Notes in the Margin - noticing the learning that matters

The rise of AI in education is a growing concern because students are using it to bypass critical thinking and genuine effort. If an end product can simply be generated by AI, its educational value is lost. The solution lies in shifting the focus from the final product to the process— focusing more on the learning journey and all of the mistakes, reflections and growth that happens along the way. If we shift our thinking to value the 'how' over the 'what,' we can create deeper, more authentic learning experiences.

Process over Product

I’m a firm believe in ‘process over product’ when it comes to assessment design. To combat plagiarism and avoid AI produced artefacts or ‘too easy’ copying and pasting, I try to design assessment that champion ‘notes in the margin’ rather than a shiny product at the end.

A quick anecdote

This week, I witnessed a student on the verge of giving up—frustrated by a lack of skill and a soured partnership. The assessment felt overwhelming, and the temptation to use AI for quick solutions was strong. Their belief that the final product mattered more than the learning journey was holding them back.

I reminded them that the real focus of the task is the thinking and problem-solving along the way. Through planning, drafting, making mistakes, and reflecting, students log their learning in a journal with prompts like: “What was hard?”, “What didn’t work at first?”, “What did I fix?”, and “What feedback did I receive?”. These notes capture the true essence of learning.

For this student, that shift in perspective was transformative. Their productive struggle and decision to take a new direction became a key part of their growth. While students may still submit a polished final product, the real value lies in the ‘notes in the margin’—the evidence of their process. If we can help students see that the journey matters more than the destination, we can equip them with the skills they need to become lifelong learners.

Notes in the margin

When I refer to notes in the margin I’m referring to the messy and sometimes incomplete jottings that happen during the thinking process. It might be annotation or quick notes or even question marks to show that a concept is not yet clear. Notes in the margin are personal and don’t need to be polished for presentation. They are a vital part of revealing the personal learning journey - so that even if information is sourced from ‘you know where’ - the notes reveal an element of processing and engaging with the text that is a record of engagement. Margin notes can include reflections, annotations, insights, or sketches that capture personal thinking

Drawing, sketching, scribbling, questioning, wondering, noticing, asking, clarifying - this are the verbs that matter.

The role of notes in the margin

As a counter to generative AI , personal and reflective notes in the margin are the shiny human thing.

I have noticed with interest that my best ideas are the ones that I have scribbled into the margins of printed drafts. Similarly, this blog is born out of a scrawly page of notes that I started this morning while I was cooking the family breakfast. Notes in the margin can provide a depth of understanding that a published text on its own may not fully show.

Similarly I recently printed a page of typed unit planning notes that I might have thought were finished had I not provided myself time for the valuable ‘jotting and scribbling’ stage where I could clarify sequences, question my timing and extend some of my thinking.

Practical strategies

A fantastic literacy activity is using comment codes to annotate texts where you can come up with your own acronyms to record the process of reading. ‘LUL - look up later’, "‘II” - interesting insight, ‘DTS’ - don’t think so, ‘NP - needs proof’ - you can come up with your own to match the voice in your head - but the act of making notes (rather than taking notes) is an important key to showing understanding through personal processing.

For teachers the most opportune moments to offer guidance to students is in formative feedback - steering a learner into the right direction before a high stakes outcome. This might be as comments in Google Docs or writing in additional comments in the margins of a student’s work as it is being drafted.

Some practical tips:

• Use digital tools like annotation apps.

• Incorporate peer review of notes.

• Create a bingo board of reflective prompts

• Keep a daily learning log

• Include ‘today’s focus’ in learning reflections

• Record, log and celebrate failures

• Summarise content with quick bullet lists

• Encourage a personal vernacular of comment codes

• Model ‘scribble-thinking’ with note-taking

• Draw diagrams

• Model questioning and active reading

• Peer-review - use margin notes as discussion prompts for collaborative clarifying activities

Notes in the margin help students to:

Clarify understanding

Record reflections

Ask questions

Justify thinking

Show resilience

Provide evidence of decision-making

Record a range of feedback

Create refined outcomes

Personalise learning

Strengthen metacognition

Take, Shake, Make Away

Using notes in the margin and focusing on reflective note making as a key part of assessment design can counteract plagiarism and AI misuse by emphasising originality and personal voice.

How might you incorporate a learning journal, process log or process over product component to assessment design?

And for your final notes (I will be using this activity to foster discussion about assessments this week;)

What is your big take away from this text?

What could you shake up as a result of reading this text?

What gaps might you make up as a result?

-

Thanks for reading the results of this morning scribbled notes.

