Impact on teaching…

The course I have been delivering came to an end this week and students are submitting their work for assessment. In this post I’m going to sum-up my findings about the plenary and think about the impact this work has had on my teaching.

Designing a Plenary

When concluding a lesson or task the main aims should be to…

1, re-cap, revisit the aims and objectives

2, check the students have understood and clear up any misconceptions

3, give the learners a sense of achievement

4, look ahead to future learning

Considering a more student-centred approach to learning I hoped to design activities that did not rely on  open questioning and formal delivery to a group only but that required learner participation and some reflection too. All the activities that I designed required the learners to record some evidence in writing, this was a purposeful decision which has proved useful in providing evidence for their summative assessment.

What might I try in the future?

There has been a lot of  research into the use of ICT in lessons as technology advances and becomes more available for use within lessons, to develop my use of ICT, I aim to read up on this more and consider the effects of using technology within lessons. Will it appeal more to students and improve motivation and engagement?

I feel it would be a good idea to create plenary games that involve ICT and use them more often. The link below will take you to some of the best game making sites I have seen so far. Although I have not found the opportunity to use these in my classroom yet, I hope to give them a go when designing future lesson plans. They are all free or have a number of free resources, however, some require you to create an account to use the site.

 http://www.classtools.net/

Resources on this site include a fruit machine name generator, a fun way to pick a student at random during question and answers.Countdown timers and arcade games to make informal quizzes to use in your lessons.

http://www.philologus.co.uk/index.php

This site includes a template to make your own ‘who wants to be a millionaire’ style game.

http://en.educaplay.com/

http://www.purposegames.com/

Both of these sites allow you to make a variety of educational games

TES – Resources

A massive network of teachers (2.5 million registered users) makse up this digital community of practice. The TES website is a great and safe way for those who teach to share their resources with other teachers. 

http://www.tes.co.uk/home.aspx

How I plan to develop…

Not only can I build on the experiences i have had so far and use them again or make adaptations to make tasks more engaging, I have now found loads of resources that can help to design activities for the plenary. I will continue to try out different ways of summing up tasks and assessing learning. Feedback from students is invaluable and to better reflect on activities I will aim to gather their feedback as often as possible.

Finding reliable written information about plenary techniques has not been easy. Phil Beadle, a national award winning teacher, journalist and author is releasing a book this year which is dedicated to the subject….

Altogether Now…. The Ultimate Plenary Book

Book Description

‘The only book full of ideas for lesson plenaries you`ll ever need. You paint an outside wall. It rains. What happens to the paint? It runs off, of course! So it is with our students. We teach them something. We can t be bothered to do the recap, the plenary, as we don`t have any ideas. They leave the lesson. They promptly forget what you have taught them. There was no point their being in the lesson in the first place. The world continues turning. This practical little book of plenaries does what it says. It delivers a series of simple ideas for how to make your lesson endings or mid-lesson recaps interesting, engaging and cognitively challenging. Apply the ideas in this book and your students will leave the lesson with the information you have taught them still in their heads.’

Transferable Skills – Reflection

Asking the students to think about transferable skills gets them thinking about their prior learning and linking that knowledge to future learning aims. This plenary did not take place at the very end of a lesson but instead after a discussion about evaluating their work. I handed each student a post it and asked them to write on it their thoughts about skills they have picked up during the course and how they might benefit work in other subjects or future learning goals.

Using post it notes when posing questions to a group is something which I have seen in action quite often, in PGCE classes and in peer observations. I think that this is a good way to get open and honest answers to a question, especially if the task does not require them to share their answers with each other. I did not check the notes they had written but instead directed them to include their thoughts in their final evaluations. I felt that by not pressuring any one student to share their ideas with the group they would feel more comfortable and relaxed when considering their answer.

Of the work handed in, I have seen some reference to future learning in their evaluations, which is great, the comments they have made so far have been a positive reflection on their experiences and link to their future aims for example one learner has written…

‘The skills I have learnt will help a lot with my fashion coursework, as I have to draw figures all the time, the proportion and balance techniques will help enormously.’

and another…

‘…skills I have picked up in life drawing to do with proportion are very helpful. When I’m working on designs and illustrations I can get the proportions more accurate and can also experiment with unrealistic proportions and make them balance correctly…’

The learner who produced the work above is progressing onto University to study Graphic Design, in her evaluation she noted that her work in this project has improved her observational drawing skills which she will continue to develop.

Transferable Skills

Lesson Topic – Preparing work for submission

This will be the last session of the NCFE Creative Craft qualification, learners will be completing their final pieces and preparing to write an evaluation of the whole creative process.

Transferable Skills – How will it work?

As the students are wrapping up this project I want them to think about the future and ask themselves what skills they have gained during the course and how these skills might benefit them in the future. At the end of the session I will pose this question to the group and ask them to write their answers on a post it note. Whatever they write should be included in their final evaluation.

This isn’t evidence required to pass any of the qualification criteria, this is more of an activity aimed to help the learners to understand their own achievements and relate their work to their future learning goals.

Group Critique – Reflection

This activity built on the share in pairs task from the previous week. I noticed in the last session that some learners were not that confident in contributing to a group discussion, some that were very focused and led discussion well and  others liked to talk very much, even at times naturally diverting the conversation to less work related topics.  To try and reduce the effect this had on the activity I chose the groupings so that there was a good balance of learners in each group, hopefully pushing the learners to support each other.

