Guest blog from Sarah Corcorran, Yvonne Somerville, Finn Gallacher, Kirsty Easson and Gillian O’Hara from Woodburn Primary School.
On Friday 13th May, we had the opportunity to attend the Shirley Clarke conference at Newbattle Abbey College. We were excited to hear from such a well-respected figure in Education and felt privileged to be amongst practitioners from across Midlothian and Scotland. The day began by looking at formative assessment. It was great to revisit some of the ideas such as talking partners and mindsets, which we have already been implementing at Woodburn and to think about the positive impact our current practice is having on our learners.
Shirley challenged our thinking by asking ‘do you truly have a growth mindset?’ and asked us to rank statements linked to fixed and growth mindsets such as ‘I worry about what my peers think of my abilities’ and ‘I like getting constructive feedback and criticism’. A few awkward glances later we realised that we need to continue practising what we preach! At Woodburn our learners have been introduced to the concept of a fixed or growth mindset and can identify the differences. However, Shirley made us realise our next steps should focus less on the discussion of and more on embedding this ethos into daily classroom practice (for staff and learners!).
Having been familiar with Shirley’s previous research we were all aware of and using learning intentions and success criteria in our classroom practice. She posed the question “why do we focus so much on ‘I can’ statements?”. She made us think about those learners who reach the end of a lesson and have not achieved the success criteria…does this mean that they have been unsuccessful learners or are they continuing on their journey towards achievement? She suggested that the language should be changed to ‘I am working towards…’ as this emphasises the learning process rather than the end product. This was a big talking point at the lunch break, how a few small word changes can have such a big impact. We were reminded about the importance of involving learners in co-constructing success criteria, ensuring more accessibility and relevance to the learners; a move away from it simply being a planning and paperwork process. This is something which we all agreed with and are keen to look at ways to adapt our plans next session.
Our thinking was particularly challenged as Shirley encouraged us to think about how we value and challenge every learner. This linked clearly with John Hattie’s research on the effect size of ability grouping. As a school we have been using differentiated challenges this year with the introduction of ‘mild, spicy and hot’ activities. However, we have noticed that some children have already become fixated on which challenge to accept. Shirley opened our eyes once again to how changing the vocabulary of these challenges could influence the learners’ approach. By using words such as ‘incredible, fantastic and amazing’ to categorise challenges and alternating the level they correspond to regularly, the children would be encouraged to look more closely at the task and focus on the skills required.
As a final point to the day, Shirley highlighted the importance of thinking carefully about the phrases that we use in our daily classroom practice and how some common phrases such as ‘good girl’ or ‘try your best’ can impact upon a child’s view of their learning and ability. This made us think about the words and phrases we use on a daily basis and the important role we play in shaping children’s confidence and self-belief.
In Midlothian we often use or hear the phrase ‘know thy impact’ and having the opportunity to attend Shirley’s conference made us realise that small and seemingly insignificant changes to our classroom practice can have huge benefits to our learning community. Following her inspiring delivery there were so many ideas that we were excited to get back to implement as soon as possible; some of them tweaking existing practice and some completely new. We are excited for the year ahead!
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