Sprints - High Intensity, High Gain

Historically, students have worked like Sisyphus. They collect a load of concepts, knowledge/information from the teacher and at some point they are expected to combine it all into a final piece of work which is submitted for judgement before washing their hands of it and beginning all over again with a new unit of work. This is how I had operated as a teacher – bred in the UK education system. I had become a traditional end-marker.

When I learned about agile working and the idea of the sprint, it made my brain both spin and ache. How would I change the habit of a lifetime? How could I make this work on a day-to-day basis? This would be an organisational nightmare for a class of primary school kids… all these worries but what saved this from being another victim of innovation fatigue was that I could see the pure and simple logic and genius of it. I knew it was worth pursuing!

I asked my students what their previous experience of feedback was in school. They gave me an example of a drama presentation they had worked on. The teacher nobly gave them feedback at the end of the lesson, they even received peer feedback. However they moved on to something new, a fresh venture and the impact of the feedback was lost… when would they ever be able to apply what they had learned? When could they use this feedback meaningfully? Even my students decided at this moment that there was no logic in this approach. A powerful lesson for us all!

The idea of the sprint is simple. Rather than learning/work looking like this:

Hauling that work up the mountainside...

It looks more like this:

I actually found this under a students pencil case - it was her plan of action!

After a short time-boxed cycle of working, the children get the opportunity to give and receive feedback. I cannot begin to describe the positive impact this brings! This feedback session can take many different forms, but a simple version is that children spread out their work for a simply gallery walk. Armed with a rubric (best case scenario – see my transparency post!) the children get the chance to walk around and look at the work of their peers. They can add post-it notes or write on the drafts offering feedback (I could write plenty of posts about this process alone!). If the work is a product for a certain audience, then for authenticity, the intended audience could provide the feedback making it more valuable. Once the feedback round is over, the children have another cycle to work, improving their product based on the feedback they have recieved and the observations they have made. Again, after this second sprint we can hold another review. In our classroom, we call it 'Feedback Friday'. This way of working mirrors how work is conducted in agile companies. Creating a prototype, collecting feedback and continually improving. Remember, even Google Maps is still a beta version!

This approach not only allows children to flex their critical thinking skills, but it also encourages empathy (thinking about how they word their feedback!), metacognition, collaboration and perseverance (or grit!). Students also get the chance to compare their work to that of others… when this simple realisation came to me, it brought back memories of my own education… who can forget the feeling of handing in a piece of work, walking to the teachers desk and looking at the hand-in pile only to see an amazing, far better piece of work on the top?! When children have multiple opportunities to see a piece of work and give/receive feedback they can judge interpersonal goalposts much better, see alternative ways of working and gather new ways of seeing their product.

Student critiquing with help of final grade rubric

Happy Sprinting!