Engaging Passive Learners in Mathematics - Muhammad Haroon

Research and development focus
Every teacher, regardless of experience, has come across a passive learner during their teaching career. The issue with passive learners is that they are rarely disruptive. This means they often go unnoticed and unchallenged. This lack of challenge results in poor progress and ultimately a child who is let down. Therefore, my main focus is to research different techniques which can be used to encourage passive learners to be more involved during lesson time, this in turn can increase student achievement. Research shows (and common sense implies) that there is a clear positive correlation between these two variables.

Passive learners often go unnoticed and unchallenged.

Literature Review
Engaging students is the clear antidote to passivity. According to Meier (2008), one way of engaging students is by making learning relevant to them by connecting it to a student's life experience. Getting students to solve authentic real life problems based upon experience, such as working out phone bills, can support them beyond the four walls of a classroom and give a subject value, thus engaging them. It was also discovered that students found it easier to solve problems and remember the techniques used when they were connected to life experiences thanks to links to prior knowledge the students already possess.

Another way to increase engagement is by getting students to collaborate with each other, either in pairs or in small groups as this also allows students to share and build their ideas and make themselves feel included and responsible for their own learning. Lastly, getting students to develop and use their higher order thinking skills such as analyzing, interpreting, and/or manipulating information has shown to improve engagement as a form of challenge. The key issue however, is how we can implement these strategies effectively.

Intervention
The Realistic Maths Education (RME) project is a resource which has taken over 14 years to research and design by academics at Manchester Metropolitan University. I have been given several resources over a span of two years to help improve the teaching of mathematics from this project. Each module is designed to be completed over two weeks.

I will be using RME strategies with my two year 7 classes and monitor two passive learners from both of them. These students tend to lose focus or interest very quickly and I have to continuously remind them to either focus on what I am teaching or on completing their work.

Having attended the training days, I learnt different strategies for engaging students. I intend to use these techniques such as getting students to draw their solutions to problems onto the class whiteboard and hand over a degree of ownership of the work as well as setting problems that relate to their prior knowledge. The resources used in the lessons have been shown in other contexts to engage and therefore reduce passive learners and so improve the students results as well as their problem solving mathematical skills.

I intend to keep track of the passive students and take note of any passive or engaged behaviours shown during the lessons in which I use the RME strategies as well as ask their perceptions of the strategies.

Encouraging students to own sections of learning by writing answers on a class whiteboard can engage learners.

Implementation and Impact
After planning and delivering the first session of the RME project, there was some improvements as the students were more engaged when I gave them a responsibility during a group discussion or when I gave them ownership of their work when presenting to the class. However, unless it was one of those two scenarios, the students were still passive during the lessons. When I asked the students how they were finding the strategies their responses were unresponsive and they claimed that they would rather do book-work. This was expected as we were told this was a common initial reaction from the students as it is a big change on how the style of teaching and learning.

When I taught the second module, one of the students was given a red, amber and green card. They were asked to show me one of the cards depending on how engaged they felt during the lesson. During my two period 5 lessons (end of the day), the student always showed an orange or red card which indicated that he was going to do some work or very little work. For this reason I was unable to see any impact of the RME strategies during these lessons. However, during the other two lessons, the student was very engaged and preferred taking part in the RME strategies instead of doing a standard book-work lesson. I did a short interview with the student in which they stated that they enjoyed the lessons more as they saw the relevance of the topics covered during these lessons. However, it is a concern that the uncontrollable variable of the time of the lesson counteracted the positive effects of the RME strategies.

Other students also showed some limited improvement. They were more interested and focused during certain activities however for much of the lesson the student still demonstrated passive behaviour and regular prompts had to be used during the lesson to keep them focused. I have completed several modules with this student but I am still going to continue to use the RME modules with other techniques to see if the student can become further engaged.

The holy grail of a fully engaged classroom can be achieved!

In conclusion, so far the students have made some progress but there is still a lot of room for further sustained development to be made. The problem is that there are many reasons as to why a student might be passive. Some students have fixed mindsets of their ability in maths, others are yet to see value in the subject, whilst other students may have other unknown reasons that extend beyond the classroom affecting their ability to become engaged. Nevertheless, the RME project has had an initial impact on the students and as such I will continue to use this resource to create a sustained culture change in teaching and learning. However other whole school strategies such as linking maths to career pathways and future aspirations could be applied to motivate and combat passivity as a separate approach to this complex issue.

