Wider Reading1

Do you remember visiting the library or a bookshop as a child? The excitement as you browsed the shelves picking your favourites based on the look of the cover, the thickness of the pages? I love to read. I find reading enjoyable, informative and relaxing. That said I have very little time to read, maybe it is because of this rather than in spite of it that I enjoy reading so much, because my reading time is precious. I carve out an hour a week during my working day to read blogs, Twitter, websites, re-watch webinars etc. I am not talking about that here, what I am talking about here is sitting down and reading essentially a book. I like a paper book, ironic as most of my work is online. I am a HUGE fan of book snaps, I probably did book snaps before they were a thing at university. Back in the day I would photocopy pages of books with my finger pointing at the bit I wanted to remember or relate to. I am a really annoyingly fast reader, one of those fast readers that is really annoying when they finish before everyone else. I am quite sad in that if I am going to devote time to reading I want it to be something of interest. Something relevant, something new, something inspiring. At the start of lock down, we knew it was coming for a period of time so I cleared the book shelves at work. Rapidly, panic picking teaching and learning books.

Whilst working from home I have enjoyed carving out time to sit and read these books. Books on feedback, assessment, leadership, technology tools and everything in between. The time I have saved in commuting to work I have chosen to spend half of it reading and half of it relaxing. Many a time I have sat down excited to read a book, phone ready for booksnaps and things haven't gone to plan. There have been books that were quick reads because they had nothing new in. I mean literally nothing new. One was on leading sessions and the ground breaking information the 300 pages had to impart was that you need to be organised and plan your sessions including rest breaks. Another book was one that I couldn't read quickly, every time I tried to read it I struggled to connect. The flow wasn't right. The words didn't make sense. The content switched about all over the place, it was a hard read. Another problem arose when a book was too academic for what it was trying to be. It was written like a dissertation but was meant to be a classroom hand book. It was like when you took your library books home as a child and you realised they weren't as fun as the cover promised!

Is there a problem because there is nothing new to say? Have we seen it all in classrooms before? Education goes through cycles. Back in the day when I started it was all about learning intentions, then it moved to objectives and everyone asked students to 'understand'. Those of us who were older cringed as we were told that you couldn't evidence 'understanding' in the classroom but we all ploughed on as someone said it was a good idea. Then the sphere's shifted to differentiation and HATS, MATS and LATS. Then it became stretch and challenge. Then it went back to differentiation and individulisation. There may have been other variations in between but my point is there has always been a 'new' thing. Each 'new' thing has always had an author, a leader of the movement. Every leadership team, in every school, in every college, bought all the books and booked the external speakers and all staff left with beautiful handouts or signed copies of the books.

So why is there nothing new now? What has changed? I can see gamification is the next new thing. I can see esports coming but what is 'new'? We have long gamified lessons and gamification has been around for a while. We have been waiting for technology and appetite for it to increase in education, finally it is here. But again, it isn't new. The gamified elements of my paper based lessons back in the day were motivating for the learners and brought great results. Perhaps I should stop looking for new and look for something inspiring? Something exciting? The books I chose were disappointing. Kindly my boss offered to buy me some more during lock down, and he sent some he wanted me to read too. I sat excitedly down to read the first of these books today and instantly finished it. It had nothing new to offer nor anything inspiring, there were no classroom examples. The greatest takeaway from this book was that videos are difficult for students to follow so think about what you put in our video content. Sorry, but yawn!

I think in reflecting I have realised that I am not after new, I am after real. I am more experienced now and what I want to read now are real classroom stories. I want to read how what has been written played out in the classroom. I want to hear from new people, not new ideas. What I want to hear about are the who, the where and the why from varied institutions. I don't want any more academia amplified because it has a shiny cover, I want amplified voices from the classroom. SJ

Planning sessions1

I am a little sad in that I love planning a good lesson. I mean a really good lesson. You know the one when you walk in and pretty much you can see how it will go. That's not to say there won't be some curve balls along the way but you can visualise the lesson. Most of my lessons now are staff CPD rather than traditional subject lessons. I don't think that makes a difference as such, staff want the session to finish quicker as they want to get back to work. Students want the session to finish quicker so they can get back to enjoying life. Staff don't make notes because they don't want to be seen as a geek. Students don't take notes because they have super powerful brains that retain everything they hear. Maybe I've misunderstood why students don't take notes, but we will leave that there!

Planning a good lesson isn't just about the sequencing it's about having a clear start and end point. I mean an explicitly clear start and end point. The start point is established and documented. Perhaps it's a pre learning task done independently, it could be a post it note discussion at the start of the session or it can be a dictated start point by circumstance, i.e. it is a brand new topic. The skill is to predict this start point. The challenge is to react and adapt when the start point is different to what you predicted! 

Sometimes when I see trainee teachers teach, things don't go to plan at this start point. The students are further ahead than they expected, they can already answer the content that is planned for later in the session. Even worse is when the students can't even access the start point and have no chance of doing the rest of the lesson. Experience as a teacher tells you in both these situations you rip up the lesson plan and do a pen and paper lesson freestyle and adapt to the learners need. Trainee teachers don't have this experience, some experienced staff wouldn't feel able to abandon their beautiful lesson either. I often see across all staff a curriculum driven agenda of delivery. Not that this is wrong, if we don't cover the content in the curriculum the learner won't achieve the outcome of the course, I get it. But that curriculum can be delivered fast or slow, leaping forwards and skipping back to meet the needs of the learner. All too often we deliver a linear agenda of our curriculum content.

