‘Learning Skills Weekend’ – Student reflections and next steps

A few weeks back a cohort of year 9 students took part in the school’s annual ‘Learning Skills Weekend’.

To give the weekend some context…

The original idea was the brainchild of a certain PE teacher and Head of Year at Newlands – Miss Ceri Burns. Following some teacher CPD on the topic of ‘Revision’, Ceri was inspired to make the learning of the students in her year group more effective.

Her aim was to combine an outdoor activity weekend with some innovative classroom-based sessions so that students gained an unforgettable learning experience. She gathered a team of teachers together to support her and came up with the ‘Learning Skills Weekend’ at Kingswood in Ashford, Kent under the project title: ‘Learning to Learn’.

The learning sessions would focus on the following four ideas: Struggle to Succeed, Making Links, Learning from Mistakes and Teaching Others.
This year…

It was decided based upon the success and impact of the first year (2014) the project would become a key part of the year 9 educational offer and as such the decision to offer the weekend to students continued. This year Miss Gratton led her year group and team of willing volunteers (teachers) to Kingswood.

The outcomes…

One only has to look at the responses students produced during a reflection session (conducted upon their return to school) to see the impact their participation over the course of the weekend has had on them. A select few have been embedded below:

Olivia Thompson November 18, 2015 at 12:22 pm

This weekend at Kingswood has been beneficial and has changed my way of thinking and learning whether it’s in lessons or outside. I learnt that struggle is success and that it is ok to ask questions and struggle instead of finding a solution straight away therefore feeling like you haven’t achieved or worked hard enough.
In Kingswood you learn how to say yes and you learn a lot about yourself, like how you work in a team, what activities you enjoy or are good at, your fears and overcoming them, how resourceful you are etc. If you don’t get a question right, don’t give up otherwise you will never succeed, you need to have a growth mind set and have a fixed mind-set on what you want to achieve.

Ciara says November 18, 2015 at 12:18 pm

This weekend at Kingswood has been very beneficial towards my approach to learning because I have developed new and helpful skills such as team work, collaboration, how to make links, making decisions and knowing the consequences and finally learning that struggle is good. These skills have changed my view on having a fixed mindest in school and out of school.
By participating in the activities I now have gone from having a fixed mindset to a developing growth mindset meaning that I now have a positive perspective on my learning and will not say ‘I can’t’ to anything. I will practise to improve instead of giving up. My social skills have improved over the past few days as I am more confident in taking part in activities with new people meaning that I can get everyone involved in the discussion.

Lili Omar says November 18, 2015 at 12:00 pm

This weekend had been a very informative 2 days, teaching me about myself and skills I can incorporate into my learning.
Even though I already had the skills of teamwork, asking questions and speaking up, I feel as though Kingswood has enhanced them to help me to be a better learner and student for my later years at school.
In the making links session [….] I had to describe a Lego tower I built up to a partner and we asked questions a lot helping sure the drawing was right. Even though it was wrong I learnt that if she didn’t ask questions the drawing would have been even more incorrect.
In the decisions and consequences session, I learnt that being distracting myself wouldn’t help me learn and to have a growth mind-set instead of a fixed mind-set is better. Growth mind-sets will make help you be a stronger learner in more subjects and fields in life.

* The complete collection of student reflections can be found at the ‘Learning Skills Weekend’ Blog – https://y9learningskills.wordpress.com)

What next?

The work on ‘Learning to Learn’ for both students and teachers doesn’t stop here. Over the coming weeks members of the school’s ‘Teaching and Learning Team’ will be constructing a series of follow up workshops that will be delivered during pastoral sessions with the aim of ensuring the development and progress the students made over the course of the weekend is revisited and reinforced.

In the meantime…

Don’t be afraid to experiment and attempt to embed the following approaches and strategies into your classroom practice (particularly with the year 9 and year 10 cohorts) as a way of reinforcing the approaches introduced at the ‘Learning Skills Weekend’.

Scenario 1

“If a student expresses the sentiment that they ‘can’t do it’, are finding something ‘too hard’ or are simply disconnecting from the lesson/task…”

Response

Don’t be afraid to make transparent and engage in dialogue regarding the growth mindset concept. Simply asking them (or a participant on the weekend) what mindset might be controlling their response or reaction to their learning may be enough to promote re-engage them with the task/works presented.

