New Year, New Ideas

So it is the last week of the Autumn term and the school is slowly winding down towards the winter break.  Which means it is a great time to start thinking about what we are going to be doing in the Spring Term of 2018!  Already it is beginning to look like it is going to be very busy, and so any ideas that can help with lessening marking/ preparation workload are greatly appreciated.

I must admit that most of these ideas I am looking at are taken from #teachertoolkit.co.uk, which is a website I would heartily recommend, along with the twitter account - I have learnt more from these in the last couple of months than I thought possible.  The site has had some great ideas about differentiation, plenaries and homework that I am already using - check out the takeaway homework menu which we used as a starting point for developing differentiated homework options which the students love - but what I am finding most interesting is the free online resources that is out there to use.

We all know about Google, and some of us already use sites such as Edmodo, but the two I am most excited about using are:

• PicPlayPost which allows you to create presentations and collages of photos, gifs, videos and audio.
• Vocal Recall that gives you the opportunity to provide verbal feedback on students work that they (and those pesky book looking SMT/ inspectors) can access via QR codes that are stuck into the students work. 

I am already experimenting with how I can use PicPlayPost to create short informational videos for my students (below one for teaching correct hand position at the keyboard (also on youtube), so that they can refer back to the modelling they saw in class.  This can be especially helpful for the students at the school with EAL considerations as the can watch it several times.  I am also interested in possibly getting the pupils to use it to present facts and information on the subjects we have studied. 

Vocal Recall  has really got me excited - not only can I use it to provide feedback on the work students have carried out in class, but for instrumental lessons I can use it to provide audio examples of how they are to rehearse a piece or how warm-ups are to be carried out.  Other possibilities include using the codes to provide additional advice and suggestions on projects, especially as the same audio track can be assigned to several codes, thus allowing multiple students to access the same information.  The website for the app also suggests that if a piece of written work has any highlighted areas numbered, these can be referenced in the recording.

I hope that both of these apps prove to be useful in the classroom (Vocal Recall perhaps a little more directly), but we will have to see.

*****Additional*****

As a cheeky little extra present to myself this Christmas I bought myself Mark. Plan. Teach by Ross Morrison McGill (Founder of Teacher Toolkit).  while some books on education can, shall we say, be a little dry, this is actually really readable.  Starting from the standpoint that through marking we can then plan more effective teaching, it also strives to encourage teachers to ditch excessive marking and planning in favour of working clever.  Suggestions to do this include:

• Increased use of self, peer and live marking within class time (I can see vocal recall coming in here);
• Verbal feedback rather than loads of written feedback (ditto);
• More focussed marking that benefits the learning and teaching of the subject rather than just being there for the benefit of observations;
• Ensuring that the students are working harder than I am;
• Starting lesson planning from the point the students demonstrate that they know already, and ensuring that this is adapted for each class rather than just relying on off the peg one size fits all lesson planning; 
• Also asking ourselves 'why' we are undertaking a task and questioning why it is relevant to the learning we are doing;
• Ensuring that the planning is concise rather than detailed - I love the advice that if you cannot describe a lessons planning in under 30" there is too much detail!
• Thinking about how we can approach setting up lesson objectives as something relevant and useful rather than just something to copy into books;
• Thinking about teaching as storytelling and being personally involved in this.

As I read the book I can see areas where I can look at changing my approach to marking and planning.  For the coming term I am going to focus on:

• Splitting my planning into blocks throughout the week, rather than completing it as a big marathon session on a Saturday, so that is can be adapted to individual classes;
• Revising the assessment points of the courses to ensure that they are relevant rather than being there so we are seen to be using formative assessment;
• Using the marking code as I have been a little forgetful in using this;
• Using 'Not Yet' and set grades for students to attain rather than just giving them a grade;
• NOT ACCEPTING RUBBISH WORK!