1
Didnt we do that in Year 7?Using reflection
and our big thinking skills to get pupils to
improve their thinking

• Phil Smith
• FS Consultant Bury LEA

2
Transferring information and the role of
understanding

• Cayard forced America to the left, filling its
  sails with dirty air, then tacked into a right
  hand shiftThat proved to be the wrong side.
  America, flying its carbon fibre/liquid crystal
  main and head sails, found more pressure on the
  left. Cayard did not initiate a tacking duel
  until Il Morgo got headed nearly a mile down the
  legCayard did not initiate a jibing duel to
  improve his position heading downwind and instead
  opted for a more straight-line approach to the
  finish.

1. Who forced America to the left?
2. What kind of air filled Americas sail?
3. Which boat had carbon fibre liquid crystal main
   and head sail?

3
Transferring information and the role of
understanding

• Does answering the question successfully mean you
  understand what the paragraph is saying?
• If we continue to transfer information without
  checking for understanding, without relating it
  to the existing mental models which allow or
  disallow the pupil to integrate the new
  information, without relating the new information
  to their world, then we build in failure from the
  outset. A. Smith

4
Connecting learning and your brain

• Connecting the learning to what the pupil already
  knows and understands is essential for raising
  achievement and motivation
• Teaching has never been and never will be about
  the transfer of information. A. Smith

5
Pre-course warning!

• This is a longer-term module that should be
  implemented

6
By the end of this session

• See the vital role of getting pupils to reflect
  on their learning
• Start to create a useful way of speaking about
  thinking and learning

7
Thinking..what do we mean?

• Thinking has lots of meanings
• Thinking relates to cognitive activity triggered
  by challenging tasks and problems
• Thinking about how we think is called
  metacognition

8
Why is reflection so important?

• Getting pupils to reflect on their learning helps
  them become more aware of their thinking and
  learning
• Metacognition is particularly important when
  pupils are doing difficult tasks and reviewing
  their strategies and progress

9
Why is reflection so important?

• Doing this is really hard without words!
• It gives teachers an insight into skills,
  knowledge and understanding

10
Getting pupils to reflect..some practical
strategies

• Three things
• Id like you to describe three things that you
  remember as significant about the last lesson.
  Then swap your three things in pairs. Try to get
  at least five significant things between you.
  Variations on this might include
• Three most important/three most useful/three
  things to teach someone else
• Three important questions which someone should be
  able to answer
• Agree what the keywords were-use them in a
  sentence to show understanding

11
Getting pupils to reflect..some practical
strategies

• One, Two, Four, Eight.
• Think of one significant piece of information
  from the work we did last time. Now take your
  one thing and swap it with someone else so that
  you have two pieces of significant information.
  Now swap your two again so that you are left with
  four. Finally go for eight or as near eight as
  you can manage!

12
Getting pupils to reflect..some practical
strategies

• Interview mapping
• Interview at least three others and from each
  find out what three things they considered most
  important about the work we did last time. Then
  review your findings in pairs.

13
The use or lack of mysteries at Key Stage 3

• Sorting relevant information from irrelevant

14
Geography Year 8

• Why is Dai Williams involved in the building of
  a new Japanese restaurant in Bridgend?

15
Pupils reflections on learning in lessons

• What do you think you learned during that lesson?
• MP. We learned about assumptions, like you
  shouldnt just rush into deciding something
  without thinking carefully.
• MP2 Yeah, you thought you were right and then
  you had to think about it and you werent so sure
  especially when you listened to other groups
• Int. How did the teacher help you?
• FP1 The teacher kept saying, Do you really know
  that? Is it a fact? Usually we were wrong,
  well sort of
• MP2 You had to have evidence to back it up, like
  in a court..like a trial

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Pupils reflections on learning in lessons

• FP1 At the end you could see how lots of fights
  start. People think they are right, but they
  dont think, not really. It was funny when the
  teacher talked about fights he used to have with
  his brother, just like me and my sister
• Read the rest of Handout 13.1 and consider what
  benefits pupils get from the awareness they are
  expressing. Do pupils in your class have this
  level of awareness of strategies and learning?

17
Developing a vocabulary about thinking and
learning

• TASK
• The wardrobe example
• (An analogy for reflection at Key Stage 3)
• See handout 13.2

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Wardrobe challenge and Key Stage 3whats the
link?

• The need to set challenging problems/enquiries at
  Key Stage 3
• The need to allow pupils time to check and refine
  their thinking (possible issues related to
  writing vs. card sorts etc)
• The need to use existing knowledge (Joined up
  whirly planning)
• What are your thinking words/concepts?

