Evidence-informed and provocative, two of my favourite ingredients for a blog. Sam asks us to think hard about our use of internal data and the assessment that precedes it.
This blog aims to outline how we as teachers can ensure all pupils participate actively in all aspects of our lessons. It suggests ways that can be used to ensure pupils are aware of how we want them to participate in our lessons, thus ensuring lessons are not something to get through but something for our pupils to be a part of. The vignette below highlights the importance of this in the wider context of a classroom.
This History teacher had spent time carefully planning the questions they would ask to check understanding. They wanted to ensure high participation and thinking ratio so planned to set the pupils up into talk pairs, however this plan quickly went awry as many of the pupils sat silently waiting for their partner to say something or knowing that once they came back as a class one of their peers would shout out an answer anyway.
What does means of participation actually mean?
This is where the teacher communicates clearly and unambiguously to pupils how they expect the pupils to participate/contribute during a particular phase of a lesson.
How might this look in the classroom?
Teachers should plan their instructions; this includes breaking the procedural instructions into manageable chunks – if more than 4 steps in the task complete it into different steps.
Teachers should be very specific about the action(s) pupils should undertake – for example “start by doing….” Or “in silence….”
Reaffirm verbal instruction with simple written prompts on the board that pupils can refer to once they begin working on their own.
Teachers should insist on attention before giving instructions, these should be delivered from the front of the room.
Ensure there is clarity on the role pupils will take and the time scale they will have to complete the task – for example in a “Turn and Talk” activity clearly state that “the window partner will speak first for 2 minutes, during this time the door partner should write down 3 key points….”
Be clear on the actions and outcomes of the activity – for example “you now have 1 minute to think in silence, and then you will have 30 seconds to write your answer on your MWB. Nobody should write anything until I tell them.”
Check understanding of instructions before starting – “What is the first step…. Freddie?”
Give a clear signal to start – i.e. “ready to start in 3,2,1…”
Why is this such an important topic to think about?
Provides pupils with explicit instructions on how they are expected to contribute to lessons.
Clarity and predictability around means of participation will result in more efficient use of lesson time.
Means of participation allows teachers to establish an environment in which all pupils are challenged and have to think hard.
What are the high frequency errors that teachers make regarding means of participation?
Attention is not gained prior to giving pupils instructions.
Giving out instructions while doing other tasks (i.e. handing out worksheets)
Instructions are unclear – pupils are unaware if silence is expected etc
Teachers assume pupils have understood instructions without checking.
Some great exemplification from Phil about how Greenshaw have codified a set of SEMH principles to develop a caring and supportive culture and reduce pupil absence.
Brad Busch has this on effective professional development – Maximising CPD INSET days: daffodils, quick wins, and big wins.
Durrington Professional Development Twilights 2023 – 24
This year we are offering twilight training programmes on the following areas of evidence-informed practice. They will take the format of three 90 minute online sessions spread over 6 – 8 weeks. You can book via this form.
Durrington Professional Development Twilights 2023 – 24
This year we are offering twilight training programmes on the following areas of evidence-informed practice. They will take the format of three 90 minute online sessions spread over 6 – 8 weeks. You can book via this form.
Lots of Pete’s blog are primarily focused on early career teachers, but are useful for all. This is one of those, on the master craft of teaching – explanation.
Durrington Professional Development Twilights 2023 – 24
This year we are offering twilight training programmes on the following areas of evidence-informed practice. They will take the format of three 90 minute online sessions spread over 6 – 8 weeks. You can book via this form.
Attention seems to be in the pedagogical spotlight recently. Of course, since teachers have taught getting students to concentrate on what they want them to concentrate on has been something they’ve yearned for. Rightly so – students can only learn what they pay attention to.
Tom Sherrington in discussing attention draws on the now famous Oliver Caviglioli infographic and explains that attention is the first step on the journey of thinking, remembering, retrieving and using information.
Peps McCrea says “attention is the gatekeeper of learning” and is “essential for information to be used, remembered, retrieved, applied and retained”.
Unless students are giving teachers their full attention at all points of the lesson, all our time spent planning and honing our high-quality explanations and devising our well-thought-out tasks will be wasted.
