Closing the Gap - Personalising Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time (DIRT) to Improve Exam Performance

For a number of years I have been setting aside DIRT after I have marked an assessment. This time has allowed students to re-write / re-draft their answers to show that they have understood the targets that I have set and can now apply those targets and improve their work.

I have struggled to make the experience truly personal though. Yes, I have always set targets that are specific to that student and allowed a variable amount of time so that students working at different rates can complete their improvements. But I don't believe that this has been as personalised as it could have been I also believe that the process has been too reliant on me as a teacher. Having done the marking the focus should be on the students, not me, to improve their work.

With this aim in mind I marked a set of GCSE history mock papers. I have 20 students in the class. There were six questions on the mock. All were based around source analysis. There were not any direct marks for students knowledge. The topic was Britain 1945-75. The focus was the growth of the teenager. The students would have a two hour lesson to complete their DIRT. Their final exam was 5 days away.

As I marked the paper I simply placed a mark, and nothing more, on the vast majority of responses. That said I noted down on my mark scheme specific students who had really struggled with each question to guide me in the lesson. I wanted the students to take responsibility for their targets and their improvements.

At the start of the lesson I emailed the students the links to the two clips below. These clips are created by me using an app called ExplainEverything. This app allows you to talk over a PowerPoint/Keynote and makes a video for you.

 

Also at the start of the lesson I handed back the mock exam papers. I asked the students to look through their paper and identify which questions they had struggled most on. I asked them to rank their questions in order of priority with the ones that they found the hardest at the top.

Once the rank order of questions was established we got into the main part of the lesson. 

The stamp I use for point 5

1. I asked the students to watch the part of the video that applied to the question they had identified as the one that they had struggled the most with. 
2. Once they had watched this part of the video I asked them to write out a suitable target that would allow them to improve their answer. 
3. The students then had to check this target with me. In most cases this appeared as simply a rubber stamping exercise but in asking the students to articulate the problem and solution to me I was getting them to reinforce their understanding. This conversation acted as a mini-plenary.  Obviously, some of the students required more support, especially the ones I had previously identified, and I spent more time working with these students.
4. Then the students re-wrote / redrafted their answer to show that they had understood how to improve it.
5. The students checked their answers briefly with me. If I was happy then I stamped the answer if not I could offer further guidance. Again this process acted as a mini-plenary.
6. The students began the process again on the next question within their rank order.

 Literacy Focus
This lesson coincided with a literacy walkthrough at my school. Question six on the exam is an essay which the students can achieve an additional three marks for spelling and grammar. On this question I provided a literacy target as well as a mark and asked the students to ensure that their improvements (point 5) allowed them to show that they had acted on this literacy target. Working in this way allowed the students to showcase the progress that they had made on both the wider exam and on their literacy.

My class work independently on improving their work (DIRT)

 Reflections

• It was personal: Each student's work in the lesson was different. After rank ordering the answers based on the marks the scored the students were able to personalise their journey through the lesson.
• I felt like I was at two places at once: I was able to be the teacher, on the screens via the iPads, and be a offer 1:1 support to the students when they needed it. This meant that the students were more on task because they were getting support from me in different ways at the same time.
• The mini-plenaries ensured I could measure progress: I feel that we are always been asked to measure progress. The fact that I was able to check both the students targets and the improvements they had made to their work allowed me to know how much individual progress was being made.
• It was student led and independent: I really felt like the activity was student led as they chose their route through the lesson, my job was to provide resources and support. Once I had provided the resources (the videos and the marks on their exams) the students were able to work independently through parts 1-3 and 4.
• It was well placed in the year: my GCSE class had done a lot of this type of thing before and it really showed. Although this lesson was a step further (in being more student led) the students saw it as a natural extension to their work and assessment.
• The students were engaged: this might have been because of the immediacy of the exam but I would like to think that it was, at least in part, down to the activity.

One students redraft of part of one question

Results
All of the students made progress in the lesson and all produced at least two rewrites of their answers. Obviously, the proof will be in the pudding on results day, and it will be hard to tell how much this lesson contributed, but judging by the atmosphere in the room and the quality of the student work the personalised DIRT was successful.

