This episode of the Tips for Teachers podcast is proudly supported by Arc Maths
You can download an mp3 of the podcast here.
Jon Mumford’s tips:
- Consider the impact of audio feedback (04:57)
- Think creatively when attempting to improve engagement/performance of boys (22:06)
- Use D.I.R.T. as a post-assessment formative tool (44:11)
- How to get students peer assessing with group critique (57:03)
- How to organise the disorganised (1:08:52)
Links and resources
- The website Jon uses for audio feedback (tip 1) is Qwiqr
- Austin’s butterfly (tip 4) can be seen here
- The website Jon uses to help students get organised (tip 5) is Trello
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Watch the videos of Jon’s tips
Podcast transcript
Craig Barton 0:01
Hello, my name is Craig Barton, and welcome to the tips for teachers podcast. The show that helps you supercharge your teaching one idea at a time. Now today’s episode is a really, really look like that excited to share it with you. But just before we get going in a quick word of thanks for our lovely sponsors, because without all of the sponsors, this show simply would not be possible. So this episode of the tips for teachers podcast is proudly supported by arc maths. Now arc math is a fantastic app designed to help your students remember all the maths content at key stages three and four. It’s built around research into how memory works, specifically York’s work on the power of retrieval practice and the space here and showing your students don’t just practice what they’ve just studied, but are regularly exposed to content they’ve encountered days, weeks and months before. Now if you want to find out more simply search art, maths and mentioned my name. And remember, that’s art with a C naught. Now today’s guest is a really special one for me, because on the show we’ve we’ve had all the big names we’ve had Dylan William, we’ve had Tom Sherrington Joe Morgan, and coming up soon, we’ve got even bigger names. We’ve got people like Tom Bennett, Daisy Christodoulou. What you may not be familiar with my guest today, Mr. John Mumford. But he’s somebody that I’ve worked with, and for many, many years, he started teaching the year after I started teaching at range High School and Formby. And one of the things I was really keen to do from the outset with this show is not just to have the kind of household names, but have experienced talented teachers who’ve got so much wisdom to share. So I was so pleased when John agreed to come on the show. So I’ll share John’s five tips in a moment. But I just wanted to remind you are three things really about the tips for teachers website. So the first thing to say is that all the tips you hear today are available both in the audio form that you’re listening to now, but also in video form, I chopped them up into five separate YouTube videos. So that might be useful if you want a bit of a visual aid. But also, if you listen to a tip on this podcast, and you think oh, that’s a good one, I want to share it with colleagues, perhaps you want to share the video with them maybe at a departmental meeting, or a twilight inset or something like that. And secondly, I don’t just share videos of the podcast tips. I also do my own videos on there. So there’s I think at the time of recording maybe 21 tips that I’ve recorded videos from that aren’t available anywhere else they just as videos, so you might want to check those out. And the third and final thing is that on the tips for teachers website, now there is a newsletter sanction, completely free to sign up, you just bang your email address in. And what happens is every Monday morning, you get an email in your inbox for me, and it’s a tip. And the idea is that you find a lesson that upcoming week to try the tip out on and see how it went down. And if you do that every week or most weeks if tips interest you, then you just kind of add into your teaching practice and as things go so that’s the tips for teachers newsletter, you can find that just on the on the homepage of the website tips for teachers dot code at UK. Anyway, back to today’s guest John Mumford and the five tips. So spoiler alert, l hurts. Here they come. So tip number one, consider the impact of audio feedback. Number two, think creatively when attempting to improve engagement or performance of boys. Tip three, use dirt as a post assessment formative tool tip for how to get students peer assessing with group critique. And Tip five how to organise the disorganised and tip fives the one that really lends itself well to that visual element once you’ve listened to it. If you look at the episode description on your podcast player or visit the episode page on tips for teachers dot code at UK you’ll see I’ve timestamps each of these tips so you can jump straight to anyone you want to listen to first or relicensing. I really hope you enjoy this one.
Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Mr. Jonathan Mumford to the tips for teachers podcast. Hello, Jonathan, how are you?
Jon Mumford 4:17
Hi, Craig. How you doing? Okay.
Craig Barton 4:18
Very, very good. Thank you. John, can you tell listeners a little bit about yourself?
Jon Mumford 4:23
Well, I actually used to work with you, Craig and I many, many moons ago. So I’ve been teaching in a language department for the last 16 years head of languages for the last eight years. But recently just at Christmas time, I thought that I have a bit of a career change. And I took a job at Hope University dealing with the National tutoring programme first and foremost. And also I’m working with the ITC students as well.
Craig Barton 4:49
career change or midlife crisis? What are we going
Jon Mumford 4:53
well, I’ve got a Lamborghini.
Craig Barton 4:57
Right let’s dive in with tip number one. What have you got for as
Jon Mumford 5:01
well, being been a language teacher, one thing that I thought was really worth sort of delving into was or the feedback. So my first tip is to consider the use of audio feedback in lessons and maybe outside of the classroom as well. And I don’t know about you, but when I feel when I feedback to students Normington written a written form, if it’s, you know, an extended piece of writing, for example. And the issue that I have with with with feedback is that the students, especially if it’s a foreign language, while they were writing, maybe half a page, maybe 50 words, 100 words or whatever. And then my feedback is probably twice that. As far as I’m looking at, I’m thinking this just doesn’t tally up at all, that I’m writing double what they’re writing. And the other other issue is that I don’t know whether they’re actually engaged with that feedback or not. I don’t know whether they’re actually going home and reading it, or they’re just looking at the mark and thinking okay, I’ll just put that to one side now. So that was a big issue with me with with feedback. I know you’ve had you’ve had dealing with him on the on the podcast as well. Haven’t you talked extensively, there’s any about, you know, how much progress students can make, give them the quality feedback. So I thought was worth exploring or the old feedback because I know that variable feedback based on ETF research, verbal feedback, you know, it’s been proven to have real impact. But the issue that I’ve got with with audio feedback, remember those audio feedback stampers, we used to have years ago, where a teacher would come around and go out have spoken to that child stamp. Nobody thought it was pointless, absolutely pointless. Nobody knew what it was for. Well, we knew what it’s for. It’s for SLT. So they could see that we’ve actually done something and mark the book. But there was no purpose behind it. And the students didn’t value it at all. But with audio feedback, recorded audio feedback as well, then the students can listen to it a number of times they can engage with it. And in my experience, and I’ll explain to you that the sorts of the guys that it takes in my lessons are outside the classroom as well in a second. But in my experience, the she wants the students know that they’re going to get their own individualised or the feedback, then they’re really keen to listen to it. And they’re really keen to engage with it. And that that’s something which I think never happens. So when does a child look forward to getting feedback they very rarely do or acted upon that feedback. So the website that I found, this was from years of looking for something similar, is called quicker. So it’s qu i Q Arthur, with a QR in the title. I think it’s pronounced quicker. And I think it was devised by there was a teacher from down south, I think his name’s Mark Waller. And I’ve added to become, I think I’ve become like his PR man or something because every every teacher, I can speak to about it, I will do, because I love it so much. But essentially, what it is, is you get you get a series of QR codes printed off from his website, and you stick them onto a student’s work. So a student will do an extended piece of writing, for example, in and I’m just using language as an example. And once they’ve done that extended piece of writing, you put this QR individual QR code in their books, which you print off on the website, and then just using your mobile phone, you will just scan that code. And using the code, you just record your feedback. So you might say, for example, I don’t know, she’s done really well, with your response to this task. However, what you’ve not done is you’ve not, you’ve not used the past tense in this in this passage. So what I would suggest you do is maybe utilise the past tense. And maybe also try and extend your sentences as well. And then what the student would do is they would take that home, they would scan the same code, and that that audio feedback would just come up on a web page, and they can listen to it, they can pause it whenever they want to. And they can act upon that feedback. And the idea is that, you know, when you Next take the students books, and you can see that they’ve acted upon the feedback that you’ve left. So that would that’s one one thing of use that for another way of use there is just just as a general picking up for shoes, because especially since the pandemic as well, you know, when students are
quite anxious that they’ve got very little self confidence, they’re worried about things. And they don’t know how they do it. And quite quite a lot the time you haven’t got the time of you in the classroom to give them individual feedback to say, you know what you’re doing really, really well, well done. And you’ve acted upon some feedback that gave me previously or you get an involved a lot more than you maybe were. And what you can also do is you can use you can use a different QR code and just stick it what why there was a stick at the front of exercise books. And it just, it’s just a general comments about how they’re doing. And I just say to them, you know, well, Don Gianni, you’re doing fantastically well. You’ve you’re getting, you’re getting involved in lessons, you’re putting your hand up a lot more than you once were. One thing you would like to do if you can do is just focus on your written work and maybe just take a bit more care in your accuracy, or something along those lines. And the beauty of that is that you can override that audio. So the student might act upon that on that feedback that you’ve left them. And, you know, they go home, they start acting upon the feet, they start behaving really well in class, if that’s one of the sorts of bits of feedback you’ve given them. And then you can overwrite it say, well done. You’ve done that. Now we can maybe look at doing this. So it’s a continual cyclical process and it It’s something which the kids have responded so well to, because they it’s one of those things where I said before, they look forward to getting that for you. And it’s not to be given to them every single lesson that that’s obviously not what it is. It’s not something which you can just have every single feedback, you give us all the feedback. But what I would say is that when the students see that they’ve got a QR code in their book, and they know having done it before that, they’re going to get some audio feedback, individualised feedback, personal to them, you name them, you know, you talk them through their piece of work, they really value it. And they really see that you’ve spent your own time. And they appreciate the fact that you know that it’s all individual and bespoke to them. So it’s something which I’ve, you know, has revolutionised how I’ve been in the classroom. And just one last little thing I mentioned about it is that because I’m a language teacher as well, one massive issue that I’ve always had been my language is teaching is that if, for example, you’re doing a spoken tasking class, the only feedback you can give them is that verbal feedback that disappears. Once you’ve once you’ve said it, it’s out in the ether, and it’s gone, it’s disappeared. Whereas with this audio feedback, I’ve used it for mock speaking exams. So so what I’ve done is I’ve recorded just like a word normally and recorded the actual speaking exam. And then, after the speaking exam has been done, I’ve recorded myself giving commentary over there, or the officers like to audios going together, and I’ve just paused at various points and said, well, the pronunciation of that word is actually this. Whereas in the past of, if I’m giving feedback to a speaking test, it will just be in written form. And it was just impossible to give any indication of students how to improve their pronunciation in written form. So I say, it’s completely revolutionised how I feedback to students. And it’s just it’s something which the students look forward to. They love it. And it’s something which they can, you know, they can revisit all times. And so before, it’s something which is a consent, cumulative process of building upon, so what’s the Met of certain targets? You can you can set them as another target as well. Flip. And
