Fall Back to Spring Forward #Nurture1415

Last year, I got so much out of writing my #Nurture1314 blog post so I am here once again to reflect on the year that has passed and look forward to what may come! 

Falling Back - 2014 in review

1. New York City - Without a doubt, this was the highlight of my year.  My husband and I talk about it every day without fail and are planning to return as soon as we can afford it.  I wrote a quick top 10 list about what we did (including photos) here. 
2. Year Leader - When I wrote this on my 13/14 list last year I had no idea that the opportunity would arise so quickly.  With the incredibly sad departure of two superb year leaders to "up north", I was very grateful to be given the opportunity to take one of the roles.  It's felt like a baptism by fire but it was exactly the challenge I was after for my 4th year in teaching.  
3. NQT - Last year, I was in the middle of supporting my husband through one of the hardest NQT years I've heard of.  Sadly, it just got harder for him but eventually he passed and is now a fully fledged, fully-qualified member of the profession! I'm so proud of him and am amazed at how he's pulled through.  He's survived 2 OfSTED inspections in his NQT year - not many people can say that!
4. Blogging (School) - I have almost got my school onto the blogging wagon, with them now using a Writers Blog which I set up.
5. Blogging (This one!) - Having stuck to the only-post-when-there-is-something-worth-saying mantra here, my posts are few and far between but I've enjoyed writing them and the feedback from people who use some of the ideas makes it worth it.  This year people have been interested in improving their marking and feedback and have had lots of questions about whole-class reading lessons.
6. The Hardest Term - For many reasons, this last Autumn term has been the hardest of my teaching career so far.  I feel like surviving it with a smile has been a real achievement.  Hopefully the worst is over and I can enjoy the rest of the school year. 
7. Writing - Through Twitter and this blog, many exciting opportunities to write for other organisations has arisen.  I've most enjoyed writing a couple of articles for Teach Primary magazine and reading fellow teachers' ideas in it.
8. Reading - As always, I haven't read as much as I would have liked but I've still managed to read some crackers.  My three best author discoveries this year were M.J. Arlidge, Peter James and Harlen Coben, all of whom write in the crime/thriller genre.
9. Theatre - I've seen a good bunch of shows this year including Jersey Boys, Billy Elliot and taking 17 people to see Wicked.  My theatre highlights of the year were seeing Kerry Ellis live in Horsham and the Pheasantry (London).  
10. Reviewing - This year, I've re-started reviewing theatre for The Public Reviews.  As part of that, I've had the chance to see The Mousetrap, the Illegal Eagles and the Wicked UK tour for free (click the titles to read my reviews).
11. Friends and Family - We've had the chance to head around the country this year to see various family members and friends.
12. Having Students - I feel like mentoring is a rite of passage into leadership in schools.  It gave me a lot of skills and understanding ready for my year leader position and I hope to continue supporting students each year.
13. Netball - This year, I've joined a team and absolutely loved playing every week.  Having never really been sporty before, I'm not competitive at all but completely enjoy the team spirit and exercise.  
14. Trips and Gigs - Harry Potter Studios, McBusted and Taylor Swift have provided memorable trips out with treasured friends throughout the year! 

Springing Forward - Hopes for 2015

1. Job Adventure - This year will start with my husband doing supply to find a settled role.  
2. Moving House - Maybe this year....maybe not! 
3. Blogging (at school) - I hope that the school will continue to enjoy blogging and that parents will see the benefit of commenting and interacting.  Our purpose is to enhance the place of writing so I hope that will be a side effect once blogging takes off. 
4. Blogging (this one) - If I've got something to say, I'll continue to say it and maybe people will keep reading.
5. Reading - I'm going to try to get through the Peter James series this year and maybe see one of his books as a play.
6. Writing - If the opportunity arises this year to write articles or posts for publications or websites, I hope to be in a position to say "yes".  
7. Theatre Reviewing - I'm hoping to do lots more of this in 2015, workload dependent of course.
8. Double Family Holiday - this year we're going abroad with the in laws and the parents! We'll see how that goes but I'm looking forward to both.
9. Wedding - not mine but my sisters! 
10. Wycombe Wanderers - We scraped through to stay in league 2 last year...perhaps we could be promoted this year! I hope to see them play more in 2015 - maybe that will help!
11. TeachMeet Sussex - Over 150 people have come to this event in 2014 - perhaps 2015 will be a bigger year.
12. Saving Money - we're not very good at putting money aside each month so maybe this will be the year we crack this.
13. Friends and Family - I hope this year will be full of more exciting trips around the country.
14. General Election - Despite always voting, I've never really been interested in politics but this year I'll be keeping a close eye on what happens.
15. Work/Life Balance - I said it would be here every year until retirement so...here it is. I may be proved wrong, of course, if Nicky Morgan can sort it out!