The fact that this lesson was so close to the real exam I was expecting the students to ask about learning content but the fact that they didn't shows that they understand how important these type of activities are to improving performance.

DIRT isn't a new concept for me and has formed part of my lessons for a number of years. The videos the students were using were made two years ago. That said delivering the lesson in such a personalised way felt like a breakthrough as it allowed the students the ability to really tailor the DIRT to their specific needs.

Closing the Gap - Student Feedback on my Feedback

This year I have tried to improve the feedback that I give to the students in all of my classes. I have tried to develop efficient feedback techniques to aid all of my classes. I blogged about this at the start of the year (see link). The aim has been to try to increase the impact of the feedback that I give in order to help the students close the gap between their current performance and the desired performance . I was happy with the quality of the feedback I was giving but felt that the impact of the marking and feedback could be increased. I also looked to do this in a more efficient manner.

The first page of an A/S assessment book

One of the ways I have looked to do this is by having specific assessment books for both my GCSE and A/S classes. The aim of these books is to keep all the assessed work, all the feedback and all the improvements, in one place. This allows the students to show understanding and ultimately progress and keeps the feedback in one accessible place.

The first pages of the A4 book are taken up by the students copying out their feedback and explaining how they are going to improve their answer. The parents also sign this page.

The rest of the book is taken up with assessed answers, my feedback, and then the improvements/re-drafting that the students have completed to ensure they have understood. The final part is me checking that the improvements are correct.

Feedback from my students
Last week I asked my A/S and GCSE class to complete an anonymous GoogleForm to give their feedback on the assessment books and my feedback more generally. Below is a Tagxedo of what they said:

Words that stand out from this to me are easier, good, helpful, improvements, think and useful.

Below are some comments from my GCSE students about the assessment books:

"I think it's quite good because you have all of your important work in one place and not all mixed in with the other stuff that doesn't have as much priority."

"It's easier having all of the more 'important' pieces of work being written in one book because then it's all in one place and it isn't likely to get lost; it's clear where everything is when it comes to writing targets or looking back to compare pieces of assessed work."

Lots of comments were similar to this in mention the organisational benefits and many also said how easy it was to look back over their work and targets.

Below are some comments from my A/S students about the assessment books:

"I like completing my AS work in the book as it allows me to keep it all in one place and easily look back on past questions / essays. It's also good for teacher feedback and discussions with parents over how certain tasks have gone."

"Great idea! We can keep all our work in place, see where we need to improve, do the improvements and get feedback easily."

"I like been able to keep track of all my essays and i can see improvement across the book,
However i feel getting it signed and filling out the front is a bit over the top "

My A/S students focused more on the impact of the feedback and moving forward. It seems that getting parents to sign the book has divided opinion but my reasoning behind it is to keep parents informed and ensuring that any performance is seen be all parties. I also think getting it signed increases the seriousness with which the students take the assessed work.

Moving forward
It seems that the students feel that the assessed book is worthwhile. None of the comments were completely negative about it and the vast majority were positive.

That said one reaccurring theme was obvious; the students would like more positive feedback.

"Give positive feedback as well as improvements (particular things we did well)."

"Give more positives."

In light of these comments, and others like them, I am going to increase the amount of positive remarks I give. Looking back through the books I realised that I gave out merits but did not specifically say what the students had done to earn these merits. I am obviously going to make this a New Years Resolution.

Finally, though I am pleased with the reaction from my students to the assessment books. It has made my feedback more meaningful, it has allowed the students to show how they have acted upon the feedback and finally it has been organisationally efficient.

A final word from one of my A/S students:

"I don't really have any improvements, it's the best feedback I receive on homework."

The Value of Independent Reflection

My GCSE class working independently in lessons.

At Rossett our new timetable has started and last week I had my first lessons with my new GCSE class. This class is exclusively Year 9 students and I teach them for 5 hours a week. Obviously, this group of students will take their GCSE history next summer as part of a cohort of students that will, for the large part, consist of students two years older than them. With this in mind I began this timetable thinking of ways I could close the gap between the potential of my evidently very hard working group and those other students who will be, in the main, two years older than them.

