The magic of computer coding

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Is teaching computing in schools just about training programmers for the future, or is it something more? Adam Lipecz considers the liberating power of technology.

"Programming is infiltrating loads of different traditional areas, … Learning how to code allows kids to do their own thing, be creative and secure a job in an area where there will be a huge shortage."

Rachel Swidenbank, Codecademy's Head of U.K. Operations (here)

"I view computer science as a liberal art. It should be something that everybody learns, takes a year in their lives, one of the courses they take is, you know, learning how to program. Because it teaches you how to think."

Steve Jobs in 'The Lost Interview', 1995.

These are visionary people speaking from deep understanding and experience of an aspect of life, and because they feel this is something that they must stand up for.

Last September, teachers of all age groups were thrown in the deep end of teaching computer programming as a mandatory part of the new curriculum. But how confident do you feel about this subject? Could you explain to a fellow teacher why computing is important in the classroom? How can you teach it efficiently and interestingly? What tools should you use? In this article, I will shed light on some possible answers.

The importance of interaction
There was a teacher who shadowed two students over two days in order to experience what it's like to learn in schools today. She wrote of her experience: “I wish I could go back to every class of students I ever had and change a minimum of ten things”.

At one point, she describes what it's like to sit all day listening to lessons, saying: “...Students move almost never. And never is exhausting. In every class, for four long blocks, the expectation was for us to come in, take our seats, and sit down for the duration of the time. By the end of the day, I could not stop yawning and I was desperate to move or stretch. I couldn't believe how alert my host student was, because it took a lot of conscious effort for me not to get up and start doing jumping jacks in the middle of science, just to keep my mind and body from slipping into oblivion after so many hours of sitting passively.”

And as a child's body, so is their mind. If they are forced to sit, passive and motionless all day, how on earth do we dare expect their mind to be active, creative and proactive?

Kids have to be challenged in the classroom - they have to be moved. Why are virtual games and smart devices so irresistible to children? It has nothing to do with screens, buttons or ones and zeroes. First and foremost, they are interactive. They let the kids decide the path of their discovery. For every action (which they can make freely and without any fear of public retaliation), there is a reaction from which they can learn. Second, virtual games are often professional products, meaning they are visually appealing, build on core genetic impulses and operate with subconscious triggers.

This is a great opportunity which lies unused by some teachers - kids love and have grown attached to technology. With the guidance of a tutor, this can be turned to the advantage of both teacher and pupil; a perfect tool to engage and have attention advantage.

Why teach programming?

Technology is all around us - it’s here to stay - and we not only have to get kids ready to use it, but build it too. They might already be digital natives, but teaching them the principles of coding helps them grasp how technology works 'under the hood', and the ultimate goal is to explain how the building bricks of technology come together to create the world we live in.

Programming is a creative, highly interactive process, providing instant and clear feedback - a cornerstone of how kids function, and how they like to learn and discover. It promotes 4C skills (Communication, Collaboration, Critical thinking and Creativity) and helps in learning how to build efficient mental models.

But should every child learn computing? I quote Simon Peyton Jones, an honorary Professor of Computer Science at the University of Glasgow to answer this question: 

“Should every child do it? From primary school? Let me ask you this: Why do we ask every child to learn science from primary school? Not because they are all going to become physicists. It’s because science teaches us something about the world around us; and if we know nothing about the way the world around us works, we are disempowered citizens. Even when you switch on the light, you know that the light doesn’t happen by magic, it happens by electricity that comes along wires, the wires can be dangerous, the electricity comes from a power station, the power station burns fuel, it may cause global warming… all of that is underpinned by the science knowledge you gained at school, whether or not you’re a scientist.”

Computing lessons are not only to train programmers for the future. Sure, that’s also a welcome by-product, as the UK will have a shortage of 249,000 workers for technologically skilled jobs by 2020. But programming, whether a potential career route or not, is an essential asset for our newest generations. 

And that's something the government has come to realise. Just glance through the main goals of the very curriculum now mandatory in every UK school, which aims to ensure all pupils:

• Can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation
• Can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems
• Can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems
• Are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.

What can you do?

As a teacher, you are the one expected to introduce children to the digital world of computing. This responsibility of a first impression is both powerful and potentially dangerous. You can make them love or hate it. So I would like to suggest some ideas that can help you.