 

Scenario 2

“Your students are progressing through the work and tasks set at an extremely fast rate. Have you…”

Response

… planned a question/task that will ‘stump’ them? Made them think at a deeper level and challenged their learning in relation to the skills/knowledge presented?

 

Scenario 3

“Did you just have a student say: ‘We did this in Maths!’”

Response

Ask your students to record (using their green pen) the cross-subject link they have just made. Get them to note this down as a record of the cross-curricular link in skills and knowledge they are developing.

‘Lesson Study’ – Defining Excellence

We, the staff cohort at Newlands, have been tasked with the objective of ‘defining excellence’ this year. What better way to explore contemporary  educational approaches as part of this task than to engage in another round of ‘Lesson Study’!

Over the course of the year dedicated time (under the programme devised below) will be given to allow us (in our department triads) to explore and ‘work out’ exactly what ‘excellence’ is to us in our school context at Newlands Girls’ School.

Towards the end of this year we will host  a seminar where our collective definitions of ‘excellence’ (hopefully informed by the findings from our Lesson Studies) will be brought together. These ideas will then be taken, formalised and shared so that we have a common goal and understanding of what ‘excellence’ is and looks like at Newlands.

The assembled ‘Lesson Study’  triads (from our last ‘Whole School Training’ session) will provide an opportunity where different approaches to our pedagogy can be explored.

This year there is no prescribed school wide focus. This is a response to the fear and feeling that annual introductions of new initiatives can dilute the impact of previously explored approaches. This decision also takes into account and acknowledges that different departments and curriculum areas inevitably will have their own interests and facets of education that they are aiming to/desire to explore and embed. Hopefully, the lack of prescription will empower departments to explore approaches that they feel have relevance and value to their respective subject and departmental ethos.

However if, at this stage, you and your department or your triad is struggling for a focus or facet to explore a few were introduced in our orientation session at the start of the year. They (along with some wider reading) can be found here: ‘Contemporary educational ideas worthy of further exploration’.

Lastly, if you are unfamiliar with the ‘Lesson Study’ approach please take a look at this previous blog post which provides a breakdown of the process and the resources required to conduct your triad: ‘Lesson Study’.

The programme

The framework for the programme is detailed below:

Monday 1st February ‘Reflection and Evaluation’

Monday 7th March ‘Defining Excellence’ Seminar

Monday 6th June ‘Excellence at Newlands Girls’ School’ Dissemination and Planning

How will this work?

Consequently this means that your ‘Lesson Study’ itself will need to take place between now and February 1st 2016. We hope this provides your triad with enough time to complete this part of the process. We will then reconvene in person on 1st February where dedicated time will be given to reflect and evaluate our findings.

Subsequent sessions will then be constructed to allow us to share our ideas of what ‘excellence’ looks like before these ideas are formalised and disseminated towards the end of the academic year.

Why are we doing this?

We’d like to think that this form of classroom based action research is one of the best forms of continued professional development and learning due to the fact that its focus is on teaching and learning and its impact ‘on the ground’, in the classroom, with your learners (If you are aware of any better approaches then please get in touch!).

With the task of defining ‘excellence’ this year we feel it is imperative that a large part of that definition is what learning ‘looks like’ in our school, ‘on the ground’, in our classrooms. What better way to construct a dialogue  about what ‘excellence’ looks like than with each other and our students in lessons?

There has also been a push and a consequent shift to ensure the ‘Performance Management’ programme that we all work under is more developmental. That is the reason why ‘Lesson Study’ now forms a part of the school’s ‘Performance Management’ framework and why the observation framework and associated pro forma has been rewritten in an attempt to be more collaborative and less prescribed.

We’d like to think that all of these changes are a positive step in an attempt to construct a more collaborative and developmental school learning culture where we are given time and resources to continue to learn and develop as practitioners.

I’ve read all of this, but what do I need to do now?