Please leave a comment to share how you have shifted your assessment practice to process over product.

Further reading:

Shift the emphasis from assessing product to assessing process (from Melbourne University)

AI Impacts Student’ Critical Thinking (Teacher Toolkit)

AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking (longer read)

Learning is not supposed to be tidy.

What is 'make the pie' learning?

Have you ever been to a workshop or presentation and been given a handout while they present a slide show but you’ve spent the time daydreaming about all the things you’d rather be doing? Or have you ever been asked to write something down that was dictated to you only to promptly forget what you had written?

This kind of learning is like being served a pie. The analogy of a ‘pie’ is helpful because pies come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors—sweet and savory—and we can all imagine being handed a pie. In this learning approach, the pie is served to a passive recipient. The recipient of the pie has no active role in making or even cutting the pie. They might eat it, but they don’t gain any understanding of how it was made. Even if it’s delicious, it’s entirely forgettable—it’s not their pie.

Let’s think about what ‘make the pie’ learning might feel like. Traditional learning experiences are more about serving the pie – and handing out the answers – rather than letting learners dig in and make the pie themselves.

In a well-designed learning environment, no two ‘pies’ should be the same and everyone should have their own pie that they have proudly designed and made for themselves.

My ‘make the pie’ philosophy, is encouraging a hands-on and interactive approach to learning. My ‘make the pie’ philosophy is all about getting people to mix, blend and bake the ingredients themselves. In a well-designed learning experience, people should feel like they have been elbow-deep in the recipe of acquiring new skills, feel confident to combine their own ‘ingredients’ of ideas and leave with an experiential understanding of how things come together.

“She really makes us think for ourselves. I am getting more confident at problem-solving and I like how she doesn’t tell us the answers.”

What’s in the Batter?

I’m not making up this whole pie thing. It’s just my way of explaining pedagogy (teaching-science geekery) to people who don’t love jargon as much as me. The ‘make the pie’ philosophy is a way to re-imagine a workshop session as a pie-making extravaganza. Instead of handing everyone a finished pie (complete with crust and all), participants might get a basket of ingredients – flour, butter, fruit, maybe a pinch of sugar. Then it’s their job to mix, knead, and taste-test as they go. This is active learning that fosters trial and error, fast-failing and iteration, collaboration and communication and a lot more too… And the making of the pie is backed up with a solid lineup of learning theories:

• Constructionist Theory: Inspired by Seymour Papert, this approach invites learners to build their own understanding. Just as they’d experiment with different amounts of sugar or spices, they’re encouraged to “construct” knowledge by trying things out and learning from what doesn’t go as planned just as they also learn from what does go as planned. Applying this theory also builds resilience and critical thinking skills.

• Constructivist Theory: Constructivism embraces the idea that learning is a social recipe – we all bring different ingredients, and when we mix with others and talk about what we are doing and why we are doing it, we can create something unique. This means collaboration, discussion, and the freedom to add a little ‘seasoning’ of one’s own ideas on the table is encouraged. This also fosters creativity, community, agency and a sense of ownership of the learning AND encourages people to bring prior knowledge and experience as a valued foundation to any new learning. Key players in constructivist theory are Bruner and Vygotsky.

• Experiential Learning: If you can imagine each step of designing a recipe as a hands-on experience then this is experiential learning. In my ‘make the pie’ learning experiences, learners are constantly doing, making, and problem-solving with me as an expert guide on the side. This isn’t about a teacher telling students what to think or do but about them figuring it out and arriving at a new understanding with expert guidance.

Why Mixing Matters More Than Memorising

In a lot of learning experiences, we’re too focused on presenting the perfect pie – giving answers and ticking boxes – that we skip the mixing stage altogether. But here’s the secret: it’s in the mixing, kneading, and experimenting where the real learning magic happens. Research shows that active learning is what makes concepts stick. When people have a chance to build their understanding, they’re far more likely to remember it. When they make the pie, they’ll talk about what they made AND want to make more pies too.

Letting learners “make the pie” empowers them to feel like they own the final product because, in a very real way, they do. They’ve rolled up their sleeves and tried out the skills in a controlled, playful setting, so they’re prepared to replicate it in real life.

What Does a ‘Make the Pie’ Workshop Look Like?

When you come to one of my sessions, you’re not sitting and waiting for the ‘perfect recipe’ to appear on a slide. You’re gathering ingredients, mixing things up, and working with a team to see how it all comes together. You might start with a challenge and work out how to fix it – just like you would in a real world situation. You’ll leave not only with new knowledge but with the know-how to apply it.

