Craig Barton 0:00 Hello and welcome to the tips for teachers podcast with me Craig Barton. Now you may be noticing some background noise because in a tips for teachers are world exclusive. I am here live in Piccadilly station Manchester in the great northwest of England, but I’m not on my own. I am joined by my longtime podcast co host conference takeaway resource queen, Joe Morgan. Hello, Joe. Hello, Craig. How are you?
Jo Morgan 0:26 I’m good. Thank you great conference today and looking forward to a nightmare journey home later because the trains are not in a good way. No, it’s
Craig Barton 0:32 not good. But it doesn’t matter because we’re here we’re doing a podcast is all wet coats. So this is one of our conference takeaway podcasts. Now longtime listeners of the Mr. Barton mas podcast will know all about these we’ve done from everywhere driver, we were saying we’ve done him from Alton Towers,
Jo Morgan 0:45 that was the best it was like 30 degrees sitting out in front of a roller coaster. Yeah,
Craig Barton 0:49 we’ve done him from hotels where we’ve had a bit to drink.
Jo Morgan 0:52 We did remember University of Warwick can we did it in the student halls. Yeah.
Craig Barton 0:56 We’re gonna do one in a spa. But that was
Jo Morgan 0:59 unfortunate. COVID cancelled the spark or
Craig Barton 1:01 now we’re in the glamorous location of Piccadilly station in Manchester. So you may hear some announcements, rail announcements, we’ll just go with that. So the way we’re going to structure this a bit different to fit in with the tips for teachers theme is we’ve been to the LaSalle Mass Comm 30. We’ve seen where we’ve run a session, and we’ve seen four sessions in addition to that. And we’ve I’ve tasked Joe with trying to come up with five tips tips for teachers, from all the sessions that she’s seen. I’ve come up with five I’ve no idea what Josie is Joe doesn’t know where mine is. So we’re just gonna tell each other our tips and see where we go. So Joe Morgan, let’s start with you. What’s tip number one, please.
Jo Morgan 1:36 Okay, so tip number one is assess prerequisites. And this is something that was talked about in Stuart Welch’s session, which was called Think fast the art of responding in the moment. And it was really about responsive teaching. And there was a point in it where he said, I he doesn’t like end of topic tests. Now, I love my end of topic tests. And what we do at my school, is we have a thing called a learning snapshot, which is another topic test that’s done. So all the subjects do them. And they all have them they will on yellow paper. And that sounds like enough. Like who cares what kind of paper they’re on? Actually, the students take them really seriously. Because they know that they’re sitting in the lesson with something that’s a whole across the school, every subject does it the same. And our snapshots in maths have. They have the topic we’ve just learned. So for example, my attends did one last week on trigonometry, sine and cosine rule. And then at the end, they have some retrieval questions on stuff that they that isn’t in that topic we’ve just learned. But normally, it’s stuff that they’ve been doing and they’re less than warmups. So say for example, I’ve recently been doing expanded double brackets and the lesson warm up, then there’ll be a question in the snapshot on that. And that helps increase engagement in the warm ups because they know they’ll be tested on that stuff. And so it’s interesting when, when she said he doesn’t like ended up with tests, but he said, I tell you, what’s more important is testing prerequisites. And that’s that was really interesting as it links to something I learned another conference I went to. So last week, I went to the pixel conference where I was speaking. And there was an excellent speaker called Tom, and I can’t remember their name, but he was very good. And he said, he talked about assessment. And he said that assessments in maths and of topic assessments should have three things in them. They should have retrieval questions. Yes, they should have the topic you’ve just done, because you do want it you know, even though yes, they might forget it in a few weeks, it is helpful to see. And then he said, they should also have a couple of questions on the prerequisites for the next topic. Why have I never thought about? So just like after half term, I’m doing quadratics with my year 10. So I could have asked some questions that would help me understand the starting point for quadratics, or with my year elevens. I’ve just given them a snapshot on histograms. And I could have put a couple of questions on angles, because we’re doing circles there. And it would have helped me assess my starting point. So I thought this was a nice link between the two conferences I’ve been to this week. And it’s really just a very sensible and kind of almost obvious thing to do that some somehow i i haven’t quite picked up on. I know some people do give pre tests. And we don’t do that in my school. But including prerequisite questions, prerequisite skill questions in end of unit tests, I thought very sensible. I like that would
Craig Barton 4:05 no reason it can work for homeworks as well. Right. Like, as long as the kids do the homework and take it seriously.
Jo Morgan 4:10 Yeah, I guess the thing is, you know, so I school we do Haggerty homework and and that means that we’re not really apart from monitoring that they’re doing it we’re not really looking at it. But yeah, I suppose what we’ve and the other the other challenge would be like I’m a bit of a obsessed with. If I give a test, I like to mark it that evening and return at the next lesson. So it was it’s always better to give it on like the last lesson you seen that week and it gives you a few days extra sewer. I like sounds like a market because I just really want to give it back to them next lesson. Whereas some of my colleagues who’ve got more classes than me might take a bit longer to market and then that’s then not going to work. So I think this might have been David suggestion. David ferrum suggested that you could put in, say, you could just mark the three prerequisite questions. So if you haven’t got time to mark the entire test, at least you can go through and mark those prerequisite questions before you start your next lesson. And that’s quite smart. I think so good idea from David
Craig Barton 5:00 Good tip that I like that one. Very, very good. Okay, right one for me very quick one. So I went to Andrew Taylor’s session where he was reviewing AQa summer exams, blah, blah, blah. And I put a Twitter thread out on this, and I’ll link to it in the show notes of questions where kids did worse than you would expect them to them and questions where they did better than you’d expect them to do. And they were really interested was any kind of delve into the reasons why a one recurring theme was units, as soon as any question needs kids to do anything with a unit, they do crap on it, basically. So he shared a really interesting one where it was fascinating. It was a triangle to the sides were marked in maybe centimetres and one of them in millimetres. And all they had to do was write as a fraction, the like, shorter side, angle side. And they couldn’t do it
Jo Morgan 5:52 because they had to convert the unit. But they can’t do it, or they’re not spotting the units are different. Well, either
Craig Barton 5:56 way, either way. Units, I think need a big focus from
Jo Morgan 6:01 because that’s a city that’s carelessness and rushing, which because actually, last night, last week, I did a question on the board, I was going through a question where there were different units that I didn’t spot. And then one of my students said, that one says mitigators. And it’s not that I don’t know how to do it. So it’s actually you have to sort of figure out is it that they don’t know how is it that they’re rushing? But that’s interesting isn’t you know, isn’t it, I tell you something about units that interests me is that when they’re in as far as I know, in case they choose SATs, they never have to write the unit. And it’s always written there for them. So we when we used to do baseline tests in year seven, and we would write include units with your answer on an area question. They didn’t know what that instruction men, like they literally didn’t know, what does this mean, include units of your answer? So that’s something that you know, seven teachers need to be aware of that that instruction is something they’ll need to explain.
Craig Barton 6:47 That’s good. That’s good. Yep. So my tip is just make sure either we’ll cover units more basically make sure we can do the conversions and practice. And again, it’s the classic thing, either right, the unit sin before you do the working out of the answer, or whatever it takes the units or a point. Yes, right, Joe tip to
Jo Morgan 7:05 use a variety of techniques for differentiation. So this was from a session I was sitting with you and which was from two excellent speakers involved in White Rose. So this was Ian once again, surname. And Davis, and it was Matt and I, this is one I don’t know how to pronounce his last name. So apologies, Ames cough, I think or something like that. Um, so brilliant session, I’ve really enjoyed it, I really enjoyed it. In fact, you were laughing at me because I was literally opened up my my scheme of work and editors in the session based on what they were saying. But so the thing about differentiation was they were talking about how you adapt your lesson to the class in front of you. And they said, there’s a whole load of techniques you can do. So if you’re taking an off the shelf PowerPoint, and you want to edit it for your class, they talked about choice of numbers, whether you let them use calculators, you know, if you’re doing angles with a weaker cast, just let me use calculator with anyone let me use a calculator and choice of questions, removing elements, providing elements rewording things, and basically adapting the level of support that you’re you’re providing, but there’s all these lovely techniques to make an off the shelf lesson suitable for your particular group in front of you. So you know, it’s, it’s nice to think about, like different ways that you can decrease or increase level of challenge.
Craig Barton 8:29 Yeah, well, I had a related one on there. So let’s, let’s box this off now. So I got I’ve got adapt off the shelf resources from the same session, but specifically, so I’m very lucky these days, I get to visit tonnes of schools. And I see one of two things happening with lessons quite a lot. So I see off the shelf lessons being used exactly as they’re presented. And the teachers are clicking through slide after slide after slide. And it’s really problematic. There’s no no flexibility to it, there’s no chance to adapt if either the kids are struggling or the kids are going quicker than you think. Or you see others where you’ve got novice teachers trying to do everything from scratch, and they really struggle. So it seems to me like the perfect balances. Let’s have an off the shelf thing available, whether it’s similar wires or whether like you were talking about how you have your lessons that you plan out available for your staff. Yeah. And then spend the time adapting as opposed to starting from scratch. I mean, it’s quite hard for a lot of teachers. So start with some a decent Yeah, then do exactly what you’re saying. Yeah.
Jo Morgan 9:32 Yeah. And it was interesting that Matt was acknowledging that he said that he can have to set to your nine classes where he wants he thinks he can use the same lesson. And he can’t use the same lesson because different classes. So it’s it’s interesting, because we’re told to not that we should use off the shelf lessons because it reduces our workload, but they were acknowledging and they and they did a really good job of explaining why you have to look at those lessons in advance and you have to kind of fix them so they’re right for you that we have in front of you They acknowledged that.
Craig Barton 10:01 Yeah, yeah, really good, really good. Okay, so I’ll do Tip two, because this was from your session Josie, you did one on area in depth one of your classic in depth sessions, award winning in depth. So this way you do all the classics, you go through what they should know from primary misconceptions and saunas, and then you get to your favourite, where you do all the resources. Yeah, so my tip was very, very simple. And just for math teachers, don’t forget the old classics, because you show a shed? Well, one resource I completely forgotten about that I love from the standard, you know, yeah, that’s a great one, which is a brilliant one. And I’ll link to that in the show notes. I took a photo from all the resources from your session on Twitter. But then also, I always forget the smile resources and you share them. They just, yeah, they’re really good. They’re almost kind of like the precursors to a lot of dumb Stuart’s tasks. And yeah,
Jo Morgan 10:45 absolutely. And that’s, it was, yeah, the one that I showed where there is that boxing in method where you want to find an area of an awkward shape, you can draw a box around it and subtract the bits around the outside. Like, it’s interesting that I saw the Don Stewart task on it. And I thought that reminds me of a smile task. And then I found it in the old haling textbook, and they there, that’s where I got the word the phrase boxing in. But yeah, I think a lot of John Stuart stuff is kind of, because it’s all reasoning based. And that’s what smile well, but again, new teachers can go to stem centre and look for the smile resources. And the only problem is the files are scan. So they’re not great quality, but they’re totally usable. Yeah, pretty good, Sally
Craig Barton 11:23 good. And just a little bonus one on that. Now boxing and you made a really good point. So for listeners who don’t know boxing is if you’ve got, like a weird looking shape with like diagonal lines. And so on Squared paper, you essentially kind of draw a rectangle around it through through all the vertices and then subtract triangles. And you made the point, Joe, that we issue that’s actually harder than Well, kids find it hard to imagine to find it, but it’s good practice of area of a triangle, identifying perpendicular lengths and all that. Yeah.
Jo Morgan 11:53 And and it’s good to sort of, it kind of reinforces the concept of area being the number of squares covered. And, and there’s lots of reasoning in there. And then, you know, sometimes I’ll do groups, we’ve got two questions where they have to subtract something, or they try and find an area of a shape in a really long winded way. And I say, well, can’t you just, you know, subtract this. And it’s a really useful skill. So it’s good to sort of do that kind of thing in year seven, where we shouldn’t just say, Well, it’s an area before, so let’s just skip over it. We’ll just say, well, they’ve done it before. So let’s go into greater depth by doing that kind of thing.
Craig Barton 12:25 Exactly, exactly. So I’ll put links to the images I shared in the show notes. So I’ve been three tips. Now. Just that must be your your Tip three, maybe my
Jo Morgan 12:32 Tip three, yes. So this is a plan a curriculum that’s suitable for the classes you teach. Now, obviously, we have told the curriculum to teach by it. So we’ve got the national curriculum, and then our schools that we work in interpret that into a scheme of work. But then the against in the same session by in a map from White Rose, they were they they did this wonderful example of congruence and similarity. And they said, here’s all the Susan the steps or the things you need to cover. And then figure out if you were teaching a group in year 10, a working at a grade three or four, which bits would you teach if your work had a grade eight or nine group which bits and then and then there’s sort of trickier, the five, six group. And obviously the if you’ve got the foundation, people have to teach only the highest stuff. And that gives you more time for the kind of, say more time to focus on the things they really need, like, say, starting with a refresher on enlargement. Whereas with your higher group, you might say, Well, they probably know how to do enlargement from Key Stage Three, obviously, you check that, but then you can spend some time on negative enlargement. And then it was like, you know, with your higher group, you’re going to do those congruency proofs, you’re going to do those, those volume and error scale factors, and look at foundation group, what like they were talking about where you might want to focus your time. And it just it again, it’s similar to the thing they were saying about adapting the lessons themselves. And they’re talking about that skill of adapting that curriculum. Because you know, every teacher needs to do that, like, you know, unless you’re in a school where the sequence you teach is canned. And you’re not allowed to deviate from that, then we’re all kind of responding to our class and changing things as we go. In terms of the sequence of lessons. And it was a really good example of that, because it is a it’s a topic that kind of spans a lot of difficulty level. Yes.
Craig Barton 14:13 And just related to that this isn’t a tip. But I always think it’s worth thinking. If the order that this your schema work at the object is within a unit is the right order to tell the story you want to tell? Yeah, I’m going deep here, right? So obviously, like you have a certain amount of objects, if you’ve got a cover and as you say, you want to think for your class, which ones am I going to get to and blah, blah, blah. But then also, if you leave in some out, it might make sense just to reject the order just to tell a more coherent narrative, how you introduce them. So I often find teachers are quite rigid in terms of sticking to the order but you don’t need to write you know, you choose the order you do things. Yes.
Jo Morgan 14:50 Yeah.
Craig Barton 14:52 Roger Morgan. Well, my last two are from the final session. So you might as well do your tip for now then because I think your last one will be from that So, yeah, so
Jo Morgan 15:00 um, so my tip is to deepen understanding of a topic by looking at boundary example. And, and this is from your session, which was very, very good, I got a lot of ideas from it. I don’t like to flatter you, but it was very good. And this is all about learner generated examples, which I spoke at a conference yesterday where I was talking about how you can get a lot of challenge out of learner generated examples. And I show and there’s an I showed you our maths fans website, which is a really good example of how that works. But then there’s the three different models you show today, I thought were particularly powerful. And, and obviously, perhaps you can put in the in the show notes and links to some pictures that I took and share with those. But they were the one example that I wanted to mention was this one about quadratics. So you had to sort of fit the page into four, and this will be done maybe on a mini whiteboard. And then it was like right in one in one in the top left corner, write a quadratic that can be factorised, then write another quadratic can be factorised. And the thing is, that’s so simple for us. Not going to be simple for my students. And I’m teaching quadratics to 10, straight after halftime, and I’ve got a class that are working around a grade four. Yeah. And I know that they won’t just immediately think, Oh, I could just drop it out, put some brackets and expand them and say like, they will have to think about that. Or they might think, Oh, I can I think of a number were watching, like, Well, are they gonna think about it in that way? And then you said, like, come up with another one. And then it’s like, well, that’s an interesting one. And we had some, we had some really nice, different examples in that. So like, Paul Rodriguez was sitting with, he did a trigger, create a trigger expression there. So he had like sine squared plus, it was really good. And then we talked about like, interesting examples. We had like a difference of two squares and stuff like that. Oh, like a mnemonic. And then you said, right, and so that’s your kind of boundary example. Because you said that’s like, how far can you push this concept. And then in the bottom right box, we’re writing something that can’t be factorised. But someone might think it can be. So this is basically they’re like the common mistakes or the like the non example of an expression that can be factorised. And that was really interesting, because that talking about what could go down there. And it could be something where, you know, there is no, so I had x squared minus two there. And you could factorise that if you put a bracket, but then when the you know, David had one, which was, I think, like x squared plus five plus 10, or something where the numbers just don’t work. But it was, it was it was, we had good discussions about it. And so so much students, and I think that was a really accessible task, and one that would just create a lot of thinking, which is just what we want to do. But if we can get them thinking, then we’re doing the right thing. And I thought it was a really nice format. And then you show to other formats, which was sort of sort of similar ideas. They’re generating examples. And they’re doing this thing where they’re discussing them in pairs to discuss them as a class. And there’s a whole load of drawing out misconceptions. And also like that, like the bit we said about how the kind of boundary example then chips over into a non example. And then understanding that point means I got a really deep understanding of the concepts. So I really, really enjoyed that was fantastic. Thanks,
Craig Barton 18:04 Joe’s very, very code. Yeah. And what I will say is, it’s the it’s you’ve got to be, you’ve got to know I didn’t mention this in the session, but your subject knowledge has got to be pretty, because and for a lot of non specialists, it’s problematic there speak. So even I’ll give you an example here. So what I did in a school, where there was some non specialists, and people who had never taught a level, or even taught high at GCSE, so one of the ones I did was fractured equivalent to two thirds. Yeah. So give me an example of some forces fine. Yeah. 20 over 30. Fine. Then he got to the interesting one. Yeah. So somebody had put down one over 1.5. Okay, so then we had the discussion, because is that a fraction equivalent to two thirds or not? And then like some teachers want yeah, it is, and some to just Well, no, it’s not. So then it really makes you think very carefully about your definition of the concept. So if you’re going to do something like like, it’s very, it’s a lot easier to ask kids questions where you know, the Yeah, it’s a risky game. Yeah. What a worthwhile game to throw it out to the kids because they could come back with something. Yeah.
Jo Morgan 19:12 It is. No, it doesn’t feel good as a teacher when when they when when you don’t know. And you say, actually, I’m not sure that it’s fun. And it’s a bit like it’s a bit of a horrible moment. But so do what was your conclusion on that? Do you think that isn’t equivalent fraction?
Craig Barton 19:27 No, I think it’s equivalent, but not a fraction would have been was my Yeah, that would be
Jo Morgan 19:33 a fraction as a integer. Yeah, I
Craig Barton 19:34 was. Yeah, yeah. But the thing is, with these boundaries, some of them are like going to be clearly wrong. Some of those kinds of edge cases you can say, because look, this is an interesting one. You’ll never be asked, you’ll never have to make this decision or like in an exam, but it’s just worth having this Eddie always draws out these problems.
