Effective classrooms

"Effective schools are full of effective classrooms"

But what makes an effective classroom? What does an outstanding lesson look like? It's not about what the teacher does - it is about what and how the students learn. This must be true at all ages although the list below is more geared to High School.

Here are some ideas:-

• probing questions - not just answering the question for them, really getting them to think (metacognition)
• students keeping learning jorurnals
• collaborative learning
• scaffolded learning
• good rapport
• not escalating too quickly up the sanctions scale
• evidence of Asessment for Learning
• lesson objectives phrased as questions
• differentiation - target students
• pace - don't take 15 minutes on starter
• make sure students know how to improve
• try to move away from stand and deliver
• try to avoid too much copying
• use display as teaching tool
• make good use of diagnostic marking
• use the traffic lights cards in the student planners to demonstrate understanding and evaluate lessons
• think of innovative ways to use the Interactive White Board - see earlier blog
• consider using social media netowrks
• consider using neuroscience ideas in the class room

reflection and collaboration in learning - in practice

I have been thinking for some time about the nature of collaborative learning at all ages and stages. The wiki that I have been championing for my school staff for about 8 months now has had quite a different outcome (so far) to the one for my GCSE students - started around the same time. The one for my MA students has been different again.

Staff wiki
mainly publishing and lurking going on here, see below for what I intend to do about this

GCSE wiki
again, lots of publishing BUT the recent addtion of the page called "hey! don't pass notes in class!" has been a major turnaround because they are now really collaborating in their learning in class time and to some degree with their assignments as well

MA wiki
questions asked of one another has made this more collaborative in nature from the outset, with students eager to help each other and to discuss openly, however, room for improvement, again see below.

Linking to my last post about theories of learning, and to Howard Rheingold's SFGate (see earlier blog post) and his ideas about attention literacy, I think that the next stage for the staff wiki and the MA wiki is to actually get participants to start blogging themselves and to link this in to the 'master wiki' or 'master blog'. I'd like to use twitter for this as well.

For the MA wiki, I will start this with the next cohort in September since the current one are nearing the end of the module.

For the staff wiki, am starting tomorrow! There are four newly Qualified Teachers who have to produce some action research as part of their assessment. Tomorrow I am running a session with them on how to undertake this project. I am going to ask them to blog their progress and use collaborative reflective writing to put it all together. if this goes well, I will also approach just a few more experienced staff and ask them to blog risk taking lessons 9with videos perhaps) and again to put together some collaborative reflective writing.

Watch this space.

reflection and collaboration learning - in theory

Parker and Chao (2007:59) regard reflective learning as “one of the critical features of constructivism” and (citing Chen et al., 2005) they suggest that wikis are likely to play an increasingly important role in how knowledge is constructed through collaboration based on experience. The National College of School Leadership (NCSL) has published a pack called “100 000 heads are better than one” (edited by Melling and Patton, 2007) and this looks both at the development of on line communities aimed at sharing best practice – in this case, amongst head teachers – and at the synapsis between “e-learning (and) established pedagogy” (ibid: 12). Considering each of the main learning theories (behaviourist, constructivist, and so on) in turn and comparing with online learning, a typology is produced (ibid: 14) with the section for socio-culturalist approaches adapted below.

Table One – socio-culturalist approaches and online communities - adapted from “100 000 heads (2007: 14)” (click on table to enlarge)

It may also be appropriate to consider aspects of what Moon (2005:1) suggests may be a cognitive capacity as it pertains to Personal Development Planning in Higher Education Institutions, that is with adult learners. As Moon (ibid: 1) expresses it: “Generally reflection is a means of working on what we know already and it generates new knowledge.” To put it another way, developing a collaborative reflective context should contribute to the construction of a situated epistemology of learning.



references
Melling, A. and Patton, S. (eds.) (2007) “100 000 heads are better than one” ncsl.org.uk, Nottingham
Moon, J. (2005) ‘Learning through reflection’, Guide for Busy Academics No. 4, Higher Education Academy
Parker, K. R. and Chao, J. T., (2007) ‘Wiki as a Teaching Tool’ in Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects Vol. 3 pp 57-72, California, USA

ref-log

More pics of California

BTW

Guess what? The mock Ofsted team did not visit me! Never mind it was a FANTASTIC lesson. We had audio, visual and kinaesthetic learning, used the IWB idea I mentioned before and looked at how neuro-synapses help us learn - also they agreed that they knew more about vectors at the end than at the beginning - all in 50 mins!

SF Gate

You might find this link of interest: SF Gate


I work in a UK High School and although many of my students do use Twitter and Facebook I don't feel that parents will necessarily want me to encourage this. So I have started a private wiki with them (about 8 months ago now). I recently thought more about the idea of getting 15 year olds to pay attention to one another as well as they pay attention to me. So *borrowing* an idea from Twitter, I have trialled putting the wiki on the Interactive White Board. Whilst working on individual Maths problems, they can come up any time and type on the screen. Sometimes they just put "help" other times, they give each other hints or ask direct questions. Not only have they started to respect one another more, they are actually more focused on the task in hand with hardly any off task chatter (in fact none at all!).

hrheingold
4/22/2009 1:48:45 PM
I love your example, janshs. And I'm always interested in learning what other exercises and strategies work for people -- educators and others. So much of the social aspect of learning is absent from standard stand-and-deliver-the-facts methodology of teaching, and, if anything, learning and constructing meaning are increasingly social. I'll talk about credibility in a later blog post. Some evidence seems to indicate that assessing the credibility of web information is social -- that is, we turn to our trusted networks to find out what is bogus and what is not. Those of us who test online claims at all -- too many don't. But critical thinking is another missing element from much of today's pedagogy that I hope to address in a future post.

