I can't live without levels

I am trying to map out progression through the working scientifically ideas, I can't do that without looking back at the work that has gone by on levels and APP.

I can't help thinking about progression of students as being in levels or stages. I can't help but think that there are levels of difficulty in tasks and levels of outcomes to activities.

I have an idea about what I want my students to be able to do at the end of Year 9. How do I get them from the level they are at when they start Year 7 to the level I want them to be at the end of Year 9, but by a series of steps or levels?

Scrapping Levels: Opportunity or Threat?

I have read a few things lately about the use of levels in schools that help me to understand why some teachers and managers are happy at their demise. However, these comments also make me feel that we need something to replace levels.

If schools and teachers are using levels and not using the information to inform intervention and support progression, then I would agree levels are not fit for purpose. But I would question why they would not.

I am not really interested in measuring students; schools will need a way to do this. They can use grades A-E as I had when I was at middle school (before levels) and compare students against other students in the school. An A or B grade will keep parents happy. Tracking can be done through percentages and scores on tests. If schemes of work are built where content gets harder then we'd assume that students are progressing in their studies if they get more than zero in a test?

I would agree with those who question the use of levels in reporting. I would ask: 'how honest are the levels we report to senior management and parents'? And I suggest the answer is not very. Is it possible to accurate to within a sub level? Are students always learning at the same level and does that level get incrementally bigger each term? In the case of science, I would say not. So why does a good proportion of reports, I have seen, imply this is the case?

Another question would be 'how confident are teachers with level descriptors'? In my experience, not very! I have watched lessons that were engaging and entertaining, but not above level 3. I have seen levelled objectives that were not levelled correctly. I have worked with many teachers who couldn't describe level ladders even in a simplified version such as 'identify', 'describe', 'explain', 'use key ideas', and 'link key ideas'. Without understanding the levels and progression they represent then levels are useless.

However, how do teachers ensure they are pitching their lessons correctly, how do they know whether some concepts are more difficult than others, how do they know what advice to give to students to help them move forward in their understanding?

I want to take my students from a concrete understanding (level 4) to an abstract one (level 6), how will the teachers of the future know this without having the structure of levels? Will we be taught it? Will it be forgotten?

I won't stop using my knowledge of levels to help my student progress. I won't stop using that knowledge to help students understand the generic outcomes and how to improve their understanding and written work. I won't stop using levels to understand where to pitch the difficulty of my lessons.

What will the science teachers of the future do to help them understand the difficulty and progression in key stage 3 science? I am concerned that the 'scrapping' of levels means that we are throwing away the idea of progression in the thinking of our students and instead of helping students to understand more difficult concepts we will just expect students to know 'more'. This is not the same.

What is more difficult, understanding the particle model or understanding balanced and unbalanced forces? What constitutes a higher level of knowledge, remembering the first 20 elements of the periodic table or being able to explain the difference between metals and non-metals?

I don't ever believe that if a system isn't working we should just throw it away before firstly considering what the problem is and secondly thinking about why the system was introduced in the first place. We need to ask ourselves what Paul Black was trying to achieve in his work that underpinned the idea of levels, and if we are throwing that away when we throw away the level descriptors. I think we are.

Improving your work in science

I haven't had a good experience with key stage 3 schemes of work in the past 5 years. (Until I came across Segue and Wikid from Upd8). I was happy to learn that at my new school, we use the QCA units in my department.

However, now that I am now teaching from the QCA schemes again I am not particularly happy about them. I am won over by the themes and how the UpD8 schemes allow progression of skills and thinking and do not cause the teacher (or me at least) to focus on knowlegde. I think that this helps the student develop into a scientific thinker during key stage 3.

We are not supposed to use levels at school. Dylan William has been listened to and levels are not to be given out. I rely on them see: "are-levels-my-crutch" I need the APP grid to help me give advice to help the students improve. I don't just want to teach content. Science changes, an analytical mind will be capable of working things out, if it is able to develop at school.

So how do I help my students go from "I want to remember lots of things" to "How can I explain this in a more detailed way"?

I have tried. The presentation below contains examples of level ladders that I asked the students to use. But they found it very difficult, and I am not entirely sure why.


I know that now I need to use my questioning and dare I say "academic mentoring" to move the students on towards more independence in their thinking.

I can't get away from using levels. Even those that use SOLO are assigning a level, it just isn't a number, to their students and/or their work. The levels are labels to help us as teachers, and it helps lad mark the progression.

My previous post shows the type of activity I am doing at the moment. http://geordiescience.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/trying-to-develop-thinking-in-classroom.html I hope that by using APP explicitly I can help the students to realise that only be thinking and adding detail to their answers can they improve in science.

It worked before, can I get it to work again?

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Location:Easton-in-Gordano,United Kingdom

Are Levels my Crutch?

I read in this month's copy of "Education in Science" that levels are unlikely to feature in the new re-write of the national curriculum.

There are so many issues with levels and grades. Firstly that students think that they are a failure if they don't get a certain level or grade. Parents too get hung up on grades. Secondly there are teachers who don't know what it means for a student to be at a certain level and what that level looks like. This knowledge gets even less confident at GCSE.

I have already written a blog post about using APP to help students to engage in their learning. Moreover, levels have helped me to understand the progression of students, the subtleties of what I am teaching and how I am teaching it.

I can't imagine teaching without levels; it will be a big shift, but not necessarily for the worse.

Using APP (badly) to improve engagement in my classroom

This year I have been teaching a course called Segue to my year 9 students. I have used Wikid before, a course from the same people for year 7 & 8, but I haven't been as impressed by that as I have by Segue.

For those who don't know the course consists of two or three lessons followed by an APP assessment. The lesson plans are thorough and included objectives that give a detailed picture of the ideas the students should be using.

After the first few teaching cycles my students latched onto the APP level criteria from the assessments. They wanted to get better. On top of this one of my groups starting getting upset and put off science because they were "the bottom set". So I started sharing APP levels with the groups in every lesson by writing them on the white board during my break or lunch before the lessons.

I would pick a stand of one of the assessment foci and write up the level 3-6 or 7 sentences corresponding to that idea.

Yes, the students were still interested in numbers: "does that make me level 6?" was asked quite a lot. "Could you do that independently?" is my reply to that question, followed up with "but now you know what to do next time to get to level 6".

By using APP in this way I was able to engage my groups, increasing their motivation and confidence. It has been an incredibly useful tool encouraging students to ask "what do I need to do to get better", and this was a regular question in my lessons.

There are a lot of statements in the key stage 3 APP grid; I just keep a laminated colour copy in my teaching files. I have started to pick up patterns and find strands that I like, but still don't know it that well. I have to plan the assessment into the lessons, but the rewards have been well worth it.

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Location:Cabot Close,Bristol,United Kingdom