7 Mistakes I made whilst teaching Computing and what I will do differently next year

Three years ago, the landscape for ICT teachers in the UK began to change. I realised that I would need to adapt to teach Computing, specifically Computer Science as the policy documents seemed to suggest that this was where the future of ICT was going. I’ve spent the last 2 years teaching Computing with a strong bias towards teaching Programming. This is what I’ve learnt so far.

Rote learning and testing

Some things are best learnt by rote. Programming is not one of them. Multiplication tables and French irregular verb endings are something which you will just have to remember. However, a function to calculate a multiplication table in Python is not something that any professional programmer would spend time memorising by rote. I remember when I first tested students, I expected them to produce working programs without referencing their prior programs or even using the Web. This is how controlled assessments and exams work in (say) Science so why not Computer Science. The reality is that, it’s not realistic or indeed necessary for 11 year old students to remember the exact syntax for sequences, selections or iterations. It’s not necessary at GCSE or A-Level (or even for professional programmers and software developers) to remember their past solutions. I did not know about this until I went on exam board training!

My leveraged observation coach had once advised me to use SPOT to make students more independent and I now consider it a vital tool for teaching programming.

Self-Persevere, be resilient and keep debugging because every failure is one step closer to success

Peer-Use your peers, ask the people sat next to you.
Other-Use other resources. All good programmers use their old code, websites (including Youtube), documentation and forums. Because there are very few problems which other programmers haven’t tackled already.
Teacher-The teacher is your last resort! He or She will be understanding and helpful provided you have exhausted all the steps above.

Expecting students to produce the same correct answer

In many Sciences, there is only one correct answer. Computer Science deceives us in that there is rarely only one correct answer! Linked to the previous mistake I made, I spent a lot of time in my first year by focussing on the correct solution.

Too much programming and too soon!

I was anxious to teach my students programming in their very first term in Year 7 for fear that they would not be able to complete their Controlled Assessment in three years’ time.  Looking back, it is quite surprising that despite my insistence on drilling the importance of Python syntax, indentations and parentheses, my students still loved programming. I think it was because of the way the subject was sold. They knew that very few 11 year olds across the country were also writing programs using Python at the time.

Whilst learning a programming language is an important part of Computing, something else needs to come first! My students were generally enthusiastic and enjoyed programming, but the focus was all wrong. JeannetteWing and Mark Dorling frequently speak about Computational Thinking and it is only after two years that the penny finally dropped for me.

In Mark Clarkson’s unofficial guide to Teaching Computing he provides the following advice for new Computing teachers:

"For the first half-term we do nothing but logic problems without going near a computer (search CAS Online for good examples) and in the second half-term we look at basic Python programming, covering input, output, variables, assignment, if statements and loops (WHILE and then FOR)…"

Jonathan Torbitt’s curriculum also reflects this, with a focus on problem solving first and programming syntax second:

Many other successful departments follow this approach of teaching the problem solving through Computational Thinking before teaching any programming.

In summary, do not rush to teach students the syntax to a programming language. Teach them decomposition-how to break down problems into smaller ones first decomposition. Then see if they can recognise any patterns-have they solved something similar before? Is there any repetition within the problem? Get them to strip away un-necessary detail and form a general model-this is called abstraction. Lastly, before students start programming, they need to plan their algorithms i.e. they need to solve the problem by planning it step by step.

Planning for success instead of failure

We all write assessments and then test it out on ourselves to see if we can do it, we’re planning for success and expect students who work hard to score 100%. Yet when students fail, we wonder why and we wonder why they all make similar mistakes. Mark Guzdial has applied an alternative approach based on Philip Sadler’s research at Harvard University. This approach involves the teacher completing an assignment themselves and trying to figure out what are the most likely wrong answers i.e. the most common ways in which students might fail or misinterpret a question. Essentially, what you’re doing is finding out all the common misconceptions and planning for these in your teaching. Philip Sadler’s research suggests that this one skill is what differentiates the best teachers from the rest:

“If teachers are to help students change their incorrect beliefs, they first need to know what those are…The results showed that students’ scores showed the most improvement when teachers were able to predict their students’ wrong answers.”- Philip Sadler

Only rewarding success

“The first thing to realise is that programming is a difficult and different skill. Students are not used to struggling, solving their own problems or repeatedly failing. They have spent 10 years or more learning to give the correct answer, and if they didn’t know it, then to learn it…

… In programming, students need to try, to fail, to realise that the sky has not fallen on their heads and to try something different. It is incredibly difficult to watch a student struggle and not dive in with the answer, but the process, the techniques and the strategies are far, far more important than simply getting a program that does what you want.”-Mark Clarkson

Computing is a unique subject in that you will spend more time failing than you do succeeding. Mark Guzdial’s advice is to create an environment where it’s OK to make mistakes. Let students know that even their teacher will make mistakes. David Batty likewise emphasises how important it is to fail in front of your students and not to over-plan your code so that it is bug free. Do the programming live and debug it live. Nobody in the world can program without making mistakes. Mistakes are teachable moments; Guzdial goes on to state that you should then talk through your debugging slowly- This is what I thought, this is what I want the code to do, this is what I will try next. Referencing Collin’s research on CognitiveApprenticeship, Guzdial states that thinking aloud plays a pivotal role in helping students become better programmers.

Karen Hume takes this rewards approach further by stating that we should reward less and celebrate more. Rewards can create a ceiling; once a student has been rewarded for success, they stop because they see success as a destination instead of a journey. Rewards also signal that the learning has not intrinsic value. By praising effort and celebrating student’s debugging, we’re more likely to develop successful programmers with a growth mindset.

But what about success?! We’d be lying to ourselves if we did not acknowledge that success is important and Brad Miller and David Ranum suggest the following for new programmers:

1) Start Small. This is probably the single biggest piece of advice for programmers at every level. Of course it’s tempting to sit down and crank out an entire program at once. But, when the program – inevitably – does not work then you have a myriad of options for things that might be wrong. Where to start? … How to figure out what went wrong?... So, start with something really small. Maybe just two lines and then make sure that runs ok. Hitting the run button is quick and easy, and gives you immediate feedback about whether what you have just done is ok or not. Another immediate benefit of having something small working is that you have something to turn in. Turning in a small, incomplete program, is almost always better than nothing.

