You can download an mp3 of the podcast here.
Adam Boxer’s tips:
- To make sure your students are ready to practise, use mini-whiteboards [2 minutes 43 seconds]
- To lower workload and build a better team ethic, make culture explicit [27 minutes 09 seconds]
- To reduce “choppy time” in lessons, use a Front Loaded Means of Participation and wait for Golden Silence [43 minutes 10 seconds]
- To make good use of data, compare to other subjects [54 minutes 53 seconds]
- To make homework more effective, integrate it with classwork [1 hour 1 minute 03 seconds]
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Watch the videos of Adam’s tips
Podcast transcript
Craig Barton 0:01
Hello, my name is Craig Barton, and welcome to the tips for teachers podcast. The show that helps you supercharge your teaching one idea at a time. Each episode I invite our guests from the wonderful world of education to share five tips for teachers to try out both inside and outside of the classroom. With each tip, the challenge is always to ask yourself, what would I have to do or change to make this work for me, my situation to my students, experimentation and frustration may follow. Hopefully something good will come out to them. Now remember to check out our website tips for teachers.co.uk, where you’ll find all the podcasts as well as links, resources and audio transcriptions for each episode. Better still, you’ll also find a selection of video tips, some taken directly from the podcast and others recorded by me. These could be used to spark discussion between colleagues at departmental meetings at twilight inset, and so on. Anyway, enough from me, let’s get learning with today’s guests for a wonderful album boxer. Now spoiler alert here our albums five tips that he shares with me in this episode number one, to make sure your students are ready to practice. Use mini whiteboards. Tip two to lower workload and build a better team ethic make culture explicit. Number three to reduce choppy time in lessons use a front loaded means of participation. Wait for Golden silence. Tip Four to make good use of data compared to other subjects. And Tip five to make homework more effective. Integrate it with classwork go if you look at the episode description on your podcast player, or visit the episode page on tips for teachers dot code at UK. You’ll see I timestamp each of the tips so you can jump straight to anyone you want to listen to first or read. Listen at your leisure. And just a warning when we go to town on tip one. The mini whiteboards 2025 minutes on that one but it’s well worth it. Anyway, enjoy the show.
Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Mr. Adam boxer to the tips for teachers podcast. Hello, Adam. How are you? Dinner? Oh, Craig, how are you? Very, very good. Thank you. Right, Adam? For those of us who don’t know, can you tell us a bit about yourself ideally in a sentence?
Adam Boxer 2:32
Yep. I’m head of science working at the Totteridge Academy in London and I’m the Education Director for carousel learning.
Craig Barton 2:38
Ideal fantastic stuff. Right. Let’s dive straight in. What is your first tip?
Adam Boxer 2:44
Okay, my first tip is to make sure students are ready to practice use mini whiteboards.
Craig Barton 2:50
Mini what you love a mini whiteboard.
Adam Boxer 2:52
I love mini whiteboards. Have you always loved them? No. I am in my 910 incense, something a year of teaching. And I only started using mini whiteboards about two years ago. And they are now an integral part of my practice such the extent that I don’t know how I ever taught without them. And notice that but I don’t know how I would teach if I didn’t have them. The very thoughts stresses me out
Craig Barton 3:27
what changed two years ago to make you start using them.
Adam Boxer 3:31
So I joined my school in September, when he was 21. This year, it was 20 2019. And they were always something that I had sort of wanted to use, but had never really got around to using them. And I’ve been in a school where people had mini whiteboards, but nobody used them. And I got some feedback from my boss who is the best and cleanest observer of Teaching and Learning I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. And he basically just said to me like you ask the question to the students. And you got an answer. But like, there were 25 kids in their room, you could have got 25 answers if you just use mini whiteboards. And I was like, Yeah, but they’re such a faff. And like you didn’t say this in as many words but he was basically just like, get over it and sorted out, you know, you’re a big boy, you can work it out. It’s not it’s not fast once you get used to them, figure out a way to make it work in the physical space that you’ve got. And just go for it. And I’ve never looked back. Well, can you
Craig Barton 4:31
sum sum up as easily as you can? How would you use them? So talk us through a little scenario.
Adam Boxer 4:38
So there’s a physical routine that is associated with mini whiteboards, which is again the physical space is important because different classes have different setups. I have six rows, I’ve got big room and I’ve got six rows. And each row has one basket and in the basket is our enough mini whiteboards enough pens enough rubbers for everyone on that row. And we train. So like in the first lesson when I want them, given our, you know, I explained which student is going to give them out, I explained exactly which direction the basket is gonna move down the table. I tell students, if they don’t have a pen, they don’t just go like, Oh, so I don’t have a pen, they just put their hand up and wait. And then I give the pens to another student to bring them around if there needs to be any space. And we get that down to pretty fine art. And most of my classes can now do it in less than 15 seconds in complete silence. And like one of my classes is 40 students, right? So that’s 40 million whiteboards out, within, you know, 15 seconds or so in complete silence. And
Craig Barton 5:36
can you just give me a sense of how long has it taken to get to that stage? Is that over a number of lessons of a practice? Like
Adam Boxer 5:42
two lessons? Okay, okay. Yeah. And even then, like, the first lesson is, like, 45 seconds. Yeah. So they get fast, pretty quick. And like, to be honest, I have, I have a couple of very, very tricky classes. And, you know, head of department, it’s my job to try and help the rest of department in that way. And so for some groups, or laid them out first, it takes a couple of minutes, or all get the previous class to do the grunt labour, I’ll just say that leave them any whiteboards on the desk where you are. And I just make sure they’re neat and tidy, so that when the students come in there, they’re ready so that we call it shaping the past, you just minimise the chance for any kind of disruption or conflict to start. Because it’s like, it never starts, like problematic, you know, what you’ll have is a kid will be like, Oh, I don’t have a pen. And a kid from the room front would be like, Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got one in the basket, and we’ll throw it at them. Right. And again, like, like, not not not even necessarily disruptively, right. But they’ll just chuck them a pen, and you know, it will go wrong or whatever, or the kid who receives it will make it faster before you know, you’ve just got chaos. Yeah, right. So you just, you just shaped the past. And you just avoid that happening. And yeah, some would say no, that is your responsibility to have high expectations expected that won’t happen and give a consequence of it. And like, yeah, just like put them out before and it will be fine. And you know, then people are like, Oh, well, how do you stop the kids doodling on them. So if your doodles on the mini whiteboards, I make them stay off too isn’t to clean all of the mini whiteboards, and then they don’t do it again, if a kid draws a penis, I will take the mini whiteboard and I’ll take a photo of it and email it to their mum right there. And then, like I’ve got, I’ve got all the email addresses on my phone. So like, I’ll just do it, and then they won’t do it again. And they don’t do it again. Like everybody laughs about it. And it’s funny, but they’re also like, Oh, God, that could have been me. So I’d love
Craig Barton 7:32
to see your camera roll out of on your phone. Hey, that must be
Adam Boxer 7:37
it tonnes of mini whiteboards with genitalia? No, it’s, I tend to delete them afterwards. It’s memory. You’ve got to save the memory. That’s why so so yeah, like, you just you just work out in different schools have different routines. People are like, Oh, how’d you you know, make sure every room has enough pens. And I’m like, it’s it’s like, it’s like drinking water. Yeah. Nobody ever says how do you make sure you’ve got enough drinking water for your staff? Right, like pens are on tech? Yeah, if if a teacher needs mini whiteboard, pens, they get them no questions asked. Yeah, it’s like, you know, obviously, the, you know, if you if I got across with teachers, I mean, there’s chaos in there, kids are throwing the pens all over the place. And then you have to put in a different intervention, right? But if the kids, if the teacher needs more mini whiteboard pens, because the kids are doing loads of mini whiteboard work, it would be ridiculous to say, Well, I’m not buying those. It’s like saying, No, I’m not paying for more exercise books. Yes. It would be insane. So so many whiteboard pens are basically on tap. And other budget would move around that because there’s other stuff that is less necessary. So you know, all of these practical problems, people are like, oh, there’s not the other I was that person. That yeah, it’s just can’t get over it. Because because it’s worth it.