Further research
I intend to continue using this resource with the students in year 8 and continue monitoring how the modules can help engage and reduce passive learners in the classroom over a longer period of time. My research will go on to support a wider project led by academics at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Recommendations

• Be persistent when implementing new strategies, at first they may not work but over time they can lead to a change in culture and help achieve marginal gains.
• Link learning and problem solving to other areas were students may have prior knowledge - this can be from previous learning or from their life experiences. 
• Present students with an opportunity to own sections of their learning.

References and further reading

• John Tait - Three ways to Engage Students (2018)
• Soung Bae and Kari Kokka - Student Engagement in Assessments:What Students and Teachers Find Engaging
• Courtney Peters - 6 Tips for Engaging the Distracted High School Student (2016)
• Meier - Adolescents at School: Perspectives on Youth, Identity, and Education (2008)
• https://www.edutopia.org/blog/golden-rules-for-engaging-students-nicolas-pino-james

Muhammad Haroon - Teacher of Maths

You can follow Muhammad on twitter:

@MHaroon54

Creating a reading culture to develop curiosity and independent thinkers - Erin Corder

How can we enthuse our learners? Well of course, we plan and deliver exciting and engaging lessons, we vary the activities and our own pedagogy to meet the needs of our pupils, and finally we take our time to ensure that we cover the curriculum content/subject specification in depth, so that our pupils really ‘know’ the subject. That's enough right? Or is there more to do?

Do we consider where there is an opportunity for pupils to explore and study exciting topics that perhaps our specifications do not cover; or maybe explore how our subject relates to current affairs?

Pupils will explore your subject further if you provide opportunities for them to do so. This is not just about putting on extra curricular clubs or trips and visits (which both have immense value), but a chance to explore for themselves through wider reading.

In the past it may have been difficult to promote wider reading; demanding an extensive library and support from home. However, now we can see how the reading culture at Denbigh has progressed with the development of technology. It would not be unusual to find our students on an iPad in the library (or using their own Chromebook) that can give them access to knowledge that we could only have dreamt of when we were at the same age.

In short, exposing students to reading is not difficult. We just have to find structured and engaging ways to do it.

Chromebooks and apps such as google classroom can provide a gateway to wider reading that was not possible just a few years ago.

Practical strategies
In my own classes, and across the arts based subjects, we are transforming the way in which our pupils are exposed to our subjects through wider reading. Each week, we as subject leaders (and experts) are finding articles of interest that feature our subjects. Students are required to read the article or articles before responding with their own thoughts and ideas on a classroom blog, to an open ended question set by the teacher.

The importance here is in the selection of the article, which relies on the teacher's own expertise, understanding and curiosity about their subject. There are exciting opportunities to expand beyond the parameters of what your own programmes of study offer students.  

Selecting the right article is key. Is it accessible? Is it engaging? Does it link enough to prior learning to make it meaningful?

A good example of this would be an article that was provided to a year 11 PE class on the IAAF’s treatment of female athlete Caster Semenya. Although the class were learning about the importance of ‘balanced competition’, the posed question encouraged deeper critical thinking.  Pupils had to challenge their own understanding of gender (and stereotypes) to explore whether or not they felt Semenya was ‘woman enough’ to compete, and whether  the IAAF had treated her in a humane way or not? When we returned to discuss the article in our next lesson, the conversation progressed from social justice to the use of performance enhancing drugs to gain an advantage. The beauty of this discussion was that pupils were drawing on their own knowledge and understanding to give valid and well informed opinions. What followed next was a  golden moment… ‘this is not the first time that the IAAF have been too harsh' spoke a student... 'I felt that the way they treated Dwain Chambers when he used drugs was far too excessive’.  I asked my student how she knew about this and she replied that she had read one of the linked articles at the bottom of the one I had provided.  This is a perfect example of a pupil being both curious and independent. This is what we want.

A possible challenge now is for the students to find their own relevant articles of interest to share with the class (although of course this will require moderation from the subject leader), and pose the open ended questions themselves to their peers. 

I hope that the google classroom will be an effective way of evidencing the students reading, their thought processes, and their curiosity. By setting reading tasks regularly, a culture of reading around a subject can be embedded. Furthermore, by selecting articles that are appropriate for stretch and challenge we can build a deep rooted knowledge structure that can help develop higher order thinking skills (especially with the more and most able cohort). Positive outcomes for everyone!