2) Keep it working. Once you have a small part of your program working the next step is to figure out something small to add to it. If you keep adding small pieces of the program one at a time, it is much easier to figure out what went wrong, as it is most likely that the problem is going to be in the new code you have just added. Less new code means it’s easier to figure out where the problem is.

This notion of Get something working and keep it working is a mantra that you can repeat throughout your career as a programmer. It’s a great way to avoid the frustrations mentioned above. Think of it this way. Every time you have a little success, your brain releases a tiny bit of chemical that makes you happy. So, you can keep yourself happy and make programming more enjoyable by creating lots of small victories for yourself.

Pedagogy
Undergraduate Education != Secondary Education

We cannot expect eleven year olds to learn the same as we learnt at degree level or whilst programming in the real world. Providing a lecture and then expecting students to apply this material in the lab is a highly ineffective way to teach programming at Secondary school. The pedagogy for teaching programming is completely different. Guzdial’s research shows that 3 things certainly work: Paired programming, Peer Instruction and Media Computation. Clarkson has found that the following works well in his classroom:

Regular programming homework tasks and paired programming challenges during lessons ensure that students keep practising, and in a safe and secure environment where it is OK to fail. In fact failure must be celebrated as it means the student in question has moved one step closer to a solution.

Balance and flexibility
Computing != Computer Science

Computing consists of three strands, Computer Science, Digital Literacy and Information Technology. I knew this as I spent a whole year meeting Teach First ICT teachers in a focus group setting and we established that teaching only one of the three strands would be short-changing our students. The current Computing Curriculum also reflects this with all three strands equally weighted.

With exam pressure however, I have undoubtedly spent 70% of the year teaching Computing, specifically the OCR syllabus for GCSE Computer Science. My rationale was that if they start in Year 7 or 8, by Year 11 they’ll be flying. Luckily, I started early and have had ample time to learn from my mistakes! The biggest mistake has been teaching to the exam, the assessments change and even our department’s GCSE options have changed. Having visited three successful Computing departments, I have learnt that it is important to offer a balanced curriculum from Key Stage 3, all the way to Key Stage 5. In September 2016, we’ll be offering GCSE ICT alongside GCSE Computer Science and as a result, I will be re-planning Key Stage 3 to reflect this. I know that ICT won’t last much longer in its current state but this serves as a reminder to be flexible; plan for balance and plan for change.

Most of this post is about Pedagogy and is based on my own experience and the articles/videos linked throughout the document and below. I wrote a similar end-of-year reflection post last year which focussed on the logistics and practicalities of setting up a Computing department, you can read about that here.

Essential reading/viewing:

Mark Guzdial’s advice for Computing teachers:

Mark Clarkson’s unofficial teacher’s guide for GCSE Computing

Mark Guzdial introduces Media Compuation

Brad Miller and David Ranum’s guide to successful programming part 1

Brad Miller and David Ranum’s guide to successful programming part 2

BBC Bitesize guide to Computational Thinking

My Curriculum Map for 2015
My Department Handbook (work in progress)
My Year 7 and 8 Resources

Metaphors for Computing - A collaborative project

Many teachers have come to realise the power of metaphors. If this is not something you've tried or if you are slightly skeptical, I highly recommend this blog post by Alex Quigley (@HuntingEnglish).

I've found metaphors particular helpful in Computing as there are so many abstract ideas and concepts. Metaphors, analogies and similes certainly make these concepts much more accessible to our 11-13 year old students!

I've started creating some slides to document these and invite other teachers of Computing to contribute.

Click here to edit/contribute or feel free to browse through the metaphors and comment below:

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Key Dates for Computing

Here are some useful dates to keep in your diary. You can use these to plan units with a specific focus:

01/09/2014	Web We Want Festival (Ends May 2015)
27/09/2014	Tim Berener's Lee In Conversation
14/10/2014	Ada Lovelace Day
08/12/2014	Computer Science Education Week
10/02/2015	Internet Safety Week

Please comment if you have other suggestions.

Learning to get better

We've been waiting for a return visit from HMI for the past three weeks. In preparation, we've had two inspection teams from Outstanding schools and an actual HMI come in to look at the school.

Initially, the workload increased massively in preparation for the inevitable monitoring visit. However, looking back I think it's all been worth it. As I've mentioned in a previous post, you cannot possibly prepare for an HMI visit in 24 hours or even a week, it takes weeks if not months and therefore I think the mock inspections have not only provided us with time to prepare but also lots of practice.

In preparation, I've started filming a lot of my lessons. I teach 8 classes and I think I've filmed 5 of them so far. It's been quite insightful. There are a few things I've learnt from watching this footage back:

-There are a lot more hands up than I realise

-Body language matters a lot
-Formative assessment works

As a result of the first of these issues, I've put more of a focus on modelling during the Do Now and before the main activity.

In addressing the second issue, I've been more aware of when I'm giving instructions, where I am and how I deliver these instructions. Certainly the worst way to deliver them is sat down! I've also noticed that in some cases I have been leaning or supporting myself with a chair or the mobile white board! I'd be the first to admit that this is not the kind of body language that is favourable for information transmission or simply getting the attention of kids. I corrected this and am more conscious about this than ever before.

Amy Cuddy's brilliant talk discusses the importance of body language in more detail:

On a more positive note, I found noticed that traffic light cards and mini whiteboards, simple as they are work well. By forcing students to have 100% participation, everyone has to think to respond and therefore will learn a lot more. Linked to student participation, our observers also noted that we should script our questions more. The only way you can use questioning effectively is if you plan the question and plan who you will ask it to. This way your expectation of a student response (no opt out) can be met in the first instance.