Jo Morgan 19:52 Your first example I love the way it links so perfectly to my area. I have spoken about finding areas of triangles and how and the common misconception there, and then you said right draw a triangle or an area of 12 square centimetres. Sure, number one, draw an interesting one and then draw one where there’s a common mistake that people make. And then so I suppose maybe not everyone did this, but my one was where they use the non perpendicular. But yeah, really nice link. It’s almost like we found it.
Craig Barton 20:16 Yeah, we get there we go. Joe, right. Okay, so now I’ve got Tip four and five are both from Nathan days sessions. Nathan did one arm into weaving with a focus on reciprocals, but then branched off into other stuff. So I’ll do one first. Yeah, so I just had a make sure you do interweaving was my simple one. It’s very powerful. So for those of you not aware interweaving, I get the sense it only really works in maths or certainly works a lot easier. So it’s this notion that you mix in concepts that kids have experienced in the past in the current one. But what’s good about Nathan, he doesn’t just do the obvious does. He’s not just like, trick a decimal into an answer question. It’s very creative. Yeah. And if you haven’t been on his website, what is it?
Jo Morgan 20:57 Is it Andover mass,
Craig Barton 21:00 exactly what it is. And he’s got some lovely examples. So the reasons he gave for why you should mix in place stuff is good for retrieval. It allows kids to swap connections. And it’s almost by definition, good for multi step problem solving. Because you’re dealing with two different concepts. It’s never just straightforward questions. So if you’re not a regular into Weaver as part of your normal teaching practice, the tip will be dropping in the mix.
Jo Morgan 21:24 Yeah. And some of the some of the examples he showed were incredibly challenging. We were like, Ah, I can’t do this, you know, really, really hard. Isn’t wasn’t it? It was interesting. reciprocals of standard form, like, that really got us thinking. But yeah, so because he was focused a lot on reciprocals. We were our slightly silly tip was, say, think about, think about how you get students to write their answer. So that’s a nonlinear way of saying it, because I found this before. So you’re doing a question on a reciprocal on the board news. And you say, what’s the reciprocal of five? Yeah. Then you write down, there’s not a symbol, or symbol to write for this reciprocal just didn’t represent you just so you can write. And then they will put equals. And they always use this equal sign. So I was sitting next to David and I said, I want a symbol, which I decided was an upside down R, but he didn’t really like that. So we’re going to get something better. So I’m saying it’s like, I want them to write upside down r equals just we need some kind of symbol there, because students will write equally well. And so it was initially because we were trying loads of wonderful reciprocal questions. And every time I was just had this the frustration that there’s not a simple to represent reciprocal. So so that is not a really a tip other than keep an eye on how your students write their answers, and don’t accept them writing and equals when they shouldn’t have written equals. So I’ve turned that into a tip. I’m just saying you that I’m making up a new symbol.
Craig Barton 22:51 That’s very good. My final one again, from Nathan session. I like the bit he did at the end. And this is almost, you know, obviously I do ssdd problems, same service, different depth, Nathan does a lot of help. Constantine is good at this as well of doing questions that have this have the same deep structure, but on the surface look different. So Helen does a really good selection of Pythagoras questions where, even if you know it’s Pythagoras, yeah, it’s still challenging, as opposed to a ladder leaning against a wall. Once you know, it’s by Congress, there’s no challenge. And I really like Nathan’s ID equals the interweaving out where he had six questions, all from different areas of math. So I wrote these down here he had, there was like, solving simultaneous equations, there was there was like,
Jo Morgan 23:36 given a point on the line, what’s the equation of the line
Craig Barton 23:40 term of a linear sequence, so completely different areas of mathematics, but his point was, they all require kids to correct something, adapt the correct the cancel out something from the simultaneous equations with the term corrective from a times table to the term so on. Again, I just want the thought of doing that drawing, like almost kind of picking a big idea and explicitly drawing the connections by presenting you can imagine it like GCSE revision once the kids have done all those areas. Yeah, put that together as like almost like a retrieval starter. And the kids get all the retrieval but then say, look, there’s a connection between Yeah, I just thought was really,
Jo Morgan 24:22 I wouldn’t have spotted it. I couldn’t see what he meant when he was saying there was a connection. Yes, I really liked the way he explained, you know that where it said, a line goes through the point 440 What’s the equation of the line? No, there must have been Oh, I had that it was parallel something. So we knew the gradient was four. And I thought it was just like the way he explained it where he said, so we know it’s y equals 4x. But if it was y equals 4x, then you get you get four but you want to have 40. So what do you have to add to that? And it was, it was quite a nice explanation like even the way he explained the completing the square one isn’t the way we typically explained. So it was quite a nice way of looking at But yeah, I agree the it was interesting to find these common threads, which is something that Watson was looking at with some Don Stewart’s while she was trying to look at it. Loaded John Stewart tartan she found threads that went through them in a kind of similar way when they seem like they’re unrelated tasks, but they’ve got something some deep masks and comments. Yes,
Craig Barton 25:17 yes. Yes. He’s good. Yeah. He’s a good way about him as well. I like his style. I think he’s good. He’s good as well. Joe, there we go. That was a good format. Wasn’t that was quick, snappy. Yeah. What do you think about so now let’s just tell the listeners you’re going to try and get back back home down south.
Jo Morgan 25:31 We’re going to attempt to get a train that’s running tonight. Who knows we’ll have a go. Well, Joe
Craig Barton 25:36 Morgan as ever, pleasure catching up with you. And thank you for joining us on the tips for teachers podcast.
Craig Barton 0:00 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. This episode I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to maths teacher, Craig Latimer. Now one of my aims of this podcast was, of course to have all the big names on and we’ve done that right we’ve had Dylan William Thomas Sherrington, Daisy Christodoulou. But they also want to give a voice to teachers who perhaps aren’t household names, but have amazing things to share. I think Craig fits into that. Many listeners may not be aware of quips work, but I’ll tell you why. After this conversation, we’ll do one quick one before we start, I’ve started recording and premium versions of Mike’s hipster teachers online courses, I’ve done four so far dead happy hour with Cornell. I’ve done one on habits and routines, one a music participation, one on checking for understanding, or one on responsive teaching. And the way these online courses work is they’re made up of loads of little short videos, I think means a participation are about at like one minute videos, two minute videos, and so on and so forth. With a really simple idea that you can try the very next day you go into your classroom, then an opportunity to reflect on what you need to change to make it work, links to any resources, research videos, and so on. So if you’re interested in those, and you can just search Craig Barton online courses, or I’ll put a link in the show notes, please check those out. Anyway, back to the show. Let’s get ready with today’s guest or wonderful Craig Latimer. Spoiler alert. Here are Craig’s five tips. Tip number one, explicitly teach the skills and experts in your domain uses it to leave a legacy. Tip three, the principles of cognitive science apply to humans, students, tip for learning doesn’t start in year seven. And Tip five we’re going deep here, the secret to a happy life who if you look at the episode description on your podcast player or visit the episode page on tips for teachers.co. UK, you’ll see I’ve timestamp teacher the tips and also have splashed the cash Thanks to Patreon sponsors. And there’s now a really nice transcript for each episode also on the podcast page, so you can search for keywords and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, I’ll shut up. Enjoy the show.
Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Craig Latimer to the tips for teachers podcast. Hello, Craig, how are you?
Craig Latimir 2:33 Very good. How are you?
Craig Barton 2:34 Very, very well. Thank you. And for the benefit listeners. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself ideally in a sentence?
Craig Latimir 2:42 Yeah. So maths teacher trained in the PGCE a long time ago and work in various schools, and now lead maths across creative Education Trust, which is a national trust of 17 schools.
Craig Barton 2:56 Fantastic, right? Let’s dive straight in. What’s tip number one today, please.
Craig Latimir 3:01 Step one is explicitly teach the skills and expert in your domain users. I’m going to try and break that down into things that make sense, right? Let’s go. So, so a Owen content makes up about 50% or so of the GCSE, but I think takes up a lot of the thinking time and the way that we direct students in lessons. So the 50% the reasoning and problem solving doesn’t get as much in my opinion, it explicit attention within the classroom, I think because people feel like it’s less of a tangible thing to sort of harness therefore, it’s much harder to teach. I’m going to disagree with that and try and give some tips. Mostly Matt centred, but try and get some overall tips people could use for their own subjects as well. So I’m going to, I’m going to ask you a math question, Craig. So I’m going to put you on the spot. So the question is, if 482 pencils cost 115 pound and 68 Pence, what is the cost of 312 pencils? Now I can see you’re writing things down. And the point here is, hopefully you don’t know what the numerical answer
Craig Barton 4:11 is. I can confirm that is true.
Craig Latimir 4:14 But But hopefully, you know how, how to solve the problem. And at the moment that the numbers aren’t the important part of that if I asked you what I asked how many pencils I’m actually cast or how many I wanted, you couldn’t tell me yet, you could confidently say you can solve the problem. So sort of what’s going on there because I think too often in in math classrooms, we go straight into the numbers, what calculations are we doing? And whereas we don’t necessarily always need to? I’m going to read that one more time without the numbers. So if blank pencils cost blank, what is the cost of blank pencils? And introducing that to math teachers? I think would they would all know how to solve it without the numbers. They’re being being important to make My first tip around explicitly teaching the skills and expert in your domain users is for maths, one of them is the numbers aren’t always that important. And expert mathematicians I think will often ignore the numbers. And I would suggest that students often get quite caught up with them. And so taking this idea of ignoring the numbers, and applying it to a longer question, I think can be a really useful tip for students, I’m thinking about the sort of 456 markers that exist GCSE, and often students will leave the entire thing blank. So we know from cognitive science, you hold about 678 things in your in your worst working memory at any one time. And if you’re reading that thing, you’re preoccupied with the surface level detail, which would be the numbers in this case, then you might end up being overwhelmed and not able to access anything. So the first step here would be to ignore the numbers. And we might, we can do one more example for a longer question. And and see, and I’ve got a visual for this, which I’m not going to share, because I need it goes out on the podcast. So we’ll see if we can do it. But it might be too much. Well, we’ll see what happens. So the question is this. And I’m just gonna ignore the numbers first time round. A pyramid has a square base. Each of the four sleeping edges has length blank, the total length of all eight edges is blank. Work out the area of the square base. So how was that one more time?
Craig Barton 6:36 Yeah. Give us one more. I think I’ve got about Yeah, go on. Give us one more time.
Craig Latimir 6:41 So we’ve got we’ve got a pyramid with a square base, we’ve got the length of all the sloping edges, they’re all the same. We don’t know what they are, we don’t know. They’re all the same. Cut the total length of all eight edges. And for sloping and before at the base. Question is, what are the area of the square base? So my conjecture here is that giving back to students, they can do an awful lot of thinking about how to solve this problem, how to get into it, what structures are underpinning there. And that an expert mathematician, first time reading that, even if the numbers were visible, would be ignoring them. And, and would look at the surface of the question, first of all. So yeah, but by, you know, the original tip was was explicitly teach the skills and expert in your domain uses one of these things, I think electrician does is ignores the surface level stuff. In this case, often it’s the numbers, which sounds counterintuitive for mathematicians, but but I think it often is. And you can model that with students, and you can go through this process with them. And I would suggest that the way that I’ve done this before, is to show students a question that sort of four or five, six months that you know, they’re going to struggle with and discuss cognitive overload, discuss what’s going on their heads and share with them why they are struggling, and then show them a similar question, but with the numbers missing, and start to break it down for them. And give them a chance as as a class as individuals or maybe in pairs to come up with the sort of the furthest plan they can have how to solve the question. And don’t be able to come to a numerical answer. But he can start the thing, what’s step one going to be? What’s step two going to be? And, and then get them all back together again, and as a group, produce a plan, you know, they will come from history lessons and English lessons and MFL lessons always encouraged for those big long questions to write a plan before they start producing the big essay. But in maths, and long questions aren’t as long but encouraging a plan, I think it’s still a good idea. And by removing the numbers, you’re forcing them to do that, that thinking and so foremost plan is a group once you’ve agreed what it should be, I will then reveal the numbers to the students give them time to then solve the problem, make them feel successful. And then repeat that few times and slowly scaffold away what you’ve done. So what you’ve done is you’ve hidden the numbers so at some point you’ll have to introduce the numbers to get them to be thinking in a way that they ignore them first time round, focusing in on what is the surface of this problem before I sort of go deeper into the calculations that I need to need to do
Craig Barton 9:23 right anything else great before I come in here because I’ve got a million things to say
Craig Latimir 9:31 I’ll pause there
Craig Barton 9:32 Yeah. All right. Let’s go on this right so a bit of background here. So this is where I first came across your work is when you this I think was your first ever tweet right where you tweeted about this. And I read it and I thought this is one of those things. That is one of the best things I’ve been the best ideas I’ve ever seen because I can’t believe this hasn’t been done before or I certainly am not aware of it and it’s so simple but so powerful. So I absolutely love it and that’s the kind of main driver I wanted you to get. On the show, and since you’ve tweeted out loads of other really good ideas that we’re going to dive into. So just a couple of things about this, you often hear that experts and novices think differently. And one of the one of the things that comes out the research is the experts for folks on the deep structure, novices kind of focus on the surface structure. And this seems like a really kind of clear example of that, where students who are struggling latch on to the numbers and we’ve all seen this, right, you know, the first two numbers that they see in one of these word problems, they just either multiply them together, add them together, whatever operation they fancy doing, they just focus in on those numbers without realising what the problems are about. And this seems like such a smart way to get them to focus on the deep structure by essentially removing the surface features. I really, really like that I absolutely love it. I also like, I’ve just got to run for a bit and then I’ll shut up. What I also like about this is I don’t You seem like you’ve been teaching there maybe a similar amount of time. To me, whenever in the early days of kind of thinking about problem solving, it was always, you know, give students like a problem to solve than a big old sheet of paper. And maybe it’s kind of four quadrants, and maybe it’s like and devise a plan. What do you know, what do you not know? And it never worked, I could never make it work, because and I think now having thought about this, for from your perspective here is because the numbers are still getting in the way that the problem is still there in its original form. So kids latch on to the numbers, but taking the numbers away, again, means you’re forced to think about the deeper structure. So I like this as a real practical way of doing it. I don’t know what order to ask these. And I’ve got three questions here. And right, well, we’ll go for it. We’ll go for this one for when do you do this? Is this kind of purely kind of building up to revision for an exam? When does it come in kind of a learning episode that, you know, when you’ve introduced an idea how far a gap before you get them solving problems with that idea in this way? Well, where does it fit in?
Craig Latimir 11:59 Yeah, that’s that’s a that’s a question. You know, I think John Mason says that if you’ve any matters and should involve generalisation, and this is broadly what this is. So that first question that we had with the pencils, and the cost is a very typical proportion question. And it works for that. By removing the numbers, you’re looking at what is going on in proportion? So in that sense, it could happen in a year seven lesson. That second question was a bigger DC question. And were more marks and more of a strategy for tackling those, those unseen questions when students are gonna get in more of a pickle. So I’d say whenever it’s helping them see what the structure is. I’ve heard Danny Quinn talk before about getting students to respond without numbers. So if you’re asking, you know, if there’s a shape on the board, he says, well, what’s the area? Instead of a kid saying it’s five times seven? It’s the length times the width. Great. But if you remove the numbers in the first place, they haven’t got a choice. So it’s not I haven’t used to build into them. It’s the only thing that they can say. And so I’d say whenever. Yeah.
Craig Barton 13:11 Okay, those are okay. Let me let me dig in a bit further on this one. Sometimes I like to be awkward and play a bit kind of devil’s advocate. What and it’s not me being nasty. It’s just so good again, just to try and push it on this. What’s the logic with showing them the numbers first? Is there a danger that that kind of overwhelms them? What? How come you don’t just show them the no number version first?
Craig Latimir 13:37 Two, to sort of prove them, they’re going to struggle. It’s that sort of, there’s a word for it when you the hyper correction effect. Is that Is that where where? Right. Can you solve this question? Or or similar to is it Datameer talks about the migraine? The aspirin? Here’s the question with the numbers. Can you solve it? No. Great. I’ve got a solution to that. Because I think showing the students in my experience of having done this a few times, we got the numbers straightaway. They just think you’re a bit bit bonkers. We can’t solve it what you’re doing. But if you front loaded with oh, look, we can’t solve this. Here’s technique which might help us go with me here. It just increases the buy in
Craig Barton 14:18 Yeah, I’m sold on that. I like that. Next one that what how does this go down with the kids? Why if it goes down badly in which way does it go down badly and how’d you get?
Craig Latimir 14:29 And I’d say so you get you get different camps of people that are more more or less done but but at the end of it, you know, when they sit there GCC, you can’t force them to solve it in a certain way. If you know this is in their locker, some of that they can rely on so often levers if there’s going to be for everybody. However, if you are trying to question like this, and you do get stuck remember you’ve got this as a as a backup. So if people are So the first time around, hopefully, you know, I don’t know what they’ve what they’ve done in their in their exams this this year, but hopefully they put it there if they need it. But broadly, there is reluctance at first, they do think you don’t know what you’re talking about, because the numbers have been the most important thing of how can you solve it. And we don’t write down plans for these questions. And it feels very much outside of what they can do normally. But enough time and with enough carefully chosen questions that they can be successful with it. They broadly come around.
Craig Barton 15:33 Got it final two questions on this. And I’ll, I’ll shut them and let you finish off at any bit of the tip that we’ve not discussed. Just thinking about exams, do you? If we’re thinking practically about students using this in an exam for a question that they’re stuck on? Is it because it’s quite hard to avoid kind of the numbers, once they’re there like is, is there anything about just you know, covering them up with your fingers, or, you know, going over them in pencil and robot about what what seems to work to make this work.
Craig Latimir 15:58 So it’s a, I think it’s on a PowerPoint with them and an ad, you know, that sort of black clutter function or black box and hit it all and tell them they, you know, they can’t do that don’t don’t scribble on their exam. And it’s part of that scaffolding process, you know, experts, we do this, that we see the numbers, but we ignore the numbers. And it’s just how you scaffold it away. And it’s, maybe you remove two numbers, and then three numbers, or you keep one to two, then you eventually have all of them. And you get them doing this thought process automatically. They read over the number. And and I will do this when I made this part scaffolding as well, when all the numbers are revealed, when I read the question, so if we go back to the premium as a square based on your question, if the number is up there, and they can all see the number, I might read as each of the four sloping, it just has length, I don’t care yet. And just to, again, make it a bit explicit of what’s going on in my head. So you can see it still trying to read it in a way that that means you ignore it. Yeah, I was gonna say only this sort of idea is only about four or five, six months old or so. So I’ve not fully tested it in every in every dimension, but I’m looking forward to sort of carrying on with it.
