THW TeachMeet – Whole School CPD

Last week’s CPD was a big success. It was really nice to share good practice in an informal way. We had 10 workshops on offer – see below for further information.

Workshop 2 – Higher Level Thinking Skills Developing higher level thinking skills in pupils CPD

Workshop 3 – AfL & A Level Teaching Teach meet AfL

Workshop 4 – “The Doughnut” doughnut template

Workshop 7 – “Relay Race”  

Workshop 8 – Independent Learning INDEPENDENT LEARNING whole school cpd

Workshop 9 – Gimmicky Revision Ideas

Workshop 10 – “Take Away” Homework nandos-takeaway-homework1

Many thanks to the staff who delivered a workshop.

Revision Game

Revision Game (with Magenta Principles!):

You play in teams (3-4 probably works best) and each student writes down 3 different things on separate pieces of paper – this could be keywords, characters, themes, topics. These pieces of paper all get put into one central bowl (so if you have a class of 20 students you’d have 60 pieces of paper in your bowl, you need a few in there but depending on ability of class you could adjust this by saying write down 2-4 instead).

For round one the bowl gets passed to the first team who have one minute to pick out and describe as many of the pieces of paper as possible – only thing they can’t say is the name or spell it out. They can only pass one, at end of minute count up score and that team keeps hold of the ones they have successfully described, bowl gets passed to next team for another minute and so on until bowl is empty. Scores are tallied for each team and then all papers are put back in bowl and whichever team finished round 1, the next team along starts round 2, where they now have a minute to describe the thing on paper but only using one word – so they will have to choose carefully but if they have a good memory should remember some of what’s in bowl. Round 3 all papers back in bowl again and this time teams have a minute to act out the words in a minute. Thought this would transfer well to classroom as everyone has to listen and try to remember what’s in the bowl.

Faye

Key Stage 5 T&L Strategies – CPD

This CPD session was a follow-up to the WCSF training we had at the end of last year and looked at taking some tips further to positively impact on the T&L of low ability learners at KS5.

The following strategies were shared:

– Comment-only marking: minimum input – maximum impact!

The amount of marking at KS5 is often very heavy yet so important in helping students understand how to improve. In particular, marking essays  and writing detailed feedback can take forever! Here’s one simple way to remedy this whilst ensuring that students get the guidance they need to further improve.

1.Students list features of good/weak essays

2.Turn comments into ‘codes’

3.Use ‘codes’ to mark

4.Students re-write one passage in class

Here’s another example developed by the MFL department after the session 2 stars and a wish AS writing Marking Grid

– Making connections:

This activity is based on the principle that if students have to do something with information (ie, reduce, connect, assemble, sequence it), then their understanding deepens.

Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” was invented as a play on the concept: the goal is to link any actor to Kevin Bacon through no more than six connections, where two actors are connected if they have appeared in a movie or commercial together.

– Retention, Analysis & Evaluation:

For some of our weaker students, remembering subject specific content itself can be a challenge. Try the following to boost their subject knowledge:

* ask students to keep a glossary of key terms

* encourage students to underline key terms in their work

* encourage students to “do something” with the information they take in (highlight something surprising… / highlight something interesting… / highlight something you agree with… / highlight something you disagree with… / highlight something you do not understand…)

* use post-it notes as a recap

* use quizzes or games to revise subject knowledge (see templates below)

To help with the skills of analysis and evaluation, give them examples, vocabulary and writing frames.

Jeopardy template Millionaire template Traffic Lights template Twenty Questions template Weakest Link template

– Peer-assessment:

The following prompts can be really nice not only to give peer-assessment a bit of a makeover from the traditional 2 stars and a wish but also to refine and improve pupils’ learning.

* Write down four key words that your partner has used. Suggest one word that they could have used but didn’t.

* Write down the best sentence/quote from their work and explain why you chose it (ie what is good about it?).

* Write down one sentence/quote that doesn’t make sense to you (ie it lacks clarity or isn’t fully explained).

* Add one sentence which improves the essay.