19
How would this Art and Design department develop
a language for learning?

• In groups of three suggest 6 words that you think
  the pupils might find useful in reviewing their
  work at the end of the unit.
• Remember you want them to talk about processes as
  much as final product. You may choose words from
  the unit

20
Possible answers might include
Stage Possible words
1. Collecting information and ideas or responding to stimulus Identify, recognise, response
2. Generating ideas and designs Imagine, visualise, adapt, experiment, define, metaphor
3. Realising designs Translate, interrelate, synthesise
4. Checking or refining Reorganise, contrast, stereotype
5. Evaluating Meaning, assess, compare, analyse
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But what are the big concepts in your subject
that help pupils reflect?
22
Ready for more?

• As a department identify the words for your
  subject, which are appropriate for your pupils
• (see Handout 13.7 to help get you started)
• Display some thinking words on A4 pieces of
  paper, complete with definitions and, after a
  suitable activity, allow pupils to choose words
  which match the mental processes they have been
  through
• Plan opportunities to develop the use of these
  words in plenaries

23
Coffee Break
24
How can we use big concepts and skills to create
more motivating and challenging lessons?
25
By the end of this session we will

• Highlight some of the principle concepts and
  skills in your subject
• Understand how these concepts and skills can be
  used to improve pupil motivation and
  understanding

26
Connecting the learning

• We have got to do a lot fewer things in school.
  The greatest enemy of understanding is coverage.
  As long as you are determined to cover
  everything, you actually ensure that most kids
  are not going to understand. Youve got to take
  enough time to get kids deeply involved in
  something so they can think about it in lots of
  different ways, and apply it-not just at school,
  but at home and on the street and so on.
• Howard Gardner (1993)

27
Providing the BIG picture

• I begin first by becoming aware of the overall
  length of the work, then of how it will divide
  itself into sections (perhaps movements), and
  then of the kind of texture or instruments that
  will perform it. I prefer not to look for the
  actual notes of the composition until this
  process has gone as far as possible. Finally the
  notes appear.
• Michael Tippet 1963

28
Can pupils see the BIG picture?

• Many lessons focus on the detailed content of a
  unit of work
• It is less common for there to be an emphasis on
  the larger patterns that characterise the
  distinctiveness of learning in a subject
• Without explicit attention to the skills and
  concepts of a subject, the transfer of learning
  from one context to another is less likely

29
Teachers are really similarity spotters
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Big concepts and skills

• Long term planning is a way of making learning
  bigger than the sum of its parts. Its goal is
  surely the creation of truly independent
  learners. This is a popular but rarely realised
  mantra. Perhaps a better way of putting it, one
  that captures something of the professional
  effort required, is to say that the goal of
  long-term planning is the TRANSFORMATION of those
  pupils who are reluctant or afraid to take
  responsibility for their own learning.

31
What are the big concepts and skills in your
subject?
Subject Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course
1. Art and Design Exploring and developing ideas Investigating and making art, craft and design Evaluating and developing work Knowledge and understanding
2. Design and Technology Understanding materials Designing Using ICT Using control Making and producing in quantity
3. PE Acquiring and developing skills Selecting and applying skills, tactics and compositional ideas Evaluating and improving performance Knowledge and understanding of fitness and health
32
What are the big concepts and skills in your
subject?
Subject Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course
4. History Chronological understanding Knowledge and understanding of events/people/and changes in the past Historical interpretation Historical enquiry Organisation and communication
5. Religious Education Learning about religion (beliefs/practices and forms of religious expression) Learning from religion (responding, evaluating, applying own experiences, sense of meaning and purpose, values, commitments) Investigation Interpretation Reflection Empathy Evaluation Analysis Synthesis Application Expression
33
What are the big concepts and skills in your
subject?
Subject Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course
6. Geography Vocabulary Knowledge of places Patterns and processes Geographical thinking Geographical explanation Investigation Map skills Fieldwork
7. Modern Foreign Languages Grammatical progression Nouns and pronouns Adjectives and verbs Structural features Other features Skills progression Application of knowledge Study skills and learning strategies Dictionary use
34
What are the big concepts and skills in your
subject?
Subject Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course Areas for pupil development over their three year Key Stage 3 course
Music Controlling sounds Creating and developing Responding and reviewing Listening and applying knowledge and understanding
35
Important cognitive skills

• 5 sense visual tool

36
Mexican migration and developing thinking skill
strategies

• Record the meaning of this account by drawing
• You can use one or two word annotations but do
  not take notes
• Draw symbols and stick people to represent the
  meaning of the story
• This is NOT an art lesson so dont worry about
  artistic ability

37
What does metacognition look like in a Year 9
Geography lesson?

• USA

The border
Mexico
38
Thinking processes during the drawing task
questions to reflect upon

• Did you draw as you listened or did you wait for
  pauses?
• Which of your symbols represent concrete
  phenomena and which represent abstract ones?
• Did you get visual images in your head? Where
  did they come from?
• What happened when you did not have to draw?
• What parts were difficult to make sense of?
• Did drawing the border and labelling the two
  countries provide a useful structure?

