

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Short burst 10 minute CPD/demonstrations for vocational teachers in English skills in staff meetings.

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Establish vocational champions for English in each subject area to promote English to their vocational teams

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Establish vocational champions for English in each subject area to promote English to their vocational teams

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Vocational staff comment on learners' progress in achieving their English targets as demonstrated in vocational lessons.

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Vocational staff comment on learners' progress in achieving their English targets as demonstrated in vocational lessons.

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Vocational teachers are unfamiliar with the differences between levels in English and the differences between Functional Skills and GCSE English

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Vocational teachers are unfamiliar with the differences between levels in English and the differences between Functional Skills and GCSE English

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Vocational  teachers' lack of confidence in own English skills and reluctance/sensitivity to accessing help in developing these skills

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Vocational  teachers' lack of confidence in own English skills and reluctance/sensitivity to accessing help in developing these skills

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Time for English teachers and vocational teachers to work together and workload

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Time for English teachers and vocational teachers to work together and workload