Making Marking Speedy

I've previously written about how I use gel pens to Make Marking Meaningful, however I've tried a lot of strategies since my NQT year to enhance the speed of my marking.  Here are some of the ideas I've tried which work.  As with everything else in teaching, these are used when appropriate in a range of subjects! 

Answers

Note: particularly useful in maths or SPAG activities.

On the outside, this is very simple: have some form of answers available so the children can mark the work.  However, how the answers are used can affect the degree of learning taking place.  For example, sometimes children mark their own work at the end of a lesson.  They have time to complete any corrections in gel pen (read why here) and comment on their progress.  Alternatively, they check their answers halfway through the lesson to assess whether they are on track.  They then choose to continue working to become confident, move onto something more challenging or get some help to address their errors.  This ensures that all children are challenged at their own level.  Of course, children can mark each other's work and find errors that someone else has made. Sometimes I make the answers available to children throughout the lessons so they can check any one answer and get immediate feedback.  They find this really useful because they can get help straight away if it is incorrect and an adult or child can talk through the process when it is fresh in their mind.  This means any post-lesson marking can be focused on misconceptions and next steps as all corrections will have been made in the lesson.  

Peer Editing

Note: great for long pieces of writing in any subject.

I discovered this after reading through 31 fairly poor pieces of writing and despairing at the length of time it would take me to mark them.  Having looked through but not marked the work, I went back to my class and explained to them that I had chosen not to mark it because there were so many mistakes.  I felt so harsh but by the end of the next hour I knew I'd done the right thing.  Knowing their two main mistakes - tense and viewpoint (first/third person) - I'd prepared a piece of writing filled with those two errors to be the input of my next lesson.  As a class we read it through, the children realised that it sounded wrong and they corrected the errors.  Then, in pairs, they completed two activities.  Firstly, with no pens in sight, they simply read their partners work aloud back to them, word-for-word.  Both children did this as it was important to hear and realise that their errors were fairly similar early on.  Next, they edited for the mistakes, corrected spellings and improved words and phrases if they had time.  The quality of work I had back in was substantially higher than it had been and it meant my marking time was cut by over 50%.  At the end of the editing process, I asked the children to comment on how they found it.  It was clear from what they wrote that they had got a lot out of it and wanted to do it more often.  Therefore I've added a similar lesson during most long pieces of writing.  

Hold A Pen

Note: Useful in any lesson! 

Make sure you, your TA and any other adults are armed with a pen during the lesson.  Give the instruction that if they work with a child, they should quickly mark their work to get an idea of how they can help.  As a teacher, this means as you verbally check work you can leave a mark to show this and any workings done with you stand out.  This makes tracking progress easier as independent or adult-assisted work is obvious.  I've found children like having their work marked during the lesson if there's time and it's a wonderful feeling to open the next book in the massive pile and find it already marked! 

Stampers

Note: This costs a bit at first (£5-10 each) but saves so much time in the long run and they last ages!
I have written at length about why I use stampers and which ones are most effective.  Quite simply, they are the one strategy which has had the biggest impact on reducing the time I spend marking.  I cannot recommend them highly enough and I'd encourage anyone aiming to reclaim some of their work-life balance to invest in a few effective ones.  

Underlining

Note: Particularly useful in grammar activities and English lessons.