1. Choose Your Ingredients: Participants can select the skills or concepts they want to explore with different options that are differentiated and designed to meet different skill levels.

2. Mix It Up: Everyone has the chance to try new approaches, exchange ideas, and learn by doing in their own time and way – like everyone adding sprinkles and tweaks to a given recipe.

3. Bake Together: There will also be opportunities for collective problem-solving and sparking and capturing ideas.

4. Eat and Reflect Together: While the catering is usually up to you, great learning experiences require some critical reflection. We’ll talk about what was most valuable, most effective, most engaging and most impactful so that we can champion these ingredients again in the next workshop.

Making the Pie means that learning is a process of experimenting, ‘tasting’, mixing up solutions and seeing what works. The ‘Make the Pie’ philosophy promotes a ‘can-do’ mindset – because participants were not handed the answers. The answers were made by them.

Ready to Start Mixing?

So next time you’re looking at a workshop or training session and you see a slide deck and a handout with readymade answers, rethink it and try a ‘make the pie’ recipe for success that’s interactive, memorable, and customised.

Because the best learning isn’t served – it’s stirred, seasoned, and baked with everyone’s minds doing the mixing. Like the sound of this kind of pie? You know where to find me.

Don the black hat! A thinking strategy for doing things better

New Zealand is currently faced with a worrying economic downturn. There are additional threats on the horizon such as the rapid developments of AI, impacts of Globalisation, looming international conflict expansion and environmental disasters due to climate change just to name a few. We turn our faces to the light and try to look for moments of brightness in the news and, particularly in the education sector and public sectors, it feels very dark indeed. Where is the light?

In these situations, it is useful to put on a black hat after Edward De Bono.

What is Black Hat Thinking?

Black hat thinking is a a way to adopt a deliberately pessimistic and cautious approach to problem-solving and decision-making with all of the ‘worstest’ superlative outcomes that we can think of. It means that we get to focus on identifying potential risks, problems, and consider of the possible negative outcomes. It is one of the six thinking styles in Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats model.

Why is it useful?
Black hat thinking encourages a kind of healthy skepticism. A lot of technology has been touted as ‘the next best thing’ for example and then it has quickly turned into a bubble that has popped more quickly than we might have predicted. Some examples of these are the dot.com bubble or the open plan classroom bubble - some may say, too, the AI bubble but this has not yet popped. (More on this later). This type of thinking is useful for carefully predicting and examining any potential flaws and weaknesses which ends up being a very useful prediction and forecasting tool.

Logical Analysis
While it might often be perceived as negative and ‘red penning’ any new and exciting prospects, black hat thinking is not about being pessimistic for its own sake. Another way of understanding it is as a useful way to critically analyse new systems/approaches/tools as a risk assessment process to ensure that any potential risks or threats are identified so that some safeguards can be put in place. Black hat thinking means that teams can anticipate and prepate for possible challenges.

Reverse brainstorming

My favourite way to facilitate Black Hat Thinking is with a reverse brainstorm. This means we look at how to do the opposite of whatever goal it is that we are striving to achieve. “How can we ensure that all of our managers fail?” or “How can we make sure that students never learn to read?” or “How can I become the worst leader of all time?” are some fun examples to play with. In one particularly memorable example in a secondary school context we reverse brainstormed “How can we make sure our students are unprepared for the future?” and there were some shocking truths suddenly up for discussion when some teachers recognised that their current pedagogy was setting kids up to fail…

The next step of a reverse brainstorm is to be as creative as possible and come up with ‘all the ways’ to make the opposite happen. Go wild. Have fun. Then review.

The final step of the reverse brainstorm is to flip the brainstorm and negate all of the negative suggestions and rephrase them as positives. If one answer for a ‘how can we become the worst leader’ brainstorm was ‘be late for all meetings’ then the solution is ‘be punctual’. The black hat thinking and using the reverse brainstorm as a facilitation method means that all of the negatives have been predicted and the opposite risk managing opportunity can be identified to inform meaningful strategic planning.

Foreseeing the rocks

If you hate the idea of a reverse brainstorm, another useful metaphor is a boat on its way to ‘some magical island outcome’. This method is great for visual thinkers. Draw a boat and draw a bunch of rocks and waves and kraken and pirates and whatever else you think might get in the way of a journey and then set about naming the hazards. What are all of the things in the way? Once this is done, you can start to strategise what your marine chart/road map might need in order to steer around those obstacles.

