I've just sat and marked 30 S4 credit jotters. The stuff I taught at the board old fashioned style, chalk and talk, with lots of examples, well, they have either managed this fine or completely forgotten it and not consulted their notes. The stuff we used the group work, self-directed learning tasks, investigations etc., has been completed dreadfully without exception.
Why can it be? I felt that the higher order thinking that was going on during some of these less conventional lessons was excellent. I felt the kids were coming up with some great ideas. Is it because we didn't do enough consolidation of the ideas once they had been discovered that the resultant homework is so bad?
Why won't the kids look up their notes from S3 on simultaneous equations? We did zillions of it last year and they could do it inside out! Looking at the homework some have done it fine but a lot didn't even know where to start.
I imagine most of you will have been in the position where you suffer 3 hours of hell where you feel yourself leaning harder and harder with the pen every time you see -4 x -1 = -4 !!! Sometimes it's just laziness or carelessness on the kids part and sometimes it's just they don't know it very well. Sometimes - like this evening, I can't figure out why it's all gone so badly. However, I sure as hell know how to fix it - it will involve lots of chalk and talk etc, but surely...
*seeks inspiration from....*
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I don't know if I can give you inspiration. I can however tell you that I've reached this point and don't know where to go from here. I had wondered if it was just me! Was I unable to inspire these kids! Did every other person who tried this method succeed and only I failed to make this method work!
ReplyDeleteFrom a purely selfish point of view I'm glad I've started to read your blog because at least I'm not alone. I really believe the problem is more the lack of thinking ability the kids have. This is why they don't look back over any previous notes they have. They honestly believe that everything they need for the particular subject they are studying will be given to them at the time they need it and they don't look up previous sources to sort themselves out. Unfortunately for these kids A levels then become doubly hard, especially Maths, as they have to sort out any GCSE problems they might have themselves because all their lesson time is taken up with getting through the A level syllubus.
I have started to do an OU course as part of my own professional development. This course is looking at two aspects of teaching maths. Firstly there is the content, which tends to be the aspect I concentrate on. Then there are the 'processing skills'. These are basically the thinking skills. The idea of the course is to ensure both areas are thought about and planned into the lesson.
The basic idea in the first unit, of the course, is to think of maths in terms of a two dimensional array. For instance the columns could be topics and the rows could be 'process skills'. This may be what everybody does but it has given me 'pause for thought'.
I truely believe that kids need to experience 'doing' maths. However this 'doing', I now believe, may actually be working on their thinking skills. I suspect your kids will be able to tackle unknown problems with open minds, rather than say this is too hard we can't do this! The problem is, I believe, that we need to ensure they also learn how to look up information for themselves. This is why I like textbooks. Most of them are a reliable source of imformation. They contain worked examples, formulae and exercises. If we encourage kids to think of them as something to dip in and out of for information purposes we may be able to develop their thinking skills enough that they can become independent learners. Something we all want!
I have always given my students a revision guide. I believe this provides each student with a single place they can go to for all the facts they need for their course. However I don't believe I have used it in the most effective way. I intend to change that this year and from now on when a student gets stuck I'm going to get them to search through the book to find the topic they need help on. Then I'll get them to read the information presented and see how that helps them. I'm hoping that showing them that they have the means to solve their own problems will help overcome this total dependence on someone else to sort out heir problems. It is however early days at present and kids are very reluctant to help themselves.
I'm wondering if what you want from the homework is very different from what you've wanted in class. Perhaps your rich tasks did lead to deep understanding (as evidenced from the pupil dialogue you observed). When it came to the homework task, had you modelled to them what you were looking for in terms of more formal, written solutions?
ReplyDeleteAlso, don't underestimate how long a year can be to teenagers studying all kinds of new things. If you'd studied the Korean War for a couple of weeks last year, how many key facts would you remember today? How would you do with a 20-mark essay question on it? You might remember studying it but you'd be rusty on the details.
I'm enjoying your blog, Chris.
ReplyDeleteAn honest and instantly recognisable portrait of classroom frustrations.
I remembered reading your post as I almost put my red pen through a jotter just now - it's factorising trinomials, not rocket science!
Keep writing!