• Encourage children to tell their parents about what they learn in computing lessons, and motivate parents to be interested. As Bill Mitchell at BCS says: “I suspect children will be delighted to tell parents something they don’t know about!” 
• Be open and motivated. Speak to fellow teachers about their ideas and methods, organise meetings on this topic or join an existing movement like CoderDojo or the UK initiative Coder Club.
• Be prepared to accept help and be lectured by people whom you never thought you would get advice from. Even from pupils.
• Be innovative. You don’t need pricey iPads to introduce computing ideas to kids. With some clever games, like 'How to train your robot', developed by Nikos Michalakis (aka. Dr. Techniko), basic concepts can be easily taught in a fun way. Also there are affordable tools like Codie - robotic toys which work with a smartphone app, and allow children to interact and make codes in just two minutes. 
• Do your research. There are plenty of online tools, tablets and other touch-screen based apps, as well as educational toys and packages that you can integrate into your computing lessons.

And remember, at the end, the most important player in this game is you, the teachers, who are actually in the classrooms, helping kids to reach their dreams.

By Adam Lipecz, co-founder and CEO of Codie, making robotic toys that teach the basics of programming. Find more information on Codie at: www.indiegogo.com/projects/codie-cute-personal-robot-that-makes-coding-fun. 

Can maths really be creative?

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Image: schoolatoz.nsw.edu.au

Carey Ann Dodah of Explore Learning thinks it can. In this week's guest post, she considers a few simple ways to promote the development of problem-solving skills and creativity in maths lessons, as expected by the new primary maths curriculum.

'Creativity in Maths!? Isn’t that an oxymoron?' was the response from many when we launched our creative maths programme last year, a weekly class for eight- to ten-year-olds. However, we are strong believers that creativity defined as ‘a process where something new and valuable is created’ is the very essence of maths and it’s those inquisitive mathematical minds that we want to develop in our future generations.

The new National Curriculum supports this - problem solving is implicit across all subjects in the maths Programme of Study and with the recent announcement from the government that from 2016, Key Stage 1 and 2 tests will now include more problem solving, we can see the emphasis being placed on this skill.

We love solving problems at Explore Learning – it’s a life skill that we want every child to enjoy and have the confidence to tackle, not just in our centres but in their school experience. However, first there are some hurdles to overcome.

What makes a good maths problem?
In classrooms, problem solving is typically taught in a formulaic manner. The problem is introduced, a technique is demonstrated, the process is practised and then used to apply to other scenarios until practice makes perfect. In life though, and in maths, there is not always a technique or set route to follow to reach a solution and remember if you know how to solve something then it isn’t really a ‘problem’. A problem has to be new and without an obvious route to solution to genuinely challenge us. In maths, as in life, we need to develop children’s confidence to find a route themselves. They own the problem and they can fix it. 

At Explore, we have been very fortunate to work with NRICH – a team of inspiring mathematicians, teachers and trainers based at the University of Cambridge. Together we have created the annual National Young Mathematicians Award competition. Its goal is to bring rich, creative problem solving into primary schools. Last year,1000 schools took part, entering a team of their top four mathematicians (typically two girls and two boys).

Unlike conventional maths competitions that are based on individuals attempting paper-based tests involving equations, computations and problem solving, the National Young Mathematicians Award allows young people to create maths. The problems are real, they are without an obvious solution, and they often involve making something. They provide opportunities for logical thinking, identifying patterns, looking for all possible solutions, hypothesising and perhaps most importantly communicating and working as a team. 

Image: getsurrey.co.uk

I am always inspired observing the final each year. I especially love seeing the children working together. It highlights that maths is not a solitary subject – its true power is seen in collaboration. All the tasks that children get involved with require collaboration and therefore good teamwork is essential. The tasks are also very open ended with limited instructions so the next ingredients to success are using logical thinking, working systematically, using trial and improvement and taking ownership of a problem. You can really tell the schools that have incorporated this type of problem solving into their lessons previously. Those children that haven’t find it very difficult to know how to start given so open parameters – so much freedom!

How can we teach problem solving?
So how can schools introduce these skills into existing maths teaching? How can we make maths more creative today? First, let’s adopt one important rule – maths is about more than a right answer. It’s about exploration and letting your imagination go!

