My first year in 6, learning so much about the different things schools can be subject to this year!

He tweeted back agreeing that it was learning curve and pointed me in the direction of a blog post he wrote, partially about year 6, after attending a course on assertive mentoring this time last year. In the post, David explains how Peter Boddy, who was running the course, spoke about ‘typical’ patterns of uneven progress in KS2 in reading, writing and maths:

Year 3 – 1 point progress (0.5 sub level)
Year 4 – 2 points progress (1 sub level)
Year 5 – 3 points progress (1.5 sub level)
Year 6 – 6 points progress( 3 sub levels)

Peter Boddy questioned why this was typically the case, why a Year 6 teacher can do this and asked whether it was because the Year 6 teacher knew how much hinged on the results. Coincidentally, I had left a comment on this very post a year ago myself:

I have to say, that I don’t know if this is the picture in my school*, but I’m not sure what to think of it. I can see how being in year 6 can be a stressful place to be and if I were to be moved into year 6 in September, I think I would feel a different kind of pressure that I haven’t experienced in year 4. However, I would argue I’m constantly reflecting on the impact of the strategies I use and in pupil progress meetings we look at progress data, analyse it, discuss what we’re doing that’s working and what we need to do next. My results are scrutinised, but arguably not by as many different groups as KS2 SATs results are. Still, I’m really very proud of the progress made by my class this year so far.

My worry is that this is sounding like an argument for more testing and league tables…?

*And I still don’t. This post works on the assumption that Peter Boddy’s picture of uneven progress throughout KS2 is a typical picture in schools across the UK. It won’t be true of all schools.

So, a year on, after teaching in year 6 myself, I admitted to David that I do feel I now have a clearer picture of assessment and I’ve felt on many occasions that I have learned so much this year. Of course, I think teachers are continually learning, but after spending two years in Year 4, I have to say that Year 6 is… different. Does it sound dramatic to say that I think it has changed me as a teacher? I don’t know, but I would suggest it has. For example, if I were to move to Year 3 now after being in Year 6, I think I would be a different teacher than if I had moved there straight from Year 4. This all leads me back to the original questions though: is there something different about Year 6 that results in children typically making the most progress this year? And if so, what is it?

My experience

• Levelling: I have levelled work more frequently, particularly in writing. (Perhaps this is partly down to the change in the writing SATs, which means that now it is done by teacher assessment of a child’s work throughout the year and not just what they produce in their SATs writing test). In fact, I broadly level every piece of writing that’s done as well as mark it and give feedback as I normally would. As a result, I have never had such a clear, up-to-date picture of where all my class are at any one time, as I have had this year.
• Targets: possibly as a result of levelling work more frequently, I feel much clearer myself about what constitutes a level 4 or a level 5. Again, especially in writing. Consequently, I can recognise what a child needs to do to move on when I level a piece of work. Of course, I gave children targets to move them on prior to being in year 6, but if I compared them, I would imagine that my targets are more specific now. Plus, targets are updated more often.
• Intervention: more specific targets leads to more specific intervention. Not only that, but the intervention set up this year has been reviewed and adapted frequently because I am levelling and targetting more often.

So ultimately there has been no magic formula. Instead it has mainly come down to changes in assessment. I think I assess frequently and accurately and use this specifically. The point is though, I really try to do something with what I’ve found out that gives children the opportunity to move on, whether it be a word bank or setting up a dedicated level 6 maths blog or an intervention group. I am in no way suggesting that teachers who aren’t or haven’t taught in Year 6 don’t do any of the above. You can see from my comment on David’s post that I was ‘constantly reflecting on the impact of strategies’ I used in Year 4, but with hindsight I have been more creative and consistent with my intervention strategies. In fact, consistency has been key this year. Again, I can, and do, only speak from my own experience.