Both of these strategic planning experiences require the black hat to be donned - and like a black wizard’s hat, the outcomes of black hat thinking can be magical.

Black hat thinking is thinking about the weather, the rocks and the crew’s capabilities to better avoid disasters.

Making some magic

If you know where you don’t want to go, then you can forge a better path to your rightful destination. Similarly, knowing all of the bad things that ‘might’ happen, means that you can plan to avoid and manage risks accordingly.

Recently I have been working on an ‘AI in the Classroom’ rubric and black hat thinking has really helped me to consider best use case scenarios - only because I’ve spent time thinking of worst use case scenarios and then sought to fix them through reverse engineering.

The black hat brainstorm highlighted worst use of AI as ‘mindless prompting’ and ‘worksheet pumping’, ‘biased without balance’, ‘industrial model on steroids’, ‘data misusing’ and ‘environmentally disastrous’ (to name a few) which can then inform more critical analysis of how to mitigate these risks with educated, mindful, purposeful and policy-protected best uses to help me to design my self-assessment rubric. (This is coming soon).

So what kind of black hat will you wear?

Of course, you don’t need a real hat - but imagining your own black hat strategy to make better decisions in your workplace or classroom is a great thinking strategy to adopt if you want to know better to do better.

Goldfish Brain Retention Card Deck Freebie

Dive into Exam Prep with my free 'Goldfish Brain' Card Deck!

As the exam season approaches, students and teachers alike can often find themselves in a whirlwind of relentless and repetitive review/revise/repeat lessons. It can feel overwhelming and stressful, not to mention boring and a bit like a chore. Sink or swim it feels like - so how bout more ‘swim’?

When I was faced with a similar hurdle a while ago I created the Goldfish Brain Card Deck to print, shuffle and liven up my revision sessions. This deck is designed to inject some fun and creativity into any revision routine - you bring the content and then the activities can be universally applied to flex your thinking muscles.

Whether you’re a student trying to figure out a less boring way to revise and study (or even ‘how’ to study) or a teacher looking for more interesting ways to revisit key concepts - this card deck is going to be a useful resource. The activities are all goldfish themed active ways of revisiting content with fresh eyes that can be applied to any subject. I’ve taken some of the bore/chore parts of designing a revision program off your plate and made it seem a bit more fun and splashy.

This revision/retention card deck contains around 30 fun visual thinking strategies and graphic organiser prompts to think outside the box (and around the corner) in order to dive back into your important content with fresh eyes. You don’t need to be a digital whizz either as all of the activities are good ole pen and papery. Have fun! Make a splash!

And if you like my thinking and want more ‘easy things’ to implement to make learning more engaging, you know what to do.

Visual Learning and Metaphor in the Classroom

This term I’ve been playing with visual learning and metaphor as a way to anchor students’ understanding about a new Achievement Standard in English (1.2 - Demonstrate understanding of specific aspects of studied texts). After exploring and explaining a ‘boat and anchor’ metaphor in class with quick sketches on the whiteboard, I took the time to draw it up as a published whiteboard on Canva so that students could ‘connect the dots’ and revise the key requirements of the task more easily.

Breaking things down into pictures is a way to reduce cognitive load and is also a way for students to connect with their learning beyond written instructions. Using images to support learning is a way to offer both scaffolding as well as differentiated learning opportunities. Using pictures to support words (or visuals to work alongside verbals) aligns with Dual Coding Theory which you can read more about here. The main principle is that retention and memory is enhanced by offering pictures as well as words. Applying a UDL lens, pictographic representations are also useful supports for students with dyslexia, dyscalculia and autism and can make learning more ‘universally’ engaging.

Application of metaphor

The boat metaphor I used in this instance was a way to discuss the importance of tying an observation about aspects of a text to the author’s purpose, to the theme and to draw attention to the fact that the ‘treasure’ of this learning is exploring a personal response. This was a useful mataphor because it helped students to understand that naming a technique and giving an example of it is like pushing a boat out onto the water - it will float away if it is not anchored to anything. The examples need to be linked together (like a chain), the boat needs to be anchored to the author’s purpose (why is it there in the first place) - but also that the ‘real treasure’ is our own responses and thinking about the ideas or themes in the text.

I used the metaphor of a boat and anchor ‘chain’ as a way to explain that examples need to be linked together for their writing to be convincing. If students zoom into the chain, they can see that it is also likened to a venn diagram in order to show diagrammatically that the connection between aspects and how they work together is where the magic happens. By recreating the anchor metaphor in Canva, I was also able to add explainer post its at each section of the image for students to zoom in and out to - depending on how much support they needed. In this way the visual whiteboard works as a differentiated learning tool too.

