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Research and evaluate a more integrated approach in the teaching of Art and DT at KS3.

To research and evaluate a more integrated approach in the teaching of Art and DT at KS3. – CLS

Historically, at Olchfa, and at most schools, Design and Technology have been taught as separate subjects, with Design and Technology being largely design and make based subjects and with Art being more creative and less focused on a final product.

My Actions:

I contacted local schools in Wales and used TES to research schools that work collaboratively across D&T and Art. No clear answers; other than it doesn’t happen because they tend to not work well together. Traditionally the Art Department and the Technology department have delivered very different courses to all Key Stages. Olchfa have introduced iCreate which is relying on collaboration between the subjects.

My Observations:

Design a Year 9 project that will “cross-over” between D&T and Art in Year 9. The project was the traditional electronics project with an art twist. The Art department has been working on a ‘Graffiti’ project using artists such as Banksy from the UK, Blu from Bologna, Faile from New York, and Sixeart from Barcelona. Pupils were set a task to use their art work and transfer it to a 2D design document. This would then be laser cut onto acrylic before the pupils assembled it into the outer covering for their electronics project.

The pupils were excited to be doing something different to the other Year 9 classes and could see a real difference in quality between the old style cover and this new idea.

I completed a survey of 12 pupils out of a total of 40 in the two classes. 12 pupils said that they enjoyed the project, 7 stated that they thought that the new style project was better than the old one. And 8 of the 12 said that they were happier to take their project home than they would have, if it had been the old style design.

Conclusions

Did it make a difference? Pupils seemed to really enjoy having more of an opportunity to influence the design of their product rather than using a pre-formed mould with plasticine design vacuum formed onto it.

Have learning outcomes improved? More pupils took the products home, with only those that were absent due to trips not taking them home.

Did students respond positively? Pupils did respond very positively and took far more care of the making of the product, and they were also more open to staying at lunch to finish off.

Did it help provide an answer to the question? Yes, pupils did respond and the cross over project worked.

Will I adopt the change as a regular part of my practice? I will try to build-in cross curricular activities more often. I do as a matter of course discuss science and geography within KS3 and 4 lessons as Technology can be applied in both those topics. I will be sharing this with my department with a view to developing more Art/D&T collaboration in the future.

Would ‘mini-whiteboards’ allow all students to participate in question and answer sessions?

Would ‘mini-whiteboards’ allow all students to participate in question and answer sessions? Could I use them to gather effective feedback and assessment during the lesson? – CG

My Actions

To phase in the use of mini-whiteboards in my lessons.
Plan some tasks that allow for the use of mini-whiteboards.
Canvas student opinion as to the effectiveness of the above.

My Observations:

Using mini-whiteboards requires some prior preparation e.g. making sure all of the pens are working and there are enough cloths etc.
Students can become a little distracted by the boards at times in the lesson when they are not required. They need to be reminded to “put pens down” and not doodle on them.
Some students are reluctant to show their answers, often writing very small or waiting until they’ve seen other students’ answers before writing their own.
It does allow me to instantly see which students, if any, have been caught out by common misconceptions. For example using the ‘slant’ height rather than perpendicular height of a triangle when working out the area.
It gives a much better overall impression of the progress of the class towards the learning objectives.
Mini-plenaries are much more effective using the whiteboards. I can see straight away if all/some/most of the students are comfortable with a particular topic.

Conclusions:

Mini-white boards require an additional amount of preparation and a slightly different approach to the lesson but are definitely worth it.
Mini-plenaries are much more effective using the boards and become a focal point of the lesson.
There is scope to develop the use of the boards much more e.g. for peer assessment and whole class activities.
I will try to build in the use of boards into all my lessons.
I will feed back to the department on the INSET day 04/01/16

Would introducing a Sport Education model improve participation rates with year 9 classes in PE?

Would introducing a Sport Education model improve participation rates with year 9 classes in PE? – BR

Historically, KS3 Physical Education has been taught through a skill based approach, where pupils would be taught skills in isolation before performing them in a game scenario.

Sport Education is a games based model, where pupils have the opportunity to mimic a sporting season. Using this model pupils become part of a team which is constant throughout the unit. As part of this team pupils are allocated different roles, such as coach, time keeper, scorer, umpire, statistician, fair play coordinator, media reporter etc. During lessons, the majority of time is spent in game play whilst others perform their ‘duty roles’ (umpire/scorer etc).

I will teach two of my year 9 groups through the Sport Education model and 1 year 9 group through the traditional skills based approach. A comparison on participation levels of the three groups can then be made.