Craig Barton 8:47
Okay, so we’ve got the whiteboards, the handout, the kids have got all the pens and everything. Just talk us through a scenario how you’d use a lot of methods, okay.
Adam Boxer 8:57
Okay, so normally, people talk about using them for checking for understanding, essentially, anytime you want to know whether or not students understand something, you use mini whiteboards, because you can gather, you know, 30 times as much information. It’s wild. When you put it like that. You asked one kid something, you get an answer, but 30 times the information is, is I don’t think people realise just how much bigger that is. Yeah, that is an astonishingly large jump. It’s, it’s it’s an order of magnitude multiplied by three. It’s, it’s crazy. Yeah. When you put it like that. I’m not talking to a mathematician. Okay, for everybody else. Yeah. An order of magnitude means multiplied by 10. Put another zero on it yet. There we go. Just just just for the punches at the back. Where was I in all of that? Realising Well, I’ve lost my you’ve got gathering loads of data, which is great. And you’ve got to make sure you’ve got a routine for it as well. So the students know that they write their answer and then they hover it so that the board facing down. And again, we explain why they want to do that as well. Because if you ask a student why they’ll say, oh, so that nobody else can copy, and then you feel nothing. Okay, well, why is copying beds? And they say, because I don’t want anyone to steal my answer. Yeah, that’s what that’s what they’d normally say. Because people, not children, people are self centred and the things about them, but like the point of mini whiteboard is in assessing that David. David said to me, you know, it’s about stealing. Stealing is So David, actually, you know, it’s not about you. Yeah, if Danny steals your answer, yeah, obviously, it’s not nice, because if stolen from you, yeah. But it also means that I can’t help with any, because like, Danny doesn’t know, then he doesn’t understand. He’s just copied your answer. And now I think he knows it. He’s like, he’s tricked me. And now like, I can’t help him yet. It’s my job to help you. And then if you’re, if you’re lying to me, and you’re saying, I understand this, when you don’t like, how do I even know? And then somebody else gets my time and you lose? So yeah, it’s not it’s not even. It’s not even in your interests. So it’s important to like, a lot of the shift in my teaching has been about moving from thinking about a class is like just a group of individuals and thinking about like, the whole class, and how do I interact with the whole class. And so many whiteboards are about building that sense that we are a class working together. And it’s about me getting information from the class and thinking about everyone in the room, and not just the student I happened to be looking at or whatever. And that’s, that’s part of the shift as well. And in a similar vein, you know, even if it wasn’t about gathering assessment data, yeah. So let’s say, let’s say I’ve got a question, which is long, right? So it’s, you know, it’s a couple of sentences. People like, oh, what’s the point in doing it a mini whiteboards? You can’t read? Everybody? Isn’t? I’m not? Yeah, I mean, I know I can’t, but at least I know that everybody’s written. Yes. So if I asked the question verbally, I’ve got I asked one key, and I know that they’ve thought about the answer. But then anything about the other 29, even if I do the most perfect cold call, you know, everything? Like I don’t know, I don’t know whether or not the other 29 are really thinking about it. Whereas when I use the menu, and whereas, and even if they’re doing independent work in their exercise book, yeah, kids are brilliant at masking, complete lack of work. So it might look to me like students are sat and working, but they could just be rewriting the questions, leaving blanks highlighting underlining the title or whatever. So when I use the mini whiteboards, then I have a much better chance that students are actually writing and thinking and doing even if I’m not going to read everyone’s and I don’t pretend to so you know, I’ll get them to show not be like, not pretend to look at everyone’s, but obviously, you know, like I said, I’ve got 40 Kids in one of my class, I can’t look at everyone’s answer, even if it is only one word. And then you’re just looking at your that your kind of target kids who give you information about the rest of the class. So your I guess your weakest third is a good bet. So you look at five or six responses there. If those kids get it, you can make an assumption that everybody else does. If those kids don’t you do a quick reteach, and then you do it, again, you’re aiming for like 80 90%. And then you can move on something along those lines broadly? And does it say yes, we
Craig Barton 13:02
do tend to use these? Is it kind of midway through an explanation? Or is it sandwich between an explanation and practice when one would be predominantly be used?
Adam Boxer 13:10
Ordinarily, in in two main parts, the first part is before an explanation in what we call a prerequisite check. So for anything that I’m teaching, there’s knowledge that the students need to have. I’ll give you a good example. Here’s something that I didn’t do well enough. I had for the first time in quite a while. Last week, I had a lesson where you know, when you finish the lesson, you’re like, right, they just didn’t get it. Just like we’re just having a right away. I want less than 100 minutes. And I’m like, we were hammering away at it for 100 minutes. I just didn’t get it. They didn’t understand. It was it’s a very weak group. I’ve talked for a long time, the year 11. And we were doing distance time graphs. Nice. Right? And my explanation was, I did a check before, so we know how to calculate speed. They understand what a distance is, they understand what time is they know what the units are all of that. So I thought and the ends by the way, they know how to like, like, understand a graph. So if I point to a point on the graph, they know right, that x equals four, y equals seven or whatever. So all of that was in place. But what I realised as the practice was ongoing, and I’m sorry, and I did that with many whiteboards, okay, yeah. Because it’s crucial for me to get information about whether or not they know this because if they don’t know it, we can’t move on. So when that is like, the purpose of the mini whiteboard at that point, is to gather information. So I gave you already two purposes. Now purpose number one was to gather information. Purpose number two is to make sure that everybody’s working. Yeah, here. I’m hitting purpose, one big time, purpose one big, big, big, big big time. Then what transpired throughout the lesson, the reason why they couldn’t, wasn’t moving them as a few of them really couldn’t get the distance time graphs was because they just struggled with basic number bonds. So seeing things like right if you Going from seven metres to 12 metres How far have you gone? And they were like 19 metres. Yeah. Right. And I’m like, no, no, what’s like, what’s the difference between 12? And seven? They were like, I don’t know what you’re saying. And the second was 12. Takeaway seven, and they’re doing it on their fingers. Right? And like that massively slows everything down. And that’s prerequisite knowledge they didn’t possess and it meant that the lesson was a failure. And that’s, that’s on me. Yeah. Like, I look in the mirror and I say, okay, my prereq check wasn’t good enough, right? Because I didn’t anticipate all of the knowledge that they needed. And I mean, big assumptions. And that’s on me. That’s not them. Yeah. Earlier Adam of five years ago would have got frustrated like how can they not know this incredibly annoying, but like, okay, they they don’t. Simple fact is they don’t and I didn’t check for it
Craig Barton 15:48
is tricky, isn’t it just just as a little interjection, they’re truly trying to get a sense of all the the full scope of prereq knowledge that kids need, it’s very easy to overlook little things like that, isn’t it? You know, stuff that kind of fits a little bit outside? It is not the obvious stuff that you check for whenever you’re thinking of, you know, yeah, look,
Adam Boxer 16:08
yeah, yeah, I don’t, I don’t want to be like, uppity about it, either. But even the obvious stuff isn’t checked for, you know, I, I’m very, I’m very lucky. You know, I worked four days in school, and my other day, I get to go to visit other schools, I get to do all sorts of things, and people send me videos of lessons. You know, I’m very lucky I, you know, there aren’t, there aren’t many science teachers who have seen as many lessons as many different schools as I have. And I consider it a blessing, like a real, like real luck and honour and a privilege and a responsibility to like, give people good feedback. And I’ve seen in, you know, in many lessons, I’ve seen retrieval practice, I’ve seen independent practice, I’ve seen good modelling, I’ve seen good check for understanding of single questioning, I’ve seen great behaviour management. Yeah, outside of my department, I have never seen a good prerequisite check. Wow, it’s, it’s, I’ve just not seen it. People don’t do it. It’s not normal. Because you put up the slides. Yeah. And you say, right, this is our learning objective, and then you launch into your explanation. Yeah, that’s what happens, right? So you describe this, we’re going to describe this, we’re gonna explain that and we’re going to evaluate or the third thing, whatever it is, and then you just like, go straight into explanation. There’s never a check. Right. And I’ve seen people check for understanding after their explanation, which is great. But it’s about doing it before, before the explanation. And it’s not something that’s common practice, even when it’s like obvious stuff. So I still don’t see it.