Craig Barton 17:17 Got it right. Last question on this. And this is, I don’t really know what I’m going to say sorry, anything could happen here. One thing I’m thinking about a lot at the moment is is retrieval and what retrieval practice looks like. And I don’t know if you’re the same here. But whenever I do either a low stakes quiz or a do now or whatever my retrieval questions tend to be typically the 801 questions that you’ve described at the start. And that seems to make sense, because you there were the easier ones to write the easier ones to assess. You need kids to be able to do that to be able to do the more complicated things. But of course, the problem with that is what what happens is that, well, a couple of things, kids don’t really get chance to practice the more complex skills aside from when they first initially encounter them. And also the message it kind of gives out about retrieval is this is all you need to remember just you know, this kind of surface level of knowledge. So I just wondered if you wanted to reflect on that in your own practice, but then they kind of tie it back to this tip? Would you include this as part of retrieval practice? Where have you ever talked to one of these questions in as a do now? Or a low stakes quiz or a homework or whatever? Well, what’s your thoughts on that?
Craig Latimir 18:25 So sometimes what you’re saying earlier about how problem solving used to be in my in my head, you know, I’d go on and rich, or I’d look at the ukmt questions, and then put them in front of in front of students. But they’re so far removed from what is assessed in the curriculum that you can go on, you know, whether you were sort of an exam wizard or exam Pro, whatever the bank for your exam board is for, for resources, and you can filter by a Oh, two criteria, or a three criteria, you can pull that back out there. And you can see that things that make the problem solving unique at GCSE are really teachable skills. And it might just be someone’s combining two topics together. And that being part of retrieval is absolutely fine. You don’t have to, I spent the first few years of my career thinking problem solving was this massive, you know, open ended problems, and she’s really good at them. And when you pull apart, what makes a Oh, two criteria to it, it’s really, really teachable. So even getting students to talk about one more thing here, which is about how students write in maths. And that’s problems are less reasoning and problem solving when it comes to the curriculum. And there’s a very particular way that we write answers in maths I think we say get a factor then we say, so what the mean score for Class A is lower than that for Class B fish effect. This means that on average, class B did better. The segment is bisected. This means the two sides are equal. It’s just about on disseminating, this thinks is needed to back to the overall tip of explicit, teach the skills and expand your domain users, once you can take what their skill is, you can make it part of retrieval. You know, I couldn’t have an image problem as part of my view back in the day, because my idea of what problem solving meant was was different. But by disseminating it down into these discrete skills, ignoring the numbers and solving them for solving number for a problem and making a plan, or writing a sentence in this way that has this structure of fact, and so what are discrete things, which you can teach explicitly, and as soon as you can teach it explicitly, you can retrieve it.
Craig Barton 20:41 So would you just again, just to clarify that, so would you, would you and have you included this as part of a retrieval opportunity? Where would it fit into a do now? Or
Craig Latimir 20:51 I would I haven’t, the nature of my job at the moment is that not based in any one school, so I’ve gone in and delivered this sort of halls full of year 11, and not had the chance to do that constant retrieval afterwards. If I had my own irrelevance back again, 100%.
Craig Barton 21:10 Got it. Got it. And was there anything else on the on this this tip, though, because I kind of put up that kind of forced you to go on pause whilst I went to my ramp as it was.
Craig Latimir 21:18 And I just spoke with just about where it came from was, and this should apply to any teacher event of any subject was that I think is so common, when it’s when the when the papers first come out, you just grab them and try and complete them as quickly as possible, like slow down, you weren’t doing so much thinking implicitly in your head, because you are an expert. It’s really hard to disseminate what those skills are. So this is where this came from, came from me looking at Question thinking, what what have I done to solve this, which I’ve ignored the numbers, which sounds like such a simple thing that kids aren’t doing that now. So what’s going on there? So from our tips on how to do it for your subject, I suppose or, or to find more tips like this, or when you’re doing maths or doing your subject, go really slow, trying to be super aware of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. If you’ve made any jumps in your thinking, pause and think well, where did that come from? And and how can I disseminate it? And how can I teach it. And then the other thing would be, I suppose, to upskill yourself, so you can keep sort of writing just just then that writing feedback from that act is do about five different subjects every day, without being asked to write in five different ways. And try and find out where you’ve got the skills that are similar or different to other subjects. And make that explicit with your students as well. will be my way of sort of summing up this, I suppose.
Craig Barton 22:42 I love it. Absolutely. Love it. There’s a danger. You’ve peaked too soon here, Craig with this, all right, what is tip number two, please?
Craig Latimir 22:51 Tip number two is leave a legacy. And so I’m going to talk about at a department level, please reply to anyone with responsibility, Key Stage or even homeschool at a colleague of the day, I think this is a widely known analogy, or one that she had she’d made up or something, but it’s about about aeroplanes, and sort of go and go on a flight. She was saying every time you went on a flight with a different pilot, made from the same airline, there were different routines in place and different qualities of landing and different food, different ways of checking in, you’d be really annoyed, and you’d be confused. And you’d be livid. And same same at the bank if every cashier was different. And if the if you were seeing a cashier whose first day it was as opposed to whose 10th year it was, you’d want the same service. And companies are really really good at doing that. You can’t really pick out who the who the first person on that on their first day, isn’t it and who’s the most experienced person because all the systems and structures that they’ve got in place. My argument here is that this should be happening in our schools as well. I think too often we sort of allow our eects or our trainees to excuse what they’re doing, but we don’t put enough systems and structures in place, higher level to allow them to shine. And so I think schools should adopt this aeroplane company policy in some senses, and I think I’m sort of broadly getting out is CO planning is how it’s been discussed. But I don’t want to talk about CO planning. I want to take that one step further. I think the CO planning goes far enough, just producing a set of resources as a department, you need an aligned pedagogy, you need agreed routines, you need consistent methodologies, you need immediate accountability, you need knowledge of where that flexibility arises. So you have a complete package and with almost a brand to feel horrible saying but as a leader of the department or office holder of a key stage, the more structures you put in place the the more freedom You allow Your teachers to have in focusing on what should matter, and you’ve taken care of the rest. And so you should, you should, you should leave a legacy. And it is tough as a teacher, because the first time you sort of become a leader is the first time you’re responsible for students that you’re not in front of. And, and no one really prepares you for that, suddenly, you’re in charge of students that whose names don’t even know. And it’s, it’s a big leap. But what can you do? That means they’re getting the best out of out of you and your experiences and you as a leader. And I think the way of thinking about this is, if you left your position, and came back in two years time, what evidence would there be that you had worked there? And what have you put in place, because I think as leaders of a school, one, you’re entitled to do that to leave a legacy. I’d argue maybe you’re duty bound to do that as well. You’re not a manager, when you go round, and you cater for the whims of all your staff, you need to be leading them. And by reducing the variability within your department, I think you can really focus on an increase the quality within the department, I I look back, I don’t know about you? Well, from the title of your book, I think I do know about you, but I look back at me teaching in my first few years, and I’m like in horror, I wish someone had given me clear structures and clear routines. And I spent my time thinking about, okay, how to how to implement them well, with a bit of extra space for some creativity and some original thought, but not worrying about what’s, what’s every single minute of my lesson gonna look like and what routines I use for this, but it wasn’t the routine or you know, whatever day of the week, it was that changed whatever I was doing it. It’s didn’t have enough headspace for me to do anything. I hate to see myself teach at the beginning of my career now. And so I think it’s about Yeah, as a leader, reduce the variability. But increase the quality focus on a few things. When you deliver CPD for your department, if you’ve said we do this here, you can pinpoint a few real high leverage ideas to focus on. And staff should be talking about the same things within your department, I think, worked in a few departments where an idea of what a great lesson was, that is so different in each of our heads, that we couldn’t really talk about it properly. We were just clashing on your kids or in silence for 10 minutes, you’re a monster, you know, your kids were throwing things out. Yeah, they were free, and they were exploring things. There was no consistency around it at all. But a good leader should should grab that. And think that I’ve not heard yet. A good reason against doing this. And I would love you to play devil’s advocate, the biggest things I’ve heard.
As an individual teacher, if I’m doing something better, I don’t want someone telling me what to do. And that’s fine. As a leader, it’s not your job to be the best at everything. But it’s to be the collator of what the best is. So someone who’s better, that should be shared. And that should be your practice. And if it isn’t better, they shouldn’t be doing it. Another thing I’ve heard is, if we’ve got all these things in place, it becomes too easy. And people won’t engage with it, they’ll walk up to the lesson. And they’ll just download whatever you’ve got in place, and they’ll just sit back and relax. But well, if they’re going to do that, if that’s their attitude, with no systems in place, they’ll be doing something anyway, they’ll be going into tears the night before, finding the person they can and implementing it. At least if you’ve got structures as a department, you know what to hold them to account for, you know, what you should be seeing. So you can say, as a department, we do this here. And you can really start having that conversation about not catching them out, but but pushing them in in the right direction, because you’ve got a real clear vision of what you are expecting. And then people talk about stifling creativity, I think when it comes to this as well. And I mentioned earlier, I disagree that the more things you put in place. The more structures you put in place, the more routines you put in place, the teaching is hard, you can think about a lot. The less you have to think about in your lesson, the more time you have to be creative and to be responsive and to have energy and to go home happy at night. And I yeah, I just don’t see why as a leader, we aren’t grabbing those things and saying this is my brand. And that’s it might annoy some people within within your department, but I don’t think it needs to be the case that every school is for every teacher. Not everyone’s gonna go work at Mikayla and be happy. That’s okay. If someone’s not fitting into your brand and your culture and you’ve done what you can for them, you know that there’ll be someone else and they’ll find someone where they’re happy and you’ll find someone that was happy with with you as well. And I’ll pause that
Craig Barton 29:59 this is great. So they’re really, really pleased you’re up, brought this one up. So I’ve talked about this many, many times in the past that when I first started teaching, I think looking back, I would have rejected somebody telling me, this is how you should structure your lesson and so on. But looking back, I definitely needed it. I 100% Definitely, because I was clueless, absolutely just make stuff up as I went along, and again, taught a load of terrible lessons. And, yeah, it took a long, long time for me to start to improve. So I agree with you. But let’s just dive into this a little bit more. So you mentioned kind of some set routines, but also kind of room for for flexibility. This is a terrible question. And one that’s very hard to answer. But what would be some of the almost kind of non negotiables? I know, that’s a very loaded phrase. But if you look, if you’re running a department, what are some of the things that you say, No, you know, what this we do this this way, versus some of the things where you can sit okay, this is where you have a bit of bit of choice to play with? Is it easy to sort those out?
Craig Latimir 31:01 I think, to a, to a degree where you can all agree probably schoolwide of what great looks like you can so lucky, you might imagine I’ve got a trustee for for science and one for English as well. And you would often think that the three of us would find it hard to agree on what great teaching is because three very different subjects there. But a zoomed out level we can all agree on. When the teacher is modelling as expert in the room that kids should be listening. There should be some whole class assessment for learning going on. Whether it’s mini whiteboards, whether it’s multiple choice questions, but whether it’s whatever. And we should all agree that when kids are working, most time it should probably be in silence because we want them to ingrain it and then think about it and then not to be distracted. I think there’s loads that you can agree on, which has the danger of sounding, oppressive and boring, and all these things. But we’re not here to cater to the whim of the teachers, we’re here to give the students the best deal possible. And the evidence is pretty clear on what that is. I’ve got it the way, the way that I would have most fun in the classroom isn’t what I know would be the best way for my students. Sometimes I wish I was back in in year one. And we had these enrich problems. And we were spending 60 minutes just having a great time I was I was loving it. But it’s quite hard to say now that it wasn’t the best for them. And if I had some structures in place around what modelling looks like, and what practice looks like, and a kid doing one thing once isn’t enough, and if one kid in the classroom gives the right answer, you can’t do that as proxy for the entire room. And I think there’s loads of things that you can agree on. And within one department, you will then find your own things that you choose to be non negotiables, you might have a certain way, just for ease that you want to set out your do now we’ll start to you might want to have a math lesson last week, last month last year, it’s not central in every school, but but it can be central for you. I think that’s that’s okay. What was the question?
Craig Barton 33:08 Now that you’ve answered it just interested about what you would consider to be kind of non negotiables? versus where so where would the flexibility come in? What areas of a lesson would you expect teachers to be doing different things?
Craig Latimir 33:19 I think great teaching is responsive teaching. And one that’s responding before the lesson starts because you know, you’ve got these kids, and it’s this time of day, and these are the last few lessons have gone. And you need to cater it. If you are using Copeland resources. It shouldn’t look the same in every single classroom, because they come in different journeys, and you’ve got different kids in front of you. And I want to see flex there. Within the lesson, where you’ve got your check to understanding it can it shouldn’t look the same. Everywhere teachers should be responding to whatever happens. So that’s where things would look different. And I think also once all those things are in place, you could have the same lesson with the same pedagogical routines and you can have three different teachers do it and the personalities would shine because all their headspace around what they should be thinking about or you know, not what they should be thinking about. But around the lesson and the key content is done and ready. And they can be themselves for a little bit. That’s a bit of creativity as well and a bit of freedom to express yourself and be who you are. And I think creativity in the name of the trust, I work for creative Education Trust, but it’s less about it’s less about in the moment, big things being wildly different. And I mean I’m saying that it’s it’s so what’s the question was where does Where’s the flex coming? Where’s the creativity come in. And I think also these these things can happen from outside of the classroom where you come up with an idea. And then you share it around and you get that structure embedded as well. In terms of within the classroom, I don’t think need to be creative in the moment. I mean, there’ll be times when a kid might throw up a misconception, and you might find a quick way to deal with it. But again, by having everything else in place gives you that headspace to think about how to deal with with that in the moment. So that’s quite creative. People might disagree, I don’t know.
Craig Barton 35:36 I’d say Well, let me ask you two related questions just on this tip here. So the first is G. One thing I see a lot when I visit schools is the classic kind of lethal mutation where, you know, either SLT decided or had a massive decided, every lesson starts with a do now or every lesson has, you know, silent modelling or whatever it may be. And you look at these lessons, and they are, they’re completely different, both in terms of how they look, and also their effectiveness. Because one person’s you know, you say I do now even if you specify, it’s got to be four questions from something kids have learned in the past, we everybody here knows there’s there’s effective ways of doing that, and less effective ways of doing that. Do you see this a lot. And this, this is danger with their kind of prescribe that you get these these lethal mutations, or, you know, people latch on to a label of something, but it’s not interpreted the way it’s intended.
Craig Latimir 36:27 100%. And you’re teaming up very nicely for tip number three our lives, which, which is all about how to deliver CPD, and to ensure that these things don’t happen. And so we
Craig Barton 36:40 will pause. I believe that’s kept listeners are like that. Well, let me ask you the final thing on this then. So we’ve we’re going down this kind of for want of a better phrase, this kind of prescribed route where we’ve got these these routines, I assume? Well, perhaps I shouldn’t I should be Who are they coming from? Is it the head? Does it typically be the head of department? Is it the head of department? The TLR holders more experienced teachers in the department? Is it a collaborative thing where it says, you know, like, let’s hold the side how our do nails or whatever look like? Where does it work best?
Craig Latimir 37:13 Yeah. So it’s a great question. And that’s where being a good leader will come into play around, talking and being human and creating these things. And there’s a mixed deck because said early, you don’t have to be the originator of all the best ideas, you should be open to some flexibility. But also, there are some things that you’ve made your mind up about, because you’ve got that job for a reason. And what you say should go with some things. I used to hate departmental meetings where you get that phoney sense of right, we need a new routine for this. And departments already decided what it’s going to be, and tries to guide everybody to say that and agree that. What about this? She’s on the next slide already? Things on posters? Oh, yeah, fine. Well, let’s, let’s go with that. And it will change moment by moment. And it will change thing by thing. And, and there’ll be times when you just need to say we are doing this, but always be open to someone else saying, I think I’ve got a better idea or something like here, which is fine. And you need to do that. But don’t waste people’s time. You’ve got a job for a reason. And, and then there’d be times where you didn’t you don’t know or the job is too big. You know, let’s say you want to agree consistent methods to how to solve things in math. You can you can delegate that to your team, you might have final say over it, but they can come up with ideas and give it to you on my team sent them or poorly made make sense. So that will just come down to a case by case basis. But But don’t be afraid if you have come up with your idea. Just to say it because people will be grateful for it. They need to be patronised.
Craig Barton 38:53 Fantastic. All right, Craig, you’ve teased already. What’s tip number three, please.