I've told my students that the last few weeks of term are simply to improve by doing corrections on our exams. I've opened our lessons with quotations and these two quotes seem the most apt:

“Improvement begins with I.”
Arnold H. Glasow

“It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to make mistakes in order to improve”
— Paula Scher

Looking ahead to Monday's monitoring visit, I'm feeling confident because I've made so many mistakes in the past 3 weeks and indeed over the past year that I've learnt a lot and improved my teaching as a result. Looking back over the year, it is the most difficult and daunting things in teaching that offer the most benefit. Line management observations, filming yourself and being scrutinised by 3 different sets of external inspectors in 3 weeks have all been challenging and at times slightly uncomfortable. However, every significant success I have had this year has come about through either one of these forms of observation or the reflection/debriefing on these afterwards.

Lessons learnt from setting up a new Computing department

This post is a reflection on my last 12 months as the lead teacher of a new Computing department. As I transition to the role of Head of Department, there are many things that I have learnt, wish I knew from the beginning and things that I would do differently.

Curriculum

Curriculum- I would aim to teach a GCSE shadow structure right from Year 7. There is no reason why 11 year olds can’t start with Python. Even students with severe SEN including ASD have managed to write simple programs in Python. Some may argue the case for Scratch or Snap!(BYOB), but to be honest most kids will have used these a lot at primary school, things like LightBot and Blockly are a much better gateway to text-based programming. I would however only spend a short amount of time on these.

Likewise, teach your students GCSE theory up to GCSE level, most of our students understand Von Neumann Architecture and can convert between binary, hex and decimal. It just takes solid structures, but with the correct structure and support, the kids can learn anything.  

Teaching and Learning

Get observed lots, bad observations are good ones because they should inform how to improve. Observers (including support staff) often see things that you don’t see. My worst lesson observation was followed by a debriefing where I reflected with my line manager. We spent some time rethinking my pedagogy and how to deliver a lesson with lots of content. The result was that in the following observation, my line manager said that he observed the perfect lesson.  He shared some of the techniques with the rest of the school.

I can’t emphasise how valuable it is to work closely with your support staff and technicians; on any given day they will make the difference between a lesson that works and one that doesn’t.

Observe your peers in non-graded observations. Visit other schools, find the best people on Twitter or at Computing events and just ask to go and see them. Visiting other schools is always inspirational, either they’re doing great stuff that you don’t yet know about or vice versa. You’ll always end up leaving in a positive and productive mood.

Make a website to host all your documents, cover work and showcase material. Some like to use Google Sites. I value aesthetics so I use Weebly and combine this with Google Docs and Tiny URL. When students miss a lesson, their first port of call can be the school website. Some argue for a VLE or network, but nobody likes logging in and if your student is ill at home, a website is the easiest thing to access and Google Docs offers the most streamlined solution for hosting and sharing documents with colleagues and students.

Google Docs is also great for creating tests which mark themselves. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Edmodo, in that it corrects students answers too. I like the sound of that and may try it next year.

In terms of formative assessment, print out name tags for every student, Get some traffic light cards laminated and buy a class set of mini white boards. These will guarantee that you know what the students actually know during your lesson. According to Dylan Wiliam, what you do with this information is the difference between average and great teaching.

Logistics and Resources

We started the year in a temporary building with laptop trolleys. Regardless of your environment, every class needs to be inducted into conduct, rules and routines when using IT. Do not assume anything!

If you have a laptop trolley the induction should include:

• Two angles-90° and 45°. The former is the screen angle for working, the latter for when you are talking. Closing the lid forces some laptops to go to sleep, so this should be avoided.
• How to carry laptops-not by the screen as this puts stress on the hinge.

• How to stow laptops in the laptop trolley, managing cables and ensuring the laptop is on charge
• How to log off. If you close the lid midway through the log off or shutdown process, the next user will not be able to log in without clicking the subtle “switch user” button. Attempts will be met with “No log on servers available”.
• If you have not bought a laptop trolley yet, opt for two 15 capacity trolleys rather than one 30 capacity ones. The latter are heavier and difficult to move.
• Move the trolley to the classroom of intended use, not the laptops. This will reduce damage to laptops.

In a computer lab:

• Entry routine: Where to sit at the beginning of the lesson-is the routine to log on then take a seat in the centre desks?
• Moving around the room, must be on foot, never on wheely chairs as it inevitably causes silliness and damage to chairs.
• Where to save
• Pack up routine: What should a tidy Computer desk look like. Headphones stowed behind/on monitor, no trailing wires, chairs tucked under.
• No open water by the computers. Or no eating/drinking at all-the same rules as a Science lab.

Once students have been inducted, appropriate sanctions should be issued to encourage the correct conduct and routines.

Other notes:

You get what you pay for. Only trust the big brands (Dell, Lenovo, HP) and check reviews on Amazon
first.

If you are tight on budget, you can get a lot of nearly-new IT equipment for cheap from ict-direct.co.uk/ or bargainhardware.co.uk

Label and number everything with your own Avery labels or tipex. You can label your equipment with a room number, department and item number. I’d advise labelling anything that is not fixed i.e. laptops, chargers, headphones, portable speakers. It sounds petty and arduous, but this year we spent over £200 replacing lost/damaged peripherals. Damages was caused by both students and staff. Whilst this was either due to neglect or laziness (teachers having one charger at home and one at school), it can be avoided.

Student technicians-When you’re a small department, you need all the help you can get. Our school didn’t have a permanent technician, so I trained some students into the upkeep of laptops, installing printers, general troubleshooting of all things AV and Wifi. They were also taught  filming and photography skills. This means all events can be documented by students. Next year, I hope to train them to edit in iMovie too. Student technicians are also helpful to have at open days and on interview panels

Other helpers-There are lots of volunteers waiting to help you learn to program and run clubs for you. STEMNET and Code Club are a great source for CRB/DBS cleared helpers. A parent who works at an investment bank in Canary Wharf recently volunteered to come in and help me develop my programming skills. Sometimes all you need to do is ask, othertimes, the help comes to you.

Buy one of these organisers for only £11. It has a capacity of 500 sheets and once you create a tab for each of your classes, you will still have capacity for your form group, department, extension, spare sheets and helpsheet tabs. It has made teaching so much easier. I just do all my printing first thing in the morning, then carry this around with me.

·         If you need a book to learn Python and have never programmed before, I highly recommend Chris Roffey’s books:

·         

Lastly, teaching resources. Most of them are free and I have written extensively about these here.

Finances

Some Computing departments will have small budgets, particularly if you are a small school with only one or two cohorts of kids. Unless you have a full school, budgets will always be small. This section is mainly for those who have a budget of less than £1000.

Provided you have an IT suite or laptop trolley, forget the tempting gadgets and toys such as Raspberry Pi’s, Lego Mindstorms and Arduino’s. Spend most of your budget on training. There are plenty of courses on the Events page on the CAS network, some of them are free.

I know my previous statement about learning toys is contentious, but a class set of Raspberry Pi’s sounds good on paper, but really they’re just slow computers which need all the peripherals of a standard computer. When put together, they don’t sit well on a desk and are prone to damage. Even with a case, memory cards can break off and go missing, power leads can get pushed too far in. From what I’ve seen and heard, they’re great for kids to use as a learning tool/toy at home. But the classroom really needs robust computers. Not a worthy investment in my opinion.  

Recruitment

In finding someone to join your department, recruit early but don’t hire someone unless they’re absolutely right. I was lucky in finding a candidate on the third interview day that we held.

We run a fairly rigorous recruitment day including a code review, curriculum task (planning a SOW), teaching of a lesson, numeracy and literacy test. The last two perhaps are less significant, the main thing is the lesson that they teach, the subject task and the interview.

The main things you’re looking for are alignment with the school culture, subject knowledge and alignment with your own personality as you will have to work with this person for the next 1-20 years! The best advice I was given when visiting another middle leader was that there are some things you cannot change in a person e.g. their personality-“can you work with them?” is the big question.

Other big questions: If their subject knowledge isn’t quite where you need it, is the candidate trainable? Do they want to improve? In your interactions with them, do they give you energy or sap it out of you?

Top 10 Websites for GCSE Computing resources

There’s a lot of resources out there for teaching Computing. Finding resources is never an issue, there are anywhere between 10-30 new resources uploaded onto CAS every week. However, it’s sometimes difficult to follow a single scheme of work when presented with so many different resources. We also have our own preferences. The list below is based on the resources I have found most useful. This is by no means a finite list. There are many teachers out there who create resources but do not host these publicly or centrally on one single site. Those that do are listed below. Feel free to add more suggestions in the comments.

mrocallaghanedu.wordpress.com Mr O Callaghan is a Computing teacher who loves pedagogy. Like David Didau, Alex Quigley and Harry Fletcher Wood, he is an outstanding blogger. He frequently applies techniques based on educational researchers and cognitive psychologists such as Willingham, Kirby and Wiliam.

teachwithict.weebly.com Wonderful site of resources and thinking from CAS master teacher Simon Johnson

teachcomputing.wordpress.com Self-taught Computing teacher Alan O’Donohoe presents his thoughts and resources for teaching Computing. If there is an example of someone who has re-defined himself from novice to expert, it’s Alan.

www.letslearnict.com/computing.html -All round site covering Computing, ICT and IGCSE

mattbritland.com Not only does Matt Britland teach Computing, he does it with style. Great SOW and articles about EdTech.

gocompute.wikispaces.com Multimedia (Video, PDF, Word Documents) A set of comprehensive resources for Computing, ICT and Creative Media

compu2learn.co.ukGreat collection of theory and practical resources.

gcsecomputing.org.uk Resources which will help deliver OCR GCSE Computing. Some content is subscription only

thedenniglessons Ms Dennig also teaches Computer Science to her year 7’s. Lovely slides which break down complex abstract ideas into more concrete accessible ones.

gcsecomputingbalcarras A great collection of videos and websites which will take you through OCR’s GCSE

gfscomputing.net My own website where I share every resource that I use in lessons. There are links to Zipped Files and Curriculum plans.

Bonus link: This is not a website, but rather a list of websites which are useful for teaching Computing from KS1 to KS4

Open questions and lesson starts

I cam across two excellent blogs about "Do Now's" and lesson starts in general and it made me realise that a lot of my lesson starts involve closed "Do Now's". I suppose I have fallen into the trap of closed question Do Now's because it makes for quicker and easier marking/assessment and suits Computing quite well. Computing is a science afterall and so asking students to do closed problems like you might do in Maths seemed to make sense.

I then realised when I read the aformentioned article by @HFletcherWood's, that having closed questions probably encourages plaigirism and the belief in only one right answer. It also means that the activity by definitioncannot be low threshold and high ceiling-this is a big problem. Having also attended further training on Python programming, I realised that for many problems there is more than one correct answer.

  Some example Do Now's from a unit of work about Python

My aim for next week then is to plan more activities where there is room for more open responses. I also think this will help slow down the pace somewhat. Often, I feel asthough I use Do Now's simply because it is school policy. I try to rush through all the correct answers, albeit using lollypop sticks to keep kids on their toes. The rush stems from me wanting to start the main activities. Perhaps this is a result of me feeling that time is tight. I lose 10 mins every lesson simply through taking out and returning laptops from a trolley. After a 3-5 minute do now and 5 minutes feeding back, that leaves 35 minutes for the rest of my lesson. I would usually try to plan something meaningful, challenging, with a solid outcome and genuine learning. At the end of the lesson, I'd also like to do extended plenaries and exit tickets, but realistically this is sometimes just not possible, hence why the start of my lesson is rushed.

Slow down, do less, do it better

After observing lessons and thinking about the burnout at the end of last term, I promised myself to slow down, do less and do "it" better. Having tried slower paced starts, I find that students are less confused; simply slowing the pace slightly allows them to process the new material and perhaps frame their questions more carefully.

In my next post, I hope to talk more about open tasks and questions that I have tried.

Primary Computing Resources KS1 KS2 onwards

A curation based on the #ukedchat on Coding:

Great collection of resources by Simon Haughton: http://www.simonhaughton.co.uk/

Further resources:

http://code-it.co.uk/index.html

http://playgroundcomputing.com/our-resources/

http://www.resources.digitalschoolhouse.org.uk/

Good blogs: http://www.digitalclassrooms.co.uk/?p=589

https://sites.google.com/site/primaryictitt/

How 5 good habits can lead to excellent teaching and learning

I recently had an observation with my line manager. I used to dread observations, especially when being judged by an expert teacher. I think the thing that even the most experienced teachers fear is an Ofsted inspection. Having received positive feedback for my recent lesson observation, I looked back on what I did and realised that most of it was automated, I do these things every lesson without thinking.




