I’ve just come across this great image on flickr and thought it went perfectly with this post for obvious reasons. A little while ago Jim Morrison sent me an email asking if he could use the prezi I made to share my efforts to try out CfE with one of my classes for inservice training he was leading on formative assessment. I was delighted of course and happily agreed. Jim then emailed me to let me know how it went and agreed for me to share this here:
Hi again Fearghal
Workshop on Tuesday went very well 
Started with a run down on AifL, using information from LTS, with a brief PPT and 3 videos. Then used your Prezi as a means to show how thinking outside the box can be used in both planning, assessment and reflective practice. The group of twelve I delivered the workshop to all seemed enthralled by your work, and how much ownership the group of young people had taken and developed.
I then split the staff into three groups with similar remits: demonstrate your personal knowledge of castles (with one member of staff in each group pretending to be a supply teacher covering a lesson each with a brief remit of what they were to deliver).
Group 1: each ‘young person’ had to write a 150 word ‘essay’ on what they knew about castles and their structures – unsurprisingly they all thought this was a waste of time and effort and could see little point in the exercise and rebelled! Luckily, some of the staff taking part in this task understood that this was the point!
Group 2: each ‘young person’ had to create, on A1 paper, some form of poster displaying what they knew about castles and their structures. The more ‘artistic’ ones drew castles, with labels showing where the moat etc was. One colleague downloaded, printed and glued on various images and added notes. They were all pretty competitive throughout and did not lift their heads once!
Group 3: this group had to work collaboratively to produce a model of a castle, from planning to implementation, bearing in mind that it would take several lessons to complete. This was the only group whose brief included the expectation to “have fun”.
During the feedback session, the groups were able to reflect on the idea of satisfying a particular outcome through three very simple but different experiences and methods of assessment. All of them wanted to do the model task next time!
Hopefully, they all left with the idea that within CfE they have the ‘freedom’ to provide more interesting and valueable experiences to the outcomes. And that formative assessment permeates, and should be an important part of their teaching toolkit.
It certainly made the stress and work in setting the day up feel worth it!
Thanks again Fearghal!
Jim
I think you’ll agree, that this not only sounds like an excellent inservice day, but it also shows the networked teacher diagram in action
