TLC 2: Activities to elicit evidence of learning

I know my students are learning when ...

... they play ‘find the fib’. I get students to write two true statements and one false statement (in a random order) about the lesson’s learning. They then swap books and try to spot the fib. Students must have gained concrete knowledge from the lesson to process knowledge into statements.

... they explain key words from a sample on the board to partner. They pick a word, verbally explain, then the partner has to rate the explanation as: fail, pass, good or outstanding. Motivate them by awarding gold stars for outstanding explanations.

... they use Kagan Quiz, Quiz, Trade cards.

Sam Best - Winner

First TLC Workshop: 2 November

The first TLC workshop will be on 2 November and the key questions are: 1) What makes good learning objectives and success criteria 2) How can we weave Personal Learning and Thinking Skills into these? We would like to ask all staff to bring 3 examples of learning objectives and success criteria which they have used to the meeting. If possible could you bring two good examples and one shocker!

You may want to have a look at the following before the meeting:

Learning Objectives

PLTS

Teacher Learning Communities

Who? What? When? Why?

There will be five teacher learning communities (TLC) workshops this year. The purpose of the TLCs is to provide a forum to discuss the implementation of agile teaching and share best practice. We are committed to a horizontal model of professional development in which staff help each other to improve as this gives staff greater control and ownership of their learning. We feel this model is far more effective than asking staff to sit in the hall and listen to a speaker. The workshops will take place in after school meeting time on the following dates:

1. 2 November
2. 18 January
3. 21 March
4. 2 May
5. 27 June

The focus of each workshop is most likely to be one of the five strand of Agile Teaching but we might choose to have a different focus if staff make a request or if learning walks suggest we need to concentrate elsewhere.

What’s new?

We have re-jigged the groups and TLC leaders. We will no longer work in triads and there is no expectation of observation – as useful as this can be. Following analysis of Claire Hamnett’s staff survey about TLCs, we have dropped the pre-made meeting materials and have created our own ‘Chenified’ workshop materials. In addition, the format of meetings now puts greater emphasis on sharing best practice and coaching.

Please get in touch if you have any comments of questions.

Cheers,

Rob Bown