Sorry I got distracted this week and have builders in at home so most evenings have been spent cleaning up after them before I’ve been able to get down to doing some work, so the blogging has had to wait! This is a long post so there will HAVE to be a part three at some point … I suppose my thoughts about “the judgement” will have to wait.
In the earlier post -> HERE I set the scene, so this I’ll now give you an idea of what it involved from my perspective, as a classroom teacher but also as associate leader of the department. Whatever I have written below is, as a minimum, factual ( I feel I have to say that in case I get my ass kicked by someone!)
So, we’d had THE call and it was all systems go. Seager and I had already had an opportunity to discuss what we were both teaching as we have been teaching both of our groups in years 9 and 10 parallel lessons, with my groups being slightly higher attainers and he had soaked up all the remaining students below mine. This joint planning has been going on for some time with us getting together every Friday afternoon and discussing the following week’s plan – together with sharing ideas and resources. We also share a year 11 “super group” of 45+ students – we did this last year and because it was so successful we repeated it again … given that size of group we felt that they would be a target for any observation (they weren’t!).
Anyway, after school on Tuesday, we’d brought the Maths team together and tried to settle everyone’s nerves. It was a case of each of us giving a brief overview of where we were with each of our classes and what we intended to do over the next couple of days. We’d done a round of assessments with our groups a week or so before and had completed our “feedback loop” of marking so had a pretty good idea about what “gaps” needed to be addressed with some groups – specifically years 9 and 10 who are the first cohorts going through the new GCSE. If you haven’t heard me bang on about them being a “gap generation” … where have you been? Making sure that we aren’t missing any of the assumed prior knowledge is something that we have been particularly mindful ever since we joined the school.
Time for me to leave, and as I left school I rang my husband, as I do every day and told him what had happened and his response was “…. And?? You’ve nothing to worry about … do what you always do!” He is my voice of reason – my leveller. So my evening was spent making sure all my stuff was in order and organised.
Wednesday morning came and the inspectors were introduced to the staff during the morning briefing session. I set off to my tutor group and did what we always do every morning during registration … we did some maths. Our Head introduced subject specific tutor groups for year 11 last year (with students changing between subjects as the needs arise) and this year we’ve tweaked the process further so that year 11 are either in an English group or a Maths group which may change for some students – it’s working really well and the students know to come in, grab some paper and start working on the problem that is on the board. Today was no different apart from the fact that a after few minutes, in walked the Lead Inspector. He came in and sat at the back of the room and started making notes.
At ten past nine my tutor group left and my year 10’s trouped into the room. They are a lovely group and usually open to discussion but to come in and see “Ofsted” sat in the room threw some of the students – most were brilliant. Again, they did what we always do … they collected the “Bread and butter” starter and their heads were down working away. We made a decision to use these with year 10 as part of making sure students were getting interleaved practice of previous skills they had learned especially given that they are the first cohort through the new GCSE.
In terms of the main lesson we were looking at using a calculator effectively – we had been looking at powers, indices, roots and surds previously and so to introduce another topic that didn’t fit with where we were in the scheme of work seemed like nonsense, but we also wanted to make sure that pedagogically there was enough challenge in the topic whilst building on their prior knowledge of the subject so that they were learning something “new”.
The introduction was very much through whole class questioning – I modelled 2 or 3 carefully chosen examples (the students are getting better at making their own notes and refer to them with any work that is set). These questions meant I could assess that the students remembered what we’d been working on previously whilst also introducing new stuff to them – they were then given a “connect 4” to work on in pairs. At this stage I spoke to the inspector and explained the pedagogy behind the worksheet in that it wasn’t just lots of the “same type” of questions but that in order to connect 4 (on the answer grid … not the question grid) they had to work out four increasingly different calculations correctly. I’d placed the answers in such a way that the students would never be able to connect four in a row just be answering 4 easy questions. The students know how the sheets work and they worked really well – they are developing great skills at being able to work “backwards” too from a solution so that they can spot which answer they need to connect 4 and then see what the question is likely to be. There is a real depth of understanding coming from this type of thing for “most” students … I suppose it’s a bit like “this is the answer … what could the question be?”
The inspector spent a lot of time looking at their books and I explained how the students have a folder with their progress tracked on the front as a “time series” graph and he then spoke to a few of the students.
In terms of the lesson once most of the group had got to the point where they had worked with some of the trickier questions on the sheet I brought them back together and modelled two more examples with increasing complexity (again, there was lots of whole class questioning) and then they worked on a “follow-me” type of activity – again with increasing difficulty in questions.
There was no “jazz hands”, no running around, no group work for the sake of it, no progress arrows but the students were making some significant cognitive jumps in my opinion through a careful selection of questions. I’ve put the below picture together as to how I see the “modelling” and the students making their own connections working in practice … I wouldn’t call it perfect or the way it works every lesson, but it will give you an idea of the principle in general (HEATH WARNING: this is very rough and dirty – planning lessons is made up of so much more!). There is lots of teacher support and monitoring of the students as they do the work and sometimes I have to bring them all together to work on a particularly tricky question if I’ve “over-egged” it or sometimes I have to throw in some trickier questions too. The type of activity the students do varies MASSIVELY – sometimes it’s an activity style worksheet and sometimes it’s just a list of questions I’d like them to work through. It varies so much dependent upon the topic, the students, the lesson and even the weather! I suppose what I’m trying to say is that there is no single “recipe”.
In total the inspector was in my room for about 35 to 40 minutes and he left to go into Seager’s where he was confronted by the same topic being taught to a parallel group at a slower pace, which works for those students.
The fact that he went into Seager’s room worked well for us, when I went for feedback at the end of the day he (Seager) happened to be walking past the room and so we both went for feedback together.
Looking back at the length of this post … I’m going to cut it short here and I promise I’ll come back to the feedback session and the “judgement” tomorrow.
PS: In the last post I mentioned I had done a FOI request to Ofsted asking them for data about the number of inspections where the “provisional judgement” differed from the one given as the “final judgement” as published in the report. Well, I’ve had confirmation of the request and I’ll keep you posted … 2nd Feb is the deadline .. the day after my 22nd anniversary (I was a child bride!!)
