Welcome to the WJETT blog
What is WJETT?
The WJETT blog or Warwick Journal of Education - Transforming Teaching blog is designed to encourage staff and students to disseminate good practice and to engage with their peers on academic cultural critique or areas of research that they find interesting. With the increased focus on ‘teachers as researchers’ in the sector, many qualified teachers are expected to publish the outcomes of any action research projects they undertake. The WJETT blog can be the first step on your journey towards publishing and enables you to experience publishing and reviewing in a friendly and supportive environment.
You will need to scroll down the page below the tags to see the posts.
How can assessment encourage & motivate children to succeed academically & socially?
Formative assessments can motivate children to succeed both academically and socially as the evidence of learning can be interpreted by both the child and the teacher to determine the child’s next steps in order for the child to reach closer to their learning goals (Harlen, 2007). For example, in Year 1 English, the ongoing learning objective is to write a sentence using Colourful Semantics. Colourful Semantics is used to teach the syntax of a sentence which includes ‘a who’ (subject), ‘a what doing’ (verb) and ‘a where’ (object). After the children complete their piece of writing on the present progressive tense. The children have access to a help mat with a Remember box that allows the children to independently check their piece of writing. The children are able to edit and improve their writing by checking the success criteria such as: sounding out phonemes, using finger spaces, capital letter and a full stop.
Black and Wiliam states that feedback to any pupil should cater to that individual child, it should offer advice for improvement and avoid comparisons with other children (Black and Wiliam, 1998). Where TN used the Remember Box to check for finger spaces, capital letters and full stops which had done independently. After this, I checked (pink pen) and circled the verb like written as lic and asked him if he remembered the split digraph (i-e) we have been learning this week. He did not remember this but I was able to scaffold the answer to him. TN edited the verb like in his writing (in green pen). I also asked TN, what he was proud of with his writing to which he replied, “I remembered everything in the Remember Box.” As I was offering TN advice on his writing, I noticed that some of the children in my writing group were also eager to receive feedback as well.
Socially, creating an environment where children can assess their work together can also be rewarding for both children involved. An example of this is when I encouraged the children to celebrate RN’s piece of writing which I had projected onto the board. I asked the children, “What can we praise RN for, in her piece of writing?”, to which the children agreed that she successfully used capital letters and finger spaces. Next, we moved on to how we can give advice on improvement. The children discussed with their talk partner and agreed that although RN used a full stop at the end of a sentence, they noticed that the full stop was not touching the line. As a result, the children were able to build a culture in the classroom to give constructive feedback and celebrate each other’s work.
References:
BLACK, P. & WILIAM, D. 1998. Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment, London, GL Assessment.
Harlen, W. (2007). Assessment of learning. 1st ed. London: Saga Publications.
Writing guidance
Can I write about anything in my blog post?
Yes pretty much. Academic cultural critique (Thomson and Mewburn, 2013) is always a good source of content for academic blogs. This can include (but is not limited to) comments and reflections on funding; higher education policy or academic life. You might also want to consider blogging about:
- Academic practice (Saper, 2006)
- Information and/or self-help advice
- Technical, teaching and careers advice
- Your research or practice
- How you’ve undertaken research
- The impact of research on your practice
- An area of research/practice that interests you
- Your teaching experiences/reflections
How long can my blog post be?
Each individual blog post should be no longer than 500 words. Long blocks of text are sometimes hard for readers to digest. Break up your content into shorter paragraphs, bullet points and lists whenever possible. Also include a list of keywords or tags as this makes it easier for Google to find your work.
Do I need to use citations?
No, this is a reflective piece so it does not need to include citations (but you obviously can include them if they are relevant).
Can I include links or images?
We would encourage you to include links to any articles that you have considered whilst writing your blog post. We also welcome the use of images (as long as you have permission to use them) as they can often help to illustrate a point and obviously will not be included in the word limit. Please remember this is a public site so if you want to include images of your students in your classes then you will need permission to do this.
What is the process for submitting a piece of work?
Your blog post should be emailed to A.Ball.1@warwick.ac.uk. Once the submission has been reviewed it will either be uploaded at the beginning of the next available week or sent back to you for editing if it requires amendments. You should then send the amended work to me once again and I will then upload it.