If we first consider the notion that there is a distinct difference between learning and performance, that is when your students are providing great answers to questions in class they may simply be performing in the moment, later during a test, for example, you may find that they haven’t actually learned anything. This idea is much better articulated in this paper by Soderstrom & Bjork (2015).

So if there is a distinction between performing and learning, how do we know if our students are learning? First we must consider what learning is and there are a number of ideas on this theme.

Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006) suggest that “If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned.” Suggesting that if nothing has been retained in your long term memory then we can’t consider it to be learned.

Now edu-famous is the oft wheeled out quote from Daniel Willingham’s excellent Why Don’t Student Like School?. WIllingham says that “memory is the residue of thought”, meaning that what we think about what we inevitably remember.

On this note David Didau writes the following in this post from his brilliant Learning Spy blog:

“Students often remember the context of a lesson whilst forgetting the content. This can lead to the illusion of learning: we remember the memory of having known a thing.”

To dig a little deeper on this notion we can discuss a relevant example from maths which I have taken from Boys Don’t Try by Matt Pinkett & Matt Roberts.

“I once observed a maths interview lesson where the teacher hooked the pupils in by appealing to their stomach. Pupils had to work out the area of a circle, whether it was more economical to buy one 16″ or two 10″ pizzas. This candidate certainly stimulated the senses, producing an elaborate takeaway menu resource. The boys solved the problems, the bell went and they trooped out for lunch, salivating. I asked them the following morning if they enjoyed the lesson. Absolutely, they told me. Could they explain how to solve the problem? Only one of them could. What they’d remembered were the toppings.”

I reckon that we have all delivered lessons like this and when it came to the crunch, the students could put none of their learning onto the lined paper. So what has this got to do with checking for understanding? A lot I think. Learning is invisible (it really is!) so how do we get to know what pupils have actually learned.

First a consideration of memory and how we remember (more on this next week!) We know from Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve (1885) that our memory quickly diminishes almost a nights sleep after learning something.

So perhaps during that one lesson a student is simply performing as they will have yet to shift the learning to their long term memory. Which makes checking for understanding a vital skill of a great teacher.

What we now know that through repetition of the same topic, we must then repeat the learning, we can improve retention of the learning so that after a few weeks the students are no longer performing they are demonstrating what they have learned. Suggesting that their long term memory has been changed, as suggested by Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006).

So for me checking for understanding becomes not just a tool for checking that a pupil has understood an instruction, asking ‘have you understood?’ or ‘do you have any questions?’ serves no purpose whatsoever, it becomes a key tool in a teachers arsenal. We must check that pupils understand and not simply remember what we teach them, this requires repetition and a demand for excellence (which I wrote about here).

Rosenshine suggests that great teachers ask a lot of questions. Who doesn’t want to be a great teacher. However, what we must take from this is that we ask a lot of the right questions. Questions that dig deeper, probe if you like, and really help us make learning visible and check that students understand what we are teaching.

To build this culture of checking for understanding there are a few strategies that a teacher can employ. Firstly they can Reject Self Report then they can get into deeper strategies such as probing, say it again, say it better and use show me a boards regularly. Show me boards are an excellent way to make learning really visible to us, this forces students to commit to an answer and will allow a skilled practitioner to really dig deep and check for understanding. Let’s take each of them in turn and explore a little more.

1. Reject Self Report

Teachnique #1 in Doug Lemov’s outstanding Teach Like a Champion is where we replace ‘functionally rhetorical questions with more objective forms of impromptu assessment’. This is where we ask ‘Everybody got it?’ type questions and as Lemov writes we are often greeted with silent assent. We must ask more questions that are direct, targetted and chosen to meaningfully demonstrate student understanding. These questions are usually done in a minute or less and can really tell us if a student has understood the material at hand.

2. Probing

probing is a skill of really great teachers and it really helps them go deeper. Tom Sherrington wrote a great blog post on Probing here. Examples of probing questions are when teachers ask ‘thats interesting, what makes you say that?’ or ‘is there a different way to say the same thing?’ or ‘what is the evidence that supports your suggestion?’ or finally ‘can you explain how you worked that out?’. As Tom says ‘to be able hold exchanges like this with individuals or a whole class is a key feature of excellent teaching.’

3. Say it again, say it better

In The Learning Rainforest refers to this technique as a silver arrow or better said a ‘quick win’. This is a startegy that teachers should use relentlessly. If you simply ask a student to repeat what they said but better they are able then to re-form their intital response into well structured and impactful sentences. This period of reconsideration will really help them to build their schema and develop their understanding of the learning.

4. Show me boards/mini whiteboards

Bruce Robertson, author of The Teaching Delusion advocates that show me boards should be as integral to a lesson as the humble jotter. Show me boards are great for a number of reasons, they make every student commit to an answer, they make every students thinking visible and allows the teacher to see clearly and quickly if there are any gaps and misconceptions. Bruce gives a few more important reasons as to why you should start using them in every lesson in this blog post.

