Marking, Planning and Just a Little Teaching

While I would like to say that I am tech savvy and keep up with all that is new, in reality I am always a bit of a scaredy cat when it comes to embracing new stuff, and generally hold off purchasing 'the latest thing' for quite a while (usually until about 3 months before the next latest thing is launched!).  Thus it has been with Facebook, iPhone, Macs, the smart watch, and most recently, Twitter.

I finally joined the Twittersphere last year as a colleague recommended it as a great source of CPD and advice for teachers.  After an initial false start (some scumbag had got my email address blocked after using it as a spam address), I set up my account and waited for all the followers to hang on my every word.  While I waited (and still am) on this multitude to materialise, I decided to research others who I could follow, and while doing this came across @TeacherToolkit.  Not only does this feed direct you to resources that you can download, but it also has the 1 minute CPD series, which is always a good read, and opinions which chime nicely with how I feel about teaching.

Late last year the founder of TeacherToolkit published another book - Mark.  Plan. Teach (Ross Morrison McGill, Bloomsbury, London) - just in time for Christmas, and so I cheekily ordered a copy while buying presents for the family.

So far I am enjoying reading about how we can limit how much we mark, and how we can plan more effectively, and there are several thoughts that I am going to try out this term in an effort to refocus and refine my teaching to take it from the 'good' ratings I always seem to be labelled with (as in "I liked the lesson, and it was good, but....") to that ever elusive 'outstanding'.  The ideas I am interested in include:

• Live marking in class - which should be easy to do in the practical Music classroom.
• Being stricter with the work I am accepting from the students, and only marking it once it reaches a specified standard - if it does not meet the criteria, it is to be redone before it is accepted.
• Getting the students to peer mark each others work.
• Using the term 'Not Yet' instead of a grade that falls below the accepted minimum rather than giving interim grades that imply failure.
• Asking students to highlight gaps in their knowledge so we can work on these.
• Focusing on the learning required rather than the activity and working from the point of where is the students learning at the present time rather than focusing on what they need to achieve in a lesson.
• Storytelling in lessons - making learning more fun and less dry.
• Lots more modelling!

We shall have to see what happens over the course of this term, but so far I am feeling confident that at least some of these ideas will become part of my teaching arsenal and will have a positive effect on the learning of the students in my classes.  

If you are interested, Mark, Plan, Teach is available here.