More tips from Tom Sherrington
Video transcript
right tom tip number five please okay tip number five set occasional open response tasks and i stress occasional because this isn’t something you do a lot in fact it only really works really well if it’s a special status which is that it’s occasional so open response tasks are things where you ask the students to report some learning or do something in a form of their choosing without too much structure to it which of course inherently brings a risk that the structure some students will find it harder than others so you have to think about that but what it means is that you you don’t mandate the outcome exactly and so students have to make some choices and sometimes they just can go crazy and you get some incredible responses so i would say in my time teaching the best work i ever saw students do was through this task so because they just went to town on a bit of learning and they would just blow your mind with their effort and if you always prescribe everything you kind of put a limit on it because you think well i can’t make everyone do this incredibly expansive thing but if you say you know do whatever you like or so i i have some examples i often do this in training about stretch and challenge for example and i’ve got some great examples to show so one of my all-time favorite one was two boys in year seven who were eleven when i taught re and um at the end of each unit where we taught lots of in knowledge i would say okay so now summarize the unit in any form you choose and some students would do like a kind of little pamphlet guide to you know the key aspects of christianity or islam but these boys some some people made a video which was really interesting a couple of powerpoints which i would try to discourage because everyone if everyone does a powerpoint you don’t want to watch them but these boys made a website they said can we make a website i said i don’t know can you make a website they said they said yeah we did it in year four and we know how to make websites so i said okay i thought it would be absolutely ridiculous but it was amazing and it’s just they made this incredible website called embracing islam and it’s got all these tabs explaining uh the science you know islam and science marriage ceremonies um misconceptions of islam um the five pillars of islam it’s got embedded youtube clips of them performing the different rituals in the five pillars of islam the next term they upgraded and they made uh embracing christianity and it says from the award-winning creators of embracing islam it’s just epic it’s got a tab comparing islam and christianity these boys are 11. and it’s like that’s an extraordinary thing to be able to do but if i had if i just followed the scheme of work which just said you know they would never have done that they’ve never had that opportunity they’ve never that was just one of several examples i could give it’s just and just sometimes you think wow that’s just isn’t that great another example a girl in year eight i taught for science and they had we’ve done a unit on a selective um breeding and inheritance and i just said i want you to come up i want to tell the story of a kind of an animal or a species or a you know plant of your choice to tell you tell its story in terms of selection natural selection and she chose dogs because and she she made this really like a youtube video like a like a bedroom like a youtuber it was her in her bedroom telling everyone about selective breeding of dogs and how they’re the same species they’re not different they’re but they’re just being bred to look different i swear to god i’ve never heard her speak so long in a lesson she gave this extended answer she explained it brilliantly she was really passionate and when she played the video in class people were sort of like is that you that’s just amazing you know so much and you’re so enthusiastic i literally i thought i totally changed my perspective you know perception of her again it was the opportunity to do it in a special way now you wouldn’t do that week in week out so you have to set up you say here’s the task this is what quality looks like but this is this this would be low quality this would be high quality so but and leave some room for choices to be made and of course there are some students so you know like you’re not if you’re struggling just do this it’s sort of a bedrock kind of structure for you because you’ll need that but you let it happen and then celebrate what you get and in my opinion it because it’s so occasional it doesn’t even matter if everybody even does it really it’s just that some children really took the opportunity and bring in amazing things and then you can celebrate that look what we can do and the others get the idea and then they’re more likely to do it the next time i just think it’s just a lovely feature of a flow of lessons that you give students that kind of opportunity to express themselves and and they rise to it it’s lovely that tomorrow i’ll tell you two errors i’ve made with this in the past so one you’ve alluded to there’s the powerpoint error so in maths i’ve had students um do a kind of uh each each pair of kids was allocated a topic to do like a revision presentation on and then present it to the class the first first time you watch you know first ten minutes of the lesson is is quite good because it’s a refreshing novel but by the time the seventh powerpoint is is on you are bored out of your mind the kids are bored out your mind it’s a disaster waiting to happen so that’s error number one so i love the fact that there’s a variety of approaches i really like that error number two and i’m interested in your take on this is i then got bogged down with trying to assess it i think that was a real problem i’m thinking all right if i’ve set this task and the kids have put effort into it there needs to be something to come out of it for the kids so do they need a grade do they need a level what am i doing here and then it becomes incredibly difficult because you’ve got some kids doing a website some kid’s doing a powerpoint blah blah blah is assessment important here or is it more just that kind of the process of doing it that’s important oh it’s definitely the process is the most important and if you kill the process with the assessment it creates a spirit remember it’s you know they’re going to do tests they’re going to do other stuff to assess their knowledge on other ways this is a celebration and so you said you affirm you you have a you have a lesson um but where you bring it all in and you celebrate what you have and you you focus on all the students who’ve done it not get bogged down in who has them and and i used to be i used to feel that was a bit of a teacher skill is to kind of like make the students who hadn’t done things feel sort of bad for themselves that they weren’t part of it you know so they’re motivated in the future but you can do things like success criteria it’s a quick kind of like does it and you can get some peer feedback on certain things like does it communicate the knowledge do then communicate it well and i’ve done i’ve done that sort of thing and but you’re certainly saying in setting up it’s like a sort of show-and-tell from the moment it’s like bring it in and celebrate and we’ll and that’s why it’s so like you said it’s important variety it’s useful to have a few things you can look at visually like as well as a few things that have to be presented in time and if they’re all time like all videos all powerpoints all stand up and present it just takes too long so it’s great to have like let’s all get our stuff out and see what we’ve made so it’s a bit of a subtle skill side of trying to engineer that diversity it can’t work though if it’s sort of open response in terms of the selection so i’ve done some lovely ones with say scientists and like you you have a sort of set structure like uh like it sounds enough but it isn’t like a fat file on say you know a weird and wonderful creature when you’re doing natural selection and habitats and people bring and they found this crazy fish and they they’ve they’ve done a sort of display of it and everyone’s seeing the things that they’ve picked and it can be about scientists and you know how do you bring all the stuff into the classroom find out about famous person and their discovery and you do it or post it and we put it around the room that’s one thing i think is again occasional it’s not it’s one of the ten one of the ten homeworks yeah is an open response task that’s great there’s nothing it’s not like instead of doing 30 practice questions it’s a once in a term type deal and then it keeps it in perspective and you can then invest a bit of time in making it good you