I came to learn about these techniques through our head of CPD (@HFletcherWood) whose numerous techniques come from the books of Doug Lemov and also talks and inset by Dylan William (See Youtube for a taster). By automating these good habits, we can free ourselves (literally and mentally) to address student's queries more effectively. Since the beginning of the year, I have managed to automate 5 techniques which have had a huge impact on my teaching:

1) Start the class with a "Do Now"

This should have a low threshold for entry and plenty of room for growth. My example was simply to state what you like/dislike about the following posters and to suggest improvements.

2) Positive framing (Catching them when they're good)

By using positive framing; only announcing names of people who were doing the right thing, it encourages those who are slow to start. "I can see James has started jotting down some ideas...I can see Megan has put one point for improvement". Within 30 seconds, everyone is settled, they all have opinions and are scribbling away. This is the most challenging class in the school. Those who looked like they had finished were asked to suggest improvements to the posters or think of general rules to make the posters better.

Compare that to negative framing where you call out people's names for being slow to start, "Ryan, you've been in here 5 minutes and you still haven't got out a pen...Janet, why are you walking around?". This type of framing adds a negative vibe to the lesson and may also lead to confrontation.

3) No hands up and no opt out

Asking only students who put their hands up is probably one of the worst habits you can get into according to Dylan William. The shyer students never get to contribute, those who are feeling a bit lazy will simply opt out and those with their hands up will get frustrated when you don't pick them. Using nametags or lollipop sticks on the other hand keeps the class on their toes.


Source: goddividedbyzero.blogspot.com 

In combination with Doug Lemov's "No opt out", it ensures that all students will contribute when asked to give an answer. If a student answers "I don't know", you can respond with "I know you don't know, I just want to know what you think". Every student has something in their head. If they're still hesitant, simply reinforcing that there is no right or wrong answer will build their confidence and even the shyest students will usually contribute an answer.

Extra tip: There are times when the question is so difficult that there is a good 30-40% of students who do not know the answer and do not even know where to start to think. In these situations, it is a good idea to do a "Think-Pair-Share". A think pair share with a written outcome means you can quickly see if the majority now have an answer to give or if you need to go from pairs to fours to widen the pool further.

4) Student routines

All the aforementioned are teacher routines. As a Computing teacher, you will appreciate that we have one big distraction in front of every student, their own screen. For some teachers, they dread laptops or a lesson in the Computer lab as it just leads to students going on Facebook. Social networks aren't even blocked in our school, but a student has never gone on a social network in any of our classes as far as I can recall simply because the consequences are so severe. Some teachers also find it difficult to get students attention. I would recommend asking students to close their laptop screens to 45 degrees on a countdown of 3-2-1. Some people call this "pacman screens", I've heard of teachers literally holding up a hand in the shape of a pacman which seems quite novel and efficient. I just call it "45"-efficiency in routines is important!


Source: itnews.com.au

By having routines for handing out folders, getting students' attention, you make your life as a teacher much easier. Expectations are clear and students do not need to think about their actions, they just do it and in turn you're making their lives easier. By having clear consequences for not following the routines, most students are quick to latch on.

5) Ending with an exit ticket

Ending with an Exit ticket is the quickest way to find out what students have learnt in your lesson. No student can leave the room before giving you their exit ticket. With these little slips (No smaller than a Post-It Note and no bigger than A5) you can quickly spot misconceptions and it also helps plan the start of your next lesson. It's one of the most efficient forms of assessment. Some teachers sort these exit tickets into piles, one for those who will be rewarded with housepoints next lesson, one which is the average pile and the last pile is the one where students simply "did not get it". The last group can also be pulled up for a quick lunchtime mastery/catchup session before your next lesson with the class. As mentioned earlier, these piles go directly to inform your planning. Very quickly you can plan for the top and the bottom.

Closing thoughts

When you get the dreaded Ofsted call, remember that there is no way that any teacher can change their teaching style for one lesson observation without seeming un-natural about it. The kids spot it, your observer spots it and you just end up running around the classroom sweating whilst trying to do a load of things you've never done before. Yes, I've been there loads of times, in fact probably for every single observation in my first 6 years of teaching! It took a school culture which does not believe in "performing for observations" or "pulling out an outstanding lesson with lots of gimmickery" which really changed my practice. The most important lesson I've learnt this year (mainly from my amazing head of CPD), is that in order to be excellent, you have to practice (and practise) excellence everyday. As your good habits become automated, you end up freeing up some of your mental capacity and therefore you are able to do even more for your students.

Using pupil feedback to improve teaching

At the end of every lesson, I try to evaluate my teaching. I've even thought about giving myself DIRT on my timetable so that it's not just the students who are doing explicit improvement and reflection. Towards the end of a major unit however, it's difficult to evaluate how effective your teaching has been. Of course, I could look at test results, but sometimes the test doesn't catch everything. It may tell you that your teaching of x, y and z was ineffective but it won't tell you why. This is where pupil feedback can help.

Laura Mcinerney once asked the daring question, "Should teachers publish the test scores of their classes"  . I wondered what would happen if I published the pupil feedback of all my classes. It has certainly forced me to reflect more honestly and openly about my own practice.

You can find the original pupil survey here: http://goo.gl/W2mRPk . I have been selective with the publishing of my results, generally ignoring repeats and responses where students replies were too general and not actionable e.g. "Mr Lau was great".

What could Mr Lau have done differently / better:

• let us figure out what has gone wrong with our code.
• Maybe give us more time to actually try ourselves rather than watching the board quite often. I also think it would be useful to sometimes have a quick break from python and try something else like scratch for one lesson
• Explain coding simpler and talk a bit less so we have time to get the work done better.
• he could have showen a demo of what he wants us to do
• Mr lau could have simplified the technical language.
• come round to every one
• Maybe explain in more detail.
• Explane more clearly
• put more computing lessons on the time table.

