More tips from Harry Fletcher-Wood
Video transcript
all right hurry tip number three um so tip number three is build habits not one-off things and concretely it’s identifying the lasting changes you want people to make and the support that is needed to make that happen um and so part of that was a wrote this book about formative assessment responsive teaching and i knew after that i wanted to do something about okay you’ve got the best lesson plan in the world you’ve got the best formative question in the world by literally i’ve talked to teachers who are like well i write i give exit tickets and students just won’t answer them what am i meant to do about that and i was particularly interested in in the behavioral science so you know we’ve been working like crazy to make sure that our lesson plans are like attempt to quantitative load and work in memory and dual coding and this that and the other and and it’s like are we um are we accessing behavioral science in the same way when we think about how we motivate and encourage students or is it mostly tips and tricks and trial and error the biggest thing i learned in in the process was that actually the the title i came up with which was habit of success came quite late because i realized that habits are kind of the key thing that i think we need to to address so we talk a lot about motivation i get asked a lot how can i motivate my students to do their homework or try hard or start writing when i ask them to whatever it is and the problem with motivation is um let’s say i have this i’ve got a student who isn’t motivated for whatever reason and i do this like incredibly inspiring thing and i motivate them to do whatever i want as i want them to i’ve done it once and i’m relying on myself to then do it again tomorrow and so i’m not actually solving the underlying issue and so it’s it’s ca is there a process whereby we can say well what is the thing that i want them to do every lesson what is the habit that’s going to make a difference for them right now and how can i partly through motivation but partly through um the prompts the encouragement the the social norms that i highlight and get them to do this on a regular basis and so instead of saying i’m gonna spend five minutes having a negotiation about whether whether they should put pen to paper it’s like actually you want a habit which is as soon as you’re asked to start writing you start writing and even if you’re stuck you just write stuff and then you know fix it later and the fractal part of this again is that if you’re asking teachers to change things quite often it’s like can you do this thing you get asked to do it once and actually spending a chunk of time pinning down what are the two or three things and this might be for an individual teacher this might be for a department this might be for a whole school what are the two or three things that are going to most make a difference to our students and how can we help teachers to change their habits or how can i as a teacher change my own habit and it is what is going to make a lasting lasting difference because we know we’ve all done it you know tried this thing for a bit and then i stopped doing it because i was just too busy and other stuff was going on and if we want to make lasting improvements we need to get away from that lovely it’s harry right just two points on this one that spring to mind first is it ties brilliantly into one of your previous ones about this less being more right like we have all these decisive there’s 27 things we want our kids to be doing every lesson and it just it just doesn’t happen so focusing on your big hitters what are going to be the ones that are going to cause them to learn more and so on like we’ll worry about the other ones later let’s just focus on on the big hitters and then this is the worst i mean i asked some bad questions generally harry but this is this is a bad one um i don’t suppose we could perhaps maybe think of a habit that we want to kind of instill in our students and you could just talk through a couple of kind of practical ways i know it’s going to be bespoke to different teachers and different kids but that may be worth trying and exploring with with students you can either choose a habit or i could make one up whatever whatever works for you well tell me a challenge tell me a thing that you’ve seen students not doing recently that and then we’ll we’ll work out a habit for you oh okay nice nice all right so let’s go for that’s a really good one um right i got one i got and i got because i saw this in a school the other day what’s interesting about this it’s not your kind of obvious kind of just bad behavior it’s but it’s something that can potentially derail a lesson and that is every time the teacher was um was asking a question of the students one or two students were just kind of shouting out chatting out the answer kind of straight away wherever the teacher wanted them to consider it kind of independently have a discussion with the partner and so on and so forth so a potentially bad habit but you know if you solve that for us harry that’d be amazing cole so so the this is another area where i think like think habitual thinking is helpful because instead of like you know we ask students not to do a thing and then we’re like if you do that thing again you’ll get an attention and then some of them just keep doing it even when we’ve made it as as like unpleasant especially for them as we uh ethically can um and so the the the thing here is to look well like a habit is an automated response to a situation and so for some students for whatever reason it might be because they’re really keen and like because they’re showing off like because they’re genuinely trying to derail the lesson and the the automated response i know the answer i’m going to shout it out so so the first so so to break a habit you have to break this link between the situation and the response um now one way to do that is to have these motivational conversations another way to do that is to punish but often that’s not actually the responsive instinct yeah it’s not not going to do the job and so probably the most obvious thing to do is to change the um situation in some way so instead of for example um instead of saying i’m going to ask a question and it’s like i’m going to put make room really quiet and calm i’m going to put the question up on the board we’re going to look at it together so i’m not asking i’m not expecting a response and likewise it could be like pens are in hand it’s who’s going to write down the response quickest and then i’ll take hands up so you you those who are competitive can still compete in some way and but but you’re you’re sort of creating a situation which makes it sludge some of the