So I think before I even start this presentation I just want to say some really interesting ideas
shared already in room two I think you'll see some trends in in my presentation and what our network
has done so we're really interested to see your comments and how we can look at developing our
elements even further so yes good morning my name is Ross Coupland I'm representing Stamford college
and our network and as you can see in front of you um what we wanted to do this academic year
was work through a form of diagnostic assessment, to really look at student confidence and try to
develop a sense of empowerment within our cohorts to demonstrate that mastery of specific topics,
okay so, the aim as you can see is also in a bit more detail there we were trying to look at a
range of key concepts that our students we know they often struggle with in gcse maths and what
we aimed to do which you will see shortly is to bring in an activity really that would allow our
students to not only judge their own ability but try to express that understanding effectively okay
so before we do begin a little bit of context on that and and what that means for well for us
and possibly for you as well um why do you do a diagnostic what's the point of a diagnostic? For
yourself or for your team or your department or your slt possibly, that was one of our starting
points why do we bother with a diagnostic and what can our teaching teams do to make them effective
and how can we work with that, and it also represented certainly for Stamford college a
very much a back to basics approach to really try and support students to access math lessons post
lockdown, again just to explain Stamford college in particular last academic year we delivered
maths fully online 100 percent we didn't have students in center at all and this academic year
we were looking to re-adapt and and get back to some form of normality by having on-site lessons
and again many colleges in our network we experienced increased levels of absence,
okay so whether that be students actually having code and self-isolation taking place
but we also had several instances throughout the academic year mainly at the start though
where whole classes were studying from home because of our uh high level of infection rate so
as we developed and continued through our action research process those were very much some of the
elements that we were considering and trying to identify. So what did we do we set up two
research windows to actually test this diagnostic activity one was quite early in October and the
other one was towards the end of the program in March we were able to gather both elements of data
from our students and we issued a student survey in the form of a google form but also on paper
to try and maximize that student involvement and engagement so we made it as accessible as possible
and then from there we've also combined that data with monthly reflections and thoughts
from teachers to try and identify any context and trends that we were
noticing throughout those two windows and throughout the academic year in general.
And as I mentioned we were also looking at the some software this was an evolution from the
action research from the previous academic year unfortunately we were able to continue
with that so at Stamford college we continued working with gcse pod the college of west
Anglia they developed their own um software using the Moodle platform which was uh using
an online diagnostic in the form of exam-based questions. Peterborough college continued with
maths watch and Grantham and Moulton they continued using century and all in all we
had responses and engagement from about 100 students with eight teachers in total.
And this is the main focus that I want to talk about today this is the diagnostic that
we actually used in one sense, it was just a piece of paper that we gave to students to try
and work through, but it became so much more than that and one of the hardest elements was
trying to lay this out effectively to maximize engagement and student thought it's just a grid.
But trying to generate these comments I can't tell you how long it took us to work through these
comments and phrases we worked with our English team we worked with mastery specialists to try
and identify low stakes engagement that we could get from our students, so it's it's essentially an
easy to hard table but it's the phrasing that really, really helped our students understand
what we wanted as teachers to get from them. How many times have you gone to one of your students
and said you know what can I help you with what do you need help with when it comes to to math?
And they go everything or I don't understand any of it, and you that although that does give you
some information as a teacher you're often trying to pinpoint aren't you you're trying to get into
that deeper understanding so we went away and we revised this sheet and what we were trying
to do was remove some of that emotive language that students can have and then even fear to an
extent when it comes to maths or the resignation that again they're doing another year of math
they've been labeled a failure they've got a grade three and and they're back again to do gcse math
so what we were trying to celebrate was what students already knew so when we launched this
diagnostic it's not a test this isn't a form of assessment where a student is going to get marks
for what they put what we were trying to do was open up a line of communication between
student and teacher or maybe student and lsa and even student to student, to really try
and open up their thoughts and understanding of where they thought they were going wrong.
So once this was launched at the start of a particular lesson as you can see here I've
chosen fractions of decimals and percentages as an example we let students choose what
they wanted to do with this, so some students literally put a tick and they judge themselves
at the beginning of the lesson and at the end of the lesson to show distance travelled, but,
as teachers became more confident with it, as it became a more regular feature in lessons,
students engaged with it more, they wrote phrases, they added additional comments,
we even had from one particular college we had a non-verbal student that had a counter and they
put their counter in the box and the counter would move up and down throughout the lesson
and feedback from teachers has been that part way through a lesson at the halfway mark maybe once
you've done your talk and talk they could quickly walk around the room and identify
where students were progressing or where they could judge themselves and then that allowed us to
influence the next stage of the lesson did we need to go back and recap were students
finding this too straightforward, were we ready to move on to the next step? But what it was doing
is allowing students to communicate their feelings their thoughts without necessarily
being put on the spot and it was trying to build that resilience and that understanding
between those cohorts and as I mentioned this wasn't something that's just developing between
the teacher and the student as valuable as that was this was also something that was
growing between the student and the lsa the student and their friends and their peers.
So again this was pictured as a low stakes exercise a low stakes activity where we could try
and engage students effectively, now don't get me wrong, not everybody, not all students used it and
some students do really struggle to engage with it it's not something that they enjoyed working with,
but others really really went went along with it so let's have a look at the results in a bit
more detail we essentially generated four key findings based on the information we gathered.