Analysis and Response: Students have raised the issue that I help them too readily. Whilst a growth mindset and persistence is abundant in the majority of our students, it appears that in my teaching, I could demonstrate these learning habits more by helping students less, offering more waiting time and responding with questions rather than answers. Several students also thought that explanations could be clearer; teaching computer programming for the first time, I think this is to be expected but I will try to observe more experienced Computing teachers. Key words and language was also raised as an issue, so I think a Vocab list for each unit would be helpful. On the positive side, many students replied with “nothing” on the improvements list with the last comment of putting “more computing lessons on the time table” brightening up my day.

What would you like Mr Lau to do more of

• Letting us work on our own, a bit more .
• more of prasing people
• Demonstrate code before sending us to do work.
• more work on your own
• come round to more people
• explained things and use more visual things like pictures

Analysis and Response: Firstly, Praise praise praise, it’s an invaluable currency. Secondly, many students preferred working on their own. I think I have done paired programming for several reasons, firstly because the research suggests it can be the most effective way of coding: 
http://www.cs.pomona.edu/classes/cs121/supp/williams_prpgm.pdf

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PairProgrammingBenefits

http://www.summa-tech.com/blog/2013/05/16/pair-programming-benefits-part-1-the-good/

The second reason is because our laptop trolley rarely has a full class set of working laptops. However, I will certainly pilot more independent working and solo tasks next term. 

What would you like Mr Lau to do less of

• Speaking to the whole class about something a few people have got wrong.
• work sheets
• stop showing people what to do if they are stuck.
• Keep on showing us the board
• To do less talking when teaching and to pick people to come and try the code on the interactive smartboard.
• canstant doing hardcore lessons may be sometimes we could fun lessons
• I would like to get on with the work straight away on the and have a learning objective on the table
• stopping the how class when only a few people need to know things
• speaking less at the start and giving us more time to practical work time.
• dont explan to fings at wons

Analysis and Response: Early on in my career, I had a lot of helpless handraising. This was partly to do with my teaching and partly due to the culture of the school. I decided to combat this by judging when it would be appropriate to stop the whole class. If a student asked a question that I thought the whole class could benefit from hearing the answer to, I would stop them. No teacher likes repeating themselves afterall. It appears that my students don’t like this strategy as I am stopping the majority in order to help a small minority. I therefore plan to get around this by helping Student A with their problem, then when Student B asks me for help on the same problem, I could direct them to Student A. If Student C asks the same question, the chain continues. Whilst there are clear literacy issues (perhaps distorted by the use of computers and their association with txtspk), the last student makes a point about working memory and helping students remember. This reminds me of Willingham's work on helping students remember and learn.

Any other comments

• stop 5 minutes early to put the computers away
• computer science is fun
• Thanks Mr Lau I am getting Better .

Nice.
print("Thanks Mr Lau again")
I think i need a new account sorry :( i will try to remeber please dont give me a detention soryy

• It was very useful to work in partners and also rate and and have your own work rated.
• my mum is impressed
• Computing is such a unique subject to learn in a secondary school and I am so happy to participate in it as it is intresting, inspiring and useful if you want to have a future career in game making or something like that.
• I have really enjoyed computer science this term I have had fun playing and exploring around laptops. Making chat bots and having challenges I have learnt a lot about computers and how they work. I am looking forward to doing more work this term and learning different things.
• I have really enjoyed codeing i really like it some times i do it at home with my dad because he enjoys it to just like me.
• PLEASE show us how to do spreadsheets through the medium of dance like in your old school.

Analysis and Response: Timing is an issue for me. I need to fit in an exit ticket, house points and packing away. That's a good 10 minutes before the end of a lesson. To close on a bright note- clearly computing is having a positive impact on many of our students. The highlight for me is the student who wrote a print command in Python in her comment!

How useful was this process for improving my teaching in general? I think it provided a great deal of stimulus for reflection and improvement. Using Google forms, I also managed to sneak in an exit ticket, which I quickly evaluated using conditional formatting.

As a result, some students will be due housepoints, whereas others will need mastery classes. 

After all this analysis, hopefully I can put some of these ideas into practice and feedback on the process. 

Reflections on 2013

This post was inspired by and in response to Lalita Raman's initial Reflections of 2013

What are you thankful for in the current year?
First and foremost, I am thankful that our baby boy was born happy and healthy on 27th July 2013. Moving back to the UK from Seychelles was a big decision and a daunting one; I was unsure as to whether I should do temporary/short term supply work or go for a full time contract. This decision was particularly tricky (financially) given that my wife is self-employed and we would be welcoming a new member to the family. Luckily, I found a full-time position at a school which I really love. I work with amazing people every day; they are constantly teaching me knew things and I have enjoyed sharing some of my skills with them too. I'm happy and my stress-levels are fairly low compared to what they had been at my last two places of work. I also have the support from a very knowledgeable and inspiring PLN. For all of this I am eternally grateful and thankful.

What are you proud of?
I am proud of my wife for giving birth at home without painkillers or any form of medication. It was very emotional, but I don't think we would have done it any other way.

I am proud of my students, many of whom have now graduated from University and some of them have chosen to pursue teaching as a profession. Many are still in touch and when I meet some of them in the street, they're so pleasant and mature. I think we did something (or indeed many things) right at St Marylebone School, so I am proud of what we did there in terms of educating the leaders and citizens of tomorrow. My current students also continue to amaze me with how motivated, inquisitive and imaginative they are, so I am proud of them.

I am proud that I got accepted onto Google Teacher Academy (second time lucky) and got to meet some truly inspiring people. The ideas we exchanged at GTA UK were innovative and inspiring and I look forward to applying what I've learnt.

What memories would you like to carry forward?
The happiness and relaxed culture of Seychelles-it reminds me that sometimes there are some things which are just not worth getting stressed out about. The creativity of St Marylebone and the rigour and curiosity of my current school are other positive things I'd like to carry forward.