Craig Barton 11:55
this sounds brilliant, right? The questions are coming thick and fast. So I’ll do a few quickfire ones here. And rough proportion of your mark in that you would say you give this feedback to versus written,
Jon Mumford 12:06
the dependent depends how much time I’ve got really, because what I would say is that if you go onto this quicker website, one of the one of the things that Mark Wallace says is that I think it’s you speak seven times quicker than you right. So the you know, the feedback that you get, if it’s if it’s an audio feedback should take you less time, I would say that at first, it probably takes about the same time, because obviously you’re trying to navigate around the website and things like that. But it does, it does save time. And especially because if you think about the sea, for example, you take it take in a set of books, and you I’m sure you’ll appreciate this as well, that when students are making the same mistakes as a class, the whole class I’m making mistakes, massive frustration for me was when the next book made the same mistake, like Well, obviously, I’ve done something wrong here in my lesson, I’ve not explained it well enough or have that there’s a misconception that they’ve they’ve got that I’ve not picked up on in my lesson, you go through the same book, and you think, Well, I can’t continue marking the same error over and over again. So what you can do with with the QR codes is record the same audio feedback, and just give them the same sticker for each year. So to save a bit of time that way as well. But in terms of how often I do it, I would say that the one I do more often is the general pick me up one of the differences exercise books, just to give them a bit of a bit of a confidence boost. But I would say maybe every every four or five weeks, just because that’s probably how often I take in their books to to mark an extended piece of writing. So I probably say when you do an extended piece of writing, I would try as best as I can to give that bespoke feedback. And
Craig Barton 13:36
that’s great, um, and cost, how much are we talking for this, I take it you’re on some kind of caught from this or something like that, right?
Jon Mumford 13:44
I said before, I should be because I probably I’ve probably been marketing it a lot more than the fellow who invented it. But I think the website is free to go on as far as I know, I think you can you can sign up for all those packages where you can have departmental one and all that sort of stuff, but it’s free as far as I know, well, I’ve used them it’s free. But you can do all those sorts of things with the app as well where you can you can send a link to to a website or it could be in a YouTube or whatever or you can even just you can even leave written feedback on it as well which obviously defeats the whole idea but lots of you can there’s lots you can do you got you started with dialogue with the students well now 13 remember years ago remember dialogic marking was like yeah, the all and end all. Whenever Ofsted came in it was all well you’ve got you’ve got it you’ve got to show that you’ve you’ve had a conversation with the students and it has to be in green pen and you have to respond them red pen, and it just became a monster in it and it was it was it became ridiculous Yeah, and totally unmanageable. But with this I think what you can do, you can you can start a dialogue, but that dialogue can just be you you ask them to do something then then responding. And that’s the end of it. Whereas dialogic marking was it there was no end went to it was the show. So it’s so it’s something which I’ve found is massively changed how I feedback. And so before it’s not something which I do all the time, every four or five weeks, I would say, but the good thing is that because you’ve got a number of classes that you teach, you know, you’re doing it quite regularly, so you into the groove of doing it, and you know how to do it and you become quicker at it more efficient. But so before the students whenever they see in their exercise books, that they’ve got this QR code that they know is going to give them audio feedback. They absolutely love it. And one of the things I would say is, one did before you asked me another question, is that one really fun little thing that I do with with the students is that because because as I said before, you don’t know whether students engage with your feedback that you never know, when you’re right, you know, half a page of a4 on you know, how they’ve done an assessment so that we do we actually know how much they they read, we don’t know, do we can ever guess which students we think might. But with with this audio feedback, what I always do is I will just leave a random word in there. So like my underpants, or monkey or something? And I’ll say to them the next day, what was your random word that I put in your audio feedback? And if they can’t tell me, then I’ll say, Well, you need to go home and listen to your audio feedback. That means I’ve spent time doing that. So you need to go home and listen to that person. So it’s just another way of making sure they’re engaged with what I said before. They seem to be very positive in their in their engagement with it, they want they want to get that feedback, which is something that I’ve never seen before.
Craig Barton 16:27
That’s brilliant. Okay, a couple more follow up questions just with that dialogue thing? How does that work with the kids responding? Did they write or do the kids verbally respond as well? How does that work? Yeah,
Jon Mumford 16:36
just bear with me as well. Yeah. So it’s all via the same QR code. So when they scan the QR code, it keeps that opposite as a dialogue, then they just basically click on a button and they record their feedback, probably slightly off as a teacher saying, I’m rubbish you are. And then if you want to you can, you can continue and carry on that conversation.
Craig Barton 16:54
That’s great. Just before I forget to mention about those stamps, I was all over that verbal feed. I was really having left right and centre that absolutely ideal. In terms of I know, it’s always an awkward question. We technology, this What about the kids who don’t have like the smartphones that can scan the QR is that not been too much of an issue?
Jon Mumford 17:13
To be honest, it hasn’t been an issue. But I mean, teaching them in the area that I do teach in or if they’re teaching, most students have got a better mobile phone than the features are. But nobody’s coming to me and said, it’s an issue. But you do need a camera to scan it. That’s it’s one of those where you do need, you need the camera. So whether it’s you what you can do, you can do it in lessons clearly, what I’ve done in the past with that, as I mentioned before, with those commentaries I’ve given on, on speaking tests, what I’ve said to them is I’ve said right, in our next lesson, I want you to bring your mobile phone, and if they haven’t got a mobile phone, we’ll use one of the school iPads and bring some earphones in. And what you’ll do is you’ll listen to my my feedback. And as you’re listening to my feedback, I give them like a little action plan sheet and what they need to do to improve their audio to improve their speaking via the audio. So you can see straightaway that if you want someone to come in and say what you’re doing, then you can say well, actually, they’re actually acted upon this feedback that I’ve given them. And then what would hopefully happen is that in the lead up to their actual speaking exam, if it was, you know, if that was the sort of exam they were doing, then they can go home and listen to the previous one that they’ve done and go but actually, last time I made that mistake, didn’t they sort of make sure that I don’t make that mistake again. But yeah, so I said something which I’ve loved using and because I quite like using technology as well something which I’ve found just really easy to use. And when I’ve been explaining to explain it and trying to market it, like I said to you before in school, other departments have found that really useful as well no master partner, for example, have used it extensively to give give good quality feedback as well.
Craig Barton 18:50
That’s interesting. Did you know you won’t off top your head? How much are you using it? Are you because again, it’s always the thing you always think is does this lend itself well to
Jon Mumford 18:58
adults to be honest, these are said they they gave me some kudos for five minutes.
Craig Barton 19:07
Just a couple of other quick questions mate on this one and SLT Are they are they happy with this in terms of kind of enough evidence? Because that’s always the beer well, isn’t it
Jon Mumford 19:14
is a big thing for you. We have a mock deep dive before Christmas. And the head came round. And he was looking at exercise books. As it before all the students had a QR code at the front of the exercise books. And he was like, What’s this? So the student was like, what does that mean? And the students were able to say, well, over the course of a term or whatever we’ll get, we’ll get various bits of audio feedback from our teacher, which, you know, tell us about how well we’re doing and what we need to do to improve. And then he also one of the students probably also say, well, that ties into the back of our exercise books here where we got these different age raise expectations as well. So I know that I’m at this point. So the kids know exactly what we’re up to, based on the you know the the updated feedback that you’re given them each time with the Through the audio. So they were really impressed with that. And especially because the students were using it, they knew what the what the purpose was behind it. But it’s that the individualised nature of it is the thing that the kids love, the fact that they’re getting there, but what they say is, it’s like having a teacher in the room. That’s what you say, when they go home. It’s like having that support network at home, that you that you have the ability to know that everyone would like to pause their teacher, wouldn’t they? But you’ve got the ability to pause and rewind. And a lot of students don’t, you know, when you’re going through through explanations, it’s too much for them, isn’t it? They you’ve lost them, and they’re just not along. Whereas, especially for the weaker students, if they can pause it in an act upon that feedback, you know, in their own in their own time and their own space at home as well, where you feel comfortable, then it can only be a positive thing, can it? It’s lovely
Craig Barton 20:45
that and final points don’t really question just a point really, when When Dylan was on the show, one of his tips was to make feedback into detective work, because he said, what happens is exactly you said at the start, we as teachers, we put a load of time into this feedback, we give it to the kids and they don’t engage with it or whatever. So one of his his tips was to, instead of saying, okay, you’ve got seven out of 10. And these are the three questions you’ve got wrong. Say, Okay, you’ve got three of these questions wrong, but I’m not going to tell you which ones you’ve got wrong. Can you find them? I imagine that your two tips could kind of fuse together quite nicely, easily. Yeah, that would work really well. And if anything, you could probably go a bit more descriptive. You can be saying things like online for you’ve made a slip somewhere, can you find where it is. But you’ve also made that slip a couple of other times, see if you can find that. Yeah, it’s really good that Muay Thai, like it should definitely be difficult of this.
