Making data and progress an event!

I stumbled upon another piece of XP East magic this week when I walked past Crew Shackleton’s classroom yesterday morning (which was later replicated in 8 Churchill).

As boring as it may initially seem, students were talking about and indeed engaging with a spreadsheet on the classroom TV that revealed their assessment and HOWLs data (as collated by staff in data drop 3.) Having worked in 5 schools, I’m convinced that millions of pounds, and squillions of working hours are wasted across educational establishments in the UK. This is generally what happens concerning such matters:

1. Teachers spend hours marking assessments
2. Teacher spends time inputting said data into a system
3. A senior member of staff makes graphs from said data
4. Lots of meetings take place discussing said graphs of data between adults
5. Students don’t see the graphs (if they did they wouldn’t understand them – like most of the staff)
6. Students might see them in a report to parents (that rarely makes sense)
7. Students don’t *really* engage with the data
8. Steps 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7 keep happening
9. Millions of pounds, and squillions of working hours are wasted.

At our school, the students interrogate the data. They have conversations in Academic Crew (with their fellow students and Crew leader) to evaluate their progress. Students have conversations with teachers when they respectfully disagree about drops in their HOWLs data (Habits Of Work and Learning) – and this has resulted with teachers changing them! Students are even the ones that use them in discussions with parents in Student Led Conferences (SLCs).

Essentially, we make data drops an event.

Students look forward to them (and those that don’t, know that they need to work harder, get smarter, and be kinder).

Love it.