15 Minute Forums – Autumn 2014

The 15 minute forum programme this term has been rich and varied.  For those that are unaware of what a 15 minute forum is, every Thursday after school, a member of staff shares something that has been going well in their classroom, with their peers – in 15 minutes.

This post is a summary of the key messages from each forum that has taken place this term.

As a school we have identified 6 key pedagogical principles that we think are essential for great teaching.  Teachers are encouraged to implement these in way that best suits them – there is no prescriptive way of teaching.  The 15 minute forums provide a great way of stimulating discussion about how these 6 principles might be put into action:

A summary of each of the forums follows.

Retrieval Practice – Andy Tharby – 25th September

• Knowledge is key – you can’t think critically, evaluate or analyse something without knowledge.
• Using your memory, improves your memory – so regualr, low stakes tests/quizzes/questions and answer sessions are all really useful for memory.

Read more here.

Closing the learning gap with homework – Sam Down – 9th October

• Homework is useful for students as it supports deliberate practice and for teachers as it identifies learning gaps.
• Once students do their homework, they should get useful formative feedback on how to improve it and then be give the time to work on the improvements – either by redrafting their work, or by completing questions on the topics they were stuck on (following teacher input)

Read more here.

Success with low ability students – Shane Borrett – 16th October

• Raise your expectations of low ability students amd think about them not as low ability (suggests achievement is fixed) but as having lower starting points – but still aiming for the same finishing line, in terms of their learning.
• Praise the effort they put into their work and make them feel proud when they produce an excellent piece of work.  Make sure they know why it is excellent.
• Modeling and feedback are key – as is repeition through interleaving.

Read more here.

Student led discussion on feedback – 23rd October

• DIRT is great – but give them more time to do it well!
• Verbal feedback is great, but even more useful when the teacher writes the feedback/question in the exercise book for the student to respond to.
• One to one feedback was seen as the most useful – when the class are all quietly working on a task and the teacher has an individual discussion with students about a particular piece of work.

Read more here.

The best revision guide ever! – Kate Bloomfield – 13th November

• Make students realise that the best revision guide they could have is their exercise book – i’s all relevant, organised and personalsied to them….and free!
• Insist that they ake pride in their books!  Keep it neat, well organised, annotate it with points during the lesson and respnd to teacher feedback.
• At the end of a half term, go through and colour code the pages depending on the topic covered.

Read more here.

Unpicking the pupil premium – Kate Blight/Chloe Gardner – 20th November

• What greater moral purpose can a school have, than to make sure that social background is not a barrier to success?
• Know your PP students – not just their names, but what their strnegths are and what they struggle with.
• Use personalised and specific feedback to support them with the topics they struggle with – and check they respond.
• Ensure they are challenged – don’t lower your expectations for them – but make sure they are supported.  Many will have low self confidnece about what they can achieve.
• Homework makes a positive difference – just make sure they have the facilities to do it.
• master learning appears to work ie. do less, but better.  So focus on mastering the key ideas and topics.

Read more here.

Walking, talking exams – Jody Chan – 27th November

• Students lose a number of marks in exams through not responding to the question appropriately – or not using the information provided with them.
• So do an exam – or part of an exam – differently.
• talk them through each question one at a time, pointing out the key features of the question – but don’t give them the asnswer or share any knowledge.
• Then give them the allocated time to answer the question.
• Then talk through the mark schems and mark the questions together.

Read more here.

Literacy Matters – Lucy Darling – 4th December

• Insist on subject specific, academic language.
• use ‘verbal response starters’ in the same way as you would use written ‘sentence starters’.
• Encourage redrafting of work to support high expectations of written work.
• Know your subject specific writing genre and model this.
• Encourage and support reading.

Read more here.

Take away homework – Chris Runeckles – 11th December

• If using take away homework i.e. givin students a choice of tasks to complete at home, create an ‘illusion of choice’ by making sure that all tasks have a similar element of challenge – so there is no opting out!
• DIRT tasks should be compulsory – just make sure that students have had sufficient feedback and teacher input to implement the improvement.
• Whichever options they go for. plan in useful and formative feedback.  This can be made easier by having prepared success criteria for each task.

Many thanks to everybody who led, attended and contributed to the 15 minute forums this term.  We will be back next with another great programme of forums – details here.

Have a great Christmas and New Year!

 

 

 

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