James Nottingham, a house and the importance of goals.

So - i've had my first art lessons. Art is the only subject where i have a class by myself ( OK! There's only 12 of them - but they're MY kids :) )

We started with a who's who - went into why we teach art at school, and what art is. The kids discussed this in groups, that then again broke up into groups with one from each of the original group.

We brainstormed on a padlet ( link to follow) that i've made for general class discussion.

Now i introduced the kids first mini project. To make a name poster. The criteria, which i've learned the importance of from James Nottingham, where as follows.

You must use the whole A3 piece of paper

You must make 3 trials of each font, color and design.

The kids got annoyed. "Why do we have to do all of this cant we just start making it already?"

Then i remembered the house task - we had done with James Nottingham. A colleague has replicated it with her class with great success. So - i went for it. Ran for some paper and pencils and handed them out. READY? You can try an do this task at home. Don't peak - follow the instructions

"Alright kids - you have one minute to draw a house. Ready? Go?"

I set the timer for one minute - when it went off...

"Alright, you now have half a minute to give each other feedback on the house they've made"

I set the timer, it went off.

"Alright, you now have another half minute to improve your house based on the feedback you've been given by your peers"

Timer is set - and.... "PENCILS DOWN. Look up! Now we're going to score your houses. Ready?"

Anyone who has a chimney gets 5 points - the kids with a chimney wrote down 5 on the top corner.
Anyone who has a door in the middle of he house gets 2 points - same procedure
Anyone who has 4, not 2, not 3, not 5, but FOUR windows, gets 4 points.  - same procedure
Anyone with curtains in their windows get 5 points - same procedure.
Anyone with color on their house gets 5 points - same procedure.

You could easily hear their moans and groans, they weren't happy with my grading...

Then i said - "anyone who has drawn anything other than a house. This means a flower, a tree, a mail box, a sun, a cloud, grass - anything else", the kids waited with anticipation, ready to write down their score " gets minus 12 points"

The kids exclaimed "this isn's fair", but i shook it off.

"New paper!"

"You now have one minute to draw an interesting house, that has a chimney, door in the middle, exactly 4 windows with curtains in them and with some color. Don't forget, you should only draw a house, nothing else."

The timer is set, and the kids are on it.

"Now you have half a minute do give each other feedback on their drawing"

The timer is set -

"Alright, you now have half a minute to improve your drawing based on your peers feed back"

The timer is set and the kids are ON IT !

Timer beeps and the kids whine for more time, but i'm ruthless. "PENCILS DOWN!"

The kids are all fired up, and ready to tell me whats what.

"Alright, which house did you enjoy drawing more. The first one or the second one?"

The kids agreed on the second one. "But why" i said. "We knew what we were doing, so we could get the highest points"We discussed it in depth, as a few kids had started out with liking the first one, as they were free to be totally creative.

"Okay, what did you talk about on your feedback on the first house? "

The kids had told each other that it was pretty, cool, wish they could draw like that etc.

"What did you talk about on your feedback on the second house?"

The kids had told each other that they were missing a window, or that something didnt quite look like a curtain. Was that door completely in the middle? etc.

"So you liked knowing what you were doing? "

The kids said that they in fact DID want to know how to complete a task - and have goals.

"Alright, well, this was a test. You knew exactly how to draw the second house, because i has given you clear instructions. From now on, if you ever don't know what you are doing, or my instructions aren't clear, you need to challenge me. This way i get better too, and it'll be a lot more fun to produce art in this class."

The kids promised me, that they would help me They should always be able to answer these questions:

What am i doing?
How far have i gotten with it?
What am i doing next? 

By this little assignment, the learning taking place in my art class is becoming a shared responsibility. The kids are going to questions my tasks, but i should make the goals for each product clear, so that they can always answer the questions from above.

But what about the kids that initially liked drawing the first house better? Well, i've started my own project - where each kid has an ongoing project on the side, from what we are doing as a class, where they get to decide exactly what they are doing. This project is worked on if a kid finishes a task early, is they need a break from the task we are working on as a class ( we have art from 8.00 till 11.20 with a twenty minute break) and i'll even be giving class time for these projects.

The my own project seemed like a fair compromise, but on the same time, it let's me see what my kids enjoy about art, to target future assignments to their liking.

After this house assignment, we started brainstorming on our name posters, and the kids started with the trials and actual poster. All in all, successful art lessons and a happy teacher.

Visible learning with James Nottingham

So - today i went to an all day event with all the teachers, in the equivalent to my county.

James Nottingham spoke about visible learning, all day. James Nottingham is the practical side to the research that John Hattie conducts.

The first thing that struck me really, was that he had the option of asking questions on todaysmeet, a concept which i will explain in a future post, as well as twitter and of course in person.

The whole concept evolves around the effect sizes of various factors. Here are a few:

WATER  - has a an effect size - but it is less than the average ( which is 0.4). However - according to the numbers, the numbers suggest that for a student to consume more than 2 litres of water a day has a positive effect in their achievements. I don't know if this is a placebo effect, Nottingham suggested that the best ideas are "born on the can" ;)

CHANGING SCHOOLS - has en effect size equivalent to that of being set back half a year. So children switch schools often, they will be set back by half a year, on average, each time.