Craig Barton 17:32
And it’s quick to do, especially with the mini whiteboards right, it’s super fast.
Adam Boxer 17:35
Well, it can be, it’s fast to like, get that snapshot. Yeah, but the process of thinking about it before Yeah, no, of course, and also the the review, and the reteach can sometimes be long. So whereas like your do now, which is just general retrieval practice, should be fast and punchy, and quick and over and done with, you know, within 10 minutes, your prereq check could take a long time. Because, you know, if I’m, if I’m teaching distance time graph, and I realised that my kids don’t understand rate of reaction in the do now, I’m not really teaching it then and there’s a push off. Yeah, I’ll do it another time. But but if I’m about to do my distance, time graph, and I realised that students don’t understand how to plot a point on a graph, then I’ve got to do that now. And I’ve got to jettison what I was planning today. Yes. Is there’s no point. Right?
Craig Barton 18:23
Okay, so we’ve got that one key use of the mini whiteboards is that the prereq chair will be will be the other one.
Adam Boxer 18:29
So the other one is then straight after your explanation. Okay. So if you ask most people why to why you’d use mini whiteboards straight, often explanation and say, again, for assessment and checking for understanding, that is only half right. Because it is correct that that mini whiteboard is a good check for understanding and it’s a great there’s no better check for understanding. But I think there’s also something else that people don’t realise as much, which is what we call consolidation. So when students have just started to learn something new, it’s very kind of hazy in their minds isn’t for anyone. It’s loose. And if you ask them to practice straight away through after explanation, even if they understand it, in the sense that, yeah, I got that. That made sense. Yeah, they might not they might not be ready. I’ll give you a great example. Really recently. I was teaching isotopes with a year 10 class, and I’ve got I’m riffing. Now I’m really gonna have to search back and remember the exact format and weird I’d explained to them. What an isotope was. And I did a quick check for understanding. So you know, these two things isotopes. Yeah, just comparing two things next to each other, these two isotopes. He was like, yes, they’re isotopes because it got sent over protons if a number nutrients. Great. Next question, is these two isotopes? Yes, great. Fine. This is kind of a multiple choice. You type thing with a bit of a push afterwards. And then the firt I was upgrading right you guys ready to do some independent practice? Go for it. And then the first question in independent practice was substantively the same thing. But in terms of its like structure was different. So it wasn’t like, are these two isotopes? I think, if I remember correctly was making full reference to their protons, neutrons, electrons explain why these two are isotopes. Yeah. And the kids were like, it’s like, didn’t even start. They were like, I just don’t understand that I didn’t know what to do. And I’m like, but I just checked, you know, again, pass and would have been like, why just check your understanding didn’t?
The problem is that, that knowledge when it first starts, it’s so flimsy. It’s so hazy, it’s so ephemeral. And it’s so cute about you know, cute, cute See, you eat. So what you’ve just taught that like pushing it even that little bit further, it’s going to be really difficult for the students. And you know, that’s what a well crafted crafted questions it does. Right? It moves it from things I’ve really familiar with. And you know, I know that I’m talking to the doyen of variation theory, and through really slight variations, moves it to things which are further and further away. But like that, that process we call consolidation. And it’s best done on a mini whiteboards, and it’s best done as a whole class. The reason why I like doing it on a mini whiteboard is eight, because everybody writes, I don’t have a kid sitting there and be like, yeah, I get this. And then I’m doing it by questioning or whatever. And then they’ve not they’ve not yet verbalised, anything, they’ve not said anything. So the consolidate part of the consolidation, there is like the act of doing something. Yeah. You know, I look, I’ve got 30 Kids, right. And I ask a question of, say, six of them, and they all give me a great answer. Yeah, I’ve done a good check for understanding. But the other 24 haven’t had a chance to verbalise anything, they haven’t a chance to say anything, they haven’t a chance to, like write anything to get those ideas out there. And what that means is that when they then get to practice, they’re like, I don’t know what to do. And they just don’t do anything. So the mini whiteboard is super powerful, because it does both. Yeah, it lets you check for understanding, it also lets them It also makes sure that everybody is practising, but also in like a format that is that they’re not, no kid has ever stressed out. Sorry, provided you get your culture of error. Right? Kids are more happy to write something when they’re not sure on a mini whiteboard than they are in a book. Yeah, cuz the kids like, Oh, if I get it wrong in the book, I have to cross it out effort, blah, blah, blah, yes. It’s only when really it’s designed there to be like to be ephemeral and like your whole class environment is that what you’re doing at that point is you’re saying, right, we we are hesitant. We’re just getting used to this new knowledge. Yeah, let’s give it a go. Right. And there’s no, there’s no, like formal writing of the things down. And so many white was really powerful for that. And so we don’t actually talk in our department, we talk about what we call a check and consolidate. So we’re doing to within two things at once. We are both checking whether they understand and getting loads of information. But we’re also starting that process of consolidation. And that’s about everybody writes, and it’s about getting started on the independent practice. And it’s and it’s preparing the human race. And I was very, I was very careful. By the way, when I said my tip right at the beginning, I said, I’ll read it. Yeah, I said, to make sure your students are ready to practice use mini whiteboards. So I didn’t say to check your students understanding, I said, to make sure they’re ready to practice. And part of being ready to practice is checking, understanding, but part of being ready to practice also starting that process of consolidation. So they can then go and start doing questions that are, you know, a bit different to what you said. And they feel more comfortable and more confident because their knowledge has started to be solidified them concretized I guess a good way to think about the, you know, with 14 hours teaching your sermons about forces recently now showing them freebody diagrams. And I was saying, you know, I showed them a whole load of different ones. And they said, Is this a freebody? diagram? And the key was that Oh, and again, we did many Why was yes, no, yes. Bla bla bla. Great. And then I moved the slide aside. Yeah. And I just said, I drew a freebody diagram, and I said, What’s the name of this kind of a diagram? Like, alright, well hang on a second. We’ve just done loads of practice on freebody diagram, right? Why does nobody why can anybody tell me what cuz they’ve had the chance to, like, See that word. And they’ve had a chance to, like, get now. So So then, at that point, I did a call and response, right, because the right thing there is they just need to see it. And then and then after that did another example, they had to write down the word freebody diagram, right, but, but like, they’re just not ready at that point. And it’s not about checking for understanding they do understand. Yeah, because they’re just answered five or six questions correctly. They do understand, but they’re not. It’s not consolidated. Yet. Understanding is a spectrum. And you start off with like this hazy ephemeral knowledge, and then it builds and builds and builds and builds, but you’ve got to realise at the beginning, it’s flimsy. It’s strong.
Craig Barton 24:32
One bonus question on your first department before we move on. Okay, final question on mini whiteboards, Adam, I wonder if you’ve got any techniques or advice for getting reluctant staff onboard for using mini whiteboards. And the reason I ask is I saw on Twitter, I believe you were running a CPD session where you can’t use mini whiteboards by stealth. Can you talk a little bit about that if that’s all right,
Adam Boxer 24:54
yes. So. So I, again, I’m lucky and very blessed people asked me to Have a CPD and training and more and more the sessions that I deliver look more and more like my lessons. So I deliver them in the same way that I teach. So the same modelling strategies and questioning strategies, so many whiteboards, strategies. So I always ask to make sure there are many whiteboards out. Sometimes that involves a hunt around the school, normally to the maths department, by the way, but I do always ask for there to be mini whiteboards on the show, because they’re brilliant for me when I’m giving CPD because I want to check for understanding as well. And I want to be able to give people the chance to consolidate and write and practice. And I also want to model the kind of things that I do in the classroom. And basically, you know, across the course of that people sort of get it. So it wasn’t the session about mini whiteboards, but people like, you know, obviously, I talk about them. And I’m like, by the way, do you see how powerful that was, I just use a mini whiteboards, people are used to sitting in CPD like this, and just, you know, gazing into the middle distance, and I’m now kind of forcing them to be engaged in to get involved. And like it’s quite enjoyable. And I’ve always felt that there are some teachers in humans. Yeah. And so there is some humans that will never change. You asked him to do something a bit differently. Now. Notice, no, okay, fine. You know, that’s the minority. Yeah, the majority of teachers want to do a better job. And the problem is like humans are naturally predisposed to think that we’re already doing a good job. And we’re not good at taking feedback that says you can do better. So I think it’s always about showing, it’s either about proving to people that they’ve gone wrong somewhere. Or it’s about showing them that they can do better. So for example, when my boss said to me, Look, you got a you did a really good question was really good check for understand you’ve got one piece of data. Do you not think you could have collected 25? And, and like, I couldn’t sit? How can you say no to that? Yeah, it’s just like so obviously, right? And he sends me you can do better? Yeah. You say you can do more?