Checking for understanding, for me, is one of the most important practices in teaching. Once a clear explanation, modelling and direct-interactive instruction period has taken place and the students are busy practicing it would be remiss of us to not check for understanding and dig deep, in every lesson, to monitor the progress of our students learning. I have, perhaps, ventured into other more nuanced areas of teaching but i place checking for understanding as something we could, well certainly me, be better at so that our students really learn the material and undergo a ‘change in their long term memory’.

If we first consider the notion that there is a distinct difference between learning and performance, that is when your students are providing great answers to questions in class they may simply be performing in the moment, later during a test, for example, you may find that they haven’t actually learned anything. This idea is much better articulated in this paper by Soderstrom & Bjork (2015).

So if there is a distinction between performing and learning, how do we know if our students are learning? First we must consider what learning is and there are a number of ideas on this theme.

Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006) suggest that “If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned.” Suggesting that if nothing has been retained in your long term memory then we can’t consider it to be learned.

Now edu-famous is the oft wheeled out quote from Daniel Willingham’s excellent Why Don’t Student Like School?. WIllingham says that “memory is the residue of thought”, meaning that what we think about what we inevitably remember.

On this note David Didau writes the following in this post from his brilliant Learning Spy blog:

“Students often remember the context of a lesson whilst forgetting the content. This can lead to the illusion of learning: we remember the memory of having known a thing.”

To dig a little deeper on this notion we can discuss a relevant example from maths which I have taken from Boys Don’t Try by Matt Pinkett & Matt Roberts.

“I once observed a maths interview lesson where the teacher hooked the pupils in by appealing to their stomach. Pupils had to work out the area of a circle, whether it was more economical to buy one 16″ or two 10″ pizzas. This candidate certainly stimulated the senses, producing an elaborate takeaway menu resource. The boys solved the problems, the bell went and they trooped out for lunch, salivating. I asked them the following morning if they enjoyed the lesson. Absolutely, they told me. Could they explain how to solve the problem? Only one of them could. What they’d remembered were the toppings.”

I reckon that we have all delivered lessons like this and when it came to the crunch, the students could put none of their learning onto the lined paper. So what has this got to do with checking for understanding? A lot I think. Learning is invisible (it really is!) so how do we get to know what pupils have actually learned.

First a consideration of memory and how we remember (more on this next week!) We know from Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve (1885) that our memory quickly diminishes almost a nights sleep after learning something.

So perhaps during that one lesson a student is simply performing as they will have yet to shift the learning to their long term memory. Which makes checking for understanding a vital skill of a great teacher.

What we now know that through repetition of the same topic, we must then repeat the learning, we can improve retention of the learning so that after a few weeks the students are no longer performing they are demonstrating what they have learned. Suggesting that their long term memory has been changed, as suggested by Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006).

So for me checking for understanding becomes not just a tool for checking that a pupil has understood an instruction, asking ‘have you understood?’ or ‘do you have any questions?’ serves no purpose whatsoever, it becomes a key tool in a teachers arsenal. We must check that pupils understand and not simply remember what we teach them, this requires repetition and a demand for excellence (which I wrote about here).

Rosenshine suggests that great teachers ask a lot of questions. Who doesn’t want to be a great teacher. However, what we must take from this is that we ask a lot of the right questions. Questions that dig deeper, probe if you like, and really help us make learning visible and check that students understand what we are teaching.

To build this culture of checking for understanding there are a few strategies that a teacher can employ. Firstly they can Reject Self Report then they can get into deeper strategies such as probing, say it again, say it better and use show me a boards regularly. Show me boards are an excellent way to make learning really visible to us, this forces students to commit to an answer and will allow a skilled practitioner to really dig deep and check for understanding. Let’s take each of them in turn and explore a little more.

1. Reject Self Report

Teachnique #1 in Doug Lemov’s outstanding Teach Like a Champion is where we replace ‘functionally rhetorical questions with more objective forms of impromptu assessment’. This is where we ask ‘Everybody got it?’ type questions and as Lemov writes we are often greeted with silent assent. We must ask more questions that are direct, targetted and chosen to meaningfully demonstrate student understanding. These questions are usually done in a minute or less and can really tell us if a student has understood the material at hand.

2. Probing

probing is a skill of really great teachers and it really helps them go deeper. Tom Sherrington wrote a great blog post on Probing here. Examples of probing questions are when teachers ask ‘thats interesting, what makes you say that?’ or ‘is there a different way to say the same thing?’ or ‘what is the evidence that supports your suggestion?’ or finally ‘can you explain how you worked that out?’. As Tom says ‘to be able hold exchanges like this with individuals or a whole class is a key feature of excellent teaching.’