Jon Mumford 21:33
You’re right there, honestly, you are, right. But you couldn’t, you know, you could even get the students to record their own feedback or needs their own piece of work and assess their own piece of work or a session with elsewhere. There’s that many things you can do with it. I mean, I’ve only touched the surface with it really in languages, but I’m sure you as as a math teacher, you’d be able to think of a number of ways that you could use it and Maths. But I said it’s something which I’ve, I’ve thought was absolutely brilliant. And and so before any anyone who asked me about any ideas that I’ve got for teaching, there’s always one of the first ones to give them because it’s something which has changed how I teach.
Craig Barton 22:05
Amazing. Okay, mate, what is your second tip, please?
Jon Mumford 22:10
Right. Let me just move on. Right, the second set, right? What are the again, this is related to something that I saw actually this morning on TV that if you watch Good morning, Britain this morning, probably too busy, aren’t you to do to watch Good Morning Britain. But I was watching it this morning. And the head teacher of Mikayla was on there. I’m sure you’ve probably had on your podcast before, haven’t you? I’m sure. And she was talking about math students and physics students being primarily boys. And I think she got taken out of context in what she said. And there was there was another there was a professor on there talking about how wrong she was that you know, we need to open up all these different avenues for for for boys and girls, etc, and make it as equal as we possibly can. But one thing that I’ve found in languages is that boys in general, find language languages are maybe not cool. And that’s very hard to believe, looking at me look at my haircut. But they find it especially because they’re exposed usually, I’ve always been one of the only male languages teachers in my departments, it is primarily a female lead departments that have worked and and that those role models just aren’t there for football use really, I was trying to try and sort of shoehorn in famous celebrities, like we wouldn’t number like Romelu Lukaku each speak to this many languages. And, and the kids love that. And that that amazed by it. But boy, is that they really struggle with that engagement. So what I had a few number of years ago was at the bottom set, like you probably call it a sync group, a group where they were bottom sets that we didn’t year nine, they definitely weren’t going to take French any further. And it was it was Spanish sorry, they weren’t going to take Spanish any further. And it was basically me with them for a year trying to teach them Spanish knowing that they didn’t want to be there, knowing that they they weren’t very good at it really. And that they would rather be doing something else. And assaulting girls and the classes were primarily boys, it was primarily those, there was a few there’s a handful of girls. But what my next tip is, is is being creative in how we can engage boys in the classroom. And what the idea that I had was that the boys that for this particular class, I would say that more than any classmates inside teaching Korean so before I’ve been I’ve been teaching for 16 years. I just couldn’t get through to them. I couldn’t you know, I feel like I’m quite a personable person in the classroom. And I think that normally I can find a way through to students whether it’s via you know, a common interest that you might have or even just you know, just picking them up in some sort of way but I just could not get through to this class at all I couldn’t I don’t think like they liked me at all for some reason, I think because the be found the subject boring. So I just think What can I do to to ensure that these boys primarily are going to learn at least put their efforts in because they weren’t putting any effort in somebody’s in the class? We’re not writing one single thing in the lesson people people just refuse to write. You know, where do you go with that, especially when you’re trying to get them to write in a foreign language? Like, where do we start there? So what I did was I created something called La Liga. So the league, that’s the league for you, in Spanish. And what I did was I assigned a mix the group, so I think there’s about it was only a small list, it was 20 in the group, because it was a lower lower ability group, and mix them all up tactically as well. So trying to think, Okay, well, I know that that students argue that students will kind of end together and I know that this students runs out the room when this this and you have to try and be a tactical as possible when whenever I was arranging the class. And the idea was that they were going to represent a football team, because the majority of the boys liked football. And why did we chose Spanish football team. So I chose Real Madrid, it’s yours, Barcelona and a few other football teams. And I said to them, right, what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna be representing this football team for a half term, or even a full term or whatever. Now, one thing I will say is that the whole purpose of this, of this, this bit of like a game, really, but this idea that I had was based on some there was a report, there was a report or some recommendation that came out and report from the British Council, I think was in the year 2000 2019, I think it was, where they were looking at Boys and languages. And they spend a bit of time looking at what was some success stories across the UK. So there was a number of schools who were bucking the trend in terms of how the boys were forming, they were outperforming girls, and they will find the capability to speak into teachers to students or students and say, what is it that you’re doing that is ensuring that these results are so so good for boys. And they came with a series of recommendations and there’s things like, you know, ensuring that they’re well supported, that they that in your classroom use humour, which you know, that you’ve always struggled with.
And things like competitive activities that we know always works well with boys. But one of them was the use of rewards and sanctions and rewards was the one I wanted to hone in on. So this LaLiga idea is a long term reward. And I’ve never been one for you know, having sweets in the classrooms. But God, I just think they are such short short term fixes. And in the end, they just create more problems than they solve. But one thing I would say is that I introduced this as a long term reward. So over maybe a half and eight weeks and a half term, and explained to the students right over this half over this half term, we’re going to be in groups, we’re going to be working together as a group in teams against other teams in the room. And the prize at the end of our eight weeks is a try to guess what they wanted. And I would say right, we can have a can of Coke each. And we can have some crisps or sweets each in the classroom. So in our last class of term, you can enjoy that in front of everybody else you can be you know, you can you can boast about it, and you can rub it in the faces and that last last lesson centre straightaway hook them in with that because you don’t get that to you know, you don’t you don’t get the opportunity to do stuff like that. So, so the dangle that carrot, and I said to him, like you got to be representing a football team. And over the course of these eight weeks, what you can do is you can score these fictional goals for your team. So you can you can score points for your team. And I said that there are four ways in which you can do that you can either you can behave well. So one of the things, one of the big issues was behaviour, that just was not work. When I was talking, they just would not listen, they were talking over me they were having conversation between themselves. So one thing I knew I had to do something like that. So I said, if you are behaving well, if you’re displaying positive behaviour in the classroom, then you can earn points for your team. If you answer the question rates by putting your hand up, because what they were doing, they were all shout it out. So I said to him, right, if you can put your hand up and I asked you that I asked you what the answer is, and you get that question, right? Or you give a really good go, then you can you can earn some points for your team that way. I also said that you can earn points by asking an interesting question. So whether you if you can show some real sort of, you know, real interest in how the language works, or you can, maybe in conversation with another one of your peers, if you can come up with a really good idea that we can, that shows me you’re being enthusiastic about our subject, then that’s another way you can you can earn points. And I think another one was, if you were if you score well in it in a test or in assessments, it’s to try and get them into the sort of mindset of working harder outside of the classroom as well. So they would have sort of four ways in which they could they could earn points, but I did say to them as well, you can actually lose points as well. And you can lose points by shouting out or getting your name on the board if that’s your thing, but that’s not my thing. But if you’re shouting up not not behaving well. And if you think I said what was he referring to something it was not behaving well and not not doing your but not doing the work of setting the lesson. That was it. And I explained that to them. And one of the key things that I said to them was, do you think we might, you might fancy I’m gonna go with this thing for this half term and do all that enthusiastic. Yeah, it sounds sounds brilliant. Yeah. So getting their buy in and getting their agreements. That was a good idea, first and foremost, really important. And then I said to them, I said, So is this something that you think might be might be good in terms of improving your language skills? And you’re like, yeah, we’ll give it a go. Yeah. So they were really enthusiastic about it. And because they knew what the end goal was, as well as what the prize was the deal bought into it. But even when I introduced it, I still felt there was still a bit of pushback from a certain number of students, I’d say one or two students when I first reduced anyway. And they’re the students aren’t the, you know, the students who, no matter what you introduce, they’re going to try and sabotage you if you’re going to try it right. What can I do? So Mr. Barton’s lesson here to ensure that it goes off track. So what you have to do with them students is you’ve got to try and get Okay, well, what I’ll do here is I’m just going to try as best I can to be as topical as possible, and try and get them on board as quickly as I can. So what I introduced was cut team captain, so I invested in some captains armbands from eBay, we would like to think of a dead centre for five or something. So each team have other team captain each lesson, and that that same capital is rotated every lesson and ensure that the that the students who are new were most likely to disrupt it or not buy into it with the captains for the first team so that they got a bit of responsibility, they knew that they were going to be representing their team. So they did that with a bit of pride. So that was the first thing I did. And also, at the end of each lesson, when I’ve collated all the, all the points and things about how they’ve done, then what I did was, at the start of next lesson, I had a league table, so like a mini league table. So at the start of each lesson, one attend me whiteboard monitor on the screen, we’ll come in, and, you know, when when whiteboards come on the sort of fade in, they’ll put it on the screen, they want to be like looking at it, looking at the
the Delete table and your chair, and if they were in the lead, and maybe at this point if they if they weren’t near the top. But what I would also do is I’m done a way where you sit ethically on this, but I would fix it a little bit, so that everybody was very, very close. So that because, you know, if one’s one team were lagging behind them, there’s no incentive for them to carry on into the show. I wanted to make tactical with it to be honest and have been ever since just to ensure that everyone’s bought into it, everyone’s taking part. But what the beauty of it and this, I would say that in my teaching career of 16 years, this the thing I’m most proud of, because when it comes to what once the once the students have bought into it, you can visibly see that they’re all engaged, you can visibly see you could get get them a task and say, Okay, well, this is a task where we’re actually competing against everyone else in the classroom. And the students will be like, okay, even though you know, the most, most disengaged boys are awake in a way. But they start to manage each other. The beauty of it is they start to self manage themselves, their own behaviour. And then if the if it teammates, it is not behaving well or not not putting the right efforts in, because they know they can lose points because there’s a collective, you know, collective entity, isn’t that a team game. And then the same common, you need to make sure you’re doing this because it’ll take a while. It just works so well. And so once they’ve bought into it, it just looks after itself. And you don’t really have to do it’s just you facilitate the room rather than, you know, rather than having to sort of pick pick students up on the poor behaviours. Well, it’s something which I said, I would say is probably the thing that I’m most proud of, over the course of my teaching career, because it’s something which I know that if I’m not getting through to a particular class, and it’s usually it’s the boys who who aren’t buying into what I’m doing, then I can I can wait Willis, I wish I could just say, right? Well, what we’re gonna do, I’m gonna try this. And funnily enough, I remember the year nine French group about this about three or four years ago, and as a ladder, no, it was probably the most poorly behaved boy in school, really was terribly behaved. And I’m not saying that in my lessons. He was an angel. He wasn’t. But what I remember in year 11, I was at the prom, and he hadn’t taken the answer. He was friends. He hadn’t taken French for three years since he and I. And he said to me, I used to love your lesson here. And that game we played and he still remembered it. And he was like, I used to love and points and that was not that he didn’t say it was really motivational. It really didn’t say it like that. Of course he didn’t. But he said he looked forward to that competition with him. And that’s good enough for me. I’m not I’m not I wasn’t attempting to make him you know, into the world’s best linguist. But what I was trying to get him to do was to engage in my lessons and he was engaged. So that’s LaLiga the league something which I found as a as a long term reward is worked really well.
