Thursday, March 31, 2016

Two minute hero - how roller derby has improved my teaching

A year ago as part of our whole school growth mindset promotion campaign,  I decided to challenge myself and my year group to learn a new skill. At the time I was trying to lead an assembly on the power of practice and I found myself suggesting that we should all record video diaries of our progress over the course of a year to be shown in a 'talent show that's not a talent show because it's all about practice show!' 
I eagerly set about looking for a skill to master and after a trip with a friend to see the Tiger Bay Brawlers and a chance conversation with my (now) coach, I chose roller derby. Here is a link to a video which explains the sport http://tinyurl.com/hptjoya As a child I loved to skate and as an adult I have often persuaded my friends to go to roller discos with me for fun. I secretly thought that this choice would be an easy one and I would be able to master the sport quickly. I was wrong! Roller derby is mentally and physically demanding and requires a high level of tactical knowledge and skill. Skaters need to demonstrate the ability to perform a long list of skills including the athletic feat of being able to skate 27 laps of the track in five minutes (that's approximately 1.6km or a mile in five minutes) I embarked naively on what has been and remains an authentic growth mindset journey.
COMFORT ZONE
There have been times when I have felt comfortable. I am now skating with confidence and I have realised that I really value the times when I do feel at ease because it gives me the courage to push myself on into the next challenge. Our coaches never allow us to stay there for long and I am always glad to be pushed out of my comfort zone because I know that I am going to learn and improve.
THE POWER OF PRACTICE
It is clear to me that the more hours you spend on skates, the better you become. It really is that simple. The skaters who are better than me are not naturally talented, but have chosen to dedicate themselves to the sport and the team. They do not only play for our team but regularly travel to play with other teams and always return to our training sessions with new ideas. They watch YouTube clips, video themselves and analyse their moves and they arrange sessions to educate the team about mental strength and physical conditioning. They know that improvement will only come through hard work, study and effort.
FAILING AND FALLING
Session one teaches all new skaters how to fall. In derby, we often get it wrong and it hurts. What I have learnt from from this is that it doesn't matter. Even the best players (our coaches) fall right in front of us and nobody cares. You aren't allowed to lie on the floor for long because someone will roll over you. You fall and you get back up over and over again. After you have fallen several times, you realise that you don't actually get hurt that often and most importantly you realise that you are not going to be ridiculed or judged. This is an atmosphere that I hope to nurture in my classroom.
THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-TALK 
Mastering roller derby skills takes time and effort. I have noticed that with every skill that I have mastered I have become emotionally stronger and more resilient. When the going gets tough, I have learnt to remind myself of how much I have achieved. I have also noticed that I waste too much time comparing myself to others. In short, we need to be kinder to ourselves when we are learning and as a teacher and pastoral leader it is my job to remind pupils of how far they have come. It's not that they can't do it, they just can't do it yet!
LONG AND SHORT TERM GOALS
My sport has taught me that if you want improvement to become a habit, you need to have goals for yourself. For me, my long term goal was to have the confidence to record my skating skills for the talent show. It might seem a bit silly to have put that much effort in to such a simple thing, but it was also about demonstrating to my year group that anything is possible if you put enough effort in. After the show, several pupils approached me to tell me about their hobbies and I was able to use these chats to begin conversations about their ambitions and hopes for the future.
A SENSE OF BELONGING
Above all other lessons I have learnt that people need to feel part of a group or community. We want to feel valued and welcome. My team works very hard to do this and other teams remark upon this as our strength. We need leaders or coaches to model concepts and show us the way and team mates to celebrate our small successes and to support us when things get tough. We need people to challenge us to leave our comfort zones and to point out our mistakes.

I feel very lucky to have found my team and I am now thinking about my next long term goal. By the way, if any of you fancy joining the Riot City Ravens we are always looking for new members!

Thanks for reading, Becky   BexK06





Wednesday, March 30, 2016

'I am going to fail!' - tales from the learning pit

As a growth mindset promoting school we have started coaching our students to be more resilient learners and to show GRIT when tasks are demanding.
I was recently introduced to James Nottingham's concept of the learning pit and I am experimenting with the use of this in my lessons to help pupils to understand that greater challenge can lead to better learning. I think that I have been guilty of protecting my students from failure in an effort to avoid a loss of confidence, and I was keen to see how resilient my year 8 learners are when they are 'thrown' into the learning pit.

