Friday, 27th November

In our last session with David Smith and Simon James we reflected about the “ingredients” that make a good school. When trying to evaluate whether a school is good or not, Ofsted inspectors will focus on leadership and management, teaching and learning, outcomes and results. But Simon insisted that he is interested in our personal opinion, not in the official perspective of Ofsted inspectors. Some of the aspects we highlighted were a shared vision, community links, inspirational space, leadership, students' involvement, consistency, good personal relationships, personal attention to every student, students' progress and life skills, safe and happy environment…

According to Simon, inspirational leadership is extremely important to make a good school. Good schools, in his opinion, have strong systems for quality assuring the curriculum, teaching and student progress. They don't wait for Ofsted inspectors to come in and tell them what they have to change, as they have their own assessment systems. They are passionate about the quality of the classroom experience. They believe that every child matters and they shape the curriculum to serve the needs of all students. They track the progress of students regularly and intervene immediately if anyone fails to improve or make progress. They are creative about the recruitment and retention of staff. They ensure that all the staff are excellent role models and that there is a culture of mutual respect. They take CPD (Continuing professional development) seriously, ensuring that all staff are adequately trained for their roles and are willing to learn from one another. Good schools share resources, teachers and strategies with other schools, so some members of the staff can teach in a different school and also observe other teachers' lessons in order to discuss about their skills and strategies. Good schools make sure that students feel happy working in a well ordered, stimulating and safe environment. They go out of their way to bring in a variety of successful people from all walks of life to serve as role models. They provide cultural opportunities which may be beyond the budget of some families. They keep parents informed of students' progress, curriculum changes and important developments in teaching and learning. They foster links with the community and beyond and seek to involve students in charitable activities.

David Smith talked about assessment for learning, which takes places during a lesson to check how students are progressing and how the teaching is working. Assessment for learning should be seen as central to classroom practice, and all teachers should regard it as a key professional skill. The big 5 principles of assessment for learning are: 1) The provision of effective feedback to students, 2) the active involvement of students in their own learning, 3) Adjusting teaching to take account of the results of assessment, 4) Recognition of the influence assessment has on the motivation and self- esteem of pupils, 5) The need for students to be able to assess themselves and understand how to improve.

The key questions are: What do you expect the students to learn? What will you do to enable them to learn? What will they do to enable them to learn? How will you know what progress they have made? How will they know what progress they have made?

Asking students if they understand the teacher is not the best way to assess their learning process, as they might feel a strong peer pressure and lie in their answers. Some useful techniques used in assessment for learning are post-it notes, mini-whiteboards, true-false cards, exit cards, ABCD cards, thumbs up, traffic lights, stand-crouch-sit, post-it divider, stamps to have evidence of verbal feedback given, partnering, whiteboard words, voting pods, etc.

Thursday, 26th November

Today we had a very special session with Simon James and Dave Smith. We talked about behaviour management and we discussed what makes a good teacher. To begin with, we are invited to share with the rest of the group some of the features that identify a good teacher in a brainstorming activity. We compared our own opinions with what children think, watching a video in which students explain what they think makes a good teacher. According to them, a good teacher should be human, approachable, fair, enthusiastic, positive, professionally skilled, respectful of students and sensitive to their difficulties in learning,

Behaviour management techniques are very important for teachers to be effective. Positive behaviour management is a good way to deal with low level disruption. In the best schools, creating a positive environment is a shared responsibility. Consistency in the use of rewards and sanctions is extremely important in order to make everybody feel that rules are fairly applied. The certainty that misbehaviour will have consequences is actually more important than the severity of the punishment.

Good teachers know how to manage behaviour of most of the students most of the time – but they can't completely control everybody all the time. They can also control some important factors, such as the seating plans, the routines, the ways we display work or greet children, etc. And they should have complete control over how to respond to misbehaviour. Many of these strategies can be learnt from Dr. Bill Rogers, who is an Australian expert in behaviour management. He presents some of his ideas in these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqIXB1RG-Vg&list=PLF1FBp_bi4gbXAvyDu1oO5o_LaJ6PufZm

Positive behaviour management uses positive language instead of negative instructions, telling kinds what we want them to do rather than what we want them to avoid. It is also important to make effective use of praise and rewards, and to redirect towards success rather than highlight mistakes. However, too much praise can be counterproductive, as some students don't like to be praised in public. Praise should be sincere if we want it to be effective. A powerful technique consists in saying 'thank you' rather than 'please'. Behaviour management can be done using the 4 Rs frameworks: rights, responsibilities, rules and routines. Rights are connected with responsibilities, so we should encourage students to choose responsible behaviour.

