Tom’s 7 things for engagement are:

1. Experience bars measure progress
2. Multiple long and short term aims
3. Reward effort
4. Rapid, frequent and clear feedback
5. Element of uncertainty
6. Windows of enhanced learning (memory and confidence)
7. Other people – teams

I got thinking that one of the most difficult classes I have for engagement might benefit from some of these ideas, and not unconnected with this, might also be able to give me some expert advice on just why games are so engaging. I recorded an audioboo on the subject.

I’m going to try and take the ideas the lads in this class have given me and make them into a workable environment to keep them working hard, learning and taking their achievement seriously.  Here’s the best of their ideas:

I’d appreciate any links to relevant reading you might have for me to make this a reality for them. One idea I’ve thought about is to make the class an online gaming style leaderboard, with updates from me after each class – ideas and links here. There are more ideas here. Yours would be welcome.

Like many teachers in Scotland at the moment, I am trying to evolve my classroom practice to encompass the spirit of Curriculum for Excellence. This is a little of what I have discovered in developing and delivering a new unit for S2 on vibrations and waves – sound, light and radiations beyond the visible.

Firstly, I set out to write an exemplar teacher’s guide covering from first principles, the route through and some resources supporting the course. I started with the experiences and outcomes within the curriculum sub-organiser and then looked across to the other curricular areas to see what I could pull in to enrich the experience. Needless to say, it was a much bigger task than I anticipated.

Secondly, my second year classes are no walk in the park. One particular day, twenty minutes into a period, having failed even so much as to get the learning intentions shared (I have to be careful here – my faculty head is attending #tmFife11), I finally blew: I don’t have time to recount the details here but I had the class write me an essay on why I should even bother trying to teach them. What came out of that exercise were several examples of passionate, articulate and and intelligent writing.

“… I was doing well in first year and now I’m doing worse than I was last year because people in this class have wasted my opportunities for my dream job as a chemist.”

These responses brought me up sharply as I realised that the children already have developed literacy skills, enough to express the frustrations some of them were experiencing. I saw my task as being to provide them a context within which they could develop these, possibly to a higher order. Two things emerged.

Listening and hearing - active engagement in traditionally passive learning

I thought of Pauk’s Cornell method and set a variant of it in context in the new unit. I was intending on using video extracts to support the learning, including one small 7-minute piece from Julian Treasure on sound health. I had the children make messy, contemporaneous notes on the key things that struck them as the video played. I made my own at the same time, then used these to challenge the children on the content of the video they had just seen. I was impressed by the quality of some of the notes (some hadn’t bothered, of course) and the ability of those who had the key points noted down, to answer even the most difficult questions on the content. This was a rich seam for assessment of developing skills, providing evidence and opportunity. One example is from a girl, normally not a big hitter in the summative tests, who enthusiastically used the powerful weapon of good notes to outclass the others in her responses. The point was well made. Many of them now take notes as I am talking to them.

Using new media and HHD

The other thing that impressed me in the class response to the new unit was how the childrens’ literacy overlaps and includes digital media fluency. I had another enthusiastic response from several pupils who, when asked if they had anything to share for (optional) homework, produced mobile phones with recordings of sounds they had made, answers to questions and even a video submitted by email. Take a look.

It is clear to me that the boundaries are being reset on literacy. Our task as teachers is to make sure we ourselves are sufficiently competent in the new literacies in order to challenge and develop children within them.

Resources for vibrations and waves are available from SSERC and LTS.