Some people might suggest teachers teach more ‘intensely’ in Year 6, but I suppose that depends on what you mean by ‘intensely’. Yes, I certainly assess more rigorously, but has my class timetable been full of reading, writing and maths? I would honestly say no. Every science lesson is still hands on with focussed recording, we still have cross-curricular topics with children creating their own Pop Art, turning our classroom into a Scandinvian country for the day and building shelters on Disaster Zone Day to name but a few of our projects. Year 6 doesn’t just have to be about writing and maths, but when it is time for those, the targets are clear.

Moving on
After being in Year 6, I think I now have the invaluable knowledge of the bigger picture about where children ‘should’ be by the time they leave primary school. This is something I can take with me to any year group. The differences in how I assess would also be something I would take with me if I were to teach in another year group. Maybe I will have higher expectations now too? I’ve now seen children make three sub levels progress in a year so I know it’s possible? Although I can’t be sure of that until that time comes.

Evening it out
So why does it take being in Year 6 to realise these changes in many cases, if the ‘typical’ uneven progress across KS2 Peter Boddy shared is true? Perhaps it’s partly down to pupils being more aware of their progress and spurred on by the imminence of secondary school? Undoubtedly the KS2 results being used so publicly to create league tables must play its part. It is hard to compltely ignore that fact and perhaps gives teachers the impetus to assess more closely throughout the year and, importantly, act on it quickly. So if that is the case, how can ‘typical’ Year 6 progress be mirrored in other year groups? Publicise all the results from every year group like the year 6 ones are? Possibly not. Give all teachers the chance to teach in Year 6 and then take what they’ve learned to other year groups? Possibly.

What do you think? Have you taught in Year 6? Did it somehow change you or give you a perspective that you didn’t get in other year groups? How? Are any of my experiences similar to yours? I would love to hear your thoughts.

DSCF2634 by couscouschocolat
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It has been just over a week since GTAUK – or Google Teacher Academy UK in case you were puzzled – and I think I just about feel ready enough to share. Where to begin?

The lead up
Prior to GTAUK, we were all arranged into teams and assigned a team leader. Randomly, my team leader turned out to be Ian Addison, who I had already met several times before. Also Simon McLoughlin, who I met at this year’s BETT Show, was in my team too – Team Rubik. However, we had a team Google Hangout as well so I felt like I had met the rest of Team Rubik before getting to GTA anyway, which was great. Simon took it upon himself to organise a pre-GTAUK dinner on the Tuesday night, which had an impressive turnout. Again, it was lovely to be able to talk to some people before GTA began on the Wednesday.

Even the sweets were Google colours.

Day one
What can I say? Day one was fast paced. Our teams moved around from session to session and I was blown away by the sheer amount of information that was thrown at me. Google Sites, Google Search, Google Apps for Education, Google Calendar, Google Art Project, Google in Education, Inspiring Ideas, Google Maps, Google Forms and Scripts, YouTube. Google+… whew. I’m sure I’ve missed something out. I made brief notes using linoit.com, which I have share below. Hopefully they make sense and there is something useful in there for others!

Old school Google.

Day two – the unconference
Day two, which was optional, had a much more relaxed pace. Attendees had been asked to use Google Moderator to suggest sessions they would like to lead or go into more detail on. People moved more freely between sessions and  it was lead by the wants and needs of the group. 

Team Rubik!

Magic moments
At the end of day one, we were asked to think of our ‘magic moments’ – those parts of the day that really stuck out for us. This was and is a near impossible task because there were just so many, but some moments that really struck a chord with me were:

• James Sanders‘ session on blended learning and flipping the classroom. James, who teaches history in the US, shared how he uses YouTube, Google Apps and a selection of other free tools, like socrative.com and todaysmeet.com, in his paperless classroom – all the children in his classes have Chomebooks. He blogs all his lessons and makes videos to accompany each one so he spends his time with the children in his classes rather than at the front, talking. I know this struck a chord with me because I was inspired to make a start on my own YouTube channel shortly after GTAUK was over. I teach in a primary setting and although we don’t have one-to-one devices, I’m interested in exploring flipped learning and the power of video further.
• During her session on Google Search, Lisa Thumann explained how Google Translate could be a useful tool in meetings with parents, who speak little or no English. You could possibly have two laptops set up, one for you and one for the parent. Now, Google Translate was not a new tool for me, but I had never made the connection between that issue and the tool. I kept wondering, how come I never thought of that?! This will definitely be something I will try in future parents meetings where language might be a barrier.
• Mark Allen really drove home in the importance of groups during his session on Google Apps for Education to ensure targeted communication. When setting up Google Apps for Education, the groups need to reflect the structure of your organisation. He likened setting up a ‘nested’ structure to a Russian doll. This really got me thinking about the structure of my school and will be the first thing I think about when I begin the process of setting it up.
• Tom Barrett offered a different perspective on Google Docs and Maps, by thinking of them as story telling tools. He used all the different types of Docs to tell the story of a day in the life of his son. Magical. He also showed us how Maps can be used as settings for stories (especially in conjunction with animaps.com) and to create maths challenges based on your school’s setting. I have created a maths map before for my school, but really want to explore it as a stimulus for story writing now too.
• Zoe Ross showed us how we could use Google Sites to jointly create a website in minutes. I am going to magpie this approach, when introducing Google Sites to a whole class because I have only worked on Google Sites with small groups so far.

Now, I could go on and on, but I’m going to leave it there because the rest of my notes are below.

Inspired on two levels
Overall, GTA was as overwhelming and inspring as I thought it would be. It inspired me on two levels: first of all there was the ‘purely tech’ level. I learned lots of tips and tricks, particularly about Google Chrome, which wowed me. If you use Chrome, you must check out my notes on the ‘Go Chrome or go home’ session. However, the other more important level for me, went beyond just the technology and actually inspired me to think more outside the box in terms of teaching approaches and gave me a renewed motivation to keep on learning and ‘dreaming out loud’, as Mark Wagner challenged us so eloquently. So my action plan needs to be finished and the real journey can begin now.

Google certified – SLAM!

Notes

Day 1: morning sessions

Day 1: afternoon sessions

Day 2: unconference sessions

Considering unlocking my tweets. Feeling apprehensive about it though for the usual reasons. Thoughts? #ukedchat

When I signed up to Twitter back in July 2010, I joined with the purpose of connecting with other teachers and people in the field of education. Following the odd tweeting celebrity was definitely more of a by product of the whole experience for me. With that in mind, I decided to tweet by the rule that I would only tweet things that I would feel comfortable with any member of staff, parent or pupil reading. To this day, I think I have stuck by that philosophy successfully. Yet not long after signing up to Twitter, I decided to change my account settings from the default of public tweets to protected ones. Twitter defines these as:

• Public Tweets (the default setting) are visible to anyone, whether or not they have a Twitter account
• Protected Tweets may only be visible to previously approved Twitter followers

A sense of security
So why did I feel the need to make this change so early on? Even now, I can’t give you a definitive answer, but I think it felt ‘safer’ to have them protected. A little odd perhaps considering I had not experienced any Twitter-related issues that meant I needed or wanted to feel safer. However, I think having to approve my followers manually gave me a sense of security. In reality though, is this actually the case? The key word there is ‘sense’. One tweeter suggested:

a protected account doesn’t protect you from anything.#futileandpointless

What’s changed?
I have been merrily tweeting away in a protected fashion for well over a year and had no real problem with this so why change now? Well, the other day I tweeted this in response to Miles Berry‘s tweet about teaching being a job that has a moral purpose:

@mberry It does. It’s not my job description that holds me accountable really; it’s my responsibility to my chn

Miles tweeted back that if my account wasn’t set to private he would have retweeted it because it was a key message. That made me stop and think: what a shame that someone felt I had posted something worthy of re-sharing, but they could not easily do so. Doesn’t that contradict the whole purpose of why I am on Twitter anyway? Yes, they could copy and paste it manually and put RT in front of it, but then if I am comfortable with people doing that, why I am protecting my tweets in the first place?

