Tips for Teachers by Craig Barton

Tips for Teachers

Welcome to Tips for Teachers – the site that helps you supercharge your teaching one idea at a time.

There are over 100 tips below, each available in audio and video.

But the fun does not stop there. You can also:

  1. Order my Tips for Teachers book
  2. Access on-demand or face-to-face Tips for Teachers CPD
  3. Sign up for the free Tips for Teachers newsletter
  4. Become a Patreon to get lots of lovely goodies

I really hope you find this site useful

Tips for Teachers – Top 5s

These collections of tips are all taken from my Tips for Teachers book

  1. Paired discussions
  2. Mini-whiteboards
  3. Checking for understanding
  4. Silent Teacher
  5. The Do Now

Habits and routines

  1. Build habits, not one-off things – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
  2. Willpower is overrated – Peps McCrea – video
  3. Consistency before challenge – Peps McCrea – video
  4. Be aware of the Valley of Latent Potential – Craig Barton – video
  5. Don’t just describe a routine, justify it – Craig Barton – video
  6. Don’t just introduce a routine, retrieve it – Craig Barton – video
  7. Teach students what to do when they are stuck – Tom Bennett – audio – video
  8. Beware the distraction addiction – Jamie Thom – audio – video
  9. Interruptions leave a wake – Peps McCrea – video

Behaviour and relationships

  1. Validate introverts – Jamie Thom – audio – video
  2. Three reflections on behaviour in schools – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  3. Teach behaviour lesson one – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
  4. Use the school behaviour policy – Tom Bennett – audio – video
  5. Use non-verbal gestures for better behaviour management – Mark Roberts – audio – video
  6. Students need to know you are in charge of the classroom – Tom Bennett – audio – video
  7. Be clear and follow through – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
  8. Think creatively when attempting to improve engagement/performance of boys – Jon Mumford – audio – video
  9. Enjoy the kids’ company – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
  10. To develop resilience you need both high challenge and high support – Bradley Busch – audio – video
  11. Teach students how to behave in a supply or cover lesson – Tom Bennett – audio – video
  12. Teach students how to have the right equipment – Tom Bennett – audio – video
  13. Make detention work fit the crime – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
  14. Ban mobile phones – Bradley Busch – audio – video
  15. Some behaviours are more important than others – Kieran Mackle – audio – video

The means of participation

  1. Find a tool that tells you what’s really happening – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
  2. To reduce “choppy time” in lessons, use a Front Loaded Means of Participation and wait for Golden Silence – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  3. Ask the whole class questions – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
  4. To make sure your students are ready to practise, use mini-whiteboards – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  5. Mini-whiteboards: go deep on the routine – Craig Barton – video
  6. Mini-whiteboards: start from the back – Craig Barton – video
  7. Keep spare mini-whiteboard pen lids – Emma Turner – audio – video
  8. Use partner work as a chance to recruit quiet kids to share their thinking – Michael Pershan – audio – video
  9. When doing group work, make clear the group is responsible – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
  10. Lesson phases and formative assessment strategies: an exercise – Craig Barton – video

Checking for understanding

  1. Be aware of student bias – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
  2. Three reasons students don’t know the answer – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  3. Check for understanding – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
  4. Always build from what they know – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
  5. Always check for understanding – Clare Sealy – audio – video
  6. No hints before a check for understanding – Ollie Lovell + Craig Barton – video
  7. Planning the checks for understanding – Craig Latimir – video
  8. Ask a question at the end of every lesson that every student should be able to get right – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
  9. Planning the end of a lesson – Craig Latimir – video
  10. Consider lengthening wait times to maximise retrieval – Bradley Busch – audio – video
  11. How to ensure questioning involves all pupils – Jade Pearce – audio – video
  12. The Tick Trick – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  13. Ask students to make a pre-topic mind map – Alex Quigley – audio – video
  14. Use talk cubes to encourage students to contribute – Emma Turner – audio – video
  15. Start with whoever got 8 out of 10 – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
  16. Use Post-it notes to find out what they don’t understand – Mark Roberts – audio – video
  17. Play “Just a minute!” – Alex Quigley – audio – video
  18. Provide explicit scaffolds for verbal responses – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
  19. Pick the student least likely to know – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
  20. Foster cross-class accountability – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
  21. Trick your students to test if they really understand – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
  22. Depressurise learning – Chris Such – audio – video

Responsive teaching

  1. Don’t forget the “respond” part of responsive teaching – Jo Morgan – audio – video
  2. Planning responsive teaching – Craig Latimir – video
  3. Modify your lessons as you go – Jake Gordon – audio – video
  4. Responsive teaching: what to do when some students understand, and some don’t – Craig Barton – video
  5. Don’t let “Don’t know” be the end of the conversation – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
  6. End every conversation with the student saying something smart – Michael Pershan – audio – video
  7. Rephrase to amaze – Mark Roberts – audio – video
  8. Diagnostic Questions – the perfect exit ticket? – Craig Barton – video
  9. How to design good multiple-choice questions – Kate Jones – audio – video
  10. Share photos of students’ work – Jake Gordon – audio – video

