Episode 181: A journey with journalling

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Robin Potter

Hi, I'm Robin Potter.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Andy Psarianos

This is The School of School podcast. Welcome to The School of School podcast. Welcome back to another exciting episode of The School of School podcast. This is a super exciting episode because we've got, not only do we have our regulars, so we've got Robin Potter here. Say hi, Robin.

Robin Potter

Hi, everybody.

Andy Psarianos

You're supposed to say, "Hi, Robin."

Robin Potter

Yeah, I don't always do as I'm told.

Andy Psarianos

Okay, we'll forgive you. Hi, Adam. Say hi, Adam.

Adam Gifford

I'll play the game. Hi, Adam. This is ridiculous. I'm going to say hi to everyone. It's nice to be here.

Andy Psarianos

Well, as exciting as it is to be with Adam and Robin, it's even more exciting today because we've got three absolutely fantastic practitioners joining us. We've got Debbie, Alison, and Lucy. Now, I'm not going to say anything about you guys because I'm going to let you guys introduce yourselves to the audience. So where are you guys from? What do you do?

Alison Wallis

I'm Alison Wallis. I'm headteacher at Langley Green Primary School in Crawley.

Debbie Lewis

And I'm Debbie Lewis. I'm math lead and deputy head at Langley Green Primary School in West Sussex.

Lucy Cartwright

And I'm Lucy Cartwright, assistant head at Langley Green.

Andy Psarianos

Well, lovely to have you guys on, and one of the really exciting things happening at your school is the journaling. I mean, journaling is something that a lot of schools are absolutely mystified by that they don't understand how schools do journaling get to the point that you guys are at. You guys are doing a fantastic, outstanding job of journaling at your school. Love to hear about it. So, Debbie, why don't you start and tell us what is journaling first of all, and how did you guys introduce it into your school?

Debbie Lewis

Journaling is just a way of a child recording exactly their understanding of the maths, how they're going to solve the problem, different methods they might try. It might be a pictorial representation of resources they've used, it might be a photograph the teacher's printed out of some concrete materials the child has used. But it's basically like a record of how the child has understood the lesson and how they've tried to solve the problem.

So we started right back, I suppose nine years ago, we followed... The recommendation was that you did the explore task, then the children would feedback and go into the anchor chart, and then the children would journal. But the trouble we found with that was that what quite often happened was the children would just copy what was on the anchor chart into their journals and it wasn't a proper explore and an investigation and showing what they understood. So I think a few years in, what we started doing was we started journaling at the end of the lesson as sort of an assessment at the end. So instead of journaling pretty much at the beginning, we decided to move that and journal the end. And that, when I was teaching Maths No Problem, I did sort of a term in a classroom with a group, I found it really useful because when I got to the end of the lesson, A, it allowed me to see what the children understood.

So we'd give them like an alternative explore task right at the end of the lesson, so it might be the same explore task but with different numbers and the children would have 10 minutes right at the very end of the lesson to say, "How would you solve that?" And they'd show how they'd mastered that particular problem. I would then at the end of the lesson, look at all of those journals and say, "Those children have got a really rich understanding and they've made three or four methods. They've really had a good understanding. These children, oh gosh, I thought they'd really understood that today in that lesson, but actually I'm not sure that that learning's embedded at all." So the following day I would really focus on those children through the lesson to be able to make sure that any misconceptions, any misunderstandings from the day before were sort of embedded the following day. So I really at that point, and as a school, we were using it as an assessment at the end of the lesson.

I think we then went along a few years and I suppose that went up to right through to lockdown to about 2020 when we were journaling at the end. Then I actually did a webinar, a Math No Problem webinar and I stayed on at the end because I wanted to talk to, I can't remember who was doing the webinar now, but I was talking about how it was a real shame that when the children did the explore task, they did all this lovely rich discussion and writing and organisation onto their whiteboards and that was, kind of they rubbed it off. And I thought, "What a terrible waste of thinking." So we introduced something called a thinking journal about four years ago. So it looks the same. It's just the book.