39
Pupils comments on the task

• Doing this made me understand more what
  listening is about. Listening is more than
  having your ears openyour brain has to work as
  well.
• The pictures in your head. I get a lot of those
  and now I try and use them, like try to see
  things in pictures. You remember them better.

40
Pupils comments on the task

• It made me realise why I dont understand
  teachers sometimes. When you hear a load of hard
  words, you switch off because its too hard. But
  its not your fault, its more the teacher, so I
  do ask more questions when I dont understand.
• Drawing the symbols was really good. We kept
  thinking How do you draw that? and made you
  think what it was about. We compared symbols and
  I could see how my partner had got different
  things out of it.

41
Task 2

• Do any of these skills have relevance in my
  subject at Key Stage 3?

• Do the skills developed and practised in the
  first task have relevance in my subject?
• Is enough attention given to developing them?
• How can they be developed further?

42

• Pupils need to know how as well as know that,
  if they are to become more independent learners
• Reflection is the key to developing greater
  awareness and precision in such skills

43
Task 3 Back to the USA/Mexican example

• Using annotation of longer texts to improve the
  level of thinking

1. Return to your map/drawing of the Mexican
   migrants story
2. Underline or highlight anything that represents
   an EFFECT in RED
3. For the underlined effects, underline in YELLOW
   if it is a LONG-TERM effect and in GREEN if it is
   a SHORT-TERM effect

44
Classifying learning outcomes

• Modular outcomes
• related to the specific content of a unit of
  work, which is taught and assessed within or at
  the end of the unit. Typically, facts and
  knowledge that can be tested in short answers

45
Classifying learning outcomes

• Longitudinal outcomes
• related to a number of units of work, which
  therefore can be taught and assessed over a
  number of units. Typically recurring skills.

46
For example.

• Regular and progressive work with causal
  reasoning, with framing enquiry questions to do
  with change, evidential understanding, with using
  visual sources critically (PROCESS)

47
For example

• Regular and progressive work on words such as
  political or power or parliament again and
  again building up really sophisticated meanings.
  (KNOWLEDGE)

48
For example

• Regular and progressive work on frame of
  reference in which teachers help pupil make
  sense of a new period in the light of references
  to Social/Political/Cultural structures and
  values from the earlier period. (KNOWLEDGE and
  PROCESS)

49
Classifying learning outcomes

• Background outcomes
• that permeate the subject and represent its
  essential characteristics (skills of discussion
  etc)

50
Ready for more?

• See Practical teaching strategies for helping
  pupils review and recall in order for them to
  transfer their learning

51
Helping pupils improve their transfer skills

• Doctor, doctor, I cant remember
• When did this happen?
• When did what happen?

In a 1996 research study 85 of the sample of 12
year olds asked, did not know what the word
revise meant!
52
SCOTS CLAN MAPS
S Sensory
C Colourful and visual
O Outrageous
T Thematic or topical
S Sequenced
C Chunked
L Located
A Associated
N Numbered
M Mnemonics
A Alliteration, rhythm, rhyme
P Personalised
S Shared
53
Sensory

• To learn anything fast and effectively you need
  to see it, hear it, feel it. T. Stockwell

• Physical sequencing activities using post-its or
  cards (e.g. German vocab posted around the room
  and pupils have to move to find meanings of
  words)
• Living essays
• Creating flow diagrams on the floor using pupils
  and props
• Bar graphs using chairs to mark different pupil
  responses
• Creating living photographs

54
Colourful and visual

• Our memory for images is better than our memory
  for words. Tony Buzan

• Use review posters in bold primary colours and
  for a specific audience or purpose in mind
• Coloured highlighters can be used to associate
  related topics or keywords
• Use coloured highlighters to review vocabulary in
  modern foreign languages-look for different
  colours for adjectives, verbs and nouns
• Complete topics using mind maps in bright colours

55
Outrageous

• I suppose the high water mark of my youth in
  Columbus, Ohio, was the night the bed fell on my
  father. J. Thurber

• Have pupils rehearse a speech in the most
  outrageous voice manageable
• Construct outrageous applications for new
  information. How might you teach this topic to a
  Martian? How might a creature who had never been
  to this planet view the information?
• List the key learning points from a unit of work
  (3 or 5 or 7). Now think of some very famous
  people, or people you know well, and have them
  tell you one of the points each, imagine they
  saying the points, one each, in order, whilst
  sitting round a table, or singing at a concert,
  or going rond a roundabout.