Year 8 French and Spanish learners had finished their daily routine module and were preparing to complete assessed tasks on the topic. I wanted to help the students to gather all of their knowledge to summarise the topic. The new MFL GCSE will require students to be able to translate and as a department we are trying to develop translation skills in our KS3 learners. I, therefore, chose to give my learners a two page translation on the topic of daily routine. I noted their reactions at different points during the lesson.
INTRODUCTION OF THE TASK
Pupils were told that they were going to be given a challenging translation activity to complete. They were advised that for the first five minutes they needed to read the task without beginning the written translation. I wrote their initial reactions down:
'I am going to fail..'
'This is too hard'
'I will never be able to do this'
'are you trying to kill me?'
'is this for older kids, Miss?'
'I just can't read it'
I felt the usual compulsion to bail them out, but resisted the urge to give them any help or reassurance. Within a few minutes the comments began to change:
'I will try though, Miss'
'I know some of this already'
'I know most of it actually'
'It sort of makes sense'
'I think that I might be able to do it'
GIVING THEM A STRATEGY
Some of the pupils clearly wanted to get on with the task but were challenged by the obstacles that I had deliberately placed in the text and others were still looking at me with a face of panic. When planning my lesson, one of my aims was to provide the students with translating skills and I sensed that at this point in the lesson, they would be most receptive to my coaching. I stopped the class and modelled how to tackle the translation by breaking it up into sentences.
Then breaking the sentences into components or 'chunks' and working out the meaning of each chunk using the super sentence structure that they had been taught.

GETTING THE JOB DONE
After this five minute coaching session, all learners started to tackle the task and when they hit a hurdle it was interesting to see how individuals coped. Pupils made learning tactics suggestions themselves which also helped the others. 
'Miss, each paragraph is about something to do with the day'
' Miss, is it OK if I highlight all of the words that I don't know?'
'Miss, can I use a dictionary to look up the leftover words'
'Yes, but Miss has taught us that we won't find conjugated verbs in the dictionary' (Yes- he did actually say that!)
'It's about a day so we can sort of work out the order that they do things'
' I am guessing that she is talking about her family because you always tell us to do that to get better marks'
'should I write it as I speak in English because the words don't exactly match' (At this point I was able to mention that the art of translation is to decode before translating into their own language)
'Is that word to do with leaving because of the English word 'disperse?'
'It sounds like the word marmalade. Is that what it means? I will check'
'I can't find verbs so I will look at the notes in my book because we have useful verb lists in there'
Halfway through the lesson pupils were starting to use phrases like 'It's easy' 'we're fine' and 'we are using the ideas that you gave us' 
OFF TASK BEHAVIOUR 
The behaviour for learning was not perfect, but it was clear that off task distracted behaviour was only happening when pupils hit a bump in the road. I observed and noted behaviour such as hair plaiting, turning round, chatting, listening to gossip, giggling and making silly guesses about the words designed to make someone laugh. I quietly noted the behaviour on the board and the pupils looked shocked. I explained that they were probably behaving like that because they were stuck and had not tried to use their translation tackling tactics. I told them that they should start to try to notice when they weren't working and to be mindful of this. When their attention wanes, they should be aware of it and try a different learning tactic. 
I DID IT!
By the end of the lesson, what had seemed like an impossible task had been achieved and pupils were very keen to show their work to the class. They did not appear to expect rewards, but old habits die hard and I couldn't resist giving out stickers! They were even more proud of themselves when I told them that I had borrowed the original text from a GCSE reading paper. It is reassuring to realise that resilience can be coached if we avoid the temptation to save them from failure and that seemingly fixed learning habits can be changed.

Thanks for reading, Becky   BexK06






Monday, March 28, 2016

'I've finished early, so what should I do?'