My Observations

Enjoyment – Pupils enjoyment was evident in the groups that used the Sport Education model. Pupils enjoyed playing games and learning through game play. The group following the skills based approach were constantly asking to play and had lower engagement levels than others.
Skill level – Pupils skill level in the skills based approach developed faster than that of the Sport Education model. However, the transfer of these skills into game situations/scenarios was difficult with many pupils failing to do so. The pupils following the sport education model were able to perform skills in game scenarios, however, the accuracy of these skills were not as consistent.
Rules and regulations – pupils following the Sport Education model progressed rapidly in their ability to read a game. Their knowledge on the rules and regulations was sufficient enough to be able to umpire/referee a game by the end of the unit. Pupils following the skills based approach were at loss when put into small sided games and needed teacher direction in order to play, thus affecting their enjoyment levels.
Participation levels – There is evidently higher participation levels in the two classes that followed the sport education model. This is shown in the registers. Below I have summarised the amount of times a pupil has been excused or forgotten to bring kit across all three classes. It is important to note that the number of non-participants is not individual pupils; it is a collative number of non-doers on a lesson by lesson basis.

Class	No in class	Approach	Number of non-participation occasions since Sep 1^st	Average number of non-participants per lesson
9X2	36	Skills based	59 occasions	3.9
9Y1	29	Sport Education	31 occasions	2
9Y2	31	Sport Education	11 occasions	1.2

As shown in the table above, on average an extra 2 pupils are non-participants per lesson in the group that followed the skills based approach.

Pupils surveyed – The majority of pupils across all three classes were surveyed with the findings shown below:

Pupils across all three classes prefer game play to learning skills through drills.
Pupils following the Sport Education model felt confident in performing almost all roles in PE, whereas the pupils following the sport education model did not.
Pupils following the sport education model found that game play didn’t affect their participation levels.
Pupils following the skills approach noted that they would prefer game play

Below are quotes written by pupils in the pupil surveys?

Sport education classes

“Because I can learn different rules”

“Because in a game you always have a job to do and you can be competitive with other teams”

“When we play we get the real feel of the game”

“Because I feel like I know the game better”

“Because you get to try every role”

“We are still learning but in a more fun way”

Skills approach class

‘Because drills get boring and when you play a game you learn new things’

‘It sticks in my head when we do drills’

‘Drills are boring and doing the same thing all the time’

‘Because it can be fun and exciting but not enough games’

My Conclusions

It is evident that the majority of pupils following the Sport Education model enjoy the way they are taught. It is also evident that the pupils following the skills based approach would like more game play in order to make the lesson ‘more fun’. There is a difference in participation levels of both approaches, with the sport education approach having much larger participation levels than the skills based approach. However, it is also noted that a number of non-participant occasions came from swimming lessons. I will continue with the sport education approach with the two classes who are currently undertaking the module. I will also begin a sport education unit with the group who have been following the skills based approach. I can then note if there is a difference in their participation levels and whether the change would be due to the approach of the lesson or other external factors.

How can learners be encouraged to engage more fully with the formative feedback given?

How can learners be encouraged to engage more fully with the formative feedback given? – ATB

This is the basic area of my research but I also wish to explore ways in which dialogue between teacher and pupil can be initiated and sustained in order to ‘close the gap’ between a learner’s current performance and their target. I also want to use this to help students become more reflective, independent learners.

My Observations

As teachers we spend a huge amount of time marking students’ work but the investment of this time is only useful if students internalise and act on the advice given in order to improve the quality of their work. More often than not we spend more time writing the comments than the students do reading them.

Dylan Wiliams summarises this well- the total time spent by teachers on marking costs the taxpayers £billions for very little benefit, making it the most expensive PR activity in history.

So is there really any point in marking at all?

The Sutton Trust report ‘Pupil Premium Toolkit’ listed effective feedback as the highest impact action (adding eight months of learning per year) – against the lowest cost.