Craig Latimir 38:58 Tip number three. And I’m going to start with two to pass experiences of mine. And then I’ll say we’re there. So once was a as it seems this was a long time ago, it wasn’t my current trips I need to say was in some CPD around direct instruction. And on the board, so this is when it sort of first coming round or come around the biscuits was hadn’t heard of it was all the good things direct instruction involves and how you should deliver it in the classroom. And not a single principle was being used by the presenter. You should model things you check for understanding whether there was reading it. Second one even more obvious, second CPD while someone reads from a slide about how when teaching children you shouldn’t read from a side because the listening and the reading is a thing. It’s a part of the brain that says this tip is to please realise that the findings from cognitive science apply to all of us. We use them in classrooms, and we use them as great principles. Teaching we share success criteria, we use explicit modelling, we scaffold the process, we give a chance to practice, we receive feedback. It’s not because that’s how kids learn best, it’s because that’s how humans learn best. And, you know, the majority of research on cognitive science, I think I’m right in saying that it’s quite done with university graduates and people that are got more of an adult brain than than they do, we’re sort of a young adolescent brain. So if anything, you should apply even more to us than it should to the students. And if for some reason, it just doesn’t happen when people deliver CPD. A great classroom teacher. But their issue, I mean, just don’t be patronising. I don’t know what it is. But the idea, I think, of novice versus expert, I think blurs people’s views here, because teachers will be an expert in loads of things. But there might be an expert marker, an expert. So technology has been their expert using a mini whiteboard or cold calling, if your CPD is worth delivering to the people that are in front of you, they won’t already be experts. So all the things you would do for novices in your classroom, that I mentioned earlier, it, do them for the adults. And it just and then like say early, early around, there are lethal mutations. You know, this is what will happen if you don’t explicitly model things, if you don’t check for understanding. I’ve got I’ve got an example here of a framework I used for getting mini whiteboards use sort of intended across across the department. And it isn’t, tell the teachers to use a mini whiteboard, there’s like six different strands to it, all the all the pre pain you need to do or the training you need to do, how you’re going to deliver it, what scripts are you going to use? Are you going to model it? Are you going to show them some non examples of when it doesn’t work? The whole thing about mini whiteboards is you need to be responsive. So should have multiple times if they will get it right, do this. If they all get it wrong, do this if there’s two or three kids that get it right, or get it wrong in the rescue, right? Then what do you do and, and model it, model it explicitly that all the all the great advice that people have heard around what they should do for children do it for adults isn’t patronising and it Phil Phil’s, it’ll feel weird at first, especially if you want to get people to do sort of Doug Lemov techniques or things that are active, if you want to start to practice it be good at it, they have to model it, they have to do it in front of other adults. And it’ll feel weird the first time, but it won’t feel weird for long. The best, CPD is a bit active and it sounds like sounds like all the things that make teaching quite funny back in the day, get your kids up and start practising the routine. But you know, we do lots of practical things as teachers so practice it practically normalise that behaviour get people out coaching each other within the CPD. Correct that if they’re not doing it, right, tell them how to how to do it better. And and, again, the same way that you would use retrieval practice, come back to this CPD. Same way that you would mark their work and give them feedback, go around observe lessons. And then what are the biggest misconceptions that you’ve seen when it’s being delivered? address that map out time, it’s not just introduced the idea, but sort of, you know, the worst case if they haven’t got it wrong, or haven’t got it right. In three weeks time, we need one more CPD booked in and after that we might be able to disseminate to heads of department who can then make little tweaks plan for all these things. We know we don’t live in a sort of a one and done world of I’ve seen it once they can all do it now and we know that in the classroom. For some reason we don’t know it when we when we deliver training to adults. So please remember the cognitive science all these things make great teaching make great CPD as well. Yeah,
Craig Barton 43:44 right okay. I don’t think I’ve ever written so much like it was just getting beyond the joke less now for i Let’s go with it. So first thing to say is I’m thinking of reissuing my How I wish I taught maths but to be how I wish I delivered CPD because I’m starting to realise this myself that, you know, it just seemed to be completely different how CPD happens versus what we what we what we think about effective lessons. And I’d never I’d never realised that before about you. You’re absolutely right. The fact that a lot of the participants in the cog science studies a university students, it’s a really smart observation that so then if it’s going to probably apply more to adults than it is to some of our younger learners, it’s really like that. Second thing to say is, anytime I walk into a seat, I hate group work hard because I’ve thrown this out there many, many times. I’m a real group. And anytime I walk into a CPD session where I see the tables in groups, I just think, Oh, nice. So this, well, first, I think this is gonna be really awkward because I don’t particularly want to do this. And then secondly, I think I’m probably gonna be able to sit off a little bit here and just let other men more you know, other members of the group take the lead and so on. And I want to pick up that I find this really interesting the cycle of real life CPD myself that I’ve been through once you’ve been speaking, I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last few months anyway, and because I’ve had a few few conversations with people like Adam Voxer About this, why my CPD doesn’t mirror more closely what I do in the classroom. And I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with this patronising thing. So I do a lot of CPD using diagnostic questions, some big into diagnostic questions, and so on. Now, the problem I always run into is what I want, I will say to, to delegates, I say, right, you’ve got two roles to play here, you’re gonna, I want you to play the role of your learners because I need you to experience what this is like as your kids. And then we need to take our Learn out and put our teacher hat on and think, right, what does this look like in our classroom, and that that feels to me, you know, like a sensible approach. The problem is, it’s quite hard to generate what it’s going to feel like to be learners because of this classic curse of knowledge that we have. So if I’m working with a group of maths teachers, and I put up, you know, diagnostic question on adding two fractions together, they all know the answer. So when I say, Okay, let’s vote, you have the either are all honest, and everyone votes for the right answer. And then it’s hard for me to model how to respond, or they have to like to try and help me out of it. Some of them, you know, put see up and then they have to pretend not to know, and it, you know, it feels inauthentic. And when I was talking to Kieran Mackel, who’s a primary colleague, he says that when he does primary CPD, he purposely uses like Key Stage Three content that is a little bit outside of you know, the regular experience of the primary colleagues. So they feel a bit more like students so that they can better appreciate it. But I think it’s a little bit harder for secondary colleagues because bit well, if I’m speaking to a mixed audiences, what am I doing whipping up a further maths question or something like that, you know, but so I’ll just pause there. Do you see a bit of that? Do you think that’s part of the reason why perhaps sometimes CPD isn’t quite as effective because we can’t make the participants feel like our kids are going to feel and that’s,
Craig Latimir 46:51 that’s definitely part of it in terms of them seeing the benefits of it. So I’ve delivered CPD, but I’ve had an apartment. I was only person that was teaching decision. Maths. Yeah. So when I did modelling, I got something from from there. It’s good. Actress, got a big CPD conference. Recently, Kara maca was didn’t expect to have teachers, which was which was great. We had Daisy Christodoulou talking about assessment. She had multiple choice question What’s capital of Moldova? No clue. And it was those things that you can buy doesn’t need to be maths related. It doesn’t need to be further maths. If you want to prove how diverse the questions work to something from from whatever domain you want. They want to, you’d want them to see how you react, how you do so with that knowledge, it doesn’t matter that the important bit like only the numbers aren’t the important bit matters, the important bit. It’s what you do with that information that matters. So yeah, yeah, I think there’s an issue. And it’s really hard for teachers to learn what it’s like be being a student really, really hard. Yeah, I would say go out of school domain where possible general knowledge, things like that, where you will only meet some people, but that’s not what you want. Sometimes I think,
Craig Barton 48:05 yep, smile makes a lot of sense. And just few more points on this. This the I don’t know what point I’m upset. Now, who knows. But one thing I’ve been dabbling a lot with is this kind of CPD via stealth. So this is the idea that I mean, mini whiteboards, everybody’s China mini whiteboards at the moment. But if you want to do CPD on mini whiteboards, sometimes it’s good idea to do the CPD almost on something else, but use the mini whiteboards to facilitate it. So if you want, you know, if you’re doing modelling or something like that, you everyone’s got a mini whiteboard, and then you can you can say to people something like, Okay, write down the three most difficult things you find when you’re modelling yourself. Okay, hold that up. So I can see Oh, amazing, Jane, tell me a bit more about that swap with your partner, and so on. And then almost at the end of this session, it’s almost like a big reveal and say, Oh, look, we’ve been using mini whiteboards what worked well with that, what do you see? Do you see any value in that at all? Is that a bit sneaky?
Craig Latimir 49:00 100%. I was as long as you don’t bid at the end, right? As long as you make it explicit. That’s the important bit I’ve seen people model. Try and do that by separate but to stealthy. Some point, you’ve got to tell them what you’ve been doing and and why it’s been beneficial for you and how you use it in your practice, for sure. Yeah, I think it depends on your audience. And where they’re at depends on how good they are at using that thing do they need all the time focusing just on mini whiteboards, or if it’s, you know, if you’ve delivered that CPD once and you’re revisiting them in six months time, that might be where you do that refresher of that. It’s retrieval practice. It doesn’t need to take the forefront because it’s retrieval. They know the basics, but if you want them to, you know, because they weren’t focusing on the routines you were doing at the time, if you then say at the end, but that was your main focus. You’re pretty well planned as as much but but if it’s retrievable, if it’s part something else that then I think 100%
Craig Barton 49:58 interest in interesting right? Final two points on this, I could talk to you all day about this. One is just an observation for me. So I’m obsessed with them atomic habits by James clear, I don’t know if you’ve ever read it sold like 20 million copies or something like that. So I’m not exactly new to the to the party with this. But he cites a really interesting study that I’ve used a lot with CPD, and that is this. It’s called an implementation statement or an implementation action or something like that. And it’s the idea that, let’s say you’ve well in the study was about like diets and exercise and stuff. If you say, you know, you get all this motivational material and you think, right, okay, I’m definitely gonna go to the gym, I’m going to go next week, it never happens. Whereas if you say, I’m gonna go Wednesday, 10 o’clock, like the jump up in participator, it’s something like, you know, 40% increase or something like that. I wonder whether this is true in in CPD that you know, you leave CPD with all these good intentions and life gets in a way. Whereas if you state the exact time you are going to do something for the first time, it’s more likely to happen. What’s your thoughts on that?
Craig Latimir 51:01 100%. So, a few things you can do within your CPD is give people one if they will stick with me, because I love New whiteboards. And one if they practice it within your lesson, within your CPD, it’s less of a strain on them to then do it in the classroom because they’ve practised it wasn’t the end of that CPD. Yeah, get him to go to laptops or whatever. Right? We’ve got 10 minutes left over now, look at lesson that’s coming up. Find the class you’re worrying about the least other stuff with Yeah, that’s good. And a lesson that will work best for it. And now produce a set of questions and or start to produce it, hopefully, you know, they can finish it, but if they need to get started, remove that time. And then you say, you know, tell your colleagues send an email to your heart, they’re going to commit, if they can capture that time doing it. Great. If not, you know, alas, and probably missed over 100% Get them to commit to give them some time to start to work on it within that CPD that you say otherwise, they’re gonna walk out the door and then are teaching this tomorrow and doing that and photocopying and life will get in the way. So yes, get them to commit it and get them to tell someone else if that person ends up coming to the classroom or not. I bet it like say it’s going to increase the success rate of them then delivering it and 100% to do that. Yes,
Craig Barton 52:26 I’m sorry. One final thing on this, Craig. And I love I think this is where a lot of CPD falls down is it doesn’t have the the follow up, it tends to be one off things. Now I experienced this myself, when I’m called in as like an ex external speaker or whatever. It’s always a bit frustrating for me, because I can leave the session thinking, okay, that seemed to go, well, people seem to enjoy and so on. But I’ve no idea what happens unless I can come back again, three months later, or whatever, I’ve no idea. But when you deliver CPD within your own school, or a group of schools you’ve got a relationship with, it’s much easier to do the follow up. But what I’ve never thought to do, and it’s such a simple idea that what you’ve said there is this idea of, you know, observing where possible, colleagues doing it, but then spotting misconceptions, just as you would do, you know, within a lesson. And then the follow up session almost starts as if you’ve marked a load of homework with Okay, here’s some examples of really good things I’ve seen. Here’s some examples of something that’s almost good. But if I describe it to you, can you see what could have made it a bit better? All that stuff that we saw normal and natural to do in Lesson doesn’t happen enough? Does it with CPD either for five kind of practical reasons, or just because people don’t realise it’s a smart thing to do?
Craig Latimir 53:38 Yeah, the danger of you might have, you know, people to try and buy somebody in to do a thing. Which is fine. You know, if you want them to work on any basketballs, you can, but we’re going to make sure that that once you’re gone, we if you’re not coming back in, we build something to chase up on it again. Dangerous that? Yeah, again, that sort of one and done. Craig Barton came in, why can’t you all use mini whiteboards, and I think it was diagnosed diagnostic questions properly now. So well, because people learned at once Same, same as I say, to this exact same, oh, I taught these kids by Sagaris a month ago. Now they can’t do it. Of course, they can’t do it anymore. It’s in their use need to retrieve it and you need to tweak it and you need to do all these, all these things that make great teaching. Just yeah, applied to CPD. Whether it’s the original speaker you get that came in and whether it’s someone in house then then grabs that board and sort of keeps it rolling. Yeah, maybe it’s maybe something worth doing. You know, you speak to them. Great question for them. Like how are you going to follow this up? And obviously, it’s not on you at all to to it’s on them, but just might encourage it lasting a bit longer.
Craig Barton 54:51 Brilliant. All right, Craig, what is tip number four, please.
Craig Latimir 54:56 Well, number four, number four is this is a bit of a shorter end We’re learning doesn’t start in year seven. So, hopefully people’s minds are blown. And so if you, if you think about all the misconceptions that you could name that a student may have acquired by the end of year seven, since sort of walking in September, the second or whatever it is, there’s going to be loads. But then you pause and realise, well, they’re in year seven, or seven, that means there’s been at least six years before that, where they recruit as many misconceptions as many mistakes, they’ve forgotten as much stuff as they could in that one year times by six. And the danger then, is that we didn’t realise that, and year to year 11. And you meet hardworking students that have good attendance, but still don’t have the timetables, they still count on their fingers, like I’m doing now. But still, when adding lists of numbers, don’t jump to the number ones first, that make their life easier. And let me know what fraction represents and I suggest that they’ve been taught to hide, it’s so easy to grab, when you teach your seven, your long term plan on schema work, or whatever it is, and go right. This is where our course starts. This is where learning starts with the students and not seeing them before, sort of out of sight out of mind. This must be where we begin. But there’s just so much that they they could have missed learned forgotten before you that you have to go beyond or backwards from the year seven and start looking at primary. I’m going to highlight this point with an example. I first heard Vicky Priddle talk about I spoke about with with our head teachers a few months ago and and the current macro spoke to our adults about that which is counting. Like if you ask pregnancy anyone but certainly technical maths teachers, what’s it take to count where you get one, then two, then three, then four, then five. And, and that’s how you count. But there’s five components to counting this like, blew my mind. So so there being a stable order for that has been 1234, you can’t go 145 That’s one thing fine. one to one correspondence, but you can count objects. So one, object two objects three, the object isn’t the number three, but it can be the sort of it can be the third one. And now the next thing I think about gets a bit more interesting. So cardinality, the idea that by the time you’ve counted the third object, not only your position three, there are three objects in total. Now, so three is, is one place and an underlying but it has a size to it. And to me that that links to jumping from counting your fingers to jumping in one in one go. If you think of three as 123 or 17, as 1234 517, you’re always gonna count on your fingers, either forwards or backwards. If you haven’t understood cardinality, you’re not gonna know you can make those those jumps. So when we see these gaps in year 11, still, I think it’s because we haven’t addressed the gaps from from primary. The next order irrelevance, if I give you seven objects and say, Craig, how many objects? Can you see here? Well, you’ll count seven objects. And if I were to rearrange them, and say, How many are there now, you would hopefully say seven. Some people would have to count them again. Well, that leads to commutativity. If they haven’t got that concept, and we never teach this explicitly, cardinality, order relevance. The fifth one is abstraction, that so anything can be counted. And also one thing can be multiple numbers at the same time. So if I have a group of five objects, well, it can be one group, or it can be five things at the same time. If I think about a fraction, fraction, three sevens is that three of something, or is it less than one of something, what it’s both at the same time, and that idea of obstruction again, so this is just counting, there’s going to be a whole wealth of these things at Key Stage One and Key Stage two, that lead up to things that key stage three and key stage four, and if we aren’t teaching, at the periphery of what students already know, not going to learn anything. This is when you get students in Year 11, that can’t do the timetables or add efficiently, because they spent the whole time learning from year seven upwards. And really, you’d be better off going a few years back. So I think ways to address this are get your key stage two experts to come in and speak to secondary leaders get the Vicki pillows and chemicals of the world or just your feeder school, they’ll know loads more, attend the sessions, but read the books with the things like maths comp will say sort of the key stage it’s aimed at, which I think is wrong. It is the key stage that the maths is not the key to that, if it was aimed at you know, I would learn as much my key stage two session as it would have been the other session because I’m teaching after that key stage. So the matters Key Stage two, it’s relevant to me because my kids would have gone through that journey already.
We’ve got a school next year. Really excited about this that’s hiring you Key Stage Two specialist for the secondary school to do this intervention. And, you know, see if that’s a possibility or see if you can do some job sharing or some swaps or something like that. And the other thing was the amount of time and effort that goes into year 11. intervention. The issue here is that students have been taught at the wrong point for four years. Ya got the crazy, very good quick, let’s blitz them for a year and see what happens. Well, if you flip that, and did the intervention that year seven, then you’re going to spend the next four years eight 910, building on actual solid ground because you fixed all those issues and beforehand, so you shouldn’t need to rethink your elephant. So yeah. It’s, it’s a fully in my teaching still, that I don’t know enough to go into a primary school and talk about their mats, secondary, no problem. But what you know, the metal stuff I don’t know, scares me sometimes, because some kind of accounting for half an hour, like I’m gonna draw on the floor, it just doesn’t shouldn’t quite be be right. Convinced, the more we know about it secondary, the better our students outcomes will be. So yes, learning does not start at year seven.
Craig Barton 1:01:12 This is a another another biggie here, hey, you know, when when you sent these tips to, I thought this tip was going to be the exact opposite of what you’ve described, which, which I find fascinating here. So Joe Morgan did a piece of like a video on YouTube that’s completely feel available, I’ll link to it, which was shift aimed at secondary teachers, showing them all the things that kids know, in year six, well, so all the things kids have experienced in year six, and it’s frightening, right? Like, you see some of the depth of math, and you’re like, Whoa, okay, you know, that’s essentially our year, seven schema workers, you know, 80% of it has been covered, it’s year six. So what I thought you were gonna say, and others have found this fascinating, was be aware what kids have done it year six, so make sure the work at year seven is more challenging. So you know, have a look at year seven scheme of work. Don’t bother spending ages on place value, because they’ve done it for the last three or four years, let’s crack on with a bit of algebra and so on and so forth. But my interpretation is, it’s it’s almost kind of the opposite. It’s make sure that that understanding really kind of, is secure. And I guess my kind of follow up to that is, is how is it is like a doesn’t mean, our kind of checks for understanding needs to be better? And if so, what do they need to look like? Is it a case of not assuming just because they’ve covered things for three or four years that they know it? And my theory with that is that yes, some scheme of work exists, essentially becomes the year six scheme of work. And then we know kids get a bit kind of bored and switched off, because they’re doing the same maths that they’ve done in primary. I don’t know if that makes sense.
Craig Latimir 1:02:47 Yeah. Now 100%. And this won’t apply to all the students. But you know, that’d be different Joe, that says, all the wonderful things that they have done, great, just means there’s gonna be some kids, that I’ve got so many misconceptions about so many things. And within the classroom, things don’t need to change, I’m probably talking about the bottom, attainment wise five to 10% of your students, the fact that you can go through five years of secondary school. There are some things outside of your control, illness and attendance and things like that, find that but when you’ve got a student that’s got good attendance and a good attitude, and is in your sort of low set year 11, and can’t do basic maths, something’s gone wrong. And I would just shift intervention should whatever time and effort and energy goes into year 11, put it into year seven, and fix it, then it doesn’t need to rearrange your whole schemes of work, because largely students will be successful. This isn’t about every year seventh student. Just about being aware, and we’re so aware of misconceptions at secondary, we know what kids have learned, moving to haven’t mastered it, and we look out for them. And we make sure we go back just the right level before teaching. Expanding double brackets, we know all the little things to look out for are multiplying the negatives and the coefficients and only going to square the powers and all that. But we don’t know when it comes to adding or multiplying and things like that. So we just need to upskill ourselves a little bit by going back further. And invest that time in in those students not not everyone don’t rewrite the entire seven schema work. But put something in place to work on those students. Otherwise they’ll spend five years not doing anything. They’re trying their hardest, and it’s not pitched the right level. And you know, the same way that yes, they might have learnt it. Trigonometry is on the case history curriculum now, doesn’t mean I’m gonna start teaching your town I’m going to assume they all know how to how to do it. Yeah. So just invest time in yourselves in your department in learning about what happens at Key Stage Two Sessions put in place for any subject as well. And then spend time in your setting identifying those students, and you’re going to put out a master class for for year 11 students took the seven instead. give them four years of better learning, rather than waiting till the very end. Yeah. Oh, they still can’t do it. Yeah, well, no wonder
Craig Barton 1:05:08 why to get asked you to awkward question though, right. So so we know that there’s a bit of a recruitment crisis in maths. We know that the Vatican, I mean, the majority of departments probably, you’d be lucky if you’ve got math specialist teaching all the classes, maybe you’ve got teachers from other subjects doing a little bit of teaching math teaching here and there, maybe you’ve got a lot of part time teacher with split classes, and so on and so forth. what invariably happens is that your strongest teachers get tend to put put on you 11 classes, because there’s, again, there’s this push for push for exam success, and so on and so forth. And that seems to trickle down that the year seven almost becomes a bit of a kind of hodgepodge where you’ve got, you know, split classes left, right and centre, the PE teacher, the geography teachers teaching a bit of this and so on. But it’s very hard to break that cycle. Because if you invert it for one year, maybe GCSE results come go down, and then there’s all kinds of pressure and so on. So working within the constraints that we know we have, how would you allocate staff? Would it be strong in year 11, strong on year seven, and then kind of year nine, just kind of that’s where the trouble comes from? Being realistic, what how do we do? How do we solve this.