VIsual learning is away to present complex information in a more memorable way. My interest has been in whether or not this way of presenting learning is ‘actually helpful’ or if it is a waste of time. As it turns out, verbal feedback from the students indicates that it ‘is really helpful’ and I have noticed that they are able to talk about ‘anchoring’ their ideas to the author’s purpose. It also has served as a way for students to know that the ‘treasure’ is the most important part and that they need to explore different ways of connecting to a text in order to have a justified personal response. From a numbers standpoint, when I look at ‘click through’ analytics or observe how many students are ‘in the board’ each lesson (and out of class time), this has been a quick indication that presenting learning visually is something that the students are keen to engage with.

Targeting asynchronous delivery

I ended up extending the whiteboard canvas in Canva to summarise the other key documents that are already loaded to the Learning Management System. Where information was new, I added a ‘NEW’ sticker and drew their attention to it in class and on the class stream (live feed) to ensure that students who had been away would not miss the notification. I also screenshot the board and reposted it to the stream to indicate ‘where’ on the map there might be updates to check out. The benefit of the visual map as a way to present learning is that the students can ‘explore’ all of the resources in one place and have a better understanding of how they fit together through the process of exploration (active learning) and they also don’t need a tab open for every document.

Addressing Challenges with Google Classroom

Google Classroom can be a frustrating conduit for learning..There is limited functionality as far as how resources can be presented to students. The list view has limited iconographic or colour-coding functionality and I am constantly guiding students how to find things even when there are clear titles because the headings alone are what distinguishes one resources from another. Students seem to waste so much time clicking in and out and around to find documents. By presenting hyperlinks to the key resources within the Canva whiteboard, I am able to streamline the ‘purpose’ of each doc with explainer notes. Similarly, students can ‘see’ what they are about to click on before they click into it.

A major benefit of visual learning is how complex information can be presented in a more memorable way. Finding a metaphor and using visual aid is a useful way to present multiple steps or share pieces of a bigger project. Using a whiteboard is also an engaging way for students to zoom in and review/pick a path and explore class materials as well as supporting information or explanatory notes without needing multiple tabs open to organise their exploration.

Visual learning and using visual aids can also make it easier for students to process and remember information. Additionally, the use of metaphor can also improve memory retention so that students can visually re-trace connections by remembering parts of an image. Further, presenting material visually and/or with metaphor is a more inclusive way to present information because it can so easily include iconographic supports.

Trials and Tweaks

If I were to use this particular canvas again, I might make it more linear rather than ‘scattered’ or I might potentially number sections or use more arrows to indicate flow and progressions. In this instance and as an initial experiment, this map was built alongside students and added to incrementally to build on synchronous and collaborative learning in class. As a tool, the students were already familiar with the boat/anchor metaphor so the board served them like a revision tool. If it were a stand-alone tool that I needed students to explore on their own, I might need to scaffold the pathways a bit more clearly.

Canva whiteboards are a fun way to present a lot of information in a visual way. An important note is that this visual learning/mapping tool is presented ‘as well as’ the list view within Google Classroom rather than ‘instead of’. It is also an optional way to explore materials and is not a ‘must’ for students who prefer more traditional delivery methodology.

Miro is another great whiteboard tool with a few more embed functions that Canva hasn’t got yet (although it needs a paid account). As a note, my Canva account is an education account and the hyperlinking of docs is a workaround to try to get some of the functionality of the Miro ‘embed PDF’ option that I like. (Just as an FYI). I have found that you can embed video and powerpoints/slideshows relatively easily within Canva too.

And that’s my picture.

What do you think? How might you use more visual learning tools or metaphors in the classroom?

Further reading:

Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning

Visual Thinking - podcast by Temple Grandin

Differetiation, does, in fact, work

Quick read on Mnemonics and why they work

Quest setting to drive engagement

Setting a quest is like planning for a good road trip. You need a crew, you need someone with a map and you need to know where the pit stops are going to be along the way. You need a destination , you need a compass and you need ‘a mission’ so that you can co-design how to get there.

I’ve been experimenting with quests in my learning design in 2023. I’ve helped to design vast landscapes with rabbitholes for online learning modules and created icon summaries of journeys to give learners clear ‘where are we going’ and ‘when are we stopping’ briefs. As a way to design a week’s worth of self-directed learning, I’ve also played with road maps and quests so that learners can track their path and mark off their pit stops in a ‘pick a path’ version of pull learning using Google Classroom as the supporting LMS.

Setting quests can revolutionise a learning experience. Under the guise of a story, learners can ‘choose their own adventure’ and consequently have more buy in - which leads to more engagement. Pairing a learning quest with clear learning outcomes and checklists (or progress bars), also means that learners can track their own progress as well as easily share it with you. As a result, you can identify learners who might be stuck, off track or on a different personal mission entirely.

The benefits of setting quests are:

• increased motivation and participation

• a sense of collaborative and shared purpose

• a way to self-direct and monitor achievement

• a fun way to pitch a learning mission

• a way to use metaphor as a gamification strategy

• an easy way to differentiate and jigsaw activities

• visible learning pathways

In a school classroom context you can set a learning quest by figuring out what the learning outcomes are for the week and then aligning the outcomes to a landscape or iconographic journey metaphor. You can then hyperlink activities (like a choices board) or give clear titles that correlate to another supporting resource or LMS. Within the map design, you can signal ‘treachery’ and ‘skill level’ so that learners can choose to enter into a ‘hard learning zone’ as they progress throughout the week. As a part of the design, you can also offer rest stops (brain breaks), teacher check-ins, whole class or individual work sprints and even ‘rabbit hole’ deliberate detours. From a student perspective, they receive a mission and a timeframe and they then can explore the map and embark on their own learning journey to achieve at their own pace - even potentially reordering activities to suit themselves.

In a workshop (as well as in a classroom) context, learning quests can be a fun way to differentiate by skill level. If you are tired or your brain is at capacity, we recommend you rest here at this resting spot - but if you are an expert adventurer ready for something more challenging, then let’s keep going to explore this peak and see what’s on the other side…

From a facilitation standpoint, the quest makes differentiation and agentic (choice, pace and voice in learning) learning easier to implement. Tied to journeying metaphors, setting quests can give you a framework to leave people at different spots along the way - and it can provide a way to consciously go back to pick them all up later. Even when traveling on different paths, learners can all still arrive at the final destination to debrief.

In a recent workshop, I provided a metaphorical road with pictures as a map or quest for the day. Each icon on the side of the road was a reminder for me to ‘cover’ a key element - and like a tour guide pointing at things as we pass them by, it served extremely well as a visual checklist. Participants liked how they could ‘see’ where their learning was going, as well as where breaks etc were going to be. (Every person ever wants to know when morning tea and lunch times will be…).

Another case study from 2023 was experimenting with a Social Studies class (year 10) and gently scaffolding them into doing week-long quests. In the beginning a single lesson quest felt new and was a different style of learning than what they were used to (they were used to more teacher-directed and synchronous learning). It was so rewarding when I eventually could provide the class with a mission on a Monday and then see them working on different tasks throughout the week to complete the quest. The ‘whole class quiz’ was clearly marked on the map so that they knew we would join together for one session - but the rest of the time they worked independently while I tracked their progress in real time (hanging out and working with them around the room) as well utilising on an online tracking system where the students coloured in a cell of a spreadsheet when each task was completed. Students knew what they had to do for the week and just arrived and continued where they had left off.

New technologies are only going to make it easier to create meaningful learning quests. Some tools that I’ve had a lot of fun playing with this year are: Padlet (I love the gifs personally and the ‘shelf’ layout with clear headings makes it easy for learners to navigate), Canva (for map design and journey metaphor making), Miro (or any other expansive whiteboard tool), and Jamboard (for scratch off interactivity and asynchronous brainstorming). But the process of delivering a learning quest doesn’t have to be digital - I’ve just enjoyed playing with how different tools can be used together to enhance engagement and self-directed learning.

Quest setting isn’t new - here is a useful article with some other tool recommendations as well as a reiteration of the usefulness of the ‘side quest’ for fast finishers or more able learners. Quests can also be leveled up by adding an edularp element and here are some more ideas.

This is an example of one of the first quests I set. This image was supported with hyperlinked resources that ended in a game design formative assessment. Note the ‘time out to read the news’ pit stop - feeding into awareness of current affairs for the weekly quiz.

Quests don’t need to be fancy infographics. Successful workshop quests can easily be run with a handy whiteboard marker and a drawing of a learning pit or road map on the board. Add some symbols for key learning and places to ‘check off’ before coming out the other side and ‘hey presto!’ you have a simple learning quest to play with.