The Twitterverse has spoken
The response I got to my initial question , as expected, was a mixed bag, but I would say the overwhelming majority of people felt that they preferred having public tweets. Interestingly, even people who had had negative experiences involving tweets being taken out of context, misconstrued and used against them still preferred to tweet openly.  A selection of the responses:

I have never locked mine – never had any issues, ok get spam mentions but just block the sender.

mine are not protected and it is always in the back of my mind to watch what I tweet, but we are allowed opinions

Let’s hope you don’t tweet about *any* aspect of your life. A parent might read, take offence, complain leading to who knows what

mine are unlocked, never had any comeback. I think as long as you don’t tweet anything offensive then you should be ok

I wanted to [unlock] a while ago but thought better of it as anything you say in 145 characters can be taken out of context!

Should policy dictate the access to *personal* social media accounts? I’m unlocked, and even followed by a parent!

public tweets are ok as long as you are careful. Doesn’t need a policy – protected under employment law

protecting stops me retweeting you

I protected my tweets after a pupil tried to follow me

I do keep an eye out 4 new followers and block any 1 don’t think are appropriate etc as yet not had pupil follow

I protect mine to stop trolls and those with friends in high places seeing what I think

you know I’ve had problems but I still prefer unlocked. I felt locked stopped me contacting ppl & inhibits sharing

I locked after an issue with someone searching for me for negative reasons but prefer unlocked. Also abide with @simfin ’s advice on not being negative or controversial on here I try 2 avoid dischord

I’m unlocked, say what I feel and will continue to do so. I block when trolled.

Never understood need to block-I don’t believe you say anything remotely controversial but also opens up ability 2RT ur gr8 tweets

A decision
I have considered everybody contributions, which I am very grateful for because it really helped to clarify things, and have decided to unlock my tweets at this point in time.

There are three main reasons for this. First of all, I don’t think protecting your tweets actually gives you any real protection at all. When someone requests to follow me, I do check who they are, e.g. read their Twitter bio, and if it says they are something to do with education I accept their request. If there is no bio at all, I don’t and if they are a pupil, I block them (this happened once). Simple as that. However, this doesn’t mean I really know who they are at all so I am still not safe to tweet any old thing I like in their presence. Protected tweets would really only be protected if I personally knew every single person I allowed to follow me and could ensure they would never copy and paste anything I posted. This brings me on to my second reason: I think protecting your tweets can actually lull you into a false sense of security, which is potentially even more dangerous than having public tweets. Just because your tweets are protected does that mean you don’t have to give what you tweet a second thought? No, absolutely not, but it can be easy to slip into that mindset. Lastly, and most importantly, I think protecting tweets inhibits retweeting and sharing, which is the whole point of why I am a tweeting teacher in the first place.

So yes, my tweets will be public until I find a reason to reconsider my standpoint on this again. I will carry on thinking carefully about what I tweet, but perhaps even more carefully than I did before, which can only be a positive thing in my eyes. That doesn’t mean that the tweets to Lisa Faulkner telling her about the latest recipe I’ve just tried from her cook book or ones including pictures of my lovely baby nephew will stop (I am only human, folks and he is incredibly cute), but I will be more aware and surely everyone could benefit from an extra dose of awareness now and again? We are all responsible for managing our online presence after all and that goes way beyond just protecting your tweets as @simfin explains so clearly in the video below.

What are your views on public and protected tweets and managing your online presence in general?

(Image: 30 days of gratitude- Day 26 by aussiegall)

Afterwards, I got some great feedback and many people seemed really enthusiastic about starting to blog with their classes. Hopefully some blogging training will follow and some other schools in Croydon will soon starting blogging too. Below is the prezi I made, feel free to use this if it looks like it might be useful for you.

At the start of the session, draw up a large circle in the centre of your whiteboard (or large sheet of paper – how retro). Note down any contributions that relate to the topic in the circle and put any that don’t outside of the circle. By doing this, you have not dismissed anyone’s response, but have visually shown them that you while you have acknowledged their answer, it is not ‘on topic.’

This was another suggestion put to us during the SALT training we had during INSET last week so I’ve yet to try it. What do you think?

