What's it all about? Progress

PedagooLondon: What's it all about? Progress. Chris Curtis

"A range of strategies to use in the classroom to track, monitor and build progress into everyday teaching. Includes things that an Ofsted inspector stole from me."

This presentation was thought-provoking for me because I am always so keen to praise the effort that my students (particularly those with SEN) have put into their work; often they will work extremely hard yet become frustrated with themselves for still not getting all their punctuation/spellings/whatever correct. I try to soothe this frustration by praising them for putting in 100% effort and reassuring them that as long as they try their best/hardest it will be okay, and their perseverance will eventually be rewarded with success. This presentation made me wonder if I have the right approach or not. I'm still undecided about what/how/if to change and need to think about it more over the next few weeks. 

Things I've taken away from this presentation:

• Focus on one thing at once...break the skills down! (I am pretty good at doing this already.)
• Praise progress even if effort is poor 
• Progress is about getting better, not just loads of targets
• One target per question
• Better or worse?: compare work from the start of your book to some recently completed 
• Assess the skill and not the grade. Grades are for summative. (I do this already.)

I like the idea of sharing the target for every student on the board and then students place a post-it at the end of the lesson over their line on the board indicating how much progress they believe they've made towards the target. I think if targets were shared in this way students could do a bit of self-directed learning and have the opportunity to put themselves into groups to work on the target together. 

 

Point number 2 in this photo is one I often ask aloud as I mark books. I think I will start writing it down! I know my students CAN use basic punctuation, they just often forget. 

I've made this picture larger so it is easier to see. I am interested with the collection of targets here and seeing the sheet like this made me realise I could just print these targets out and circle the ones that I want for each student, thus saving myself a lot of time writing them out! Also, the pictures in the right of the photo are mini-worksheets for different basic writing skills. In my previous school I had a display a lot like this for extension work/extra practise, and I'm considering making one in my current classroom for commas/paragraphs/evaluating/evidence etc. 

I'm really pleased to say that I consistently do ALL the things on this slide!