Lessons learnt from a cyber-attack

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 can, it is YOU that is the best resource to your students'. 

Thankfully over the past week some staff have found resources on hard drives but my most recent resources are still with the Care Bears. The main difference in my older resources I have found is the lack of modelling. 

This brings me to another great touchstone text: Rosenshine's Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington. 

Models - the importance of worked-examples to reduce cognitive load. We need to give many worked examples; too often teacher give too few.

Tom Sherrington expands on Rosenshine's work by explaining that we can provide models in a variety of ways:

- Physical representation of completed tasks, such as model paragraphs.

- Conceptual models, such as ones we need to understand the behaviour of particles in solid, liquid and gas. 

- Explicit narration - thinking out loud our thought process of how to solve problems.

So this week I have been busy writing model answers and making a concerted effort to narrate my thought process. How can you increase your use of models in your classroom?