HOMEWORK - Homework has an effect size of 0.29 . It is positive, but it isn't even average. So why are we spending so much time on it? Younger kids effect size to homework is 0.01 - That means that for younger kids - drinking 2 litres of water has a more positive effect on achievement than homework does! For teenage kids, the effect size is 0.54. That means it has a more than average effect on achievement but not as high as home preparation - the flipped classroom style. Which has 0.9 - that's more than the equivalent to an entire years advantage!

These are just numbers, and as impressive as they may be - they don't compare to these coming up. Here is "Hattie's top ten effect sizes for achievement" -

To read these numbers, Nottingham explained that the average was 0.4, and that this was equivalent to a year. This means that 0.8 is a two year advantage and 1.2 is a three year advantage.

10th place we have FEEDBACK, comes in at 0.75

9th place: TEACHER CLARITY, comes in at 0.75

8th place: COMPREHENSIVE INTERVENTIONS FOR LEARNING DISABLES STUDENTS , comes in at 0.77

7th place: CLASSROOM DISCUSSION, comes in at 0.82

6th place: MICRO TEACHING, comes in at 0.88 - Micro teaching is filming/documenting your own lessons and then reviewing these (with a colleague)

5th place: PROVIDING FORMATIVE EVALUATION, comes in at 0.9

4th place: TEACHER CREDIBILITY, comes in at 0.9

3rd place: RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION, comes in at 1.07

2nd place: PIAGETIAN PROGRAMS, comes in at 1.28 - We've passed a three year advantage! By this influence/factor individualisation and differentiation is meant - as well as ideas like Vygotskys zone for proximal development

1st place: ASSESSMENT CAPABLE STUDENTS, comes in at 1,44.

Assessment capable students - students being able to assess their own work. How might that be done you ask?  Students need to be able to answer the following questions.

What am i trying to achieve?
How much progress have a made so far?
What are my next steps?

Nottingham had a cute example of this that i would like to share with you.

The example is set in a classroom of 4 year olds, that are being assigned the task to paint a picture of something that they saw on the way to school that day. The teaches says "Today we are going to focus on 2 things. First, we are going to fill the whole page, so that's the whole page from corner to corner - we don't just want a picture up in the corner of the page. Second, we are going to use at least three colors in our picture. "

Now - we've set the stage and they are able to answer the first of the three questions, and reflect on the remaining two.

Nottingham approaches a boy that's drawing a picture and asks him what he is doing. The boy is able to tell him that he is painting a picture. When asked which kind of picture, kids without specific instruction may not be able to elaborate - but this kid can tell you that he is painting a picture from something on the way to school, that takes up the entire page and that has at least three colors.

Now Nottingham asks him what he has painted so far, the kid can elaborate that he hasn't taken up the entire page yet, so he's going to draw a tree, and that he is still missing a color.

So naturally the kid knows that these are his next steps.

This kind of teaching is set with very clear goals - enabling students to take charge of their own progress. It forces them to take responsibility for their own learning.

Nottingham explained that he later heard two 4 year olds have a lively debate about wether 3 shades of red in fact was three colors or not. Without this kind of goal oriented, self assessment type of learning, a discussion like this may not have happened - and an opportunity for learning would have been lost.

Nottingham raised many issues throughout the day. Such as the problem with praising achievement over progress. This doesn't mean that achievement is bad - but progress is better.

I'll probably have more thoughts on the issue, so now i think i'll go find one of his books to explore them further.

I hope you found this useful - please feel free to comment if you feel that i am unclear ;) .

Wordle

En wordle er en super nem måde at visualisere tekst på - eller hvis man bare gerne vil have et billede der kan "læses" til feks. et oplæg. wordle.net er super nem at bruge - men der er mange generators at vælge imellem. Man copy paster bare teksten ind, og så genererer den en wordle.

Man kan feks. lave en wordle over et digt, så man kan se hvilke ord der bliver brugt hyppigst. Det samme gælder for overskrifter på nyheds sider. Der ville jeg måske anbefale tagxedo.com. Jeg elsker især ideen til feks. forsider på elevers skrevne værker, opgaver mm.

Altså - wordle gør de ord der hyppigst fremgår af teksten større. Så - hvis jeg vil gøre nogle af ordene større - så skriver jeg dem flere gange - like so.

Tip - hvis du gerne vil have at ordene i din wordle er sammenhængende, skal du bruge dette symbol ~ så på min wordle har jeg skrevet dog~lover - således at ordene bliver sammen uden behov for en bindestreg, for den bliver der ;)

Hvorfor blog? Hvorfor nu?

Jeg vil gerne reflektere. Det at skrive ting ned, og forholde sig til dem, gør at man bearbejder dem. Jeg vil gerne huske ting - denne blog er et sted hvor jeg kan diskutere teoretikere fra min kandidat grad, trick til at få ro i klassen fra mit arbejde som lærer, eller små indslag fra privaten.