Craig Latimir 1:06:25 So linking back to tip number two, around building a legacy and having structures in place, so long as you’ve got a solid person looking after each year group during it five, in that sense, then whatever routines in Scotland to underpin structures and things are in place, and then embedded, and if you’ve got a PE teacher, because you have your legacy because of your brand. And because of all the those things, you’re mitigating as much as possible for all these things. But you’re touched on another really important point, which is, like, ethically, what’s the right thing to do? Let’s say you had the Queenstown numbered, right? 99 to one, let’s say you had 1000 grades to get out to 100 tilde pupils and make the numbers off of myself. But would it be ethical to give everyone to attempt to work in a way that gives everyone a sixth? Where you ignore the people that are doing better than that? And you put all your time and energy into those little ones, and twos and threes? And fours? But are you aiming for a normal distribution? Or are you saying that if you want an eight, I don’t really care about anymore? Because eight nine, you’re the same life chances broadly, and I only get my three or four? Are you saying that if you don’t get these kids nines, they can’t get into Oxford, and they can’t become the next Einstein, they can’t do this. Because we’ve got limited resources, you have to decide. It’s tricky as schools, state schools, parents don’t choose, they choose the ethos that they heard they send their students to, you have to do that for them. And I’ve worked in schools with a priority is four plus four plus seven plus that sort of thing. And then any sort of five, you just sort of ignore them, because some pluses, your 11th grade, and four plus is your sort of large life chances grade, you have to decide where you want to divert your energy and your best teachers and your resources. And it’s, I don’t know what the perfect answer is to that. But the current system we have in place. You know, when you have intervention sort of ended up for class and named that top set, probably most most of the time. I think it’s that right? You got kids that aren’t a great one. So they’re, well don’t worry about them suddenly get a four anyway. Well, it should, should be to get them to, I don’t know. You have to decide ethically, philosophically for yourself, either as a head teacher, or as head of department, where and how you’re trying to keep these resources. And if you have a bump in GCSE results one year, but you know that in two years time, everyone’s going to it was going to increase. Do you do it? Because, you know, that’s one of the toughest decisions I think you need to make is where do you put your resources? And yeah, I think it’s a very long way of me not answering your question.
Craig Barton 1:09:05 So check your high grade, fifth and final tip, please.
Craig Latimir 1:09:10 Fifth and final tip seven, save as the secret to a happy life.
Craig Barton 1:09:14 I saw I saw this I thought, right, I’m gonna pay attention here. This is this is gonna be a big game changer.
Craig Latimir 1:09:20 Yeah. So this, this isn’t gonna be pedagogical. And this isn’t aimed at anyone with sort of serious mental health problems and intention not to demean or undermine anyone going through that but it’s so the rest of us it’s been fluctuating between feeling invincible and on top of the world and then being a bit grumpy. Sometimes, and teaching can be so rewarding. It can be lonely and it can be stressful and it can be can be really pressured as well. I was at a conference one of the sort of summer conferences a few years ago and every speaker was pretty dull, and they had one person booked for a double over lunch was our great two hours of darkness instead I think was the most incredible two hours of my life. And it was a man called Andy cope, Dr. Andy cope, who is the UK self professed doctor of happiness. And he wrote his thesis on, is it possible to be happier without anything within your life changing. And he was great. And he gave five tips, I won’t give them all because we’re running out of time, and I don’t want to take his job off him. But a few tips he gave that just resonated. Number one was when you get home, or when you wake up in the morning, be the best you for five minutes. So you’ve probably had a horrible day. Sometimes you’ve had a horrible day. And the temptation is, as soon as you get in, this is your place where you’ve got your partner with children or your character and you unwind and you let loose. Don’t like take a pause before you knock on the door with the key in the door and just think, right for five minutes, I’m gonna be positive, I’m going to ask what the people are doing, I’m going to I’m going to bask in their happiness from from their day and what they’ve achieved. And it’s important to have people to offload to and not when you walk in, you don’t want this sort of Pavlovian reaction of the doors going right and other moans about to happen. And so sometimes about other people’s happiness as well, but but if you do that for five minutes, you make a concerted effort to be happy. It might also just change your mood a little bit when you when you go on in the in the rest of the rest of the day. So that was one tip. And another one was stop wishing your life away. I think teachers are awful for this. And if you’re in your 30s, you’ve got about 2500 weeks or so to get. So imagine starting a half term on a Monday and going six weeks ago. You’re wishing for a shorter life. Like don’t don’t say six weeks to go like find the joy in a Monday morning in a Wednesday in a five day period five, stop saying I wish it was Friday already or two days ago or it’s hump day today. Like it teaches other words the suitor halftime starts over this is a short one, where we’re talking about like, this is your life. It’s finite. Enjoy it, find the little things and with that He then spoke about hookah. And I don’t know if you’ve come across hookah. So who is this Danish idea of comfort and cosiness? And they sort of embed it in their furniture and their ways of life? And it’s one of the reasons that you know, the Danes and the Norwegians as was come off as the happiest people on the planet. And you speak about seasonal hookah. So in the summer, what was your who could be what would bring you comfort and cosiness? It’d be like reading a book under a shady tree isn’t your personal history to each person in the ultimate might be having a tomato soup and a polystyrene cup was watching some fireworks for me in the winter. This is an awful one. But in London, it would be on a cold evening wrapping up warm, getting a box of popcorn chicken from KFC and walking along the canal at night. And it was just it’s just a little time to give me a bit of headspace and enjoy myself was not thinking about what school who would be. I started writing a list last night of the little things you can just appreciate in the day that have to happen anyway. But where can you find the joy in it sort of seek out the moments and just appreciate them. So like a pristine, newly cleaned a whiteboard and write on that for the first time. As beautiful a tidy classroom in the day. Oh God, meeting a class for the first time. What a joy writing with a chisel tip pen for me to tip all the way. That’s how satisfying doing a mini whiteboard routine. And if one gets it right, like savour these moments they’re gonna happen anyway. But don’t don’t rush past and seeing that kid that’s annoyed you all here is quite personal one smash outperformance on the piano in front of the whole school in the term. And that was just beautiful. Finishing a new seating plan. That’s a big one. And and marking the last question of the last paper in the pile. There’s no better feeling than the mat. And these are things that are going to happen anyway. But just just pause and appreciate them a little bit find the joy in a five day period five find the joy in a Wednesday and your Monday morning and yeah read hookah by Mike Viking it’s a great little book.
Craig Barton 1:14:14 Wow what a fantastic tip that is to end on grey just just just just a just a very brief reflection for me on this. Absolutely fantastic I spoke to Jamie Tom on the podcast a number of episodes ago and he’s very much into slow teaching and mindset and so on. One of his tips was turn down the negativity radio and he says that teaching is really bad for this that it’s we’re full of the negative thoughts you teach for good lessons you have one ropey one what’s the only one you reflect on? It’s the bad lesson and so on. And he talks about things he does with like his little boy I think he’s little boys three or four. And at the end of each day they say what their favourite part of the day was and so on. These things are so important on in any job but particularly particularly teaching where you’ve got to be performing all the time and so on. It’s yeah, so that was just one reflection. But but the second one, the the not wishing your life away, I think is a huge one. That’s I think that’s huge. It was one of the reasons I took a break from full time classroom teaching because I was doing this like I would everybody on their timetable has one or two lessons that they do not look forward to either, particularly year two in class, I would have them Thursday, period six every week, last lesson of the day. And I would dread it, and I would dread it from I’d be happy at the end of Thursday, period six, but even Friday, mid afternoon, I’d start thinking in four days time, I’m going to be to anyone hanging over me all weekend. And it was it was hard. And you always have something like this, there’s always something in the week that you dread. And if you’re anything like me, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got something to look forward to, it’s the dread that kind of overshadows this. And also related to that is because the teaching is divided up into six half terms, you’re never that far away from a holiday. So you’re always like, it’s always a countdown five more sleeps, and all this all this kind of stuff. And the years just take away, they just take away, take away take away and you know, before you know it, you’re you’re old, you’re cynical, and you know, and all these moments have kind of gone. So this is a big thing that I am reflecting on. And I’m really pleased you you’ve mentioned this and there’s some lovely ideas. I’m terrible. This is the last thing I say I promise I shouldn’t be. But I’m terrible for that. As soon as I walk through the door, the moaning comes out comes out comes out. But I’m going to do that now. Be my best me for five minutes. I think that I’m fat. I’m going to try this because what I could do is listeners won’t know this guy for cutting it out. But Alexa just went through my wife interrupting a podcast. That’s a cardinal sin in this house. So I could go down and be dead grumpy. But what I’m going to do, I’m going to be my best me for five minutes and see where that gets us. Craig, that’s absolutely brilliant. Right? Let me hand over to you then what? Well, because I was going to talk about this tonnes, what listeners should check out but as I say you, Are you new to Twitter permanently? Or was this just kind of new guys that you popped up? And then well, well, where can listeners kind of get more of your stuff because it’s brilliant.
Craig Latimir 1:17:01 Yeah, sort of links to tip number five, as well as post like, I I’ve been on Twitter, under my name for years, originally just personal and try to turn it into professional about three or four years ago and putting some things out there. But I came so aware that anytime I send something out, if within five minutes hadn’t got 100 likes, yeah, I became really self conscious. And I was just I was checking it over and over again. And I’ve got people think I’m stupid and I colleagues, my peers gonna see this, I need to delete it and delete half the things and it was destroying if I tried to keep them nice, I was trying to be helpful. But if I tried to do it, then left the house would be on my mind. And this isn’t healthy. So that there isn’t an account under my name, but I don’t really use it as much anymore. So maybe this new account thinking, right? If I’m anonymous, maybe I won’t worry, I still you know, I feel like I’ve been in this game long enough to give some things back. And I’d like to do that. So I’ve learned so much from other people through the same medium. So that wallet, let’s make an anonymous one. So check out teaching solutions on Twitter. But it just it just really helped. This might quite ruin my anonymity a little bit. But it was like being, you know, trolls sort of harass you anonymously, I told you like become like an anti troll, like anonymously help people. And it just made me just feel so much better. So this is a category of about two months or so. And been overwhelmed. I think that the freedom it gave me to express things, you know, it’s bypassed the engagement, the other account had by biomar. So it’s it was just quite interesting. And yeah, so check that out. But also don’t be a beer anonymous troll sometimes if you want to help people out. So that’s where you can hear more more from me on that on that Twitter account. And yeah, and then do you want other things? Yeah, gone? Yeah, of course in terms of I just so you’ve been doing this for a long time and there’s loads of things I don’t want to repeat anything that people have already said. So one is just about go out there and listen to people and read people that are diametrically opposed to what to what you believe like I’ve had the the fortune of I wrote a master’s based around Joe bowlers work. I’ve trained under Alan Watson. I’ve worked at the school that Bruno Reddy and Chris Bolton were out and had both their jobs and visited. Makayla visited Helen handles school where they’re doing inquiry learning, all those things, people that, you know, that’s so different in their backyards, but I learned something from every one of those of those things. So just try and broaden what you’re listening to and what you’re reading. And then to to actual things. When one book, which I’ve not heard mentioned, it’s called inclusive mathematics. It’s by Alan Watson and Mike politan. And it’s quite old now, but as if anyone reads that and doesn’t get something from it. I mean, well, well done. And then there’s a CPD event called the Institute of Political pedagogy champions once a year. And it’s happening in a few days time starts on my birthday. I can’t wait. And it’s sort of three or four days in a convent in rural Oxfordshire, and it’s most incredible CPD for anyone that’s that’s sort of done the math comps a few times and starts to hear the same things. Go to this because it will blow your mind. It’s quite limited and spaces. And I know I’m putting on to explain for next year, but But yeah, it’s incredible. I think that’s, I think that’s me, Tim.
Craig Barton 1:20:36 Wow, brilliant. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure. I know I say this a lot. But I’ve learned so much. Yeah, I mean, again, I’ve Yeah, I make a lot of notes, but I put stars next to things that I really need to focus on and it’s like some kind of big constellation on my on my pages. So this has been an absolutely brilliant So Craig, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us. Cheers.
Craig Barton 0:00 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. Strap yourselves in for this one because this episode I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to curriculum experts, Mary Meyers and you’re in for an absolute treat. A few quick announcements before we dive in at firstly, sponsor slots for the tips for teachers podcasts are now open. So if you want to let the world’s most interesting listeners know about your book, product or event, just drop me an email. Also just a reminder, you can do videos of all Mary’s tips or tips for teachers website. These videos are absolutely ideal to share meetings or training sessions to promote discussion. You can also sign up to the all new tips for teachers newsletter, where every Monday morning you’ll receive Scipio inbox to try out the classes will also receive a video. Podcasting since you on your journey home, over 2000 people have signed up to the newsletter get loads of great feedback for free to just hop onto the website to sign up. I’m also I’m taking bookings for face to face tips for teachers CPD sessions. I’ve done a few of these in the last month or so. I’m really enjoying super practical CPD. Basically, I outline a problem, I suggest a few tips for it, check it over to you to think what could you change to make this your classrooms have a discussion that we do another tip, it’s bang, bang, bang, loads of things, you can try out the very next day. And finally, if you find the podcast, please could you take a moment to review us on the podcast player of choice. Make a difference? Anyway, shut up. Craig, I’m here and you’re saying Okay, so back to the show. Let’s get learning with today’s guests. Spoiler alert, here are Mary’s five tips. Tip one, you should all be focusing on doing fewer things in grade two that tip to focus on the concepts and the big ideas in your curriculum. Tip three we know more and remember more when we’ve heard it in a story. Tip Four provoke curiosity in our students. And finally, Tip five we need to ask ourselves Who is this for? If you look at the episode description on your podcast player or visit the episode page on tips for teachers, you’ll see I’ve timestamps each of these tips so you can jump straight to anyone you want to listen to first. Oh, and thanks to my wonderful Patreon sponsors have splashed the cash on the right now really well. I think they’re pretty good transcripts for each podcast episode that flows like a bit like a conversation. They’re all time stamped as well. So you can quickly find the bits of the podcast that you want to listen to or read or listen to. Okay, I’ll shut up now. Enjoy the show.
Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Mary Maya to the tips for teachers podcast. Hello, Mary. How are you?
Mary Myatt 2:55 Oh, hello, Craig, great to be with you. And thanks for including me very well. Thank you.
Craig Barton 3:00 That’s fantastic. Right for the benefit of listeners. Mary, can you tell us a little bit about yourself ideally in a sentence?
Mary Myatt 3:07 Well, I’m an education writer, and speaker, and thinker. And I’m mostly focused on the curriculum.
Craig Barton 3:17 Fantastic. Well, let’s dive straight in. What’s the first tip you’ve got for us today?
Mary Myatt 3:23 Well, my first tip is that we should all be focusing on doing fewer things in greater depth.
Craig Barton 3:31 I like it. Tell me more about this?
Mary Myatt 3:35 Well, I think that as a sector, we’re inclined to add more and more to our schedules, to our curriculum to our resources. And the reason for that is because we are a very dedicated diligent group of professionals who want the best for our pupils and students. And what I’m arguing is, is that we need to be Morrow conduit in what we’re doing stripping it back to the things that are really adding value. And there’s quite a lot of work around this Pareto the 8020 rule. So 80% of impact and outcomes across multiple sectors come from about 20% of input, and it’s not precise, but it’s just like, there are some things that are adding real value. Let’s focus on those and let’s strip out the stuff that is a bit redundant, a bit dusty, and just we’ve always done it this way. And I think this is system wide, but I also think it is personal personal responsibility to do this as well. Otherwise, we’re all going to keel over.
Craig Barton 4:47 Right, let’s dig into this a bit. What I love I love this marriage, a really, really strong opening tip this I know you’re obviously an expert on on all things curriculum, and I can only speak from my narrow little maths bubble. I get the feeling or the subjects reclaims around two full like ours, would that be fair, others some kind of worse offenders than others?
Mary Myatt 5:06 Yeah, so, I mean, there’s a, there’s a lot in the national curriculum for English and maths. And that’s understandable. Because those are kind of foundational for, you know, a successful life in all sorts of measures, not just financially, but in terms of being able to grapple with the world and all sorts of measures. Beyond that, apart from history, which has got a lot in it. And that’s because Michael Gove got his mitts on it, you know, the rest of the national curriculum is actually manageable. In my view, and where we think there is too much, you know, there are some things we can do to make sure that what we are teaching children has the greatest impact. And so that’s why we have to be very intentional about what it is we’re planning, to teach to make sure that it has the greatest impact that comes back to your things in greater depth as well. But my view is, there is a lot, there is a lot to be addressed. If I’m going to pick up on a on this for a later, tip on my next tip, which is around identifying the concepts and the big ideas and making sure they are secure. That’s one of the ways to make it manageable.
Craig Barton 6:28 Fantastic. Can I just ask you, Mary, as a maths teacher, one thing that annoys me is that we’ve got this key stage three statutory guidance, so things that legally kind of have to be covered in in key stage three. And it’s ridiculous. It’s so jam packed. So you get like trigonometry has to be in there. And there’s no need for it to be in there and stuff. What when you’ve got like this kind of enforced jump out curriculum, is there anything kind of teachers can do you see this in English? And math? Do you see any good practices about because it’s hard sometimes to go into depth when you’ve got so much so much to cover?
Mary Myatt 7:00 Right, so Dylan Williams, really good on this. And he talks about, you know, we need to look at it through the lens of what do our pupils and students need to know. So, you know, at a very basic level, things like supervising absolutely having number bonds and times tables completely under their belt. And then, by contrast, need to know, so this need to know, and need to know. And so he would put in that need to know, you know, Roman numerals. And, and the benchmark for deciding whether it’s need to know as opposed to need to know is asking ourselves, is this fundamental for pupils, future learning, and their future success in life? And so we need to focus on those. And the rest is kind of neat to know. So nobody’s going to die if not taught about the Roman numerals, for instance. And so, yeah, that I mean, there is a lot in the English and the math and also the science. But then they also have more time as well. In the in timetabling generally.
Craig Barton 8:18 That’s true. That’s true. The other thing I say, I’ve got tonnes to ask you about this actually marry everything you say. Just don’t you’re not below more questions here. One thing you often see in math schemes work. And I’m interested whether this is true across all the subjects and what your view is, is you’ll get the year seven scheme of work will look quite similar to the year eights and scheme of work, which will also look quite similar to year nine. And the logic being that we need to expose students to these these ideas time and time again, because we know students forget them and so on. But what you get is you never get that depth in year seven, it’s kind of Let’s rush through it. Because we know we’re going to revisit in year eight, and we’re going to revisit in year nine? What’s the arguments against that? Because it’s quite hard sometimes to convince teachers that actually no, let’s spend a lot more time on this in year seven, we’re not going to have sufficient time to revisit it in as much detail in year eight or nine. But going deeper earlier is a better idea. What What’s the argument to support that theory?