Try this exercise to demonstrate the concept to students and colleagues. Ask for three volunteers and instruct them to tell you a two-digit number, it doesn’t matter which ones they give. Get students into pairs and ask ‘which is the odd one out?’. On the board, draw five bullet points. 

Let’s say you have been given 62, 27, 36. Give a couple of minutes to the group and ask each pair to tell you their ‘answer’ and the reasons why. Record all the reasons on the board and try to fill the five bullet points. 

You may have something like this:
• 27 – it’s an odd number
• 62 – it’s above 50
• 62 – not a factor of 9
• 27 – it’s below 30
• 62 – ones are smaller than the tens

These are all correct answers! Well done! 

Now add several more bullet points to the board and allow the group much longer this time to think up some other possibilities. Thinking time in maths is vital – if cut short then you are unable to uncover the rich, deep thinking that everyone is capable of. Too often this is missed because time is pressured.

Now you will have less obvious associations made:
• 27 – has a diagonal in the digit
• 62 – adding the two digits together does not equal nine
• 36 – square number
• 27 – the words have a different number of syllables to the other two
• 27 – has ‘open’ figures rather than ‘closed’ ones

And you can keep going and challenging your group to think of more reasons. It can be anything as long as they can explain it! You’ll be amazed at the amount of learning that can be gained from such a simple task and how many different directions this will lead your learners. Those without the confidence to share initially might suddenly find a gem. 

Your role is as a facilitator: little talking, lots of listening and then jumping on the great ideas that could pull out more maths from the activity (‘what is a square number? Can you think of any others?’) and in doing so help children clarify their ideas and share their knowledge.

This exercise demonstrates the power of peer learning. It tells students that you value different ideas, strategies and routes. It encourages clarity in explanation and opens opportunities to introduce new vocabulary in a subtle but powerful way. Last but not least it encourages creative, imaginative thinking.

Making maths accessible

Image: willowbrook.leicester.sch.uk

The task described above is a good example of the kind of activities that we cover with our children each week on in creative maths course.  Every week our centres fill with a group of excited mathematicians awaiting a new challenge. They are not all ‘strong’ mathematicians, in fact many of them lack confidence in class but this is maths with a difference!

All the activities apply the NRICH philosophy of ‘low threshold, high ceiling’. In essence, low threshold means that all the exercises are accessible to the whole group. To access the task, you may need a basic ability to add numbers or use a ruler – everyone can have a go. High ceiling refers to the task having the potential to result in very complex mathematics, nth terms and formulas, should the individual be able. 

One of our favourite examples in the creative maths course is buttons! This is an exercise that could run over a couple of classes.

To begin with, describe that you have a cardigan with three buttons. You like to do the cardigan up in different ways every day. Sometimes you might start at the top, sometimes from somewhere else. How many different possible ways can you do up the buttons on the cardigan? This can be a great practical task and you could have a pot of different coloured buttons that the children could use or they might prefer to use T M B (top middle and bottom). It’s about the children finding a method that makes sense to them, rather than the way you would do it. 

Quite quickly children will come back with answers – it’s great to ask at this point that you need to be convinced that they have found all the different ways. Once children have convinced you, ask if they can find out what happens when you have four, five or six buttons and the task becomes a greater challenge. Your able mathematicians may start identifying a pattern and they might use conjecture and develop a theory. They are reaching for a high ceiling but in gentle, structured steps that allow you to see them grow (intellectually and in confidence) within a matter of hours.

You can find more similar problem solving activity ideas here and here.

What other skills will creative maths develop?
This practical maths allows children to improve key mathematical skills which also translate into other subject areas such as science, technology and are used in later life: 

• logical thinking 
• developing a systematic approach 
• trial and improvement strategy 
• exploration and explanation skills 
• convincing and proving 
• collaborative learning.

The challenge was to prove that maths can be creative, collaborative and stimulating. I hope this post has given you some insight into how this can be the case and some inspiration to challenge your young students. Perhaps you can try some of these rich, low threshold–high ceiling exercises out before entering a team for the National Young Mathematicians Award this autumn. Let’s see how far they can go!

Carey Ann Dodah is Head of Curriculum at Explore Learning.