What would you want the year 2014 to be?
A happy year, a year of change, a year of revolution. Let's not talk about resolution, what we need in many areas of our lives is revolution. One thing I learnt at GTA UK was that we cannot change the world, but we can certainly change our world. So speaking personally, I want to be less consumeristic and more realistic. I want 2014 to be a year of questioning and reflection; why am I doing things in a certain way? What if I did things differently? What can I continue to learn from others?

What can you offer to the coming year?
Free Computing resources, anything I have used I will share, as I did at the end of this term ( goo.gl/k6rM02  ). I can offer my time and advice to those willing to learn, share and exchange (about technology, computing and teaching in general) and I can offer more rejections to demands which would be "nice to do" but are not going to have significant impact on my teaching or my students' learning. I can also probably start to offer advice to parents of newborns!

I invite you also to share your reflections:
What are you thankful for in the current year?
What are you proud of?
What memories would you like to carry forward?
What would you want the year 2014 to be?
What can you offer to the coming year?

What do all outstanding teachers have in common?

What I'll be trying on the first day back Part 2!

I will start this post with a bit of pretext at the macro level. If you want to skip this, jump to paragraph 4.

I once worked in an inner-city London school, it was a non-selective school and so had a full comprehensive mix of students from the surrounding burroughs. 18 years ago, the school had 45% achieving 5 A*-C's at GCSE. For the past 10 years, the figure has been above 80%. Today the figure is 93%, yes that includes English and Maths! The headteacher once asked us the rhetorical question, "How did we turn it all around?" Answers varied from: Excellent teachers, small class sizes, a good leadership team, investing in the building, recruitment, teaching to the exam etc.

Her answer: "Whilst all of those things are important, none of it can happen without behaviour management. It doesn't matter if you recruit the most innovative and passionate teachers if bums are not on seats in lessons". In many schools across England, you can walk into a classroom before the teacher arrives and there is chaos...the teacher then has to spend 5 minutes instilling order.


Source: Multivox

There must be a way of having an orderly school with learners ready as soon as they enter a classroom. As a headteacher, she decided to find people who were strict, I will define this as teachers who could manage behaviour no-matter how challenging this was by applying a firm and fair behaviour policy, consistently every time.

She firmly believed that all kids inherently want to rebel. If you ban the use of MP3 players in lessons but allow it at break, one way of rebelling is walking into a lesson with your headphones on. However if you remove that barrier altogether by banning MP3 players within school time or within the school gates, you take that out of the equation. The mere sight of an MP3 player resulted in confiscation.

With this philosophy in mind, she set a strict uniform policy and her staff enforced it down to the minute details. It was an all-girls comprehensive and girls were only allowed to wear a blue, black or white headband. A child who might want to rebel would wear a pink hair accessory. The thing is there's a great difference in how much this rebellious act disrupts learning. In one school a child rebels by listening to music in class in another school a child rebels by wearing the wrong colour hair accessory. Clearly in the latter the impact to learning is minimal, yet students are still temporarily rebelling in the same way that any child wants to rebel at some point in their school career.

On the micro level, if you walk into any classroom of an outstanding teacher who generally delivers good or outstanding lessons. What do they have in common? If it's one thing that I've noticed in my 7 years of teaching it is this; they all exercise complete control of the classroom environment. Students know what is expected, "how things are run" as it were. They know exactly what is and what is not acceptable and that is because the teacher executes a behaviour management policy fairly and consistently. That is all. On top of that the teachers will differentiate, ensure marking is timely, actionable and specific, use a variety of assessment strategies, use lots of praise and constantly challenge their students of course. However, as a new teacher, I certainly remember focussing on all these other things, ticking all the boxes on the Ofsted-ready lesson plan. In hindsight, I should have started the year focussing on one thing- behaviour management. My school had a behaviour management policy, perhaps at times it wasn't explicit enough. Indeed, I have been in schools where there isn't a behaviour management policy or it is just very fluffy. If this is the case, you need to develop your own. Be explicit, train the students in it, be fair and consistent in its application. Even if "student X" is normally a "nice kid", if they talk when you are talking, you have to give a detention. They may cry and it may hurt you inside a little the first time you have to do this, but it will pay dividends later in the year. Why? You may ask. Why does my classroom need to run consistently like a machine? And does this mean there will be a room full of compliant robots with no creativity?

No. Quite the opposite in fact. Structure liberates.  If you want to see this in action, visit a dance or drama class at any leading school. The routines, rituals and behaviour management is always solid. Yet the students are able to be happy and creative learners all the same. When students know what is expected of them, they do not need to expend emotional or thinking time deliberating their actions and behaviours. They know what is expected of their behaviour, so they can focus on their learning. They can go from remembering and understanding all the way up to Analysing, Evaluating and Creating much quicker and their learning is much richer.

Indeed, differentiated worksheets and creative lessons cannot work without a controlled environment. It took me six years of teaching to realise this. I thought teaching was all about "teaching engaging lessons". In a way I was partly right, but in order to get there I needed to manage behaviour and exercise full control of my classroom first. "Engagement" is a dangerous aim to have and in an inner-city environment, you think that engagement is your ultimate means for success. "If I can engage everyone with exciting content and delivery, then students can learn and make progress". I still believe in this somewhat, but it is not the be-all and end all to an outstanding teacher.

I wanted to write this in August in time for teachers starting in September. If I were to give advice to any teacher starting a new school or simply a new year. I'd tell them that for the first 2 weeks, focus simply on behaviour and learning names. The lesson activities which introduce your subject are important, but without total engagement and control, it doesn't matter how fancy your slides are that you spent 6 hours preparing. Tom Bennett's top ten behaviour tips is essential reading if you don't have a week to read a book. Likewise, all his resources are worth dipping in to.

These two documents from Edutopia are also worth printing out and reading on your commute to school (unless you drive of course!)

10 Tips for Classroom Management (PDF)

7-tips-for-better-classroom-management-tyler-hester

If you are a member of SLT, help your teachers by designing an explicit behaviour policy that cannot be misinterpreted. Sweat the small stuff and make sure that teachers are applying it consistently. It will make your school a more pleasant place to be in and no, it won't hamper creativity. My first inner-city London school had a Performing Arts specialism and was recently awarded "Teaching school" status. There was no lack of creativity there and no, I don't think it  will impact negatively on student happiness and well-being. It makes perfect sense when you look at Maslow's hierarchy.


