The potential pitfalls and positives of the 'walking talking' mock

Last year, in the whirl of final exam preparation, the 'walking talking' mock (WTM) first began to appear on my timeline. The sometimes cult-like prophets of PiXL extolled its virtues as a way of improving exam technique and raising student achievement. Kristian Still's 2015 blog post does a fantastic job of capturing the erstwhile hype from when this approach was first mooted.

For the uninitiated, it's a mock exam... but not as you know it. Rather than students battling their way through an entire paper in one blast, they instead engage in a somewhat stop/start process of teacher explanation followed by timed completion of each question.

Having suffered the pain of disappointing results last year my leadership mantra this year has been 'let's do things differently'. Enter the WTM stage left. We knew we had two specific issues in relation to underachievement in AQA GCSE English Language:
1) students failing to stick to the clear timings required for each question
2) students not fully understanding what was required in each question.

The WTM seemed like a good way to support students in understand the quantity they were able to write in the time allowed and to guide them through the nuances of the assessment criteria. However, concerned about the idea of holding court with 150 students for 3+ hours - and, if I'm honest, yet to be convinced it was worth the bother - I decided to trial the WTM with two target groups on days when our students otherwise would've been at home.

The trial
I thought it would be a hard sell to convince students to attend but, as they so often do, our students did me proud and I ended up with a cohort of thirtyish Higher tier students on day one, and the same for Foundation tier on day two, for a 4 hour trial WTM. 

Free bacon butties booked for the halfway point were an important aid to stamina and I'd encourage any of you undertaking a WTM to remember it's a marathon for all involved and sustenance for teachers and students alike will be well appreciated!

Judging by my wholly unscientific student voice exit evaluation, students felt more confident and informed after the trial.

After the ‘walking talking’ mock exam I felt…	…more confident.	…the same.	…less confident.
Higher tier	26	1	0
Foundation tier	28	2	1
‘I feel I have a clearer understanding of what I need to do to achieve my target grade.’	Definitely	Partially/ somewhat	Disagree
Higher tier	8	19	0
Foundation tier	18	13	0
I would like to repeat the ‘walking talking’ mock exam before my June exam.	Agree	Not sure	Disagree
Higher tier	10	12	5
Foundation tier	18	11	2

More pleasingly, after marking their papers, it was clear that it had led to evident gains in their achievement. The combination of these two factors launched me to action, rolling the WTM out to the rest of the cohort as soon as I was physically able.

The trial turned out to be a really important process in itself in that it taught me some important lessons about how to ensure the sessions were effective. I'll attempt to distil some of these below, but I strongly urge anyone with a large cohort to try it out in this way first.
The logistics
Organising a WTM is like being a scout: you need to be prepared. You'll want to keep everything you can as similar as possible to the conditions in which students will sit the final exam. So, it's time to apologise to your Head of PE and get the Sports Hall/Gym booked.

We were also supported by our superb Exams Officer and hardworking team of invigilators whose support was invaluable in establishing the necessary entrance routines for phones, bags, coats etc. Thanks to them, exam desks were set up as they usually are with students' laminated name cards with their exam codes and a strictly regulated seating plan. Interestingly, the invigilators found it hard to adjust to the idea of us talking to students in the exam hall and it's well worth explaining what a WTM entails prior to starting so you're all comfortable with one another's role.

Additionally, tech support is invaluable. The first of the trial sessions, for Higher tier, I did without a Powerpoint or projector - the impact of which can arguably seen in the evaluation table above. Don't make my mistake: a few short bulletpoints on a slide is important visual reinforcement for students of the key messages.

After day two of the trial I'd also, unsurprisingly, lost my voice. To ensure you're still able to teach the next day, invest in a £7 wireless mic from Amazon and blag an amp from the Music department.

Also, consider filming your WTM as a revision reference for students. If you're up for this added challenge, you'll need a camcorder or your phone, tripod, and charger. I found it was easy to place this to avoid filming students, but give yourself some to set it up prior to them entering.