At the end of the task I engaged the students in a whole group discussion where I asked learners for feedback, they had all felt comfortable discussing their ideas with each other. At the beginning of the critique I had discussed the purpose of a critique with them and talked through transferable skills so that learners could link their knowledge to their future learning. After repeating the importance of the critique, I asked the students to write a  statement that stated the purpose of the task and asked them to reflect on the feedback they were given from their peers. This enabled me to  check their understanding individually before they left the room.

To improve the conclusion of the task I feel I should have pushed the group discussion further, asking students more direct questions and to link to future learning rather than leading the discussion myself. As they were in small groups already, it might have been a good opportunity to ask those groups to write a plenary for me and then feedback to the room. Directing them to sum up the purpose of the task, what they feel they gained from the experience, how they will use the information in the next learning session and to list any transferable skills they think they have picked up in the session. When feeding back to the other groups they would have had the opportunity to assess each other.

I also had the pleasure of being observed in this session so gained feedback from my observer on the activity as well as from the students in the group. The observer noted that the learning environment was open and friendly and that working in small groups enabled the quieter students to contribute easily. 

Photographs of a couple of the completed hand-outs below.

Group Critique

Lesson Topic – Try out and adapt ideas, use feedback and and evaluation of own work to develop ideas.

The objectives of this session are for learners to –

• Try out their ideas by experimenting with materials, tools and techniques.
• Gather feedback from peers and use advice given to develop ideas for a final piece.

Group Critiques – How will it work?

• Split the learners into small groups of 3/4 (chosen by me).
• One learner at a time will take the role of the artist, I will let them decide an order between themselves.
• One will take the role of the discussion leader
• The remaining learners will participate in the discussion.
• The artist must spend a couple of minutes talking through their work with the others and then the discussion leader can open a dialogue between the group.

There will be two hand-outs to support this work. The first sheet is for use by the discussion leader and will contain questions to pose to the group. The second sheet is to be given to the artist and is for them to record their feedback in writing as the discussion is taking place. (links below)

Critique discussion promt – Discussion Leader

Notes on your group critique – Artist

Share in Pairs – Reflection

This was a successful task, through observing discussions and checking their feedback sheets I could assess whether the learners were confident in their ideas and research work, they now have written evidence of feedback from peers. This was quite a good way to finish a lesson as it gave chance for the students to reflect on their progress and think about what they needed to work on in the next session.

There are one or two students in the group who tried to shy away from participating, I hoped that by pairing them with the people they had chosen to sit with they would feel more comfortable. Next week I plan to chose who will work with who and try to have someone confident in each group who can lead the conversation and support those who are a bit more hesitant.

Share in Pairs

Lesson Topic – Initial ideas and Artist research

My students are now at the stage where they are preparing for the production of a final piece. Evidence of feedback from others needs to be provided in their sketchbooks.

Share in pairs – How will it work?

At the end of the session I am going to ask the students to talk their neighbour through their initial ideas and the artist research they have gathered so far. Their partner will then give advice on how the work can be developed.

The students have already had some experience of assessing each others work during this course, this activity will expand on the earlier activities. In next week’s session I am planning to hold group critiques.

The resource below is for the students to record feedback from a peer about their own work. The questions posed are there to direct the discussion so that the learners can focus.

Share in Pairs – Handout

 

Sharing Experiences – Reflection

Repeating an activity at the beginning and end of a session was quite interesting as you can compare their thoughts at the beginning and end of the session and see how their knowledge may have developed. The learners in my group normally engage well with tasks I set them, having said that I think some of them lost a bit of interest with this the second time round. The activity made quite a good starter and did wrap up the lesson neatly but perhaps rather than repeating the task in full I could bring their initial answers back up on the smartboard and hold a discussion about how ideas may have changed.

Below is one student’s responses at the beginning and the end of the session.

  

Sharing Experiences in a Group Discussion

Lesson Topic – Watercolours

Sharing Experiences, Group Discussion – How will it work?

At the beginning of this lesson I am planning to introduce the students to different techniques that can be used with watercolour paints. The plan for this lesson is to use the same activity as the starter and the plenary. The idea is that as a group the learners share their existing knowledge about the materials with me and we can discuss the properties of materials and their potential.

I will set the students the following questions at the beginning of the class

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

• What effects have you tried to achieve using watercolours?
• How did you apply the watercolours?
• What techniques did you use? did they work well and why?
• What problems have you encountered with the materials?
• Did you like using watercolours and why? 

And these questions at the end

TODAY’S EXPERIENCE

• What were you trying to achieve when using the watercolours?
• How did you apply the watercolours?
• What techniques did you use? did they work well and why?
• Have you encountered any problems with the materials? could they be resolved?
• Did you like using watercolours and why? How do they compare to other paints you have used?

Using the interactive smart-board we can write their answers into the power-point presentation used to deliver the lesson. This can be saved and revisited. By saving the information we can compare answers given at the beginning of the lesson with those at the end and see if any of their knowledge has altered.

Fill in the Blanks – Reflection

This plenary activity was pretty useful; it will certainly help the students gather evidence for summative assessment as well as supporting the lesson conclusion. The only potential problem is that as the learners work at different paces so some finished earlier than others, to try and resolve this problem I asked those who finished quickly to support those who were struggling.

The students did understand the properties of Chalk Pastels, a couple of examples of their work below…