Day 3 AGQTP or is it day 4

Came late to this session - too busy discussing constructive teaching strategies with teachers.
Spend some time using the extended T chart which involves unpacking objectives (eg SACSA) and then using the chart to say what you want the students to know, at what Blooms level, and what skills the students need to achieve it.
Could be useful with the all-day session next term with Margaret.
We also discussed trying to understand the different levels of Blooms using three cups.
Knowledge - they are cups
Understand - they are reasonably big and either plastic or clear in colour.
Apply - use them to drink with
Analysis - one might hold more liquid, but another might be safer in a bathroom
Synthesis - create a new use for the cups - as a hat.
Evaluation - just how good each cup is according to its environmental impact.

We then spent some time on rubrics. It was good to go over this again and to hear that you should avoid putting too many levels (ie good, fair, excellent), otherwise it becomes unwieldy.
It was also useful to hear that student should be taught how to use them to help organise and prioritise their work for an assignment.

Finally, we did a PMI on our presentation. Must get students to do that with their own efforts.

The next day, I used some of the Blooms information for the next set of meetings with our Learning teams. We were talking about SACSA and how we can use Blooms to create criteria that illustrate what a SACSA "A" looks like. The English/SOSE/RE teachers decided to try and clarify what an "A" was for them - other than an "X" factor and use it in an assessment task in the next term.
The Science/Maths/ITC people decided to come up with generic rubrics (using the reporting A-E) model for things such as tests, practical reports etc. and to try one of them in the next term. I noticed that Adam was pretty quiet in the meetings. Must try to find something for him to bring up at the next meeting.

Finally, today I showed the Year 11 students a remembering technique. I can't remember what it is called but if you need to remember a series of facts then try to visualise the structure of your house - the rooms, the features and appliances. Link each fact to an appliance, feature of the room in a visual and literal sense. Then do a walk through the house trying to remember the idea as you walk through each room.
For example, the students were trying to remember the names of the key placental groups (eg rodents, carnivores, ungulates). I suggested that they put a representative animal in each room (eg rats [rodent] in the kitchen, bat [chiropteran] in the shed, whale [cetacean] in the pool or baht) and then write a story of their adventure through the house. They even included the animal doing something which illustrated their groups main features. For example, dog [carnivore] eat a leg of lamb [as meat-eaters do] in the bedroom. The really liked it and were intent on creating a story. The test will be tomorrow if they remember the rooms, animals but particularly the groups.

A big couple of days.