Flipped Learning

In my everlasting quest to find ways to help 6th formers become increasingly independent I have become interested in 'Flipped Learning.'

What does this mean? Here's a guy I've followed on this subject explaining what flipping a classroom means.

And here's how it looks when I try it!

And here are some interesting reflections on what the real benefits of this process are. These certainly resonate with my experience

Meta-Cognition

This is completely nicked from johntomsett.com who, in turn, developed the idea from the research published by the Sutton Trust.

John was trying to work out what the most useful thing a teacher can do in the last few lessons leading up to a A level exam. This is something I've often wondered myself, but his answer is really interesting because it also hits a number of other, slightly intangible, problems I've not been able to address satisfactorily yet.

Here it is:

Go through an exam paper and verbalise the meta-cognition which I (as an experienced writer of exam questions and as a psychology expert of sorts) use, without thinking (so to speak) as I construct effective answers to each of the different types of question.

Even better, do this in real-time with a visualiser so the students can basically 'see' your meta-cognition as you go through a paper because you're verbalising these thought processes and annotating them on the paper. This is what one of John's colleagues did and she also gave students a copy of the paper and got them to copy her annotations. Essentially she was kind of dictating her meta-cognition to them. Then she got a student to do this - even better.

You can see a video of this in action here

I love this idea so I'm going to try it next week.

Dialogic Feedback

What is it about Google? I mean, everything they do seems to work. And all they ask for in return ...is your identity.

Anyway, the latest thing I'm using in exchange for my soul is a feedback form, shared with the student, where we can have a dialogue about their work. Really simple idea but it's proving almost revolutionary in its simplicity and effectiveness using a Google Doc.

I get a piece of work in (or the student gives me a link to their work) - I write some ideas on how to improve it on their feedback sheet and they have to respond. The pro-forma is very simple - looks a bit like this:

Date / Teacher Feedback:

Date / Student Actions:

Date / Teacher Feedback:

Date / Student Actions:

...you get the idea.

But what's amazing about this is that I can have a whole class set of feedback forms in one folder and Google will tell me, down the right hand side of the screen, which student has written any actions on their form in the last day / week. At a glance I can tell whose thinking about Psychology outside of the classroom ...and who is not. Who is taking action on improving their work ...and who is not.

Not only this but I'm gradually building up a fantastic record of all the work the student and I are doing throughout the year to maximise their understanding and exam success.

What's the point of teachers?

I mean, I know teachers are needed to keep children moving around the building we call a 'school'. Actually, I can even buy the idea that we are needed within that building to answer questions or, at least, to set students in the right direction to answer their own questions, or, even more at least, to show them some of the skills of finding stuff out and making sense of it. So I suppose what I really mean is, 'What's the point of lessons?'

Here's why I'm questioning it all. I've recently come to the end of a two-year A level course, 'teaching' students about psychology. Only, something interesting happened in the run-up to the exams. The students started to do something they called 'revising.' Nothing new about that, except that what they really meant was 'learning' and as far as I could tell this was more-or-less learning from scratch, as if we hadn't really done any real 'learning' for the previous year or two.

This strikes a chord because I've noticed, in previous years, my own inclination to race through a syllabus in order to 'cover' it as quickly as possible and get into 'revision lessons'. What!? Maybe I was kidding myself! Maybe what I really meant was that I wanted to cover the syllabus quickly in order to get on to the 'learning lessons.' That is, spend MOST OF THE YEAR getting something out of the way before I could start getting into the business of learning!? Well if that's the case I really need to know what this 'covering' business is. This thing that's taking up most of the time.

Maybe it's this: it's a pointless exercise that we ('we' being teacher and students) go through for a number of reasons:

1. It's the way it's always been done (I have no idea if that's true by the way)
2. We all feel better, safe in the knowledge that we've covered everything we need to cover for the exam: we've 'got it covered'
3. You can do really satisfying things like write a lovely clear 'Scheme of Work' which sets out, at the start of the year, exactly how you are going to 'cover' everything you need to cover so that we've all got it covered.
4. It probably lends itself to the school set-up where you have a set timetable with a sequence of lessons
5. I can't think of anything else

Okay, so what's the alternative?