Mary Myatt 9:12 Yeah, so I think there’s a lens to be considered before year seven, and that is knowing what they’d been taught up until the end of year six. And so what I quite often see is, pupils being taught stuff that as though it was a new thing that they’d actually been taught in year four. Now, it is fine to teach them stuff. In year four, if we have identified there is still some gaps, or we’re doing it intentionally because we want to make sure it’s really secure. That is absolutely fine in a retrieval practice lens kind of thing. But quite often this material is being taught so they’ve never come across it before. So this is a patronising to the children. And you know and then we wonder why why they get Oh no, the whole Key Stage Three wastage is, you know and celebrate this work of 2015. This is a real this is a realistic in terms of content being repeated, there is an argument for that I can see that where you are revisiting where you’re revisiting stuff that’s been taught before. Because again, that is important. However, it, this is why we’ve got to be really intentional about what we’re doing. Those later years in year eight, and nine, should really be quite light touch building on what happened in year seven. So again, this comes back to a few things in greater depth. Let’s get this really secure in year seven, so that when they’re in eight and nine, it’s not just being skimmed, like it was in year seven, it’s actually just revisiting to consolidate as opposed to reteaching, because they hadn’t got it properly the first time. So I think there’s a subtle but important distinction there.
Craig Barton 11:00 That makes perfect sense. So just just to others on this tip, Mary? Yeah, we’ve obviously talked about curriculum. And I assume that this also applies kind of at a general school level, and also maybe for an individual teacher making decisions in lessons. So how do you see that playing out this idea of doing fewer things in greater depth,
Mary Myatt 11:19 yet beyond us as individuals, I think that there’s quite often across the sector kind of scatter gun approach to the bright, shiny new things, some of which might be worthwhile, but not taking the time to really consider whether they’re appropriate for this setting. And for me, as an individual for my classes. And so I’m going to adopt and trial something either as a school or as an individual. I’m going to be very measured about it. And I’m also going to think what am I going to stop doing in order to do this thing really well. And again, Dylan, William is really good on this, you know, what’s already good that we might have to stop doing it or do something that’s got more promise. I’m paraphrasing, but it’s both systems and at individual level as well.
Craig Barton 12:17 Fantastic. All right, Mary, what’s Tip number two, please?
Mary Myatt 12:23 Well, you think I plan action. I had planned it, of course. But my second tip is, is focusing on the concepts and the big ideas, and it does link to fewer things in greater depth, I now realised as I’m talking to you about it, but um, so when we’re thinking about teachings, stuff to kids, that we want them to know, understand and be able to do something with. We’ve got a lot of evidence, I suppose common sense. But it’s also from the research as well that we know more and understand more if we understand the concepts of the big ideas behind what we’re learning. Now. This is really helpful when we’re thinking about teaching a curriculum. Because the concepts and the big ideas are like the boulders that children are going to encounter across their time in education, would argue from three to 19, the big ideas, assuming they’re going to still study it at 19. But you know that the point is, they’re there all the way through. So things like in history, democracy would be a big idea. They’re going to encounter that in lots and lots of different spaces. Migration in geography, and so identifying the concepts and the big ideas, a one route into doing fewer things in greater depth. The reason for this is that, apart from it being intuitive, is there’s a lot of research and Dan Willingham and Steven Pinker amongst others, show that knowledge news, they’re like holding baskets that contain a lot of information. So if I understand a concept or a big idea, it means new knowledge linked to that concept or idea is going to be much stickier. So a quick example from my own field, which was religious education. If I’m teaching Santa’s unit up a Key Stage Two or lower key stage three, about Judaism and we’re learning about the commandments that the Jewish community expected to take account of.
If my pupils and students have not been taught about and understand the underlying concept or big idea there, which is the covenant, the deal or the agreement or the contract between God and the Jewish people, it means those six hunt written 13 commandments or mitzvah that they’ve somehow got to take account of is just like random stuff that Jewish people have gotten to. And so if they understand the covenant, it all makes sense it links together. And then if later on, we’re learning, saying Christianity and Jesus referring himself to as the new covenant that only makes sense if you understand what the original covenant was, in the Jewish context, because Jesus was Jewish. So there’s huge resonance when we identify those concepts and big ideas. And the great thing is, there’s plenty of them, but there aren’t too many. And it’s my job as a teacher to identify those and with others, when we’re doing curriculum planning, and see how they plot across across the years. So what would that look like in history, for example, if we’re taking the big idea of democracy? Well, in Key Stage Two pupils are taught about Ancient Greece, and I would argue, is not a proper unit, unless you’ve got democracy in there. It’s not just making Greek sandals. That’s not, that’s not history. That’s a sign technology, if it’s even that, anyway. So you know, democracy so. And then later on when they’re studying another aspect of history, either Key Stage Two or key stage three, say, for example, Magna Carta, that’s got that’s got democracy underpinning it as well. And so we’ve got an opportunity there for children be able to enhance our understanding of democracy similar to and different from what we learned before. And then it can spill out into citizenship, you know, when we’re talking about the elections, and all that sort of stuff. And so the big ideas are kind of the building blocks, really, I’m arguing of a curriculum. Steven Pinker goes so far to say that you’re unless we have concepts and big ideas, we’re learning new stuff. It’s just like unlinked pages on the web, they might as well not exist. So again, this links back to fewer things in greater depth, because instead of just chucking masses of material at children, what I call the curse of content coverage, Jackson Pollock in the curriculum, I’m hoping some of its going to stick, I’m going to be very intentional about those big ideas, because that’s what’s going to be really stick. And also, they’re really juicy. They’re really interesting. Now, of course, that then takes us into vocabulary, because a lot of those, a lot of those concepts are tier three vocabulary and vocabulary important. But the tier three vocabulary is distinctive in that it’s Jen, it’s the gateway into the individual disciplines. Sometimes they cross over. So you have some similarities across science and geography, for instance. But for the most part, they open the treasures, they’re the jewels of the curriculum, which is why we need to pay attention to them, learn a lot about them get into the etymology of them. And so yeah, so the concepts and the big ideas are a very exciting place. Both of us I think, as teachers, but then for our pupils, and students as well.
Craig Barton 18:13 I love this, I love this, Mary. And for I mean, I’m fairly sad, I’m reading research, when I can get my hands on it, and I came across them a big list, I think I’m about 19 of these big ideas for maths because I often think my math doesn’t quite fit into this, but you have like, the big idea of equivalents in maths. And so there’s loads of these. And so my question to you is, what what is the most practical way to use these? Is it the case that you’d let’s say, you’re introducing a new concept? Do you say to students, okay, look, before we learn this new thing? Here’s the big idea that it links to that we’ve encountered in the past. Now, let’s go deep into this new concept, and then kind of zoom back out again, and kind of reflect on it. How does it play out best in in terms of planning and in the classroom making the most of these big ideas?
Mary Myatt 18:58 Yeah, that’s a really important and interesting question. And I think it speaks to the inspection question. I don’t normally like reference inspections. But it seems to me this latest framework is pretty sensible. And some of the questions being asked are also pretty sensible, as well. And so there’s quite often the question why, why are we teaching this? Why now? And that gets us into? Well, if the answer then is one of two things. I’m teaching this for the first time, because my pupils have not encountered this before. That I’m very conscious, it’s going to be built on later. But quite often, what we are teaching them is building on what they’ve learned before. And so that’s why it’s important to have a you know, an idea of what what what their, what the curriculum looks like it the headlines of it, you know, ideally across three to 19 doesn’t need to be in detail but For instance, in primary, when children are learning about how the Earth changes, you know, lots of changes, due to the geomorphology of, of geography. Well, in early years, they might have done quite a lot of work on pebbles and puddles and stuff changing and sand all the rest of it. In Key Stage One, they might have done some work, you know, looking down into the centre of the Earth, through a lovely book, street beneath my feet, something like that. And then in Key Stage Two, you know, how, how rocks and things have changed over time, through something like a pebble in my pocket. So, you know, when we’re thinking about, when we’re actually teaching this, we can say to children, you will have learned about some of this before or I’m teaching you this for the first time. It’s like cancer, we’ve now got to be careful, because some kids know some of this stuff outside, in any case, some patients for the first time, and this is what we’re going to be learning about. But, you know, at the heart of, you know, formative assessment, informing, I’m going to do next, just checking in with a light touch wherever the children learn anything about this already, some can build conversation around that. So yes, it’s like you’ve, you’ve met this before, or this is a new thing. And then the headlines of where it might go next. Doesn’t mean I’ve got to be a curriculum expert, in phases that I’m not currently teaching that we’re doing this big idea stuff is, it’s really just headline stuff. So I hope that helps.
Craig Barton 21:38 Yeah, that’s absolutely fascinating. And just just one final reflection on for me on this. You see this with mathematical problem solving quite a lot when when problems. So students says, you know, we all teachers or my thesis want to get kids good at problem solving. And one way I’ve done it in the past is you just give kids a load of problems to solve, but the thing is that they can’t see the connections. Whereas within problem solving, you have these big ideas, like a good strategy is to take a complicated problem and reduce it to a simpler problem. Another problem solving strategy is to look and try and kind of generalise you’ve got your specific solution, try and generalise it. And if you can make explicit these connections, and I think this is where I’ve gone wrong, it’s it’s not these are two completely disconnected problems. But they’re not connected necessarily by topic, but they are connected by this big idea that underlines them. And I think I’ve certainly been guilty of not making that explicit enough to students, because it’s quite obvious to us maybe, you know, we can see these connections. But but really, it seems to me that the making explicit as an important part of this memory.
Mary Myatt 22:38 Yes, I couldn’t agree more. And, you know, and we’ve all done, it made assumptions that children will get what those connections are. And that’s where we have to continue to move from the expert to the novice lens. You know, we’re all relative experts, there was a complete expert, but as, as the expert in the room, I’ve got to continually remind myself, what’s it like to encounter some of this for the first time, and then then it becomes natural. But it’s hard because a lot of this has gone into our DNA. It’s just natural for us as adults. Yeah. But we’ve been like doing it for quite a long time. And our pupils and students both have done
Craig Barton 23:15 fast. Fantastic. Okay, Mary was tip number three, please.
Mary Myatt 23:21 Well, it actually links again, to your question about how to introduce this to children so that it makes sense for them. And I’m going to draw again, on the research, which by the way, you know, we just treat as Best Bets. To quote Dylan William, again, I think it’s the third time in this session, St. Dylan, but I think it’s appropriate because, you know, he is a genius. And so the notion that we want children, knowing more remembering more and being able to do more, let us draw on some of the research, take it in the spirit of Best Bets, rather than it being a three line whip, because this is one of the issues. legacy issues still in the sector. I’m digressing a bit now, I’ve things like the strategies, you know, the national strategies, you’re probably too you are too young to remember them. Not probably you are too young. I wish and, you know, there’s some great stuff in there. But there was also stuff that was bit naff as well. So you could just chuck that out. Like I used to talk to colleagues and say, you know, why are you doing that now? Well, it’s the next page on the national strategy documents hang on a minute. They are strategies they’re not statutory. Anyway legacy of that kind of stuff. And I took notice there was some good stuff in there is that we are directed to do to do is a kind of three line way and there’s no doubt about it. You know, they did raise standards. Certainly I noticed that when children coming up having He had the literacy and numeracy strategy when I was in secondary school, you could see the difference. Anyway, that became a bit of a, I do this, I’m going to have my head chopped off. It sounds like we are professionals who use them judiciously. Anyway, I think a legacy of that is that quite a lot of what is published people think it’s written in stone, you know, we’ve got to know, our professional judgement. So this next insight then from cognitive science, and the psychology is that we know more and remember more when we’ve heard it in a story. That is just my next tip. And, yeah, I mean, Comey, did we need the research to tell us this is why don’t we, I think it’s worth emphasising, because while a lot of these insights, they might be common sense, they’re not yet common practice, which is why I think we need to really spell out why they are so helpful. And again, Willingham and pinker and others. You know, we know Monge, remember more if you’ve heard it in historic now, when Williams talking about story doesn’t just mean novels, and fairy tales, and poems. It’s also visual stories, we read visuals. But it’s any text with a narrative element to it, we’re going to know more and remember more if you’ve heard it in the narrative text. And again, pink is saying unless you’ve got some form of narrative in the stuff you’re learning, it’s just not unlike pages on the web, they might as well not exist. So I think this is a huge opportunity. When we’re thinking about the curriculum. When we want children to know more, remember more, do more. We find a high quality narrative to underpin that, particularly when we’re introducing new stuff. Now I’ve got some examples in a moment. So the second thing to say in relation to that is that we know standards rise if pupils are exposed to a lot of high quality text, if they’re read too. So a combination of that means that if I’m introducing either the background so Christine counsels hinterland really, really important because we’ve got the background there new knowledge is much stickier. Or I want to dig in deep and get my job is to find a high quality text that is going to open up that territory that that we can then dig deeper. So quick example from science yes six programme of study talks about children being taught about the theory of evolution. Now I can either download a tonne resources from poor quality websites. Or using this insight, I can teach my children about the theory of evolution through using high quality text, such as Sabine or a day birth, Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species.
A number of things are going to happen now. One is, if I choose the right text, and I have some criteria for the right text, there’s not any text will do. The visuals have got to be exquisite. And that is because I think too much of what lands on children’s desks is poor quality. My children deserve the best, my pupils and students deserve the best quality materials I can offer them. So the next thing is to think carefully about the tone. Because quite a lot of the materials patronise pupils, or they try and jazz it up. And what I’m looking for is a tone that treats them as though they’re intelligent human beings. And the third criterion for any text that I’m selecting is that they you’ve got this lovely rich vocabulary, conceptual vocabulary that links back to the concepts. So in this example, so being a diver, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the images are beautiful. The text is exquisite. And you’ve got this lovely rich vocabulary like geological record, extinct species sediment this is all the stuff I want my kids to know. And it’s there within the text. And I’m going to pull some of that out the most important ones pop them on a knowledge organiser and use those carefully. Now the this is a transformational way of Taking pupils in that’s just one example to that element of the curriculum that I want them to be able to know more remember, won’t be able to do more. It doesn’t apply to every part of the curriculum, because for instance, in geography, I’m also going to want them to be out with their compasses and maps and iOS maps and that sort of thing. But it’s those parts of the curriculum, which is the bulk of the curriculum, well, not children no more remember that and understand that background selecting a high quality text is what I’m arguing for. So things like Yeovil Harar, is SAP Ian’s, for extracts from for science, yes, I’m gonna I’m gonna teach old texts, and it’s going to pull some of it out in history. Gone breaks little history, brief, brief history. And that, you know, gun bricks work was written for undergraduates as a primer before they started their university courses. But I’ve used it for planning in year eight, and I was talking to a colleague, during lockdown, they used it in year five, because what happens with really high quality texts is you written in a way that can go cross phases and ages, people who really know their stuff. speak and write in a way that is really accessible without dumbing down. So also in science, you’ve got Richard Feynman, six brief lessons in physics, you’ve got Karla valleys, international bestseller also on physics people who really are able to convey it in a way that takes you into this territory. And so I’d be interested in your views on this the one place where I say, I think this is hard to do with mathematics. And the reason for that is because we’ve only got so much time we have, we want to get all this stuff in really deep, we want children to be fluent, we want, you know, got to think wisely about our time. But nevertheless, I think there are opportunities to unpick this in say, for homework in primary, I think there’s can be some nice topics, topic work coming out of it. So for instance, you know, how many of our children I speak to so many kids that Key Stage Three said they don’t like math, which is such a crying shame. I said, Well, what in particular are you struggling with? And it tends to be algebra? I say, Well, why are you learning algebra? And so they don’t know for the test? And I say, Have you asked your teachers about why you’re learning algebra? If they have? For the most part, teachers have told them it’s for the test? I just don’t think that’s good enough. Of course, the test simple, but we’re on a bigger journey than that. So why is it important? Where does it where does the word come from?
How, how is the bigger thing fitting into what we do? And I’m just going to set that for homework. And so you know, we’ve got lots of opportunities for taking children into this because they do need to know the why of the bigger picture, even if I haven’t got time to do it in class. Similarly, in primary talk to children about, you know, what an isosceles triangle is, and for the most part, they can tell you, but it’s like, do they know where the word isosceles comes from? That it’s just such a shame that they don’t, because if they knew it came from the Greeks, but no, you know, I sauce is equal and scalars is legs. They’ve got bigger mental picture of what it is. But it also scales them up. When they bump into it by symmetric and other parts of the curriculum. It’s got something to do with equal. And a fundamental one, how many of our kids know where zero comes from? It’s like, this beautiful, big, exquisite idea. And when we start doing this, so for instance, PT, zero and algebra, the examples I’ve just given, oh, Fibonacci is another cracking one. Fibonacci, his life story. Brilliant. But I’m not suggesting we do that in math lessons. But then, yeah, nice little topic and Brian Murray and when I say early keys, day three as well. But um, you know, when we start talking about say, algebra, and zero, and children finding that out code for homework, it starts opening up and the cultural aspects of a curriculum, but it’s also going to affirm the children whose families have come from either the Indian from the Indian subcontinent or the Middle East, because algebra, the balancing out of unknown quantities, you know, it all starts making sense, but this didn’t arrive ready made to talk to us in our Key Stage Two and Three curriculum. This has got an ancient history. So just a few brief conversations around that I Think really good. Now I was talking about this that before half term at a multi Academy trust in the Midlands, a primary multi Academy trust, I said I wouldn’t necessarily try and shoehorn this into mathematics curriculum. I would use it as homework and I would use it maybe as a topic. Anyway, then max lead across the Taoiseach when he said no disagree. We use mathematical stories, all the way through for all the reasons that I described. So there’s me worrying that I don’t want to take them from you said, No, it’s it just deepens it. And there’s a fabulous website for you note. Mathematics through through stories is just this. There’s a lot out there. And of course, we look at popular literature. There’s massive. That’s, you know, the number devil, the man who loved only numbers, there’s huge amounts out there. And so the general public are intelligent. And I just think we drop some of this into what we offer our pupils and students as well. So that’s me on the importance of score. And the final thing saying that there’s a great paper from well, it’s referenced by Willingham, Marissa and more Paul’s work of 2012 story fIying, the science curriculum really, really fascinating. Because it was about they were the equivalent of year rates, I think, but in the States, and the pupils were learning about Marie Curie, and Galileo. And they were set. They were they were given them were split into groups, because it was research, the pupils, who had the straightforward text, information text, and then the other groups were given the same information, but in a narrative form. But texturally just as dense, difficult, demanding, etc. They remember far more, they’d heard it in a narrative thing. So what I like about this is that it’s not it’s not just be going or whimsical isn’t quite strong stuff behind this. And there’s all sorts of reasons why it’s not embedded yet in the sector, which I don’t really have time to get into. We’ll never get rid of.