Craig Barton 27:07
Got it? Got it. Right. Tip two, Adam, what are we going for?
Adam Boxer 27:11
Oh, close. To here we go to lower workload and build a better team ethic make culture explicit,
Craig Barton 27:20
called Craigslist. Okay, tell me more about this.
Adam Boxer 27:24
So culture is a amorphous and difficult to define. But it’s about kind of, I guess, a shared set of values and an understanding about the way that you work together. And there are what, what happens a lot, is the the most common thing that happens is that is that teams don’t have a culture. You have teams of people who like work together. But there’s no like, the culture is like people have banded together. There’s no culture of like really supporting each other or really being alert to other people’s needs. Or going specifically out your way to know what other people’s workload stuff like that. That’s the most common thing that happens. But there’s, there’s other things that can happen that where you do have that kind of shared understanding when someone new, for example, joins the team, and it’s not like, you know, and sometimes things happen in schools where you’re like, Oh, this is working well, and you don’t see all of the work that’s gone in to make that happen to start with. I’m not doing a very good job of defining this. So I’ll give you some examples. Yeah, one example is about around accountability. Yeah, so people miss deadlines, or people make a mistake, or whatever. So we have this thing in my school called the accountability line, there’s this thing called the accountability ladder, which is basically a ladder of ways to respond to something going wrong. And the bottom is stuff like, It’s not my fault, or it’s someone else’s fault, or I didn’t know about it. Or there’s one lovely phrase, which is wait and hope. So, you know, you’ve missed the deadline or whatever, you just wait and hope that nobody notices. And all of those things are considered being below the accountability line. Being above the heritability line is saying, I’m sorry, that shouldn’t have happened. This is what I’m going to do to sort it next time. And we are department doubled in size this year. And a bunch of times early on in the year, I said, you know, I said to people, Look, I’m going to be above the accountability line here. I’m sorry, this happened, blah, blah. And people were just like this to me, and I didn’t realise but like, I’ve never adequately explained what the accountability line was. So I got the letter, we looked at the pitch together in the department meeting, I explained what it was, I explained why it’s important. I explained that you know, humans make mistakes, and that’s fine. But ignoring your mistake is a conscious and deliberate thing. And it’s crucial that the that we apologise we do that properly in our model that, you know, I apologise regularly for stuff I’ve not done. This week, literally for the Friday I do a morning duty on a Friday. For the first time this year. I missed it. I just completely clean forgot about it. And nobody noticed. Nobody knew I went to the deputy head yesterday and I Say says I said, Tom, I missed my duty on Friday. I don’t want to wait and hope. I just want to tell you that I missed the duty. Fortunately, nothing happens. There were no, I know of no fights or anything. But yeah, and I’ve set a reminder in my Outlook for every Friday, so it doesn’t happen again. Yeah, and I would have to say that I said that to anyone, like missing a duty is a safeguarding issue. It’s not a small thing. Yeah. It’s a big concern. Right. And but I could have just ignored it, and wait and hope and nobody ever would have confronted me about it. But it was a mistake, I owned it. And I would happily tell anyone that I made that mistake. And in the interest of being above the accountability line, like if you don’t have that conversation, you don’t make it clear, people will miss deadlines, and you won’t know about it. Yet, whereas as department, you know, individuals here and there do miss a deadline, but I always know about it. I’m always told it’s not. And it’s normally flagged in advance. And again, like, you know, nobody’s in trouble. Yeah, it’s just a case of, okay, how is this happened? And what do we do next? You know, there are other things as well, so so all of our communications via teams, we don’t email in our department, everything is by teams, if someone puts a message in the wrong channel. Yeah. So if there’s a message that needs to go to your eight teachers, and they put it in the general channel, yeah, that’s not how teams should be used. And it’s annoying for others. Because if they see a message in the general channel, they assume they need to read it, and then they read it, and it doesn’t actually apply to them. So if someone puts a message in the wrong channel, I will come in there, and then I won’t do it behind, you know, quietly, have a quiet word, I will comment there. And then I’ll say, I say, this should be reserved for the year, ah, no, please delete it and put it there.
And again, like, and people will do that, you know, because it’s important that everybody sees that this culture, it doesn’t arrive by accident, it’s done on purpose, we have you know, we, we have, whenever we have departmental action, we make this thing called a Trello card for is just that it’s like an action, and it says exactly what they need to do, and underneath their space to come in. And there are some things where we’ll ask for comments. So for example, if we think teaching learning, we might put a video of a teacher, and I’ll say, please put your comment with your feedback. And in the area underneath, a lot of actions don’t need a comment. And recently, a teacher put a comment under the action about what they’re done, or whatever. And I wrote back and I said, Thank you, that’s really interesting, just that, you know, you, you didn’t need to write a comment for this one. Now, I could have just ignored it. Because people would say, Oh, well, you let You’re embarrassing that person or whatever. But think about everybody else. If one person writes a comment, then the next person wants to come in, then the next person writes a comment, then the next person writes, comment before we know we wasted six people’s time with something they didn’t need to do. So that stuff like you just need to get it out. You need to be explicit, and you need to explain why. Right. So that what I just said to you about that comment, I then took to the department meeting, and I said, that’s why I said it. Because it’s about thinking about everyone. And like, obviously, you know, that comment was brilliant. Yeah, it was really, really interesting. You know, in a sense, I’m glad they wrote it, because I got to read what they were saying. But at the same time, I didn’t want anybody else to think that they had to do that. Which is why I asked, you know, which is why I said that explicitly. You know, we had a good case recently, we don’t, you know, I posted as well, one of my colleagues who doesn’t have any leadership responsibility. Last week, on a Tuesday, wherever I was, I got four emails a day. That’s it for emails. And as opposed to normally, where you get dozens of emails with things that you don’t need to see cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And again, if someone, anytime I get an email that I don’t need to read, that is that is made, it’s made clear that that email shouldn’t have been sent to me. And now Now, either be by me directly, or if it’s something that keeps happening or be through line management, because and it sounds like a dick move, right? People are like, Oh, how can you be so rude? And I’m like, Look, you know, it’s about workloads, right? And if it takes me 45 seconds to read your stupid email, and realise that I didn’t actually need to read it. That’s 45 seconds that I could have been helping my students. Yeah, I don’t have that time to waste. And if I’m getting 50 of these a day, it’s it’s highly problematic. But again, you make specific conscious actions to make sure that doesn’t happen. Otherwise, it just will. We have one of my one of my colleagues wanted to take a couple of kids out of a lesson to do some kind of enrichment thing. And he emailed the teachers who are outside the department PE teacher and an art teacher and said, Is it okay? If I take them out of this lesson? And he’d copied me in and I immediately messaged him, and I said, I said, I said, it’s not okay. We need to do it in a science lesson. And it was it was a time thing. So it was they were supposed to do at a certain time. I said, I said, we can’t be taking students out of other people’s lessons. And I was very clear about the reason for that. I wasn’t rude. I wasn’t you know, I was blunt, but it wasn’t rude. As I said, in many schools, there is a, you know, people are taking kids out of listeners the whole time for this trip for that trip for the other trip for this P thing to that whatever. Yeah. And before and before you know it, you know, and then you’ve got kids turning up who you thought one turning up and people like, oh, well, why didn’t you read the email that you sent four weeks ago with the name of 17 kids, we’ve all moved class since then it’s absolute chaos and pandemonium, it’s not acceptable. It’s annoying, it’s frustrating. And it ruins the flow and kind of natural harmony of what needs to happen in a good, efficient and professional school. So as I said, all of this semester, I said, look, the reason why you don’t have students coming out of your lessons, which is annoying to you, is because we don’t do stuff like that. Yeah. And if we allow things like that to happen, then it starts here and it moves to somewhere else, and then someone else is doing and someone else is doing it before, before you know it, we’ve got that chaos, which you know, from your previous school, and, and it just doesn’t help anybody in it ends up being annoying and frustrating. You’re getting dozens of emails that, you know, all of that is is conscious and deliberate and explicit. And if you don’t make it explicit, if you’re not clear about those reasons, and like, it’s not like that teacher was like, oh, Adam, you’re being so rude to me, You sent me I can’t do something. Yeah. We just rearranged it for the next day. It’s not a big deal. And they were like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. You know, when you explain to people that the most important things that you do in a school, in terms of deadlines, and making sure things work, and the things that affect other people as well. Yeah, yeah. So setting cover making sure your cover is proper. If people are like, Oh, don’t worry, we’ll be done. Like, no, yeah, this affects somebody else, it needs to be moved to the top of your list immediately. Yeah. And again, you’re explicit about stuff like that. And you’re really clear. And then you show accountability, if you fail to meet that mark. It’s, it just makes the team better. It makes everybody more efficient. It means nobody has this nonsense workloads and things that they have to do that don’t make any sense that don’t apply to them.
