#10minwin - RAG

I've read a lot about teachers who get students to self-assess and RAG, but following an activity this week realised I haven't helped students understand how to assess themselves properly.

In an activity where students wrote a tough question on a post-it that they could answer, they then circulated the room and asked each other in pairs. If they both got it right, they switched post-its, if a mistake was made then the answer had to be explained.

During feedback following the activity, a student commented that some of the time if he made a mistake, the "asker" was able to give the answer but not explain it, so he didn't feel he'd learnt. So here comes the new self-assessment criteria (note the "yet"):

I intend to use this both as a whole class activity (using coloured ABCD cards) and also getting students to highlight in the margin next to a specific skill or question.

#10minwin - Question, Feeling, Learning Plenary

Following a session on our New Staff Induction meetings, I've been using the Question - Feeling - Learning activity as a plenary.

In summary, students are asked to stand by one of the 3 posters (around the room), according to what they'd like to share about the lesson:
- do they have a question to ask?
- how do they feel about the topic / lesson?
- what have they learnt today?

Students appear to have really enjoy this as it gives them a real chance to be heard. However, as one of the classes I do this with has 35 pupils, it's impossible to hear from them all at once! In a coaching session this week we discussed how to address this, with the following ideas that I'm eager to try this week. The aim is to hear from all students, albeit it sometimes indirectly by getting students to form subsets (yes, maths in pedagogy - thank you coach!) as well as giving learners a sentence starter to help them phrase their thoughts.

Feeling

Tasks

- join to a group of people who share your feeling

- find a person who feels the opposite way to you, and find out why

Sentence Starters

"I feel... because..."

"I feel .... but last lesson I felt..."

 Question: sentence starters

Tasks

- join to a group of people that have the same question as you

- ask your question to the "question" group and see if anyone can answer it

Sentence Starters

“I’d like to know why…”

“I understand … but I’m not so sure about ….”

 Learning

Tasks

- join with other people that have learnt the same thing as you

- explain what you have learnt to someone else in the "learning" group

Sentence Starters

“I didn’t know how to do … before, but now I can.”

“I’ve learnt that it’s a good idea to…”

“I’ve learnt that it’s OK to…”

GCSE Maths and Numeracy Problem Solving

Here in Cardiff we've been hit with the new numeracy GCSE, which contains a lot of worded problems - shifting the focus from procedural to reasoning questions.

I've been slowly collating a bank of questions to help students prepare for this question type, using the IMCA technique:

• Information (highlighting data, what is being asked)
• Method (what techniques are likely to be needed) 
• Calculations (full working)
• Answer (short sentence to answer the question)

Please find the resource thus far here - answers are being added slowly in the notes of each slide!