You can follow Erin Corder on Twitter:

@CorderMrs

Useful links:

• https://www.completeissues.co.uk/welcome (Great for student focussed articles)
• https://theday.co.uk/ (Great for student focussed articles)
• https://www.npr.org/2019/05/31/728400819/i-am-a-woman-track-star-caster-semenya-continues-her-fight-to-compete-as-a-femal?t=1573205543643&t=1573463026770
• https://cdn.oxfordowl.co.uk/2017/04/21/10/51/51/265/bp_osi_buildingoutstanding.pdf

The Assessment Revolution - Ian Stonnell

Assessment is one of the most complex activities a teacher can get involved in. What seems a simple enough task of checking how well a student is doing can quickly become a minefield. Take for example the old model of assessment. Once we had levels and flight paths - students who came to us in year 7 were expected to make three levels of progress by year 9 (I think that's how I remember it). Seems simple enough until we actually began to sit down and work out what any of these levels meant; 'Is this work a level 4....? Maybe, but if it is a level 4, is it a level 4a, 4b or 4c?' 'Hang on a minute does this fit in with what a level 4b is nationally?' 'What's the criteria again...?' (I remember this being rather woolly and subjective in RE).

I am sure many of us remember having these entirely heartfelt, but basically empty conversations about placing students into these abstract levels - it felt more like a charade to please an accountability machine, which in essence it was.

An old school flight path that looks pretty but may not be that useful in supporting progress.

Back then, were we as teachers really thinking about the important things such as what the students actually knew and what they could do? Maybe not as much as we should have.

Ultimately, should we as teachers really care what abstract level or grade a student is? Shouldn't a teacher's main concern be about what students know and can do? Surely, if we worry about that, any level or grade that needs to be assigned by the accountability machine (exam boards et. al) will look after themselves.

The assessment revolution
In 2015 there was a big rethink in assessment:

“In the context of curriculum freedoms and increasing autonomy for schools, it would make no sense to prescribe any one model for assessment. Curriculum and assessment are inextricably linked. Schools should be free to develop an approach to assessment which aligns with their curriculum and works for their pupils and staff” - Commission on Assessment Without Levels, 2015.

The old KS3 levels were abolished and responsibility for developing assessment policies were handed over to schools. This posed an opportunity and challenge to make new assessment systems that are more meaningful to teachers and students and remove some of the failings of the past.

Life after Levels
At Denbigh subject leaders developed KPIs (key progress indicators) to identify specific pieces of knowledge and skill that can pin-point student progress. The logic being that these KPIs should link directly to the curriculum that subjects are teaching. In the light of the knowledge rich curriculum an emphasis upon knowledge could also be placed and in any assessment, summative or formative, a teacher can gather evidence for the relevant KPIs they are testing for.

In this context subjects have been liberated and assessment conversations can become more meaningful, devoid of an abstract level.

However the implementation of such systems is key. Are the KPIs relevant to the curriculum? Are they accessible to students? Can they be easily assessed or are they themselves too abstract? And do they actually support pupil progress? - They can't just be a new summative system that tells a student what they don't know or can't do and leave it at that - they have to help make them better.

Teachers and Formative Assessment
Teachers must understand that assessment is continuous and fluid. Assessment should form a dialogue between teacher and pupil with the aim to improve pupils’ understanding, learning and raise achievement. Utilising well thought out KPIs, assessment should be motivating and meaningful for both teacher and learner - teachers will glean information about pupil performance and use this to inform planning and progression for individuals and groups, whilst pupils will have an acute awareness of what they need to do improve but more importantly, how to improve and understand the importance of that progression.

Aims of the R&D group - Jess Pather and Samantha Lewis
In this research and development group we are looking at ways we can make the new assessment policy work at Denbigh. We also aim to discover and share the best innovative practice that is currently happening in formative assessment and find out if it works in developing student motivation and the development of their longer term memory and recall.

Below are some useful links to some further reading on assessment as well as some general evidence based formative assessment strategies you can try.

You can follow Jess Pather and Samantha Lewis on Twitter:

@jpather74
@MrsSLewis1

Useful links:
https://teacherhead.com/2019/01/10/revisiting-dylan-wiliams-five-brilliant-formative-assessment-strategies/
https://cambridge-community.org.uk/professional-development/gswafl/index.html
https://learningspy.co.uk/category/assessment/
https://teacherhead.com/2017/12/18/fiveways-of-giving-effective-feedback-as-actions/
http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/best-practice/assessment-developing-your-own-approach/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLpAalDaqQY