Lessons Learnt

So here we go again, but this time it feels different. I am not claiming to be an expert in remote learning and I know I still have many lessons to learn but I am hoping that these thoughts might help you and in return you might help me. I will draw on my own experience and 'Teaching in the Online Classroom' by Doug Lemov to share the lessons learnt. Doug Lemov and his team admit that they are no experts in this field but quickly embarked on a thorough investigation into the Online Classroom by observing as many online lessons as they were able. The main lessons I can take away from this book is the reflection on the difference between Asynchronous (learning occurs at different times in different places) and Synchronous learning (learning happens at the same time) and how there are benefits and limitations of both.  Obviously in the book these are all explored in detail but in summary;   Asynchronous (pre-recorded lesson delivery)  Synchronous (live lesso...

This morning I came downstairs to my Husband and toddler getting increasingly frustrated with each other over breakfast.  Husband: 'Do you want something else?' Toddler: 'Yeah' Husband: 'So you want a croissant?' Toddler: 'No, no, no' Husband: 'But you want something else?' Toddler: 'Yeah, yeah' Husband: 'Well do you want some toast?' Toddler: 'No, NO, NO', eeeelse' Me: 'He wants 'else' because you are asking a 20 month old toddler an open question when he thinks it is a closed question and that 'else' is something for him to have. So he wants 'else'.' Communicating with a toddler has taught me things about the use of language in a way that I have never considered before and has made me think about the my use of questioning in all aspects of life.  I recently attended a webinar with Tom Sherrington about Questioning (I know I feel like his number one fan girl right now!) and whilst it fo...

Hands up, I admit it. This week I lost it and my year 7 class felt the brunt of it. It’s been a tough week for a variety of personal reasons and I was not in the right mindset to handle the needs of year 7 on Wednesday morning. I don’t consider myself a ‘shouty’ teacher and try to maintain the ‘relentless positivity’ to encourage and engage my students but on Wednesday I shouted for the first time in a long time and I’ve been feeling bad and also slightly embarrassed about it since.  Thankfully during my weekly scroll on Twitter I came across this article from @teacherhead https://teacherhead.com/2013/01/06/behaviour-management-a-bill-rogers-top-10/amp/?__twitter_impression=true   It was reading point 8 about Controlled severity that has made me feel a bit better about my actions that day. On reflection the class have begun to become quite restless over the past few lessons. In our current bubble system Year 7 are being taught all their lessons in the Maths block and it’s fair...

2020 - The year of live-streaming or videos. For me these have been on various platforms. In the professional sense with Google Meets, Loom and Skype. With social events on Zoom or Houseparty and I have to admit I have even fallen into the black holes of video's on Insta and TikTok... there has been some desperate times but now I feel is the time to reflect on the lessons learnt from all of these platforms.  During lock down we held virtual lessons for our 6th form in a 'tutorial style' on Google meets. The premise of these was to review some of the work we had asked them to do independently, i.e. Flipped learning. I found Loom a super useful tool in structuring these tutorials (alongside my Husband’s surface pro... Accountant vs Teacher budget right there...) as I was able to model live worked examples. If you haven't used Loom give it a try as it is very easy but the surface pro definitely helped the functionality.  There are endless lessons to reflect on from lockdow...

The honeymoon period is over and the learning gap between the students is emerging. This week I want to reflect on a lessons learnt from my Year 10 class.  Despite having been teaching for 10 years now, every year I struggle with a Year 10 class and my Year 10 class this year is no different! They are a mixed ability class and when I say mixed ability my gut tells me their likely GCSE outcomes will range from grade 7 - 3.  I say 'gut' because our systems are still being re-built from our cyber attack and I have very little information about their prior attainment. They are also very mixed in their behaviour and levels of engagement so I have to pull every trick out of the box for meaningful learning to take place.  Which brings me to my lesson learnt this week and building on my last post about the use of modelling it is also the use of scaffolding that has given me some success with this class.  One of Roshenshine's Principles explains how rather than setting lower ...

No one quite knew what to expect for our first week back in the classroom, but we certainly did not plan for a cyber attack! All use of technology was blocked and it has left us with very little resources... but as with everything there are lessons to be learnt! Thankfully I was organised for the first few weeks with seating plans and all resources printed ready to go. Staff rallied round and shared what resources we had and at the end of the week many staff felt quite invigorated by teaching without technology. Many admitted they had become reliant on the same old resources and it forced them to re-plan around student led activities. Some teachers felt devastated that years of resources have been lost (we are still waiting confirmation on this and are hoping some can be recovered from the cloud somewhere - I am hopeful the Care Bears are looking after them...) and when a teacher was in tears 'but I can't teach without my resources' another teacher said 'of course you c...