theorists call it you’re making it actively harder for students to do the thing you don’t want them to do without resorting to life if you do that again it’s an attention because again if it’s enthusiasm you don’t want to kill it but like uh um yeah so so something like that like ever i’m gonna put a question on the board everyone’s gonna be totally quiet um everyone’s gonna write down their answer then you’re going to turn to partners and i’m going to be looking for the person who writes it best because that’s the first person i’m going to call on and again you can then you know if that works or even if it’s promising make that a habit for not clearly not for every question because it’ll take forever but for the big disc knowing that we’re cutting things in half we’re going to cut half our questions and just ask the best questions um for our top questions do it that way make it a habit students will get used to it and hopefully come to like that’s lovely that harry the problem is you’ve answered that a bit too well so i’m going to have to ask you a follow-up to that so the first thing to say just to relate back to the previous guest on the show adam boxer he said something one of his tips seems to fit really well with that he had some kind of a catchy way of saying it front load the means of participation and what he was saying there is before asking the question he would say right before i put this guy i’m going to put a question up on the board soon i want you to answer this in silence by writing it down so whereas in the past what i do the question goes up on the board and then i said oh no wait a minute wait a minute i’ll be quiet you can be quiet answering this and so on so i that that’s been quite a bit of a game change for me that seems to fit in really well with this kind of habit forming and what you said about changing the kind of environment as opposed to trying to react to things that i don’t if you want to respond to that that feels like it fits in well with what you’re saying yeah i mean it sort of ties to the classic like when i say go yeah yeah that you learned like to do this all right when i say go definitely front loading the things and thinking about cognitive processing like what needs to happen first what like as a student what do i need to know i’m gonna do this that’s how i’m gonna do it and now i’m ready to go so yeah i completely would agree with that but but again if we can make it habitual we’re making life a little bit easier for everybody that’s nice so my follow-up question is another terrible one she wants in my last terrible one so well what about teachers you mentioned if we want teachers to change and develop habits because we if anything they’re worse than kids right because you leave a cpd session thinking right ah i’m all over this now i’m going to do this and then life gets in the way so any thoughts on that about how either i’m thinking either from the perspective of a cpd giver or a cbd receiver what are some of the things that can help there so yeah let’s think about sort of a prototypical cpd session that i might have led when i started out leading cpd sessions we’re going to talk about some stuff i’ll share some evidence with you we’ll discuss it and you’re going to go away and lo and behold didn’t happen and again not you know like not a word against my colleagues like they were busy and i was saying go off and do this different thing and make time for it and it’s just just not gonna happen so it’s this thing okay um here’s a thing i’m gonna narrow down like to a fairly tight goal that you’re then going to interpret in a way that’s going to fit your classroom and but you know it’s not going to be too vague we’re going to spend time in the lesson designing a version of let’s say it’s a different quest let’s say it is a hinge question um so we’re going to spend time a lesson you’re going to design a hinge question for an upcoming lesson we’re then going to practice using it so you’ve got experience doing it we’re then going to put in place some sort of prompt trigger that so it might be like you’re going to put a little um like put a little blue star on the powerpoint if you’re using a powerpoint put a little timer to go off something like that put a reminder first thing wednesday morning it’s going to go ping that’s going to say remember you’re trying to hinge question period three whatever it is and set up some accountability so ask a colleague can you pop in and see me do it and then bring them back so that you’re going to review it again and then when you review it again let’s you know what we learned what’s gone well this was a disaster okay how can we change it let’s set another one so there’s a couple of things going on there one you’re trying to reinforce the action and encourage it to happen but two you’re getting into a habit of improvement habit of trying stuff bringing it with your colleagues finding ways to make it better it’s really nice that harry um one thing i’ve started doing now and again it’s directly related to that if i’m asked to do a talk i always want to have a follow-up if possible to because as you say get that accountability to get people back together but if that can’t happen one one little change i’ve made and it’s exactly what you’ve said there is if i’m doing a session on diagnostic questions or problem solving whatever it may be the example i always ask the teachers to think of a lesson that they’re going to be planning you know tomorrow or the next day or whatever just so any work that they do in that session is almost like time saving they’ve got every reason then to use it because it’s saving them time whereas in the past i might have just been we’ll all be doing the example that i’m doing on the board and if you’re not teaching that for a term where’s your incentive you’re gonna have to start from zero just little things like that can make make a difference can’t they i’m always happy when you get to an end of cpd session and you see someone turn around to their colleagues that’s actually quite useful because yeah that’s it that’s it’s like trick with you know like we’ve told you some stuff that might be useful but actually you’re going away thinking cpd is useful and i’m ahead of that to be rather behind and that’s a really good incentive then next time instead of turning up a cbd session with your market or yeah i’m not sure i want to be here feeling um yeah so i completely agree i think it’s a really really really wise thing lovely that harry no i realize you’re kind of the habit king is there anything else you wanted to say on this tip before we before we move on i don’t think so well yeah no i don’t i don’t think so we’ll may come back to them later but um just habits think habits yeah i like it fantastic