Misunderstanding starting points was almost fatal for me in a staff CPD session recently. I was told that the starting points were determined by circumstance as staff had no prior knowledge and to start at the beginning. I knew staff had seen similar training before and it couldn't be a zero base start point so I made a few tweaks and went in. I came out battered, bruised and exhausted!!! Some staff were below zero base and couldn't login to their devices as they had never used a trackpad before and refused to use it now as it didn't look and feel like a mouse. Some staff had listened to their first training session and refused to engage in my session as it was beneath them. Even worse, I inadvertently, by starting from a base point of zero gave them the false impression that they were now experts as they knew more than the taught content I delivered.

It was a car crash. I tried to adapt mid session and push forward for the more advanced ones but I didn't have a login for the next part of the system and it all went wrong! On reflection I hadn't planned how I was going to adapt. I had planned a great session. I knew the start point (!) And I knew where I wanted the end point to be. All the stuff in the middle was excellent, honest! I even had checkpoints built in. But I had no plan for what if they don't achieve this checkpoint? Or what if they exceed the required knowledge for the checkpoint? I hadn't planned that in. I tried to rely on experience and adapt but because I hadn't planned it I couldn't access the IT system I needed.

I had planned a linear delivery. I needed to have planned a skipping forwards and looping backwards delivery. So I changed the way that I plan. I am laughed at for being a Google Certified Trainer and still relying on paper so much but I do! I write (on paper) across the middle of the page the linear plan of the session. Start to finish a sequence of what will happen. I then scribble around it with arrows of if this bit bombs I can go back and do this bit. If this bit goes really well I can skip and do this bit. It looks a mess! But it's a beautiful mess reflecting the thought process and care that I have put into planning for my learners be them staff or students. 

Starting points are tricky. If you set pre learning, give yourself enough time to review, reflect, and adapt you planning based on the pre task results. It's no good if the students have a deadline of Monday for your Tuesday session, realistically do you or would you be willing to scrap your beautiful lesson plan in that short period of time?

Do you have a back up plan in place for if your bell work or starter activity doesn't get students to the starting points that you had planned?

Have you checked that the circumstances you have been told about are correct? Will the stating point be zero? I wish I had checked mine! SJ

Home Schooling Part 1

I have been an educator for almost 10 years now. I like to think that I am OK at my job. I know what a good lesson looks like, I know how to check for progress, I can give feedback and next steps etc. Yet home schooling in lockdown has caused me challenges that I wasn't expecting. I expected some challenges in terms of managing content, it's not my age range specialty, obviously the relationship with my kids and them wanting to engage would be my main challenge. The last day at school I was given a huge pack of fun educational things to do at home. This wasn't useful. I knew how to make play doh in the microwave already. Now this wasn't school's fault, they didn't know what to do either, it was all very quick and sudden. 

So I dutifully created a login for the age appropriate teacher resource site and began planning some lessons. Whoa did I struggle! There was so much content. Sentence prompts, they look easy enough, I will begin with those. Cue 1587 resources on sentence prompts. How do I know which is a good task? How do I know my kids will be able to do it? How do I change it from portrait to landscape in this website? This made me think, how are other parents, non educators managing? It was very overwhelming.

I think that there is a wider problem in that we haven't learnt the skill of curation yet or it certainly isn't embedded yet in our ways. We teach the 6C's in education settings but as adults, leaders, educators of a different generation of when the internet first arrived, we haven't been taught this skill. Part of my job is to help educators create LMS content, Google Classrooms for example. All too often I see reams and reams of information in a stream, no topics, no structure. The educator has posted articles that they like, assessment tasks, slides from class, wellbeing updates, contact details for pastoral care...all good stuff but how does a learner access it easily, how do they find what they need?

In a social media world we are used to pinging a link, sharing something funny, it's easy. But as educators and leaders we need to adapt to a different skill set when sharing with people. We need to be explicit about what we want them to access. Google Classroom (disclaimer I am a Google Certified Trainer) has some great tools for this. Material posts are when you want learners to read something. Assignments are when you want them to do something etc. However educators need to use the topics tools too. A good place to start is always, admin tasks, pastoral information, exam information and then subject specific tasks. Learners can then navigate easier by clicking into the topics they need and then searching in a smaller area for the information they are looking for. 

Even with these tools staff still need to curate the content, it's not a case of sharing every article that you see. There's a saying, think before you click. We should extend this to think before you click the share button. Is it the best example of what you are trying to share? Does it add value to your discussion? Will the experience be enhanced by you sharing this content? Tools like Wakelet help with this. Wakelet lets you pop all your bits in to one place, all your websites, articles, infographics from the web and then you can trim your content down and curate it on Wakelet. Why not share your Wakelet board and your number 1 example? Let people view your collection of resources and ideas and then promote your best example. Surely that is a more positive experience than asking people to scroll through streams of posts?

So home schooling got off to a slow start, I struggled to plan and access the content, spoiler alert, there are further challenges ahead in my home schooling journey...SJ