Planning lessons

  1. The crucial role of curriculum – Ollie Lovell + Craig Barton – video
  2. Lesson planning mistakes – Craig Latimir – video
  3. Lesson planning principles – Craig Latimir – video
  4. The first thing to think about – Craig Latimir – video
  5. Make question planning part of lesson planning – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
  6. Focus on explanations, not resources – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
  7. Plan sequences not lessons – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
  8. Backwards plan. ALWAYS backwards plan! – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
  9. Be super clear about what you want children to learn – Clare Sealy – audio – video
  10. Do less, but better – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
  11. We should all be focussing on doing fewer things and greater depth – Mary Myatt – audio – video
  12. Review every lesson plan in terms of what the student is thinking about – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
  13. Plan for error – Emma Turner – audio – video
  14. Take a low effort, high impact approach to task and question design – Kate Jones – audio – video
  15. Teach what you mean to teach – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
  16. Focus on the concepts and the Big Ideas in our curriculum – Mary Myatt – audio – video
  17. Learning doesn’t start in Year 7 – Craig Latimir – audio – video

Examples and modelling

  1. Beware the curse of knowledge – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
  2. Set out the big picture – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
  3. We know more and remember more when we’ve heard it in a story – Mary Myatt – audio – video
  4. Planning the exposition – Craig Latimir – video
  5. Planning the modelling – Craig Latimir – video
  6. Mind your modes – Peps McCrea – video
  7. Question, don’t tell – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
  8. Use explicit instruction for novice learners – Jade Pearce – audio – video
  9. Model techniques live – Jo Morgan – audio – video
  10. Try teaching from anywhere in the room – Jake Gordon – audio – video
  11. Begin your explanations as a series of questions that everyone can answer – Michael Pershan – audio – video
  12. Use, where possible, dialogic teaching – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
  13. Encourage students to say “stop!” if they are confused during an explanation – Emma Turner – audio – video
  14. Avoid the Split-Attention Effect during worked examples – Craig Barton – video
  15. What you say matters – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
  16. What you don’t say matters – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
  17. Don’t ask students to listen and read simultaneously – Craig Barton – video
  18. Explicitly teach the skills an expert in your domain uses – Craig Latimir – audio – video
  19. Use visual aids, including props and online tools to bring explanations alive – Jo Morgan – audio – video
  20. Reduce clutter from everything students see and hear – Jake Gordon – audio – video
  21. Beware of seductive details – Craig Barton – video
  22. Use examples, not definitions, when teaching & assessing – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
  23. Get used to asking “what if” after explaining something – Michael Pershan – audio – video
  24. Provoke curiosity in our students – Mary Myatt – audio – video
  25. Use related examples and non-examples to explain a concept – Craig Barton – video
  26. Further thoughts on the Myth of Copying Things Down – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  27. Hone your public speaking – Jamie Thom – audio – video
  28. Feign enthusiasm when necessary – Chris Such – audio – video

Student practice

  1. Planning the practice phase – Craig Latimir – video
  2. Teach in small chunks and fool kids into doing lots of work initially – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
  3. Make sure students know whether they are right or wrong, and don’t wait until it’s too late – Jo Morgan – audio – video
  4. Provide answers so pupils can check their work in real-time – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
  5. Set occasional open-response tasks – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
  6. Two frameworks for learner-generated examples – Craig Barton – video
  7. Use SSDD Problems to improve students’ practice – Craig Barton – video
  8. How to help students avoid “silly” mistakes – Craig Barton – video

Memory and retrieval

  1. We have little insight into our learning – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
  2. Challenge students on what they like versus what’s best for them – Bradley Busch – audio – video
  3. How to overcome the limits of working memory – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
  4. Have a robust culture of retrieval – Clare Sealy – audio – video
  5. Understand the active ingredients of retrieval practice – Jade Pearce – audio – video
  6. Retrieval practice is worth investing time to understand and use – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
  7. How to make retrieval practice work – David Goodwin – audio – video
  8. Try using a collage collection to stimulate ideas – Alex Quigley – audio – video
  9. Show your students the Forgetting Curve – Craig Barton – video
  10. Show your students a model of memory – Craig Barton – video
  11. Show your students that being familiar with something is not the same as knowing it – Craig Barton – video
  12. Develop systematic revision – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
  13. Planning the Do Now – Craig Latimir – video
  14. Give worked examples with retrieval starters – Jake Gordon – audio – video
  15. Get your students to assign confidence scores to their answers – Craig Barton – video
  16. How to organise the disorganised – Jon Mumford – audio – video
  17. Make corrections quizzable – Craig Barton – video
  18. Sometimes it is better to review than retrieve – Kate Jones – audio – video
  19. Make use of the Encoding Specificity Principle – Kate Jones – audio – video
  20. How to make the best use of technology for retrieval practice – Kate Jones – audio – video
  21. Choose the purpose of your Do Now… and tell your students! – Craig Barton – video
  22. Revision should start from day one of a course, not at the end – Julia Smith – audio – video