PS some pics

see ref-log to see pics of my California trip

using the twitter type idea with GCSE students

As I said in last blog post, I don't feel I can actively encourage twitter with minors (ethical issues here).

So I had the first try today of just putting a page on private wiki up on the interactive white board and they came up and typed what they usually whisper to each other

e.g. how do you do ratio?
start by adding the numbers

and so on

It went really really well - and is now stored on wiki for revsion purposes as well

mock Ofsted tomorrow - let's see what they make of it .....

Twitter Backchannels

From Twitter @hrheingold Professor uses Twitter as backchannel in class http://bit.ly/2rzW5

this gives me an idea for my GCSE Maths class.

As they are minors I don't feel they should use twitter in class - or at least I shouldn't encourage it. Anyway they are not allowed mobile phones so it would be difficult.

However, they have a private wiki which we already use mainly for homework and revision for exams.

I am going to have a page (or maybe a series of pages, depending how it goes) which I will have up on screen with link to internet during class. Whilst they are working independently to solve Maths problems, I will invite them to come up to the front whenever the whim takes them and they can type up a question for me, a hint for each other or just "help I'm stuck".

I am going to try this next term when we have a mock Ofsted - hah! why not? risk taking is the *in* thing. I'll let you know, it may be yet another of my doomed experiments but if you don't try ....

more on reciprocity

Following on directly from yesterday's blog.

I have been reading two short essays:-
Mary James (2008) Only Connect! based on a professorial lecture at the IOE 17.10.07
Rosemary Luckin (2009) Learning, context and the role of technology based on an inaugural lecture 27.01.09

Based mainly on Luckin, the Big Question (it seems to me) is "What does a context whioch supports technology rich learning look like?"

I thought about the above in terms of three issues which she mentions (ibid: 41):-

• the increasing importance of Higher Order Thinking skills (HOTs)
• students or other participants desire to 'publish'
• the role of More Able Partners (MAPs) - in particular, where there are multiple MAPs

[She is basing the idea of MAPs on Vygotsky's (1976, 1986) Zone of Proximal Development p ZPD]

Now, in my 'thinking out loud' here I am linking the issues above and the Big Question with James (2008: 7) who quotes from E. M.Forster's Howard's End (1910, ch 22), "Only connect the prose and the passion .... live in fragments no longer". She also writes (ibid: 7), " most research in education is motivated by more than a detached interest in generating new knowledge per se. It is knowledge with moral purpose. " This made me think of a book by Michael Fullan (I'll look the reference up some time soon) called The Moral Purpose of School Leadership (I think, I lent it to a friend - need to get it back!).

So in terms of reciprocity and the Big Question above, I think we need to find a way to actively encourage, stimulate, support and (perhaps most importantly and maybe most difficult) sustain reciprocal contributions on things like wikis, blogs and Twitter.

I am starting to think that the way we do that is to preempt the question that participants may ask - "what's in it for me?".

learning theories and frameworks for evaluating research

Thanks to Sonja and Jo for comments on Jones and Preece which have made me think a little more and also to Jo for her week 7 round up of H809 - see link to her blog on the right of this page (digital games and learning). Some great links she has made to yet more blogs there - especially Helen Beetham.

Jo asked me was there anything I would add to the following:-

• Participation, non-participation and reciprocity
• Empathy and trust
• Etiquette
• Social presence
• Communication and common ground
• Collaboration and competition

(see earlier Jones and Preece blog).

I'll be having a good think about her question and responding further later on. For the time being, I suppose that ethics comes under the etiquette section. The one that interests me the most and on which I think I'd like to expand for my own research is the notion of reciprocity.

I have just checked into my GCSE Maths wiki (yes during their break!) and find that they are happy publishing but not much responding to one another. Whereas on the staff wiki, it seems to be the response that gets the most discussion going. Interestsing. More later on these ideas.

Learning theories

It's son's 24th birthday today so won't be hanging around here.

Trying to catch up with all the reading on learning theories and also thinking back to an old OU course (E836) and Anna Sfard's Acquisition and Participation metaphors - you can find it online through OU or JSTOR.

Done TMA02 in draft form as I know I am going to be v busy marking the assignments from my own students next couple of weeks and have an awayday the weekend it's due (looking at school self evaluation). I hope to get a chance to re-draft it before handing it in.

spring is sprung

There are a few tadpoles in the pond this year - not as many as usual worryingly. Seen some newts too though. The greenhouse is almost done - doors and sliding window to do - maybe tomorrow. It's not a great bit of DIY but it is really warm inside so should help all the veg along I hope.

More on reciprocity

This blog post from M Weller about the reciprocity economy is well worth a read and also takes my last post much further - I'll need to think some more.

Jones and Preece Sociabilty and Usabilty framework

Click on the table above to enlarge.

Jones and Preece (2006) propose a sociability and usability framework to assess and study different collaborative online projects. This framework includes the following headings:-

• Participation, non-participation and reciprocity
• Empathy and trust
• Etiquette
• Social presence
• Communication and common ground
• Collaboration and competition

These headings tie in with both my own project about developing a staff wiki aimed at collaborative Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and the H809 course wiki and the attempt to build up a discussion of case studies looking at ethical concerns related to online research.