Zoe Farrell

Zoe Farrell

Teacher at St Helen's, Northwood

Activity

  • Thank you; I have really enjoyed the course, and found it very thought provoking.

  • World Environment Day is now done. We had about 180 children on scooters at morning break. It brought joy to my heart. In fact, the children had plenty of pupil voice in this case... just in a different way that I was thinking about it.

    Their pupil voice was directed at their parents. We had so many examples of children advocating using active travel to...

  • One amazing organisation that gives older senior aged pupils a chance to develop their leadership skills, confidence, communication and compassion is called Phab.
    https://www.phab.org.uk
    Students run regular activities for young people with disabilities to attend. Some of the Phab Clubs are quite small, some are huge with students fundraising to take their...

  • Empowering education, creating robust and happy individuals who love learning.

  • Though structured differently, a number of these characteristics remind me of the ‘16 Habits of Mind of Successful People’. I have found these extremely helpful in teaching girls to identify their own learning behaviours and helping structure my feedback to them about how there are behaving as learners.

  • I have been thinking a lot about how parents influence the girls and how I can influence the parents. I feel many parents of the girls at my school are unconsciously pedalling toxic expectations of their daughters, pushing ‘little Miss Perfect’ attitudes that promote a fixed mindset in their daughters.

    For Mental Health week we did an activity in PSHCE...

  • For the second time on this course I find myself wonder about the age of the students described. When Stannard says ‘Male students tend to... female students tend to...’ does he mean at 4 years old as equally as at 15? I don’t think so.

    Like Stannard is believe we need to very actively take gender into account in Education, however, rather than address the...

  • I have used a Padlet for girls to add pictures of their balloon racer car that they made for science homework. It was nice because they could share both vids and pics with each other, but I soon ran out of storage space on the free version!

  • Nor can I write on it.

  • This is an area I know I need to improve. I can find that I do all my planning both for lessons and events out of school time, without giving myself the turn-around time to engage any children.

    Acting unilaterally can have great advantages- mainly in speed and feasibility. For example, we are marking World Environment Day after half term. The Senior Eco met...

  • I also work in the primary sector, however, in my view it is important to be challenging as well as affirming at different times and can completely see myself using that language.

    To achieve this, I think it is really important to be open to children about your own mistakes, for example, me: ‘Oops, I’m going to have to completely rethink this- I’ve planned...

  • My observations are that 1- ‘Austin’ had time, space and motivation to revisit his drawing- not always factors we allow children. 2- that he had some exceptionally good feedback from reception aged children.... 3- the activity allowed the children in the video to reflect effective on what effective feedback would be like.
    The success of peer feedback, and the...

  • I have been working on my use of success criteria as a mastery model, to enable children to be more effective in peer and self assessment. By having a clear mastery model to compare their and their peers’ work to they are able to discuss what is successful, and what is ‘not yet’, without fear that they are ‘being mean’ about each other work.

    This links to...

  • I like using a learning jigsaw, and have found it stands or falls on the quality of the material I have given each group. When my activities have fallen down it has been because a child just reads out the material I have given them rather than actively making it their own. When successful I find the children can cover a huge amount of material with very little...

  • I echo your statement that primaries are generally collaborative environments. Though it remains true that aggressive testing regimes narrow the focus from more constructive learning to individual test scores. It was my experience of preparing children for SAT in a London school that propelled me into teaching in the independent sector where children and I had...

  • @LaurisGrundmanis @CathyWalter I too am left with a question after this article and reflection. I’m struggling to phase it concisely, but it is something like this:

    I believed that 1- there is no intrinsic difference between girls and boys brains. 2- that (by the last years of Primary) girls learn better collaboratively. 3- that women do less well in the...

  • It is lovely to hear how enthusiastic you are for your school's culture. As we all know, not every school is there yet.

    It is very true that it takes years to build a culture within a school, however one can also build a culture within a class with supports, runs ahead or flows-counter to the general culture of the school.
    As individual teachers, or as...

  • I think consistency helps children know 'where they are', what is expected of them and their behaviour... but I would argue that a consistently proscriptive environment is not as good as an environmnt that is inconsistent if, in the sea of prosciptive teaching, there are a few islands of genuine dialogue and enquiry. A few rays of sunshine are better than a...

  • He is using both open and closed. Open questioning was effective in gauging the start point for children engagement, however he was also using closed questions to drive the discussion in the way he intended to progress the lesson. I was interested in the quick sequence of closed questions that helped guide a group through the graph.
    I thought his use of mini...

  • Like @JonathanBrough , I really felt priviledge to see them work through that process. Thanks to all the girls and their teacher.
    I would be interested to know how long they had for that lesson, as there is some debate in my school at the moment as to whether you can have an effective P4C lesson in less than an hour.

  • I find the 'Concept Cartoons' very effective at generating dialogue in Primary Science. Because the cartoons display a range of views to discuss it helps the children kick start their own discussion and investigation.

  • Thanks @JohnTench

  • My TA’s view was ‘they didn’t really want a challenge, they just wanted to make you happy.’ If that’s the case, as they were successful, there is no harm in being motivated by a positive relationship with an adult.
    Possibly, by opting for something described as ‘Yr 7 data’ there is no fear of failure, because if they don’t succeed they can explain it away...

  • I hummed and hawed about what to go for a golden lesson activity. In the spirit of indecision, I decided to let my Yr 5 bottom set maths set choose their activity to see how much their experience getting out of 'the pit' had improved their attitude to challenge. They genuinely amazed me. Overwhelmingly they chose a Yr 7 graphing problem, over their class...

  • I think the concept of 'low entry, high ceiling' tasks is useful here.

    That's were we can all access the task at its entry level, but it become genuinely challenging as it progresses. I find many of the NRICH maths activities follow this model and allow children to go through 'the pit' like this. Unfortunately, I don't always manage to plan lessons like...

  • @JohnTench , please could you direct me more specifically within the blog as I can't see an article dealing with Dwerk's work/ Mindsets: I find Dwerk's evidence very convincing, but always happy to have my views challenged.

  • Whilst reading, I found myself wondering the age of the pupils being discussed in different places.

    I don't have the research at my fingertips, however I feel sure I have read studies of how adults speak to children in EYFS and that boys are more encouraged to risk-take where as girls more highly praised for compliance. The BBC's 'Boys toys vs Girls toys'...

  • Your point resonates with me. I think there is some truth in the idea that, broadly speaking, education offers a 'safe space' for girls, but the world of work does not.