Between now and the 1st February you and your triad will plan and conduct the ‘Lesson Study’ lesson itself. You will then need to discuss (with each other and the students) and record your intial responses to the session and its outcomes. This constitutes phases 3 – 8 of the ‘Lesson Study’ process.

That’s it… for now.

Questions?

If you have any questions regarding any of the above please get in touch by dropping me an email: CraigLucas@newlandsgirls.co.uk

‘Lesson Study Reflection’ – James Gaskell, Rachel Fletcher and Craig Lucas

Last July members from the ‘Business Studies’, ‘Languages’ and ‘English’ Departments took on the ambitious task of having a ‘dual’ focus with regards to their ‘Whole Staff Training’ Lesson Study triad… with great success.

The highly ambitious Lesson Study was bought out of a desire to continue explore the concepts of ‘talk’ (Mercer & Dawes, 2013) whilst also embedding ‘concepts to develop a growth mindset (Dweck, 2014) into learning’ (all of this on top of developing Business Studies concepts.

The team of teachers involved came away from the experience satisfied with the outcomes from the experience however a few questions still remained. The purpose of this blog post is to pose those questions for our wider learning community to see if dialogue can be constructed and some of these questions answered!

The outline

The plan for the session was threefold:

i ) Learners will be exploring the Business Studies concept of ‘location’ through group and peer discussion – this would be the main vehicle for learning.

ii ) Learners would, at staged intervals, be asked to reflect upon their learning by recording the degree of difficulty to ‘struggle’ they were facing at selected moments.

iii ) Consequently learners would be asked to engage in a period reflection that aimed to raise awareness of the ‘growth’ mindset concept and to provide a reference point to enable them to reflect on future learning in relation to their approach.

The findings

With regards to talk:

• Giving learners a large degree of ownership and independence to tackle a task from the outset of a lesson was challenging and can result in ‘slow starts’. Hence learners at Newlands (in this context) are ill-equipped with sufficient meta-cognitive ability to initiate their own learning discussions.
• For future reference, when constructing such scenarios, having a clear framework to work within is essential to content-related progress.
• Those that are more versed in skills relating to talk (incl. teachers and TAs) will subsequently dominate talk time in group work, often assuming multiple roles in discussion.
• Therefore, to what degree does this limit the cognitive processes and learning that takes place amongst other members?

With regards to growth:

• It was a new requirement for students to have to engage with meta-learning in this way.
• At this stage this becomes a useful tool for the practitioner to inform planning of future learning phases.
• More dialogue with meta-learning is required for this to be a useful tool for student learning with little impact being had on enhancing their content based learning (at this stage).

We, as a group, subsequently went away with a few questions that we continue to explore to this day:

i ) How do we embed approaches to growth that have an impact on our learners and not just the practitioner? Is ‘more of the same’ (with regards to our current approach) beneficial or are other approaches required to raise the level of dialogue regarding learning in the classroom for their to be impact?
ii ) How do we group students to ensure effective talk? Is the careful selection of groupings essential in ensuring dynamics are conducive towards ensuring talk is a powerful and effective tool for learning?
iii ) How do we develop a degree of independence whilst ensuring progress? What facilitation is required to ensure that we are both skilling our learners with tools for life whilst ensuring the content of our subject is learnt?

If you have any responses/answers to the questions we have posed ourselves, please get in touch by Commenting or dropping us an email at: JamesGaskell@newlandsgirls.co.uk, RachelFletcher@newlandsgirls.co.uk or CraigLucas@newlandsgirls.co.uk.

Pedagogy in Focus ‘ – ‘The Pygmalion Effect’ on the ground.

We, undoubtedly, want the best for all our students and in order to enable them to work to their best we need to have ‘high expectations’ of them.

Robert Rosenthal has explored the effects of teacher expectations on students’ learning over the past five decades under the title: ‘The Pygmalion Effect’ or sometimes ‘The Rosenthal Effect’. A short overview of his work can be seen in this short video here:

OK, this is fine, but it got me thinking… on a day to day, lesson to lesson basis, how do I actually communicate my expectations? 