It's not marked by the teacher, it's not assessed by the teacher, but the children have a chance to use it, sort of like an aide-mémoire when they're given the explore task. They can use a whiteboard if they want to, but we encourage them to record all their different ideas, all their different methods, anything they might have done, and they then kind of keep that in their thinking journal. So as they go through the lesson, they then go on to the guided practise, they go onto the workbook, they might then do their journaling at the end. So they've got something in their books as a reminder of all that lovely discussion they've done and work. So that, we introduced in about 2021 and that's working really, really well. I know Lucy might be able to talk a bit more about that.

Lucy Cartwright

Yeah, I think with just normal math journals that they work in, there's a lot of emphasis on presentation and making sure numbers are formed correctly. But my class really like their thinking journals because they know that I'm not going to look in them, that they're, to be honest, they are quite messy, but I think as an adult, if I'm working out things, it's all quite messy, I've crossed things out, there's numbers all over the place, and that is just their jottings from their own thinking that are recorded.

Debbie Lewis

And I think it's important that they have that space and time. If you are trying to work something out that's quite challenging, you want to be able to scribble down and cross things out and maybe write. We've got one-side square, one-size plane, so if they want to draw diagrams or pictures, they've got that freedom to be able to really hunker down with their partner and think, "How am I going to solve this?" And it's sort of a freedom book.

Lucy Cartwright

Yeah, they don't have to use a ruler or anything like that.

Debbie Lewis

No, it just, "Get your ideas down. Here's the problem, get your ideas down." We found that they took a while to persuade to move. They did not moving from a whiteboard into their thinking journals.

Lucy Cartwright

No.

Debbie Lewis

But once they got used to that, I think some of them really, really liked. I like doing that, I like scribbling on a bit of paper. If I go on a Math No Problem course and I have my notebook and somebody gives me an explore task, I like to scribble and cross things out. I don't necessarily want to line it up beautifully in squares. I might want to explore more. So we actually include the thinking journals with something we've added as a school because we think there's value. It's saying to children, "We value your thinking. We value what you're writing down." How terrible just to wipe that off when they finish doing it like it's not proper math thinking. It's like, "You are just going to scribble on then and you're going to rub it out." We want to value their thoughts in their books.

Andy Psarianos

First of all, I am completely absolutely devastated that you guys said what you said, and super excited at the same time. The reason I'm devastated is I wrote down here what I thought was a really clever question I was going to ask you guys, which is journaling something you assess or is it part of the learning process? But you guys have cracked that, because that's always been the dichotomy of journaling. Do you assess it, judge it effectively, look at it and say, "Oh yes, this is what I want, this is what I expect"? Or is it a free space for the children to gather their thoughts and think about it? And I think you guys have cracked it.

This is the first time I hear of this idea of a thinking journal and it's fantastic. I mean, yeah. Anyway, sorry. I'm so excited. I'm not even going to ask a question. Lucy, what were you going to say? I'm sorry I interrupted. It was really rude of me.

Lucy Cartwright

I was just going to say we have iPad Pros with Apple TV, so their thinking journals, we can take pictures of them, put them up for the class, so it's quite nice. We encourage lots of talk and using the sentence stems to, so if someone's got an idea in their book, it might be the same as someone else in the class or someone can build on that idea as well. So it just aids to that discussion as well, particularly in the explore task and perhaps lower down the school. That's when the teacher can model, actually putting their ideas into a more kind of a formal method perhaps onto the anchor chart. Yeah, so it's quite good.

Debbie Lewis

I think it's that freedom to explore, isn't it?

Andy Psarianos

Yeah.