3. Say it again, say it better

In The Learning Rainforest refers to this technique as a silver arrow or better said a ‘quick win’. This is a startegy that teachers should use relentlessly. If you simply ask a student to repeat what they said but better they are able then to re-form their intital response into well structured and impactful sentences. This period of reconsideration will really help them to build their schema and develop their understanding of the learning.

4. Show me boards/mini whiteboards

Bruce Robertson, author of The Teaching Delusion advocates that show me boards should be as integral to a lesson as the humble jotter. Show me boards are great for a number of reasons, they make every student commit to an answer, they make every students thinking visible and allows the teacher to see clearly and quickly if there are any gaps and misconceptions. Bruce gives a few more important reasons as to why you should start using them in every lesson in this blog post.

Checking for understanding, for me, is one of the most important practices in teaching. Once a clear explanation, modelling and direct-interactive instruction period has taken place and the students are busy practicing it would be remiss of us to not check for understanding and dig deep, in every lesson, to monitor the progress of our students learning. I have, perhaps, ventured into other more nuanced areas of teaching but i place checking for understanding as something we could, well certainly me, be better at so that our students really learn the material and undergo a ‘change in their long term memory’.

The post What every teacher should do: check for understanding appeared first on Becoming Educated.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how I will continue the use of EdTech when I return to my classroom. Many are advocating for us to completely change the way we think and do our jobs. However, I am not so keen and will want to go back to how I was teaching before this pandemic.

A few years ago in a previous post I advocated the use of online class forums first with Edmodo and latterly with Google Classroom. Since moving school I haven’t used it at all, for no reason whatsoever.If I had to choose I would say that Classroom is by far the superior option. It is slick, easy to use and has everything you need to continue your lesson long after the bell. I will get it set up again as it really is a wonderful tool to complement your classroom teaching.

I had success with Classroom on a number of occasions with a large variety of classes from senior and junior students. The ease of use made it accessible for everyone and for those that were confused it didn’t take long to show them around the desktop and phone app.

I used classroom as my online class forum. I started by making sure everyone was able to access it, i even hosted a lunchtime and after school session for those that couldn’t access it at home. I started by simply posted a youtube video or a short document for pupils to watch or read prior to the next lesson. The engagement here was great with many pupils commenting on the forum, more of that later.

Once everyone was set up I started to post lesson resources that we had used that day. There is a section where you can post resources which you can use as a one stop shop for everything a student needs to know, think knowledge organisers and booklets they are using in class in case they lose theirs.

After our confidence grew I tasked some pupils with responsibility in the forum. I wanted them to lead their own learning and take control. With this in mind i tasked pupils to do a number of things. First I videoed them conducting tests and explaining how their process and thinking. This was uploaded to the forum for everyone to use for their own learning. Secondly, we began to use Classroom for homework and i tasked the pupils with reminding each other on the stream. As I had encouraged the pupils to set up notifications they would be able to see them pop up so that they didn’t forget to complete their homework. The students enjoyed reminding each other, especially the ones who were prone to making excuses.

Finally, we started to share interesting articles and videos we found online which often started some great discussions on why Usain Bolt could run so fast and what factors contributed to his successes, for example. This allowed us to communicate between lessons and continue the learning. Which contributed to the relationships in the class and kept our focus on learning at all times. This had a powerful effect on how we spoke about learning in the classroom. Perhaps I was modelling safe and effective use of social media.

This model of online learning will be one that I intend to return to, made easier by the fact all of our students are now already on Google Classroom.

For me this isn’t a replacement for face to face teaching, it works alongside highly effective teaching. There are a number of benefits for using a class forum like this.

• It allows you to share resources, perhaps saving time in lessons
• It shows the students that learning is something you can do all of the time and it isn’t confined to the 50-60 you spend in the classroom
• By encouraging students to contribute (homework, for example) it helps them take control of their own learning. Some of the articles and videos they shared really made a difference
• It allowed me to share my love for my subject with them even more
• It models appropriate use of social media for learning

You could also use this class forum if you are an advocate of flipped learning. This could certainly buy you time in an often overcrowded curriculum. Students can read things in advance so that as soon as they enter the classroom the next day they can get to work. You could video demonstration in science, explanations of complex problems in maths, how to play a guitar riff in music, how to use 3D modelling in graphics and how to perform a fosbury flop in PE. All of which can be accessed any time by the students making learning a 24/7 event.

Once this notion was embedded with the students there were some remarkable occurrences. During one lunchtime while I was on duty a group of my students approached me displaying their phones, “Were doing the homework sir and was wondering if you could check to see we are on the right lines”. What I loved about this was that the students were discussing learning during their lunchtime and used seeing me as an opportunity to check they had it right, taking our learning outside of our classroom. This may happen a lot in other schools but it was a shift in culture where I was working. On another occasion while a student was injured and couldn’t take part in the physical aspect of the lesson they used their phone to video conversations he was having with his peers, he took it upon himself to question them on their learning and by posting it on our class forum he allowed the others to share in their learning. I was immensely proud as I didn’t task him with this, he led his own learning.