Craig Barton 34:48
That’s brilliant. I love the sound. So I’ve got a couple of questions, a few of them obvious ones. And first, like, how do you know it works? Did you have anything to compare it like did those kids just hear me compelling story about that? Oh, I’ve tears in my eyes here. But I’ve just with the group as a whole, did they perform better than perhaps they would be expected?
Jon Mumford 35:08
Yeah, funnily enough, I had a TA, I’ve usually got ta with those lower ability groups, don’t you? And at the start, I remember, I wish I remember what this this lads said when he when he first entered my my group in year nine, he looked around the room because because it sets it looked around the room and he said, All this group’s heavy, isn’t it? Because of all the characters? And then I thought, Oh, God, is that going to be that bad is it. And the teaching assistants said this class are a nightmare across the school. But the feedback she was giving us this is really working. She was saying this game is something they talk about in other lessons, and they ask other teachers, can we play a game that we do in French? So and I know that, you know, sort of speaking to the teachers, and, you know, secondhand third hand that it works. And I’d say in terms of the I wouldn’t say that, in terms of the the engagement with the students, that that’s not the thing that I’m holding, if we’re looking at the, how they perform, I wouldn’t say there’s a massive difference, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say that, you know, those students who are taking French when they weren’t going to take French before, that’s not what I was in it for. I was in it for ensuring that the students were engaged in my lesson. So they were getting something out of it, they were they were working hard, they were getting something from it. But what the one thing that I did always do with those lower ability groups was have a sort of cultural side of it, because they struggle with the language side of it, either cultural elements, or almost all of my classes with those groups. So ensure that they were appreciative of other cultures, and that, you know, just developing their knowledge that way rather than the linguist because the linguistic fight, unfortunately, was not for them, really. But just broadening their horizons, thinking about the well being bigger than, you know, the four walls of our classroom was really important for me and getting them to engage in that debate when it comes to, you know how important languages are and where they sit in their lives. Because a lot of the students that have dealt with a lot of that asked us bordered on the xenophobic, quite quite a lot of the time, which is really sad. But I would say that engaging them this way and getting them to engage with whether it was a reading task, or even, it could even just be a video that I’ve shown and I’ll ask them questions on the video about how people live in, you know, in other countries who speak French, whoever it might be. I can just save it and No, probably not. You want it you want some immeasurable, don’t you but all I can say is we’ve got I’ve I can see from that from the students engagement. And that was that was all positive really.
Craig Barton 37:34
And really obvious question me, well, what about the kids who either don’t like footy or don’t like the competitive element was was that an issue or not?
Jon Mumford 37:44
Not really, no. Football was obviously the first way in are utilised. But I did. What else did I do? I did monuments, so monuments across Europe. So they’d like the Eiffel Tower, on the bed gate, things like that. So they were representing that they represent countries so that I think there’s a well cop out at one particular time. So it’s always Spanish speaking countries. So it doesn’t have to be to do with football, it just, it just lends itself well, because that particular group that I started it with, they primarily love football, I don’t know whether you probably you might be asking me in a second, you might be thinking about the girls in the classroom as well how, how they reacted to it. I always think that, you know, when you when you say to students, we’re gonna play a game now, because I know that you boys ready to be really competitive, the girls are competitive as well, the girls want to win as well. It’s not, it’s not just some, you know, trait that the boys have girls, you know, like, like competing as well. And I found that in the lessons that as long as the girls are in the right group, and usually they do like to be with another girl, at least one other girl in the group that they buy into as well. And they get as much out of it as the boys do. So I say some of them, which I’ve been really proud of, and something which is before, seems to work all the time. And it’s something which I can just rely upon as being something which will maybe tell a certain set number of students around and I know that over that eight week period or seven weeks, whoever it might be in a term that I’ve got them when I want them and then obviously the beauty of that is that you get a better relationship with them then once once they’ve opened up a little bit and they’re competing, you can have a bit of what used to be a band support, you can have a bit of a conversation with them, you can have a bit of relationship with them. They’re more likely then if you try something else with them to go with you on that. But that’s just been been something which I said before is that I’ve seen play out in reality that because one of the things that I’ve done with them as well on the back of that is that once it’s over the students what we’re gonna do an hour because it’s called back to the phone and messenger with them and before can we so one of the things that I did was I called that little magazine, the Mumford what what was that mean? No magazine, magazine, you should know. shop. Shop. There you go. So so what I did was I called it, I called it I call it law magazine them and so what I did was same prints support. So your endpoints are, in fact, that was your roles that printed off all random, euros, fake euros. And I said, you can add your own for the same principles that I mentioned earlier on. And then at the end of that eight weeks, I’ll bring in a certain number of crisps and drinks and things. And you, if you order them in French, or gave them a bit of help with the French as well, then you can, you can buy certain things. So everyone was involved in that level, because everyone was in in euros, there was no sort of winner as such. But they could all they can all buy into that as well, literally buying.
Craig Barton 40:33
So, a few things to say this is just gonna be a big, long rambling point, mate. So God knows if there’s any sense in this at all. One thing that feels really powerful about this is that it’s a long term reward as you say, you’re not having to reward them at the end of each lesson or anything like that. And then it doesn’t become about the short term, it becomes about the long term that feels important. And the other thing that feels important is that the points are awarded for a variety of kinds of behaviours that you want to see in the classroom. You can imagine with like a mixed attainment group, if you are always giving points for correct answers, it’s always going to be the same kids at the top and stuff. But it sounds to me like you’re rewarding kids for behaving well, being considerate, put in the hands of asking questions, and so on. So that feels like an important
Jon Mumford 41:15
part of this as well. And as I said that started because the team captains played an important role as well, because that because they were cyclical, they would get and change these lessons, you could see that the more able students really helping the less able students as well. And you could see that the less able students growing, you know, having that responsibility as well from from, you know, not really contributing watching lessons to then having that responsibility. Obviously, some students are quite shy at first, aren’t they? But when when they can see that they’ve got a question right in their teammates as hell well done, you’ve answered some points there, you can see the confidence growing visibly.
Craig Barton 41:51
It sounds like when I first listened, I think and this is gonna be quite hard for you to be recording keeping track of all these points and so on. And I also was thinking just before you said it about if the groups at the bottom, it’s really demotivated, but it sounds like as you say, you’re, you’re fiddling it a little bit? And maybe you’re not that obsessed with tracking every single point here, there and everywhere happy, right?
Jon Mumford 42:10
Yeah, it is right, what what I did one one issue that I did find actually somewhat taking the points down was, you know, what I usually was up by prints off the of the seating plan written out or printed out. And then I use that a bit of a tally chart for the points. But then obviously, you know, day to day life, you know, you’d like I haven’t printed off that haven’t printed off the charts, what we’re going to do, so then you use like a whiteboard or something didn’t work. So what I did was I laminated the seating plan. So that whenever it was, it was in less like a little clipboard so that the students knew that was like an official thing as well. So I’ve looked clipboard, make the notes. And then at the end of the lesson, put the points into that lead table, and then just always just wipe it off and go to the next lesson.
Craig Barton 42:50
That’s really nice, final couple of points you made on this. The group norms feels like a really important part of this, as you say you’ve got kids are always always going to try and disrupt things, but the power of the group that if you can get those kids on board short term, and then the group dynamics take over and stuff that that feels really powerful. And it reminds me of Sammy Kempner, who came on the show has had a massive Totteridge Academy. I’ve been a group word sceptic for many years, but but Sammy really got me on board here. And one of the things he talked about was how the group was really responsible for the performance of the individual so much so that he said that, and this blew my mind this it asked me a kid a question in the in in a group. And if that kid got it wrong, the rest of the group would dad essentially because he was blaming them for it because like Why doesn’t he know this? You know, we’re working together on one. And again, it feels to me like these this fits in perfectly well with this it really Foster’s really strong group dynamics and everyone’s looking after each other because they’ve got that added incentive to
Jon Mumford 43:50
it’s one of those as well, where you’re, you know, you’re looking at a kid and you’re thinking, that kid doesn’t want to be here. That kid doesn’t like this lesson. And then you see them as you’re observing or as you’re walking around the room, really engaged helping somebody else and you’re like this, this is working and this this is something which you need to know to build upon. But yeah, definitely those were
Craig Barton 44:11
okay, mate. Tip number three, please.
Jon Mumford 44:13
Okay, tip number three, is the use of debt as a post assessment formative tool. So I remember years ago, and then whether you might have been at this meeting. It was a teach meeting that we have at our school, and I’m gonna teach you from calderstones High School in Liverpool came to speak to us and she was talking about debt and nobody had heard of it before. So dedicated. I mean, it’s number of different titles and it’s dedicated improvement and reflective time is what I take it to meet to stand for. I think I’ve had dedicated, independent reflective time. There’s a number of different things that describe it. But it’s been a game changer for me in my lessons because you The way I’ve used it is that the whole purpose of it is to start a dialogue with the students and try and highlight some I know that you you love your misconceptions. I don’t know, what have you have you ever heard of a misconception before, I’m sure that you’ve heard of it a couple of times. And so it was to give, give students an activity, which, you know, heart might highlight one of those misconceptions, or it might get students to discuss the importance aspect of that, I understand why that is to get them to have a lot of think about it, habit of think about maybe those common errors that they might be making, and discuss it with their peers. And I always think that I my most enjoyable moments in a classroom is when I’ve set them with their activities that their activities I usually do are, I might take a piece of work. And there might be five areas that I pick out from various people’s piece of work. And I just put them on the board. And I’m just like, Okay, what’s the area in the census? That’s straightforward. Sorta, you talk to your partner, for the next 510 minutes. And we’ll discuss what we think the common error might be. And I said, my best moments, my most precious moments in a classroom, or when I’m not teaching, I’m just walking around, and I’m listening to these high level conversations. And I know it’s language based, but how how French or Spanish works, the intricacies of how the language is structured. And sometimes I think I would never have heard you speak in in that way. In those terms about French or Spanish, whatever it might be, if I hadn’t done this task, because you very rarely do it in a language classroom, especially, you don’t get that much time to either speak the language or to offer answers, because unfortunately, there’s 30 other students in the class or fighting for that, you know, that that air time. But those if you can have a collective, you know, a collaborative activity, like a bet activity, where the students are discussing it together. And I just think it’s such a powerful, powerful tool. And to be honest, it took us time with diversity questions as well, because I have the same experience when I use diagnostic questions, because I set it off to the students and just say, Okay, well, which is the right answer? And can you have a little discussion on what those are the three, what what trap of the fallen into it, those are the three there, and the conversations that you often don’t give the students of credit to you because you listen to them? I’ve not even thought of that. That’s a brilliant that I’ve not even thought of that has been a possible answer. So I just, I love using debt, at the start of that, especially after an assessment, because what I’ll often do is, I’ll take those five senses out. And if you’ve got a nice relationship with the students, you can say to them, you might even recognise one of your own senses here. But if you remember it well enough, then you can ask that students after they’ve had a conversation with someone, you recognise that one? And they’ll say, Well, I don’t know yet. What do you think it might be having spoken to your partner? What do you think it might be? So I just want and not a massive, you know, Game Changer on Earth, and, but to be honest, it has been for me, it’s probably not saying it’s going to revolutionise anyone’s teaching. But at the end of every assessment, once I’ve marked the assessments, I will do with this activity with the students just to ensure that as a group, that we’ve understood what those common areas might be. And the better. As with diagnostic questions, the more we discuss the areas, the common areas, the less likely the students are to meet them, because the better at recognising them and then preempt them. So yeah, so that is from that which I love using do you use that watching? And
Craig Barton 48:23
what are we Yeah, the thing is, it’s one of those that has just been, it’s got so many different meanings to so many different people I’ve, I’ve seen it used so many different times. But for me, the power has always been focusing on those common errors, as you’ve described there. But I’ve often seen it simply being used as time in class where kids just go through and respond to the individual feedback. And that comes back to the issues that we’re talking about in your first tip, where that’s very hard to get the kids to engage in that individual feedback against the father. And whenever I’ve done that I’ve spent my whole time just running around the class trennis either respond to questions, or actually get kids doing something, and it’s never worked. But I really like this idea of focusing on on the common areas. So just to dive into the logistics of this mate for a second, would you so this is essentially whole class feedback, right? In I type of whole class feedback. So you’re marking up the books or the essays or whatever. And you’re keeping a note of spotting common themes and you’re coming up with you know, three, four or five common errors that are happening throughout there. Are you giving the books back first before you do this activity are you holding on those?
Jon Mumford 49:31
Yeah, I’ll give the the exercise box back and I’ll just say right, open up your box on the next page. And again at the door whether you’re whether you’re like using different coloured pens and stuff, but I just use green pens for birth that time especially because SLC can see that straight away when
Craig Barton 49:45
you get this
Jon Mumford 49:48
number out Yeah. And then what I’ll do is I’ll write the five senses on the board in black panels. See to make copy these sentences out incorrectly so that the senses are incorrect as they stand up. Probably the most incorrectly leave a line underneath. And then with your colleague with with the person sat next to you have a little discussion about what you think the error might be. And if you’re confident if you’ve got the error rates, then in your green pen underneath, right there by the corrected sentence out, and then after five or 10 minutes, we go through them together and obviously pick on various very students to talk me through as to before, I would try and choose the students who’s made the error initially to see if they’ve reflected on it well enough.
Craig Barton 50:26
It’s really nice as I’m a matt, as you know, I’m a massive fan of misconceptions and errors just in general in discussing them
Jon Mumford 50:32
starting a website.
Craig Barton 50:37
This is Dan over ramble AMA, I don’t know if there’s even a question as part of this. But one thing I found really powerful is it’s great for differentiation because you could have a kid who’s got their essays perfect, or in my case, they’ve got 10 out of 10 in their in their homework, and you’ve got another kid who’s either has done a really poor essay, or is that an absolute nightmare in in the math exercise, but they can still get something out of this because the child has struggled, their focus is on trying to identify that error and correcting the error. Whereas the child has done really well, their focus, once they’ve identified the error, I often say to them, okay, how would you explain to somebody or support somebody who’s made that error? How would you can you understand the error? And how would you convince them not by just saying, Look, this is how you do it? How would you get them to resolve that misconception? So it doesn’t matter what kind of level you access this, there’s something in it for everyone, if that makes sense?
Jon Mumford 51:26
Yep, definitely, that’s the beauty of it, everyone’s involved out there. And no matter what their ability level, they’ll contribute something about me. And quite often they’ll surprise, they’ll surprise you. As I said before, they’re surprised at the level of thing, the level of thought that they’ve got what I said, the thing that I found most most useful in languages is that you can predict, you can predict the mistakes that they’re gonna make, that’s the thing in life, you know, that they’re going to the end of the day, it’s gonna be wrong. So if you can get them looking out for those, so that when they, when you’re doing an activity like that, looking out for the endings of those verbs, or they’re looking for the word or whatever it might be, when it comes to their own written work, they’ll subconsciously know that they’ve got to pay attention to those those aspects of the syntax.
Craig Barton 52:06
It’s really nice display. And, yeah, in terms of the you made a really key point there about the fact that the kids will surprise you. Whereas if you’re trying to differentiate, like really explicitly, like, one kid will get this worksheet one kid or get this task and so on. But you’re just playing a guessing game, whereas this, every child has got that that opportunity, and kids will surprise you the other way. Right? You the kids who you think you’ll have a real good grasp of this? Yeah, actually won’t do. So it’s, you know, the, yeah, the other thing I was going to say is, if you mark a piece of work, and perhaps you don’t see like certain areas that you know, you’ve seen in the past, will you be tempted to kind of chalk those in as part of dirt? Or will it always be related to things you’ve actually seen in that pot piece of work, it’s
Jon Mumford 52:46
so before, it’s usually related to the things that I would have seen in assessments. But just the way, the way languages work, as I said before, you can predict the types of mistakes you’ll make. So if you haven’t seen that mistake for a while, you might just you might just throw that one in. So you might just make one up, for example. But one of the things that I’ve done, and I don’t know what your take on this might be, because when I’ve introduced this to my departments, some of them said, not for that at all. But what I’ve seen, I’ve seen this on, I think was on Facebook or somewhere that I’ve seen it in the past. And it’s still there, it’s still clusters there, but it’s a bed crib sheet. So it’s one sheet, because what one one thing that I’m done what how you fill up market, but marketing is the thing that I despise my profession. And if you there’s nothing more demoralising than taking 30 books into marketing, and I’ve got I’ve got I’m going to work my way through these. So one thing I thought to reduce teacher workload primarily, was a crib sheet. So once you have a four, and on the a4 sheet, there are maybe six or seven different boxes. And then one of the boxes that might be appraised section in one of the boxes might be presentation. One, it might be common misconceptions or class common errors. That might be I think, one of the core, the Polaroid moments where some are produced something absolutely amazing that we want to make a big deal about. And as you’re marking the books, instead of actually individually matching, marking the book and invited into the exercise book, you’re just making notes, you’re flicking through the exercise books, you make some notes about those common errors that they’re making, or anything that you want to highlight. And then the students all get that same same crib sheet back. So you actually name the sheet. So you might even say, you know, the presentation from Craig is not so good here. And I don’t What do you think about that? Naming and shaming?
Craig Barton 54:33
Yeah, it all comes again, I think you’ve alluded to all comes down to relationships, right? If you know the kids and you know the class, it’s it can be a really powerful thing to do. And if you’ve got that culture where we’re all in it together, and sometimes some kids are going to do well, but sometimes I’m not going to do so well, and I think it can work really well. But again, we can only imagine kids for whom it’s going to be an absolute disaster. So yeah, it’s all teacher judgement for me on that one. But that sounds really It sounds a really interesting one. And it’s like, again, when we refer started our teaching career, there was none of this whole class feedback, right? Like it was all kind of it all had to be personalised, individualised and so on. And yet, it saves so much time. And it’s super effective, isn’t it? You know, both looking at the whole class problems, as we’ve already discussed, but also examples of excellence across the cluster, there’s so many benefits to it.
Jon Mumford 55:21
Yeah. And, you know, when, if we go back to the E F report as well, they mentioned things like live marking don’t mean things that which are collaborative pursuits aren’t the where everyone’s involved, everyone’s, you know, getting something from it. Whereas they said, it just doesn’t make sense. It’s not a good use of your time, as it should be, as you said before, going around the room and dealing with every single students. And what I think is really important with with with this sort of feedback, as well as explaining to the students why feedback is so important, why is important with discussing these common areas and get just get them to appreciate the fact that when they’re doing an activity like this, that there’s a real purpose behind that. And it’s, it’s centred in the right place. So I love using data after assessments. But, again, it’s not for it, it’s not for everybody. But I think that you’re right, that as a collaborative way of giving feedback, and getting students to move on and recognise common errors, which are found really useful.
Craig Barton 56:18
And it’s, again, just final point on this. Like, the fact that you’ve got evidence in books is an important thing, right? For Frassati, or whatever. That’s often a problem with whole class feedback that well, well, how does it relate to my work? What have I got a show from this, but the fact that whether the kids are responding to those common errors and having that discussion, or the sticking in the crib sheet, or whatever it may be, there’s, the response has happened from that. And that, that feels like it’s an important part.
Jon Mumford 56:43
They can reference, you know, you can reference those, those are the best activities in the past as well. So you can you can say, well, actually, we did this error that we’ve just made here. We did that in last week, you know, there’s activity, we haven’t looked back, and it’s because it’s in green, you can flick back really relatively easily as well. So, yeah, it does work. Well.
Craig Barton 57:00
Lovely. That might. Okay, tip number four, please
Jon Mumford 57:04
jump. Okay, tip number four, is how to get them writing and peer assessing with group critique. Now, do you remember what group critique is? Do you know what group critique is? No, no. You remember years ago, we went on a course me and you our friend, John Selleck. And it was run by Powell Roberts and mahalo Roberts.
Craig Barton 57:29
Yeah. This is now ringing a bit of a bell. Yeah. Yeah. And he,
Jon Mumford 57:32
it talked about, there was a an educator in the US called Ron Berger, remember, and he showed a video of this thing called Austin’s butterfly. And it’s one of those things, isn’t it? Where a million salary for what it is? Absolutely brilliant. I’ve showed it to my department. But it sounds like people in departments are like in tears. I’ll move into this. What do you want to just give a quick rundown? Explain? Yeah, so Austin’s butterfly is ronbow goes into a elementary school in the US. And the students are tasked with drawing a butterfly or creating the most lifelike image of a butterfly. So he gives them the image and he says, This is what it looks like, Go away in your groups and produce the best version you can. And this law, Austin goes away. And instead of drawing what he should be drawing, he draws the economist in his brain of a butterfly, which is just like a child’s version of a butterfly, like you would expect. And he goes up to the teacher. And he says, there’s my butterfly. And the teacher says, well, it’s not quite what we want it to be. So he says, go out, go go away and have another go. But when you go away, have have your friends around you to try and guide you to try and give you some feedback specifically about what you can do to improve. And the whole, the whole of this critique protocol that he comes up with is the key elements is being specific in your feedback. So the teacher takes a backseat, the teacher facilitated the room. But the students in the room are critiquing each other’s work. So when Austin was that he had to go and gave him a bit of bit of background on what you should do to improve it. You went back to the teacher and he said all that that’s a big improvement. Well done yet you’ve you’ve made it look a bit more like this image, and quote, because a long story short, he goes back a number of times, and he produces like Picasso or something. Now Picasso, that’s a bad example. Because it would have been Would it be all over the place but darling, let’s say darling, so a very good piece of art anyway, and what the what was really powerful was it showed him the two images when he started and where he ended up. They would pose a party or he produced some amazing way. But the thing that was most powerful to me was the teacher that nothing the teacher took a backseat. And it was the students who gave the gave Austin, that specific feedback. Now, when I saw that, I thought that’s brilliant. But in realistic terms, you know, if you’ve got to come As a theatre, you can’t just choose one kid every lesson and just have one go at something. So that was that I thought, okay, it’s a good idea. And it’s very powerful. But how can I utilise that and what the idea that I came up with was using group critique. So getting students to assess each other’s work in the class, but not necessarily just focusing on one one students. So one day, I remember, an ex colleague of mine used to be obsessed with using wallpaper in the classroom. So walk in with a bit of wallpaper, and the students that you’re going to redecorate or something and you roll your roll out onto some, some desks or you push it on the desk, and you roll it out. And the kids are looking at you going, what is going on here. So straightaway, you’re inquisitive, they don’t know what’s happening. So it’s something different. So you roll out onto the desk, and you explain to them just like it was a flight that you’re going to show them a piece of work, that what they’re going to try and do is try and produce something of a similar quality. So in languages, for example, I might give them a 90 word written task and say, right, this is what a good one looks like. And what we’ll do is we’ll put it on the board, and we’ll spend maybe 10 or 15 minutes discussing it and saying, Okay, well, why is this a good piece of work? And we’ll dissect it, and we’ll discuss together. And as we’re doing that, I’ll make notes on the board. And I’ll say, Okay, well, it’s it’s got three different tenses, it’s got opinion phrase, and I’ll make a big list than the students be able to see that list. And that’ll be visible throughout the whole lesson. And they’ll explain to the students I say, Okay, well, now we know what a good one looks like, we’re going to have a go ourselves. So you sit the students down, in facing the wall papers on either side of the wall paper and the writing directly onto this wall paper, and explain to them that over the course of the next maybe 1520 minutes, they’re going to write their own piece of writing. So you give them the task to do you’ve got the the exam, the exemplar on the board as well to help them and you say, I have a goal with this task. Now straightaway, because and what you do is then you explain to the student, okay, well, in a minute, what’s going to happen, you’re gonna move around, and you’re gonna look at someone else’s work, and you’re gonna give them some feedback. And that feedback has to be kind, it has to be helpful. And most importantly, it’s got to be specific. Now, once you explain that to the students that they’re going to get feedback from someone else in the room, straightaway, the like, Oh, God, I’d love to make this good enough to make this as good as I possibly can. So straightaway, they’ve got pride in what they’re doing. Whereas if you give them a written task, half of them will just be like, well, just, I just need to Lanzi and that’ll be it. So immediately, you’ve got you’ve got that buy in, it’s similar to what I was saying before about the buy in for the, for the league idea. So something different going on, so they know that they’re going to
they’re going to be given feedback from their peers. And what to do is give them some, some post it notes. So once they’ve they’ve read written their piece of work, get them moving around the room, look at someone else’s work, and leave some some feedback on the on the post it notes. Now one thing that when I first introduced there, I thought okay, what I want to have a bit of an issue here when I’ve got a really able students and a week students is marking their way because there’s obviously going to be a bit of a disparity between what the the the ABLE student knows and what the weakest, you knows. But then I consoled myself in the fact that we’ve just discussed together what a good one looks like. So we all know the criteria that’s involved here. And that’s why I said before, really importantly, you have to leave that on the board. So that when they’re going through it, they can say, well, actually, you’ve not included a past tense here when we just decided that a past tense was necessary to get to a grade nine. You need you need a past tense here. So it worked in that way. But I said before, the beauty of it was that because the students knew that other people were seeing their way. They talk the talk real pride and Romberg it talks about an appetite for excellence. I think he calls it an ethic of excellence, I think he’s got a book called ethic of excellence, where he mentions that it fosters an appetite for less appetite to succeed and to do well and be willing to redraft and that’s the key. So what the students then do is when when the feedback comes from their peers, they go back to their original piece of work. And just like Austin, they but as butterfly, they made sure to be willing to redraft it and not not accept that their first attempt at something is, you know, the the final version
Craig Barton 1:04:05
is really interesting this way. So first thing I’ll say is there was a period of about four years where every inset I went to Austin was either wheeled out, or that you remember that monkey, whether they’re playing basketball and a monkey comes in waves, it was like one on one or the other. But you’re right, there’s definitely something in this I just want to dig a bit deeper into this cuz it’s not something I’ve tried before. And a lot of these. What I really want to do on this tips for teachers is interview people from lots of different subjects who have lots of different experiences and try and think well, this worked for mine and well it worked for maths and English teachers watching and so on. So let me just dive into this a bit more. I’m really interesting what you said there that they the kids will take more pride in it because they know someone in their class is going to look for it that that definitely rings true. If your 100 into the Teacher Okay, fair enough.
Jon Mumford 1:04:51
But as funny that isn’t it what?
Craig Barton 1:04:52
Yeah, it shouldn’t be that way. Yeah, but that that definitely I could I could see that definitely being the case. I’m interested stayed in the what two aspects of this? I’d imagine the first time the kids are given the feedback, it’s quite a challenge for them, even though you’ve done the modelling on, while you’ve given them the kind of criteria on the board and so on. How do you get around that? Do you kind of if you see a really good piece of feedback, is it a case of Alright, stop? Everybody have this is an example of good feedback. How do you kind of upskill them in the feedback given? Yeah, it is
Jon Mumford 1:05:23
a bit of a bit of training involved, I think it’s not just doesn’t just happen with the first time you do it. But as I said before, with a number of others, those are the ideas that I’ve given, I’ve given today, if the students are used to doing it, they know they know what’s involved. But I would just be walking around the the wallpaper and just looking what they’re at, and just saying, Well, maybe look at that line there, what do you think they’ve may have not done, they’re just dropping little hints and tips as you’re not giving them the answers. But if we, you know, when you know, your class, you know, he’s gonna give, give some good feedback. It’s another model of excellence, isn’t it, it’s another, if you can exemplify and, and show some good feedback, then you may as well share in line celebrate you and the other students can learn from it. But it’s, again, it’s that idea of sharing those areas, or there are ways to improve with the class and being willing to stop the class. And so actually, this this error that someone’s made here, whilst it’s an error, it’s a brilliant error to make, because there would be a really big reason behind it or you know, because in the exam criteria, it says that you need to ensure that you are using the perfect tense or whatever it might be, and the students not done that. So I say it’s getting them getting them trained up a little bit in terms of the protocol. But what was really surprising for me when I whenever I’ve done it is that I said before the protocol for that Ron Baggett talks about which is Be Kind be helpful as those first two, the students always kind of helpful, but never, never sarcastic or anything like that. The, you know, the, the obviously what a mark is certain persons working or if they’re friends of their friends, or whatever. Well, you can use that just to move along one seat or whatever, if you if you want to avoid that. But I was really, really surprised how helpful they were and how considerate they were of not only the other person’s feelings, but just wanting them to get to the next step and improve their work. But yeah, so check out Austin’s butterfly, if you’ve got, you got to spare five minutes.
Craig Barton 1:07:24
One more question on this for me May is and it’s alluded to something you’ve just said there, I can see this working really well. Once you’ve got that kind of plus dynamic in the class norms, where we are confident sharing our mistakes, we’re all in it together and improve and so on. But you could also imagine some other classes where that dynamic isn’t that kids don’t want other kids looking at their work and knowing it was them and so on. Is there ever a case for anonymizing the work here or in your experiences are always better to the kids know whose work the feeding back to? Well?
Jon Mumford 1:07:56
Did the kids don’t put the names on anything. So it’s, you know, unless you’ve, unless the students remember exactly where the other kids are sat, it’s totally anonymous. So again, they might know that the handwriting maybe the whole idea is that it just you just mark in a piece of work. And it works. If it’s a big class as well, you can just you can say about anyone on this side of the room, you’re gonna be looking at a piece of work on this side of the room. And I haven’t encountered an issue with it as yet. But it’s something you might need to think about as well. But I’ve just, in the past have just had positive feedback from the students how much they’ve enjoyed it, and how, because I’ve used it before we do a writing task. So just to get them right, because that was the whole purpose of the tip was to get them right and so because sometimes boys, especially sugar, we’re just putting pen to paper, but also before if they know that someone else is going to look at it. The bailiff ago.
Craig Barton 1:08:50
Brilliant. Fifth and final tip, please jump,
Jon Mumford 1:08:54
right. This fifth and final tip is going to require me to share the screen.
Craig Barton 1:08:58
So for the benefit podcast listeners, this is a world first on the tips for teachers podcast, and for the video listeners, literally a video of us literally anything could happen here. So this is uncharted waters, right, give us a taste and then we’ll do teasers with the tip and then we’ll share the screen.
Jon Mumford 1:09:13
This will go down well with the audio view as well. All the listeners. So this one’s entitled How to organise the disorganised. Okay, so let me try and share the screen you see that screen?
Craig Barton 1:09:31
I can see I see the Eiffel Tower or Blackpool tight
Jon Mumford 1:09:33
Okay, brilliant. I can’t actually see you now which is well, I was that could be a benefit. So what I’ll say about about this idea, then is that when I was teaching a year Tang group a number of years ago that what they saw with was the idea of revision and how to how to engage in the revision process. And in my previous school But what they did was they did try and get students to engage with the revision process. They set up what I think the what they call the revision hub on on the school VLE. So they set up a revision hub in all subjects were tasked with ensuring it was populated with as many revision materials as they possibly could to ensure that when students went home during the Easter holidays, wherever they had work to do when they could, they could do a bit of revision. My issue with that was with that was that I’d speak to the students and say, did you look at that materials that are put onto the division? How can you be like, what, what revision or? Or they’d say, No, I didn’t know where to look, or, you know, it was like a convoluted way to try and get you to click through a number of screens on the VLE or whatever. The students were using it, they would simply won’t use it as you went to the tech, one of the technicians, the IT technician and said, Is there a way of telling how often students are going on this page? And he said, I can tell you now that I’ve actually done this before and didn’t use it at all. He said, only a handful of students use it. So I was like, What is the point then? What is the purpose behind it? So I thought why don’t have to do is have to conduct a pupil panel. In fact, so you I’m gonna stop sharing the screen. I’ll just stop sharing for a second. Can you see me? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m back. I’m sorry. Just that that will amaze me as well see me ugly face while I’m talking. So this year, Tang group decided to to conduct the pupil panel with them. And and say to them, okay, well, with the revision, what is it? You wanted it, you find that hard? And the most common response I got through and it was primarily boys as well, was don’t know where to start? I don’t know, I know, there’s loads to do. I just haven’t got a clue where to start. So I was thinking, Okay, well, this, the starting point is probably the vocabulary or ensuring that you’ve got a systematic way of learning new vocabulary for from a subject anyway. And they were like, well, I can’t, with this vocab book, you guys were given, like a bold couple that thick and say to them, okay, probably land that. And, you know, they’re not going to do that either. So. So essentially, what we’re trying to do is try and come up with a system where we can maybe learn some vocab, maybe less often, and things like that. So we set up vocab tests and things and they were they were okay with them the not much better than they would have expected in any case. But then I thought, Okay, well, there’s got to be a way to, to get them to focus the revision a bit more and to spend a bit more time on the actual revision process. And it was actually a conversation with a young man called Craig mystic, Mr. Barton master carpenter, I think that’s his full name. That’s his full name, I think. And while I was speaking to you, this is, again, about five or 10 years ago, about six or seven years ago, I remember you said you use Trello, to organise stuff. And I was like, never heard of it. And I’ll be showing you, I think you had like certain number of tasks that you needed to do, probably for your website. And you were saying, Well, what I can do is I can put all the list of jobs that I need to do on this left hand side here. And then I can move them to the doing pile that I’m in the process of doing. And then once I’ve done that, I can move them over there, and I can block them off, and I don’t need to worry about them at all. And I remember, in my household me and my wife adopted that for household jobs. Don’t Don’t worry, it went down like a lead balloon. And well,
Craig Barton 1:13:18
we planned our wedding with it. Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it was touching
Jon Mumford 1:13:23
the arguments that
Craig Barton 1:13:26
I was moving. Yeah.
