Three Dimentions of a Form-Teacher

Form Teacher is vital to the efficient running of the school.The Form Teacher should be the first person to whom a student will turn to for help or advice, although it may sometimes be necessary to refer the matter to the Year Head, Head of School, Deputy Head or, through them, even to an outside agency. It is through regular daily contact that unobtrusive care is exercised.

1. COMMUNICATION: 
1. Roll is marked accurately and daily. Reasons for absence will be collected and recorded on the weekly basis. Patterns of lateness and absence are recognised and action is taken to remedy problems relating to lateness and absence.
2. Ensure that letters to parents are distributed and recorded in student planners.  Returns should be collected and disseminated or passed on. Matters arising from any returns from parents are discussed with Year Head and action is taken on problems and queries. Register notices give essential last minute messages and along with messages from staff briefing should be read out or passed on to the tutor group. 
3. Ensure that all students have access to the same quality of pastoral care and supports HODs with constructive criticism.This is to take an active role in initiating new developments or shouldering responsibility for maintenance of whole year tasks.
4. Play the vital role of checking daily the progress students are making and praising and supporting students and arrange to meet parents over matters of concern and in appropriate cases attends meetings of external agencies and to report back and helps whole pastoral team (Head, Dep., Head of School, Year Head) in decision making process.
2. ASSESSMENT
1. Gather information from students and other parties which does not appear on formal reports / and develop a thorough knowledge of all students in the form.  In depth picture of both their academic abilities and out of school activities and interests and give advice to students in constructing personal targets and portfolio of achievements.
3. ETHOS
1. Student protocol at general assemblies
2. Maintain the standards of discipline and uniform
3. Check student diaries

Seriousness of Assessment

As a teacher, I often consider assessment to be rather a process i.e it is more than just an event. While there is a lot of research as to how the assessment influences instruction, there is relatively little attention paid to how students receive and react to assessment. It has in fact got different perspectives to it - social, emotional, or psychological.

1. Students need to learn how to use assessment feedback from an early age.
2. We need to better understand how students respond to assessment.
3. We need to learn how to promote positive classroom assessment climates.
4. We need to better understand how classrooms work and how assessment fits into effective classrooms.
5. We need to promote the students‘ voice in learning and assessment.
6. We need to understand how students work on assessments that are longer in duration and exist to a degree outside of the confines of the classroom.
7. We need to teach students how to monitor and self-regulate their independent learning efforts through better self-assessment.
8. We need to consider how students will react to major changes in curricular and assessment practice and policy. This should be a regular part of the consultation process. If we desire good outcomes from changes in policy and practice, we need to think those changes through from the perspective of the student.
9. We need to know how students experience tests‘ that are a regular part of classroom and school life such as, PATs and asTTle.
10. We need to better understand which types of assessment tasks students feel they are able to best demonstrate their level of understanding and skills.

In short, and in sum, the ten recommendations listed above can be boiled down to the simple phrase, ―Think of the students.

The Four aspects of Inquiry Learning

1. Relationships
• Know your students
• Students finding out about each other
• Students valued for who they are
• “Do you know me well enough to teach me?”
• Respectful connections: student/student, student/teacher
• Vital in order for students to take risks and colborate
• Becomes the fabric of an effectively functioning classroom
2. Student Voice & Choice
• Students involved in decision making around their learning
• Students co-constructing learning
• Different options are provided for learners and their learning
• Rich learning conversations with prompts for deeper thinking
• Listening/responding/conferring/prompting
• Inclusion of ‘passion’ type projects directly related to student curiosities
• Student voice/choice is deliberately planned for, regular and authentic
3. Learning what they are learning
• Visible student goal setting and action plans
• Clear learning intentions and success criteria
• Rich in the characteristics of the Key Competencies
• Looks like: participation, planned, focused, reflective, open minded, questioning,note making/taking, making connections to known/unknown
4. Provoking curiosity
• Using objects/resources that provoke curiosity and trigger further learning: fascinating images, compelling texts
• Deliberate questioning: What are you wondering about? What are you curious about?
• Making use of any opportunity to ask and answer questions
• Planned opportunities to model and record curiosities
• Planned opportunities to reinforce processes, follow-up actions and how to’s

The effects of standards based assessment

1. Tests can be used to help make promotion and retention decisions : Many factors enter into the important decision of moving a student into the next grade. Intuition is an important part of any decision but that intuition is enhanced when coupled with data. Standardized tests, and records of classroom performance on less formal tests are essential for supplying much of the data upon which these decisions are based.
2. Test results are important devices to share information with boards of education, parents, and the general public through the media: Classroom instruction depends upon a large support network. That network needs information if an adequate support level is to be maintained. Tests in various forms can supply that information. Informational needs vary among the support groups; specialized referrals for remediation and enrichment need test data for parental support and approval; effectiveness of educational planning is needed by boards of education: evidence which can be partially supplied by test data; financial support of existing programs by the general community needs evidence that can be supplied by test data.
3. Test results are useful tools for measuring the effectiveness of instruction and learning: Various types of tests can be employed when measuring how effectively teaching impacts student learning. Learning when viewed in the aggregate can be viewed within a district at three levels; district, building, and classroom. Standardized tests are particularly useful at all three levels. These tests can be used in norm, criterion and objective-referenced modes. Tests written within the district for large-scale use can also supply information focused specifically on unique, local aspects of educational programs.

Multivariate Testing

The attention span on the Web has been decreasing ever since Google had arrived and changed the rules of the game. Now with millions of results available on any topic imaginable, the window to grab a visitor’s attention has decreased significantly (in 2002, the BBC reported it is about 9 seconds)


Statistical testing relies on design of experiments. Several methods in use for multivariate testing include:

1. Discrete choice and what has mutated to become choice modeling is the complex technique that won Daniel McFadden the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2000. Choice modeling models how people make trade offs in the context of a purchase decision. By systematically varying the attributes or content elements, one can quantify their impact on outcome, such as a purchase decision. What is most important are the interaction effects uncovered, which neither the Taguchi methods nor Optimal design solve for.
2. Optimal design involves iterations and waves of testing. Optimal design allows marketers the ability not only to test the maximum number of creative permutations in the shortest period of time but also to take into account relationships, interactions, and constraints across content elements on a website. This allows one to find the optimal solution unencumbered by limitations.
3. Taguchi methods: with multiple variations of content in multiple locations on a website, a large number of combinations need to be statistically tested and medium/low traffic websites can take some time to get a large enough sample of visitors to decide which content gives the best performance. For example, if 3 different images are to be tested in 3 locations, there are 27 combinations to test. Taguchi  orthogonal arrays can be used in the design of experiments in order to reduce the variations but still give statistically valid results on individual content elements. Taguchi uses fractional factorial designs.

The principal goal of education

The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done. Jean Piaget (1896-1 980)


Piaget (1972) argues that it is better to let children spend more time on a few problems, really working through them, than to cover a lot of territory: "It  is in learning to master the truth by oneself at the risk of losing a lot of time and of going through all the roundabout ways that are inherent in real activity" (p. 104). Early critics of Piaget faulted him for basing his worldview of children on studies done in his own home. Subsequent research by  others, however, seemed to indicate that his creative genius made it possible for him to do successfully what others would frown on. Today, early education is strongly influenced by Piaget, particularly when
we put down the skillpacks and dittos in favor of less directive hands-on learning