To enter a team into the National Young Mathematicians Award, visit www.explorelearning.co.uk/youngmathematicians. Registration closes 30th September so hurry!

For further activities to help students practise for the competition, visit nrich.maths.org. For more information on Explore Learning, visit www.explorelearning.co.uk. 

Image: explorelearning.co.uk

Activities for outdoor learning this Autumn

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Image: gardeningforkids.com.au

Earlier this year, we published a blog post detailing some lovely outdoor activities to enjoy with your students in the Spring time. But, in case you haven't noticed, it's no longer Spring! Autumn is upon us and with it brings plenty of opportunities to get your class out in the crisp golden sunshine and kicking about in the leaves.

The resource sheets, activity ideas and online flash games featured below are all available from The Woodland Trust's fabulous Nature Detectives website. They're all completely free so we figured they wouldn't mind us sharing some of their wonderful ideas and resources with our readers! Simply follow the links to download. And don't forget that this is just a sample. We really recommend checking out their site for more Autumn activities and ideas.

ID tools and spotter sheets
Some brilliant resources here! Get your class outside and identifying Autumn leaves, fruits and seeds, twigs and more. My personal favourite resource is the hunt for animal tracks, as well as - one for the boys this one - an animal poo ID sheet! (It does stress to kids that they shouldn't touch the animal droppings). Other spotter sheets include nocturnal animals, minibeasts, birds, bramble and fungi. If you don't have access to a proper woodland in school, why not send some spotter sheets home as homework (optional or otherwise)?

Image: Rake's School, West Sussex

Conkers
The best part of Autumn in my humble opinion... hunting for conkers! Nature Detectives provides instructions on how to play conkers, plus a snazzy conker champion certificate and a cool horse chestnut tree fact sheet. There's also a recipe for making realistic-looking conkers out of chocolate (no actual cooking required - all you need is a fridge) which would be great for a classroom session on cooking and nutrition.

Den building
Giving conkers a run for their money as most awesome Autumn activity, is this lovely set of tips for building a woodland den. It's aimed directly at the kids so it's all in really simple language with loads of great ideas plus helpful safety advice.

Tree faces

Image: naturedetectives.org.uk

A brilliant resource for art lessons this, students find and draw a picture/photograph a 'face' on a tree. It's a great way to develop imagination and also empathy, as the kids are encouraged to think about how the tree is feeling based on the face it's pulling. Could you take it one step further and have them come up with reasons why the tree is feeling that way? What happened in the woodlands that day? The children could write up their stories as a follow up activity or even look at existing stories about tree people, such as the green man or dryads from Greek mythology. Don't miss the tree face 'hall of fame' on the page linked above - your students could even send in their own 'tree face' photos like the one to the right.

Cross curricular indoor activities and online games
You don't even need to go outside to enjoy all Autumn has to offer in every subject across the curriculum! 

Science
Develop a range of scientific skills with this DIY fungus experiment in which kids control variables like temperature, moisture and light to work out what fungi need to grow best. Another science activity is the food chains game, a board game which teaches children the connections between woodland wildlife in a fun, imaginative way. 

Literacy
If you'd prefer to develop your class' literacy skills, why not try the concrete poetry online flash game. Kids choose a woodland shape (or draw their own) and fill it with words (either from pre-prepared word banks or their own imaginations) to make a poem. The completed poems can be printed out. 

Another literacy game on the Nature Detectives site is called Save our wood. This presents players with plans to build a road through beautiful Badger Wood. The player navigates the woodland, looking for woodland residents. They interview each creature, collecting information before designing and writing an article to defend the wood from development. There's also a list of supporting resources including a sheet to help them develop a balanced debate (with arguments both for and against), plus a template to help them format an offline newspaper piece too. 

History
Another fab online game worth mentioning, this one based around developing historical knowledge, is A tree's memory. In this game, kids meet three trees - the ancient tree, the city tree and the country tree. They pick a tree and fill in its life story from a choice of images. For example, the city tree is only 50 years old, but in 1969, it witnessed something that was 'out of this world'! After selecting the correct image, the player gets a bit more information on the event, plus the tree's opinion!

Image: Rake School, West Sussex

Are you thinking of taking your class outside? Fancy a bit more inspiration or some advice on assessing the risks? This article by The Woodland Trust's Amy Williams is packed full of safety advice and inventive ways to engage students with the natural world.