Quest setting is an invitation to reimagine education as an adventure. Workshops and learning experiences can be so much more than passive sessions and when teacher-centric facilitation is omitted, learners end up with more one-on-one support. A quest-setting approach gives participants an opportunity to become active protagonists in their own learning odyssey. Why not let learners choose their own adventure?

P.S. If you're looking for support to design a quest, someone to deliver an immersive story-based learning experience, or to help you to reimagine your existing content as a captivating quest, I’m just an email away.

The Kaizen Classroom - Teach, Tweak, Repeat.

One small tweak here, one small tweak there - imagine the difference that you might make over the course of a day, a week, a term… a year?

While designing some ‘stacking starter’ activities this year, I have been thinking about how the first five minutes of a class are the ‘golden moment’ to set the tone of the class, invite them into the learning and engage with the content. If you think about our students as users and apply some UX (user experience design), we need to be mindful that they have been tuned in to different teachers and different environments in a fairly relentless cycle before they get to us. So what can we do to make it welcoming, engaging, and exciting? I have been thinking about this a lot - and beyond the first five minutes and the great power of an effective starter - the answer can be found in Kaizen.

Kaizen is the Japanese art of continuous improvement. James Clear talks about a version of it through a different lens when he writes about habit stacking (stacking a new habit onto another once the previous one is ingrained) in Atomic Habits and I think that habit stacking AND constant tweaking to seek continuous improvement has enormous potential in the classroom.

This term my focus has been on the ‘first five’ of classroom culture. Embracing the ‘DO NOW’, I have been playing with this space as a place to explore literacy (word games), ignite problem-solving and critical thinking (puzzles or problems to figure out as they come in), retention strategies (list five key words from last lesson), Agency (choose from the choice board) and journaling opportunities. I have used it as a space for agency with ‘This or That’ frames and as a place to specifically target 21st Century Skills and learning dispositions that sit ‘beside’ current learning objectives. So what does Kaizen have to do with it?

In the ever-evolving landscape of education, finding effective ways to enhance teaching methods and empower students is a perpetual goal. And as a perpetual goal, we need to be agile and constantly shifting in order to meet it effectively. Kaizen - the Japanese term that translates to "continuous improvement," is a way to think about what we are doing as a process and not a product. It is a useful way to think about how we can constantly tweak the dynamics of our learning environments. Teach. Tweak. Repeat. It even has a fun ring to it.

At the heart, Kaizen is the belief that small, incremental changes can lead to significant improvements over time. Similar to habit stacking (This is adding a new habit to an existing habit - like listening to a podcast while driving to work since driving to work is an existing habit and listening to a podcast is the new desired habit we ‘stack’ onto it), tiny wins can result in large victories over time. In the context of education, this means continually seeking ways to refine the way we deliver, present, and reflect on the ‘glorious messiness’ of teaching and learning.

The Kaizen Classroom - Key Steps:

1. Embrace a Growth Mindset:

   • If you try something once and fail that does not mean that it will never work. A growth mindset helps us to think about what the students were carrying with them into the lesson, what we (we are not devoid of our own baggage) were carrying into the lesson, and realising that a single attempt is not a finite attempt nor is it the end product. As teachers, we need to have a growth mindset and model as well as encourage the belief that intelligence and abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work and, in this case, reflective iteration.

2. Continuous Self-Reflection:

   • I have a ‘plus-minus interesting’ reflection log that I have been keeping in my planning book. I jokingly refer to it as ‘Tragedy/Comedy’ sometimes (Have you seen that Will Ferrel film Stranger than Fiction? It is one of my favourite films). I regularly reflect on what worked and didn’t work and look for ways to shift and change my delivery. Was it too hard? Was it too easy? Were the instructions unclear? Was my technology choice fit for purpose? I am never afraid to ask the students what they need more of or less of and to really tune in to what they tell me. Regular reflection on teaching methods and outcomes allows us to figure out small things we might change when we try again. (Notice - we - not me). We can identify areas to refine and improve, and be open to growing - even if it still doesn’t work in round two.

3. Small, Gradual Changes:

   • It takes a long time to turn a large ship. If we think about how students have experienced school, how they have experienced the world and what their expectations are for what learning should ‘look like’ - we would be unwise to give them too much to chew on for fear they might choke. Having said that, they can eat larger and larger pieces gradually. In a year 10 class (over a term) we have gone from the students ‘doing nothing’ when coming in to jumping straight in, knowing what they are learning and where they are up to, following a weekly quest (a map I make for them each week) and working collaboratively to find out about questions as they come up. This is a big win - but it wouldn’t be there without nine weeks of incremental baby steps. Over these nine weeks I have gradually released their expectation of me as ‘sage on stage’ and taught them the skills they need to navigate ‘trickier’ and ‘unchartered’ learning experiences. If we avoid drastic overhauls and instead focus on small, manageable adjustments, we can make meaningful change happen. Incremental changes applied carefully can lead to lasting improvements.