It’s just, it’s just better all around. And sometimes, yeah, you do have to be blunt with people and a bit on British. But they’re like, you know, and again, what you would hope is that someone would say to you, you build a culture where some would say, as I think the way you said that, to me wasn’t polite. And I say I say I’m sorry, I apologise. I know that sometimes I’m in a bit of a rush. And sometimes I can speak bluntly and to cut. I’m sorry, please, let me explain my reason, again, is that, okay? Completely different conversation. And it’s just, it just the culture and environment, the ethic, the way that everybody pitches in. Much better.
Craig Barton 37:29
I like it. So the message I’m getting here, regardless of whether people agree or not, with the kind of policies that embody this culture, the key to getting this culture is making it really explicit, be really consistent about it. And would it be the case do you think because obviously, you get these kind of whole school cultures, but can you influence it at a departmental level? Do you think regardless, it’s going on whole school?
Adam Boxer 37:52
Yeah. Like I said, you know, our department only uses teams, right? There’s no other department in the school, or department uses Trello is an organisation that nobody else uses Trello. Yeah, we have specific ways of working. The other departments don’t have, you know, folder curation? Yeah. So this is this relates to the same thing. You know, we have in our folders you go in says, he says three, year seven, you’ve got six folders, one for each unit that we teach, you open the folder, there is one file there. That’s it. And that’s the booklet for that unit. Normally, you open it up, it’s got less than one. And then it’s got six word documents. It’s got four PowerPoints with different initials, blah, blah, blah. And people like, what’s wrong with that? Like, I just, it’s just what I want to put my stuff? No, it’s, it’s wrong, because it means that if I want to know what I’m supposed to do today, I have to look through eight documents in order to figure that out. And what that means is that what you’ve done affects somebody else. So what we have is we have one file, and that’s it. There’s another folder there called archive or other and you can dump your crap there, all you like. But if people put stuff in the wrong place, or if people rename documents, and put their like initial at the end of it, or whatever, or delete it, or delete it, or delete it, it’s made very clear, they get one chance. And the first thing I did, I sent him a message and say just, you know, there’s this document there, please, could you move it? Yeah. And then the next time I delete it, and I explained again, I’ll explain why. And I said, Please, can you move it? The reason we do this is because it means that somebody logging in, goes into the folder and isn’t sure which one to use and spends valuable time trying to figure that out. And then if it happens, again, I just delete it. And I send them a message afterwards. And I say just the you know, there was this document there. And you know, like I said last time, it means that other people will get confused and it will take their time. So I’ve deleted it now. And if they want, they can email it support, and they’ll be able to recover that document. But if you there’s no, if there’s no consequence, people are going to keep doing it. And so I think we have every year at the beginning of the year, we have a couple of teachers who knew to the department and you know, make a mistake once or twice. And again, they get a very polite explanation, and then it doesn’t happen again. It doesn’t happen again. And it means that people don’t waste their time. And the same applies for people editing documents. Yeah, we’re blessed. Now with OneDrive and shared drive. That means like, you can look at version history, right? So if someone’s messed up or the margins in the document, you open the version history, you see who it was, you just got to have a quick conversation with that person and say, Look, if you’re not 100% sure about how the formatting and stuff just asked me and I help, yeah, but But look, and I’ve taken them, I say, look, you see how everything’s cut off now. And it’s moved to the wrong page, and blah, blah, I’m now going to have to go and edit that back. So that when we print it next year, it’s it all works, and all makes sense, okay? That’s why I don’t want you to do it. Okay. And again, you’re just making it clear, you’re being explicit, you’re giving people a chance, you’re telling them and then and then people don’t make that mistake.
Craig Barton 40:45
Again, it’s that interest in this. And because there’s a real dangers of that you can listen to this and think, Oh, God, he’s been petty about this. It’s such like small things. And when you think about reducing workload, you immediately think of the big things, right, you think of your marking policy and all that. But what I’m getting from you is that these small things, these are the real killers in terms of workload, because these are the things that that take 30 seconds of your time here a minute and a half of your time here. They frustrate you, they stretch you they build up, they they prevent you getting focused and cracking on with what you want to do. So eradicating these is possibly just as important as dealing with the kind of big hitters would that be fair?
Adam Boxer 41:20
Oh, 100%, if you’re a frontline teacher, and you’ve got six lessons in a day, and you’ve got a kid coming back in break for help with this, and you’ve got kids coming in lunch for detention, and then after school, you’ve got to call a couple of parents, and you’ve got to do some marking of units and assessment that you did today or whatever. If you get 30 emails on top of that, yeah, like when you’re going to find the time to do that. Right. So So either you’re gonna burn yourself out into the evening doing it, or you’re going to end up ignoring them. And there might be something important in there for you. So if you’re not, if you don’t sweat these details, you know, we like our staff surveys are always off the charts, right? Like every you know, I’m not, I’m not just saying this, we do a big anonymous survey as part of the academy chain every single year, it’s not even run by us, it’s run by an external polling agency. And like, our staff are happy, everyone is happy, we work hard, but we know that our workload is like, sort of really importantly, and all of those many things, they really do add up. And, you know, like we’ve had like, like, I’ve had really big internal debates about like, even the way that we enter data, because we’ve got like a central spreadsheet that we need to put data into, but also the MIS management information system. And I’m like, I’m like stressing out because I’m asking people to put data into two places. And it’s put it into our spreadsheet, so that can calculate the grades or whatever, and then put it into the MIS as well. It’s a Sims arbre, broomcorn, whatever it is that you use, and I’m trying to figure out a way so that we can do it so that it doesn’t involve that double entry. How long does it take a teacher to do that? Five minutes, seven minutes? Yeah, but that’s seven minutes. They could be planning an explanation. Well, that’s all you know, that’s seven minutes. They could be going home earlier to see their their family. Yeah, yeah. So so why would I take that away from them if I can protect it?
Craig Barton 43:07
Make sense? Make sense of them. Tip number three.
Adam Boxer 43:12
Tip number three, to reduce choppy time in lessons. Use a front loaded means the participation and wait for Golden silence.
Craig Barton 43:21
Now there’s a few buzzwords in choppy time loaded and golden silence. Take us through each of these.
