Teach Meet – Sharon Porter Consulting

The Never Stop Learning Hub Teach Meet, took place on Thursday 20th March 2014. It was the first to be run by the inspirational @MrOCallaghanEdu and took place at Bristol Brunel Academy.

There were ten workshops and I led one of them with Tom Leahy (@MrTLeahy a fellow Maths teacher). The idea for running our workshop on Differentiated Homework came about due to us considering the differentiated lesson. “We differentiate in lessons so we should differentiate homework…right?” Right!

How can we as teachers insist upon differentiating our classwork and feel justified in giving the entire class the same piece of homework? It can become boring for the more able, consistently annoying for those who are finding the work challenging and it can be boring for the teacher too! To an outsider, it may seem strange that we are not differentiating homework, so what’s happening? Why are we all giving our students the same homework? Let’s consider the “Why? How? & What?” of this homework scenario…

Why do you want students to complete homework?

Practice? 10,000 hours makes perfect (Malcolm Gladwell – Outliers)
To cover more content? The flipped classroom (Bergmann & Sams)

How do you want them do it?

On paper – Will the students (claim to) lose their paper work?
On-line – Do students have access to the internet at home or at school?

What are the next steps?

How can you maintain this level of homework?
How much effort are you putting in when setting and marking the homework?
How can you ensure that your students learn from the homework and not end up with lots of pretty displays? What level of feedback/marking is the most effective (#Takeawayhmk – how can you fairly assess the homework…see Marking #TakeawayHmk part 1; part 2 coming soom.)

Differentiated Homework

Knowing the current approaches that are taken with homework and the completion rates, the following is a list of different homework that can be tried with classes (examples of these items can also be found here).

Two sided worksheet / laminated card
- Basic questions on one side and an extension of the concept on the other e.g. problem solving task – students can do either/or see option 4 http://expateducator.com/2013/06/23/differentiating-homework-for-gifted-students/
On line homework (SAM Learning, MyMaths, ShowMyHomework, etc)
Choice Boards
- More commonly seen KS2 but would transfer nicely to KS3 students e.g. http://www.theartofed.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/elementary-choice-board.pdf
- Templates can be found here http://visuals.autism.net/visuals/main.php?g2_itemId=109
Alternatives to Traditional HW
- Suggestions by the students of Kathleen Cushman “Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us About Motivation and Mastery“
- An example of the grid can be found by clicking here.
Takeaway HW Idea 56 (from “100 teaching ideas for Secondary Teachers” Ross Morrison McGill aka @TeacherToolkit) #TakeawayHmk
Concept Cards – some staff made their own in the workshop…

Poetry Concept Card by @Zedagogy — Top right ‘Poetry’ Concept Card by @Zedagogy

Examples of Concept Cards on Concept Walls can be found here http://mrcavswalloffame.wordpress.com/ & here http://mrcollinsmaths.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/mathematical-concept-wall-examples.html

Rick Wormeli: 'Homework' versus 'Practice' — Rick Wormeli: ‘Homework’ versus ‘Practice’

Another aspect of homework to consider is how you talk about homework to your students. Some teachers refer to this as practice as opposed to homework and as such, this can affect the quality and quantity of homework that is received. For a slightly different perspective, watch this video clip of Rick Wormeli talking about Homework vs. Practice.

Conclusion This workshop was a challenge to prepare but fun to run and differentiated homework will be an ongoing project for me. I intend to trial more approaches to differentiated homework (see Marking #TakeawayHmk) but in the meantime I will try to convince other teachers to do the same. With this in mind, I expect differentiated homework to be a way that students can experience an appropriate level of challenge in their work outside of the classroom…practice or homework; what ever you choose to call it!

Thanks for reading @SPorterEdu

Why did I decide to do a micro-presentation about an ordinary pack of playing cards at the Never Stop Learning Hub Teach Meet last week? (which, if you missed it, was an amazing event!) Well, similar to other educators, my motivation was a student.

A few years back, I had a student who was adamant that they could not multiply numbers (well, they said “I’m rubbish at Maths and I’m no good at timesing” which I occasionally hear…when did saying “times” become the norm? I digress…). I wanted to find a way to help without the student feeling singled out AND I didn’t have loads of money to spend on resources. An ordinary pack of playing cards was the solution.

I instructed the student to remove the aces, picture cards and all of the number tens. Then we sat down in Maths Club and started practising…

5 Hearts x 3 Clubs = 15
9 Spades x 2 Diamonds = 18
6 Clubs x 4 Spades = 24

…until we got through the pack of cards. When we got to the end, we shuffled the cards and started again. Not knowing what combination of cards would come up next, made both of us concentrate. As we got through the pack of cards a third or fourth time, there was an immediate improvement; it worked!

Ever since that afternoon, I use playing cards with students who really struggle with multiplication (most households have a pack). I tell them to practice at home with their families, in front of the TV with their friends or on their own.

Playing cards in lessons

At the Never Stop Learning Hub Teach Meet I made a quick demonstration of what I’ve discussed above, with some rather large playing cards and the help of two handsome assistants (the inspirational @MrOCallaghanEdu and the motivational @ActionJackson – thank you gents!).

As this was not a Maths event, I had to make sure that I had an Ace up my sleeve, some way of showing that playing cards could be used for more than arithmetic and probability in Mathematics lessons. I showed the audience how they could use playing cards in MFL lessons…

…so, I say to the audience “…get the students to pick a card, for example, the 9 of Hearts and tell your student to say what they see or get them to make a sentence that includes that item.” Easy! It doesn’t take long to set up a grid like the one above, it’s just a matter of finding the right images. The beauty of this is that you can use this grid across different subjects and key stages (e.g. Science, Psychology, Geography, Physical Education and so on)

So that was it. That was my 5 minutes of fame…pow! amazing!

Don’t reinvent the wheel…Ideas for using playing cards in lessons

So instead of wasting time making lots of resources, adapt my blank grid, use one of the resources below or just search the internet. Don’t bother buying new cards, just collect any old packs that you find; even if one or two cards are missing…it really doesn’t matter.

Blank Grid with suits (A very basic version that I’ve made for you to populate!)
Foreign Language Verb and Vocabulary Activities Using Playing Cards
Teaching with a deck of cards (Maths)
Acing Math; one deck at a time (PDF)
The Playing Card Warm Up (PE – needs setting up and other resources)
History of Playing Cards

I hope you enjoy the resources and consider trying playing cards in your lessons this week. If you find or make any resources for playing cards in lessons (any subject), please share this with me, via the comments below or on Twitter #PlayingCardLesson. Thanks for reading.