Issue 1 - Numeracy Ninjas, Activate Tasks, Using Praise and Teacher Talk Radio
27th February 2023
QDR feedback - Kirsten Senior
The QDR on Thursday was incredibly successful - the behaviour & attitudes of our students were found to be exemplary with our First Class ethos a 'golden thread' understood and championed by all - these are the features of an outstanding school. There was recognition of our work on cold calling, it was the default questioning technique in nearly all observed lessons. As a result, the reviewers saw high levels of engagement with very few passive learners. This is a significant improvement from the QDR in October, thank you for your commitment to cold calling, it is having a huge impact in a short space of time.
Whilst successful implementation of cold calling means students think hard and remain cognitively active in lessons, it does not assess the learning and progress of all students. This is why mini-whiteboards are an important assessment for learning tool. However, we have some work to do on their consistent implementation because reviewers observed a variety of methods to varying effect. Therefore here is a reminder:
It is essential that all students hold up an answer and it is imperative to respond immediately - you can do this by asking students to justify correct answers, ‘How did you get there?’ and ‘What was your thought process?’ - this is a good one to model disciplinary thinking. You can also challenge incorrect answers by asking, ‘Can you explain where you went wrong? Look out for common misconceptions in the answers - do a number of students have the incorrect answer? Do you need to reteach a component? It's very useful to combine show me boards with Think-Pair-Share so that students can work with their peers to collaborative on finding an answer before sharing their joint response with the teacher and class and, importantly, before they permanently commit to an answer by putting pen to paper in an exercise book.
Our other key area for improvement is to ensure that our vulnerable students (SEND, LAC, PA) are as engaged and making as much progress as our non-vulnerable students. In order to achieve this target, all teachers and TAs must have a sound knowledge of who their vulnerable students are specifically targeting support and encouragement when circulating the class and marking on the move.
Teaching Tips - Numeracy in Tutor Time
On 9th February, Syeda and Junaid introduced two new strategies for developing numeracy skills in KS3 across the school.
Times Tables Rock Stars
Year 7s have been introduced to Times Tables Rock Stars which is a fun and challenging programme with a proven track record of boosting students’ fluency and recall in multiplication and division.
Students can complete challenges at home and in school. During form time on Mondays, students should be given some time to have a go at some challenges in order to boost their confidence. All students have been given their login details by their Maths teachers - if they have any issues with their login, they need to inform their Maths teacher.
Challenges and Rock Offs will be set for students where they will have opportunities to win prizes!
Numeracy Ninjas
To support our Year 8 and year 9 students we will be introducing Numeracy Ninjas from Monday 27th February which will be running every Monday during form time.
Numeracy Ninjas is a programme to support learners in developing high levels of fluency of key numeracy skills. Students will need to complete questions in the pink exercise books which will be provided during form time. Form tutors should give students 5 minutes to complete as many questions as they can in their exercise books. Students will then peer mark their answers from the answers that will be on the tutor slides.Before they pass the books back, the form tutor will ask for their scores and put them into the spreadsheet provided so we can monitor progress. The progress will be tracked by the colour of the belt they achieve based on their scores.
Prizes will be given to students for their progress and to drive competitiveness.
Thank you for your support in improving numeracy across the school.
Teaching Tips - Activating learning with retrieval practice
On 23rd February, Amber shared ideas for using retrieval practice to activate learning. Activating prior knowledge that is not relevant to the lesson can hamper learning (Ford, A. 2022), so it’s important to ensure that retrieval practice used in the Activate Stage of the lesson is carefully planned.
Oracy - Victoria Hamilton-Reay
You will have already found a copy of the oracy praise card in your pidgeon hole (a little late valentines present from English!) Praising students consistently and liberally for demonstrating oracy skills is an excellent way to both raise student awareness of these skills and also motivating them to use them more frequently. The oracy praise card can be kept in your planner or on your desk, or laminated and added to a keyring and provides you with the language to use when giving students positive feedback on their oracy in the classroom.
CPD opportunity - Teacher Talk Radio
Teacher Talk Radio is a community radio station for teachers and educators. It's the biggest audio platform for educators in the UK and provides a platform for the sharing of ideas and the discussion of educational issues. Recent podcasts have included episodes on toxic masculinity, decolonising the curriculum, direct instruction and drama in the curriculum.
Listen live here: https://www.ttradio.org/
Listen back: https://www.ttradio.org/listenback
Poll of the Week - Caroline Room
On 24th February, I ran a session with the CTG Secondary trainees to examine ‘What makes great teaching?’ We identified six components of great teaching - but which of these do you think is the most impactful?
The results of the poll will be revealed in the next issue along with what the research says makes ‘great teaching’.
Contributing to the T&L Bulletin
We are interested in sharing top teaching tips, resources, book reviews and CPD opportunities. If you would like to contribute to the T&L Bulletin, please email any articles, resources, audio recordings, videos or poll suggestions to croom@putteridgehigh.org