Skip to main content

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?











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lessons Learnt from questioning a toddler

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

PD Day Lessons

After our two P.D. days back at school, I have two lessons to reflect on.  My first lesson; our year group bubble system means that our students won’t be socially distancing from one another, but that staff are required to maintain 2m from the students. Whilst one teacher joked ‘Ah, I will finally be able to legitimately spend all lesson teaching by sitting at the front of the room’, another gasped ‘Oh, but circulating the room is what I do!’ I agree with the second teacher but I am also relieved that the students will be sat next to each other and will be able to use ‘think, pair, share’ as it is intended to be used (see my last post). More ideas on how to ‘teach from the front’ to follow in a future post...  Whilst most staff seemed happy to return to school there was a feeling of uncertainty and apprehension in the air and that leads me to my second lesson; the need for us to maintain that ‘relentless positivity’ when the students arrive, despite our own feelings....
Post a Comment
Read more