I was particularly interested in exploring how my expectations are understood through ‘feedback’ under what Rosenthal describes as the ‘feedback factor’. Was I guilty of accepting lower quality responses because of my perceived understanding of one’s ability? Was my feedback differentiated based upon who had constructed the set ‘work’? How do I establish what my expectations are of the tasks/work/activities set. In order to explore this I needed to consider a specific case study.

Modelling ‘high expectations’

Within Media Studies students are required to produce a piece of ‘real’ media that can be disseminated and marketed to a ‘real’ audience. In our case we task them to construct a music video. At a very early stage in the process (the research and planning phases) we choose to use professionally produced music videos as the source for our analysis and deconstruction. We ‘break them down’ considering their conventions and how they have technically been shot and edited. One such example of a music video that was analysed this academic year can be seen below:

I believe this approach to research and planning works: looking at ‘professional work’ within the subject provides us with a real world reference point. And, given the technology available to the class is of similar capacity to a working professional (DSLR cameras, Apple Macs with professional level editing software), highlighting ‘professional work’ establishes an aspirational goal of what we ‘can’ achieve. Consequently we have:

a ) established extremely high expectations and…

b ) created a reference/comparison point (the ‘professional work’) onto which constructive ‘feedback’ can be provided without the need to overly critique the students’ work or learning.

The creative journey the learners then embark upon means:

• they make mistakes (lots)
• have to embark on a learning ‘journey’
• they have to continually reflect and refine
• they, consequently, develop a degree of reliance
• they continually have to problem solve.

It is fair to say that the modelling of ‘high expectations’ (by providing a professional level piece of work as the stimulus and reference point) breaks down the learners’ self-perceived level of ability and heightens their own expectations about what they can produce. This expectation is often further heightened by exploring previous cohorts work on the same brief (examples can be seen on the Media Studies Department’s YouTube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/newlandsmedia).

A music video produced by Sapir Tal and Sophie Madden (2014).

Reflecting on this approach has provoked myself to ask questions of how I establish and model the expectations I have of learners across the year groups and subject(s) that I teach. This will be a focus for a further blog post… once I’ve done some research and some thinking!

‘Flip learning’ – L. Arnold

Flip learning reverses the traditional class setup: students acquire basic content outside of class, and then work together in class on application-orientated activities. This allows more time teacher contact time so higher order knowledge and skills can be developed in class.

‘The flipped learning model’

It can be useful for content heavy parts of the course and those that are sometimes rushed through due to time constraints. It does require a change for both pupil and teacher in establishing procedures for preparation and engagement in class. Pupils need to take responsibility for their own learning rather than sit back and take a passive approach.

The way it works is that pupils have prior access to materiel covering the content of the next lesson. This can take any format you wish. Pupils prepare for the lesson by reading/watching or whatever is appropriate and trying to understand it. The lesson can then be used to discuss areas that are not clearly understood, use knowledge gained and undertake activities activity designed to appropriately challenge pupils to apply concepts and engage them in the types of thinking common to the area being studied and relevant to the subject area.

Having used this idea at a previous school and recognised its benefits I decided to trial it with AS biologists at the start of the year. They were given an article about circulatory systems in various animals which contained all the details required by the specification plus some extension content. To check that it had least been read I started the lesson with a short (and very easy) test. At this point some pupils admitted not to reading it as “you are going to teach it to us anyway”. However some pupils had clearly spent some time studying the article, with one saying that she had been particularly interested in some of it and had done some further independent research on part of it.

The article formed a basis to discussion activities and questions in the lesson.

The discussion activities allow pupils to practice articulating subject specific content in front of others, which is useful skill for pupils to acquire as I have found in general the girls are quite reticent to speak in front of others. In the near future many of them will be attending university interviews where they may well be asked subject specific questions so hopefully this will go some way to helping them be successful.

As a first attempt I feel it went quite well. It is clearly different from what they are used to and some pupils were out of their comfort zone in that they were not told exactly what to write down and were reluctant to participate in discussion in case they were wrong. Hopefully in the future they will build up resilience and take control of their own learning.

Flip learning encourages independent learning and puts the responsibility for learning on the pupils, again a useful university skill.

‘Contemporary educational ideas worthy of future exploration.’

Ideas come and ideas go, some stick around. There are educational ideas and approaches that ‘work’ and can transform the learning culture within our classrooms and some that just don’t ‘work’ in certain school contexts.