4. Student-Centric Approach:

   • An exit ticket that requires a bit of bravery to administer is, ‘What do you want less of?’ Asking students how learning has been/is going for them is vital for successful iteration. Is this map working for you? Do you think these instructions could be clearer? Would you prefer to be quizzed at the beginning or end of the week? Students are the end users of our learning design and we can tailor our teaching strategies to meet the diverse needs and learning styles of all students - even if it is just one baby step at a time. Kaizen helps us to deliver tiny improvements for every student.

5. Data-Driven Decision-Making:

   • Iterations can also target success criteria. Recently, a student told me that he couldn’t prepare for the Current Affairs Quiz each week because he didn’t have time to read the news. A tiny tweak to my planning now includes ‘news time’ to read the headlines as a starter activity (that golden first five). To top it off, this tiny tweak has prompted me to think about how I can offer a ‘media smorgasbord’ to gently push students to consider different sources of news. I am looking forward to sharing Future Crunch with them (an optimist’s news feed) and slipping in some lateral research skills. My next ‘This or That’ for them may now be ‘read the headlines’ but with the choices of two different global news websites or obviously biased sources. We can utilise data (like a student underperforming in a current affairs quiz) to inform the next incremental tweak to our teaching practice. Tiny weeny eeny meeny adjustments every day can lead to improved outcomes over time. Just because we plan something one way doesn’t mean it can’t be tweaked in the process of delivery in order to be more responsive.

6. Culture of Collaboration:

   • For Kaizen to have the most Bang for Buck, we should all be talking about what we are trying, what we are tweaking and what we are failing at. I love sharing ideas in the classroom and love the stories of things that haven’t worked as much just as much as I love hearing about techniques that have worked. Teach, tweak, repeat - imagine if we all shared our wins and losses with each other and how much faster our strength as a collective might grow. Effective communication and a culture of collaboration amongst staff can amplify the impact of Kaizen in the classroom to become a genuine culture of learning and innovation beyond single cell iterations.

Most measuring sticks are divided by little steps. We can learn from them too. Inch by inch…

Here are some ways that Kaizen can be used in teaching:

1. Lesson Planning: We can add tiny updates to incorporate new ideas, technologies, and teaching methods. What if we tried ‘one new thing’ each week?

2. Feedback Loops: How are we getting student voice regularly? We might tweak how we get feedback so that we can be more responsive to students’ experiences.

3. Professional Development: Kaizen also applies to professional development. Though perhaps not daily, - monthly, termly or annual reviews of practice can promote a culture of continuous improvement. Need someone? (Hello! Pick me!)

4. Classroom Environment: Make a tweak to the classroom environment or staff room each week. It could be a new quote for the wall, a new display or a new way of sharing learning outcomes. Small wins add up.

5. Target the first five: Like my examples above, maybe the first five minutes is a worthy space to focus your energy.

I have touched on the benefits of a Kaizen Classroom - and in a nutshell - the Kaizen Classroom is the belief that small wins can lead to big victories over time. Whether it is improved engagement, streamlined ‘openers’, less time wasted in transitions, more engagement and buy-in with assessments or better relationships - Kaizen is being responsive, adaptive and reflective in the pursuit of doing things better.

The journey of education is just as important as the destination. If it doesn’t work the first time, tweak it. Try again. Tweak it. Try again. Twerk it. Work it. Repeat. (Deliberate typo for fun). If we apply Kaizen principles to teaching, we are never settling for ‘this is how it is because it has always been like this’. No. We can do better. We can not only transform our classrooms one baby step at a time but we can also shape a brighter, bolder, braver future. What little thing might you do differently?

The Teaching Tree - Dive into the Archive

I have been happily blogging on my Wordpress ‘Teaching Tree’ Blog for years and, even though Squarespace says that I can import all of my content across to this website, I am yet to figure it out.

In the interim, this is a ‘satisficing’ measure - this blog can be window to all of the blogging and writing I have been doing over on my theteachingtree.blog

On my blog, you can find teaching tips and tricks, reflections on what works or why we need to try harder to make things work, general musings on pedagogy, poetry, an education manifesto and more.

This content is in the magic portal on its way over to this website but the time-space-time-life-reality continuum may cause some delays.