Alterntatively, if you'd prefer to read about other schools who've taken the plunge and rented a piece of woodland to care for and use with their students (and that's not as outrageous an idea as you might think), take a look at this article by Patricia Ockenden of woodlands.co.uk. In it, she describes the amazing curricular opportunities taking the classroom to the woods offers.

Launch your PBL unit with a bang!

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The first session of your project is one of the most important, as this is what hooks your learners and gets them excited about exploring that juicy driving question. But how can you make it a day to remember?

Image: williambrookes.com

The Year 7 students wait outside the school hall. They’re all clutching flight boarding passes and the corridor is alive with the buzz of excited conversation as they wonder what’s going to happen.

Suddenly, the door opens! The murmuring stops as a Year 10 student steps into the corridor, and the younger pupils wait expectantly for their instructions.

“Your flight to Fiji is now ready to board,” the Year 10 student says with a professional smile. “Please follow me.”

The Year 7 kids follow eagerly, filing into the hall. They see that the chairs in the hall have all been set up in rows of six, with an aisle cutting down the middle – it’s a plane!

Thoroughly thrilled now, the young students take their assigned seats, as directed by the Year 10 flight attendants. They sit for a few minutes, shuffling through the magazines and safety leaflets they found on their seats, before one of the air hostesses plays a real flight safety video and the pilot (a member of staff, dressed the part of course!) announces they’re ready to take off.

The students cheer as he informs them they are now air-borne and on their way to exotic Fiji!

That is, until disaster strikes. The plane suddenly loses one of its engines, and then another. The pilot keeps the passengers informed as yet another engine fails, and the children listen with anxious (but still rather excited) expressions.

“I’m taking us down on the ocean,” the pilot announces grimly.

With great skill (oddly, this pilot has crashed a plane into the ocean a few times before…) the pilot brings the plane down on the sea. 

It’s a perfect landing, and the flight crew begin evacuating their young passengers.

“There’s an island nearby!” the pilot calls as Year 7s leap into the ‘ocean’. “You’ll have to swim. Watch out for the sharks."

And thus begins Matthew Moss High School’s project-based learning unit ‘The Island’. Now stranded on a desert island, the Year 7s will have to work out how they’re going to survive and then begin to explore how their islander community might evolve.

The kids are completely engaged in the story, the very convincing plane crash setting the precedent for a dynamic and absorbing project.

And that’s the trick to successfully launching a project-based learning unit – an exciting, memorable entry event.

What is an entry event?

Your entry event is exactly what it sounds like – the first session of your unit and your students’ introduction to the project.

According to the Buck Institute for Education, an entry event has two basic purposes: 

• to spark student interest and curiosity
• to begin the inquiry process by leading students to ask questions.

The whole point of the entry event is to introduce the driving question and establish a ‘need to know’. The students should be hooked – they should want to get on with exploring the driving question right away!

An entry event also has to stimulating and unforgettable. Suzie Boss suggests novelty, so your students aren’t quite sure what to expect.

So what kind of events make for a good PBL introduction? 

Drama and simulations

Kids as scientists on a spaceship
(Image:mantleoftheexpert.com)

Understandably, many teachers opt for the dramatic when it comes to introducing their project – and why not? It’s a chance to have some fun and get involved in a bit of make-believe. It also makes for a memorable launch to the project – which of the Year 7s at Matthew Moss High School are going to forget the day their teacher crashed a plane into the ocean?

Simulations like this work well because they involve the kids in the action. They also give students a role to play in the project. In the case of the plane crash for example, the kids were survivors, stranded on a desert island, and they stuck with and developed that role throughout the rest of the unit. 

Other projects use the entry event to set students up in the role of an ‘expert’. Depending on the curriculum content you’re covering, your kids may be archaeologists working on a dig, rescuers at the scene of a disaster, scientists in a laboratory, astronauts in a space station, or rebel fighters in a civil war. 

This type of project is made for a dramatic introduction. Start yours by gathering your students together for an in-role team meeting or briefing. Remember to let them know who they are. Use presentations, photographs, video clips and sound to get them into role and then to introduce them to their challenge. The more dramatic, the better!

