CPD Day Monday 3rd February

Resources:

A whistle stop tour of AfL

Goodbye Jessen

Assessment for Learning Activities

Plenary Cards

Differentiation SIG Intro

My aim - to collect resources and ideas for teaching low/below pupils in Business and preparing them for their controlled assessment.

What are your viewpoints on differentiation?
Resources - edited the book.
Not publicising the fact they need extra support but allowing pupils to have the choice.
Questioning
Reflecting on realistic targets - May be not completing a task.
Emphasising the positive
Not dwelling on what they haven't done.
Helping them/more support without the pupil realising.
Dealing with being wrong/failing.
Interpretation of questions.

Definition of Differentiation:
Making a task accessible to all students whilst ensuring they are still be challenged.

Business Studies Classroom Ideas

I have been thinking about my ideal Business Studies classroom. Purely thinking about the layout and content of the room. Currently I teach in a room that is a little too large which, due to there being no carpets, is very echoey. The PCs are spread around the edge of the room meaning pupils are generally facing away from the board when working. This makes referring to the board hard work sometimes, to-ing and fro-ing. There are tables in the middle of the room but it is a bit of a squash to get pupils near enough to the whiteboard when copying down notes. The whiteboard that is in the room is tiny. Not that I'm fussy or anything...

I visited a school in Winchester that had desks similar to those shown below. Their idea was that if pupils are being taught in an office like environment, it would firstly give them a better understanding of what an office environment is like but it would also potentially motivate them some how. They had most of the desks positioned to the center of the room so the teacher could navigate around them. The only downside being that the teacher couldn't see all the PC screens at the same time.

I like the idea of each pupil having a set work space. The design below would work well if pupils had their own laptops or tablets. There is enough space to do paperwork as well.
The smaller table set up would also work well for meetings and group work. It would appear to create a much more formal working space which again could motivate pupils.

Image from here

With the number of pupils choosing Business Studies at Wildern increasing, I am inclined to think that a change of classroom set up is needed, particularly as this means class sizes are also increasing.