I have been fortunate enough to visit the BETT show on many occasions it was here in 2018 that I met Alice Keeler and although I'm not afraid to say that I hadn't heard of her before, I am ashamed that I hadn’t! I think most maths teachers should know about her brilliant work. Although based in America the core principle of what she is trying to achieve is relevant even over here in the UK. How often when teaching in maths are you so busy helping and solving problems and assisting students that you don't have time to spend the quality time that is needed to deepen the student understanding? Alice's approach completely transformed my teaching and took me out of my comfort zone. What I'd like to do is tell you about an example of how I embraced Alice's principles in my teaching. Not all my lessons follow this model but, for those that do, the power it has greatly improved my student feedback and their experiences.
Alice talks about getting students to discover their own learning, "why pretend that Google doesn't exist" is one of her famous quotes. As an adult if you don't know the answer to something you would just Google it. It's the same as when students say, I don't need to know how to work it out, I have a calculator on my phone for that in the real world. We can debate that argument another day! Alice is all about changing our teaching to embrace the technology that is available. Alice asks how can we teach differently in this blog here: https://alicekeeler.com/2014/04/10/we-have-to-do-things-differently/
Reflecting on the inspiration Alice had given me I began planning for doing this differently. I looked at the units coming up and I bravely thought it's now or never! The next day I taught transformations in a completely new way. In my planning I reflected on how I usually teach transformations and asked myself what value was I adding? I demonstrated transformations then got students to do some of their own and make some notes. I asked myself, why was I there? What was I adding to the lesson? Honestly not a lot! With the help of Google they could probably have achieved the same outcome outside of my classroom. I think it’s important to ask now... how often do we teach in this way? A Director I work with is always asking for the return on investment, if you invest time into something make sure you are getting value back. I'm not sure I can honestly say that I have added value to every maths lesson I have ever taught and in these lessons I couldn’t see my return on investment. So I dared myself to do something differently inspired by Alice Keeler.
I must explain I work in a GSuite for education department and am a big fan of the product, as is Alice Keeler. I am a Google Certified Trainer. However, whatever technology your education establishment has could apply in this example too. To teach transformations I created a Google slides presentation with tasks to complete throughout the lesson. A basic example is here:
It asks students to research translations then to curate their list of helpful sites. Curation is becoming an ever important skill and I really encourage it at every opportunity. Students then answer a GCSE question. The presentation continues asking students to evidence revision techniques for revising translations as well. I am too controlling to let them leave without evidence in their learning by attempting an exam question. This may be wrong on my part but I am who I am! Interestingly across my learner's there were some very different approaches to the task. My dance students would insert video clips, songs, sounds and raps that they'd found on YouTube of people talking about translations and transformations. My sports students would cut and paste images from the internet into their work. My art students would write notes and make interesting infographics. I wrestled with the amount of cut and paste, is it ok that they were just cutting and pasting things from the internet into their work? Does this evidence that they have understood what they have researched? I didn't have the answer to this but I would discuss it with colleagues and it was a brilliant student teacher that was working with me who said well what do they do normally? Well normally, I answered, they copy down my notes from the board. It was then it struck me... I don't normally have any evidence that they have understood what they have copied from the board so what difference does it make that they have copied something from the internet and inserted it into their work? At least this way it was their choice of what worked best for them in terms of making notes. Feel free to disagree, I'm still undecided as definitively where I stand on this, but I accepted the cutting and pasting was ok in this lesson.
I then would ask them a GCSE question, typically a describe a transformation question and I would give them feedback on Google slides. If you are unfamiliar with using Google slides and Google classroom and the tools that it has for giving feedback and I will discuss these in a later blog post. What happened in every lesson that I did this activity in, all the learners were sat quietly working happily on a computer. Yes computers are not always available, but they could access this on their phones. Students would sit quietly working...brilliant! This was just what we wanted! I was then able to, as Alice does, spend quality time with students in a one to one situation. I could go over previous work, the topic of transformations, general revision, whatever the student needed. There is a risk in this approach that some teachers may choose to sit at the desk twiddling their thumbs but there is a risk that some teachers would take the easy option in every lesson. In teaching transformations this was able to spend 10 15 minutes, a really lengthy period of time, going over things with them. We did the full four transformations in this way so we had a series of lessons where the rest of the class were learning while one was out at the front with me.
The learner feedback afterwards was amazing they all said they thoroughly enjoyed the activity, it was a nice change from what we normally did and they were really appreciative of spending quality time with me. It's like your kids at home you know yourself if you really devote the time and do a quality activity with your children at home that carries a lot more weight than a quick McDonald's on the way back from the shops, well it does in my house anyway!
I was feeling very pleased with myself, I had done something different, the learners have learnt and had quality time from me. The verbal feedback was positive but then I asked in a typical four in a bed channel 4 programme style would you do this activity again? Would you prefer more lessons to be done in this way? And overwhelmingly the response was no! I was heartbroken! I had spent time on it, what was my return on investment? Being really brave I asked some of the more chatty students why they didn’t want any more lessons like this. They said they missed me, my input and my explanations.
Reflecting on the student feedback I kept asking myself, how could they be missing me when we were spending quality time together? Was it me they were missing or was it each other and the general classroom atmosphere they were missing? Alice promotes collaboration. Had I missed a trick by not getting them to collaborate? Would they have been able to do the work collaboratively on this topic? Did they need teaching how to work collaboratively first? I could go on but I still have so many questions that as yet I don’t have the answers to. Next time I plan to add in a more collaborative element to see if it’s the class rapport that was missing. I enjoyed the experience and so did my learners. I think the return on investment was fair and enjoyed spending quality time with my students. Could I teach a whole GCSE programme in this style? Probably not. Could I teach more lessons in this way? Definitely yes!
