1. Chat to someone about this while we wait to start

2. Tim Whitehead – Alderbrook School and Claire Marshall, for Cre8us & changing cultures

3.  By every measure thinkable boys at school were underachieving compared to the girls

4.  Small team of us worked with a team of teachers(English, Science, Geography, History) and a group of 30 challenging boys from Years 7 and 10  We looked at what staff really wanted to see in their classrooms – what they loved about their subjects  We looked at the boys interests & why they were disengaged  We co-planned lessons using the boys interests, specific curriculum content and teachers hopes and ambitions for the learning in their classrooms

6.  We took everything the boys offered seriously and worked with it – which soon disarmed them and engaged them  We planned lessons, the students and staff tried it with the whole classes and we looked at how went it well, refining ideas over a half- term  We then evaluated together with the boys and teachers sharing what had worked, what would have been even better if…

7.  Lucia had to look at the poetry anthology with Year 10’s and help move the boys up from D’s  She wanted to have excited discussions in the classroom with boys then able to pour into their writing  The boys were interested in Cheryl Cole!  So it started of with looking at her songs, how she interpreted them into videos, we used the skills Lucia would normally teach to approaching poetry as a way to approach the songs and then looked at the anthology as a comparison.

8.  The boys were more engaged  Lucia had a new way to look at planning and continues to use this approach  She knows what works well – media resources and lots of short activities that keep the lesson moving all working to the same goal  Everyone in the class including the boys all improved in their writing assessments and were showing much greater progress in their learning

9.  We told the Head this is what we needed to do  We came up with a principles of planning document that went into the school planners for all staff  We knew we needed to utilise the students as these new approaches meant the staff were spending time collecting new seemingly unrelated resources- the students needed to help not only plan but provide materials for the lessons

10.  I was briefed- “Design and create a website that will store lessons ideas that will engage the students. Your working groups are 10 naughty boys from year 8 and 10 from year 9”

15.  Although the initial idea was to engage the students it quickly became clear that it would…make everybody’s life easier

16.  Students more engaged  Greater levels of progress, students either on target or above (no longer below) and in KS4 improved GCSE results for boys  “The idea of this project was to find ways of making learning more interesting for boys, and we think it successfully did that. It was good to have a project just for the boys, as in lessons there are things we don’t find interesting but the girls do. It has improved our learning as it’s shown different ways for boys to learn, a good way, and it works.” Year 10 boys

17.  They understand the strategies that make a difference and work  They built relationships with their students and saw this as crucial in a successful learning experience  “It has been a successful collaboration; I’m going to build in more time into lessons to get students to make resources that are more relevant to them. It has worked so well in that unit of work, it’s made me think about what more we can do.” Science Teacher

18. In pairs/small groups each person thinks of a lesson coming up in the next week that you can set homework for to look for media clips  what curriculum content do you want them to think about?  how would you set it-up to be successful?  how can you use what they find for you usefully?

19.  All you need is a helpful ICT technician!...

20.  And if you haven’t got a helpful ICT technician

22. It all starts with a conversation… claire@changingcultures.org