Craig Barton 37:12 Well, I’ll tell you why. Strap yourself any American have tonnes of things to ask you that because this is, I’ll just give you my background here. So when I am, I’ve often been a fan of stories in mass, but it was only when I read Christine counsels work on insulin that I started thinking, okay, there’s a there’s a kind of name for this. And there’s there’s almost a justification or reasoning for it. I’ve never, I’ll tell you how I do kind of hinterland in a second. But what I’m really interested is the practical use of these texts that you talk about, how would that play out in a lesson? Would it be kind of projecting up an extract on the board? Or what what what’s the most effective way to use these that you’ve seen? Yeah,
Mary Myatt 37:49 so there’s a number of ways of doing it. The the basic, lowest cost is for the teacher to have a text, show it through a visualizer or if you bought it on Amazon or Kindle and then the teacher reads it. That’s a really important thing. You know, the children are hearing this, I would also argue more than once because the tendency is then Well, we’ve read that they’ve got it No, they haven’t they need to be read more than once a few things in greater depth again, and so but then what’s happening in some secondary schools? So as I was talking to Achmed, Khattab a little while ago, science in South London, brilliant, brilliant leader, and in their school, they read a minimum of 800 words every lesson in those lessons where they want, it wants stuff going in, obviously not when they’re doing the daily model or whatever. Because, you know, they’ve, they’ve implemented this work and research and so what a lot of schools are doing, I don’t know if this is the same with Achmed, Jenny Webb is also doing a lot on this producing booklets that have got this textual stuff in their narrative text in there. And so there are lots of ways of doing it in primary. Sometimes the children have their own have their own books. But there’s cost implications to that. But that’s kind of been factored in. So there’s lots of ways to do it. I mean, only having one text is not a barrier to doing it, in my humble opinion.
Craig Barton 39:30 I agree. I agree. Well, this is interesting. So what what I’ve always done with this Mary is, is kind of used it as almost kind of a bit of storytime where I tell a story, and I’ll have images that are available. But so I’ll give you an example. So recently, I was in a school and we were doing a model lesson on averages and averages a facet especially the mean is fascinating because it’s got a real rich history that I had no idea of like Pythagoras gets involved in the mean early doors, and then there’s this whole thing about when cargo ships used to go off on voyages, if they got if they get sunk, you’ve got to work out what the investors have got to pay as a proportion of their investment. And this gets this idea of equal distribution and so on is fascinating thing. But this is all something that I’ve said to the kid, almost like kind of, right. It’s storytime now, and I enjoy it. Because I don’t have to be as concerned about being kind of concise and precise with my language. I’m not doing check from the standards were many white, but all that kind of thing. It’s for me, it’s very distinct from them. When I say okay, right, now, I need you to fully concentrate, because I’m going to do the explanation or, you know, model the procedure and so on. So for me, it’s distinct from the kind of explaining part, would that be true in other subjects? And would you also almost have this kind of a bit more kind of free and easy approach to it where this is, you know, almost kind of sit back and enjoy. Alright, now we’ve got to really concentrate because now I’m doing that the so called Teaching part, does that ring true at all?
Mary Myatt 40:54 Yeah, it does. And I think I think that can that can also lead to people taking it less seriously than it should?
Craig Barton 41:07 Yes, yes. So
Mary Myatt 41:08 this is an it’s it’s always lovely that you’re talking about it. And this has been a special moment with them. And then we’re getting into their heavy duty. As part of teaching. This is as much heavy duty as the other stuff, I would argue. And so this is one of the reasons why I don’t think it’s embedded yet in schools, because we’ve all had that moment. And I’m sure you can think of one where we’re reading aloud to a class. Or we’re telling them a story. And something happens to the atmosphere. Doesn’t happen every time. But we recognise that don’t wait what Claire Seeley. Now in leading school improvement in gardens, it’s what she calls the collective cover. We know that definitely. Not that is wonderful, but easy with that is we think it’s enjoyable, therefore, we think it can’t be work. It is work. So I think we want to nail this, this is a serious academic discipline thing that we are doing. It happens to be enjoyable. Okay, great. The other barrier is, is that if I’m underpinning a new unit of work with a high quality text, how much time have I spent preparing for this, these lessons, I found a high quality text because my leaders have given me the time because they take this seriously that I’ve got the time to find this high quality text. And and I might have identified half a dozen words that I want to pre teach in the spirit of Isabel Beck’s and others bringing words to life just to make sure everyone can access it. And but it’s not taking me that long. What I’ve not done is work till midnight, preparing half a dozen differentiated kind of worksheets that are going to widen gaps. So again, comes back to fewer things and greater depths. Because, you know, we’re inclined to think the more I prepare, the harder I work, the better my kids are going to do. Goes back to the Jackson Pollock King stuff, actually do staff really thoughtfully and carefully and with intent, kids are going to get a better deal, and does what we’re describing. And it’s less work for me. It’s not my do it. It’s the consequence of working in this more thoughtful way. And then the final reason why I think it’s not taken as seriously so you get this. Oh, we’re just reading. It’s like meat. Just reading is it? As Andy Harvey says, Let the text be the beating heart of the lesson doesn’t need to agree. But the final thing I think that is getting in the way of this being truly embedded is that we’re all obsessed with evidence. It’s like a lesson hasn’t happened less my kids have got something in the book. Where did that come from? Who said that we have to have a written outcome every 50 minutes or 60 minutes. Where did that come from? And so that result is we get loads of really poor quality gobbets of information in kids books I can show someone taught them something. If you look at the English National Curriculum, this applies to literacy across the curriculum, including mathematics, writings, number four, in the elements, I think that’s no coincidence of the speaking, listening, and reading. This applies to all subjects and won’t get great written outcomes. We have to have those first. You know, James, Britain said in 1970, writing floats on a sea of talk. Yeah, I cannot get great in that unless I can articulate it. So we’ve got all these barriers in place. And then the final thing in terms of evidence is if someone comes into my classroom, you know, or your classroom and you’re telling them this lovely story, and they’re coming in with their mental tick box of what a good lesson looks like, or a literal one. That still happens. What does it look as those going on? It’s like the kids aren’t doing anything. Except they are it’s just all happening internally. So there’s so much to unpack here. That these are all the reasons why it’s not yet in bedded? Well, there are some schools doing some great work around this, but it’s not yet system wide, because we’re obsessed with producing evidence for other adults as opposed to getting it right for children. So yeah, that’s my take on on the story is fantastic that, you know, you’re, you’re also using them as well, but it is, it is far more powerful than we appreciate.
Craig Barton 45:22 Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. Um, so one thing I’m definitely changing now is, in my own mind, and students mind, we’re gonna take this more seriously, this is gonna be just as serious as the explanation. If you just put me one final question on this, Mary. One thing I’ve discovered since I’ve started doing this is the kids are so let’s take the average example. Two weeks later, you say to students, what, what do we do in that lesson, and they’ll be able to recite the story, there’ll be loving that Pythagoras, the loving all that the actual procedure itself, that’s not quite gotten as much because I think in maths, we did, it’s hard to do the narrative story of kind of journey through, you know, calculating a procedure. So it’s, it’s almost, there’s almost a danger, or maybe it isn’t a danger that, you know, kids have got limited attention or whatever, if they’re going to cling on to anything from that lesson, it’s probably going to be this nice, pleasant, you know, easy to digest narrative structure. Is that a concern or not?
Mary Myatt 46:12 Yes, it is. And I think you’re absolutely right to raise that. So, you know, alongside this narrative route in to the to the curriculum is some heavy duty, heavy duty spadework on the part of my pupils and students and the teacher. So what this narrative stuff is doing is taking them into the territory. But there is no getting away from the fact I need to know my times tables, I need a load them inside out back to front and upside down, I need to be able to spell beautiful. So I’m sorry, sweetie pies. Some of this is just grunt work, and we do it. But I tell you what, it’s really really deeply satisfying when we’ve nailed this. So no, the two go hand in hand. And so all that’s happening there is because the the narrative element has, has had fewer barriers to go into the long term memory for all the reasons that, you know, scientific reasons for that, it does mean that that more precise working through still with quite a lot of heavy cognitive load until they’re fluent in it still needs plenty of practice. And so yeah, the two go to absolutely go hand in hand. But my argument is, they’re more, they’re going to be more willing to do that heavy lifting, if they see the bigger reason why, and they’ve had this sort of intellectual warps around them through in through the narrative, if that makes sense.
Craig Barton 47:42 That’s fantastic. Primary wants Tip number four, please.
Mary Myatt 47:47 So tip number four, is curiosity. do just the curriculum in our school, do my lessons provoke curiosity. And again, it’s just an insight from research by Ken It’s kind of kind of common sense as well. But what I’m always trying to do is get away from a very reductive performative approach to curriculum, the teaching of the curriculum. What I’m after, is a place where I take my pupils and students to a place where they want to engage with this stuff, because it’s inherently interesting. And I think because it seems like if we frame it like that, it means that then going to there’s going to be far more buy in for the more routine stuff of memorising things. memorising stuff is actually really, really satisfying. As long as it’s broken down, you can see it making progress. So not to shy away from that, because kids like doing stuff that’s difficult, you know, we’re challenged seeking species. And so this notion of curiosity, I think, is really helpful. It doesn’t have to be in every moment in every lesson, but the extent to which we might want to ask ourselves, to what extent does that curriculum the school provoke curiosity? And to what extent do the lessons aren’t they provoking curiosity, and I’m not going to talk to this up, I’m not going to try and make that happen in every moment. But it is just a lens through which I look at my materials, particularly if it’s going to be something that’s unfamiliar, or doesn’t resonate with the backgrounds of my pupils or students. So to go back to that covenant example, in religious education, teaching Judaism, I need to think carefully about how we unpack this deal agreement contract between God and the Jewish people, possibly with some other examples, first, concrete examples to take them into that and so so they kind of get it so there is some intellectual hooks there. That’s interesting. I wonder how that relates, etc. And then I’ve got quite an an example that I just want to share with you that also links back to the to the story element is that beyond, beyond, you know, Willingham and Pinker’s and others work around, you know, the narrative elements of a text, there’s really nice piece of work that came out of Sussex University a few years ago, the foster reading research basically wasn’t a huge trial, you could critique some of it as you can critique any of it, but essentially 365 year rates across a number of schools. They read in English lessons for 12 weeks novels that are at least a year above what they’d normally be taught. radical, we read an English lessons, Goodness me. Anyway, at the end of that the reading ages for the whole cohort had gone up by an eight and a half months. For the pupils who had been identified as poor readers, you know, because they weren’t set or anything, everybody got it. It was almost double, it’s gone up by 18 months, 16 months. Now, when they talk to those pupils about had been identified as poor readers about why they got on so well. Very interesting. Their responses, they said, well, we don’t, didn’t need to, we didn’t need to know, everything, or all the vocabulary, because we could stop and ask or that teacher would talk about beforehand. But we wanted to carry on, we wanted to find out what happens next. What was going on there their curiosity have been provoked. And then when they spoke to the teachers about what they thought was going on, with those poor leaders, for the most part, they were surprised they hadn’t thought they could cope, that we’ve got lots of stuff to unpack, there’s offered children, this really rich, interesting stuff that provokes their curiosity underpinned by exquisite language opportunities to talk, then you get those kinds of results. And on the back of that work, it’s now been replicated in primary. And on the back of that I just started a website, which is free to access cost me a fortune to set it up and keep it going. But I so believe in this, that I’m doing it called the teachers collection, where we select texts, like the Sabine Redeemer.
And then I have a draft plan to show how it can work and then a draft knowledge organiser, which people can download. And so had a lot of interest to for secondary. So over time, I’ll be building into secondary for things like Yokohama, sapiens, and all the rest of it. But it’s all linked to the national curriculum to show how this can work. So it’s not just this sort of fluffy, cosy thing we read them to know stories now, this is this is areas linked to what they need to know, as, you know, within the national curriculum. So that knows that. That’s the notion of curiosity.
Craig Barton 53:07 Yeah. Fast, fast and fascinating. This marriage, just a couple of things on this. So one way this often plays out our sound like a broken record, but one way this often plays out in math is to try and find like a purpose or purpose for feel for what we’re doing. And often the go to in math is bad, because your purpose tends to be how does this apply to real life. And it’s quite tricky sometimes to find authentic contexts that operate at the same level of the math that the kids are doing that interest them. So you get like, you know, Pythagoras, so you say to kids, Imagine you’re walking along the road, and you see this ladder leaning against the wall. And you really want to know how long it isn’t allowed kids or what you’re going on about here, or you come up with something. So kind of complex, you say, Well, you know, trigonometry is used in architecture or whatever. But it’s such a high level that then the kids can’t quite relate it to what what the school level they’re doing. So what I what I do instead, if I can’t find this authentic real life context, there’s this there’s this concept and I get I’m intrigued whether you think this applies. To help with curiosity outside the maths bubble is this concept of headache versus aspirin, which the US maths educationalist done Mayor talks about. And it’s this idea that before you teach students something, so before you give them the aspirin, they’ve got to experience the headache first, they’ve got to know what life is like without this new idea. So a really basic example that I sometimes use a primary is before you teach your students how to, you know, do long multiplication, say to them, okay, here’s here’s a problem, I want you to solve 623 plus 623 plus 623, plus 602, and so on, and so on and so on. And then I can flip back and they start with trying to work it all out, and it takes a long time. And they feel like you know, a bit annoyed and then you say well, I’ve great news for you here because I’ve got this way way we can do this super quick and it’s called multiplication and so and there’s loads of examples throughout secondary that you can do this with factor As in quadratics, and so on. And I find that creating a bit of a headache is quite a nice way to pique this curiosity. And it makes them they’re much more open to this new idea that you want to teach. So I just wanted to get your reflection on that. And whether you think, Is that something you’ve seen outside of mathematics and something that that may apply or not?
Mary Myatt 55:19 I think this is beautiful. making notes on it. So yeah, that, that creating the headache, which is a kind of cognitive struggle and dissonance, and frustration, in a good way, is setting the children up. That’s deep curiosities. Africa has a slicker, more efficient way of doing this few. And so yeah, you’re, you’re provoking that you’re setting up that kind of tension. And I think that is that is absolutely terrific. And, yeah, I think there’s some examples in design and technology and art and design, etc. But I think that could be a really useful lens through which to look at other elements of the curriculum as well. Are we posing a problem? And so some of the big inquiry questions that you get across a number of lessons, say in history, or our re kind of do this as well, not in such an intense way, I think that is really clever. And I think that speaks to the particular particular space that mess inhabits. Now, I would just go back and just want to offer a few reflections on that idea that we need to make everything irrelevant. I, I think, I’m not sure that I don’t believe that’s the case, actually. And so I quite often use the quote of Einstein, that mathematics is in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. I hadn’t road tested this with the unknowns yet it’s on my agenda, right? I don’t think everything needs to be performative. In that sense, we’re gonna make, we’re gonna make use of this, you know, and I had to come to terms that really early on is, you know, as new in my career as an art teacher, you know, you got your heavyweights coming in, I don’t need to do this, I’m not gonna be a priest, or my back’s not gonna be a nun, I had to nail this really, I don’t care. It’s not, it’s not what it’s about anyway, you’re in here, we’re gonna have a really interesting time. And you’re also going to work hard. That’s it. And so this idea that everything has somehow got to be relevant, I can think can lead us down some narrow roads, which is why I think that idea of, of Einstein’s mathematics is where the petrological ideas, it’s that balancing out of this exquisite, you know, world. And, you know, there’s some great epistemological stuff that can be explored there. I think from quite a young age, it’s like, well, in any possible world, virtually any possible world, I understand that extremes is not the case turn to is always going to be called for. There are no other claims that we can make and other subjects that are as certain as there are in mathematics, and yet mathematics is highly conceptual. So so much going on there. Because everything else can be contested, and where that maths can’t I’m like, Am I making too many strong claims in mathematics?
Craig Barton 58:17 No, you’re not. And it’s interesting, isn’t it? Like Matt is often held out as this, you know, completely different subjects. And I’m always interested in where things can crossover what maths teachers can learn from other teachers and what other teachers can learn from maths teachers, but I think there are some occasions where it is distinct and that yeah, you know, certain things will work for us that perhaps Perhaps won’t work. And maybe this is one area where the differences are perhaps, perhaps too great. But yeah, you’re right. You’ve got the relevance of you’re absolutely right, Mary is some of the worst lessons I’ve ever delivered in my life. Start with a shoehorned in context and the kids. Kids don’t believe in what you say, and why are you going on about here? And then you’ve lost them? You’ve lost them straightaway.
Mary Myatt 58:56 Yeah. And then also, you know, so this stuff is important in its own right. And it’s not. And it’s going to develop to into and it’s deeply satisfying. There’s just a book, I just want to reference and I haven’t had a chance to read it, but a copy has arrived. And it’s beyond measure the Hidden History of measurement by James Vincent. And it’s absolutely fascinating. The headlines of it have actually, you know, the significance of measuring politically, commercially and I can’t wait to get stuck into it because I suspect it’s going to fulfil a lot of the stuff that we are talking about. He was on James O’Brien on LBC. And everyone was raving about it. So of course, I had to buy a copy. I’ll report back in terms of how that’s
Craig Barton 59:51 fantastic. Right, Mary, what is your fifth and final tip for us, please?