I will work hard to build this upon my return to school and feel this is the best way to incorporate EdTech into my teaching. Teachers will never be replaced by technology but through establishing the right conditions and modelling safe use of the platform we can certainly extend our reach beyond the confines of our classrooms.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how I will continue the use of EdTech when I return to my classroom. Many are advocating for us to completely change the way we think and do our jobs. However, I am not so keen and will want to go back to how I was teaching before this pandemic.

A few years ago in a previous post I advocated the use of online class forums first with Edmodo and latterly with Google Classroom. Since moving school I haven’t used it at all, for no reason whatsoever.If I had to choose I would say that Classroom is by far the superior option. It is slick, easy to use and has everything you need to continue your lesson long after the bell. I will get it set up again as it really is a wonderful tool to complement your classroom teaching.

I had success with Classroom on a number of occasions with a large variety of classes from senior and junior students. The ease of use made it accessible for everyone and for those that were confused it didn’t take long to show them around the desktop and phone app.

I used classroom as my online class forum. I started by making sure everyone was able to access it, i even hosted a lunchtime and after school session for those that couldn’t access it at home. I started by simply posted a youtube video or a short document for pupils to watch or read prior to the next lesson. The engagement here was great with many pupils commenting on the forum, more of that later.

Once everyone was set up I started to post lesson resources that we had used that day. There is a section where you can post resources which you can use as a one stop shop for everything a student needs to know, think knowledge organisers and booklets they are using in class in case they lose theirs.

After our confidence grew I tasked some pupils with responsibility in the forum. I wanted them to lead their own learning and take control. With this in mind i tasked pupils to do a number of things. First I videoed them conducting tests and explaining how their process and thinking. This was uploaded to the forum for everyone to use for their own learning. Secondly, we began to use Classroom for homework and i tasked the pupils with reminding each other on the stream. As I had encouraged the pupils to set up notifications they would be able to see them pop up so that they didn’t forget to complete their homework. The students enjoyed reminding each other, especially the ones who were prone to making excuses.

Finally, we started to share interesting articles and videos we found online which often started some great discussions on why Usain Bolt could run so fast and what factors contributed to his successes, for example. This allowed us to communicate between lessons and continue the learning. Which contributed to the relationships in the class and kept our focus on learning at all times. This had a powerful effect on how we spoke about learning in the classroom. Perhaps I was modelling safe and effective use of social media.

This model of online learning will be one that I intend to return to, made easier by the fact all of our students are now already on Google Classroom.

For me this isn’t a replacement for face to face teaching, it works alongside highly effective teaching. There are a number of benefits for using a class forum like this.

• It allows you to share resources, perhaps saving time in lessons
• It shows the students that learning is something you can do all of the time and it isn’t confined to the 50-60 you spend in the classroom
• By encouraging students to contribute (homework, for example) it helps them take control of their own learning. Some of the articles and videos they shared really made a difference
• It allowed me to share my love for my subject with them even more
• It models appropriate use of social media for learning

You could also use this class forum if you are an advocate of flipped learning. This could certainly buy you time in an often overcrowded curriculum. Students can read things in advance so that as soon as they enter the classroom the next day they can get to work. You could video demonstration in science, explanations of complex problems in maths, how to play a guitar riff in music, how to use 3D modelling in graphics and how to perform a fosbury flop in PE. All of which can be accessed any time by the students making learning a 24/7 event.

Once this notion was embedded with the students there were some remarkable occurrences. During one lunchtime while I was on duty a group of my students approached me displaying their phones, “Were doing the homework sir and was wondering if you could check to see we are on the right lines”. What I loved about this was that the students were discussing learning during their lunchtime and used seeing me as an opportunity to check they had it right, taking our learning outside of our classroom. This may happen a lot in other schools but it was a shift in culture where I was working. On another occasion while a student was injured and couldn’t take part in the physical aspect of the lesson they used their phone to video conversations he was having with his peers, he took it upon himself to question them on their learning and by posting it on our class forum he allowed the others to share in their learning. I was immensely proud as I didn’t task him with this, he led his own learning.

I will work hard to build this upon my return to school and feel this is the best way to incorporate EdTech into my teaching. Teachers will never be replaced by technology but through establishing the right conditions and modelling safe use of the platform we can certainly extend our reach beyond the confines of our classrooms.

The post The Resurgence of Class Forums appeared first on Becoming Educated.

Whatever side of the education debate you land on its important for us to find our common ground, because after all aren’t we after the very same things?

I’ve been full of joy and wonder since listening to Emma Turner and Tom Sherrington on todays #BrewEdIsolation. They spoke about their upcoming show ‘Mind the Gap’ and i just can’t wait. What a double act. Both have become #edulegends for me in recent weeks and months.