Data and assessment

  1. To make good use of data, compare to other subjects – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  2. Know how to effectively assess – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
  3. Stop talking about grades – Mark Roberts – audio – video

Homework

  1. To make homework more effective, integrate it with classwork – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  2. My favourite homework activity – Craig Barton – video
  3. Rebrand homework as practice – David Goodwin – audio – video

Marking and feedback

  1. Don’t give negative managerial feedback – Mark Roberts – audio – video
  2. How to improve feedback – Jade Pearce – audio – video
  3. Choose the right feedback type – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
  4. Don’t do written comments – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
  5. The best feedback is a learning activity, and it’s much better than written feedback on the page – Michael Pershan – audio – video
  6. No feedback, more teaching – Clare Sealy – audio – video
  7. Make feedback into detective work – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
  8. Consider the impact of audio feedback – Jon Mumford – audio – video
  9. Use D.I.R.T. as a post-assessment formative tool – Jon Mumford – audio – video
  10. How to get students peer-assessing with group critique – Jon Mumford – audio – video

Improving as a teacher

  1. Use tips when they act as solutions to problems you face – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
  2. Ask students “What was the most useful thing I did today?” – Emma Turner – audio – video
  3. Inquire into mechanisms – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
  4. Study the teachers you respect – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
  5. Have your coffee whilst sitting in the classrooms of effective teachers – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
  6. Work out why things work – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
  7. The power of teachers reading research – Jade Pearce – audio – video
  8. Ask yourself “what evidence would change your mind? – Bradley Busch – audio – video
  9. Use research on learning not as a prescription but as a compass – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
  10. Ignite the CPD culture – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
  11. Leave space between reading and implementation – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
  12. Treat the act of teacher development like teaching – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
  13. Read for pleasure and read for progress – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
  14. Be clear about your career pathway – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
  15. Make use of the NPQs – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
  16. You can learn something from everybody – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
  17. Go out and visit other schools – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
  18. Nobody really knows what they are doing – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
  19. Ask “who is this for?” – Mary Myatt – audio – video
  20. What’s happening in AI right now, and what does it mean for education? – Peps McCrea – video
  21. Rethinking To-Do lists – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video

Observations and coaching

  1. How to observe a lesson – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  2. How to give a colleague feedback – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  3. Diagnosis in coaching – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  4. Develop competing hypotheses when observing teaching and learning – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video

Leadership and culture

  1. To lower workload and build a better team ethic, make culture explicit – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  2. Think about implementation – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
  3. Be explicit when modelling for colleagues – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
  4. The principles of Cog Sci apply to humans (not just students) – Craig Latimir – audio – video
  5. Leave a legacy – Craig Latimir – audio – video

Health and well-being

  1. Maintain perspective – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
  2. Remember the tortoise and the hare – Jamie Thom – audio – video
  3. Tackle the negativity radio – Jamie Thom – audio – video
  4. How to get better sleep – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  5. The secret to a happy life – Craig Latimir – audio – video
  6. End the day on a positive – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video

Maths, Maths, Maths!

  1. Use the same questions, with different numbers – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
  2. Use calculators with students from the earliest opportunity – Jo Morgan – audio – video
  3. The power of a slideshow for teaching mathematics – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  4. Doing maths is not the same as teaching maths – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
  5. Practice, practice, practice…not until you can get it right but until you cannot get it wrong – Julia Smith – audio – video
  6. It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it…and that’s what gets results – Julia Smith – audio – video
  7. Fluency in the four operations is a cornerstone of developing mathematical understanding – Julia Smith – audio – video
  8. How to deal with students who say they hate maths or are no good at maths – Julia Smith – audio – video

Reading, literacy and oracy

  1. Learn about reading development – Chris Such – audio – video
  2. Provide opportunities for students to read in lessons – David Goodwin – audio – video
  3. Every teacher should make the teaching of literacy a high priority – Clare Sealy – audio – video
  4. Analyse words using morphology and etymology – Chris Such – audio – video
  5. Focus on developing keystone vocabulary – Alex Quigley – audio – video
  6. Develop vocabulary – David Goodwin – audio – video
  7. Assess reading difficulties and respond – Chris Such – audio – video
  8. How to improve students’ ability to write – David Goodwin – audio – video
  9. Support your students using sentence expanding – Alex Quigley – audio – video
  10. Get your pupils to spell their name backwards – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video

Micro-tips

  1. 7 micro-tips from Chris Such – audio – video