I have always been an over planner and I was often advised by observers to reduce the number of tasks that I expect my pupils to achieve during lessons. Pupils rushing to complete tasks and hands shooting in the air to cheerfully announce that they have finished the set task (J'ai fini!) was common place in my classroom. I even used to give rewards to the first one to finish the task! I used to ask early finishers to do a few more exercises or gave them another similar worksheet to fill the time until the rest of the class had finished.
My work on metacognition led me to understand that this might not be an effective use of lesson time. Pupils felt that they were working really hard, but the reality was that they were staying in their comfort zone and I was limiting what they were able to achieve.
I, therefore, began to create a bank of resources designed to encourage pupils to improve their outcomes and to deepen their own learning. At the time, I had read The Lazy Teacher's Handbook by Jim Smith and I was also looking for ways to encourage my students to do more while I did less. I started by looking at my worksheets and tweaked them to allow pupils to select their own level of challenge. I told all students to start at the question that they perceived to be difficult and not to bother with the rest.
There was a strong sense of achievement amongst the students particularly when I deliberately used coaching phrases such as "I would be surprised if you are able to do that without using your book" or "are you sure that you can't mange to do the red section too?"
As a department we also developed a bank of reading comprehension cards which we categorised according to level of difficulty and not according to age or year group. My head of department came up with the idea of using karate belt colours to rank the level of difficulty. Pupils were again encouraged to select their own level of challenge and pupils felt a strong sense of pride when they successfully understood a 'black belt' reading card. 
As I started to experiment with metacognition in my classroom, I created a metacognitive activities board that I stuck at the back of my room and I called it the 'I've finished early so what should I do?' board. I know, catchy isn't it? I tried to link each task to my metacognitive processes headings of prediction, comprehension, connections, analysis, application and reflection. 




Pupils are usually not allowed to move to USEFUL or INNOVATIVE until they have completed all tasks on the ESSENTIAL board. This encourages them to slow down and quality assure their main lesson outcome before they move on to other things. The sounds of 'j'ai fini' have started to reduce and I am not really that busy in lessons anymore! Pupils tell me that they enjoy being able to choose their tasks and they like how they make them think a bit differently.
Thanks for reading, Becky  BexK06




Sunday, March 27, 2016

The super sentence - a metacognitive framework for developing speech and writing

In my last post I mentioned that I have been experimenting with metacognition in my classroom. As part of this experiment, I have created a series of questions which I keep on display at the back of my room. I use this display as a script to encourage better thinking during lessons. My questions are categorised under the following headings: prediction, comprehension, connections, analysis, application and reflection.
Through time I have noticed that for development of extended speech and writing, pupils benefit from being encouraged to analyse long passages of language and to break it into usable chunks or building blocks before rebuilding independently to suit their purpose. I use the idea of a hurricane ripping through a paragraph, scattering bits and pieces of sentences across the classroom and pupils needing to rebuild it like a destroyed village!
It was clear to me that my learners needed a framework to help them to rebuild and I, therefore, developed the idea of the super sentence. 
When I teach a new topic, I deliver new vocabulary and grammar concepts in this order. My students know that a series of super sentences when connected together using joining words equals a paragraph and more than one paragraph equals an essay. Using this method gives all pupils a basic framework that they can rely on, but when they are ready they can 'GCSE - ify' their work by varying their tenses, extending their opinions and using GCSE expressions. These expressions are on display in my classroom at all times. 
When pupils are asked to break an extended piece of reading material into pieces for reuse in class, I often give them a language detective sheet like this one. 

This approach does seem to give my learners confidence. It would be good to hear from people who do something similar or if you try something like this in your classroom.
Thanks for reading! Becky  BexK06



Friday, March 25, 2016

G2 - an interactive learning space

My classroom is designed to allow pupils to embark on a learning journey. As cheesy as this might sound, the walls of my room have been designed to facilitate learning from word level to paragraph level. This is the bread and butter of foreign language teaching and learning. My learners are taught to see language as a series of building blocks and the walls help them to stack these blocks up to generate longer passages of speech and writing.
As part of our in house school INSET programme I attended a series of sessions on growth mindset led by Richard Jones (@MrRAJones / www.sweetspotlearning.com) Each session inspired me to create a new wall for my classroom. Having already done quite a bit of work on bringing metacognition into the classroom (more on this in another post), I was able to combine tried and tested techniques with my new knowledge. Learners quite literally move in a clockwise direction from one wall to the next, gaining knowledge as they go. I suppose that I am trying to achieve the language learning snowball effect that my PGCE tutor used to talk about all those years ago!

WALL 1 - TACTICS BOARD




























WALL 2 - THE GREAT WALL OF MISTAKES SENTENCE LEVEL WITH SUPPORT

WALL 3 - PRACTICE WALL - WHOLE CLASS PARAGRAPH WITH TEACHER COACHING



WALL 4 - THE 'WOW' WALL - INDEPENDENT DRAFTING AND REDRAFTING

EXAMPLES OF A PUPIL'S IMPROVEMENT JOURNEY - GOOD-BETTER-BEST

Thanks for reading my first blog post!
Becky @BexK06