CHARACTER EDUCATION |
I committed to explicit teaching of team building skills in Spring 1 and inclusion of team building on the success criteria in Spring 2 and I have now analysed the data from this.
In Spring 1, when the assessment task was introduced, approximately half the lesson was given over to discussion of what good team work looked like. I have only spoken about this previously in reference to particular problems that have already arisen, so it was a new approach to consider this element BEFORE there were any issues. Pupils worked in their assessment groups to identify problems which might arise given who they were tasked with working with. This information was then fed back to the whole class. Pupils were very honest in identifying the failings of other pupils, not quite as candid in about the difficulties they may present others with! Usual complaints consisted of behaviours such as 'messing about', 'wasting time', 'not contributing' and 'always disagreeing'. They then expected me to offer solutions to these problems. However, I insisted they came up with solutions themselves. Because of this, I saw the emergence of pupils taking responsibility for their own behaviour and understanding that their reactions to others were as crucial for success as the initial actions of their peers. I found it very helpful at this point to remind pupils what their overall aim was and that their success depended on being able to work together. This led to pupils offer each other solutions to engage group members and group members committing to minimum standards acceptable to all. The pieces they had created by the end of the assessment showed a marked improvement in participation and sharing of roles compared to groups of similar ability in the last academic year. This was a surprise to me as I had expected the main outcome to be less falling out and petty squabbling. So, for Spring 2, I wanted actual evidence I could track. You can see on the assessment sheet I have included below that two of the eight success criteria were related to teamwork. Based on my experience of the work of previous cohorts , I would have expected most pupils to achieve green on these two criteria at this time in the academic year. However, when it came time to assess I was very surprised to report that the majority of pupils attained purple in both teamwork criteria, with only a handful attaining green. Out of four year 7 classes, I only had two pupils who attained less than green. This is an astounding improvement which also impacted on the quality of the actual drama pieces. As a result of this research I will be including at least one reference to team work in all assessments in year 7 next year and I will continue to discuss it explicitly with pupils in preparation for assessments.
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