Here are a few, ‘recent’, educational ideas (in no particular order) worthy of future exploration that may provide a focus for your ‘Lesson Study‘ triad on our journey to defining what excellence looks like at Newlands.

‘Talk’ – Neil Mercer – Mercer explore the power of the spoken word in enhancing the learning process and as a vehicle for developing writing.

• ‘The value of exploratory talk’ – A rationale
• ‘Thinking Together’ – Mercer addresses the development of language use, ways of thinking and learning. 
• ‘Talk at the crossroads’ – Judy Clark assesses the place for talk in education.
• ‘Leading Learning through Talk’ – An initiative at Newlands Girls’ School

‘Growth’ – Carol Dweck – Dweck explores the power of the mind and how the explicit teaching of a ‘growth’ mindset can dramatically affect learning.

• ‘Fixed vs Growth – the two basic mindsets that shape our lives’ – An overview
• ‘Teaching a growth mindset‘
• ‘Transparency and transformability’ – An approach to constructing dialogue regarding growth
• ‘Growth mindset – what next?’ – Taking the growth mindset further

‘Building Learning Power’ – Guy Claxton – Claxton puts forward the idea that an education should provide ‘space’ for developing certain dispositions alongside knowledge.

• ‘The idea of Building Learning Power’ – An introduction
• ‘Below the line cultivation’ – A presentation on the approach
• ‘Building Learning Power – helping young people become better learners’ – Copy available in the Teaching and Learning Library
• ‘Building Learning Power’ – Newlands Girls’ School resources

‘Formative Assessment’ – Dylan William – Dylan William’s work has transformed approaches to classroom formative assessment over the past 15 years.

• ‘A talk by Dylan William’ – An extensive overview
• Dylan William’s Website – A wealth of resources and research
• ‘Inside the Black Box – raising standards through classroom assessment’ – The seminal piece of research on formative assessment. 

‘The Pygmalion Effect’ – Robert Rosenthal – Rosenthal’s research explores the degree to which our expectations (as teachers) affect learning.

• ‘The Rosenthal Effect’ – An overview
• ‘The Pygmalion Effect – communicating higher expectations’ – Strategies and classroom approaches
• ’20 psychological principles for teachers No. 11 – expectations’ – Links to other psychological principles

‘Growing Minds’ – Challenging a fixed mindset at Newlands Girls’ School

Over the course of the past academic year (2014 – 2015) we, as a school, have embarked on a journey to explore the concept of ‘growth’ as addressed in the work of Carol Dweck (2012). Much of this work has been under the guise of focused action research via the ‘Lesson Study’ programme which has and continues to be the ‘vehicle’ for our continued professional learning and development.

As we embark on the evaluation, reflection and dissemination phase we feel that it is important to address the key question with regards to ‘growth’ at Newlands… ‘what next?’

What we know

The ‘Lesson Study’ programme produced one definitive outcome in that it acted as a form of ‘diagnosis’ identifying the mindsets that exist within our respective classrooms and the mindsets that our students bring with the through the gate. Some ‘Lesson Study’ triads went further in an attempt to challenge the dominant mindsets, employing a range of strategies and approaches.

To develop our approach to addressing ‘growth’ as a concept it is now clear that some ‘doses’ of ‘medication’ are required to combat and address the ‘diagnosis’ we have come to.

Next steps

We are proposing the following strategies/initiatives to take this further:

• Formal dissemination of our book, ‘Lesson Study at Newlands Girls’ School’, during dedicated training time to allow the findings to be read, understood and departmental plans of action to constructed.

• The creation of a dedicated ‘optional’ Twilight Training sessions on ‘growth’ where interested practitioners can meet as ‘champions of growth’ to develop new strategies and approaches.
• A platform for ‘growth’ to be explored further through the performance management programme at Newlands where practitioners are given the opportunity to engage in ‘Lesson Study’ triads.

We do however appreciate that the above strategies are ‘teacher focused’ approaches and to support our pursuit of developing a ‘growth’ mindset at Newlands it is imperative that a ‘student focused’ approach also be constructed. Consequently we are proposing to run a project titled: ‘Growing Minds’ that will operate in the following way:

• Through collaboration with the pastoral teams across all years of the school ‘stubborn’ or ‘fixed mindset’ learners will be identified.
• 15 – 20 learners with the most ‘fixed’ of mindsets will be invited to attend a series of workshops run throughout one academic week with the intention of challenging the mindsets the students bring with them ‘through the school gate’.

At this time we are at the proposal stage and over the coming weeks will be in contact and have dialogue with the relevant groups and parties within the school to gain their thoughts. But we’d also like yours, please feel free to Comment and share your thoughts by clicking the button to the left!

‘Transparency and Transformability’ – C. Brown

Transparency
Easy to perceive or detect
Thoughts, feelings or motives that are easily perceived.

Transformability
is the capacity to change form, nature or character.

“My brain can’t do Maths”
“I just can’t remember stuff I’ve read”
“I can’t draw”

How often do we hear these phrases from pupils or (whisper it very quietly) say similar things ourselves? Now, why is it that in a short period of time our students develop strengths in some areas and such aversions to others? The predetermined ideas our students enter our lessons with regarding a subject or their own ability in that subject can so often impact the progress they make regardless of the sequence of learning planned by the teacher. When faced with something challenging in a subject they enjoy or approach with confidence, we can often see our pupils be much more willing to embrace the challenge. Compare this to a pupil who believes they are already at a disadvantage compared to their peers because of the talents they have (or haven’t) been given, the level of resilience shown could well be minimal. The question is how do we establish the ‘growth’ mindset in our pupils to bypass such obstacles?

Transparency is key to trying to change a pupil’s mindset. Through our ‘Lesson Study’ triads last year all members of staff have tried to develop some aspect of ‘growth’ and lots of teachers are actively trying to embed key learning skills in their lessons in some way, shape or form on a regular basis. We as staff know what we are trying to achieve but more importantly do our pupils? A student with a ‘fixed’ mindset will- by definition- be hard to change but are we going about achieving this change in the most effective way? Often we openly direct our classes towards our curriculum or subject based goals, however, do we do this when we are trying to develop their mindsets? There can be a reluctance to broadcast these (sub) objectives in lessons and hope that through osmosis they are taken on board but being clear and open with those outcomes far increases the possibility that they might be achieved. The sooner we get our pupils thinking about the way they think as well as the way they learn the better.
Secondly we must be transparent about our pupil’s transformability. Matthew Syed -former English table tennis player, three time Commonwealth Games gold medalist and now more commonly known for his journalism as well as his book Bounce (2010)- is a firm believer of this.

Syed is a promoter of Carol Dweck’s work on Mindsets, often applying these theories to sports based scenarios. In his book, Bounce, and when he delivers talks he works hard to dispel the myth that talent is the key or overwhelming factor in achieving success. He places more importance on hard work and focused, high quality practise. However, he also promotes the idea that these same principles can be applied to students in an educational environment. Similarly to Dweck, Syed supports the theory that the language we use when talking to our students is extremely important; “aren’t you hardworking” rather than “aren’t you smart”. To put it another way, Syed said:

“In this (fixed) mindset people worship effortless performance, if I can do something without even trying that must mean I’m super talented…the very thing that enables them to reach their potential is something they are embarrassed about” (The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practise, 2013)

Are we reinforcing our student’s misconceptions that success in a given field should be easy because that is where our predetermined strengths lay?

Syed references the misleading idea that the potential for our brains is a genetic inheritance like our eye colour or height. To dispel this idea, Syed refers to London Taxi drivers. If we believe that so much of our abilities were inherited Black cab drivers must come from a long line of super humans who were born to memorise the inner workings of a complicated city who very luckily have a brain to deal with that amount of space and directional information. The reality is that over months and years of practise the part of the brain responsible for holding this information has grown with use. It is this potential for growth that Syed believes young people must have a firm grasp of. He states, “the brain is a highly adaptable organ…it adapts to the demands placed upon it…children need to think of their brain as a muscle that grows with use”. Cultivating this type of thinking in our students may very well remove the shackles restricting them from making positive strides forward. Syed suggests a possible way to encourage this style of thinking, particularly in children, is through imagery and animation (brains changing over time for instance- see below) or through anecdotes from relatable sources. However, there is always the danger that if a pupil is well entrenched in a ‘fixed’ way of thinking then there might well be a chance that this type of pupil may think, “they might be able to do that but I can’t”. It might well be worth trying to expose an occasion in each pupil’s life or education when they have achieved some kind of growth through hard work, endeavour or focused practise to cement the idea that it possible for everyone.
MRI showing growth (left to right) of the hippocampus in taxi drivers.

Brain Stimulation during easy tasks selected by student with fixed mindset compared to students with growth mindsets who chose challenging tasks.

‘Lesson Study’ – Pro Forma

Please download the ‘Lesson Study’ Record Pro Forma by clicking on the link below and saving the .docx document to your ‘Desktop’.

‘Lesson Study’ Record Pro Forma

‘Lesson Study’ at Newlands Girls’ School – A Book

In years past we, as a school, have utilised a range of strategies with regards to how we disseminate the findings of whole school approaches to ‘Teaching and Learning’ – from ’round table discussions and presentations’ (‘Teaching and Learning’ working groups, 2013 – 2014), ‘pop up stall/display sharing’ (research groups, pre 2012) to ‘films’ (‘Leading Learning through Talk‘, 2012 – 2013).

This year we’d like to propose something new. As we are all aware we have been using ‘Lesson Study‘ as the vehicle to explore approaches for embedding ‘growth’ into our classroom practice and, as we near the end of this process, we’re proposing that we, collaboratively, write a book about it!

It is hoped that the writing of this book will allow us to construct a document that will allow us to maximise the understanding of how ‘growth’ can be embedded in our school context in the ultimate hope that the result of sharing our research in this way will ‘translate’ into effective changes to pedagogy in our classrooms (and fields, sport halls, swimming pools, labs etc.).

Onto the book…

Here’s the front cover…

However Page 1 currently looks like this…

… as you can see, we need to write it!

What’s in the book?

Essentially the content of the book will be a collection of the reflection documents that we will aim to formalise and write in our session on the 6th July. Each triad will have their own page in the book where they will be able to: summarise the planning process they have been through, summarise the observations from the lesson, summarise the feedback from the focus group of students, a summary of notes from the post lesson observation, an evaluation of the impact the constructed approaches had on learning and an outline for next steps or changes should this approach be used again. There will also be a space for contact details of the members of the triads to encourage dialogue and collaboration across triads about their experiences with embedding ‘growth’.

What do I need to do?

Nothing… yet! Just come along to the session on the 6th July where pro formas and frameworks will be available that will aid the reflection and writing process.

What do I need to bring?

Just one laptop between the triad so that the recording and reflection pro forma can be completed.

What happens next?

Firstly, we can look forward to the summer! Over the break the book will be constructed from the reflection documents that are produced on the 6th July. Copies of the completed book will be disseminated (both physically and digitally) once we return to school and will be used to inform how we, as a school, will continue to explore and embed the concept of ‘growth’ across the curriculum during the 2015 – 2016 academic year.

Why are we doing this?

It would be irresponsible for us to have invested so much time and energy into this phase of action research through ‘Lesson Study‘ for our respective findings to be known and understood by only those members of the separate triads that were conducted. The rationale here is to produce a document (in this case a book) that will be curated, printed and disseminated to all colleagues to encourage cross triad and cross-curricular dialogue regarding approaches to ‘growth’ at Newlands.

But my findings weren’t wholly positive?

Great! Surely that’s exactly what we need? We never set out with the idea that this was going to be a total success. The essence of ‘Lesson Study‘ is that it is essentially a form of ‘on the ground’, classroom based action research. ‘Lesson Study‘ triads that feel that the findings from the process were negative or non-impactful on the learning provide an equally as important level of feedback as the ones that showed positive impact on classroom learning. We feel it’s important to experiment with ‘growth mindset’ approaches and find what works well for us, for our learners in our school context – establishing what doesn’t work will go a long way in helping us do that.

That’s it, we’re looking forward to the 6th July.

Here’s to writing a book!