Training guide

Activity 3.1: Collaborating with others

Watch the video with the head teacher from Kabwe talking about the impact of teacher collaboration in her school.

As you listen, make notes in your Teacher Notebook about the activities this head teacher has seen in relation to:

• TGMs
• teacher – teacher observations 
• learners’ outcomes

Now watch the video with the Assistant DRCC from Chisamba talking on a similar topic and make further notes. Have you had similar experiences in your TGMs with colleagues? Make a note in your Teacher Notebook of ways in which you could use collaboration with other teachers to help your practice and your personal CPD.

In your Teacher Notebook write down three resolutions to improve your teaching and your collaboration with other teachers for this term. For example, ‘I will have tea break with… every Friday and we will discuss…’.

Activity 3.2

Take a look at this video of a Grade 7 science class. Would you describe this as Assessment of or for Learning?

In your Teacher Notebook make individual notes about your reasons for identifying it as Assessment of or for learning.

Now share your thinking with one or two colleagues. Did you arrive to the same conclusion?

Classroom Example 3.1: Getting to know your school environment and community

Listen to the audio or read the example below about how Elisa taught Social Studies to her Grade 5 class. As you read, make notes in your Teacher Notebook, considering the following:

1. What topic is Elisa’s activity about?
2. What skills and values does she want to develop in her learners?
3. How does Elisa find out what her learners already know about the topic?
4. How does she teach new knowledge to her learners?
5. What does Elisa do to find out what they have learned from the lesson?

Audio transcript

Elisa is a teacher in Grade 5 and she is exploring the local community and environment around their school in a village in Zambia. As part of the social studies syllabus, Grade 5 learners need to study aspects relating to transport and communication in the district. Elisa hopes to develop her pupils’ abilities in observing and respecting the environment surrounding their village. She hopes this will help them to understand their roles and responsibilities with respect to local resources and their community.

At the end of one day, Elisa explains to the learners what they will be doing the next day and what she hopes they will learn. As homework she asks them to note down all the modes of transport they see on their way home that day and to bring their list to school the following day.

The next day, she writes on the centre of a large piece of paper:

‘What modes of transport do we have in our own environment?’ 

Elisa asks for volunteers to come and add the names of the modes of transport learners have noted in their homework, for example: bicycle, car, minibus. As they add the modes of transport, Elisa asks them what is good and not so good about different modes of transport for the local environment, and for those living in it.

Elisa then draws a circle around all these modes of transport and asks learners to add any other modes of transport they know about but are not present in their own community. She also asks them about the benefits and the issues of each transport. During this activity Elisa has to explain a number of modes of transport that some learners are not familiar with. To do this, she first asks her learners if any of them knows what it is, and then she adds some information herself.

For the next activity, Elisa draws a table on the chalkboard with three columns: mode of transport, benefits and issues. She puts learners into groups of six and gives each group a mode of transport from their community, and one that is not present within their community. She asks them to copy the table on the paper she has given them and write what is good and not so good about both modes of transport.

As she walks around the different groups, Elisa finds that all learners are very engaged with this activity and are contributing very good suggestions.

For her next lesson, Elisa plans to ask each group to explain the benefits and the issues of each mode of transport, asking learners to make notes of all these in their notebooks. Elisa has also thought about how she can assess each learner’s understanding and knowledge in a few weeks’ time.

Activity 3.3: Assessing learners’ learning

After listening to or reading Classroom Example 3.1, reflect about how you have assessed learning during a lesson you recently taught.

Identify a lesson that you taught last week.

• What did you expect your learners would know during the lesson?
• Are you confident that learners grasped the new ideas?
• If so, how do you know?
• If you are not sure, what could you have done to find out?

Make notes in your Teacher Notebook to share with colleagues in the next TGM or next time you discuss your teaching with a colleague.

When discussing your experience with a colleague, make notes about any different ways they have used to assess learners’ understanding or learning as they might be useful for you to use in a future lesson.

Activity 3.4: Stages in learning process

Nellie has begun teaching her Grade 4 class about forces (Topic 4.5 in the science curriculum) and wants to get them to think about the concepts of ‘pull’, ‘push’ and ‘twist or turn’.

Listen to the audio or read classroom example 3.2 as she explains how she helps her students do this. As you do so, write down the various steps or stages in the process in your Teacher Notebook.

Classroom Example 3.2: Brainstorming force action words to elicit knowledge

Audio transcript:

Over the past two weeks, I have been collecting pictures and objects that illustrate different types of force action, drawing resources from around my home and school environment. For example, I have a screwdriver to demonstrate how to ‘screw’, and a sheet of ripped paper to visually show the meaning of ‘tear’ and ‘rip’. I begin the class by demonstrating and eliciting the three key verbs (pull, push, twist).

Most of the learners are familiar with these words although a few are not sure of ‘twist’. Once I have demonstrated and asked them to show me physically what it means, I write the three words on the board.

We then do a brainstorm activity where I ask my learners to call out all the action words they can think of. I make three ‘word spiders’ on the board - one for each of the three verbs (push, pull and twist). We begin by using words in their home language and then move onto English.

I find using mime to demonstrate meaning is really helpful, and I check with them whether each suggestion they offer is a push, pull or twist verb to check their understanding.

Finally, I put all the pictures and objects I have collected on a table and ask the learners to label them with an appropriate verb and put them into three groups – one for push, one for pull and one for twist types of force.

Did you notice...

• Nellie prepares for the activity well in advance, collecting pictures and objects to demonstrate the three forces.
• Nellie uses her local environment to find resources to help her teach the force concepts.
• As Grade 4 are quite young learners, she maximises the brainstorming activity by using English and their home language to ensure participation.
• She uses mime and gesture to help with understanding.
• The brainstorming activity is followed up with a more focused matching task.
• Although this is a science lesson, Nellie is also teaching English. In Grade 4, when learners switch from learning in their home language, this is really important. Learners will need a great deal of support with their language whatever subject they are studying.

Activity 3.5: Using local resources to elicit knowledge

Bennita uses local packaging to find out what her Grade 5 students already know about the difference between objects and shapes.

Watch the video as she shows the resources she has accumulated.

In your Teacher Notebook make a note of what other items you could usefully collect to help with your classroom practice, and what topics you could use them for.

Activity 3.6: Eliciting prior knowledge

Decide on a lesson that you are going to teach in the next few days. Choose a technique from the three suggestions you have just read about to elicit your learners’ prior knowledge: brainstorming, using visuals and local resources. Use the ‘top tips’ below to help you.

In your Teacher Notebook, write:

• the technique you are going to use
• the grade you will use the activity with
• a few notes about the topic
• what you expect learners to learn through that activity
• what you need to do to prepare the activity in your lesson.

Write in your Teacher Notebook how you will elicit information from your learners and discuss your ideas with your partner. You can practise brainstorming with your colleagues or explain how you will use a visual or local resources in your lesson.

Activity 3.7: Monitoring reading skills

Listen to the audio or read the transcript where you can hear Wilson talking about how he has started monitoring the reading skills of his Grade 6 class.

Audio transcript

I am the teacher of a large Grade 6 class and I had become more and more concerned that I just didn’t have time to check the reading ability of all my students during normal lesson time. A few of my students are great readers and I know I tend to use them a lot when I want a learner to read aloud from the textbook because it saves time. I needed a better way of monitoring the skills of the whole class, as there are some students I had not heard read aloud for quite some time. So, for a month, every time I listened to a learner read, I made a note of it and how they did in my mark book. I deliberately created opportunities for less confident readers to read to me individually, rather than to the whole class.

It took a few weeks, but now I have listened to all the learners in my class and I have now been able to group them into reading sets which I believe will help them improve and practise their skills. Thanks to this information, I also sometimes use learners from the top reading groups to help learners who find reading more difficult. 

In order to do this, Wilson made a chart with each student’s name, the date and a space for comments. Over the period of a month he found time to listen to each learner in his class and to complete a table like the one you can see below:

This model of monitoring can be used in all subjects. After listening to Wilson (or reading his thoughts) and looking at his table, reflect on and discuss with colleagues how this would work in your own subject.

• What is the advantage of this method of monitoring learners’ reading skills?
• How could you create opportunities to do something similar in your class?

Using a mark book, or your Teacher Notebook, make a plan for monitoring learners’ in your subject for the next month. Think about the key knowledge, skills and values that you want them to learn, and devise a way of recording their progress. You could use a table like this:

Activity 3.8: Using positive language to provide feedback

In your Teacher Notebook set up a list of sentences you can use to give positive feedback to learners when praising or correcting their work.

Draw a table with two columns:

1. Praising
2. Correcting and prompting

In the ‘praising’ column, copy the sentences provided above and add a few others you use regularly.

In the ‘correcting and prompting’ column, copy the sentences above and add others you regularly use.

Share your examples with colleagues and add their ideas to increase your own lists. When you give feedback to learners, in their written work or in other activities make sure you use different sentences to praise and correct their work.

Activity 3.9

Watch the video of Mary teaching Grade 4. As you watch make a note of the different kinds of feedback and prompts that she gives to her learners.

Now compare your notes with a partner.

How do you think you compare with Mary in terms of praising your learners and following up on their responses? Do you think you can improve?

The next time you have a peer observation, ask your colleague to focus on your feedback to the students and your movement around the class.

Activity 3.10: Building self-esteem

Read the following scenarios and discuss with a partner how you might respond with appropriate feedback. Try and imagine what it would feel like to be the child receiving the feedback.

Scenario 1:

Michael is in Grade 4. You have set some Maths problems. Michael is the first to finish, but when you look at his work you realise that in his rush to finish, he has made a lot of mistakes.

Scenario 2:

The school has received some reading books. You invite your class to choose one to read to themselves in quiet reading time. You notice that Martha chooses one which has very few words on each page. You know that she is quite a good reader and you would like her to challenge herself more.

Scenario 3:

You asked your class to answer some questions in English about a story you read to them. David wrote some very good detailed answers, but he made many mistakes with his spelling.

Activity 3.11: Formative assessment

On the next three pages are three classroom examples, all of which show teachers undertaking formative assessment in different ways. As you listen or read the different examples, in your Teacher Notebook:

1. make a note of what the grade, subject and topic of the lesson is
2. write down all the ways in which the teacher is gathering information about the progress of learners (formative assessment)
3. note down the ways in which teachers use that information to plan teaching.

Compare your analysis with a colleague, and together compile a list of ‘top tips’ for formative assessment. Display this on the wall of the staff room.

Think about a topic that you will be teaching soon, or have just taught. How would you adapt one of the classroom examples for your classroom?

Classroom Example 3.3: Monitoring learning, peer assessment – past tenses and writing

Audio transcript

Lucy is teaching Grade 4 learners about awareness and use of the past tense to write short stories. They have done many activities in her lessons over the past week, but she is not sure if all her learners have fully understood and remember the main irregular verbs.

In order to assess their learning, she asked them to write a story titled Janice’s visit to the market last week. For this she gave learners a list of 10 verbs, both regular and irregular, which they had to include in their story.

While she is correcting the stories, Lucy realises that most learners have clearly understood that all verb forms are the same for the different persons in the past tense. However, she noticed that some learners are still finding it difficult to use the correct forms for common irregular verbs such as go, make and buy for example. In her class list she made notes about how well the different learners had completed the activity.

The next day, she sets up an activity where learners had to change sentences which included both regular and irregular verbs in the present to the past tense. Before the activity, using the notes that she had made on her class list, she put learners in groups ensuring that in each group there was at least one learner who had demonstrated good use of past tenses in the writing. As the groups worked, she walked around the classroom paying attention to all learners and ensuring those who had completed the writing correctly were assisting others rather than just giving the correct answer.

At the end of the activity, Lucy brought the full class together again. In order to reinforce their learning, she asked learners who had made mistakes in their writing to provide the correct sentences from their group.

A few weeks later, Lucy revisited past tenses as part of another topic they were working on. As she walked around the class while they were doing a pair activity, she used her notebook to remind herself of the learners who had struggled in the writing activity, and she was pleased to see that many of the learners who had made errors in their writing were now using more verbs correctly.

It took Lucy a lot of time to mark all the work and set up the groups, but when reflecting about this activity, she realised that all learners were now much more confident in using the past tense in their writing. The additional time she had spent in this series of activities to reinforce irregular past tenses had benefitted all learners.

Did you notice:

• Lucy set up an activity to assess individual learners’ knowledge
• based on the outcomes, Lucy decided to set up an additional activity to reinforce the learning outcomes of the topic in question
• all learners were involved in the activity based on their competence: those who had completed a good writing assisting the others
• Lucy reinforced the learning at the end of the activity for all
• Lucy reviewed the learning a few weeks later using her notes from the previous activity.

Classroom Example 3.4: Brainstorm to elicit prior knowledge and poster design

Audio transcript

Charles, who teaches social studies and expressive arts at a small school in Mumbwa, wants to reinforce his Grade 6 learners’ knowledge of important events in history. In order to do this, he plans a lesson where his pupils need to develop a timeline which would represent key events that have occured in the history of Zambia, Central Province and Mumbwa District. Charles has already spent a number of days on this topic, so he is keen to know how much learners remember about the topic and how to help them to summarise their knowledge.

He divides the class into six groups of four to six learners and gives them each a big piece of paper. On each he has written Zambia, Central Province or Mumbwa. He gives two groups a paper with 'Zambia' written in the centre; two groups a paper with 'Central Province' written in the centre; and two groups a paper with 'Mumbwa' written in the centre. Each paper has a table divided into two columns: Date/Year and Event. He asks the groups to write all the events they remember that have occurred within their allocated jurisdiction, adding the date or year it occurred. If they can’t remember the date, they can leave that blank as just naming the event already demonstrates they know that a key event took place.

After 10 minutes, he asks the two groups who have worked on the same jurisdiction (Zambia, Central Province or Mumbwa) to exchange the pieces of paper and:

• assess whether they think the other group is right
• put a question mark next to any dates or events they do not agree with
• add anything the other group might have missed.

As Charles is not planning on asking each group to share their work at this stage, he walks around the groups paying special attention to their writing to ensure that the information is correct. After 10 minutes, he asks the groups to return their paper to the original group.

After each group has received their paper back, Charles asks all learners to look at the board where he has drawn a timeline of the history of Zambia. To help pupils understand the concept of periods, he has divided the history of Zambia into the pre-colonial, the colonial and the independence periods. To give a sense of how long each of these periods is, he draws each period to scale. Charles asks each group to identify one event and asks for a volunteer to come to the board to place the event in the timeline. When all six groups have added their event, Charles explains that he would now like them to draw a timeline and present the events they have identified in the best possible way for others to learn from it.

Did you notice

• Charles prepares an activity to assess how much learners have retained after a number of lessons
• he organises two groups working on the same jurisdiction (Zambia, Central province or Mumbwa) to allow the groups to assess and complement each other’s knowledge
• Charles walks around the class as the groups work to ensure the information recorded is correct
• after the group work, instead of asking each group to report back, Charles organises a class activity to share the findings from the different groups.

Classroom Example 3.5: Formative assessment for understanding fractions

Audio transcript

Geoffrey is working on proper fractions with his Grade 3 class. He wants to ensure that they all understand proper fractions and can explain their understanding of the topic. Geoffrey begins the lesson by taking a banana out of his bag. He tells the students that he wants to give an equal part of the banana to five of his friends and asks them to tell him how he can do that. Several students put their hands up and Geoffrey elicits the response that they will cut the banana to make five equal parts. Each one is a fifth. He writes 1/5 on the chalkboard.

Geoffrey tells the students they are going to work in pairs and asks them all to point to their partner. He then gives them four tasks to do around dividing bananas into equal parts or fractions. He asks them to divide an imaginary banana into 4, 6, 8 and 9 parts. For each one he asks them to write down the fraction.

As the students are working through the tasks, Geoffrey circulates around the classroom monitoring the students and asks them to explain how they reached their answers. He avoids telling them the answer but waits for them to find it and encourages pairs to help each other. In this way he is able to identify where there are problems of understanding.

When all the learners have completed the tasks, Geoffrey asks for volunteers to write each answer on the chalkboard. He then writes up two more fractions: 1/3 and 1/10. He asks them to say which one represents the smallest piece of a banana; which one represents the largest; and how they know. At the end, he helps them to deduce that the larger the number on the bottom of the fraction, the smaller the piece of banana.

Did you notice:

• Geoffrey begins the lesson by using a practical example so that the task is clarified for the learners, in this case by using an actual banana
• he ensures that everyone is clear about working in pairs
• as he circulates around the class, Geoffrey elicits answers
• he collects evidence of understanding by asking the learners to explain the process by which they get their answers.

Activity 3.12: Reflecting on your learning

Look back through your Teacher Notebook and make a summary of some of the main things you have learned in this course.

• What has helped you to learn?
• Are there any critical activities that made a big impact on you?

Think back to last term – write down any ways in which your lessons are different now.

Discuss your reflections with a colleague and set yourselves three targets each for next term. Think about the things that you think you need to improve and what you can do to achieve that improvement.

Activity 3.13: Reviewing your resolutions

At the beginning of this course you were asked to write down three resolutions to improve your teaching and your collaboration with other teachers for this term. For example, ‘I will have tea break with… every Friday and we will discuss…’

Go back to these resolutions in your Teacher Notebook.

• How much progress have you made in each of these?
• Did you find any challenges to fulfil them?
• Do you need assistance from anyone to fulfil them?

As you plan ahead for next school year, think of them and reflect on what you other resolutions you can make to build on all you achieved this year improving your teaching.

Activity 3.14: Reviewing your learning Quiz

Now look at the quiz and complete it individually before sharing answers with colleagues.