Source: Wikimedia Commons

Students cannot attain self-actualization, they cannot learn effectively and efficiently unless they feel safe first. Consistent behaviour management through rules and routines ensures a safe learning environment in which teachers can teach.

If there is anything more important than behaviour management, I'd love to hear your views. I under-valued this aspect of teaching for so long because I didn't want to be the strict/mean teacher. However, having applied my school's extensive behaviour policy this year, I'm happier and the students are happier and we're making great progress together. It's a refreshing change!

What does classroom innovation look like in your subject?

In my first year of teaching, I had the fortune of working with an exceptionally creative staff body. I was inspired practically every day by the innovation at the performing arts school. Some things I tried and they failed, but I failed in a safe environment, my line manager was forgiving and encouraging and that empowered me to innovate some more. Whilst my environment changed over the next 6 years of my teaching career, I was still inspired to innovate and create engaging lessons:



But the big question is how do we innovate? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would argue that creativity leads to happiness and it generally leads to flow and great innovation. As a dancer, I learnt that in order to create something original, we need to combine two (sometimes unrelated) elements. Nothing is truly new or original on its own, but in combination we can truly create and innovate. This lead to my first innovation in my first term of teaching, "Teaching spreadsheets through dance"

There are those that disagree that this style of constructive learning is beneficial, Harry Webb whilst commenting on an excellent post about Direct Instruction vs Constructivism states:

"...Constructivism also has damaging effects other than those associated with minimal guidance. It delegitimises the teacher as an expert. Teachers see themselves as needing to ‘engage’ students with ‘relevant’ and ‘authentic’ tasks; a sort of ‘customer knows best’ mentality. This pulls teachers away from focusing on cognitively taxing problems and forces them to introduce potentially distracting contexts. It also creates debilitating levels of guilt around a failure to deliver on nebulous concepts such as differentiation."

I would strongly disagree with Harry Webb who states that Direct Instruction should be used for all new content, I used constructivism for new content and combined with some direct instruction later on, it had a dramatic effect. All students achieved 1+ grade of value added and that same set scored 100% A-C in their GCSE ICT exam, most notably they were all comfortable using spreadsheets throughout their school career.

Indeed, students themselves may innovate and in turn lead us teachers to re-evaluate our teaching and curriculum as was the case when a student demonstrated to the class how to make a game us presentation software, in this case, Powerpoint:



At times however, innovation does not look pretty. Indeed it can simply be deciding to teach using a very didactic form of Direct Instruction as was the case in these revision sessions. To make them a bit more accessible and to maximise time:learning ratio, we could also do these as Vlogs:

#

I wont really get into the flipped classroom debate here but I can say that that it worked well with my GCSE classes who were very much engaged by the multimedia nature of the Vlogs. I'd be interested to hear how other people have innovated in their respective subjects and perhaps we could all learn a bit more from each other as we combine and re-apply these techniques.

What can teachers learn from Stephen Covey and chess grandmasters?

At our school, we have staff enrichment (i.e. CPD) every Monday. During these CPD sessions, we are sometimes able to choose from a menu of sessions. One session was entitled "How to be an effective form tutor" another was entitled "How to manage your time more effectively". It was September, we had just had a baby boy 2 months ago and I was getting by on 3-6 hours broken sleep in a day; surprisingly, I was very productive however unsurprisingly, I still opted for the second session!

What did I learn. Two things, first of all, there are only certain things we can control in our life. Whilst working as a door-to-door book salesman,  I learnt a phrase "control the controllables". Our Sales leader had obviously read Covey:

Source: Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1999)

We must sort ourself out and accomplish private victories before we can accomplish greater public victories. One of those private victories and one which is related to numbers 1-3 above is managing our own time and strategic planning.

This ties into the second thing I learnt about time management. We should try to plan well in advance, having a strategic overview and also planning by the week rather than by the day. As a result we minimise the number of things in the top left corner AKA Crisis Corner.


Source: www.island94.org Adapted from Stephen Covey


How many of us simply let the important things build up until they become urgent and start to seriously stress us out?


 Source: Flickr FJTUrban

A few days later it hit me, the teacher who delivered our CPD (yes, most of our CPD is delivered by our own staff) is an avid chess player. Perhaps there was a link between chess and time management as a teacher. Like teaching, chess is a game of strategy. You have to have an end goal, i.e. where you want your students to be at the end of the term/year. Likewise, whilst it helps to know your opponent in chess, it helps to know your classes and students so that you can plan your tactics carefully. I make no comparison to battlefields and the front-line though!

Similarly, the sequences of moves/lessons strike me as another parallel. And finally, as Covey advises us to plan by the week to avoid crises, in chess if we simply play one move at a time, one lesson at a time, one day at a time, we'll soon find ourselves in moments of stress and crisis as too many things hit us at once. Perhaps, we should all be teaching like a chess grandmaster. We could have set strategies, plan our moves (lessons) well in advance perhaps several moves ahead with a medium and long term goal in mind. We could have a backup plan should our students go off track or make an unanticipated move(ment) in progress. With all this in place, I believe it is less likely that we will get caught out. Instead we will spend more of our time in "The Zone", planning and delivering good and outstanding lessons, rather than flailing around fighting small fires in the bottom left corner or dealing with larger fires in the top left.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts. Am I just stating the obvious or does the analogy help us manage our time more effectively as teachers?

Useful websites for IGCSE ICT

IGCSE ICT, run by a former teacher from ISS Mahé. The site covers all theory and practical aspects in detail.

The ICT Lounge offers straightforward material for the IGCSE. Some of the files open as seperate PDF's. Useful for revision and self-study purposes.

Around the world in a week

For the last week of half-term, lessons were planned on the theme of "Around the world in a week". This involved students rotating around different countries each day (sometimes more than 1 a day). Here they would learn a bit about a country's culture and participate in some learning, be it in new languages, arts, crafts, cooking, maths or experiments. It was a huge success and this video shows some of the highlights. The week ended with a MUFTI day and a cake sale.