And, finally, to avoid shivering students, do remind the caretakers to put the heaters on(!)

The instructions
It can be harder than you think solely to comment on exam technique and not give any specific guidance about the content to be included in students' answers. I'd go so far as to advise not reading the exact exam paper students have in front of them so you're simply not able to give them advice on the content to include.

It's also really important that the guidance you are giving is already consistently embedded across the teaching in your Faculty before the WTM. We've worked hard this year to ensure that the messages we're giving our students is consistent across classes and revision sessions. I think it's really important that we all agree on what is required in the exam based on sound advice from current examiners and more experienced colleagues. To support this, I produced an A3 guide to each tier of the exam for my teachers and tiered work book for students that reinforces key messages in a similar format.

The follow-up
As with any mock exam, the marking and feedback that teachers provide to students is key ensuring its a powerful tool for improvement. Students' papers should inform lesson planning, remembering that if students can't do something under WTM conditions then, quite frankly, swift, sharp intervention is needed.

Whilst it's easy to get swept up in improved outcomes, it's clearly important not to rely on the grades generated by WTM for forecast data. They are not an accurate portrayal of students' ability to respond when left to their own devices, as they will be in final exams. It's therefore important to book in a 'proper' mock exam swiftly afterwards both to reinforce exam technique and to gauge the impact of the WTM. Ours is after Easter and I for one will be waiting with bated breath to see whether the positive impact I'm expecting has actually been achieved.

 

A very special relationship: towards better cross-phase empathy andunderstanding

I'm going to start this post with a quick plea to secondary school teachers: please stop opining that the new end of Key Stage 2 expected standard for writing 'looks like a GCSE grade C'. Whether it does or doesn't (and, for what it's worth, I'm not convinced such mechanical tick-boxing does) this comment is leading some Primary school teachers to complain 'What on earth do students do for five years?'.

That this question is being asked by Primary colleagues at all, quite frankly, pains me. What do they do? Well, quite a lot actually. My immediate reaction is to present our Year 9 exam papers or get out the superb work of my Year 10s. But, my second reaction is one of sadness because for me that question typifies a lack of empathy and understanding that, in many cases, is found between Primary and Secondary teachers both online and in real life.

In the last year I have had to defend the size of my school from Primary teachers who've presumed that have 1700 students on roll automatically results in a faceless institution in which Year 7 students are somehow swallowed up. For the record, I can assure you that the young people you entrust us with are very much seen as individuals by their teachers, form tutors, and Heads of Year, and we delight in watching them blossom into young adults.

I've also heard numerous complaints that in Year 7 classes across the country core learning is being lost, students regress or, at best, 'tread water'. Whilst the national achievement dip in Year 7 has been well-documented, there are numerous social and educational demands on students as they begin Key Stage 3, not least the widening breadth of study, the more challenging mode of assessment and demand for independence, all against reduced or less flexible curriculum time for individual subjects. I don't think there's a secondary school in Britain that isn't striving to buck this trend and placing the blame squarely at the door of secondary school teachers doesn't do much for cross-phase relationship building.

As secondary school teachers we are painfully aware of the limits of what we can do. We want our Key Stage 3 to build on prior learning and to be a rich, exciting and challenging progression but, try as we might, we simply can't adapt our Key Stage 3 curriculum to complement all of our fifteen feeder primaries. Conversely, I wonder, could Primary school teachers respond to the curriculum of one 'feeder' secondary school? I would argue that it doesn't take two years to prepare students for English GCSE: it takes a childhood of schooling. But it doesn't always feel there is a willingness amongst Primary colleagues to acknowledge this responsibility on top of the pressures they already have in this brave new world of testing.

It is perhaps unsurprising that relationships become frayed when there are so many external pressures at both phases. We become inward-looking in a kind of Blitz spirit as we batten down the hatches and prepare for what is on its way. With so many challenges, it's no wonder that there's so often a lack of empathy in both directions.

So, how do we go about mending this most special of relationships? Well, I for one am going to strive to keep at the forefront of my mind that whilst times are hard for us they're immensely hard for you too. At every possible juncture I'm going to express my true feelings about Primary school teachers, which is that quite simply I'm in awe of you.

You have skill sets that I simply don't. I knew on day two of my pre-PGCE Primary experience that I didn't have the patience or sensitivity needed. This was perhaps most sharply apparent the moment the boy with the snotty nose approached me and said, "Miss, I've pooed myself" and with the dawning realisation he expected me to do something about it. I'm trying to learn about phonics and strategies to improve handwriting, but I have no doubt that in these areas you are the experts. But then I would hazard there are areas for which the reverse is also true.

My commitment to you will be that I'm going to make better use of all the information you give me about the children you pass on. I'm going to skill myself - and my team - up on grammar teaching so that we can reinforce your use of terminology and language learning. I'm also going to do whatever I can to build professional networks that include Primary teachers, like the wonderful Michael Tidd and Shareen Mayers, so that our relationships grow and become even more fruitful over time.

Let's all agree to meet one another in a space that is judgement-free. Let's read one another's blogs and ask open, honest questions that challenge our presumptions. Let's recognise that we're both working towards the same end and responding to extreme pressures that one another might not fully appreciate or understand. If we can do this then it will be a very special relationship indeed.

Questions are a good place to start

I’ve spent my day wading through three sets of books: wonderful, glorious, messy and brilliant exercise books. Against this backdrop, I’ve also distracted myself by engaging in fervent online chats spanning everything from how to get Tesco to pay for your highlighters, Derrida and deconstruction theory, and how to tackle Paper 2 of the new AQA GCSE English Language spec.

One of these casual exchanges sparked a blog post and, now I’ve finally popped away my purple pen (and once more donned my usual elephantine HoF hide), I’ve got about ten minutes to respond before my bath is full and I go and finish another chapter of ‘Batavia’ before bed.

So, here's my attempt to explain exactly what I *did* mean when I asserted:  

1) “Asking questions is the starting point for all learning.”
2)  “If only experts asked questions teachers may as well give up now”

Which means it’s time for some Emily Bronte.

“Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree”

“The writer uses nature to communicate ideas of sadness. It says, “Fall, leaves, fall”. This suggests the poet as [sic] described someone who is having a bad time, and he [sic] just wants all his problems to drop and go away, just like when leaves drop of [sic] a tree. We want them to blow away so we can carry on moving forward.”  -  Student response to an unseen poem

The student who wrote this response, for a variety of reasons, doesn’t have much content knowledge that may have helped her to unpick meanings, the writer’s use of language etc. The nature of the unseen response also doesn’t allow this understanding to be scaffolded by the teacher in a format that can be learnt and retained.

And yet she’s understood that there is a meaning here beyond the literal, unlocking ideas about tone and imagery. So, how did she do it? She asked questions. She sought meaning through her own enquiry.

She isn’t an expert and yet she isn’t ignorant. Her own questions unlocked understanding and signalled the knowledge to be gained.

Which isn’t the same as saying that all questions are created equal; I absolutely agree that the more you know the more interesting your questions are likely to be. If this student knew something about Bronte’s life, perhaps, or had the subject terminology to unpick how meanings were created she clearly could’ve created a more nuanced response.

So, OK, I may have fallen into the hyperbolic trap of the tweet when I said questions are the starting point for ‘all’ learning. I’m sure there are many contexts when a secure base of knowledge is absolutely necessary for learning - if not most - and that my example of the unseen poem could be seen as somewhat ‘niche’. And, yes, I apologise to David for the needless prefix of “Rubbish” before statement 2. But, it is surely the most human of endeavours to ask. To seek. To pursue knowledge throughly asking. 

If we only allow those with a secure knowledge base to ask we are surely cutting off the source of inspiration and excitement that makes this job so wonderful and exciting. So, well, fun.

And that’s what I meant by my two assertions.

Let’s encourage our students so they have the confidence to ask. Let’s start by inspiring our students so they want to ask.

Content knowledge can provide answers, but at its end point we just find more questions. Let’s ensure when we get there that our students are able to create those questions for themselves and aren’t simply holding out their spoons waiting for non-existent answers.

Top tactics to make revision unavoidable for Year 11 students

It’s still five months before the first GCSE English exams and 1 in 5 of our Year 11 have already attended at least one voluntary after school revision session.

Now, not for a second am I complacent about this. What will impact student achievement this summer is sustained hard work – both in and out of lesson – but I am taking a moment to have a demi-smile that this year group clearly want to do well and are upping their game when it most counts for both them and the school.

I was asked by the lovely @cazzwebbo how we go about getting these students to attend such additional revision sessions. I can only reply with a slightly scattergun and naggingly persistent approach that uses two main tactics:

 

1)      MAKE REVISION UNAVOIDABLE AT SCHOOL

·         We display posters on the doors of all form rooms and class rooms.

·         We have daily announcements over the P.A. system at the end of the school day to say where revision is starting.

·         We give reminders in year team briefing for form tutors to pass on and ensure these messages are repeated in assembly.

·         We have a form group league table updated on a weekly basis to show which groups have attended most frequently and then award prizes to encourage a competitive element.

·         Our HoY has a loyalty card scheme which unlocks access to the prom and then further Vivo rewards.

·         Revision session reminders are also displayed on TV screens around the school.

·         We provide free buses for students to get home twice a week to ensure every child can access the after school sessions.

 

2)      MAKE REVISION UNAVOIDABLE AT HOME

·         We give all parents revision class timetables on Year 11 Parents’ Evening. Class teachers then refer to this in their discussions with parents to clarify expectations about which sessions their child will attend.

·         We send text messages to all parents to remind them when revision sessions are taking place.

 We call home or post letters when target students are not attending and clearly need to be.

3)      MAKE REVISION COUNT

·         We make sure that when students do attend that their time is well spent by teaching well-structured sessions. All teachers ‘opt-in’ to lead the sessions they are most confident delivering. This helps ensure that they come back!

·         We give every student a timetable showing the topics that will be covered on each day so they can ensure they can address areas of weakness. We hope that this encourages them to divide their time sensibly between revision for other subjects. Note: we remove the teachers who will lead each session as students sometimes only want to go to the ones ‘their’ teacher leads!

·         We liaise with Maths to ensure that students can attend revision in both core subjects.

Of course, this only scratches the surface of our revision strategy. I haven’t even begun to mention the revision bags, QR code revision sheets, revision book marks, half term and Easter schools, intervention days, walking/talking mock exams, use of website or Twitter, or our deployment of an English Support teacher. I’ll save that little lot for another blog.

Letter to my NQT self

So then, Caroline, you didn't do your MA in English Lit despite confirming your place - good decision. Your PGCE will stretch your legs, brain and emotional capacity that have all, you will admit, become somewhat stagnated after three years of bumbling through an undergraduate degree (that seemed to consist of a bizarre mix of the study of British place names and Deconstruction theory).

The next 24 months will be a challenge to say the least. At first just the 6am wake ups will be a source of distress, leading to *that* incident when you fell asleep in the staff room. Then it'll be the workload, as you attempt to balance marking, lesson planning, and the usual excitement of being a 21 year old living in a bedsit in a bustling city centre. But try not to cry so much. The tears don't help: they distress those who care about you and ultimately you will survive, intact and a wiser, better person for it.

Take comfort that when that kid threw the chair it wasn't about you. The one who whispered the Head teacher's name under his breath as a threat to report you for some invented injustice? Still not about you. 

The sensitive one who didn't know how to make sense of her feelings of depression and hid in your room at lunchtimes? Like you, yes, but not about you. 

You'll soon realise that you were one of the lucky ones. You have two supportive, loving, wonderfully eccentric parents who have simultaneously made you feel like anything is possible and that the most important thing in life is being a nice person. That is heartbreakingly rare. Cherish them as well as the children who are not so fortunate. Children can be vulnerable for a host of reasons, and not just the one who have the label of 'Pupil Premium'. Care for them in their most frustrating moments and if you shout and they shout back at you learn from that.