Adam Boxer 43:29
Okay, choppy time is like noisy time. Yeah. When kids aren’t misbehaving. Yeah, but there’s noise. So for example, when they’re giving out the mini whiteboards, you say, yeah, so you want mini whiteboards to be given out. So give out the mini whiteboards. That leads to trophy time. Got it. Now, what we saw before earlier, is that that choppy time can escalate. And I had a whole thing that I used to say it was like Yoda star, you know, you there’s like, hey, it’s for suffering, suffering leads to anger leads to jealousy and jealousy. That kind of thing. It basically like noise, leads to hubbub leads to disruption leads to conflict leads to defines Nice. Yeah. And an experienced teachers know that. If you nip it early, it ends up always being better. And that little bit of hubbub and that bubble, that noise that you think is okay, very, very quickly turns into stuff that isn’t okay, and is uncontrollable. So, if you want to, like reduce that, that choppy time, you need to be clear with your instructions. Now telling people to be clear with their instructions is not good advice. Yeah. Because how would you if I said you’d be more clear? Yeah. What like enunciate would it’s like when people tell kids that you didn’t read the question or they read the question. They read the question. No, they need to read the question more carefully. Okay. How do you read more carefully Yeah, what like, you just do it slowly? Like, can you read slowly reading slowly as hard? Yeah, it’s actually work. So it’s just a nonsense. Yeah. So telling people they need to be clear is rubbish, right? So what they need to do is they need to front load their means of participation. Okay? So it means it means the participation is how you want the students to do the thing. So let’s say you’re asking a question you want hands up, you’re saying, hands up. And you’re being explicit about it. If you want them to answer them on the whiteboard, you’re saying, on your mini whiteboards, if you say if you want them to do it in silence, they’re gonna do it in silence. If you’re going to do it quietly talking to your partner, you’re going to do it quietly talking to a partner, that kind of stuff. And front loading is putting that at the beginning of your instruction. Because if you say something like, you know, everybody write down the equation for speed distance anyway. So if you say no, if we didn’t mini whiteboards is better. It’s easier if I say, Okay, on everyone’s get the mini whiteboards, but when you sit quietly, by the time I get to the but I want you to do quietly, they’ve started getting the mini whiteboards, and then noisy Yeah, and you’ve lost it because they’re not listening to you anymore. They’re focused on the mini whiteboards and then noise, hubbub, disruption, chaos, pandemonium, nuclear thermonuclear war, right. All of those can
Craig Barton 46:07
imagine the silence one’s a big one as well, right? If you don’t, already with the silence, they’re already exactly the person next to you
Adam Boxer 46:13
say things like Okay, guys, we’re going to do this next bit in complete silence God, nobody’s going to talk. Quietly. Grab your mini whiteboards. Nice. And then key, wait. And wait, that one of the most important ingredients to an instruction is the wait afterwards. Because what I see a lot is people start instruction, then they take a question from a kid over here, that’s a question and get over there. And then they start talking to someone at the bank. And then they start repeating their instruction or whatever. And before you know it, that hubbub is like, off the charts. You got some kids working some kids chatting, minutes each start circulating talking to this guy. Is that good? Yeah, it’s all about that way. Right? It’s about making sure that everyone’s on the same page. So So you didn’t mean to I wasn’t gonna do that talking completely quietly. Everyone’s going to get them any whiteboards. And then if a kid says also, I didn’t have my pen and you start walking over and you give him a pen. Anyone else not got a pen? Go over there. Go over there before you know it. Kids are talking. Yeah, because why wouldn’t they? Yeah. Okay. So we modified the instruction again, we say okay, we’re gonna we’re gonna do this completely without talking. If you find you don’t have a pen, and again, I’m not even saying them to get them in your eyeballs yet. I’m waiting for that to the end yet. If you find you don’t have a pen. You just raise your hands. I don’t want to hear any noise. I don’t hear you cooling out with speaking to anybody about you. And you just put your hand in the air. What are we going to do if we don’t have a pen, David? Very good. You know? What are you going to call out to me that you don’t have been in a perfect world and it’s just going to go up in the air. Nice and quiet. Excellent. Okay, is back up it? That weight that weight? Good, lovely. Write? Very, very quietly. And if we don’t have a pen, our hands gonna go up. We’re just gonna grab our mini whiteboards go now. And then I wait. Kids put their hand up. I’m still waiting. I go like this. Give me a thumbs up. I signed wait. Yeah, Makaton sign for wait. That’s that one. Okay. It’s funny because like I spend a lot of time in Israel In Israel. Everyone signs wait like this. You put like two units, you go like this. This is like a really common sign. That means wait. And I keep doing this. The kids are like, look at me like I’m completely mad. What is the second you start to introduce that noise? It all flips up. And there’s hubbub noise chaos, etc. So yeah, it’s about that way. And then once everyone’s got their mini whiteboards, and there’s kids who’ve got their pen up, you just quietly cool wonky towards you give them a box, and you just say, go take a pen to everyone with a hand up. Okay, rise up pay guys. Lovely. And then you can ask you a question. You know, and that just like, if you apply that to every single occasion where you give instructions, yeah, let’s say the kids are about to practice. Okay? You okay? So you’ve just done your check for and then you say, Okay, I said who? Please? Oh, here’s a really good one yet when it gets there when when you whiteboard up to show you their answer. Yeah. You have a look. You should have a note you go, okay. I don’t want anyone to rub off their answer. Put it down. Now, why does that work? It works because if you say put it down, some of them start rubbing off others is not rubbing off. You start talking some of the kids are listening to you. Some of the kids aren’t listening to you. You want them to look at their work, but they didn’t have their work. So you say get who wrote someone wrote 24? Who was it the route 24. And it was it Oh, I think it was gone. Lost it. You lost the magic, right? So you make sure you say don’t rip it off. Put it down and they don’t rub off and they put it down and then you talk through the answers and it’s okay guys. I want you now to quietly rub it off. Lovely. Next question. smooth, clean, clear, crisp every time. Kids are about start practising. Is there a guy’s eyes up please? We’ve all finished with them. Anyway, it was lovely eyes up here. Okay. I want everyone quietly to turn in their exercise book. Please do the clean page. Okay, really good. I want everyone’s getting their booklet turned to page 40 In please. Lovely. Question six. Don’t need to write out the question quietly by yourself onto questions six to 14. And even then I missed that. So it’s a question six verse I shouldn’t have done. I should have started by saying, we’re not going to write full sentences. We’re not going to read the question quietly by ourselves. I’m going to ask some questions six to 14. Compare that say to we’ve now finished with a mini whiteboards Okay, everyone, get your books and start questions. Six to 14. Yeah, chaos. Yeah. Yeah. Because some kids are squirrelling looking at the book, wherever and then like, which question was, especially chaos noise? How about blah, blah, blah. Yep.
Craig Barton 50:41
That’s good. Give me Give me the Give me this. I’ve got the lingo right here and give me that tip. One more time. Tell me Tell me though. I haven’t finished it yet. Oh, yeah. Go? Yeah, go go.
Adam Boxer 50:50
Okay, so a quiet class is not necessarily a class you can disturb with noise. Yeah. So so the, the, the example that I like to use is the register. Yeah. So let’s say your kids come in, there’s work for them. So on the board in silence, yeah. And they’ve just got quiet. And then they’re starting to work. If you call the register that then bad call. Yeah, because the I don’t 100% Have a good theory to fully explain this yet. But what I think is that people get engrossed in a task. And when they first start a task, they’re not engrossed in it. And any noise will like disturb them, know this or that or whatever. And if your kid like says, they don’t have a book or whatever, and you start having a conversation with that kids, you you add to the noise, noise, hubbub, etcetera. But once kids are like, focused, and in that task, when you then put a bit of noise in, it’s okay, it works. That point isn’t the point at which silence is reached. That’s, you know, a minute after. And I call that golden silence. Yeah, it’s the point in time at which they are engrossed in their work. And you can interrupt it just a little bit with a little bit of noise, or you register or talking to a kid or whatever. And you don’t flick that noise up. Some classes, by the way, will never reach golden silence. Yeah. And you need to keep a lid on them the whole whole time. Yeah. And classes like that. For example, if you ever you know, if a kid puts their hand up to ask a question, you start having a question with him across the room. Disaster. Yeah, you never ever do that. I mean, you should never do it anyway. But with some clauses worse than others, most classes will reach a point have gone silence which point you can like interact it a bit by going to talk to one key taking your eye off this key and you know, going a little bit of circulation over here or there, whatever. But yeah, if you go too early,
Craig Barton 52:35
you kill it. That century, you know that that answers a problem I’ve had for many years. And that’s I always used to get in trouble for taking the register too late. Like it is not the within the first five minutes of the lesson, some illegal things happen, or something I used to get told regularly.