The reasons as to why this could be happening are vast and as individual as the child.  However, today we had a speech and language focussed inset and the speech and language therapist running it shared one very simple way to encourage children with language disorders or delay to answer a question: give them options. In other words, turn your questions into multiple choice.

What colour is the girl’s top? becomes What colour is the girl’s top? Is it red or blue?

This approach is particularly useful for children with word finding difficulties; they know the answer when they see it, but struggle to find the word independently. However, as with many things I have observed and learned about, what is good for children with special educational needs is often also good for all children.

What connective could I use here? Is it but or so?
How could we remove the salt from the mixture? Would we use filtration or evaporation?
What is the x-coordinate? Is it 3 or -2?

I can certainly see how I could use this technique to encourage more confidence with answering questions in almost any year 6 lesson if it was needed.

Meeting people
The excitement for BETT this year, my second one, has been building up for quite some time now. Twitter was a-buzz about it and it was catching! It may seem odd to say this about a technology show, but it was the meeting of people in the ‘analogue sense’ (thanks for that phrase, Andrea Carr) that made it for me. I’ve been much more involved in Twitter this year and BETT would not have been even a fraction as exciting without that element to it. It was great to catch up with folks I have already met and get the chance to speak, even briefly, to the many that I hadn’t. It just reaffirmed my belief that speaking with other teachers is one of the best things you can do as a teacher yourself.

Taking children
A while back, the lovely people at 2Simple invited me to bring some children to present on their stand. So on the Friday, seven very excited and very nervous digital leaders came with me and our ICT technician to BETT. I tried to prepare them about what it would be like, but their stunned faces when we first walked in confirmed that I hadn’t quite managed to do this! However, once they were up on the stand, they were awesome and I can’t quite put into words how proud I was of them. They spoke to a rather large, but extremely supportive crowd about how they ran a staff meeting showing teachers how to use Purple Mash. My favourite part was possibly the unrehearsed Q&A session at the end where one of my girls asked the crowd if they had any questions and Anthony Evans, 2Simple’s online content manager, took on a David Dimbleby-esque role! They also got to meet Julia Skinner, who they know through doing the 100 Word Challenge every week and has celebrity-like status to them. After the excitement of their presentation, they had great fun visiting stands and getting to try out lots of other tech that they haven’t before. I may need to find some budget for BrainPOP after their rave reviews… Thank you to everyone who supported my children and were so kind to them and also for the great tweets I received after. Particular thanks must go to Ant Evans, Jack Sloan, Steve Bunce, Oliver Quinlan, Andrew Kilgour and Julia Skinner. I will be sharing all of them with them. They all told me it was ‘the best trip ever’ many times and they’ve already asked to do an assembly to share their experiences. We’ll definitely be back next year if someone will have us!

They also got a mention in Oliver Quinlan’s BETT 2012 Scrapbook here.

#TMBETT2012
Whew. The Teach Meet at BETT blew me away in so many ways. It was only my second one and my first one at BETT and I suppose I wasn’t really prepared for the size of it. Also, somehow, Ian Addison had talked Cherise Duxbury, Julie Stanton and I into presenting our story of how we use Google Docs to plan maths together every week. None of us had presented before, but the most interesting aspect of it all was that the three of us had only got together in person for the first time about an hour before! So to say we were unpractised, unpolished and nervous was an understatement and a half. In the end, we went up last and by that point had worked ourselves up into an excruciatingly painful state, but you know what? We needn’t have. The support we got was just unbelievable. People, who I know, follow and respect, took the time say and tweet some amazing things to us and it bowled me over. To have people like Tim Rylands even know who I am, let alone take the time to give such amazing feedback was, quite frankly awesome. And for Ewan McIntosh to tell me the next morning that he enjoyed our presentation, well, it made the terrible nerves worthwhile. Thank you to everyone who took the time to do that.