As part of the plenary in certain lessons, I ask children to underline in gel pen the main elements of the learning.  For example, if they have be learning to use subordinating conjunctions, then I ask them to underline the ones they have used.  That way I can see if they have used the correct conjunctions with commas if necessary and check whether the words they have used make sense in their sentences.  This sometimes highlights to children they they haven't used any or many and gives them a chance to correct this before the work is marked.  When I come to mark the work, the coloured lines guide my eyes to where I need to look to assess the extent to which children have achieved the learning objective.

Favourites

Similar to underlining, I sometimes ask children to put a *star* by their favourite sentence, fact, calculation, word problem etc as is appropriate to the lesson.  I explain that I will look at all their work but will mark their favourite in detail.  Likewise, I sometimes ask children to circle any which they have struggled with or which they think are incorrect so I can look closely to help them with those.  Again, my eyes are drawn to the symbols used so that my marking can be completed quicker. 

Codes

Note: Useful for presentation errors.

Thankfully we don't have a whole-school marking code which I have to stick to religiously.  I'm not a big fan of long marking codes as children can spend longer deciphering the marking than actually learning from it.  That being said, I do use codes to improve children's presentation; mainly 4 symbols.  T indicates they need to write the title (as required by the school - only 1 or 2 words).  D shows they should write the date. U implies they should underline the title or date and I draw a simple tree if they are wasting too much paper (save the trees!).  These 4 codes take hardly any time to draw, save me writing sentences and ensure the children can understand and respond quickly to presentation errors.  

Primary Roll Call - Classroom Ideas

As part of a joint venture with Michael Tidd, I am collating some of the primary tweeters, bloggers and pinners who share exceptional practical ideas for the classroom.  This collection of educators, through their tweets, blogs and Pinterest boards, have had a direct impact on my teaching; their ideas are sound and they are certainly worth a "follow".

So, here goes, as Dermot says, "in no particular order":

Claire (OhLottie)
As the inventor of Graffiti Maths and an all-round inspirational primary teacher, Claire's ideas are always tried and tested and come with her own evaluation on their use.
She tweets, blogs and pins.

Sam (SAiston)
Sam provides a no-nonsense commentary on Education with lesson ideas and common sense theories for the primary classroom.
He tweets.

Rob (RedgieRob)
Famous for being the creator of The Literacy Shed, Rob also (somehow) manages to simultaneously be a fantastic primary teacher.  His twitter feed is full of good practice and useful resources.
He tweets.

Alison (AliMattWells)
This lady is a fount of practical classroom ideas; whether displays, English, maths, topic - she's got it covered!
She tweets.

Michelle (FootieFanMiss)
With extensive Pinterest boards covering a range of education themes, Michelle is well-worth following.  She is an advocate of Working Walls and has some brilliant examples on her blog and Pinterest boards.
She tweets, blogs and pins.

Ian (IanAddison)
As a former ICT advisor for Hampshire, Ian's posts about technology are really useful.  However, since moving back to the classroom, he provides useful ideas and resources to be used throughout primary lessons.
He tweets, blogs and pins.

Rachel (rpd1972)
Rachel's blog posts, tweets and articles focus on simple ideas which have made a difference in her primary classes.
She tweets and blogs.

Sarah (Sarah__wright1)
In the important job of training primary teachers, Sarah shares brilliant ideas for KS1 and 2 classrooms along with inspirational books and quotes from the training programme at Edge Hill University.
She tweets and pins.

Sway (SwayGrantham)
Sway is an important UK educator to follow if you are interested in the changes being made to technology in learning.  She has some specific advice relevant to BYOD and Rasperry Pi in primary education.
She tweets and blogs.

Lisa (TishlyLishly)
As Early Years queen, Lisa regularly shares early reading and maths ideas, impressive display photos and ways to enhance themed areas.
She tweets and pins.

BONUS - There are a few secondary bloggers, tweeters and pinners who give superb ideas which are easily transferable to the primary classroom.  However, Rachel Jones' fount of inspirational blog posts, tweets and pins stands out from the rest so I feel she deserves to be an honourary primary teacher for the sake of this list!