Alternatively, see if you can get a visitor to come into school and play what Suzie Boss terms ‘a stranger from another century’. In her Edutopia blog post, Boss tells of a school who launched their project based on the Epic of Gilgamesh with ‘footage of swords clashing and bare feet running on a grassy battlefield. There were whoops and cries from cheering warriors, but no narrative to explain what was happening.’

As the video ended, the stranger from the past (a local classics professor in full costume) entered the classroom and challenged the students to find out ‘why his army had been vanquished by superior forces.’

If you can’t get someone local to come in and play a historic or fictional character, try a search online. There are plenty of companies, charities and actors who will be happy to Skype you and your class for a small fee. Imagine! Your students could have a chat with a real live Viking! (You know what we mean...)

When it comes to dramatic entry events, the only limit is your imagination. Rope in a few teachers and older students to play any extra characters you need (GCSE drama students are always a good bet) and see what you can come up with. 

Interesting objects

Image: interfaithhousing.org

Another way to introduce a PBL unit is through the use of interesting objects. Appeal to your students’ curiosity and imagination by arranging for a surprise invitation or parcel to be delivered to the class, asking for help with a particular problem, or orchestrate an exciting discovery on school grounds such as a time capsule, an ancient map or a box of secret letters.

Children at a primary school in West Lothian arrived one morning to find a paper trail of animal tracks leading into the classroom. At the end of them, a toy fox and its cub were sitting in the centre of the floor with a letter next to them. The letter explained how the foxes’ home – the enchanted woodland – had been destroyed and so they no longer had anywhere to live. It asked the children if they could help the foxes create a new home.

Other potential project hooks to appeal to the senses and engage students in their driving question include:

• a display of historical artefacts
• a provocative reading or poem
• ‘mysterious’ or unusual photographs
• film clips
• sound bites
• a song
• a piece of art
• shocking statistics.

Field trips and guest speakers

School outings and guest speakers - whether speaking in school, via Skype, or out on a field trip - are another exciting way to introduce a project. We’ve touched on this briefly, but guest speakers don’t always have to be in-role as a character from history or a work of fiction. Visitors from charities, museums, zoos, aquariums, local businesses, even local celebrities, can all provide thought-provoking talks to launch a project.

For example, The Innovation Unit’s guide to PBL tells of a teacher who began a project on peaceful protest by inviting in a local musician who performed for the students and then answered their questions about why, and how, he wrote protest songs.

Combining field trips with guest speakers, one school in Stockport took their students on a visit to a local archaeological site, where the students were introduced to a legendary story about a Celtic tribal leader. Developing this story as an epic battle movie became the students’ project.

In another project at Matthew Moss High School, the children were carted off to the local history centre to meet real historians and genealogists. Their task during this unit would be to research their family history and create a beautiful family tree, and experts from the history centre would be on hand throughout the project to assist.

Examining a model response

The Innovation Unit also suggests showing your students a model of the type of product they will be creating as the project’s entry event. There’s no reason you can’t do this as well as a flashy hook, but a careful, full-class examination of a model will show students exactly what you expect from them and what they should aim for.

The model can be something you created yourself, exemplary work from the previous year group’s project (though this is only possible if you’ve done the project before), or work by a professional.

Image: Matthew Moss High School

The biggest advantage of using a model as an entry event is that it provides the perfect introduction to ‘critiquing’ – an important part of PBL (see our first blog post in this series, The 8 essential elements of project-based learning). 

Work with your class to critique the model. Help your class to understand what critiquing means by breaking it down into questions:

• What is its purpose?
• How well does it meet that purpose? 

Get them to consider the work they will be undertaking. Look at the model and consider: 

• What looks most difficult to do? 
• What looks easiest to do? 
• What aspects are most important?
• What are least important?

The model you show will give students something to base their standards on, and spark discussion as to what the students’ own models will need to have, do or be. The ensuing discussion and your kids’ decision on what a ‘good’ final product will look like will be something for you to base your assessment criteria on.

Image: Matthew Moss High School

No matter what you choose to do, your PBL unit should begin with a bang. The kids should be engaged, excited and raring to go. After all, all that planning will be for nothing if your students are not invested in the project.

