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- The Classify Education Newsletter #6
The Classify Education Newsletter #6
Andrew Wilkinson
September 01, 2024
Welcome to the fifth edition of The Classify Education Newsletter. It’s been a busy month with lots of exciting things happening
What we cover
Want to take a look at Classify Education? Click the button below to take get a guided walkthrough of our prototype dashboard👇
Classify updates
Version 1 of Classify is almost ready to go live. Version 1 (AlphaWave) will make the main features available for teachers. Development will continue on enhancing those core features as well as leadership features over the following month.
The Learning Curve School Leadership Podcast summer series is complete (Leadership Shorts) you can listen to them all here. There was some really positive feedback on these ‘shorts’ so it may be something I look to expand on in the future.
Episode #12 of the main Learning Curve School Leadership Podcast is live and it’s an absolute cracker with the wonderful Barry Smith. It’s a really insightful listen especially at the start of the academic year. Check it out here.
Leadership reflection
Take care of the little things. Their presence or their absence could make all the difference.
Reflection: I’m currently re-reading Pep Guardiola: The Evolution by Marti Perarnau and I came across this quote at exactly the time I needed to.
Starting off the school year, it’s about sweating the small stuff and taking care of the details early. For me, this has been about setting expectations around classroom and school routines as well as expectations around uniform, equipment and presentation in workbooks.
After my conversation with Barry Smith, I’ve really worked hard on subtracting when it comes to communication around expectations and having short, clear messages that I intend to communicate often with my team and with students in schools. All of these messages are intended to ensure little things are present in the department and that everybody is aware of them.
Here are some of the examples of the prompts I am currently trying to use or am thinking about using:
We’re polite to you, you’re polite to us (credit to Barry Smith)
Look smart to work hard (trying to focus on the process vs outcome)
Full sentences for full answers
Track to focus
I am still in the experimentation phase of this and really trying to codify the ‘small stuff’ and how I can communicate expectations clearly. Alongside this, Barry made the simple point that leaders and teacher must say what they do and then do what they say…there’s clarity in that and so much sense.
In addition, I have also used the following wonderful resource from Cat Chowdhary to codify routines in the classroom.
This structure is simple and effective and has allowed the department to think about having alignment when it comes to routines to try and establish some cumulative gains and maximise learning time.
The data drop
Data from Teacher Tapp
This month’s data drop takes some interesting data from Teacher Tapp on the use of AI in the lives of teachers. Personally, I was quite shocked to see that 57% of teachers stated that they used AI tools to help with school work and I thought this number would be slightly higher. This number shrank when it came to working with younger students where 46% of EYFS/KS1 teachers use AI tools vs 64% at KS2. Anecdotally, I have not met many teachers who have not at least dabbled in using AI to support report writing. It would be interesting to delve into the number closer to see specific use cases such as report writing, generating model texts etc and I think that would give some interesting insights.
The use in lessons being 11% makes me think that teachers have not found a smooth way of integrating into lessons (excluding computing) perhaps due to switching screens and redundant time or perhaps due to usecases. It would be interesting to see if this will change with some new curriculum specific tools such as WhiteRose Infinity.
I also believe there could be an interesting follow up or exploration of the data based on teacher age and use of AI. Working in an international setting, with a younger teacher base means that in international schools there may be more use of these tools.
Do you use AI to support with your school work? Let us know with a reply 👍
Teaching & learning tip
Visualisers
Visualisers tend to be a little bit decisive in my experience speaking with teachers. Some teachers absolutely swear by them and think they are the best method of teaching and others tend to dislike the disorganisation of flicking between presentations and camera.
Personally, I believe visualisers to be a great resource…assuming they can be integrated seamlessly into a lesson with minimal disruptions. I’ve been experimenting with visualisers over the last year or so and I wanted to highlight some of my ‘top tips’ for their use in the classroom.
Firstly, I want to highlight that I am in favour of using a visualiser as part of a hybrid approach alongside a PPT which provides flexibility vs using solely a visualiser or PPT. I tried using a visualiser on it’s own and found that at time I just wanted to have a secondary screen or wanted to show a video etc equally I don’t like just PPT as it’s difficult to replicate exactly what the student sees.
It is also worth noting how the importance of achieving a smooth setup to minimise disruption. I preferred a standing single person desk which I taped up to show where work should go and to ensure the camera was setup correctly for students to view on the board. Taping up the desk was probably the best thing I did as it saved me time manoeuvring the camera and paper which initially, I found very frustrating. I also made sure that I was facing the students vs being side-on or turning my back in order to ensure students were focusing on the board.
When to use a Visualiser:
Establish presentation expectations
Paired with a teacher workbook, I believe this is the best way to establish really clear expectations around how students should present work. There is 0 room for interpretation or mistakes as teacher and student are viewing and using exactly the same equipment.
Modelling
My favourite use of the visualiser is in providing a blank canvas for modelling and, along with clear scripting, a method that can really support in reducing cognitive load for students. If you are interested in how I like to build explanations and model, check out the Classify blog here.
Highlight student work
Simple but effective. When circulating and supporting students during practice, having a visualiser makes it incredibly easy to grab some student work to highlight excellent examples or to highlight possible misconceptions. In the case of misconceptions, it can also be useful to use the visualiser to capture an image of the work which can be used to create a bank of misconceptions to teach from or use to challenge students down the road.
Feedback
Similar to the last example but slightly different…I got into the habit of using the visualiser to share notes I was making around common errors which would form the basis of follow-up tasks. I was teaching Year 7 students at that time and they enjoyed the process of me talking through what I’d found when circulating.
Practical demonstrations
Similar to modelling however just with more practical demonstrations. Using a visualiser changed my life when teaching constructions in maths. Using a digital protractor and compass on the board was a real battle and switching to the visualiser supported with the intricacies of hand movement and positioning on a page which really helped the students.
Hopefully the tips above are of some use. If you’ve never tried it I would highly recommend diving in and giving a visualiser a go in your classroom.
Five things we enjoyed this month
Learn more about Classify
Thank you as always for taking the time to read this month’s edition of The Classify Education Newsletter. It is genuinely a pleasure putting it together and sharing with passionate educators.
As always, if you have any feedback on anything we do…give me a shout and let me know. I want this newsletter to be a valuable resource and I would love to know if people wanted something specific.
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