Michael has published a similar list of Primary leaders and thinkers here.  You can follow him on Twitter or his blog.  I collect and share ideas on Twitter, Pinterest and this blog.

When Will I Get My Oscar?

You may think that I'm a teacher,
And that goes some way to say,
A little about the activities,
I complete in school each day.
You may think that I'm an expert,
And it might surprise you so,
That, really, I'm just an actor,
Who's a little in-the-know.

I crammed in the information,
The night before the class,
Put on a special wig and clothes,
And answered the questions you asked.
You played along, like I was somebody else,
A famous historical doctor.
It was such a great performance so,
When will I get my Oscar?

You really hurt me yesterday,
Using names so rude and mean,
And today I'm meant to treat you like,
It's forgotten; the slate is clean.
I smile and greet you as each day,
In my mind is yesterday's phrase.
You're completely none-the-wiser so,
Will my Oscar arrive in a few days?

I tell you stories using my face and hands,
Creating characters with my voice,
You complain when others 'don't do it right',
And, when I'm done, you all rejoice.
Each lesson; an elaborate episode,
I've learned the script by heart.
My audience are hooked to know the rest,
Surely an "award-winning" start?

There are times when you are struggling,
Disrupting and causing a scene.
I know you are craving attention,
Sometimes angry or overly-keen.
The learning continues, as that is my job,
'The show must go on,' I know.
It takes all of my talent to ignore you,
You stop. It worked. What a show!

In life, the worst news possible,
So much pain within.
But my audience expect the usual cast,
So I get up and drag myself in.
Inside, I'm cut up in pieces,
There's nothing that anyone could say,
But I'm on stage so I 'act naturally',
Is my Oscar on its way?

The directors want me to change the script,
The props - the whole production.
Really, I know my audience best,
I keep going with minimum disruption.
They want to review my performance,
So I simply adjust the show.
"When will I get my Oscar?" I cry,
Doesn't anybody know?

Each day the red curtain rises,
The education stage is set.
How much we both put into this,
Will affect how far you get.
The truth is: I won't get an Oscar,
And that's certainly not what I need.
The fact that you love learning and school,
Is like a standing ovation to me.

Why TeachMeet?

After promoting a local TeachMeet in a teachers’ meeting, I overheard a thought-provoking comment in the staff room the next day. Whilst gazing at the TeachMeet poster I had put up, a teacher who was absent in the previous day’s meeting pondered, “Why would anyone want to do that – actually choose to spend some of their own time meeting with teachers?” So…Why TeachMeets? What are they and why do busy, practising teachers put so much time and energy into running these independent events?

Despite going to many TeachMeets in my 2 years of teaching, it’s something that I’d never even considered.  I guess the main reason for this is that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every TeachMeet I’ve ever been to – it’s never felt like a burden.  I’ve come away from each one with a tonne of ideas to use in my classroom, new friends who are in the profession and a full belly from a very decent pub meal. Nevertheless I understand that, to those less familiar with them, TeachMeets seem like a less-than-appealing pastime - I’m on a mission to persuade teachers that this isn’t the case at all!

TeachMeets are founded on ideas.  Teachers sharing their great ideas with other teachers.  Sometimes this can be jazzed up with sponsorship, prizes, keynotes and fancy food (cupcakes at TeachMeet Sussex!) but in principle, the sharing of ideas is universal. However, as an organiser of a TeachMeet in a new area, the most difficult job has been getting local people to share their ideas.  These mini presentations throughout the evening are the heart of the TeachMeet yet seemingly great practitioners, who have signed up for a teaching event in their own time, are shying away from telling people about what they do well.  Again and again I reiterate to people, via Twitter, the website and word of mouth, how simple this should be. The best presentations consist of people spending a few minutes telling other teachers about one simple idea, resource or strategy that has been effective in their classroom.  They rarely need a PowerPoint, A/V equipment or even a pre-prepared speech!

Having been gently bullied into presenting at the first TeachMeet I went to, I’ve made it a general rule-of-thumb that I will present at any TeachMeet I attend.  This isn’t because I like blowing my own trumpet or because I have exceptional ideas – TeachMeets don’t exist for either of those reasons.  My understanding is that everybody has something to give – so why not give a snippet of what I do in my classroom?  I benefit so much from what other people have to share and my aim, by presenting an idea, is that someone will go away inspired to try something new based on what I’ve said.  Teachers are professional people who can make educated decisions about whether a certain idea is worth trying in their classroom so the the ball is in their court as to what they get out of the event. 

Sadly, there will always be a small amount of teachers who will shun this grass roots CPD.  However, for the rest of us, TeachMeets can be that link between work and life – an enjoyable, social event with great food and drink which can inspire and challenge us, reigniting that passion for teaching which prompted us to start out. The added bonus is that you can have a good time without feeling guilty about being “out on a school night”!


Note: I organise TeachMeet Sussex which happens in schools around Sussex each term.  This post was written as part of TeachMeet UK 2014.

Whole Class Guided Reading: How does it work?

Background

Last year, Year Four in my school moved to teaching reading in whole-class lessons rather than the traditional carousel of Guided Reading activities.  We found it had a very positive impact on children's written responses to texts while being quicker and easier to plan and resource.  You can read all about our move to whole-class reading here.  Many people, after reading those posts and downloading the logos, inquired as to how the lessons worked so this should answer some questions and provide you with the plans and resources for an example lesson.

How does it work?

The simple answer is that it works the same as any other lesson; There is one learning objective for the whole class based around the same text.  The activities are adapted for different abilities so that all children can access the learning objective and be challenged.  Sometimes texts are part of a class book we're reading and other times they are a poem or non fiction article.  Please find below an example lesson plan using Harry Potter's journey to Hogwarts in the first book to interpret changes in feelings.  After the lesson plan, I have put some notes about certain sections of it to give more information.

Lesson Plan Notes
Top boxes - these are the overarching objectives which I've pulled from the new curriculum.

Read with RIC - the stimulus is always something different; it can be a song, poem, video, photo, advert.  Sometimes they require children to read, sometimes they don't.  They always contain a Retrieve, Interpret and (author/artist/director) Choice question.  All children are to try the R and I questions, most try the C question too.  We go through the answers to these and children steal other answers in gel pen to improve theirs. See more examples of our RIC starter activities here. 

Challenge - This is where we put the options for children to show their learning against the objective.  Generally children can choose which they complete out of Good/Amazing/Awesome.  There is some specific support using extra information and the TA.  The SEN activity allows children working significantly below the rest of the class to still access the objective at a level appropriate to them.

Having taught the lesson to my Year Four class, I would say it would be slightly more appropriate for Year Five.  

Click to view and download more plans and resources (including SMART Notebook files) for:

• This lesson - The Journey from Harry Potter 1 (includes a blank planning proforma)
• War Game by Michael Foreman
• The Great Hall description in Harry Potter 1
• Other sample plans

Across the School

Having piloted whole-class reading lessons in Year Four, our headteacher was keen to roll it out across the school.  Currently, all of our Key Stage Two are now teaching reading like this with two or three lessons each week, each lasting an hour.  Our other English skills are taught through Theme-based lessons, with 5-8 sessions in a week covering geography or history and English.  Key Stage One are continuing their phonics teaching in groups while using a RIC starter daily with their whole class to practise those important reading comprehension skills.

I hope this can answer some questions about whole-class reading lessons.  If you have further questions or comments, please feel free to put them in the comments below or on Twitter or check out the Whole-Class Reading FAQs.

To see all other blog posts about whole-class reading lessons, click here.

The Challenge of Challenge

High expectations vs glass ceilings.  Challenge for all vs differentiation and inclusion.  Ensuring all children are challenged in your class presents, in itself, an organisational challenge.  To set or not to set? To ability group or to mixed ability group? To differentiate the activity, the support or the outcome? To give children the choice or to prescribe their activity?  Recently, I've read these two posts, by Nancy and Rachel, which consider issues in differentiation and inclusion.  Both immediately had me thinking about what this looks like in my classroom and the effectiveness (or not!) of some of the things I've tried.