Of course, a good entry event doesn’t guarantee a successful project. It’s an important factor in getting the kids on board, but it’s where you go from here that will determine how much they get out of it.

A major element of PBL is the multiple drafting and critiquing process. Our next blog post will consider what this means in practice and how you can help your students develop the skills they need to be successful in this area. Watch this space!

Introduce emojis to your classroom!

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It's a whole new language entirely, but one your students will already be very familiar with. 'Emojificate' your classroom with this range of tips and ideas for using emojis to gauge student understanding, encourage reluctant readers, foster friendships and more.

Our new marketing intern, Olivia, has even made them into a fabulous infographic!

Click the thumbnail below to view in full and access the links:

A treasure hunt for the digital age

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A QR code

Creative teaching need not be about play-dough and paint, but can simply be taking advantage of the learning opportunities that technology can offer - even relatively simple ones.

In this post, we share an exciting series of lessons based around the idea of a treasure hunt using student-generated QR codes. The lessons make use of Solo Taxonomy and were designed and first implemented by Rachel Jones, a teacher and blogger with a penchant for all things creative.

Engaging older learners

Rachel is an A Level sociology teacher, so she works with older students - often those who found school difficult and are hoping for a fresh start at Sixth Form.

Aside from the play-dough and paint (which she does use - along with ball pits, parachutes and 3D essay plans!), Rachel likes to indulge her geekier side. She designed this QR code treasure hunt to self/peer teach Feminist approaches to inequality, and replaced lesson plans that, the previous year, Rachel reveals, had included a 34 slide powerpoint.

The following outline was featured as part of a longer article for our magazine. You can purchase the full article here. It also featured as part of a post from Rachel's own blog, 'Create, Innovate, Explore'. You can view her original blog post (which features loads more exciting ideas for all kinds of treasure hunts) here.

Lesson one 

One student's 'treasure map'
(Image: createinnovateexplore.com)

Students were divided into small groups of two or three and given an area of Feminist enquiry into inequality to become experts in – for example Hakim, the pensions gap, and so on. Rachel gave them an hour and a half to research the topic and then create a 'treasure map' (a Solo style station) with QR codes that would enable other students to research and become experts in that area. 

"The classroom was soon filled with learners utilising their own devices to research and then create resources for the use of other groups," she says. 

By the end of the lesson, all the groups had produced QR codes (Rachel recommends www.qrcode.kaywa.com for generating the codes) that linked to relevant web-based or student-generated content. 

They had achieved the unistructural phase of learning. 

Lesson two 

The students arrived with a QR scanner already downloaded onto their devices. They then worked round the room using the QR stations to complete a grid that covered the content of the specification.

Rachel was amazed at the quality of the content that the QR codes led to. She says: "Students had not only linked them to web content, but had also created podcasts, infographics, and even a twitter account (for a dead Marxist Feminist) to assist their classmates in their learning.

"The beep noises the phones make when they scan the codes made my classroom sound like Tesco checkout, but the students were totally engrossed working round the various stations to ensure that they completed the grid."

"There was a surprising amount of peer support and sharing of information," she adds. "All students completed the grid, which was a demanding amount of material."

This was the multistructural phase of their learning.

Image: createinnovateexplore.com

Lesson three
According to Rachel, "this was the day the sun first came out and so we decided to decamp outside." Before doing this however, she gave each group  a giant hexagon and told them to summarise their initial unistructural learning onto it. The students then took the hexagons outside and spent time as a whole class moving the hexagons around to create evaluative links between the theorists.

"This was more complicated than it sounds, and took some negotiation between the different opinions and evaluations of individual learners," Rachel says.

This negotiation, and the evaluative skills that it required to reach a collaborative conclusion, made up the relational and extended abstract phase of the learning. 

"It encouraged the learners to think beyond the information presented and utilise learning from other modules and even areas outside the formal learning of the course," Rachel explains.

Try it yourself!

This type of treasure hunt can only be successful if all your learners have access to the technology to create and undertake it. You can run into problems if they are sharing phones or devices, so you need to ensure that you plan effectively around this issue. 

However, Rachel concludes: "Because the students knew other learners would need their information to complete the task, they were invested in the quality of their output which resulted in some amazing finished pieces and an enjoyable learning experience for my class."

Visit Rachel's blog for more exciting ideas and resources for creative teaching. 