Adam Boxer 52:48
But was on bells go off in Whitehall.
Craig Barton 52:51
Yeah, exactly. But like taking the register whilst they’re trying to get on with a do now or something. It’s just a disaster waiting to happen, because and now I haven’t heard you describe this because they’re not in that kind of deep focus state where anything for me is distracting them left, right and centre. So the perfect time to do the register, maybe like 20 minutes into the lesson whilst whilst they’re practising away, but sometimes you just can’t do that. That makes perfect sense.
Adam Boxer 53:14
It’s one of those we’re like, we’re like, once you’ve had a bit of experience in the classroom. It like you like oh, right, obviously. And, you know, things like, a kid tricks on a chair. Let’s say kids are quiet and working. Right? Yeah. Imagine two scenarios. Yeah, the same class. Yeah, they’re both quiet. They’re both working. A kid is moving to the bean to put some pencil shavings or whatever, and trips a bit on a chair. In both classes, and one class, everyone starts to turn right at like that. Yeah. In the other class, which is the same kids. People don’t even clock that’s because the second class has hit golden silence in the first class hasn’t. Yeah. And that’s like, it’s like a magic moment when you know that you’re in the clear. Yes, right. And if people tell you to break it before, then they’re wrong.
Craig Barton 54:10
That’s interesting. I like that right. So I’m gonna ask you again give give me the give me the three key phrases there. Alright,
Adam Boxer 54:15
so we had to reduce choppy time, which is that like noisy Vasily. But yet frontloaded is about it. The beginning means participation is how you want them to participate. And so like quietly or in your books, or whatever, and then go on silence is the point at which you could disturb things a little bit and there won’t be chaos. And in terms of phrases that I’ve borrowed, so means participation I’ve stolen from Douglas of choppy time isn’t a real phrase. It’s just like normal. And then front loaded and gone. silence I made up myself. Hey,
Craig Barton 54:48
go. Love it. Love it. Right. Tip number four, please.
Adam Boxer 54:55
All right, to make good use of data compared to other subjects.
Craig Barton 55:00
Yeah, tell told me about this, because and the reason I found this interesting was, it’s very easy, isn’t it just to get kind of in your own silo just focused on, in my case, the math results, and so on and so forth. So why are we bringing in other subjects?
Adam Boxer 55:13
Yeah, so So most data in schools is nonsense. And it’s used really, really badly. And the reason why is because it takes average measures and applies them to individuals. So it’s like, you know, if you have, let’s say, you’ve got a kid who’s in year nine, or whatever. And so they start schooling year seven, and they’re 110 centimetres tall. And then in year nine, they’re 160 centimetres tall. And you go to the little charts on the NHS, and it says, Well, look, you know, 11 year olds who are 110 centimetres tall, on average, end up being 170 centimetres tall. When they’re in year nine. This child is clearly too short. I mean, like, that’s obviously nonsense, right? Because there’s average measures. Yeah, on average, the kids in year seven who are x will end up being being why, you know, and that’s what all school data is. Right? All school data is, you know, secondary, secondary data. Yeah. For the, for the, for the, you’ve got 500,000 students in every cohort. In general, for the 50,000 students that come in at this particular level, they go out at that particular level. And then what we do is we say, right, well, this student was in that bracket. Why aren’t they at that level? Now? Yeah, yeah. They’re below target. Yeah. Well, it’s, you know, it’s normal. It’s natural. Yeah, don’t stress. So a lot of time, that’s a problem. And you get sent data that says, these kids are below target. Do something about it. Yeah. So so the problem is, yeah, for every kid that’s below target, there’ll be a kid who’s above target. And that’s again, normal and natural. And so it’s difficult then to figure out who the kids that you really actually like, Okay, this kids below target their target stupid. Yeah, yeah. I mean, one kid who just got a six, or four or whatever, and their target is a nine, like, yeah, it could be that I’m really shitting my job. Or it could be that their target is rubbish. It can be, of course, you can never really know. But the point is you that’s the point you can’t really know. So what what we tend to do in the department is we say, right, well, these kids are below target. Let’s see how they did in Maths and English. Right? Okay. So let’s say I’ve got a kid whose target is a six. And they got fall in science. I look at their math in English, and they got four in maths and I got four in English. Okay, I don’t care. Kids fine. Kids find targets wrong. Yep. But if I look at that kid is he got four in science got six is six, target. And he’s got six in English six in maths. Okay, what are they doing that? I’m not? Yeah, because? Look, obviously, it could be some kids are really good at English and maths and not good at science. Yeah. But in most cases, you’d expect students to be roughly in the right place and plus or minus one. Yeah, if it gets five in science and six English or math? Yeah, not that bothered. Right. But if a kid is two grades out, then I started thinking, hang on. Could I be doing something differently? That is smart use of data? Yeah. Because it kind of removes that. That natural error around the distance between where they are and their target, and says, you know, if you’ve got a kid who’s got four for you, and they’ve got seven in English and 70 mess, you’re doing something wrong. It’s not necessary. You’re doing something wrong, but you could do something differently to help that kid out more. Yeah, what what’s going on in English and maths that he’s doing fine. And he’s not in science? What’s the story here? Investigate, figure out. Yeah, don’t use that data as a stick to beat people with. But you say, what, what is going on here. And I think that’s a, I think that is a good use of data. I mentioned, some statisticians will say it’s still well dodgy. But I think in general, that’s a better route. And there will be times, you know, so we sit around and look at data like this as a department, because it’s important, if you’re entering data, you do something with it, we don’t enter a lot of data and the data that we do, and we do something with, we look at the data and we say, Look, you know, this kid is this is where they are, this is where they could be, is anything we can do different. And sometimes the teacher will be like, I don’t know what I could do differently. And I say, you know, do you think if I put them on a report to me, do you think that would help? Maybe I don’t know this, that or the other, you have that conversation. And then you tailor your response accordingly. You don’t use a stick to beat someone with and we’re not we don’t have like data targets. So we didn’t have you know, those three targets a year if your performance management or whatever. So yeah, I think that’s just like a quick, it’s not necessarily easy. It depends on your data systems, but you should be able to get someone to teach you how to do a VLOOKUP or pull out from for matrix or whatever, to figure out what they’ve got in English in minutes. But that can give you much, much, much, much, much better information than just looking at their distance from their target. That’s brilliant. That always works. works the other way around. You can have a kid who’s on their target. Yes. If a kid is His target is four, he got four in science, but he’s got eight in English and maths. Yeah. Don’t be resting on your laurels. Yeah, because it’s not good enough.
Craig Barton 1:00:13
That’s interesting. I remember a few years ago, this year 11 class and there was a lot in there. And everyone wanted him to be in their class, because he got a ridiculously low result at SATs at Key Stage two, and you could like he was going to absolutely smash his target. And he was just like, amazing. And you obviously know what a great teacher I am because he’s going to beat his target by three levels or whatever. But then you had other kids in the class who you thought I mean, their targets a joke, but you kind of dismiss that as a joke on celebrate the ones where they
Adam Boxer 1:00:43
and that kid the proof of the pudding is that kid will have been doing the same in English, math and science, etc. Yeah, so I mean, good job, Craig. Yeah, well done. But yeah, but the kid is doing better in maths and they are in science and English and history or whatever. Yeah, that’s the kid to celebrate. Yeah, not to celebrate that kid but to say I’ve done a good job by this guy.
Craig Barton 1:01:03
That’s good. Love it. Final tip of an item. What is it
Adam Boxer 1:01:07
to make homework more effective? Integrate it with classwork?