One of the ways I am seeking to do this is through a weekly homework task that the students independently complete. They are tasked with spending 30 minutes developing their understanding of a topic we have studied that week. They can chose the topic (although I strongly advise them to pick the topic they have found most difficult) and they can chose how they go about improving their understanding. The only rule is that they must produce something that I can see. It can be physical or digital. I do not mark this work, I simple check it has been done, give out merits where appropriate, and oral feedback where necessary. The work is set on a Thursday after our final lesson of the week and is checked by me on Monday at the start of the next week. The 30 minute time limit is absolute, and I have explained to the group that they cannot work longer than this even if they are really into the topic. This is obviously difficult to police but I want them to show how much reflective work they can produce in a 30 minute time frame.

I must also say at this stage that this 30 minutes of independent work sits alongside the two formal homework tasks that I set each week. These are obviously traditionally marked.

Aims

• The main aim of this work is to get the students to reflect on the work they have done that week. The simple action of choosing the topic that they have found most difficult gets the students to reflect. The aim is that they also reflect on their understanding and develop it.

• The second aim is to give the students ownership of the work they produce. By choosing what they do I hope that the students will be more committed to ensuring it is as good a quality as it can be.

• The work produced will be brilliant for revision. All of the examples I have seen so far (and particularly the ones in this post) make fantastic revision aides. The aim is not just to shore up the understanding but to help close the gap come revision time.

• The aim is for the students to creatively develop their understanding in a way that best suits their own learning. By being creative and active my aim was to ensure the students consolidated their understanding. The examples in this post have all done that.

Examples

The first example comes from Sophie. It is a video she has made to show how Republican Policies of the 1920s caused the Boom. The second half in particular is very impressive as she relates the Policies to the Boom. When I watch this back I am struck both by the quality of the work and the fact that you can almost see the cogs whirring as she explains it. There is no doubt that this work fulfils all of the aims I set and is work of a remarkable standard for a student who is essentially still in Year 8 (although technically in Year 9 they are not really until after the summer).

The second example comes from Katie who has produced an Educreation on the Republican Policies. Again this is another fantastic piece of work which fulfils the aims. I like here how she has combined a mind-map with her own explanation. Such is quality that it is the sort of resource I could easily use within my own lessons.

Katie's Educreations Lesson

The next example comes from Matthew who produced this Keynote on the 1920s using a LACKPANTS video that I found online and embedded in my wiki mrwestusa.wikispaces.com I am impressed with the creativity here and how Matthew has found a resource that he could use to help develop his understanding of the causes of the boom. It was not a resource we used directly in lesson so it is good to see him using his initiative (and the wiki) to develop his understanding.

The final example comes from Lucas who produced revision cards, on the other side of the card is the  relevant explanation. I particularly like this as it is an old fashioned example but one that works well. It has minimal glamour but is still a very effective tool.

Reflections

• Clearly it is only the second week of this but I can already see the quality of both the work and the creativity that has been displayed. I firmly believe that the students will have a much better grasp of the topics they chose than they would have done simply from my traditional teaching.

• I also believe an air of competition has developed with the students keen to produce better work to show themselves in the best possible light.

• Even at this early stage of the course setting this type of activity has allowed me a de-facto look at how my students revise and I have been able to guide them to more worthwhile activities than simply just re copying out what they have already learnt.

• The quality of the work from my Year 9 class in the first week of their GCSE History speaks volumes for this approach. I think the freedom here coupled with the traditional standard homework tasks works really well.

Going forward

The aim is to have a mini learning fair in the last lesson of term, the students will have completed three separate 30 minute pieces of independent work by then, the aim of this is to show off the quality of the students and their work. The students will have to lay out their work (digitally or physically) and the students in the group will go around the 'fair' and see all the creative ideas that have been produced. If this is a success I hope to replicate it regularly throughout the year.


3 weeks later...

The Learning Fair

Well the learning fair has just finished. The students brought in three different examples of the 30 minute independent learning work they had completed so far. they then set them out on the desks in a 'u' shaped fashion. The students moved around the fair in a clockwise fashion watching, reading and listening to their peers work, they then commented on what was good about the work produced.

