Good Practice - Case Study

Francis Bacon Maths & Computing College

School No: 403

Personalised Learning & Assessment for Learning within ICT

Personalised learning is something of a pedagogical challenge. We are all encouraged to work towards it, yet nobody has all of the answers as to how we should do it. Attempting to go down the path of personalised learning within your own classroom is often a dangerous / brave route to take as it often leaves the classroom teacher more open to criticism when boxes need to be ticked during observations – if you have twenty five students all working on totally different things what on Earth do you write up on your board as the learning aim? How do you do a starter and a plenary that is relevant to all?

Three years ago the author of this article won the National BECTA Award for ICT in Practice for ‘innovative work’ that was enabling success through personalised learning at a Hertfordshire secondary school. Three years on these ideas and technologies have matured and developed a great deal. Does the ICT department at Francis Bacon Maths and Computing College feel it has totally cracked personalised learning? Certainly not. However, the hope is that this snapshot of how Key Stage 4 ICT is managed within the school may just give you a few ideas that you might take away and try for yourself.

Evaluation

In a recent visit to Francis Bacon Maths and Computing College, Herts ICT consultant Jonathan Dobres needed to observe an NQT teaching in the department. I stood with him and as we looked around the room we saw…

• a student learning to do a mail merge letter;
• a student learning how to create simple drawing objects in Macromedia Flash;
• a student developing her ability to do step-by-step animations in Flash;
• a student using a writing frame to do a detailed evaluation of an animated GIF;
• a student analysing his current levels of attainment and investigating what he needed to improve in order to raise his grades.

There was a really good ‘buzz’ in the room and all students at least appeared to be on task and actively taking part in the lesson.

The system described in this article involves processes that we believe are in line with government guidance on ‘personalised learning’.

This is because from the students’ perspective, the learning and teaching practices in the department are enabling them to work at their own rate. This is enabling the Gifted and Talented to fly yet the less able students are able to come in to the lesson knowing exactly where they are up to and confident in their ability to continue to meet the course requirements.

Systems are in place to ensure that all students make progress and those students who would chose to make little or no progress are soon identified and appropriate action taken.

From the teachers’ perspective, day to day planning and marking time has actually been reduced. Although there is obviously a lot of work that needs to be done at the start of a course to plan and create resources and to gain a full grasp of the assessment objectives, once these are actually in place life becomes really quite easy!

From the Head of Department’s perspective, such teaching practices enable greater monitoring of student progress throughout the subject area. Thus students making less progress than expected can be identified early and appropriate action taken.

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