In their talk Emma used the analogy of us all being on a side of a river. We first, must take into account that no one ever wants the river to flow backwards. We all want the river to flow downstream. Ive never experienced any teacher outline their desire for children to fail or to not succeed. The exact opposite is the only discourse that prevails.

What Tom summed up was that they both come from completely opposite backgrounds. Tom spent his career as a classroom physics teacher and formerly a high school headteacher. Emma on the other hand spent her career in primary going on to form one of the UK’s first ever co-headships. Now aren’t they a wealth of completely different experience.

What makes me completely excited is their promise to provide debate and insights from each bank of the river without the often polarising nature of twitter debates. Regardless of which riverbank you place you flag, I believe that we can find middle ground.

Whether you advocate for a progressive education or a more traditional education it is important to note that there are common grounds and for me, you can’t teach using solely one. You need to board a boat or build a bridge between them. Tom Sherrington uses the terms Mode A and Mode B. With Mode A being more of your traditional teacher centred approaches and Mode B incorporating more of the progressive student-centred approaches.

If you’re new to this debate (like I was only a few months ago) they can be summarised as follows:

Progressive: Student Centred: experiential learning, group work, the guide on the side, discovery/enquiry, 21st-Century skills.

Traditional: Teacher-Centred: expert knowledge delivered by the teacher, direct instruction, the sage on the stage, rigour and challenge, probing questions.

In The Teaching Delusion Bruce Robertson advocates for an 80/20 split for Mode A/Mode B teaching. Agreeing with what Tom Sherrington outlines in The Learning Rainforest. Both of these books should go straight to the top of your wish list. Given this, I would agree with the split and feel that the more we know about cognitive science and how the brain works the more a traditional approach comes to the fore.

A good education, however, must include Mode B pedagogy. This is where i build my bridges and hop on my boat. I often employ flipped learning strategies, encourage debate and I am (far too) often found to be going off piste with the enacted curriculum.

The progressive-traditional debate is just one area of the minefield that is education. The curriculum is a debate that could rage for hours but with everything it is important that we give an appreciative nod to those on the opposite side of the river and built our bridges and boats to get downstream ever quicker to the hinterland of a truly word class education system. We can get there.

Whatever side of the education debate you land on its important for us to find our common ground, because after all aren’t we after the very same things?

I’ve been full of joy and wonder since listening to Emma Turner and Tom Sherrington on todays #BrewEdIsolation. They spoke about their upcoming show ‘Mind the Gap’ and i just can’t wait. What a double act. Both have become #edulegends for me in recent weeks and months.

In their talk Emma used the analogy of us all being on a side of a river. We first, must take into account that no one ever wants the river to flow backwards. We all want the river to flow downstream. Ive never experienced any teacher outline their desire for children to fail or to not succeed. The exact opposite is the only discourse that prevails.

What Tom summed up was that they both come from completely opposite backgrounds. Tom spent his career as a classroom physics teacher and formerly a high school headteacher. Emma on the other hand spent her career in primary going on to form one of the UK’s first ever co-headships. Now aren’t they a wealth of completely different experience.

What makes me completely excited is their promise to provide debate and insights from each bank of the river without the often polarising nature of twitter debates. Regardless of which riverbank you place you flag, I believe that we can find middle ground.

Whether you advocate for a progressive education or a more traditional education it is important to note that there are common grounds and for me, you can’t teach using solely one. You need to board a boat or build a bridge between them. Tom Sherrington uses the terms Mode A and Mode B. With Mode A being more of your traditional teacher centred approaches and Mode B incorporating more of the progressive student-centred approaches.

If you’re new to this debate (like I was only a few months ago) they can be summarised as follows:

Progressive: Student Centred: experiential learning, group work, the guide on the side, discovery/enquiry, 21st-Century skills.

Traditional: Teacher-Centred: expert knowledge delivered by the teacher, direct instruction, the sage on the stage, rigour and challenge, probing questions.

In The Teaching Delusion Bruce Robertson advocates for an 80/20 split for Mode A/Mode B teaching. Agreeing with what Tom Sherrington outlines in The Learning Rainforest. Both of these books should go straight to the top of your wish list. Given this, I would agree with the split and feel that the more we know about cognitive science and how the brain works the more a traditional approach comes to the fore.

A good education, however, must include Mode B pedagogy. This is where i build my bridges and hop on my boat. I often employ flipped learning strategies, encourage debate and I am (far too) often found to be going off piste with the enacted curriculum.

The progressive-traditional debate is just one area of the minefield that is education. The curriculum is a debate that could rage for hours but with everything it is important that we give an appreciative nod to those on the opposite side of the river and build our bridges and boats to get downstream ever quicker to the hinterland of a truly word class education system. We can get there.

The post Build the bridges and the ships appeared first on Becoming Educated.

