The Speak Magazine
WCAT Sharing Success
Targeting Visible Progress
I recently came across the fantastic work of Jon Tait (@TeamTait) and really liked his idea of a lesson objectives target board. By using post it notes or stickers, it gives a visual representation to both the students and anybody else in the room, how close the students are getting to achieving the desired outcomes, which is always a good thing.
Below you can see the target boards at various points in the lesson, it really seems to helps differentiate the learning outcomes for all of the students. Each individual student seems to have had a specific target and they could all see their starting point and what they had to do in order to be successful in making progress.
Although it is un advisable to constantly stop the learning to check progress in lessons there seems to be a lot of merit in this resource and it could be adapted to suit the needs of individual departments or staff.
For more information on Jon's work there is a link to his outstanding educational Blog below.
Beginning
Entrance task
Middle
Consolidation phase
End
Reflecting / plenary
Recomended Reading
Below are some really good and insightful books with a leaning towards supporting middle and emerging leaders within schools
Mick Waters
Thinking Allowed
Jackie Beere
The Perfect Coach
Tait Coles
Punk Learning
Supporting RWCM
Engaging starter activities for maths and a Literary display
The importance of Maths & English is as evident as ever and the whole school support of RWCM is of paramount importance to aid students improvement within these areas, below is an example of an engaging starters that could be used in tutor times or within certain lessons for Maths and a nice display promoting some luminaries of the Literary world.
Learning environments Low effort / High impact
In my last classroom I turned a whole wall in to a blackboard in order to make displays more changeable and interactive. The clever people at 'smartwallpaint' have designed an amazingly good wall paint which turns any surface in to a whiteboard and it is making lots of educationalists very excited about how it can transform learning environments. In a recent school that I visited a member of staff had used smartwallpaint to transform his students tables by painting half of each desk in order to make them a learning tool, it transformed the work stations in to tools for learning & teaching and aided collaborative work between students. At only £60 a tin it could really change learning spaces in schools.
Wakefield City Academies Trust
Email: mmcdonald@wcatrust.org
Website: http://www.wakefieldcityacademy.com/
Location: WF1 4SF, United Kingdom
Phone: 01924 303755