I asked them to give specific comments not just general vague ones like 'detailed.' At the end of the fair the students all gave one reason why their independent work was good. An example of the work produced is below:

This is about prohibition and Al Capone, I love the creativity and drama.

 

 

Reflections on the Fair

We held the fair on the last period of the final Thursday of term. It was really hot. Despite this the quality of the work was outstanding. I was completely blown away by the students and I could easily have put an example from every student on this blog.

 

My students are a huge credit to themselves, in just 4 weeks they have really got into the idea and importance of this independent work. Without any input from me they have produced fantastic work.

 

I believe that the fair will spur everyone on at the start of next term to be even more creative and to use some of the excellent examples they have seen from each other to make their work even better.

 

The work produced will be invaluable for revision.

 

I set this independent activity up to help close the gap between my year 9 GCSE class and the older students taking the exam and I believe it has already gone some way towards achieving that.

 

I would urge everyone who teaches a group more than 3 times each week to try this approach as I believe it has yielded some fantastic results.

Reflections from the first week of 1-1 iPads @Rossett

At Rossett we have had 1-1 iPad scheme running for two weeks. That said it is only this last week that I have really felt that they are part of my classroom. Every student does not own an iPad and I have to book about 5 for most lessons. With that done I am effectively teaching in a school with 1-1 iPads.

Has this completely transformed my classroom. No I guess not. But that could be down to the fact that we have had iPads in school for a year, they just haven't been 1-1. This week I marked a GCSE mock exam and used YouTube (and ExplainEverything) to give my feedback. The students used my video generated content, in individual ways, to produce AfL targets (see previous post). I have been doing this for a year and 1-1 didn't change that.

That said I have already noticed that my teaching has changed.

Ebooks
My head of history has invested in some ebooks in PDF form that we have emailed to KS3. This has already altered how I set homework. Using apps like Popplet I have asked students to screenshot some content and make sense of it. This couldn't have been done before. As time passes I can see the online development of 'books' being used in very different ways.

Edmodo
I have now been able to use Edmodo in lessons. This week year 7 have been working on medieval towns. We play a game which necessitates the students keeping a town diary. The students completed the diary on the iPads (using notes or pages) and then pasted their work into an assignment on Edmodo. I then marked their work, offered a target, and the students then developed and improved their diaries and class work. This was all done 'paperless' within Edmodo. I can see a lot of lesson work being completed in this way in the future. Marking on Edmodo is simple and with some pre-written targets pretty quick.

Becoming an 'ICT' teacher
This is a big change that has occurred in my classroom. I have used Socrative, Edmodo, iMovie, Popplet and keynote/pages this week. My belief was that the students would be able to work these apps. This has not been the case. This has led to me having to become a pretty proficient 'ICT' teacher. I have always been 'good' with technology and I am thankful that I was given an iPad a year before the students. As this develops the students will become more proficient but at the moment the students need support with this. This has undoubtedly developed me as a teacher and has made me more confident in a computer room.

Emailing
Students having their email accounts on their iPads (or being able to access them on the school owned ones) has given me a great tool to share content. No longer do we need to have the work displayed on the board. This has allowed for increased de-facto personalisation of the lesson, something the iPads are brilliant for. We don't all need to work at the same rate and in the same way.

Engagement
The wider availability of this technology has allowed for greater excitement around school. "Are we using iPads in this lesson?" Has become a very common question. I'd have liked to think that students were already excited by the prospect of my history lessons but my use of iPads has certainly taken this to another level.

Differentiation
I love Popplet and YouTube and they are tools I like to use myself when learning. Obviously, now I can embed them into my teaching much more widely which has allowed me to differentiate much more easily. I remember last year filming myself reading an extract from 'Birdsong' to make the text more accessible. It went down a storm with all sets especially the bottom ones. I did as a bit of a gimmick to put it on a level playing field with Blackadder which we were comparing it with. The impact was much greater than that. iPads have the function to read out any text and, whilst it obviously won't be as good as a video of me, I think there is a lot of scope with this.