The first one is that according to the the survey student engagement in their topics
due to the diagnostic tool increased not just in one center but across all five
and equally student confidence in their own maths ability
increased between all five centers that took part between those two research windows
and what was really positive for us was that the continuation
of our interactive maths software was also judged effective by students at all five colleges
slightly in the second survey window and equally topics that students felt they needed support with
was common across all five colleges which is what you would expect, but what was more surprising was
that there was little change between the first window in October and the second in March. So
to look at that in a little bit more detail just so you can identify the colors there the blue,
the blue bars that you're seeing is the data gathered in October 2021 and the orange data
reflects the window two of March and those are the questions that I was just referring to so
as you can see there on a scale of one to five how would students rate that diagnostic tool
in supporting them to engage in their lesson and this was gathered as mentioned through the google
form or through a paper-based activity. Although college 2 has a slight increase it's an increase
nonetheless, we're going to celebrate that, and that is the same across all five of those
colleges and we can also see that with the second survey question that was issued students did judge
that their confidence improved over time, now that could be a natural process couldn't it? If they're
if they're attending more lessons and if they are engaged in more maths activity and reviewing their
topics we would expect that increase, but, what we're trying to identify and what the student
comments just showed us was that potentially that diagnostic tool, was playing a key part,
and it's interesting to know we plan to do further work with college five for example
which saw significant increases between those two windows and college two again which also has
an increase but has the smallest increase be interesting to make further comparisons with those
and that's what we aim to do in the in the final window of action research next academic year.
And again in terms of the math software that I referred to earlier we can see that every
college saw an increase as to how students judged their progression and that particular intervention
was also making good use. I've also just done a quick word wall there at the bottom just to see
what students were saying in their feedback and it's interesting to note that
progression or progress was something that students were really identifying as from that
diagnostic tool and confidence and again that's what's really hit me today with those last two
presentations that we've seen in room two, developing that student's confidence to
engage with activity to engage with questions is something that our network really wanted to
focus on and we feel that we're very much trying to develop something here and that
we've kind of stumbled across something by going back to that back to basics approach,
and then interestingly just a quick snapshot of those challenging topics that are referred to
as well so as you can see those I'm sure those are topics that your students do struggle with
but we were surprised to see that although we had covered fractions several times throughout
our scheme of learning it still features late in March 22. okay granted numbers aren't high as you
can see we've had about 100 responses from both but it was quite telling to see that fractions
did remain throughout as does angles okay ratio is also a common one which we which we would expect
so that suggests that again as a college or as a network we need to consider how we implement that,
why do students feel that those topics are challenging? And again part of our next steps
is to identify is it the question is it student confidence with that is it something that students
don't want to engage with as opposed to the topic itself. And as you can see from our conclusions
although we do like that diagnostic sheet it does not you don't necessarily need a
sheet that tests students I think what we found really beneficial this academic year
is that we have generated those conversations to empower students to attempt questions and
it's been trying to create a platform in which students can express their concerns,
express their understandings and the teacher can make instant use of that. Okay, so as students
are working through that mastery process those that have developed that confidence and are then
supporting their friends their colleagues are able to progress and show that understanding,
and equally the use of that interactive software what we have noticed because again we it's almost
as important isn't it to recognize the other side we do have students that positively engage with
with the interactive software but we did have a significant negative effect as well. A lot
of students said well as a result of the online learning last academic year or through lockdown
they developed a negative response that well they associate negative emotions or memories with
that process, so it's not the be-all and end-all when it comes to that and I think as part of our
re-engagement and return to on-site learning has been trying to ensure that we don't overload
and overbear students with that online element, it's there as an additional learning tool,
because otherwise it can have that negative impact. Equally as I mentioned those students
that don't or feel they're unable to engage with that diagnostic tool to the point that we did have
a handful of students that did not work with it at all they were not interested in expressing their
opinions their their views they didn't understand the meaning of it or the value of it, so again
it's just it's just worth identifying that that there must have a fail safe isn't that make sure
that you've got something else in place to support your learners and equally that does also apply for
that interactive math software it does not replace the tutor directed lessons but it can be a very
useful and very powerful tool that can engage the majority of learners. So what are we looking to
do next as a network as we move into the final phase of our action research next academic year
and that is we want to continue developing that diagnostic tool and one of the key elements is to
actually start that at the beginning of the academic year we did we didn't launch until
October so by the time students got into a routine some of that really valuable key information that
you can get through induction right in those first few valuable weeks have been lost,
so we want to make sure that we can capture that information and work with it effectively
and I think as a network you can see we've really tried to demonstrate really the value
of that emotional response trying to capture students feelings listening or demonstrating to
students that they've been listening to has been absolutely critical in building those
relationships with our learners this year. One of the big key key pieces of feedback
was that students would like an online equivalent of that resource as well to possibly store that
information to show progress and distance traveled all the time we started with with that - with the
paper-based version because it allowed the teacher to get a snapshot as they walked around the room
but there could be potential and an investigation into an online equivalent as well where all that
information could be stored and equally we continue to plan to review that interactive
software as we build on the lessons learned throughout the rest of the project and tie that
in with mastery related cpd with our teachers to continue that understanding on both sides,
and as I draw my presentation to a close I just want to say significant thanks to the
partners that took part in this project this year so Grantham college, Moulten college,
Peterborough college and the college of West Anglia and also that very specialist
support specifically from Sheila Evans, Norma Honey, Marie Joubert, Cath Gladding and Steve,
the ETF and many others that I don't have time to mention right now thank you very much everyone for
your time and thank you for your attention and I look forward to your questions later, thank you.