When kids misbehave, they are making a choice that should have consequences. Managing behaviour has three phases: 1) give children choices within fair rules, 2) influence them to make appropriate choices by modelling behaviour and 3) apply consequences of choices in terms of rewards or sanctions. It might be useful to remind students that everything they do is a choice: “If you choose to keep on talking while I'm teaching, you'll be choosing to come to the front to sit near me. It is your choice.” Another powerful technique is the “maybe...and...” approach: ”Maybe you were listening to me, and I still need you to pay attention, thank you”.

Rob Plevin also has interesting videos about behaviour management in the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_jQ81O0yzM

The effective way to give instructions begins making eye contact. The teacher should speak in a calm but firm manner, using first names and pausing after the name to make sure that the student understands the instruction using non-verbal cues when appropriate, saying 'thank you' rather than please, and dropping eye contact at the end, giving some take-up time to the pupil.

Wednesday, 25th November

This is our last day with Francisco. We will present our school attachment experience to the rest of the group using PechaKucha. This is a very interesting technique used to show in a quick and effective way our work using only a few images and a limited amount of time to explain them. Apparently, the idea of using PechaKucha arouse in a meeting where architects were supposed to showcase their work. As they seem to have a strong tendency to talk and talk forever, someone suggested to allocate only a limited amount of time for their presentations. This proved to be a very good way to organize these presentations, and is now widely used in other areas besides architecture.

Our PechaKucha personal reflection has three images. The first one will show something positive in our experience, the second one will focus on something that could be improved, and the last one will show another positive aspect of our stay in Chichester.

The rest of the day we worked in teams in order to prepare a presentation including a general reflection about what we learnt during these seven weeks. In the afternoon we had the opportunity to show these presentations to the rest of the group.

Tuesday, 24th November

Today we have a special session with David Smith and Simon James. As we were in 9 different schools, now we have the opportunity to present our experience to the rest of the group.

North Mundham Primary school – Eva and Celia

In this school, teachers found that tables are arranged in a very interesting way. Behaviour management uses green and red cubes to reward or punish the students. If there is bad behaviour, the class loses part of their free time, represented by the green cubes. In Spain schools use textbooks, so there are some limitations and constraints to the implementation of these new teaching techniques. However, some of the writing activities that are done could be put into practice in Spain. They use a VCOP code (vocabulary, connectives, openers, punctuation). Every student knows their level and their goals, so they have a clear idea about what they have to do in order to reach their objectives. Students also assess their own progress following a key – this is the 'traffic lights' assessment. The school also has meetings with the parents, at least twice a year, to show them what children learnt.

Davison High School for Girls – Paco, Susana and Mercedes

Davison school is a Church of England school, with a clearly defined ethos based on learning, engagement, thinking and success (LETS). The Spanish teachers had the opportunity to observe some interesting examples of good practices in this school.

• Structure of the lesson – All sessions have the same structure, and teachers in the same department have a very consistent approach to teaching, giving their lessons in the same way. All sessions begin with a starter, and learning objectives and success criteria are written on the board every day. The lesson usually includes other activities, as well as a plenary at the end.
• Activities are generally dynamic and participative, including think-pair-share activities, rally-robin (giving all students in a group of 4 people the opportunity to contribute in the process) and learning by doing. Teachers don't lecture their students, but they try to make students create their own knowledge working individually, in pairs or in groups.
• Students are encouraged to reflect about their learning process, reflecting individually, in pairs or in groups. Debates and discussions are very frequent.
• Assessment is done asking the students to reflect about what went well and what could be done even better if… There is self-assessment, peer-assessment and feedback given by the teacher, emphasizing the effort and giving a lot of praise to the pupils.
• Teachers use a rubber stamp to mark the notebooks. They also use KPI (key performance indicators)
• Differentiation is done working in Kagan groups of four. Each member in the group is assigned a colour according to his/her skills. Teachers also produce various resources and materials, according to the different levels of the students. Students are encouraged to work on the problems and activities they feel confident enough to face. Low ability groups have a low ratio (about 15 students) And each SEN student is helped by an assistant.
• Literacy is enhanced using DEAR time (drop everything and read). Once per week students go to the library and they have time to read.
• Students also have a red book (which is different to the ordinary notebook), used to write down difficult key words.

David Smith explains that a very interesting experiment was done to check how Chinese teaching style (mostly based on lecturing students) would work in an English school. Details about this experience can be found in the following link

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/33766156/what-it-was-like-being-taught-by-chinese-teachers-in-the-uk

St Mary's Primary School – Javi and LuisMi

There are a lot of Polish students in this school – 34% of the pupils don't have English as their mother tongue. They also have a lot of students in each class (up to 34), but there are also teaching assistants who work with them.

Classroom routines were very effective as they were very well structured. Every day there is an assembly at the beginning of the day, and then students have numeracy classes, a break, guide reading, literacy, lunch time, and more classes in the afternoon.

