Exit ticket AfL

My year 10 and 11 students have files instead of books. I don't really like it, but it is what they expect to have and I don't want to argue over it. (Year 11 kicked up such a fuss when another teacher suggested going back to books, and I was always told "pick your battles").

There are advantages to having files (hole punches don't run out in the same way that glue sticks do). However, this means I don't really get to "mark their books". I mark their homework/prep, but don't take in what they do in class. There are pluses and minuses to this. I have to plan for time to look at their work in class as they do it, and I incorporate more self-assessment into the lesson as there is no other way to feedback on the work they have done, which does mean they get more immediate feedback. It also means that I have less marking.

However, I am not satisfied. I feel that I don't give enough longer answer questions of feedback because I need to have simple work. It doesn't help my student prepare for the 6 mark questions or develop literacy in general.

So I am going to plan to include an opportunity for the students to write freely and hand it in at the end of the lesson as their "exit ticket". I have used the specification to try and write questions that can be differentiated by outcome.

The first attempts can be found under my username on TES resources: http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Exit-Ticket-Worksheet-C2-OCR-Gateway-2011-12-spec-6319894/

It will be interesting to see what the students think, and how they respond. I have deliberately made quite a few initially so that it is easier for me to persist with this.

What is the lesson about?

My current favourite starter activity is "What is the lesson about?". Best demonstrated by some examples in the images below:

Planning using the 5Es (or 7Es) of lesson planning

The 5Es are engage, elicit, explore, explain, elaborate.

When planning I start with elaborate and engage. I decide what it is that I want the students to be able to say/do at the end of the lesson to show their understanding. Then I will think of how to introduce the lesson. It maybe that I want them to explain fractional distillation, so I will start the lesson with images of products made from oil.

For the elicit phase I think about how what science I need the class to have before we can move on. So for fractional distillation they need to understand boiling and condensing.

Explore and explain are the main part of the lesson. I might refer back to the engage section. The students might complete an experiment like how temperature affects the size of crystals formed, working out the efficiency of a kettle, observing a demonstration of fractional distillation, plotting the locations of earthquakes on a map. Then after the students have investigated something for themselves they explain what they found. It might be as a whole class discussion, it could be a Cloze procedure, but something that involves some degree of teacher input to ensure the students are on the right track in their thinking.

Then they need to apply what they have learned in a context in the elaborate phase. This bit is what the lesson is all about. It allows the teacher to assess that students. This is the bit of the work that I would mark.

Sometimes you can do as perfect a lesson as others.

For example F=ma. I could just tell them the formula and get them to do questions. I know ultimately I want the students to answer questions using F=ma, so that will be my elaborate. I now have to think of a context requiring F=ma that the students can answer questions about that can also engage them. Stopping distances might be one, I have a video clip of Jason Bradbury demonstrating that the stopping distance of a car is more than a motor bike. That could be the engage and the students can explain it and carry out calculations about it in the elaborate phase. Before they can explain stopping distances using F=ma students need to understand balanced and unbalanced forces, so I would question them about it in the elicit phase.

For acid/alkali indicators I would dream up a scenario where the chemist needs to know if the chemicals are acids or alkalis. In the elicit phase I might ask for a common acid and alkali. Then we would make an indicator and test it in the explore and explain phase respectively. In the elaborate phase we would use the indicator to test the unknown chemical and the students can write down what they have found in their own words.

I find using the 5Es makes the plenary of the lesson the most important part and encourages me to teach constructivist lessons.

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Location:Bristol,United Kingdom

The Five E approach to lesson planning

Tomorrow evening I will be presenting at #tmclevedon, a Teachmeet at Clevedon school in North Somerset to the uninitiated.

I will be talking about using the 5 E model of lesson planning to help encourage a thinking classroom. I think that it has worked for me this year.
My presentation should be embedded below:



I have included an example of a lesson planned around the experiential learning cycle structure of planning lessons.

Personally, I find that the structure encourages me to do the plenary as the "story"/cycle isn't completed without it. The point of the lesson becomes the evaluation the students do and not the explanation that I give them. I hope this helps to build the thinking skills of my students.

Although I don't have the time or imagination to produce schemes to the quality of the segue scheme, I can still develop lessons and series of lessons that engage and motivate my pupils and help them to understand what they need to do to progress.

EDIT: the evening over ran and I didn't present in the end. It was an hour after it was supposed to finish when I was asked to go on. Next time!


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