School Driven Optimus Training PD

The school I am presently working in has come up with a great idea for providing CPD - we all have to complete 30 hours online via Optimus-Education.com!  To be fair, some of the courses look like they might provide some useful information, but 30 hours is an awfully long time to be staring at a computer screen when there are books to mark, reports to write, bikes to ride, food to cook and eat and runs to do.  Oh, and music to write and perform...

Here are the courses I have completed so far:

Reviewing, Marking and Feedback - Part 1 (1 Hour)  - This is the first of three parts looking at how we can change our approaches to formative assessment to make it more worthwhile to the students.  Interestingly the point that was made most strongly was that, unless work is to be summatively assessed (such as at the end of a topic), a grade can be less effective than other forms of feedback.  This especially caught my eye as I had recently been pulled up for not giving students a grade for every piece of practical work!

The course got me thinking about how maybe my marking schedule has got to caught up with being seen to be done rather than making it personal and relevant to every child (i.e. sometimes it can feel that the comments are in the books because that is what is expected for the infamous book looks).

Thoughts I took away were:

• Ensuring that the pupils complete relevant self reflection and peer assessments and that these are embedded in the course.  This is something that I already try to do, but there is no harm in reviewing this.  I have been experimenting with using online resources this year, and would like to use more often.
• Using differentiated assessment strategies more often, as sometimes these can become 'one size fits all'.
• More is less - This year I have found that the pupils have been a nightmare for avoiding writing down feedback, and then duly forgotten any advice they have been given.  Next year, instead of having exercise books, I will look at producing topic booklets where they have to complete the information as part of the course.  This will also give me the chance to provide differentiated work to different classes.

Differentiation Overview (2 hours) - an okay course, with some good points.  It was good to refresh my learning on this, although some of the material was not really relevant to me.  It did get me thinking about how to give the same work to different abilities groups.

Differentiation - Diagnosis and Planning (2 hours) - again, an okay course which gave some good ideas and questioned how to decide what kind of differentiation is relevant to the topic and how to build this in to the SoW.  It did get me thinking about how I get the students to record information that is important - I want them to write it down (as this is a skill in itself which a lot of the students lack), but how much is right, and when is it too much?

Assessment after Levels - Unit 1:  Moving Away from a Levels Mindset (1.5 hours - 10/02/2017) - Having been trained in Scotland, the madness of levels and sub levels had passed me by.  This meant it took me several years to get my head around the difference between a 3a and 4c pupil, and now this has all gone.  Hopefully this course will release my inner assessment guru to attain enlightenment on post-level assessing...  Interestingly, the very first paragraph says:  

Moving away from levels has been harder than many schools initially thought.  The notion of regular progress through the curriculum at prescribed paces has proved difficult to shift. When secondary schools have extrapolated GCSE grades backwards or primary schools have adopted similar grade based scales, this has often created levels in another name.

The course handout also states that:

... use grades when you want the assessment to be summative. When you want your pupils to use the assessment to help them learn, avoid levels and grades. 

I think this is something that we are all guilty of, especially as some pupils (usually the stronger ones) want to know what grade they got - not, as it transpires, to see if they have improved!  Something to bear in mind.

Another section of the course goes into how summative (i.e. graded) assessment is only carried out in the authors school twice a year.  This is interesting, as in music, with the three elements of listening, composition and performance this would give 6 graded assessments in the year - more than enough to  ascertain the level at which the student is working.  The rest of the time formative AfL approaches should suffice.

Assessment after Levels -  Unit 2: Comparing assessment approaches (1.5 hours - 19/02/2017) - This unit has built on unit one and looked at three different areas as suggestions for assessing without falling into the trap of levelling by another name.

• Defining 'Big Ideas' - the concepts which should be covered and assessed at each stage;
• Using questions not statements - using question based judgements for assessments rather than criterion based judgements;
• Comparative Judgement - comparing pieces against one another or in a ranking scheme.

Going through the unit directed me to several articles and web pages that highlighted how levels had been adapted badly from being a tool to say that students had reached a certain stage to being the actually point they had to attain.  And this was from the man (Dylan William) who had been one of the original proponents of levelling!  A number of the articles included in this course also highlighted that with levelling the obsession is with linear development, whereas the reality is that students will have spurts of development followed by periods of seemingly stagnating. 

Some points to take away from this are:

• Only two formal summative assessments a year (preference is maybe at the end of term 1 and the other at the point of the year assessment).
• Have more informal assessments such as quizzes and multiple choices built int the SoW.  These can be done via online tools such as Edmodo which removes the issue of spending time marking them or used as a starter/plenary in lesson with other pupils marking them.
• Only having 3 or 4 'Big Ideas' that pupils work towards - avoid trying to teach too much too thinly.  In Music, the obvious form to take is performing, listening and composing, but could be adapted to be include theory?

I do not know if I am happy ranking pupils against one another in Music - does not give much of a boost to the ones at the bottom, although the departments present use of an established artist as a model in which we can assess work can fall into the comparative judgement category and with a bit of adaptation could be a positive way of showing students how much they are developing.  I also think that using questions instead of criterion based judgements could be worth looking at further, especially as this can be used to promote the C21st skill of Critical Thinking.

Differentiation Webinar (2 different videos - 1.5 hours)
These presentations went into the practicalities of including differentiation into a mixed ability classroom without spending hours preparing different worksheets and tasks for different student groups.

The main points I took from these were:

• Avoid All, Most and Some LOs as these are already saying that certain students will only complete certain work.
• Use whiteboards to encourage students to attempt work and then they can erase any errors before copying it into their books.  I have developed this into Back of Book  work, where all the rough notes are in done in their books but is not subjected to formal assessment.
• Dot marking - instead of telling the students what mistakes they have made in a piece of work, placing a dot on the offending word or in the space where something should go encourages them to work it out for themselves.
• A helpdesk area (or in my case The Drawer of Knowledge) - have a space in the classroom where students can do if they are stuck to see if they can find the information out for themselves.
• A space where students can write down an area they are stuck on, and other students or the teacher can then help them on this.
• Activity Tick Sheets and Exit Tickets - these allow the student to mark down how much they feel they understand the task, and to show where they might need help.  The tick sheet also shows them progression from not understanding to fully understanding.

I enjoyed watching these videos in that they condensed a lot of information into a small amount of time.  Over the next term I will see how effective these ideas are...