Beyond my own experience of presenting for the first time, there were also many other #tmbett2012 highlights, such as BEd students, Amy Parkin and Emma Taylorson, taking to the stand – just brilliant! Oliver Quinlan spoke about building an online community and that growing a PLN is not about luck, but actually about having a member of that community there to induct you into it. Many people have been kind to me, but I have to mention Ian Addison at this point, who, through his encouragement and support, has been my ‘inductor’. Emma Dawson shared the amazing Monopoly and Mission Explore projects she has run with children, which I would I need to talk more to her about and Paul Hutson spoke about organising Kidsmeets, something I hope to get involved with too. Colin Hill showed us just how versatile eBooks are and David Mitchell revealed his Feb29th.net blogging project… the ideas just went on. It was a fantastic experience.

The DellEdu Think Tank
This was quite a surreal one for me, I have to admit. I had received a couple of emails from Dell asking me to attend their think tank, which was being held on Saturday and it sounded interesting so I thought, why not. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I know I didn’t expect to be sat around a table of only about 20 people to take part in what felt like a quite intimate discussion that was being streamed live over the internet and facilitated by Tom Barrett and Ewan McIntosh. Honestly, I felt out of my depth on arrival and did wonder how I ended up there. However, once it got under way it was extremely interesting and thought provoking. I had to leave at 11.00am to present on 2Simple, another great experience, and BETT being as it is, there was too much (and too many people) I wanted to see so I didn’t make it back but followed the #domoreedu tweets with interest.

What next?
Our LA Primary ICT consultant saw my digital leaders’ Purple Mash presentation and has asked them to do it again at our LA ICT Coordinators conference, which is just great. In fact, seeing just how fantastic the children were has given me big ideas for my digital leaders. The support I received myself during and after the Teach Meet has spurred me on to present at other ones in the future and be a giver as well as a taker! Overall this year’s BETT has left me more buzzing than I felt beforehand and with some great ideas in the pipeline.

Could you…

• let children decide who to work with?
• give children a choice of topics to choose from?
• allow children to decide the mode of output of a final piece of work – poster, presentation, short film, website, scrapbook, model, blog post, a combination of the above or something entirely different?
• ask children where they would like to work?
• challenge children to plan how they are going to make a project happen and what resources, materials and tools they will need?

I am trying all these things with our latest topic, which is all about natural disasters.Today, the children grouped themselves, chose what type of natural disaster to focus on, decided how they would present their final project and planned what they would need over the next few weeks as well as what to bring in for the next lesson. They were given some guidelines about some things they must include such as an explanation as to what causes their chosen natural disaster, where they occur and famous examples, but apart from that it’s very much up to them. The buzz in the classroom was undeniable.

How do you introduce elements of control in your classroom?

My immediate thought was to have P4C-based enquiries and activities, but then I pondered on it for a little longer and realised that I wanted to ‘give it back’ to my class somehow to create a truly child-led experience. In Essential Motivation in the Classroom, Ian Gilbert talks about happiness being directly related to the extent to which we perceive ourselves to be in control of our own lives. In school, there is much that is out of children’s control, but by making a conscious step to give some control back to the children in my class, could I increase levels of motivation, engagement… even happiness?

Others have blogged about independent and child-led learning in the past, which has also inspired me. Oliver Quinlan’s writing on child centered learning, negotiated learning time and use of provocations has been something that has stuck with me for some time and more recently someone pointed me in the direction of Jim Maloney’s blog post on independent learning. My idea is to take elements from all these things and implement a ‘Teach Someone Something’ project. The overall aim being that children work together in groups or pairs to teach somebody else anything they choose. How to do something or make something, that really is up to them, as would be their intended audience and mode of delivery. One pair might choose to teach a group of year 1 children how to make friendship bracelets while another might create a video showing how to improve passing skills in football. The ‘spare’ hour would be used for children to plan and resource  their idea. My hope is that this encourages all sorts of skills and interests, particularly those that don’t necessarily got much or any coverage in our curriculum. I want everybody to get the chance to show how they are clever.

Have you introduced something similar in your class? Could I change my angle on the ‘Teach Someone Something’ idea or do something entirely different with it? Any feedback, ideas and suggestions would be great appreciated.