In my relatively short time teaching, I've used a variety of strategies and ideas to organise how children are challenged.  Because none is perfect for every learning opportunity, each lesson I consider which is appropriate for those children, the learning and at that time.  I use some of these strategies more than others but I've seen success with all of them in different circumstances.  Likewise, there have also been lessons when I've clearly done the wrong thing - I like to think that those were learning opportunities for me to reflect and evaluate for my future practice.

Top-Down Planning

In my NQT year, this phrase was used in an Assessment For Learning seminar.  I'd not heard it before but it made so much sense.  Mostly, at uni and on placement, I'd learned that from your learning objective your differentiate up and down for your highest and lowest ability.  The idea of top-down planning is that you consider the next learning objective for your highest ability children; that becomes your lesson objective for the class.  In your planning, you describe and prepare any inputs or resources to enable all the children to achieve this objective.  That way, your high ability children are truly challenged, rather than just kept busy, and the expectations for your lower ability children are raised.

Scaffolding the Activity

A while back I purchased these trays, mainly as a way of assessing children's opinions on their understanding in lessons.  Pupils place their book in the green/yellow/red tray according to how they found the lesson and I mark the red and yellow books first so that I can give them more time.  After a few weeks, I found another use for them; to give children a choice about the support they receive for the activity.  I started placing support materials in the coloured trays according to how much support is given.  Children could then choose if and when they needed some help with an activity, if available.  As a school, we have a big focus on giving children choices in their learning so these trays help me to explain the choices to the children.  They also mean children can make choices without their peers interfering.  I've found children are generally very good at deciding which tray to take from; this is probably down to the work we have done on Growth Mindset this year.  They are very aware that it is free-flowing so if they are finding something too difficult or easy they know they can go to the trays without asking, look at the board for ideas or request help from me (I rarely have a TA so children need to be very independent with this).  Obviously, on touring the classroom each lesson and supporting children at all tables I can guide pupils and remove scaffolds to encourage children to practise without support.  

Mixed Ability Groups

Early on in my teaching career, I did what I had seen in many schools - children ability grouped for reading, writing and maths.  The groups stayed as they were between assessments and there were celebrations when children were moved "up" and uproar when children were moved "down".  Having read the research and taught for a year, I abandoned ability groups for most subjects.  I did however, continue to use fluid ability groups in maths.  They were fluid in that they changed each week, sometimes during the week and even during lessons.  There was no "top" and "bottom" group, simply children working together at similar steps.  Sometimes the groups stayed for one lesson; sometimes they stayed for a week however it was rarely longer.  As I marked books, I piled them up according to children's next steps and those became  the new groups.  Nowadays, I have no ability groups. Children sit in mixed-ability groups with an appropriate partner sat next to them. They discuss and work together in all subjects as well as completing work independently. Children choose the support they require and are often working with more or less support than their neighbour. This has removed all glass ceilings from my lessons and allowed children to smash my high expectations of them.

Let's Chat About Stamper

I've blogged about this before here, but this is something I use regularly to organise mini-inputs for children when I'm marking their books.  When looking through their work from previous lessons, I can see where certain pupils or groups have struggled with concepts.  Generally, I decide on only one or two areas to "chat about" and stamp the appropriate books.  At a planned moment in one of the following lessons I will call children to the carpet.  The stamper means they know which input they come to while also acting as proof of this (for the powers that be!).  Sometimes I encourage children to explain near the stamper what they have learned as a result of that mini-input.  This is a way of ensuring each child is challenged at the point of their current learning.  

Like I said before, these are simply tools which I pick and choose according to the learning.  Sometimes I use all of them; sometimes I decide to do something completely different.  As I move forward this year, in which I have the widest gap I've experienced between my highest and lowest ability children, I'm sure I will re-evaluate these and other similar strategies regularly!

To read more about how mixed groups can work in a primary classroom, click here.