Debbie Lewis

As a mathematician, you want to be able to explore something and to be able to think and discuss without... It just was a bit soul-destroying when I looked at children and they'd done all this when I was observing and listening. There are lots of lovely thinking on these whiteboards and then they just wiped it off and it's like what does that say to children if you are wiping away their thinking? We've kept the thinking journals in place since then and I think children have that ownership of them, but it was quite important as well that no one's marking it or saying, "I think it's quite important. Sometimes you have that room to think. And it's not right and it's not wrong. That's just your thinking at that time."

And then you can grow as a lesson goes on and you've got that journaling at the end as your final assessment, which is more about, "Where are your gaps? Brilliant, you've really grasped that well though, but actually you've got some misconceptions there." So you've got the best of both worlds. You've got a chance for them to be mathematicians and think, but you're also making sure no one slips through the net at the end.

Andy Psarianos

But you see that one of the five core competencies that we try to develop in children, we know the five core competencies that lead to people who can excel in logical thinking, in mathematics for sure, but throughout everything, is the ability to communicate. So yes, you need space for free thinking. You absolutely need that space and I love the idea that you cherish that and you want to hold onto it warts and all because I think that that's really important for people to not shy away. It always breaks your heart when children are trying to hide things. You scribble something out on a piece of paper so hard that you can't see what they put down or whatever.

You want to encourage them to make mistakes, encourage them to be messy and explore and be free with their thinking, but at the end they need to be able to communicate those ideas. And at the end it's like it's following it right down to that, and the idea of not erasing it and not getting rid of it. And the idea of paper and pencil. I mean, Adam, I know what you're thinking because, Adam, you're such a big fan of paper and pencil. What does that conjure up for you?

Adam Gifford

Well, I love it. I think the thing is that there's part of me that goes, "Okay, there's not a simplicity to it." You give something, pens on paper, I'm holding up my little pad that I write on as I go. I've never stopped doing that. I think that there's the utter simplicity of just saying, "Here's something that you can put down. There's a permanence to it to record your thoughts," which seems like the implementation of it into a classroom should be very straightforward. You've got something that's your space and that's something you can refer back to, you can communicate an idea to yourself as you've already talked about. You've got something that strikes me as a little bit more structured at the end.

I suppose I know your school, I know how much you evaluate things, you consider things, and you really think about implementation. So it all sounds really straightforward, but like Andy's described in what we've all experienced, there's plenty of schools out there, they don't even know how to start. They're just not sure and I'd love to be in the same place that you are at. I think even though it sounds very straightforward, what I'm thinking is what advice would you give if you're going into the classroom and you want to make this work so it's beneficial and rich, not just so it's something that you do and you're not quite sure why? Was there anything over the years that you've modified the programme that you'd say, "Yeah, these are the things that are really important in terms of implementation, so it becomes habit, and so it becomes lasting, and rich, and meaningful"?

Debbie Lewis

I think first thing is pick a time for journaling and then stick with it for a while. So if you follow the Math No Problem programme, when I've done the training, it is you've got your explore, you've got feedback to teach on the anchor chart, and then the children journal in some way, shape, or form. So we've moved away from that for our school, but I would say if that's what you want to do and stick with that programme, do that for a year. Just get the children used to writing in a journal and writing ideas down, even if that's maybe a couple of ideas they copy from the anchor chart, just get them used to using a journal and writing down ideas. You might want to do that at the end, but just get that used to.

I mean, the nirvana for me for journaling would be the children are working on the lesson, something strikes them, they get their journal out and they're making a note of it and they're using that journal completely independently throughout the lesson to embed their learning. That's what you really want them doing, isn't it? To be totally independent mathematicians, where they know the right point to journal because this is exactly the point. "Oh, I've had a light-bulb moment, I want to journal now." And it's not structured, but I would say go very, very structured, make a decision as a school, "We are going to journal here and then work, stick with it, and make sure the children are all journaling and it's consistent across the whole school, so journals are looking pretty much the same and it's exactly the same time across the whole school."

I think then you can start to adapt and introduce new things, but I think it's really important to pick a time you want to journal, decide what you want to go in that journal. So it might be if you're going to choose the end, you might want the children to select some methods, show that they've understood what they've learned today.