Well, I've seen the alternative in action because it's exactly what was happening when the students I mentioned earlier got into what they thought of as 'revision' mode. First off, they figured out all kinds of different ways of learning stuff that worked for them. Two of the boys started working together  writing flash cards and testing each other in such a good-humoured way that it was like watching an on-going Morecombe and Wise sketch (a reference they would probably be nonplussed by). One of the girls produced a beautifully presented artists sketch book with notes, cut-outs, images, etc. Another girl bombarded me with exam-style questions she'd answered, asking for feedback. Someone else produced a poster with every element of the Child Psychology topic on it, in the shape of a child (genius!) Someone else really took to my own favourite way of figuring stuff out which is to create a model (flowchart-like) of complex theories.

Yes, the 'lessons' I conducted when 'covering' the syllabus included some of these things but here's the difference: during the 'revision' mode the students were figuring out how they wanted to work and what areas they really needed to work on. I was just there to help.

Now then, what if we just got straight into these 'revision' lessons right from the start of the year? Even before there's anything to 'revise'? What would the problems be?

1. The students might not 'cover' everything. That's pathetic - give them a list.
2. The teacher doesn't get a chance to inspire and enthuse the students about their subject. I've just freed-up about 6 months of lesson time within which, rather than 'covering' stuff you can spend a bit of time explaining some of the elements of the subject that got you into it in the first place.
3. The teacher won't know at what level the students are working. You could talk to them? You could still set tests?

I can't really think of anything else. So that's it - I'm trying it from Sept and the 'Scheme of Work' is in the bin. Or maybe, what I'm looking for is 'Flipped Learning'?

A War On Labelling Children

I am repeatedly asked to put forward the names of the 'Gifted and Talented' students in my classes. Given that I teach psychology I am, I presume, being asked to suggest who has the 'gift' of an innate ability in psychology.  ....really? I mean ...REALLY? Wouldn't it be more realistic to ask, 'Which child in your class  has had a stable, supportive background with parents who have been keen to stimulate and encourage their child at home and have been successful in engendering high aspiration and a sense of agency and academic self-worth since they were born?' Okay, it doesn't have the same ring as 'G&T' but at least it doesn't rest on subjective, fairy-tale notions such as 'Gift.'

Let's take the other end of the spectrum. Recently I was covering a lesson for a colleague. This was a bottom set English group of 13/14 year-old children. The first thing that happened was that one of the boys handed me a report card which had on it his target for each lesson. The target was to stay in the room for the duration of the lesson.... Think about the sub-text of that: 'We don't really care that you're not going to learn anything [because you're a 'Low Achiever'], but please don't bother us by wandering around the school: just make sure you're physically present in each room you're supposed to be in.'

Then there was the work which had been set for them: read some text about bananas and make a list of the key points. There was an exemplar on the next page which showed the students what a list looks like. It turns out that a list is a given number of points all stacked on top of each other. Looking at this work I started to wonder whether even I was going to manage to stay physically present in this room for an hour.

A quick chat with some of the these kids was ample time to see that they were absolutely as capable as their counterparts in the top set. What they didn't have was much sense of how and why they should expend effort on the work being given to them. How and why they should dare to fight back against the messages and LABELS they have obviously been deluged with for years both implicitly and explicitly: bottom set, low achiever, E grade student, NOT gifted, NOT talented.

But these labels are never good, not even for the those being labelled 'Gifted' or 'A grade student.' There are many students I see towards the end of their schooling who have learned how to work our system and have always gained A grades. On one level, that's great - they've often worked hard to do that. But here's the problem: what they have learned from our system is that it is all about the outcome (the grade). Not only that, but the outcome somehow personally reflects on who they are. These students are now TERRIFIED of getting a B, or a C, or worse... This, in turn, means that what they want from me, as their teacher, is quite simple: what do I write in this A level exam to get an A? Anything which deviates from this is often met with something close to hostility in such students. And yet, exam boards are (rightly) wise to such an approach and so, increasingly, they are constructing exams which require thought and understanding rather than memory and pre-learned answers.

These A grade students are a classic example of what Carol Dweck refers to as Fixed Mindset: they do not really value the process of learning, only the outcome. When they make a mistake they see no opportunity, only personal failure. Similarly, the students in the bottom set English group have a Fixed Mindset: they do not really believe that they are capable of success, so why put in the effort?

The opposite of this is Growth Mindset, where the process of learning is valued. Mistakes are opportunities to learn, therefore risk is highly valued and learning is always worth the effort, for its own sake. When a child thinks like this, Dweck has shown that they are likely to surprise both us and themselves in terms of the outcomes. Dweck also shows that it is relatively easy to get students to adopt a Growth Mindset.