Attention can seem an intangible concept. How can we really be sure that students are giving us their full attention? It is useful to have a whole school strategy for what attention looks like, some schools have adopted strategies such as SLANT. Where this is not in place, or along side it, teachers can set their own routines, underpinned with a no opt out culture. I have focused this blog on two key points in a lesson to help build routines around attention.
Start of an explanation
Whether you are just finishing the do now task and are about to go through the answers, or are about to give an explanation in art of how to use a scalpel, or in PE before you teach a new skill, having a routine for gaining silence is key. Having a count-down script that you use each time as a prompt for silence can help with habit forming. The count-down can vary depending on exactly what you want pupils to do and the subject you are teaching them. An example of a count-down is shown below.
Stop your conversations
Pens down
Looking at me
Everyone listening
Other teachers prefer to count from 1 to 3 reducing their volume with each number and then give a clear explanation of their expectations. Both are practices I see lots of teachers using regularly in our lessons. However, a common pitfall of both that is often overlooked is that not all students follow the instructions. Some are whispering, often students are still twiddling their pens and the teacher starts their explanation anyway. The more frequently the teacher ignores this non-compliance the more this behaviour is unconsciously embedded.
Teachers often believe it would take too long to ensure that all students follow their instructions. Whilst this can be true initially the more students practice the routine with no opt out the more embedded the routine becomes for all and the faster the process becomes reinforced. It is important to make sure pupils ‘practice perfect.’
To help with the routine for attention teachers can:
Use the same prompt each time.
I find it really useful to stand it the same position in my room at the start of my explanation as a prompt to students.
Make a really exaggerated point of checking that all students are complying before you start talking. One (I think Lemovian) way to do this is to pretend you are looking around a pillar in your exaggerated checking, so that students ‘see you looking.’
Using non-invasive strategies where students have not followed your instructions and praising those that have.
Waiting until you have 100% compliance.
Keeping attention during explanations
In an ideal world once we start talking our subject would be so interesting and our explanations so captivating that we would have all of our students hanging on our every word. Unfortunately, this is not always the experience of most teachers. To help maintain attention it can be useful to again build routines in these parts of your lessons:
Restate your expectation that students need to be giving you their full attention and explain what this will look like.
Looking for compliance
Looking at your class throughout your explanation and using your least invasive strategies to correct any students that lose their focus.
Checking are students still following your instructions for example are hands still empty are students still looking at you?
Expect silence, students will struggle to pay attention if there is background noise, even if they are whispering about the work.
When you become really tuned into attention you will be able to ‘read your class,’ reading their subtle signs and signals if they have lost attention even when they are still looking at you, enabling you to notice a glazed or far-away look. Just saying their name when you are giving your explanation soon brings them out of their day dream and lets them know you are watching them.
Questioning
Make it explicit at the start of your explanation that you will be checking understanding throughout. This can be with quick questions on a mini white board or using cold calling to ask at least 3 students the same question. These questions do not have to be complex, it is more about checking for listening than deeper understanding at this point and keeping students on their toes knowing they could be questioned at any point.
These questions should be short so that the pace is not too slow and you risk losing students attention
Giving useful feedback to subject teams is a tricky part of whole-school secondary leadership. Here is an explanation of one way we try to get that right at Durrington.
Durrington Professional Development Twilights 2023 – 24
This year we are offering twilight training programmes on the following areas of evidence-informed practice. They will take the format of three 90 minute online sessions spread over 6 – 8 weeks. You can book via this form.
This blog is going to be printed, distributed and referenced an awful lot in the coming months and years. A great reference point for how we respond to the needs of pupils who need us most.
Giving useful feedback to subject teams is a tricky part of whole-school secondary leadership. Here is an explanation of one way we try to get that right at Durrington.
Durrington Professional Development Twilights 2023 – 24
This year we are offering twilight training programmes on the following areas of evidence-informed practice. They will take the format of three 90 minute online sessions spread over 6 – 8 weeks. You can book via this form.
Leading teaching and learning in a large secondary school is a great job. One of its many complexities, however, is that subject pedagogy is not universal, in fact, it is extremely different. That means the people you are leading, in the shape of subject leaders (or curriculum leaders as we call them), have greater expertise in their subject’s pedagogy than you do.