Snapshots, Twitter and tiny people

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Photography teacher Jane Hewitt inspires her student to look at the world from a different perspective, putting the power of creation and creativity in their hands!

Allow me to introduce ‘Bert’ he’s only a couple of centimetres high but has such a story to tell!

Meet Bert!

He didn’t start out with a story, but simply as an inanimate prop for my GCSE Photography group who were trying to recreate images in the style of Slinkachu, a modern street artist based in London who creates tiny scenes using these ‘little people’ and then abandons them on the streets for people to find.

I began by trying to do some of these images myself – call me a coward if you like but when I’m trying something new or something that is outside of my comfort zone, I prefer to try in private away from 30 or so sceptical pairs of eyes!

I duly set up ‘Bert’ in the middle of my lawn and lay down to take my images (not sure what the neighbours thought!). He is so small it was easy to find a range of places for him – in the middle of a patch of clover, perched on the fence with a spider’s web behind him, in a puddle so you could see his reflection. You can see how small he is and the whole fun of these tiny people is to create ‘worlds’ for them.

In some lessons pupils used plasticine or scraps of card to create scenes, but I have seen images where sugar or custard powder was used for a beach scene. For just £2, I managed to buy an old metal traffic light, which was part of a discarded train set at a local antique store. Look around your kitchen … liquorice allsorts make a great climbing mountain, cups and saucers make seats, tea bags make backdrops – the only limit is your imagination. The book Microworlds, authored by Mark Valli & M Dessanay, gives some inspiring ideas.

Liquorice allsorts make a great climbing mountain

On showing these images to my KS4 students, they immediately started to talk about these tiny toys as people with a history – he had to have name – hence ‘Bert’ and it was sad that he had everything that he owned in the three colourful bags on his bench. They then couldn’t wait to examine the other people – I’ll just introduce you to ‘Gladys’ who is my own favourite! She has a shopping trolley full of objects – you have to study closely!

Meet Gladys!

She has a shopping trolley full of objects

The Photography students had to physically create the ‘worlds’ that these figures inhabit – but I have done this with a Year 7 class where they have created worlds with words and written their stories on Twitter. @TheHeadsOffice is a wonderful supporter of creativity and Julia Skinner, founder of the 100 Word Challenge, suggested that we could in fact use these as stimuli for our stories. Visit the website www.headsoffice.co.uk to see the weekly 100 Word Challenge for creative inspiration.

Combining a visual stimulus that pupils can control and manipulate, with a rigorous, but fun, written challenge can produce really imaginative results. Students were amazingly creative – below is an image of Bert in winter – set up in the classroom using a sherbet fountain and an old pinecone. 

Sherbet and pinecones put Bert in deepest winter!

The GCSE Photography students’ task was to research, design, record, manipulate (using Photoshop) and then analyse. The Year 7 pupils worked in pairs, to choose their little person and create their character and world. I ‘scaffolded’ this by agreeing the criteria – name, age, occupation, a secret they had and their best moment ...the possibilities are endless. To take this to the next level we began to link our people together – thinking about how peoples’ lives become interwoven. We joined pairs together and began to link stories – did they go to school together? Had they had an argument in the past? Taking it to the next level we created their village – using a flat sheet, masking tape and post it notes (thanks to the wonderful Dorothy Heathcote for that inspiration!). Who lived where, worked where, where did Bert meet Gladys? What do we need in our village?

So, where do I get these figures? Well they are model railway figures made by a company called Preiser – you can get them from Amazon or eBay (they start at £3.99). There is a huge range – I buy the finished ones but you can buy them unpainted and be even more creative! The size of the figures means that they are unsuitable for young pupils but older ones think they are ‘awesome’ (not my word!) and are happy to be creative. Take them outside and use natural backgrounds, create and draw your own world, find a world in a book and use that image as a background. Be warned – this is seriously addictive! 

The material in this blog post was taken from the article, 'Snapshots, Twitter and tiny people' by Jane Hewitt, published in Creative Teaching and Learning, volume 2.4.

An intrepid little person discovers the dangers of the school pond!

A guitar is used as a prop here

Coca Cola makes a great lake, as one student discovered

A little man takes cover

One student used sugar and lollipops to create a retro beach scene