Appreciate how young you are. Older teachers have experience far beyond your years. Respect SLT, even the ones who pass on unhelpful advice about getting up at 3am to work. They've earned their position and you don't yet understand the pressures and tensions they have to respond to on a daily basis. 

Similarly, don't judge other schools. You haven't got a clue about the difficulties of recruitment, complexities of catchment and budget, and healthy dose of luck that can bring about disparities in student outcomes. 

You picked your first school well. Ten years on, your HoF will continue to mentor and inspire you and you'll still be attempting to capture the spirit of mutual support and collaboration, only this time in your own Faculty.

And now, in the style of a certain Mr Springer, my final thoughts. 

It's hard. It's worth it.

Questions V closed DIRT tasks

A lot has changed since the last time I blogged about marking, two years ago. Not least that I was still in my twenties (sob!) when I wrote the somewhat grandiosely-titled post 'the ten commandments of frequent, high-quality marking' and I am now writing as a thirty one year old cynic.
 
Gone are the "gloriously word-packed A3 APP epics" (although what replaced them is for another blog post entirely), DIRT has now become so ubiquitous that kids up and down the land know the acronym, and - horror of horrors - I'm slowly being won round by SOME use of marking codes.
 
But my biggest flip-flopping by far has been on the idea of questions as targets.
 
Here's what my younger self said:


5. Thou shalt word all targets as questions
It's a simple idea that was introduced to me by an outstanding (not the Ofsted version of this word, just simply bloody brilliant) teacher at my first school. The theory goes that asking a question demands a response. Like much good practice in the teaching profession, there's no empirical evidence to support whether this makes even the slightest bit of difference to whether a response occurs, but it's the intention that to me makes this so wonderful.

With zero additional effort, you're establishing that marking is fundamentally a dialogue. If nothing else then it reminds me to respect commandment number 6.

Note: I love the idea of marking work using only a highlighter for this reason. Like an irritating younger sibling it shouts out: "Here! Look over here! What did you forget? You can't leave me here like this!"
 

This belief stemmed from the use of sheets like these where students 'collected' their targets and I rubber-stamped their progress towards meeting them as I marked:

However, with the introduction of our (very good) whole school marking stamps, these sheets quickly became unnecessary and obsolete. Let's face it, if you can reduce paper in the teaching game then you're going to be on to a winner. And so the focus shifted, quite rightly, to high-quality feedback being given directly on student work.

But, as you can see, even after these changes my belief in the power of the question remained. So what did finally do away with this rhetorical flourish?

Well, as with the best pedagogical shifts, my students did. 

Y'see the problem with GOOD DIRT prompts are that they are HARD to respond to: they've got to be if they're going to lead to actual progress. Learning IS hard.

The problem for the teacher is then managing thirty students at the absolute edge of their ability all responding to a different, personalised prompt. What comes next is that dizzying 'whack a mole' feeling with hands springing upwards at a cumulative rate. Even without heels on, I cannot support every child at once in that kind of situation.

So, kids being kids, they then respond to the simple questions (or, in our case, go for the whole school 'write out the spelling mistake five times' task) and avoid the more challenging ones: the ones that would actually have the greatest impact.

What is needed in this situation is not a philosophical air of grandeur or insipid invitation to marking 'dialogue'. No, what is needed is action with no 'wiggle room'! What is needed is a closed imperative. 

No more 'Can you...?'.

Instead I ask students to

explain

list

write

or, answer.

And, you know what? Students now understand so much more clearly what they need to 'do' and more readily complete challenging prompts.

To my younger, more rebellious self it may at least come as no surprise that commandments, like rules, are indeed made to be broken.



 

I am a feminist. I am a teacher. I am Mrs C Spalding.

