T1: This week Mr. Barton has done it again with an incredible interview with Professor Becky Allen. Becky is one of the people that Dylan Wiliam mentioned to check out the work of when I interviewed him for the ERRR podcast, and I was just as impressed by Becky's interview with Craig as I was with Dylan's! Well worth a listen, and I'll definitely be buying Becky's book.

T2 is coverage of one of the mis-used terms in education, the ‘Zone of Proximal Development'. If you're keen to find out whether or not you or colleagues have been using it incorrectly (as I definitely have done in the past), then T2 is for you.

T3 is a quick tweet following on from my blog post last week on implementation intentions and action triggers.

T4, another quick and pithy tweet.

T5 is a pretty good resource if you're looking into developing better discussion in your science classroom, especially for primary teachers.

T6 and T7 are all about careers, and T8 to T12 are for the maths teachers amongst you.

T13 is a model for teaching electrical circuits that was new to me, but seems super powerful.

T14 is a report on supporting social, emotional, and academic development that I haven't as yet read but that I'm sure will come in handy in future (and to some TOT readers now)

Thought shrapnel this weeks is on a way to help teachers, and maybe students, to see their progress more clearly. Primarily about teacher Ed, but broader applications too. Probs not an original idea, but a musing none the less.

Enjoy : )

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MUST LISTEN: Professor Becky Allen (@profbeckyallen) on the @mrbartonmaths podcast

Problems with the ‘zone of proximal development', and how it's used in edu-talk. via @DavidDidau

Getting a planner to include a time, in addition to a date, significantly increases action, via @hfletcherwood

When is it the best time to vary the context of learning? a tweet via @NickSoderstrom

‘Talk Science'. Free online PD to support discussions in the science classroom

How to find your calling, according to psychology. Via @psych_writer

It isn't just your personality which influences your career choice, your career choice also influences your personality!

Fraction talk war, via @NatBanting

The Mathematics Centre. Heaps of maths resources

Maths Teachers: GEMS, a (better) alternative to BODMAS/BIDMAS/PEMDAS, via @danicquinn

Dominotion: Purposeful practice game for mean, median, mode, range, etc

SET, the game. A repository of resources, via @nomad_penguin

‘The Rope Model', for teaching electrical circuits. I will use this this year

Supporting social, emotional, and academic development: research implications for educators

>>>THOUGHT SHRAPNEL<<<

Ideas for teacher education

To paraphrase Dylan Wiliam, if a teacher is able to coach themselves after a lesson, and identify all points that an observer would, then self-correct, then the teacher educator has done their job.

I read the following in Pam Grossman’s paper Teaching practice: A cross-professional perspective (2009)

OLIVER LOVell, Ollie lovell, Pam Grossman,

When I read this I thought ‘Yeah, this is true, but we rarely provide the sufficient scaffolding to allow students to unpack that video’.

I’ve also been thinking about growth a fair bit recently, and building on these two ideas, I thought of an assessment idea.

First week of teacher training: Show students a video of teaching practice, get them to answer a number of questions such as ‘What did the teacher do well?’, ‘How do you know what the teacher did was/wasn’t effective?’, ‘What advice would you give to this teacher?’.

Take their responses, hide them away.

Do exactly the same exercise at around the halfway point in their teaching course, and again at the end.

As a celebration of growth (hopefully) at the end, return to them all of their work from the three instances, see if what they see, and what they can identify as areas for improvement, have improved (Key Q is ‘what are the correct answers', but that's a bigger Q!)

Could adapt to fit a school setting too. What about videoing students reading aloud at the start of the year, then again at the end, and letting them see the difference. Is anyone doing this? Could be an interesting approach, and a way to help students to take charge of, and be motivated about, their own learning more too.

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