In every lesson there is some time for individual work, some time to work in pairs and some time for team work. They foster autonomous learning, which is great, but there are some students who lose their time and are not learning at all.

Students can collect house points if they work properly. These points are used to assess students' behaviour using a 'traffic light' system. There is also group assessment, self-assessment and individual assessment. Students show if they found the activity easy, difficult or impossible with emoji images.

It is curious that children don't like PE lessons. Apparently teachers are not very interested in this subject, and they don't spend too much time preparing PE sessions.

Depending on the students' attainment level, they are placed in groups that vary from one class to another. Behaviour is managed praising students and being positive rather than giving warnings or grounding students.

Advanced students who are fast learners can move on to take a challenging task, which is always ready for them if they want to do it.

As for the curriculum, in this school most of the time is devoted to Mathematics and English. Other subjects, such as Science, are not considered equally important, which is quite surprising.

Bishop Tuffnel school – Cristina and Ana

Students are intrinsically and extrinsically motivated in this Church of England School. They use the traffic light system, but there are few students who will admit that they are in the “red” area needing extra help from the teacher. Students place themselves in the colour they think that corresponds to them. There are several awards that are given to the “star of the week” or the “advanced reader”. They also use stickers, trophies…

The pupils are given targets at the beginning of the lesson, they follow the plan and review their progress, and at the end they reflect on what they learnt and how successful their plan was.

There is a code of symbols that everyone knows and which is used for assessment by all the teachers and pupils. For those students that are outstanding and did their work very well, the EBI section can include a new difficult challenge for them (next steps, the extra mile)

St Philip Howard catholic high school – Gerardo and Isabel

This is a faith school, so regular attendance to religious services is one of the important selection criteria for the students who subscribe it. Even though the buildings are very old, the school has invested in making everything visually attractive. The distribution of spaces encourages learning and makes students feel comfortable and engaged. There are bright decorations and displays everywhere, as the school hired someone who is especially devoted to do this task. All teachers share a common philosophy of education, so they have the same perspective and teaching styles are quite consistent.

Downview Primary School – Luis and Nina

This is an academy, an outstanding school according to the ofsted reports. Everybody shames the mission of the school, based on collaboration, communication, creativity, resilience and risk taking.

Teachers have one day off, which is used to plan their lessons. The whole school follows the same lesson model, so there is a strong consistency. Learning objectives are always shared with the students at the beginning of the class.

Class management involves many routines, which helps to create a good atmosphere. Consistency in the use of rewards and sanctions is also remarkable. The teacher is a conductor rather than an instructor. Instead of subject notebooks, students use 'learning journals', based on the idea that the learning process is a journey. The progress of students is assessed using evidence, such as pictures of their productions to compare their initial work with their final outcomes at the end of the school year. Differentiation is very important, and teacher focus their attention on slow learners and SEN students, as they want them to catch up with the rest of the class.

Bourne Community College – Olga, Paz and Aurora

This school is focussed on progress. The school set targets for every student, based on their key stage 2 tests. Teachers share their learning objectives with the students at the beginning of the lesson, and they use a starter activity in every session. Warm-up activities can include spectacular experiments, or mysterious questions which can be quite engaging. Teachers use different ways to give information. For example, the teacher can distribute different handouts with certain problems and solutions, so that students must try to match them. This is a great way to deal with information instead of using a boring and dull textbook. A practical approach to education can be found everywhere. Peer assessment and self-assessment is used to check the progress of the students. Critical thinking is also a strong point in this school.

Bersted Green Primary School – Teresa and Esther

This school has gone through a very difficult period, but now it has a new headteacher. At this school teachers use wonderful warm-up activities, such as “Do as I say, not as I do”, “Good morning children”. They are used to start the class every morning. Teachers use many different techniques and activities, which can be done individually, in pairs, in small groups or in plenary sessions. For example, a controversial topic can be proposed to the students to launch a debate, in which students are invited to choose and defend one side or the other. Creativity is fostered with activities such as writing poems. Silence techniques are regularly used by the teachers, including the use of a special word that children associate with silence, the clap and rhythm, the call and response or the use of significant gestures. Among the feedback techniques, both the traffic lights and the thumbometer are widely used. Rewards are given using techniques such as a Class Dojo, a Vip pass or house points.

