Damian Hayes\’ Blog

Extended essay help sheet

We are comparing the ease of use of this site with the new school website. Can we add documents, pictures and links easily?

 We’ve done a picture- now for a document…

We have a plan to get comments and answers to students questions using a wiki (discussion page). Some colleagues from Edinburgh university are going to see if they can help with answering questions.

http://higherextendedessay.wikispaces.com/

Another ‘no preparation’ lesson standby that works: especially with Higher classes. Students are in groups. They each get a question on a piece of sugar paper- each group has a different coloured felt pen. 3 mins to bullet point answers to question, pass on to next group, 3 mins again, pass on again and so on. When ‘their’ question rotates back to them each group then has to answer the question to the class- but they’ve got everyone else’s input to use or leave out depending on how useful they think it is.

The different coloured pens allow you to see which groups need more help!

Time to be noisy.

Starter: first years running around the class looking for hidden keywords from last lesson. When found they had to be grouped to make sense.

Marketplace: Groups of 3: they read and summarise a text. I give them a template to help them- they are forced to summarise as they are only allowed 6 keywords and as many pictures and symbols as they like.
One then stays to ’sell’ the information- the others go round and ‘buy’ the info from the other groups. Lots of ‘knowledge for sale’ type shouting.
The buyers then return to their group and all write down the information that they’ve gathered- I give them a buyer’s basket to help them with this. Helps teamwork and is more interesting, if noisy, way to hand out information.

The different coloured pens allow you to see which groups need more help!

As a department we’re trying to get our assessments standardised for Standard Grade. We’re also trying to get a set mark scheme for each one in ‘pupil speak’ so that we can mark simply by ticking what the students have done and circling what they haven’t. This way the students have direct feedback on what they need to do. Increasingly this means that after an assessment we have a conversation on what they didn’t do- they write in their target for next time, and then they correct their paper immediately to show that they know what was wrong.

An example of a mark scheme

Time to re-seat. For a while I’ve had students sat in 3s- we’ve got small individual tables so this is possible. Groups of 3 I think are the best- with a 4 someone is always left out or lazing. With 2 they get stuck- it’s just like a group chatting at a party.

However tables of 3 look a little untidy- and for Higher groups I want them to discuss- and a table of 6-8 sitting and facing each other is the best way for that.

So now I’ve got a variety of shapes- based on multiples of 3 so can do group tasks easily. 3 six seat tables, a row of 3 and 2 groups of 3 and a few ones and twos for students who need special attention. More space now for me to move about the classroom.

We’ve managed to set up a class blog- with some difficulty at first. Technical difficulty on my part and artistic difficulty on theirs as to what name and password should be chosen. Link connected. We tried to upload their lesson on powerpoint but the site doesn’t seem to take those.

This will be a brief blog. I’m using it to keep track of ways that I’m trying to teach- so Learning myself and Learning for the students.

 1. Students Learning Logs. My 4th year History class are going to keep a learning log. Rather than do it in a spare jotter I think that we’ll try to do it as a blog.

2. Teacher Break. The same 4th year class are half away at the moment on work  experience- so the remaining half of the class is preparing a lesson on suffragettes for them. 3 students have decided to prepare a starter based on a game of battleships. 3 more are doing a powerpoint presentation to teach the main parts of the lesson. 3 more are testing knowledge with a game: question race. 1 is choosing and setting the homework, 1 more is the ‘ringleader’ and will organise and present the lesson.

3. Independent Learning. My Access 3 class have worked very well at this so I’m extending it to my  second year history class. They will be choosing their own tasks and learning at their own pace. They each have a sheet giving a range of options to choose in order to get to the end point- an assessment.