I’m beginning to be heavily influenced by the writings of both Ron Berger and more prominently Tom Sherrington. To say i’ve spent a few hours trawling through Toms blog is a bit of an understatement. After reading The Learning Rainforest I have immersed myself in blogs, books and articles to help me better understand great teaching, curriculum and assessment. I want to be an expert teacher with a thorough knowledge of education and I believe all teachers should be chasing this idea of excellence. As Dylan Wiliam says:

“Every teacher needs to improve not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better”

However, this shouldn’t only apply for the teachers. Teachers should be demanding excellence for all of the young people in their care. This shouldn’t be something some teachers do, all children are entitled to the very best education and as Mark McCourt says in his talks which I also believe is that “all children can learn well”.

So what makes the difference and really moves the needle for young people. For this I have discovered Ron Berger, through my trawling of teacherhead.com I came across a wonderful post about a video where Ron Berger is speaking with fourth graders and kindergarteners about one of his first grade pupils, Austin. Austin wanted to draw a butterfly. His initial butterfly represented clearly a butterfly but it was not great and far from excellent. Most of us would be happy with this because he is only in first grade. However, Ron Berger demanded excellence. Through careful critique and the mantra of ‘think like a scientist’, Austin went off again to redraft his butterfly with a more scientific approach to drawing a butterfly. Then again after more critique and feedback Austin would go back and redraft a further 4 times until he arrived at his final excellent interpretation of a Tiger Swallow Tail Butterfly (Austin would only be 6 or 7). It’s worth watching the video to get a flavour of the kind and specific critique being aimed at younger learners.

To me this is a wonderful example of peer critique and verbal feedback. It also shows exactly what young people are capable of if given the right conditions to excel in.

For me as a physical education teacher I rely heavily on what we call model performers. In sport it is often easy to simply watch a golf swing and then go and replicate it, but what makes it a true learning process is the feedback that we get from ourselves but more importantly from a parent, teacher, coach or peer. This is prominent in a PE department as teachers are skilled at knowing what a model performance looks like, sharing this verbally and physically and then critiquing young people attempts at the selected skill. The beauty of this is that it is a never ending process, for example you can always learn something new and there is often mantra’s ‘basketball never stops’.

In the classroom however we are often guilty of accepting substandard work. We present a task, offer up some success criteria and then mark the work produced by the students. Some would say that the first attempt at a task is what they can already do, what they can do after feedback is them improving on what they can do. Consider these questions. How often do you accept the work, offer up verbal feedback and then send them off to redraft? How often do you continue this process until the student has produced a third or fourth draft that is much much better than their initial effort? I bet you might think that there is no time available in an overcrowded curriculum and on a busy 5 period day to focus this much on an individual students work. We should be providing this level of focus and demanding this level of excellence though.

Ron Berger believes that every child should experience excellence in their schooling:

“After students have had a taste of excellence, they’re never quite satisfied with less; they’re always hungry”

I wonder what happened to Austin’s experience of school if this was his experience of learning in the first grade! Did he continue to be held to such high expectations, did he continue to be critiqued so well and did his teachers in high school afford him so much time to improve his work through several drafts. It is our job to challenge and extend the most able and in Austin’s case to not accept what they can already do.

What I would like to explore is that instead of highlighting the success criteria of what a successful piece of work should entail it may be better if I outline exactly what excellence looks like. Tom Sherrington in The Learning Rainforest articulates this idea beautifully:

“For any piece of work we should be setting out the most challenging success criteria we can conceive of for the task by referencing specific examples: in Year 8, an exceptional student should be able to produce work like THIS: (produce an actual example). It has the following features: (define the features).”

By composing our expectations like this it spells out to the students and exemplifies what we expect of them. By showing them excellence and outlining the key features of it they then have a reference point for their work and you as the teacher have a roadmap for clear, coherent feedback which will move the learning forward.

To help you identify what excellence looks like in your subject you only need to look at the work produced by previous students. As i mentioned in a previous post you should become a ‘historian of excellence’. By keeping the best work from past students you can inform future students. It should be a key component of departmental and inter-classroom discussions on what excellence looks like so that all teacher are clear on the depth and rigour expected in the written answers of students. It should also be common practice to highlight best practice, the ‘bright spots’ so that there is clarity of the standards expected.

We should be demanding excellence from our young people in every lesson. If Austin, in first grade, can be encouraged, through careful critique and verbal feedback, to produce work that may be considered beyond his capability. The so can each of the students you currently teach. As Tom Sherrington writes:

“Its should be a matter of basic credibility for any teacher that they stretch the most able in their lessons – there is no excuse not to”

I’m beginning to be heavily influenced by the writings of both Ron Berger and more prominently Tom Sherrington. To say i’ve spent a few hours trawling through Toms blog is a bit of an understatement. After reading The Learning Rainforest I have immersed myself in blogs, books and articles to help me better understand great teaching, curriculum and assessment. I want to be an expert teacher with a thorough knowledge of education and I believe all teachers should be chasing this idea of excellence. As Dylan Wiliam says:

“Every teacher needs to improve not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better”

However, this shouldn’t only apply for the teachers. Teachers should be demanding excellence for all of the young people in their care. This shouldn’t be something some teachers do, all children are entitled to the very best education and as Mark McCourt says in his talks which I also believe is that “all children can learn well”.