WHY BOTHER? Effective marking allows us as teachers to show the children that we teach that we value their efforts. It allows us to judge our own effectiveness as teachers. It is when we can make strategic decisions about the next steps children need to make. But more importantly it is a rare opportunity to have an individual dialogue with every child. Without it most of the children we teach would never get that one to one feedback they need in order to make outstanding progress. When it is done well it allows us to personalise our feedback, targets and praise. It is a crucial skill for every good teacher. Hayley Thompson AST

I find a great deal of resonance with both of these extracts and personally believe that high quality, effective marking can make a real difference to the final outcomes for students. From personal experience work, if work from a student is not marked there is a clear decline in its quality both in terms of the content and the presentation. Students are keen to minimise the time spent on activities that are not of their own choosing and see little purpose in devoting hours of their time to something that will never be looked at. ( I can sympathise with this..I rarely paint my toenails)

From my research into current thinking it is not the quantity of feedback that matters but the quality and impact of the feedback given. So we need to keep the volume of marking in proportion to the impact it can have on improving learning outcomes. Learning outcomes can only be improved if the feedback is studied and acted upon. This also needs to be a rapid cycle so that learners can act on the advice immediately whilst the key ideas are still current and relevant. This is especially important in content led subjects such as Science.

I came across some examples where teachers had used highlighters to indicate areas of success and areas for improvement. This seemed to offer a clear way of communicating to students where their work needed to be improved in a simple and efficient manner as well as celebrating areas of strength. This also offered a platform to engage thinking skills as students would be required to determine what was wrong with their work in order to decide on how it could be improved. This level of engagement was what I was hoping to achieve rather than a simple note taken of my diagnosis of what was wrong with their work which at best is a fairly passive learning experience.

Build in ‘struggle time’ before providing feedback. “Learning happens when people have to think hard” [Coe]. Over-guiding students is less effective than “delaying, reducing and summarising [Bjork].

So fewer words and more highlights…

My Actions

I made the decision to initially focus this style of marking on extended tasks such as homeworks comprising of a selection of past paper questions or QWC type tasks to allow opportunity for detailed feedback to be given. Each student would also receive a comment to guide as to major areas that need to be addressed and suitable actions to take to resolve these issues.

This highlighted feedback would then be followed by dedicated reflection/improvement time at the start of each lesson where assessed work had been returned. Here students would be expected to complete corrections/actions to improve their work.
They would also be asked to reflect on how much effort they felt had been put into the work and how they perceived the standard of the work. Students would also be asked how they intended to use the feedback given to improve the quality of the next piece of work.

So armed with highlighter-pink for a problem and green/yellow for good bits I embarked on a colourful research project in Sept 2015.

My Observations

As the project is only 6 weeks old, the long term impact cannot yet be determined. I hope that by making my marking more effective the overall performance of my classes will be improved with possibly a positive residual somewhere……

The short term impact can start to be considered.

Students have responded positively and actively search out the pink highlights during reflection time. They comment that this is easier than reading prose comments to identify where there is a problem (many of our students find reading handwriting difficult).
Many students, particularly the MAT enjoy the challenge of ‘spotting the mistake’.
Students collaborate, compare and discuss their work to identify reasons for errors in their work and this has promoted quality peer interactions in lessons.
There has been a marked reduction of the repetition of the same error in subsequent tasks. (A frustrating feature ever present in earlier work as students failed to read/assimilate the advice given and apply it to the next task).

Unexpected outcomes

A reduction in the amount of copied homework -students now appear to value their homework tasks more. The prioritisation of reflection time for homework seems to have raised its profile in the eyes of the students.
Many students are actively seeking to improve the quality of their work over time and the completion rate of tasks set has been sustained at a high rate over the first half term. (as opposed to the regular drop seen in previous years)
It has been possible to differentiate more effectively by giving additional support/guidance for weaker students to help them identify their mistakes whilst offering far less help for the more able.
Possibly the weirdest outcome. I have become a more reflective marker. In choosing which parts to highlight I have found myself becoming far more analytical. Freed from the need to pepper the work with comments and words I have been able to focus on what the students are actually doing and why the mistakes are occurring. This has allowed me to amend my teaching in a more focused way.

Future Developments

After Christmas, once students are fully conversant with the processes outlined above, I intend to develop this further by asking the students to produce the summative comments for each piece of work and pose questions for me to respond to. This will then act as a vehicle for using pupil voice to inform the teaching and learning within my lessons. I will still need to provide comment based support for some learners as these higher level thinking skills take time to develop.

Maybe one day just the highlighter on its own will be sufficient to promote development, with students discussing ideas and collaboratively suggesting effective pathways and actions to secure improvement. This is surely the aim of every teacher-to develop the independence and self confidence of every learner. To enable students to analyse and improve their own performance seeking support from both their peers and their teacher. I feel that this is a realistic goal for my Yr 13 group as they are both able and highly motivated. I may also be able to go some way to achieving this with both Yr 11 Double and Triple groups.