My love affair with feminism started at the age of 16, the moment I read an article in 'The Independent' declaring "Is this what we meant by feminism?" alongside a picture of a drunken young woman complete with spilling beer in hand. It was the era of the 'ladette' - a media-created female parody who mimicked the actions of an equally as mythical and reductive vision of a man who felt the need to prove himself to others by consuming his body weight in strong lager.

To me, feminism was heroic women in big skirts chucking themselves under hooves to win females the vote. For the writer to claim that my generation somehow 'wasn't worth the bother', whatever our questionable drinking choices, was my call to arms. Or rather, to pen: the resulting letter to the editor even making it into the paper.

In the next few years, I consumed the work of Greer and Davies, Faludi and Woolstencraft. And, when my bloody brilliant A Level English Lit teacher directed me towards them, I latched onto Carter, Plath and Woolf.

Alongside this I discovered a whole new group of brave, exciting and ground breaking women. Only these ones played guitars and the drums and fought for equality in a very different area: music.

Riotgrrl grew out of the same American punk scene that gave us the ubiquitous Kurt and Courtney and lifelong loves of mine like Minor Threat and Babes in Toyland. Frustrated by macho gigs and the lack of female representation in the alternative music scene, women and likeminded men banded together and tried to create something a bit different. For me it marked the start of two years of adventures, from helping to run a music festival in a legalised squat in Amsterdam (thanks for letting me go to that one, mum) to contributing to zines now homed in the Women's Library in London to getting published a bit in this book:

I met truly unique young women and men and, although I now cringe at the use of the word 'grrl', it secured for me a lifelong commitment to the feminist cause and the pursuit of gender equality, key to which, of course, is freedom from binary notions of gender for both sexes.

Fast forward ten years and I'm now bucking a good few of the dominant ideologies associated with the female: bread winner, leader, ferocious competitive streak, fan of data, happy in my own skin. I've also married and have taken my husband's name, love shopping, and occasionally wear lipstick. All of which are equally irrelevant. Because if feminism taught me anything it's that I can do whatever I damn well choose to, so long as it doesn't impact negatively on others. As can every man and woman, regardless of their gender.

But I am keenly aware that this freedom is not the case for every woman. We live in an era when a woman can still be shot in the head for seeking an education, where women are still routinely paid less for the same work, and where we have had to develop an acronym for chopping off parts of a woman's anatomy so frequently does it (dis)grace our newsfeeds.

Which all makes me deeply uncomfortable when I see some of the debate arising in education circles.

I am not a 'girl' and do not subscribe to 'girl power'. Does anyone truly believe the Spice Girls, product of a misogynistic pop industry, can be role models for a movement of any significance? Did anyone else read Laura Mulvey? I'm not a 'little bit more qualified'. I'm a lot qualified. I don't 'occasionally wear professional dress'. I am a professional. No I don't believe that I have been discriminated against when applying for jobs and nor do I feel pressured by my work/life balance any more than my male colleagues.

The gender issue is far more subtle, complex, and serious than these distractions.

I might as well add that, on reflection, I also could not give a crap if I refer to myself as 'Mrs' or 'Ms' - it's most definitely not a sign of ownership by my husband (I think he'd snort out of his nose at the very idea) and I don't feel demeaned or exposed at people knowing I'm married to him. He's ace. I don't care if I refer to students as 'guys': my commitment to making all of them feel comfortable in their own skin regardless of where they fall on the gender spectrum every single lesson trumps any simplistic notions about the impact of nomenclature.

In our schools, we do indeed have a disturbing gender gap in the make up of our SLT, but I feel equally disturbed by the growing gender gap in achievement between boys and girls in my subject. The causes of both of these patterns are multi-faceted and numerous. They cannot be summed up in an infographic and solutions cannot be honed solely through a national conference or Teach meet. They are social and cultural as much as pedagogical.

So, a plea to the wonderful women involved in #womened. I'd love to be involved too. But let's get serious. Let's stop talking about wearing heels to work. Let's stop using sassy pop references. Let's talk about the fact that boys are underachieving as well as the appalling lack of female Head teachers. Let's make this a real gender debate.