Craig Barton 1:01:12
This intrigues me Go on, tell me what you mean by this.
Adam Boxer 1:01:16
So I said at the beginning that I am the Education Director, carousel learning, which is not on my platform. It’s it’s an online quizzing platform. And I’ve been thinking very, very hard for for about a year and a half now about homework. And I think the majority of homework doesn’t work. Yeah, I think most schools, most departments, most teachers are like, Yeah, I set homework, but like, it’s just nothing. And I think that I think there’s, there’s a few reasons for that. I think the two main reasons are accountability and value. So accountability is where the students are held to account for their homework performance. So and that can range from a kid who doesn’t do their homework to they get a consequence. Is there a follow up? Normally? No, there is no. And but it can range up to the quality of their homework as well. Yeah, kids hands up, you’ve set them 10 questions at home? They’ve done the first two or so I didn’t understand. Yeah, the rest. Yeah, I mean, what do we need to understand? Well, I just couldn’t, I couldn’t do question three, and I’m all about question four. And I would you mean, I can do question three. What my question, right, so So that happens a lot. There’s accountability there. But that blog also, like, who’s gonna give attention for that? Yeah, because, like, they’ve done homework, they’re just gonna, they’re just gonna resent you never give it attention to a kid who wants it’s never it never has a strong words yet. But giving it attention to a kid who doesn’t understand what they’ve done is wrong. who disagrees with you about whether what they’ve done is wrong? It’s, it’s good, in a sense, because the detention sends a signal to everybody else that this behaviour is unacceptable, right? But for that kid, it’s clearly not going to do anything. It’s just going to breed resentment. Yeah. So if a kid like, like genuine doesn’t get what I just didn’t understand, like, so which one from my life? Yeah, I didn’t understand it. Not putting them in detention. But what that means is that the accountability bar is low. Yeah, there’s no accountability. There’s also value that I think a lot of kids just don’t see the point. They think that homework is something that teachers do, because it’s part of their job, and their parents would complain, and there’s a policy and it just needs to get done. And, and I think both these things are a big problem. And one of the ways to kill those two birds with one stone is about integrating the homework with the classwork. So for example, if you use a do now that’s based off questions from the homework, yeah. And you’re explicit about the fact that you’re going to do a due now based on the homework, you’re explicit about the fact that I’m doing this because the homeworks important, and I want you to see, if you do the homework properly, you do better in class, and I’d be so proud of you, because you’re turned into a brilliant scientist. So what you’re doing is you’re showing them the value by feeding it into class. Right? And you then also raising cans ability because what you’re saying this is key, if you say, if you’re saying it’s okay that you’re going to take questions from the homework and put them in to do now, if they get to do now wrong. It shows whatever they did. They didn’t do the homework properly. proofs in the pudding it? Yeah. You said, Look, guy. Yeah, you’re telling me you did the homework shoot fine. Again. Yeah. But like, you couldn’t do the due now. Something’s going wrong. I’m going to hold you to account for it. This is what we’re going to do. Doesn’t necessarily mean a detention. It might say you might say, you know, we keep kids behind we give them a laptop, we say show me how you do your homework. Let me help. Let me help. Ya, I want you to do better in class. That’s I give you the homework so that you can do better in glasses cleaning, not working. Let me help. Let me see what you’re doing. You do all of that through integration. And you know, I’ve given you a five minute precis like I could spend hours talking about how to do this, you know, we’ve just written a document for carrousel good retrieving better, which goes into this, you know, quite deeply we give webinars about this kind of stuff, because it’s difficult to get right But when you do, you are bawling because the kids like get that the homework and the classwork a one, and that they kind of mutually reinforce each other.
Craig Barton 1:05:11
So a couple of quick couple or just questions or points on this, I think it’s the first one that that kids not knowing the purpose of homework is it is a massive one. And I’m a bit obsessed with this, even like the do now kids not knowing the why we bother with the 10 hour. You know, it’s it’s a big one, isn’t it? Because we kind of assume that they they know, or they’ll take it seriously, but unless they know the purpose of it, it’s it’s it’s really problematic. And my question was, though, does this only work if the kids so imagine you’re a child and you’ve you’ve tried your home? You’ve genuinely tried to home? Can you genuinely got stuck on it? There’s got to be kind of an avenue for them to go down to get some support. I assume that that’s the kind of a prerequisite for this to work.
Adam Boxer 1:05:51
Yeah, but But what but I would expect if a kid turns up and they’ve not done homework, because they didn’t understand it, and I didn’t get an email. I’ll hold them to account.
Craig Barton 1:06:01
Right. Okay. Okay.
Adam Boxer 1:06:03
It’s not it’s not good enough.
Craig Barton 1:06:04
Yeah, yeah. That’s good. Okay. And if you see results from this, this seemed to work in terms of the kids taking the homeworks. More seems this participation rate of homework gone up? And oh, yeah, definitely.
Adam Boxer 1:06:15
Yeah. So we set one homework, where each class gets at least one quiz a week, and I get 95% completion, and to good standards. It took a long time to, you know, months, months, weeks, off a term, maybe a bit longer. And and if
Craig Barton 1:06:39
a teacher is looking to implement this, well, what are some of the key things they’ve got to get right as the message into kids, I assume is going to be fairly high up the list?
Adam Boxer 1:06:46
Yeah, look, it’s difficult. And again, you know, I’m not here to advertise carousel, but you’re, you’re limited by platform as well. If your homework is just, you know, do questions online, or whatever it is do questions from a book booklet, or wherever and you’re not going to be checking them, you’re just gonna be going over them in class, a lot of kids are gonna slip through your net, it’s inevitable. So, you know, we, we built garrison in certain ways, so that it would be easier for people to do stuff like this. So you can look at every student’s response and mark them all. You know, you can mark a 15 question quiz from 30 Kids in less than five minutes. Right, then automatically gives you a display that you can use in class as a do now. It allows you to identify questions that a lot of students found difficult, identify misconceptions, you can mark them in front of the kids, you can even if a homework is not due, you can use the questions as you’re doing now. You put them up on your whiteboard, it allows you to generate quiz from them. So we built it so that you could do that. But if you’ve got a fire and forget programme, and and by the way, even really good programmes, yeah. Which are adaptive and have really good questions and supporting materials and videos and stuff. There’s normally there’s no feed through into class, other than you’ve done it, you’ve done it you’ve not done Yes, yeah. And it doesn’t you know that that’s that that’s that’s going to put a limit. It’s going to put a limit on you.
Craig Barton 1:08:09
Okay, so it’s it’s not just the fact that the kids can get the kind of automated feedback or whatever know whether they’re right or wrong. It’s the key is this feed through into class? That’s the kind of make or break for this.
Adam Boxer 1:08:19
Yeah, that is my opinion. And my experience
Craig Barton 1:08:24
had that has been absolutely fantastic. And now it’s over to you. Is there anything you would recommend our listeners check out on I’ll put a link to this in the show notes.
Adam Boxer 1:08:34
Yes, Teach Like a Champion, which I always recommend. What things did we talk about? We spoke about mini whiteboards. Yeah, Teach Like a Champion is great. Team ethic stuff. There’s some cool books that I’ve heard of that I’ve never read. Radical candour is very I’ve heard about I’ve never read that as well. I’ve never read it sounds smashing. Yeah. data you need to read Becky Allen’s blogs for sure. And also Adam Robbins has a really good blog about target grades as has been Newmark has really good blog about target grades, and then homework and classwork. Look, you’re not here to hawk my wares. If you go on to the carousel learning blog. All of the blogs that I’ve written, I’ve aimed to be useful for everyone, even if you’re not a carousel user. And there aren’t a lot of blogs that I’ve seen about homework and how to get homework to work. It just doesn’t seem to be a particularly well developed area. Everybody be talking about curriculum and cognitive science. And I was like, yeah, how do we actually get kids to do their work?
Craig Barton 1:09:40
Well unbox it. That’s been absolutely fantastic. Thanks so much for joining us on the tips for teachers podcast.
Adam Boxer 1:09:47
My pleasure. Great. Thanks for having me.