Monday, 23rd November

Today we received the visit of Toñi Fernández Yubero, who is the main coordinator of our training programme in the Comunidad de Madrid Regional Ministry of Education. She was eager to know the particulars of the course from us, so we had a meeting in the afternoon where we had the opportunity to share our impressions and suggestions about the programme with her. Most teachers said that they found the experience both fruitful and very interesting. However, there were also some teachers who considered that the first weeks at Chichester University had been somewhat confusing and stressful. The great variety of different learning strands, the amount of information that was given to us and the considerable effort that we invested in doing our tasks after classes made some of us feel a bit overwhelmed. The attachment experience at schools was, generally speaking, much more satisfactory, as most of us consider that observing how English teachers give their classes is an exceptional and very useful experience. Many members of the group also had the opportunity of teaching, making this experience one of the most interesting and valuable parts of our training course.

In order to make this training programme even better in the future, we gave Toñi some ideas and suggestions. Some people considered that it would be great if a certain amount of time could be allocated to give us the opportunity of sharing our good experiences, as in the group there are some outstanding teachers who could show us some of the activities and techniques that they successfully use with their students. Other people explained that, even though getting to know how English teachers prepare and give their classes is quite interesting, putting this educational approach into practice could be a rather challenging experience in Spain, especially for those of us who are used to a more traditional teaching style. If possible, it would be interesting to devote some time in the training programme to prepare some kind of scaffolding strategy that could help us to cover this gap, in order to make this transition between old-fashioned and modern teaching approaches easier to implement.

Friday, 20th November

During my last day at Bishop Luffa school I had the opportunity to observe a P4C class taught by Mr Walker to Year 8 students. The session was called ´My responsibility to others´and was about charitable giving.

Mr Walker reminds the students that the purpose of P4C is not to tell students what to do, but rather to give them accurate information so that they can take their own personal decisions.

As Christmas is coming soon, this class will make students aware of their gifts list, and it will show them the importance of responsible giving and the possibility of taking into account charity, alternative presents. This is a challenge to the traditional commercial view of Christmas.

To begin with, Mr Walker asks the students about the meaning of the word 'responsibility'. The starter task consists in writing their 'wants list', making it clear that there is a difference between wants and needs. Students are also invited to make a list of approximate costs associated with their list. Later, they will compare their personal list with their neighbour´s list. I notice that, even though the first part of the activity was supposed to be individually done, most students are talking about their wants with other people. This seems to be a very interesting task for them.

The teacher shows the award winning video 'Don't buy crap'. He is not only focussing on the content of the video, but also on the strategies used to make it effective and impressive. After watching the video, students are invited to work in teams. They must prepare a short presentation to raise awareness of the Oxfam unwrapped scheme. Later, they will be encouraged to talk before the plenary in order to present their 'pitch'. This will not only make them aware of the importance of this initiative, but if will also improve their communication skills.

I feel quite surprised at the way this subject is taught, in close and direct connection with the real life and personal interests of the students. Instead of discussing about abstract concepts or philosophical ideas, they are always focussed on practical, down-to-earth topics that have a real impact in the pupils´ lives!

Thursday, 19th November

The Philosophy for Citizenship class today is quite unusual, as it will be taught by Miss Smerdon to a very big group of students (90 of them). The class is about drugs, AIDS and contraception. These three topics are generally dealt with in three different sessions, but as there is not enough time they will be combined in a single 60-minute session.

FIRST PERIOD – Philosophy for Citizenship (P4C) – Year 11 - Miss Charlotte Smerdon

As a starter, a video is presented to the students, showing the dramatic effects of methamphetamine. Later, the teacher explains what drugs are, stressing the difference between legal and illegal drugs. Even though some drugs, such as alcohol, are legal, they are also dangerous. As for illegal drugs, the teacher shows a video called 'Top 10 deadliest street drugs'.

The teacher tells the students that people abuse of drugs because of peer pressure and to forget their problem. However, drugs can produce addiction and they can also be extremely dangerous. The teacher spends some time explaining the classification of different drugs, its effects and the legal punishments associated to each one of them.

In order to make them think, the teacher shows a picture to the students and asks them to imagine what it is about. It is a photo of Rachel Whitear, who was found dead in her bedroom after having drugs.

The second part of the lesson was about sex. A video was shown, 'The STD song', introducing some of the sexually transmitted diseases (or infections) and the dangers of unprotected sex. To explain the peculiarities of these STIs, very explicit images of its effects are shown to the students. I guess most of them are feeling quite scared after watching these disgusting pictures. I know that it is not easy to talk about these topics without patronising, but I must say that I find that this presentation was a bit biassed.

The last part of the lesson was about contraception. The teacher used a short video about it, before presenting all the different contraception methods that can be used to prevent undesired pregnancy.

As a final activity, the teacher asked the students two questions: 'Which are the only two contraceptive methods that will protect you both from pregnancy and STIs?' and 'Who is responsible for contraception, the male or the female?'

Taking into account that this period combined three different lessons in one single session, I think the teacher did an excellent job. However, I think that these topics are so important that it would be necessary to give them more time, in order to present them in a deeper and more effective way.