How serving up small bites led to thinking about teaching chewing and My P.I. How to Eat an Elephant: How serving up small bites led to thinking about teaching chewing and not teasing at the table. Mary van Rossen

How the elephant arrived After considering my results last year a couple of Things stuck in my mind: -The students ran out of steam when it came to Doing internals and so these needed to be over and done with by term 3. -The students seemed to flounder with what was asked of them in their internals despite models, exemplars and milestone checks being in place. -The students were too slow at getting through material that was needed for their external exams.

So there were really two elephants but they agreed merge

Internals I decided to try teaching the internals differently. Rather than giving them the whole assessment with its separate tasks I looked at what was required for Excellence at each task and then break each task down into very small bites. Scaffolding the scaffolding and then some...

Scaffolding the scaffolding I provided students with the whole assessment, a due date, examples of Excellence and Merit work done on slightly different content in order to provide modelling of what the “whole” assessment would look like when completed. The task templates provided were not useful to students as guides for what is required to achieve Excellence or Merit, so I explained that we would be creating our own templates for recording the information.

Supervising that each template was drawn in class It felt really pedantic, but I wrote up headings on the board and drew up what the templates should look like, the contents and examples of the kind of contents. The students copied this into their books and recreated them in word. I made sure that initial tasks were completed before they moved on by putting in class time limits on student decisions, sharing these decisions as a class to help those still unsure of what things looked like. Then I would draw up the next template, contents requirements and examples.

Results In most cases, each step of the History Research process was done extremely well. There was in class peer group competition about who was creating the most detailed answers within the templates. Those with poorer responses were well aware of what was being created beside them in class. Those that handed in work that needed improving had been absent during the early set up lessons and didn't understand the necessity of completing process routines in their research assignment, even though they had been given copies and had them explained. Others that didn't complete work to the same standard preferred to work away from the class group and had lost touch with the quality of work illustrated by the exemplars given out. These students were given the Option of resubmitting.

Level 2 History Research ASHS ACTUAL 2010 34.8 8.7 17.4 39.1 Three students are yet to complete this assessment Level 3 History Research The Two not achieved students have just handed Their resubmissions in.

Next Elephant The students were too slow at getting through material that was needed for their external exams.

I decided on a continued snappy supply of Chunks of elephant

to digest them was clear Learninng Intentions and Success Criteria were used to help the students Understand why they had to digest the Various chunks in the context of The whole elephant. But they kept Choking. The bits were Too big. Even if the reason to digest them was clear and made sense.

I made the bits even smaller, but it turned out They didn't understand my instructions about How to get the chunks off the plate and into Their heads. I had to start cutting up the instructions into smaller tasks. And making sure that they understood how the tasks Worked to help them absorb the information. This didn't always work, so I found I needed to teach how To perform the task instructions. Not only did the students have an elephant to eat they had to Learn how to hold their knife and fork and chew.

And so slowly the information elephant Disappeared and changed shape. We had conversations about Ways to digest the information elephant. Students taught me their ideas And showed me how to make My instructions better. And so slowly the information elephant Disappeared and changed shape. It could also chew on its own to grow bigger and bigger

The instructions were understood as strategies for their learning: Close reading, cloze reading, paragraph and essay writing as group And individual work Literacy PMI, compare and contrast, 3,2,1 3 things you didn't know, 2 things you found interesting, 1 thing you found surprising. Continuims of Most to least – important, accurate, significant, etc and presenting why - group work Thinking: Dictation, plastacine modelling of concepts, Role play. - group work and competition For a Kinaesthetic break: Visual Kinaesthetic: Posters, presentations, powerpoint – group and individual competition Content recall: Quick quiz, card quiz and matching games, online quizes as Groups, class and individual.

But some of the students started to wander off task – away from the trough They had too much off-task chatter, To say to each other or else they were Taking over the class discussion. Or they would take over the class feedback and Conversation with stabbing remarks.

Enter group work strategies to experiment with different pairings/groupings of personalities within the class. Egos settled down again and more respect Returned to student feedback sessions. NEXT STEP IN MY P.I.: GETTING TO KNOW THE ELEPHANT WITHIN. HAVING DIGESTED IT – IT NEEDS TO BE EXAMINED, JUDGED, COMPARED AND CONCLUSIONS MADE ABOUT IT

How does using World Cafe in class increase student knowledge, Understanding and confidence about a topic?

Assessment Week More students appeared to know what to write About in their essays. Students were much quieter and more serious In their attempts to answer well and respected Exam conditions. These scripts are still to be marked