Know thy impact

I attended a course recently that brought Hattie's work to the forefront of my mind again. I have returned to his Visible Learning book a few times since a teachmeet friend (JP) related Hattie's work to his own forest school work. It made a lot of sense. 

As far as impact goes, Hattie has done all the hard work for us, with extensive research to tell us what works best in education. By ranking 195 influences and their effect size, Hattie is pointing us in the right direction of what we should be taking notice of and what we should not waste our energy on. I'm not going to analyse that here - time is short and I'm sure if you google it you can find much better blog posts than I would write. What I wanted to share was my 'so what'. 

In this recent course we were told how research shows that the greatest impact on learning is student self belief / expectations of themselves. I know that there are lots of things that I do to promote this already. I traditionally start each year with Trevor Hawes optimal learning approach, whereby (in a nutshell) children learn about their brains and how they learn (metacognitive strategies are ranked at number 4), then recognise their smart areas and liken themselves to someone famous that they can aspire to be like. 

As a school we promote growth mindsets - that effort is valued - and we use strategies such as Austin's butterfly to show children the value of critique, feedback and effort. 

I ask the children to rate their effort during and at the end of lessons, using their fingers (this was another teachmeet tip) and they are very honest. I ask them to congratulate themselves if their effort has improved by the end of the lesson. Sometimes I ask them to show me by putting their thumbs up if they have improved, but mostly it's about them acknowledging that great work is often linked to effort. 

Despite my efforts, some children still do not possess that self-belief or 'can do' attitude. So here's what I intend to do next term to support them further:

1. Reinstate #proudofmyselfie so that children acknowledge when their effort has led to great work

2. Trial a weekly genius hour. I am half way through a blog post about this, which I will finish soon. Basically I will support children to develop the skills to use their hour wisely, to pursue their own questions / learning. I hope that high interest will mean greater success, leading to that self-belief that some lack. This idea is based on the 80/20 work model. If it appears to be a gimmick with little impact, I will drop it at the end of the half term. 

3. Ensure that children continue to develop their confidence and self-esteem through forest school type activities. This really does enable them to learn (and apply) so many important skills. 

4. Continue to be honest with my feedback and ensure they all buy into the notion that failing / 'breaking' things is a great way of learning (they will say they agree with this, but I know they don't all believe it. Yet!) 

5. Continue to provide challenges that develop their resilience and problem solving skills, particularly in maths and ICT/computing

I will review what we have done at the end of the half term - particularly genius hour - and will ask children to review their learning too. My children are very young (7-8) and measuring the impact may end up being anecdotal.

Update 25.02.17

The idea of genius hour has been well received by my children. To establish good habits, for the first couple of weeks I will give them a theme. After that they can choose their own questions (within reason - I did have to explain to one child this week that she would learn how babies are made when she gets to year 5 ...). So to start with, their questions will be inspired by our science topic of humans and other animals. I have read all of their questions and completed an online resource, linked to their class blog, to help some of them find information quickly. A few are asking similar questions, so will be encouraged to work together. At the end of last week they went to the library to see if they can find a helpful book or two. I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes!

Trumpet blowing!

I've had a drama article published in Creative Teaching and Learning Magazine! I had written a blog post called 'A Waspish Sort of Problem' about a drama day that I had led, based on a book called 'The Giant Jam Sandwich'. 


I had blogged about the event and shared it on twitter and was subsequently approached to write the arcticle. I admit that I was unsure at first, because of time limitations and  my ability to do a good job.
 So, now that I have done it, I am going to blow my own trumpet! Fitting it in was a miracle in itself (the week before the google teacher academy and during those google app tests). I have no intention to 'tweet brag' about the article or this blog post, but am blogging just because I am wearing a *proud face* right now and want to have a 'look what I've done' moment! 