So what makes the difference and really moves the needle for young people. For this I have discovered Ron Berger, through my trawling of teacherhead.com I came across a wonderful post about a video where Ron Berger is speaking with fourth graders and kindergarteners about one of his first grade pupils, Austin. Austin wanted to draw a butterfly. His initial butterfly represented clearly a butterfly but it was not great and far from excellent. Most of us would be happy with this because he is only in first grade. However, Ron Berger demanded excellence. Through careful critique and the mantra of ‘think like a scientist’, Austin went off again to redraft his butterfly with a more scientific approach to drawing a butterfly. Then again after more critique and feedback Austin would go back and redraft a further 4 times until he arrived at his final excellent interpretation of a Tiger Swallow Tail Butterfly (Austin would only be 6 or 7). It’s worth watching the video to get a flavour of the kind and specific critique being aimed at younger learners.

To me this is a wonderful example of peer critique and verbal feedback. It also shows exactly what young people are capable of if given the right conditions to excel in.

For me as a physical education teacher I rely heavily on what we call model performers. In sport it is often easy to simply watch a golf swing and then go and replicate it, but what makes it a true learning process is the feedback that we get from ourselves but more importantly from a parent, teacher, coach or peer. This is prominent in a PE department as teachers are skilled at knowing what a model performance looks like, sharing this verbally and physically and then critiquing young people attempts at the selected skill. The beauty of this is that it is a never ending process, for example you can always learn something new and there is often mantra’s ‘basketball never stops’.

In the classroom however we are often guilty of accepting substandard work. We present a task, offer up some success criteria and then mark the work produced by the students. Some would say that the first attempt at a task is what they can already do, what they can do after feedback is them improving on what they can do. Consider these questions. How often do you accept the work, offer up verbal feedback and then send them off to redraft? How often do you continue this process until the student has produced a third or fourth draft that is much much better than their initial effort? I bet you might think that there is no time available in an overcrowded curriculum and on a busy 5 period day to focus this much on an individual students work. We should be providing this level of focus and demanding this level of excellence though.

Ron Berger believes that every child should experience excellence in their schooling:

“After students have had a taste of excellence, they’re never quite satisfied with less; they’re always hungry”

I wonder what happened to Austin’s experience of school if this was his experience of learning in the first grade! Did he continue to be held to such high expectations, did he continue to be critiqued so well and did his teachers in high school afford him so much time to improve his work through several drafts. It is our job to challenge and extend the most able and in Austin’s case to not accept what they can already do.

What I would like to explore is that instead of highlighting the success criteria of what a successful piece of work should entail it may be better if I outline exactly what excellence looks like. Tom Sherrington in The Learning Rainforest articulates this idea beautifully:

“For any piece of work we should be setting out the most challenging success criteria we can conceive of for the task by referencing specific examples: in Year 8, an exceptional student should be able to produce work like THIS: (produce an actual example). It has the following features: (define the features).”

By composing our expectations like this it spells out to the students and exemplifies what we expect of them. By showing them excellence and outlining the key features of it they then have a reference point for their work and you as the teacher have a roadmap for clear, coherent feedback which will move the learning forward.

To help you identify what excellence looks like in your subject you only need to look at the work produced by previous students. As i mentioned in a previous post you should become a ‘historian of excellence’. By keeping the best work from past students you can inform future students. It should be a key component of departmental and inter-classroom discussions on what excellence looks like so that all teacher are clear on the depth and rigour expected in the written answers of students. It should also be common practice to highlight best practice, the ‘bright spots’ so that there is clarity of the standards expected.

We should be demanding excellence from our young people in every lesson. If Austin, in first grade, can be encouraged, through careful critique and verbal feedback, to produce work that may be considered beyond his capability. The so can each of the students you currently teach. As Tom Sherrington writes:

“Its should be a matter of basic credibility for any teacher that they stretch the most able in their lessons – there is no excuse not to”

The post Why demanding excellence is the change we need in our lessons appeared first on Becoming Educated.

Ive been thinking a lot recently about the characteristics of great teachers. Although it is something that may come naturally to some teachers, who don’t even realise that they are doing a great job as it has become the norm. For many others they need to really consider how to become great and it is why so many people have tried to unpick what makes the great ones great. For me I think that the first thing that we can learn from great teachers are the conditions that they set in their classrooms. Many of the conditions are set over time and results in observers seeing an orderly classroom with pupils struggling in the ‘learning pit’ and engaging calmly and politely during ‘direct-interactive instruction’. I believe that when we see this it is doing to clear classroom routines that are taught and retaught time and time again. If we consider behaviour to be part of our taught curriculum then this extends to how children enter and leave your classroom and everything in between.