So how have the students mentioned above learned to adopt a Fixed Mindset? To my mind, it starts and ends with the labels we give them: Bright, Gifted, Talented ....High Achiever. It is never alright to label young people who are developing rapidly and whose extraordinary potential most of us adults have no idea of.

Self-Reported Effort Grades

I have a continuing interest in the work of Carol Dweck on the importance of a 'Growth Mindset.' In essence a very simple idea that rests on engendering a belief that ability is not fixed but is, in fact, malliable and dependent on effort.

So I wanted to highlight, to my students, this simple link: more effort = increased success. Of course, I could just tell them but, in my experience, that's a very limited approach and very quickly leads to a kind of nagging which can end up being detrimental. So I tried this really simple idea: get them to self-assess their effort at the same time as self-assessing their success.

I gave my students a test with a week's notice. They were given a selection of questions which I would draw from (see my post on the 'Sangster Method') and every opportunity to plan, ask for help, etc. Having taken the test I got them to self-assess it against a mark scheme but I also got them to give themselves an effort grade. from 0 to 10 on this scale:

0 = ‘We have a test?’

10 = ‘I’ve been thinking about nothing but this test since I saw these questions and I’ve been working tirelessly at refining my answers to hit all of the marks. And I checked my work with Mr Harvey-Craig to make sure I was on the right track’

I was interested in whether having them assess their effort and their success at the same time would highlight the link between the two. What I found was that, with certain students, it really did. In fact, with some students the effect seemed quite dramatic.

I'd like to use 'Ben' as a case study. Here's what he has to say about it:

"Going through the process of giving myself an effort grade for the work that the class has just completed and the work we had to do at home to prepare ourselves for it, at first came as a shock to me as I never before realised how much effort, or how little, effort I put into the work. After the first week and having to give myself a 0 really hit home and made me realise that infact i am letting myself down. If the teacher gave the effort grade to us it wouldnt be as powerful, but since i had to give myself a 0 i decided that i needed to step up. So slowly over the following weeks ive been able to get my effort grade up from the 0 to about a 6-7 and through this self evaluation of effort i belive it has greatly increased my understanding and self respect throughout the lesson and all work that is required outside of it. I feel that this is a great strategy and it should be used more as it can either make a student realise they're letting themself down or reinforce the students that already have put the effort in."

The 'Sangster Method'

This is a technique I nicked off a semi-retired, somewhat legendary teacher called Brian Sangster. I don't think he'd mind me saying that he lends a refreshingly straight-forward, fad-free perspective on the business of teaching.

Here's what I'm calling the Sangster Method:

1. Give students a selection of 3-4 exam-style essay questions
2. Tell them that in one (or two) weeks' time they will be required to answer one of these essay questions under exam conditions, but they don't know which one it will be
3. During the week before the test they should create essay plans, write draft answers, etc and check these these with me (the teacher) for feedback - they can do this as much as they like but it must be done outside of normal lesson time
4. After the test the students are given a comprehensive mark scheme and asked to self-assess their answer, writing comments on their script indicating how they would improve it
5. Finally, I take their answers in for marking and give them another set of questions for the next week

This is so simple, so why do I like it so much?

Firstly, I like the one/two week time-scale because it forces me to plan, in a really structured way, for the work students will be doing outside of the lesson. This forms part of my wider 'Fractal Planning' method.

Secondly, because students are encouraged to come and see me outside of the lessons (with their essay plans, etc), I get a really good insight into how much independent work they're doing because I know who has come to see me and I've seen their work.

Thirdly, the fact that they don't know which question they are going to be asked means they have to plan for all of them. This maximises the work they have to do without causing huge amounts of marking. I have also found that it quickly highlights to the students how dangerous it is to try to guess which question is coming up in the exam - a valuable lesson in itself!

Fourthly, the self-assessment means they engage meaningfully with mark schemes and  they get immediate formative feedback on their work, but I can also check their comments and make sure that they are coming up with effective formative feedback for themselves.

Finally, it's flexible - you can change the type/number of questions, the timescale between receiving the questions and answering them, the way you run the test (eg, you could let them use, during the test, any essay plans that they've created).

I've ony just started using this so I hope to get some evidence for its efficacy over the next couple of months. But, so far, I've received positive feedback about it from the students (I can't say they love it, but they can really see the benefit of it).