Drama in the classroom: the power of twitter

Many people know what a drama queen I am. Not always in real life; as a true Gemini I can go from confidently outspoken to self-conscious, uber-relaxed to hyperactive at the drop of a hat. But I do love a drama in the classroom and I enjoy taking risks and trying new things. Dressing up and pretending to be someone else takes me back to my childhood and, whilst I have no acting ambitions, I like the reaction I get from the children. It is amazing to see how some of them can drop into the drama with me, instantly.

I have been lucky in the past to have other staff who are willing to dress up and drop in with me too. My previous headteacher has kindly been Samuel Pepys, Percy the Park Keeper, Henry V111, a French chocolate spy and a space cadet before. Teaching assistants have been in role as such people as Maid Marion’s lady in waiting and Jacqueline Wilson. This is not part of their job description, they do it because they enjoy it and can see the benefits.

I have roped some of my family into playing a role too. My dad and sister have been giants complaining about small cakes, my son is regularly a manager, employee or traveller. Sometimes you need a fresh face though. So a few weeks ago I asked on twitter if anyone could help. Within 30 minutes I had a video message from Miss Read ( @MissRead10 )  asking for help from Badger Publishing company.  

She was going on holiday and didn't have enough room in the case for her daughter's favourite book - The Hungry Caterpillar. She wanted to know if we could help. I wanted the children (in role as publishers) to come up with the idea that creating a book on the ipad would solve this problem. The initial problem was that my class were really indignant that Miss Read couldn't remove some clothes and put the book in! 'It's quite small after all!' Luckily, one of my chaps said, 'Well we could make a book and email it to her", which then prompted the ibook idea. We had used book creator before, but I wanted them to make an animated story, so I joined in as I always do (as an employee) and dripped some more ideas in.  The videos below are examples of what Badger Publishing company created.

This was a what I would class as a mini-mantle. Dropping into a drama for a short time (2-3 lessons) to achieve the desired outcome, usually covering only one or two curriculum areas.

 The next mantle I wanted to do would involve many more curriculum areas. It needed to incorporate learning about night time and nocturnal animals as part of our work towards SATs. I asked another fellow tweeter (@normal_for_JP) if he would do me a small favour. I wanted a way of getting the children to try and deduce the difficulties of capturing nocturnal animals on film. I was expecting a short audio/film clip request for help to film creatures. I was absolutely amazed at what I actually got! See for yourself!

The mantle had already started in the morning with a letter of complaint 

from a fellow nature lover, who said that the WPIT website was not very informative. Creating dilemmas is what gets a drama started and keeps it going.

WPIT decided very quickly that they needed to add more content and should probably make sure that their animal facts were accurate, so they set to work. It was at the end of the morning session that I showed the film. 

Initially we discussed the problem and the children reasoned why the animals weren't being captured. In the afternoon the WPIT employees filmed tips like the one below as a response for Backwoods Bill, which you can see on our class blog. 

We carried on working on our company website that afternoon whilst I was plotting ways of extending the problem solving and learning from Billy's film. It turned out that I didn't have to do much thinking (as usual!) I had tweeted about the post on our class blog and by the morning we had a response from Ross Mannell (@RossMannell) in Australia! Even more incredible was the fact that he had responded with a post of his own! We studied it carefully and came to the conclusion that Backwood's Bill might not even know anything about the creatures he was trying to film. WPIT's solution to that problem - create a guide book for him. Great! Enquiry learning with outcomes and success criteria naturally set by the children.


As another part of our work on night time I wanted the children to learn 'Be Safe, Be Seen.' So cheekily I asked JP if he could drop into role again and have an accident ... Once again a brilliant film was delivered that kept the drama going. It allowed me to cover objectives, but once again my class thought that they had made the decisions about the learning and the outcomes. 

So what can I say but a HUGE thank you to three fellow tweeters who have taken the time and made a big effort to add a bit of variety to my classroom.


What about me? Well I did make the effort in the end and drop into role as Backwoods Belinda - Billy's team mate. No film clip I'm afraid. My Australian accent was dubious and it was one of those times when I was glad that I was on my own in the classroom!

Backwoods Belinda

If you want to read more, you can see our class blog here.