If you think back to the last lesson you observed, or taught, that was up there with the best, firstly consider how privileged you were to see it and be a part of it and secondly, consider the routines that were in place. Im willing to bet that if you think hard enough you will be able to identify multiple occasions where the teachers skill afforded the pupils a calm, focussed and enjoyable learning experience. I believe all teachers can achieve this but the hard work is in establishing your expectations at the beginning, rehearsing your expectations and repeating your expectations until you make routines routine. As Tom Sherrington and Oliver Caviglioli write in Teaching Walkthrus (2020):

“Routines are the bedrock of a positive behaviour management system. If everyone knows what to do, where to go, what to bring, how to respond and what happens in various situations, then it allows the focus to be on learning because the rest happens more or less automatically, with minimum fuss”

If you again think back to that lesson you observed. If i get my wallet out again I bet that the focus was on learning because everything you saw, although it looked calm, orderly and productive, was the result of a lot of hard work on both the teachers and the students part. Routines would have been explained, demonstrated and rehearsed. Praise would have been given to those that follow the routine and corrections would have been made to help those that forgot the routines.

In your classroom it is your domain and with this in mind, you set the conditions of that room. I’m yet to meet a teacher who wants a chaotic disorderly room with children jumping on tables and swinging from the lights. With classroom routines I like to start from before the children enter the room or department. As a teacher of physical education our routines start by greeting children into the department, supervising changing rooms, providing a task or an instruction for those changed early, register during this time to not waste activity time and then teach the class. In the classroom it would look a lot different and would mirror what the great teachers are doing in my school and throughout the country.

So what are clear starting routines? I like referring to the work of Doug Lemov (2015) when considering the start of lesson. This is where you can really take control of behaviour and set the focus for your class. Lemov (2015) suggests that you start every lesson with a Do Now activity. This can be a worksheet, reading or displayed on the projector or visualiser. Rosenshine (2010) suggests that great teachers review prior learning in ever lesson, wouldn’t your Do Now be a great time to do this. To make clear a positive start to a lesson i like what Jonny Uttley offered in Putting Staff First (2020):

• Have your Do Now ready before opening the classroom door (I like it when teachers are at the door to meet pupils)
• Greet each student with a smile and a hello as they come in, using their name!
• Stand at the front , centre of the room, and explain what is expected in the Do Now activity and that you will be taking the register during this time
• Take the register promptly, whilst scanning the room and intervening if anyone is off task
• Walk around the room and check that everyone is ready for learning and has complete the Do Now task
• Move to the back of the room to debrief on the Do Now
• Move to the front of the room and introduce the new learning for that day

Now i recognise that this is a very prescriptive checklist for the beginning of lessons but how many of these do you do instinctively? How many of these have you seen great teachers do in those lessons you have been so privileged to see? Finally, what do you think would happen to the start of lessons in your school if every teacher in your school did exactly this, learned it, taught it, rehearsed it and demanded it from themselves and pupils?

Beyond the start of a lesson routines can be taught, rehearsed and embedded for a number of scenarios. For example, how do children hand out text books and work, is there a certain way you like them to do it? How do children engage in debate and direct-interactive instruction? Doug Lemov (2015) Teach Like a Champion is a wonderful resource and offer accompanying videos that show teachers in real classrooms who have embedded the techniques that he names throughout the book. His book, blog and associated videos are really wonderful and he believes that if it is done, it can be given a name and shared with everyone and he does this beautifully. What about the end of a lesson? Do you pause for a plenary, do you use exit tickets? In a recent interview I had with Jo Facer, who wrote the wonderful Simplicity Rules (2019), she spoke about plenary being an awful made up term and a pointless exercise. She argues in her book that we should just simply pack up. She writes:

“We simply packed up. That was the only expectation. Half way through the reading? No problem. Halfway through a discussion? Still no worries. The kids are writing silently? Still not a problem. Take a quick glance of the clock, realise there are 2 minutes left, call the class together, and announce the lesson has ended. I’d normally say, ‘that’s all for today, we’ll pick up again tomorrow’.”

She does note however, that from some classes you need more time to pack up and for early career teachers or NQTs I would encourage them to give a bit more time for packing up until they feel they have a bearing on how long the class take. Some great teachers however, like to finish with some from of recap or review of the days learning, some like to use exit tickets or mini whiteboards to elicit evidence of learning from the lesson. One thing I would note here is that learning isn’t split into 1 hour lessons, some learning takes 5 minutes while other learning takes 5 hours.

If i double back to the start of this post I really do believe that the very best teachers have embedded explicitly and clearly classroom routines that leave no stone unturned. They also, through this rigour, allow for children to flourish and experience learning safe, fun and informative conditions. Relationships can grow to be really strong under conditions like this and we could consider classroom routines to be sowing the seeds to grow beautiful, wonderful and colourful ‘philosopher kids’.