56
Thematic or topical

• They say that most adults over the age of forty
  can remember where they were and what they were
  doing when Kennedy was killed. My memory on this
  ones pretty hazy-all I can remember is being on
  top of a book depository in Dallas, Texas and
  then these policemen chasing me down the street
  US Comedian

• Teach chronology by starting with the chronology
  of the pupil-which family member lived where?
  And when? And with whom? And what did they do?
  And how are they related? And how do we know?
• Encourage pupils to make and use analogies
• Use mind mapping to encourage identification of
  associations, common themes and connections
• Teach settlements or ecosystems, or census data,
  or population change by starting with the
  immediate environment the pupils know best and
  build out

57
Sequenced

• Pupils use cards and detail the stages of an
  experiment on the back. Mix the cards up, turn
  them over and explain each turn in stage. Events
  in a role play or a novel, historical events,
  laws, principles of maths or science can all use
  sequencing activities.
• Templates for structured thinking, structured
  written or oral responses
• Fish bone diagrams, flow charts

58
Located

• Ensure that groups who are sitting SATs or GCSEs
  visit the room in which they willsit the exam
  beforehand. If possible, have them sit at the
  very desk they will sit at when they complete the
  exam. Ideally have revision lessons in that room
  with them at that desk!

59
Associated

• How do you use your long and medium term planning
  to ensure that both knowledge and processes are
  revisited and developed?

You can remember any new piece of information if
it is associated to something you already know or
remember. Lorayne and Lucas
60
Numbered

• To remember dates use words to represent figures.
  For example 186,282 miles per second becomes a
  dazzling sunray is flashing by with 1 8 6 2 8
  and 2 letters

You can remember any new piece of information if
it is associated to something you already know or
remember. Lorayne and Lucas
61
Mnemonics
These are best when invented by the learner!
A. Smith
0 Pill (nill is replaced by pill)
1 Sun (think of a comic sun with a yellow smiley face)
2 Shoe (one of your own shoes is best)
3 Tree (a fully grown tree in leaf that you are familiar with)
4 Store (as in superstore selling everything)
62
Mnemonics
These are best when invented by the learner!
A. Smith
5 Jive (moving to a rhythm)
6 Bricks (hear the sound they make as they are stacked)
7 Heaven (pearly gates and angels with harps)
8 Crate (a wooden box for storing)
9 Line (a railway or even a clothes line)
63
Alliteration, rhythm, rhyme
These are best when invented by the learner!
A. Smith
The vitamin called A has important connections It
aids in our vision and helps stop infections. To
vitamin C this ditty now comes Important for
healing and strong healthy gums. Finished with
both of these? Here come the Bs B1 for the
nerves B2 helps cells energise Digesting the
proteins B6s prize
64
Alliteration, rhythm, rhyme
These are best when invented by the learner!
A. Smith
A
Brilliant
Device
For
Finding
Good
Geographical
Information
Is
Linking
Names
Properly
So
Specially
United
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Italy
Ireland
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
United Kingdom
65
Alliteration, rhythm, rhyme
Try remembering geometric shapes to the tune of
On Top of Old Smokey.
Oh, take a rectangle And give it a squish The
sides will be equal A square if you wish Now
take a square And cut it in half Slice on the
diagonal And you have a triangle
Now take two triangles And place base to base. It
is a rhombus, The base line erase Oh six
triangles We can take Assemble together A hexagon
shape
66
Alliteration, rhythm, rhyme
Try remembering weather words to the tune of
Clementine
Condensation, evaporation Water cycle, cirrus
clouds Wind chill factors, ocean currents Trade
winds, high pressure zones Stratosphere and
centigrade Fahrenheit and barometers They excite
you, they cant bite you Please make friends with
weather words
Strong winds blowing Hail, sleet, snowing The
weathers with us all day long So look out your
window in the morning Just in case the forecasts
wrong
67
Personalised
Where the pupil has a strong personal connection
with the information it is readily recovered.
A. Smith

• Encourage pupils to consider applications in his
  or her personal life how might you apply this?
  In what ways might you benefit? How might you
  teach a younger brother or sister?
• Using pupil questions to shape a series of
  lessons within an enquiry (see Robert Philips and
  ISMs Initial Stimulus Material article)

68
Shared

• Structured opportunities to test understanding
  are a powerful aid to recall.
• Use a variety of regular and informal tests.
  Each one teach one., explaining personal notes
  or mind maps, preparing a lesson plan on how you
  would teach this to another group and formulating
  key questions and asking someone to test you on
  your understanding of them!