Lucy Cartwright

I think it needs to be a teacher model as well to start with that teacher modelling of how to do it.

Debbie Lewis

And one of the things we do, Adam, is Journal of the Day. So if a child has done some really amazing journaling the day before, that's the first thing you discuss in the morning. So the children will come in the morning for maths and the teacher will have selected a Journal of the Day. So, "Wow, look at this child." Yes, it could be any child in the class, but they've explained their thinking really well and that's modelled to the whole class and we have some little Journal of the Day stickers and the children get awarded that. They get some points towards our behavioural reward system, and that's really celebrated. So I think once you've been teaching for a while and you've got some really good examples as a school, you can then maybe start awarding Journal of the Day. So you've got pupils modelling for other pupils, what good journaling looks like as a role model?

Lucy Cartwright

Yeah, My Year 6s love Journal of the Day now. They have their books up and they're like, "Oh, I've got Journal of the Day."

Adam Gifford

But I was going to say, I guess if you set that up as the success criteria, then that's something to aim for, that it values even more so what they're doing. And I didn't mean to cut off, Lucy. I've got a second follow-up question, is that Langley Green is a constant sort of evolution, it seems if this is where we want to head to. And perhaps, Debbie, you've already answered this with what the nirvana looks like, but I guess can you also see, having talked about really the foundational steps of implementation of journaling, can you see where you are moving towards next? Is there anything or you're happier thinking actually, "Do you know what? The programme is where we need it to be right now"? Is there anything that you're moving towards that you're thinking, "Actually, do you know what? We can just start to do this"? Perhaps not. I'm not sure.

Debbie Lewis

I think it's about teachers choosing independently when they journal, which is best for their class. So I think although it's good to have consistency, I think as a teacher, you want to make that judgement about, "Actually, today I don't want to journal then because I look to this lesson and I think actually this is going to be a real key point in the lesson for the children to journal or they might journal twice today." So I think it's that independence in teaching, so that move away from you have to journal now to teachers, really looking at those lessons and thinking, "When is it going to be best for my children to journal? When's it going to have the most impact? And when is it going to support them most with their learning?"

So that's what I think that's the next stage in the evolution I think is a bit more independence in teachers to make that decision about when they journal, because of the learning. Because ultimately, journaling is about learning. It's about, "How am I going to support my children to learn most effectively? What's going to have the biggest impact on their progress?" And that's why you journal as well as the assessment, it's key points in the lesson. Would you agree with that?

Lucy Cartwright

Definitely. I'm just thinking sometimes it might be a lesson later on in the chapter, which is a bit more challenging, and it might take a little bit further into the lesson of questioning. It might get to the guided practise and you're still trying to get a concept across to the children. It might be at that point that you might want to journal, because earlier on in the lesson it would've been too challenging for them.

Debbie Lewis

Yeah.

Lucy Cartwright

Yeah. And as Debbie said, catching the learning there.

Debbie Lewis

Or you might decide that a lesson is so challenging, you might want to spread that over two days and you actually might not journal at all that day. You might journal the following or the beginning of the lesson the following day to see where you're at for the following lesson. I know sometimes if a lesson's particularly challenging, you might not get it all done in an hour. Or one lesson, you might need to spread that a bit further. Or if it's a lesson at the very beginning of a, which is absolutely key place value lesson, you might want to spend a little bit longer exploring that, so over two days you might journal at different points. That's what I think we would work towards as a school is teachers being able to being so skillful that they can make that judgement on when it's most useful for children to journal, I think.

Andy Psarianos

Just a question for the schools who aren't so familiar with journaling, what's the benefit of journaling for the pupils, for the students?

