Planning for Performance – what are we up to?

User Centred Design presentation process design on a whiteboard by Wonderland CC BY NC

A few weeks ago I wrote about the new IBO MYP PHE Criterion and my initial thoughts on the first year using them.  I want to try and blog about these criterion by unwrapping one criteria at a time over a few blog posts in a concentrated way to get my head around each one.  I will aim to put together a blend of my Professional circle’s viewpoints; my own experiences with this Criterion and then put out some research and collected ideas with my friend and wise PHE guru, Ken Forde.  I am hoping that by doing this that I will have time to really get a stronger idea of how these Criterion could be used for G6, G7/8 and G9/10 and also to share ideas amongst the community.

This year I have been working to try and incorporate more Formative assessment (at the moment looking into Dylan Wiliam’s research – more to come!) into my units and use Visible Thinking Routines  as part of this process.  I have been researching into both of these models to see how they could have impact in PHE as I want to build my own library of resources but also try and see what I can use that will give me a clearer picture of what my students understand to help guide my lesson formation and how to best assist my learners.  I have been working to see how I could put these ideas into a useful assessment model for Criteria B: Planning to Perform.  The table below is the top band (7/8) for G6, 7/8 and 9/10.

I feel we face an issue in PHE – that in G9/10 we are being asked to assess students planning in a very major way.  Students now need to design a plan, then explain their plan and justify why their plan is effective.  They then need to execute or test out their planning and the analyse the plan and also evaluate their planning based on the testing out of the plan.  In a Design Cycle (see image below), this process would ideally go on for a series of loops, in PHE we could:

Inquire into a Game or Concept and research the Essential elements in that game or concept.

Develop some ideas about what is required (what do we need to plan for? What problem do we see in our game that could be assisted by a plan?) for an effective plan or strategy.

Construct a plan or create a lesson or drill or skill or strategy or game play or fitness unit or design a new game and then

Run your Plan – share it, do it, teach it or other

Evaluate your work by analysing your plan to assess if you incorporate the essential elements and had a clear understanding of your plan and then evaluate the success or what you would do differently next time.

Phew!  I feel like this Criterion has the potential to be a really huge assessment task.  This year so far, I have used it to with my G9 and G10 students to :

• Create a Fitness Workout (with the essential element/concept of Balance) and evaluate it
• Evaluate a running fitness plan (with the goal to race a 5km race for a specific athlete)
• Plan out a choreographic piece in Dance
• Plan and Evaluate a mini-lesson in Handball
• Plan and Evaluate a mini-lesson in Futsal
• Plan a set of Volleyball strategies (skills, strategies and interpersonal skills) and evaluate them.

I am looking at how to use this criterion for a SEPEP unit later in this year and have students working on Designing a new Striking and Fielding game and Creating a dance and choosing how to plan a lesson (writing? video? diagrams?) for others to learn their dance and use evaluation as a feedback tool for further development of their design/plan.

The other concern I have is that this has the potential to be a lot of writing.  I am trying to work out how to use this Criteria in a way that could be less written – more discussion or more spontaneous.  I feel that as a Coach I research Basketball plays and the players learn a few of them, and then the next step is for my players to use these plays as a scaffold to jump off and create plays based on the players, the score in the game, the opposition they are playing etc, but I would argue that a lot of this sort of planning (by players not coaches necessarily) comes up quickly and requires a limited time frame.  I would like to think about how to use Planning for Performance in a given situation, for example:

Invasion Games unit: Students are in teams of 4 and are playing modified basketball type games.  One team has a problem: the opposition are all taller than them.

Teacher question: What strategies could you plan to use in the next game, based on the problem/s you have identified?

1. Design a plan (to not use overhead passes and work on using bounce passes).
2. Explain the plan (verbally discuss this with the team)
3. Justify your plan (using overhead passes will be difficult as the opposition are all taller than us, lets use bounce passes and keep the ball low as this is generally more challenging for taller players)
4. Play using Bounce Passes
5. Analyse – the essential element here was the type of pass and how we used it – we could break down examples to discuss the use of the pass and how it went in game play
6. Evaluate – were we successful?  Did we keep possession or were we constantly intercepted?  Will we continue with this plan or change or add to it?  Why?

I wonder if I had the chance to discuss these types of game play plans each lesson with my students if this would be enough evidence – it would certainly tell me if my students understood how to create a game play plan and if they understood or if we feel that to allow our students to really Explain, Justify and Evaluate they need time and to write down a lot of words or diagrams?  This is the crux of my investigation into Criterion B.

So, here is my request, if you have time, please can you either share a comment or fill out this google form so that I can collect up a lot of Criterion B feedback and ideas to share here for others who are looking.  A big thank you in advance for your time and efforts.