Visualise…with a Visualiser!

Rationale

I have been teaching literacy with post-16 students for 19 years. It remains a challenge. The condition of funding requires that all students enrolling at college with a grade 3 re-take the GCSE exam. The percentage of students on GCSE resit programmes in FE colleges that leave with a grade 4 or higher is low and dropping – 30% nationally.

As Project Leader I wanted to address the weak reading and writing skills presented by many of our students. Often, they have grappled with these skills throughout school. A high percentage (approximately 30%) have additional needs including dyslexia and other barriers to learning.

I wanted to implement the use of a visualiser as a new teaching strategy and methodology with the aim of improving teacher/peer modelling, engagement and learning across the English team. I felt that this approach has been promoted and used far more effectively in schools than within FE. School teachers frequently make assertions such as, “`My visualiser has been a game changer in the classroom!” I felt certain this was something that could hugely improve our student experience. With nearly 20 years of teaching experience, how had I not used one before?

By increasing the percentage of students leaving with a GCSE pass at grade 4 and above, our hope was also to improve the career prospects and life chances of our learners, an aspiration which lies at the heart of our values and is the reason why we work in this area of further education.

Approach

As Project Leader I used my role as Head of School to purchase five visualisers and arranged for the accompanying software to be installed on our computers. I then arranged CPD to embed their use throughout the curriculum.

The timing of the CPD was key as it had to take place before the planned lessons were underway in the autumn term. We therefore arranged a twilight workshop session in September through the ETF Shaping Success programme.

The aim was to help teachers use visualisers to model the processes of text annotation and different stages of the writing process using authentic texts and exam questions. We planned to encourage students to work collaboratively with teachers and other learners by offering suggestions on the text in question.

The team had already been using the visualisers on their own and as they were of the ‘plug in and play’ variety they did not pose any difficulty in terms of displaying the work in the classroom. However, the CPD provided opportunities for staff to link their use to the GCSE assessment criteria and to demonstrate to learners how they could ‘level up’ their work.

Progress on the project was an agenda item on a bi-weekly meeting which monitored progress through the academic year using achievement data gathered from mock assessments, staff reflections, students’ focus group discussions and comparison of student work pre and post project.

The research process was shaped by the use of regular reflective questionnaires, opportunities for discussion in team meetings and the facilitation of a student focus group.

We set up and used a Padlet board and Google Forms to enable teachers to provide ongoing feedback on their use of the visualiser and to share examples of resources they used.

Evidence of improvement in learners’ achievements, retention and progression

I held a focus group at the end of November when students discussed their English lessons and the impact of the visualiser project in more depth. I carried out a force field analysis and supported them in recording their comments by offering some sentence starters.

Students were asked to identify three things that they felt helped them and three things that hindered them in the classroom. Some of their comments included:

“Annotations on the visualiser help me to understand the text.”

“The visualiser helps me to see where I went wrong.”

“It makes it easier to see where I have gone wrong on an exam question.”

“It makes it easier to understand my teacher’s explanations when they are linked to specific words that I can see visually.”

Students’ discussion points and examples of work have been collected and can be seen on the Padlet below.

We gathered quantitative data that show an improvement in grades from Assessment 1 to Mock 1. For example, the number of students on a grade 4 at initial assessment was 38. This increased to 164 for the first mock.
Additional observations by teachers indicated an improvement in student behaviour, a higher level of engagement and greater enjoyment of the lessons. Please see the Padlet for case studies of students’ work.

Evidence of improved collaboration and changes in organisation practices

Increased modelling using a visualiser has now become a key feature of our English lessons and is included in our curriculum planning documents which have been shared with SLT.

As project lead, I shared the findings of the project at the regional English Practitioners Meeting at Cambridge Regional College in December 2019 which was well received. I was able to share examples of students’ work prior to the implementation of the new approach and compare them with those that were produced after the introduction of the visualiser. The level of detail included and the first glimpses of their enhanced skills in language analysis were clear to see and incredibly exciting!

In terms of equality and diversity, the increased use of visualisers in modelling provides a ‘step by step’ approach to both writing and annotation that is particularly beneficial for those students with learning difficulties such as dyslexia and other additional support needs.

Our approach will be rolled out and discussed with all lecturers across the college at a CPD event to take place before Easter as a practical strategy for embedding literacy skills and good classroom practice.