Debbie Lewis

I mean, I think it's all to do with them being able to solidify their learning. If you can write it down and show somebody else that you've understood it, then you can understand it. It's that whole explaining to someone else. So I think if you can journal and you can explain how you'd solve a problem, then you've really understood it. You can appear to understand something. So you're solidifying your learning. I think you're being able to demonstrate your learning and you're going to be able to show mastery. So it's all very well for a child just to show you one method at the end of the lesson. But if they can show you several methods, particularly one that they've come up with themselves, that might be, I used to have children, I used to call it the method by their name because you think, "Wow, I'd never thought of doing that. That's a brilliant method. Let's all talk about that method."

So I think it's them really being able to demonstrate that they've really mastered something and they really understand it, that they're really able to explain different general types as well, like writing instructions, or write their own problems, having different types of journaling as well. It might evaluate relative, I think those different, being able to show different ways of expressing that they've understood as well. I think it just makes the math lesson much richer. And really, again, it aids that pupil voice, doesn't it? They're able to explain exactly how they've understood and how they can respond to that question.

Adam Gifford

Can I jump in and ask you something just very quick? I'm not sure if we're approaching the end, but in the previous episode, you talked about a decision that you made to take on Math No Problem really early in the piece, and now you're talking about where the programme is so well embedded that effectively you are fine-tuning, like your refining and just really making it sing, and that's the point you're at. Did you think when you first took it on that you'd be in this position where you've got staff children that just the programme is just working, it's such a level that it's just incrementally fine-tuning now and having the impact that it did? I know the work that's gone into it, but did you think when you first took it on that you'd get to this stage?

Debbie Lewis

I think we always had the belief that it was a brilliant programme. I loved it. Right from when we reintroduced it, I could see how brilliant it was. I think we held onto that as a staff at the very beginning because it was incredibly hard work to start off with, just making sense of the lessons, how to deliver it, the whole approach, the mastery approach. It was such a learning curve, but I think we held onto the fact that we thought it was a really fantastic programme and it would work. So I think it does take time, but I think it is holding on that it's brilliant and what steps, small incremental steps, how can we work towards everyone teaching? And you are always in that process, you're always having new teachers and working on that programme, but I think it is just work in small steps, a little bit at a time. Have your action plan and just work, chip away at it. Do you agree with that?

Lucy Cartwright

Yeah. I think there is no end point with it and you're not going to be finished. And that's the thing about teaching. We are there to reflect and evaluate and improve and embed the next thing. So it is something you're never going to say, "Yeah, we've cracked it or it's going to stand still." We're always looking for that continual improvement.

Adam Gifford

And it's amazing. And it's amazing. And seeing it firsthand in the school and listening to you talk about it. And I think it's aspirational. I think that it's also amazing to hear the steps that you've taken. So, schools, you want to be able to embed it like you've done and to have that flexibility. What's really interesting to me is when you talk about the next step for journaling, it's almost letting go. It's like that fluidity to be able to say, "Oh, we're going to do it now, we're going to do..." Whereas some people might think actually that you would not begin with that, just at the right moment, pick and choose. But actually, the groundwork that goes into it to get to a point where it is so embedded in practise, the ideas behind it, the expectations and all of those sorts of things, that that's the next step.

And I think that that's a really interesting thing that I'd take away is that setting up the structure first allows you to then let go, but to get the amazing results. And that needs to be seen, that the structure starts, the practise starts, the understanding as to why to do it, the dedication of time, all of those sorts of things. And I think that's a really, really interesting evolution to move to a stage where you can have that flexibility. I think that that's amazing.

Debbie Lewis

I think it's how it all meshes together, the programme, the training, and in the culture where teachers aren't really trusted, I think it's really heartwarming to know that when you come to this stage, that you can hand over that trust that teachers do know what they're doing, they do understand where their children are, and that you trust them to adapt those lessons because the programme is fantastic, because the training is all there, you get to that point where you can let go and trust teachers to do what they think is best for the children at the right time within the parameters of the Math No Problem programme.

Andy Psarianos

Thank you for joining us on The School of School podcast.