Why have someone like me leading teaching and learning then? Why not just allow curriculum leaders full autonomy and leave them to it? Well, that’s certainly an option, and not to do myself and my team out of a job, but in part I could see the attraction.
(Its also worth saying that the “me” in this blog is very much a royal “me” in that I have a small team that supports me in leading T&L here. That is one of the many benefits of being a research school.)
But, as I said, it is a great job and in my opinion does have value. If I’m doing it well, my role should be useful to curriculum leaders (and teachers) in a number of ways. Some (not exhaustive) would be:
Support in interpreting evidence-informed approaches to teaching and learning in a subject specific way.
Creating and maintaining a “tight but loose” framework for effective teaching that is meaningful for all and creates a common language across the school to talk about teaching.
Creating and sustaining structures for effective subject specific professional development.
Supporting the embedding of student routines that allow subject pedagogy to flourish.
A macro example of this would be designing a professional development structure that is consistent over a number a years that allows subject leaders to lead activity that helps their teams get better at specific teaching practices in their subjects. The micro would be helping a curriculum leader interpret metacognition in a way that supports the teaching of a specific chunk of their year 9 curriculum.
One aspect I’ve been really working at over the past couple of years is how I can give our curriculum leaders, and by proxy their teams, useful, meaningful and crucially formative feedback on the priorities they are working on.
There is more than one way to do that, and rather than document all of those I use, I just want to focus on one, what we call our T&L reviews. If I started again, I’d probably change the name as I don’t think it really describes what they are. However, I’m kind of stuck with them for at least this year because of all the laminated versions of the structure below up on office walls.
Essentially, T&L reviews are an opportunity for subject teams to get some feedback on where they are with their current priorities. As you can see, everything in our structure stems from the DIPs (department improvement plans). These are very pared down from the huge documents they used to be and are concise articulations of what teams are working on that term in four key areas: curriculum, teaching, assessment and routines & relationships. Our curriculum leaders together with their line managers write brilliant DIPs. I’m really proud of them. I say it all the time but at the start of each term when I read them all I’m blown away by the expertise they contain and how skillfully our curriculum leaders contextualise evidence-informed practice into something so subject specific, relevant and actionable. For example here is the “teaching” section of the current English DIP:
As you can see, they are not long. We aim for just a few bullet points per section. They are also a movable feast. The third bullet point is clearly a work-in-progress. In fact, in this case I know that these strategies have now been identified and are being worked on. The point is, the DIP is not for show, it is a genuine articulation of what leaders want to work on with their teams.
Therefore, the basic premise of the T&L reviews is that they provide useful feedback tied very closely to the DIP. They are not me and my team coming into the department and then deciding what their priorities are for them. This would completely undermine the DIP. They are also not about judging teacher effectiveness or department effectiveness, no summative judgement of any sort is made.
What they are designed to give is formative feedback against DIP priorities. Basically: “You want to develop in this area. We saw these aspects of that going really well (here are some examples), we think that you might have further still to go in these areas (here are some examples).“
We spend time before hand talking to the team and the leaders about the DIP and how aspects are going. We then spend lots of time in lessons having jointly decided on the best day to visit (we stress the importance of business as usual and given how many lessons I’m in across our school I can say we get it). We talk to the children, we look in books and we provide written feedback connected to each of the DIP’s bullet points. We then have a feedback meeting to discuss it all. If any teachers want more detailed individual feedback on lessons then we do that too. This is a collaborative process from start to finish and is about something that is a joint effort rather than something that is being “done to” the department.
So far, the feedback on them from curriculum leaders has been very good. Of course, the ideal would be to solely have specialists doing this for each subject. That’s not possible so we have to accept there is a limit to the feedback we can give. However, all curriculum leaders have said they have been able to use the feedback to help shape the professional development that has followed.
What’s been particularly heartening for me is to see how the reviews have influenced the DIPs that have followed and the teaching practice that I see in classrooms.
I’m not suggesting T&L reviews are the panacea for feedback at a department level, and try as I might I have been unable to completely remove the anxiety they create for staff being observed. However, I do think they have been valuable in reinforcing the importance of the DIP and as such supporting on-going subject specific professional development for Durrington teachers.
Class Teaching 