Obviously there are a lot of challenges with the 1-1 approach but it feels like a natural progression for me as we have had bootable iPads for a while now.

I will need to decide what to keep and remember that my students are working towards written exams.

Obviously, the initial excitement will drop as iPads become the norm. Or will it? Students always look forward to doing things they enjoy.

I love the possibilities that this approach to education brings. After only one real week of teaching I can see the impact. I am very fortunate to work in such a forward thinking school. I believe that our students are lucky to learn in an environment with so many possibilities. I would urge anyone in education to give this idea some serious thought.

I wrote this post on my iPhone on a busy delayed train. I am about to tweet it to 1,238 followers. 18 months ago I didn't have a blog or any followers. Two weeks ago we didn't have 1-1 iPads. Think where we will be in 18 months.

Below are a selection of photos from this week in my classroom @Rossett. All these photos are real they are not staged.

The Best Type of Feedback - Students Reflecting on my lessons using Google Forms

I have recently been receiving and analysing feedback on my teaching provided by my last GCSE class. Using a GoogleForm I anonymously asked them several questions about my teaching. The questions focused around what they thought was good about my lessons and what I could do to improve them. This is a process I repeat at regular intervals and is something that I believe has real value. It provides me with some of the most useful and valuable feedback I have had as a teacher.

Why does this provide the best type of feedback?

•  The feedback is real. Most feedback we are given as a teacher is based around short lesson observations which, for various reasons, do not always reflect the normal classroom practices. I had taught my GCSE history class over 150 times. Their experience was real and their feedback is based around that period as a whole. This means that it is not only fair but also allows the students to comment on a whole series of activities and lessons which are far more wide ranging than several 30 minute observations.

•  The feedback is provided by experts. My GCSE class is a combination of Year 9, 10 and 11 students who have spent their whole lives in education. They know what works well and what needs to be improved because they live it everyday.

•  The feedback is personal. The students in my class spoke only about my lessons and provided me with the kind of detailed focus that would be difficult to achieve without the GoogleForm.

•  It profoundly alters the classroom dynamic. This is perhaps the most significant reason. I am a big believer in students co-constructing the lessons (see Co-Construction Blog) because it places greater responsibility on the students and allows them to 'own' the learning. When students see that they have the chance to influence what is taking place I believe they become much more engaged. When I explain to the students how the shape of the learning has been altered by the information they have given you can clearly see the impact of the process.

The class that filled in this GoogleForm are a group that I no longer teach. @Rossett we change the school timetable 4 weeks before the summer and begin teaching our new groups. I was keen to use the advice my former students provided to improve the learning for the new cohort.

What did I learn from this process?

•  The Impact of my YouTube Channel. Nearly all the students referred to the videos I have made explaining how to answer exam questions. The vast majority said how useful they had found them and how the pause/fast-forward/rewind had individualised feedback. This is obviously something I will continue to do.

•  The need to keep changing the seating plan. My students felt that they were stuck working with the same people too often. My new group have been constantly changing partners and groups. I have made use of the random pair generator and at least once a lesson the students are working with 'random' other students. In just the first 4 weeks I have seen the benefit of this. My class is mixed Year 9-11 and the constantly changing pairing's have really developed the class dynamic. I am grateful to the students who pointed this out. One of my students actually tweeted me to say he enjoyed an activity partly because it allowed him the chance to meet new people.

•  The need to improve the revision sessions. In the run up to the exams I held a series of revision sessions after school. One of my class pointed out that most of the work that was completed in these sessions could have been done, by them, at home. They had attended but had not got the most out of the sessions. This led me to consider the work that was going on. For some of my students this was exactly the aim of the sessions because they were completing work that they would not otherwise have done at home. However, for a significant group, the sessions were not working. I have decided to develop my revision session around the principle of Solo Stations. Setting several activities that allow the students to select where they begin their revision journey. I am confident that this will improve the quality of the revision sessions and am pleased that the plight of this student (and doubtless others like them) has been brought to my attention.

I hope that you have found this blog interesting. I hope I have shown why I believe student reflections using GoogleForms is the best type of feedback. I also hope I have shown the type of quality outcomes that this kind of interaction can produce.