Jon Mumford 1:13:29
Well, that’s the thing is that the beauty of it is you share it, don’t you share that, that board with other people, don’t you? So you might be working on something like one of my jobs was to put the band out or to redecorate the spare room, which still hasn’t been done. And you see them on that to do list for ages don’t yet if they’re not in the doing pile, and then people have got got a word to say or to about. So I thought when I was using Trello with my wife, I was thinking, Okay, I could use this thing with people who are now really disorganised in my friends group who are now really struggling with organisation. So I thought, okay, what can I do then. So what I did was I will share my screen again with you, I set off Trello. This took me a while to do so I’m not going to say that this didn’t take me a long time. So we did. And basically went through the specification. And I went through every elements of the vocab list and the specification, every topic area as well. And what I did was I gave the type gave the title it matches up with the specification. And if you click on each of these, so for example, we just scroll down here. So if I scroll down to me, my family and friends, which is the first major topic of GCSE, if you click on that, just shout out Craig. If you can’t see this, by the way, I can sign talks to him as best they can. So once you click on one of these areas of this, this red section that I’ve got on the left hand side here, so all the things that are yet to be completed. Then what I’ve got here is I’ve got a list of little tasks for this students to do. So I’ve got here, if you’ve got, like a five minute quiz, you’ve got a memorised Quizlet Quizlet quiz. And these are all linked then to that particular topic area. So once you click on that, or do it now, but once you click on that, that will take you to a Quizlet quiz on me, my family and friends, which will test the students on the vocab needed for that particular topic area. So I was setting the students work to do in order to get them to focus on the revision. But the beauty of Trello, as I mentioned before, is that once you are confident with an area, so for example, say they clicked on me, my family and friends, and they were happy with how they were doing, then they could either move it to the amber section, or they could actually move it to the green section if they think that and we might have done for example, a vocab test, and they’ve got 50 out of 50 on that vocab test and they know it inside out, they’ve done all the tasks that have embedded into the, into that particular card, then they can put that into the green section. And they know that when it comes to their revision in Eastern or whenever they start, they don’t need to waste their time on this, me my family and friends because it’s this stuff over here, which is the the areas that they need to focus their time on. So straightaway over the course of it was over two years and it did it that the popular the way they populated this was you know, you’d have some over here love some in there, with a few more over here. And when it came to revision, the students knew that they just need to focus on these sections here because I’m sure you’re probably the same grade when it comes to going over things you’d like to do the things you know, you’ve got that don’t yet so that a lot of the students are focusing their time on things that they already knew they knew the answers to. And they would they could say to themselves, I’ve just done an hour’s revision, they’re on me, my family and friends, I’ve got full marks. So like, that’s me, don’t ask me French workbook stuff. Whereas in reality, they should be focusing on these things over here. One thing that I really like about Trello, as you said before, is that you can share, you can share the board with other people. So what I would do is I would share this board with one of the students and the students, me and the shoot, we’re the only people who own that board. So I can keep an overview of how they’re doing and if they are actually doing some revision at home. So I can have a look, look, I can dip in and dip out and say, well, actually, you got 30 out of 50 on our vocab test, and you’ve put that into the green section, you need to move it to the under section to the more confident with that area. And by the same token as well, you can actually add parents email addresses in as well. So I’ve used it utilised it to a large extent for parents even it’s just said, Well, you’ve noticed having it on their Trello board, that they’re not really engaged with any religion at all, they need to make sure that that using Trello to know to do some vocab revision or some listening activities, whatever it might be. And then we’re coming out it, you know, a two pronged attack, really. So it’s also on the parents as well. And the parents have often referenced that as well in their, you know, in the conversations that I’ve had, I’ve had with them. But one thing that came out of the
the pupil panels within the pupil panel to start the year 10. And then a pupil panels towards the end of year 11 before they left for their exams. I said soon what, how are you? How would you think you are on course for you for your target grades and things like that. And again, it’s primarily boys that we’re talking about here, they were saying that the thing that has got them to the stage that we’re at, they’re where they’re at, which is on target or above target is using Trello and focusing on their revision, and ensuring that when they click on these different icons here that whether it’s on their phone, or whether their laptop or whatever, they can just do five minutes at a time rather than go into their exercise book or their, you know, their so before their big bold cup booklet that they use, they can just do it on the move on the boss, or whatever they wish to. So that’s something which was, I think Trello is well it’s not it’s not an educational app is it’s not an app that’s designed for education at all. But I think that it can be used in that way to to get people to focus the revision little bit, ensure that they’re spending the time on the things that they need to spend time on rather than wasting precious time.
Craig Barton 1:19:01
was fascinating there. So just a few questions on this might if that’s okay, so just in terms of logistics, you, you create one board. But then what do you do? Can you then copy it, so each kid has access to their own, you don’t have to do like 30 times or whatever.
Jon Mumford 1:19:18
So you have you have to I call mine a master ball. So you have a master ball and then just copy that much of the board. Yeah. And then in a lesson, I would just get the students who are signed up to Trello and then get them to copy that master board. And then they call it whatever their name is. So I’m on my Trello sites looking to put the students names and what they’ve all got their own individual shuffleboard called their name and then they then free to move it around. They would obviously then need to invite you to share that board. And then once you’ve shared that once you and the students are both in ownership of that board, you can both click in and click out it whenever you wish to and so before you can also share it with the parents as well if the if they want to
Craig Barton 1:19:58
and Are you setting it up at the start of the year? So they’ve got they can see the whole course? Or is it just something that you do towards revision time? Yeah, to start
Jon Mumford 1:20:05
at the either start the year 10. Because in year 10, what we do, because there’s such a huge number, I think there’s over 3000, where you’ve got to learn at GCSE. You can’t do it all overnight, can you so it’s got to be a well structured programme to learn the vocabulary. So we do a vocab test every week in year 10. And all the same people on Trello. They’re all of all the vocab test vocab is all linked into that. So the students use a cello anyway, just to, you know, to revise the vocabulary.
Craig Barton 1:20:40
So yeah, that I was gonna ask, just in terms of the logistics of the homework, would you you would be, you’d be setting kids homework and the way they would access that homework, like if it was a Quizlet thing or something like that will be to go through Trello. With that, would that be right yet?
Jon Mumford 1:20:52
Yeah, so if it was, especially if there’s a revision for a vocab test, that’s primarily what I’ve been using it for. But obviously, on Trello, there, you can see that I put Quizlet quizzes, and there’s a website called memorise that we’re using languages, you can put any link on there at all. And the beauty of it is that everything’s housed in one place, because that I said before, the issue that the students had when they called it revision hub was they were clicking through a number of different slides and different, you know, different websites and things to get one task. Whereas if they know they’re not very good on family and friends, then there’s a number of tasks, you’re ready and waiting for them
Craig Barton 1:21:25
to tell I’m excited about this mate. You know, I think this has definitely got cross subject potential. So the resources, you can link to website actually, I assume you can attach your documents or something like yeah, if need be.
Jon Mumford 1:21:38
Yeah, I think what one thing that I will say is a bit of a caveat is, it did take me a long time to, to embed everything and get it all set up and things. But once it’s once it’s settled, you know, it’s ready to go. And you can use, I’ve used that the same one, over a number of years. And you can, obviously you can keep adding to it and ensuring that you’re, it’s all fresh in any websites, you find that useful, can just be added on. But the main main body of it is always there once you once you do it.
Craig Barton 1:22:10
And it’s cross platform, right. So the kids can just get it like an app on their phone, or their tablet or on their desktop, or whatever. I also got,
Jon Mumford 1:22:19
I was gonna say one thing that I often do is that the students vocab test would be on like a Wednesday or something, or whatever day it was. And the students will always come in and say, can we spend 10 minutes on trial before you start the test? And I just say, Yes, of course, yeah. Because, you know, some students probably would have done nothing at home, but at least I know, I can walk around and see what they’re doing. And I just give him the opportunity to do a little bit of last minute revision, but at least they’re doing something I say through Trello, you get them into that habit of of doing everything through Trello. Then when it comes to revision, they know that that’s where they’re going to go, and you’ve got a clear idea of what they’re going to do, rather than going on to the school website and just being confused. Because all you know, subjects are different something and they will have different revision resources, and ways to access things. So I just thought I would just have it all in one place. And just have it as easily accessible as possible.
Craig Barton 1:23:14
That’s amazing. And yeah, the final question was just gonna be the cast. As you’re using it. Is it free?
Jon Mumford 1:23:19
Yeah, I think it’s bad. It’s, again, as far as I’m concerned, it’s free yet I’ve not I don’t think unless if it’s every bank accounts, probably at least every month, but it’s, it’s free. I think that was one of the big things that you you said it was free. Because
Craig Barton 1:23:34
it was yeah, I’m just it sounds like you’re using like using it a lot. I wonder whether there’s any limitation, but unless, as I say, unless you’re kicked out your house in the next few weeks, maybe fingers crossed, here it is. That’s brilliant. That sounds like a really, really interesting use of technology. Okay, so now I’m going to hand over to you and because they were five fantastic tips and be anything to plug or anything like that this is your
Jon Mumford 1:23:58
so I haven’t really, I mean, that’s what a show if there was a show plug, that first tip again should make the audio fit because I’m not really I’m not, I’m not done the job of marketing him enough over the past three or four years. The only thing I would say Craig is that for the first time and I’ve started a blog, but it’s it’s I started about four or five weeks ago and I’ve done nothing on it since it’s called Engaging NFL. But there’s one idea on that and it’s one of the ideas of it spoken about today. But I’m going to try and get a bit better at it sorts of you know, enter into debates with with all the other teachers online and things like that I do use Facebook and the other Facebook I do use Facebook quite a lot with there’s quite a lot of good forums on Facebook for for language teachers. there any similar ones and for Spanish.
Craig Barton 1:24:46
Maths, not essentially Twitter all the way for for math, you don’t tend to get along like and unless I’m missing out but just not inviting me to think. But yeah, okay, well we’re gonna put a link to that. that blog in the show notes that’d be brilliant. Brilliant. Honestly, John, this has been absolute pleasure this and you’re the first language teacher on here and that’s loads of ideas that I think certainly will cross over to to non math subjects. But I think lots of those things I can use myself as well. So Jennifer Mumford has been an absolute pleasure speaking to you taskray Great to see you again.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
