Sharing Good Practice

Teaching in school as an ongoing evolution in an ever-changing world

One aspect of school under corona that is less often (if ever) in the headlines, is the impact of hygiene regulations on teacher development. It stands to reason that teaching in school in the context of an ever-changing world means teaching methods have to evolve to keep up to give our students the best learning opportunities.

As a school with both national and international programmes, we have perceived that different education cultures view the process of observing learning very differently. In some systems, going into the classroom is seen as invasive and stressful, sometimes with the outcomes linked to appraisals that may have an impact on pay. Other cultures simply have no real process of learning observation once a teacher is fully qualified.

Neither of these is in the best interests of the students, or teachers. The first scenario leads teachers to spend a disproportionate amount of time planning and preparing a lesson that is not a realistic snapshot of learning. The second scenario all too easily leads to a lack of critical reflection on learning practice.

How to improve teaching in school

At Cologne International School, we see the aim of observing learning as part of our ongoing evolution as educators in an ever-changing world. We recognise that, taken as a whole, our teachers have a large amount of experience, that due to being a multiple curriculum school, is very diverse. All we have to do is share it!

To this end, we have a regular event in school called ‘Sharing Good Practice’, which kicks off this year on 13th September. It is a kind of festival of teaching, whereby teachers offer observation slots in their lessons to colleagues across the campus. In the lessons, they showcase elements of teaching such as classroom management, active learning, technology etc, which they think will be interesting – and useful – to others. We use the Cognia’s ELEOT (Effective Learning Environment Observation Tool) standards to frame the observations, which take place over a two-week period. The observers do not need to grade what they see, but are encouraged to provide positive and constructive feedback out of appreciation for the host’s efforts. At the end of the period, we come together for coffee and cake to share our impressions.

This is a highly positive experience for the teachers, which complements their regular ELEOT observations. Through this method, we seek to create a hive-like approach to developing learning, which is on-going, stress-free and does not distract the teachers from their regular activities.

Shaun Roberts, International Secondary School

Find out more about International Secondary School

Supporting student learning after Covid at CIS/IFK

What is lost learning and how to help students recover it

Education in every corner of the world has had a turbulent 18 months as governments and schools have tried to balance the developmental needs of children with the safety concerns arising from the pandemic. As we go into our summer here at CIS/IFK, we are in a period of relative calm and can begin to consider approaches to the next phase of this issue: helping students recover lost learning after Covid.

We have some advantages: our online learning platform was rolled out immediately, which, with Managebac, had an already well developed infrastructure behind it. This enabled us to maintain a supportive environment where teachers were able to keep learning expectations high. We have also been seen that our exam providers are working with us to ensure that our students are fairly treated, despite some disparities in the way assessments are being carried out at the moment: for the IB graduates of 2020, results were consistent with previous years, in fact showing a slight improvement to give us our best results ever. We await the results for 2021 with similar confidence.

Nevertheless, we have seen some students struggle, particularly with the long duration of online learning during Covid, and there is, in many cases, academic ground to be made up.

And there is also the cost to wellbeing: the pandemic has been a time of stress and anxiety for everybody, and we see the impact of this in school as the number of students experiencing mental health issues has increased.

How we at CIS/IFK support our students to catch up with learning after Covid

So the main challenge of lost learning we face is, how do we help the students to catch up without adding so much pressure that their wellbeing is affected?

The IB’s research points to five key factors that schools can adopt to mitigate the impact of lost learning:

• A positive school environment
• Using assessment to support teaching and learning
• Goal setting
• Differentiation
• Developing skills that support resilience

At CIS/IFK we have long placed an emphasis on a positive school environment, with a positive and caring attitude at the heart of our approach. We have also been gathering assessment data to support teaching and learning through assessment points, mock exams and real exams for a number of years. In study skills events and self directed learning we promote goal setting as self directed activity, and in reports set goals for students. Differentiation is also in our DNA as a school.
I make this short list to point out some of the ways our pedagogical approach is already consistent with helping students to recover from lost learning. And we are not resting on our laurels on the matter: this year we have rolled out ELEOT (Effective Learning Environment Observation Tool) to help turn our performance in these areas into data, so that we can reflect and support each other in improving further.

Developing skills that support resilience and how to practise these skills during summer holidays 2021

The factor that I would like to focus on in more detail here, is developing skills that support resilience.

The first thing to say is that these skills form part of a curriculum called ‘Approaches to Learning’ by the IB. These competences cross subject boundaries and, once mastered, empower the individual to take ownership of their learning – in school and beyond, and for life. We work on these in school too, both in the regular subject curricula and through trips and other extracurricular activities.

The great thing about a life skills curriculum is that it can be practised outside of the classroom, and does not have to feel like learning at all, which post corona, can be a stress trigger. So as you all look forward to going on your summer holidays, I would like to illustrate a few ways in which you can work on these skills together in ways that need not feel like summer homework:

• Higher levels of social competence: allow the kid/s to take the lead when ordering dinner in a restaurant, or alternatively, plan a day trip for the family in detail, and present it to you for questions
• Problem solving skills: tackle a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle together
• A sense of autonomy and self efficacy: let the kid/s plan a dinner, then buy the ingredients and cook it (with a little supervision if necessary!)

You can no doubt think of similar tasks – what they do is not important as long as they are practising independence and experiencing challenges in a positive way. They don’t need to do a perfect job, and you do not have to provide a full critique as to how they could have done it better. It is best thought of as a game that you are playing together, for fun. If something does go awry, this is also constructive – mistakes often pave the way for future improvement. But the main thing is, whatever you do with the summer make sure you relax and recover!

Shaun Roberts, International Secondary School

Find out more about International Secondary School

Corona protective measures for the best possible learning conditions

The great commitment of the school community ensures safe everyday learning in extraordinary times

We too have had positive corona tests repeatedly in the past few weeks. Fortunately, all infections have so far been mild for both teachers and students. We have learned that positive corona testing will be part of our reality for the next few weeks and months. It is therefore important that we take precautionary measures in these cases, keep the number of direct contacts as low as possible and adhere to the wearing of masks, sufficient distance and regular hand hygiene. So far we have managed to ensure that members of our school community who tested positive have not infected anyone else in our school. It seems to be paying off that we stuck to the mask-wearing duty in secondary school classes between the summer and autumn holidays.

This is a positive result that encourages us to continue unabated and enforce our measures to protect the school community. In order to make our decisions on a broad basis, we meet regularly with representatives of the student body, parents and teachers in a Corona Response Committee to analyze the situation and adapt our regulations in light of the applicable hygiene measures. We are glad that we have a great consensus in our school community about our action plans which are also available on our website.

Although individual students have to study from home at times due to quarantine, although learning can, may or must be done from home in a rotating system in those learning groups where we cannot continuously guarantee the minimum distances between learners,, although there are many ways for our students to withdraw from every day teaching the message of the children and adolescents at our school is clear: They prefer teaching in school over virtual learning processes. We are therefore grateful that our teachers face the challenges on-site and in the virtual world equally every day without exception so that we will be able to offer lessons in our rooms as long as the state government allows the schools to open and there are students standing at our gate in the morning to attend their daily classes.

Director