Mary Myatt 59:57 So the final one is my son gestion is that everyone, wherever they are in the sector, whether they’re an early career teacher, middle leader, learning, support senior leader asking themselves on a regular basis. Who is this for? Why are we doing why are we doing this? Not in aggressive way. But who are we doing this for? And so I have a number on the hit list for this one is marking who we marking for. We do know. And Dylan William as worked out that if you factored in teachers time in England, we spent about four and a half billion quid a year on marking. And most of it makes absolutely no difference children’s learning. I’m not saying we never mark, but it’s like we’re using whole class feedback. Are we using AI tang of tools? Are we self assessing mini whiteboards, all that sort of stuff? Complete? Not a waste of time, most of it. So marking is a big one. Who itself I’m having to put in data? Yeah, who’s it for? How far in secondary pupils are on track to meet their target? Why we got targets? He says we have to have targets? Where did they come from? I mean, why don’t we just give everyone in secondary target have a nine. They’re not going to get a nine, but more likely to get more children hitting higher grades, if I’m pitching it high. And so there’s an awful lot of stuff that just happens in systems and structures. Because we don’t often asked why often enough. And there’s a lot of muddled thinking as well. So lots of people say to me, Well, you know, we use Fisher family trust, you know, to in secondary set targets. They’re not targets sweetheart, their estimates, they don’t talk about them as their targets their estimates. And if you look at the carefully the scatter, you know, the scatter gun, the scatter graph, right, again, the graph, you know, to a child from quite a low, allegedly low starting point, if they got 20% of getting a reasonable grade, I’m going to teach them. So stop the mucking about everything at nine, I know, they’re not all going to get it but more of them are likely to and stop this nonsense of a, you know, basing targets on dodgy data, you know, just ridiculous, you know, Key Stage Two SATs and they think you know, gonna win, they’ll come back, but the last year 2019, which we have any data, you know, and then if you just look at how narrow that is, that’s mathematics. And that isn’t even writing an English is just read, just reading, reading about things and the spaghetti stuff. And Yet, You’re Going to predict on the basis of that how a child is going to do in religious education or design and technology or science. You kidding me? So we’ve got lots of stuff that we just need to ask not in a cynical way. That why why are we doing this? Who is it for? And if the answer is for another adult? Or Can’t they work it out? I’ve got I’ve got to mark, because senior leaders want to want to see it. It’s not I’m not Mark, I’m not teaching senior leaders. I’m teaching my kids. And I can tell you, Craig, I have done enough books scrutineers with senior leaders both on inspection and you know, as an invited guest in schools, I never do them on my own. And you sit down with him say and they say what are you looking for in these boxes? No, I’m looking to see if the book had been marked as a marvellous now. So what difference is that made? Or we don’t look to see if it’s made any difference? Come on. All this performative stuff? So what I’m getting at here, so this is my final tip, we ask in a nice way what you know, you know, I’m an early career teachers, you asked me to put all this data in. And it’s the same in primary as well, you know, all the skills progression complete nonsense. They’ve either got it or they haven’t yes or no. What am I doing about kids who haven’t got it? So technically, somebody who needs this what governors needed. Yeah, but why do they need it? Just keep asking why? Because they don’t because it’s dodgy dodgy data. So just
Craig Barton 1:04:24 a little this, this, I like this. I always like what we did with a bit of controversial one as well and you you’ve hit a great way to get married. It’s great this and I’m just thinking of let’s think about this, this early careers teacher because they’re the ones who are going to be like what is going on here and we know teachers leave the profession for many reasons behaviour, definitely one of them, but also workload and kind of pointless workload like like this. It’s frustrating. You’ve talked about the data, the QL, A’s, all that kind of stuff, the mark in the written feedback and so on and the targets which we know can put a ceiling on kids ambitions and so on. So So did you think it do you think it works? And did you have experience that this you know, early careers teach us the head of department? Who is this for? I can imagine the head of the department is going to say, well, SLT have kind of mandated it and then the head of department then has to think right, I’m gonna go to SLT. Do you think, is it realistic that this will play out that will lead to a lasting kind of improvement?
Mary Myatt 1:05:20 Yeah, well, we either crucify ourselves, you know, and just go along with it. Or, you know, someone can justify it to me, fine. Absolutely fine. But if they can’t, it’s just for another adult further upstream. So I think, you know, we are all professionals. And so if I’m a head of department, and my, my, you know, someone newly joined early career, asked me that, I don’t know, I think senior leaders want it, I got an obligation to go and have a chat with senior leaders, then they’re going to say, oh, governors wanted it, your white cup this morning, they need to know what standards are like, but we don’t do it through dodgy data, we do it through samples of children’s where bit of evidence tells a big story. And so yeah, there are schools that are doing this, that, you know, they are looking at samples of children’s work, primary and secondary, in line manager meetings and saying, you know, just talking through where the children are, the curriculum itself is the progression model, you don’t need this is 40, pseudo pseudo scientific stuff. And we’ve got, we’ve got billions of quid tied up in investment in MIS mis systems, which is, I think, is professionally criminal got to start, you know, cutting a load of this load of this stuff out and just asking, because, you know, I think it’s one of the most powerful things we can do is to ask in a nice way, I’m not talking about being aggressive, but um, it’s about being having a healthy professional scepticism, I’m always happy to be persuaded that I’m wrong. So I’m trying to do is power up people’s self confidence. You’re professionals. You are graduates. And, you know, get the tone, right, which I think most people do, and I’m just not sure I can do this really well, it doesn’t take much on my part to pretend to be stupid, because I am in lots of respects, it’s like, I’m just not sure. What’s going on here. Do talk me through I know exactly what’s going on, actually. But I’m gonna pretend I’m stupid. Because I am in, as I said, lots of respects, but in this one, I have thought it through pretty carefully.
Craig Barton 1:07:26 Last question, last question on this, Mary, do one thing I certainly see, I don’t wonder whether you see this and what your responses is, because evidence seems to find its way into kind of teachers practice a lot more like teachers or reference, I’m doing this it’s robbery and retrieval practice, because it’s a desirable difficulty, and so on. I often get messages on Twitter, DMS and stuff from teachers saying, I’ve been asked to do written feedback, can you? Can you show me some evidence to suggest that this is not a good idea to do? Or I’ve been asked to do targets? Can you send me some evidence that it’s not and there seems to be almost, if we can find the evidence to either support this or go against it, we can use that to arm ourselves. But um, what my sense has always been it’s a lot a lot more difficult than that. Because the you know, you can pick apart many of these research studies, a lot of them particularly something like targets, I mean, how on earth you run in there, you know, you’ve given you’ve got one group against targets one, doesn’t it, it feels quite a difficult thing to have an authentic context that matches and your experience, do you? Do you feel that? Do you often hear this that kind of when you speak to SL T, or governors or whoever they want the evidence against what they’re already doing before they change their mind? Or do you think a reasoned discussion is will be enough to convince people?
Mary Myatt 1:08:43 Yeah, in my experience, it’s a reasoned discussion. It’s like, it’s like, it’s gonna be really controversial here. But I think the sector as a whole is quite immature. And not the individuals in it. And so we’ve adopted and in about 15 years or so ago, a lot of management kind of systems and structures that were thought to be a good thing. Not notice that most of most organisations have dumped them, but we’ve still gotten to them because they feel comforting. You know, we’ve got all our debt. I tell you the number of governors and senior leaders who’ve got out their data, and I just just walked me through what this is saying. They can’t do it, Craig, can’t do it. Because it’s gobbledygook, you know? So I don’t need I don’t need to produce 1000 pieces of research because the evidence is there as we’re having the conversations. If they can convince me otherwise, it’s fine. I might just, I there might be someone with truckloads of data, I can have a conversation with they can pinpoint exactly what is going on year nine, low priority training pupils mathematics, and they can walk me through it fantastic. In Just thinking I will just wrap up with this. And I’ve been burbling on a bit, but um, I was doing an inspection of years ago in a, in a school, and it was there just before the first half term in the autumn term. So we were able to talk about, you know, the published data, have some conversations about that. But then, of course, you need to know what’s happening for children currently in school, not just the ones who’ve left. And so I was talking to the head about, you know, I was talking about the maths, actually, and you and I said, Have you got any sense of how your lope prioritising students in mathematics are doing, for instance, in year nine, he looked at me and said, All Mary, such a shame you’re in this week, because we’ve just done our data, you know, stuff, and we’re just crunching the data. I just looked at him. I said, I think, you know, of course, he knew it didn’t need the blimmin data to know, how did he know managing by walking in and out of lessons, not with a clipboard? But in a genuine spirit of just finding out what’s going on yet? Can I be of help and all that sort of stuff? You know, strong leaders know, they know what’s going on. So he didn’t need the data to? You know, that’s, that’s my point, really, that? You know, we do know, we do know, and mostly we’re putting in stuff we already know. So why are we doing it? I’m not saying we don’t talk about the published stuff, or if they’ve been doing, you know, reading tests, or, you know, external stuff, internally generated school data. It was one of the big things that got passed my mind, we’re doing it.
Craig Barton 1:11:29 Fantastic. Well, Mary, this has been absolutely brilliant. So just before we wrap up, let me hand over to you what should our listeners check out of yours? And I’ll put links to these in the show notes.
Mary Myatt 1:11:40 Oh, and I think the thing I’m really excited about at the moment, is this teachers collection. And so it’s at the moment for primary but because I talk about these texts in secondary as well. You know, people ask me if we can do this, and secondary principles are the same. But you know, that is there. So that’s the teachers collection. And then the foster reading research. We’ve got a big package of that, or Martin Co. Well, Steve Wilshaw and Rachel higgenson have helped me on this. So Steve Wilshaw has interviewed the original researchers, which is fantastic. And then Rachel higgenson, has interviewed, has interviewed Gail flexure in Cheltenham as well doing this in primary. So that’s what I’m really excited about. We’ve got masses going on with her and her leaders, the curriculum pieces of work I’m doing with John Thompson. So we’ve done secondary to primary we’ve got, we’re just planning for Sen. D, and alternative provision. And then on the back of that, John, and I have got a lot of requests for training on the curriculum. So to make it worthwhile, we’ve got a really exciting cohort based course, which we’re running. We did a beta run in June, and we’re running September, October, really intense, eight sessions over four weeks in the evenings. Really, really, really exciting piece of work. So yeah, really looking forward to that.
Craig Barton 1:13:16 Amazing, amazing. Well, I knew this would be thought provoking stuff, but you’ve blown my mind a little bit here. I’ve got a big old page full of notes here that I’m gonna have to go away and think about. Well, Mary, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us.
Mary Myatt 1:13:32 Craig, it’s been fantastic every chance to talk with you really, really great. So thank you very much for having me.
Craig Barton 0:00 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. This episode I had the pleasure of speaking to primary maths specialist Kieran Makayla, and you are in for five quick announcements before we start. Yep. Number one sponsor slots for the podcast are now open. If you want to let the world’s most interesting listeners know about your book, product or event, just drop an email. Number two just a reminder, you can view videos of all of Karen’s tips on the tips for teachers website is a great TO SHARE IT department meetings or training sessions. Number three, you can sign up to the all new tips for teachers newsletter, to receive a tip in your inbox every Monday morning to trout in lessons that week, plus a video to share with colleagues podcast to listen to on your way home. So do sign up for that. And number four, this is a big announcement I’ve released the first 10 Premium tips for teachers online courses. This first one is on habits and routines, loads of practical suggestions that I’ve taken from my guests. Reading research on my own experiences working with students and teachers all over the world. There is a link to the cost of the show notes and many more. Last, but certainly not least, if you find this podcast useful, please take a moment to review it on your podcast player of choice. Thank you so much. Okay, back to the show. Let’s get learning with today’s guest with a wonderful year in market spoiler alert. Here are Karen’s tips. Tip one, leave space between reading and implementation. Tip two, treat the act of teacher development like teaching. Tip three, be explicit when modelling colleagues. Tip Four some behaviours are more important than others. And Tip Five. Nobody really knows what they’re doing. Least of all me. 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 a timestamp teacher these tips so you can jump straight to anyone you want to listen to first already listen. And this is very exciting. I nearly forgot this. I’ve splashed the cash here, thanks to my wonderful Patreon supporters. And I’ve now got much better podcast transcripts where it’s more of like a script. And you can go to the different time and search words and all that kind of thing. So check that out for this episode. And I’ll be updating all previous ones with it as well. All right. Enjoy the show.
Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Kieran McCall to the tips for teachers podcast. Hello, Kieran. How are you?
Kieran Mackle 2:45 Hi, Greg. I’m Oh, good. Thank you very much.
Craig Barton 2:47 Well, thank you very much for joining us. And for the benefit of lessons. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself ideally in a sentence.
Kieran Mackle 2:53 So I’ve written the sentence down to make sure it was a sentence, but it’s pushing the boundaries. So I’m a teacher, primary mathematics specialist who for five years has led a collaboration of three schools as part of a project funded by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmith’s designed to raise aspirations and outcomes in an area of high socio economic deprivation. The author of two books on primary mathematics and a host of the thinking deeply about primary education podcast, hopefully, I wasn’t too long.
Craig Barton 3:18 That’s good. Plenty of comments in that sentence. That’s that’s very good. Right? I’d say why Kiran, let’s dive straight in. What’s tip number one you’ve got for us.
Kieran Mackle 3:27 So tip number one is to leave space between reading and implementation.
Craig Barton 3:34 Whoa, tell us about this.
Kieran Mackle 3:36 So I think it can be really exciting. You know, particularly when we’re as interested in education, education resources, we might be in, you know, our peers are to read something and jump straight in. But I think that’s possibly the easiest way to get towards lethal mutations, you know, so, if I can give an example, the first time I read about retrieval practice was in 2014. So I read David dadoes, what have you, everything you knew about school was wrong. And it was 2017. Before he actually put anything in place that utilised it actually had to read David’s book twice because it challenged quite a lot of my assumptions about education. And but I went to the source materials who went to the Bureau works, and some of their colleagues notices they sort of co authored work with different people and and then they sort of poked holes, and then thought, well, how can we make this management in the classroom? And so I thought this would be, you know, I’ve read efficiently enough that I can utilise this with with colleagues. And, you know, one of the things I’m thinking about at the moment is the question of when does coaching become another fad? And I think it’s when we don’t spend time looking at the different models because coaching I think is reasonably complex, and to read about coaching, and then decide everyone in school is going to be a coach. I think that’s, that’s not necessarily the most effective way to get the most from them. So I think, you know, look at what the experts say there are different models of instructional coaching and structure coaches, perhaps just one model of coaching itself. And then, you know, and then make a plan for maybe six months to a year’s time and see where we go from there.
Craig Barton 5:12 This is great. Let’s dive into this. So So first, just just on the coaching thing, everybody’s chatting, coaching, or like hearing these days, I need to get into this coach, and I need to get up on that on the Twitter bio, I’m missing out here. It’s all over the show into what was called where’s that come from Dragon?
Kieran Mackle 5:28 I mean, I think research aid has been very, very effective in disseminating sort of messages about things that might have, you know, our best bets. You know, I was thinking about him listening to Nick rose on your podcast many, many years ago, and he was telling me what our best bets are, we don’t know things will be effective, but we do know that some things are likely to be more effective than others. And I think when you’ve got people like Josh Goodrich, like John Hutchinson talking about the impact that coaching might have, and how they’ve utilised it in their context, I think, you know, combine that with Tom Sharon Denali, Oliver Gillies, walkthroughs, and you’ve almost got a critical mass of people who, you know, you should listen to when they’re speak, you know, it’s and this is, this might be something worth doing.
Craig Barton 6:11 Yeah, that makes sense. And the other thing I was gonna say, so I’m really pleased when you send these tips, I love all of them. But this one in particular, because I’ve done this keyword as well, right? You read one thing, you think this is the thing, and I’m going to dive in. And the problem was that I never read anything for 12 years, then I tried to read everything. So my lessons were just a disaster beforehand. And like the year after I started reading stuff, because every time I read it, I just try out and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. And I give you a good example of this. So So interleavings are really interesting, what many of you have mentioned in the box. So when I first read it as part of desirable difficulties, I thought, Oh, this sounds good. You just make stuff up and something magical happens. But the kids hated it. Performance debt and performance dip so much that learning never really seemed to take off in the end. And it was it was really bad. And I think it’s only now so this is what maybe six, six years on from first reading about it seven years on, that I’ve finally started to get to grips with with with perhaps what it takes to make it work and some of the sorts of things that I missed. So my follow up? Well, first to say is I fully agree with you. But my follow up question is what helped me with interleaving wasn’t just leaving time, but also making sure I checked out other people’s take on it. I think this is quite important, as well as a podcast that I listened to called Tyler Cowen, he talks a lot about this, he says, Whenever you’re reading about something, make sure you read several different people’s take on it, because then you start to get the bigger picture of it. Whereas if you just focus on one take, even if it’s really clear, you get a bit of a narrow view of it. So do you think it’s a mixture of when you read something leaving time, but also then trying to get different takes on it in different sources are always times efficient?
Kieran Mackle 7:50 I mean, I definitely agree, I think the best use of that time that you’ve left, you know, first time you read about something, okay, I’ve got a general idea. And then, you know, lots of people that I talked to, will have three or four books on the go at the same time around similar ideas, and maybe not just education based, but how it applies maybe in other contexts in your business, that kind of thing. So yeah, 100% with you, I think, you know, the best use of that six months, is giving yourself the most rounded picture possible.
Craig Barton 8:15 And final one on this, Karen. It’s tempting though in it right? Because you’ve read it you want to try it is hard, especially when you because we spoke about this with a few people this this kind of fear of missing out you see on Twitter, somebody’s chatting about something, you want to dive in and give it a go. And you want to say well, what’s the worst that can happen? How do you how do you resist?
Kieran Mackle 8:35 That’s a really good point. I think there are probably is a fine balance between the practitioner in the classroom, who might try something out, you know, tomorrow, and the school leader who is looking to plan for meaningful change. So perhaps the bulk of what I’m saying might apply more to leaders, you know, because in the classroom, you know, if it doesn’t go well, you can always fix it the next day. It was something that was more tried and tested. I totally understand. But yeah, I think it maybe depends on your particular context.
Craig Barton 9:06 That’s the Yeah, you’re absolutely right that because we’ve all seen this right. SLT, get hold of an idea. Next thing, it’s the next big thing. It’s the new policy. And they haven’t had time to think it through. They’re the foundations aren’t there. And it’s a disaster. Yeah, like that. So individual teachers, by all means try stuff out SLT, maybe just put a pause on it. Let’s go back here. And I like it. All right. Well, that’s tip number two, please.
Kieran Mackle 9:31 So tip number two is to treat the act of teacher development, Mike teaching.
Craig Barton 9:37 Yeah, let’s go for it.
Kieran Mackle 9:39 So I’m talking specifically about the strategies that we employ when supporting others and improving you know, the the physical act, I think it is. And I, you know, the more I do it, the more I see the connection between hire would teach a class and hire a teacher teacher to teach. So you know, I think if you very crudely broke the essence of teaching Dine, it might look something like explain, model and practice. And I think I would use the same model when working with teachers in my schools and you know, I would explain something, I’d model it. And then and then they would be given a chance to practice and we almost repeat that cycle. You know, I think that some of the particular points that stand out to me are the idea that we remember what we pay attention to. And we’ll come to this in a in a later tip. But I think when we asked teachers to pay attention to too much, you know, we’re thinking about the report and sound centres talked about how we need to account for cognitive load when we’re training our teachers, and he’s probably talking about big inset days as much as he’s talking about coaching with teachers. But if we’re very specific, okay, I want you to pay attention to this, you know, you will attend to this one particular idea, then you were more likely to enact that in the classroom. And I think, you know, we expect our pupils to pay attention to the meaningful components of our lessons. I think Daisy Christodoulou is component parts, you know, making good progress, she talks about the gold states and more than your current state. And, you know, Michael person pushed me on this a bit because he likes to talk about generalisations and broader behaviours. But I do think there is a place for breaking sort of bigger behaviours down into smaller parts, getting rid of the smaller parts, and then bringing them back together again, just just like the football players might do on a Saturday when they’ve been trained in different things all week, you know, so maybe the jury’s still out, you know, I probably defer to Michael most times, and, but this is the way I’ve been sort of approaching teacher development in my current role. And then I think, with explicit language instruction, you know, I want my pupils to know what the quotient is, I want them to know what the minuend and the subtrahend are, because they can use one word instead of seven or eight. And if we do the same, and codify the, you know, the act of teaching, then I think we have a better chance of sort of engaging in a more meaningful level, you know, and I know that people perhaps and stuff, we’ve talked about that for quite a while I but it definitely has a massive impact when you’re talking the same language.
Craig Barton 12:12 This that interest in this care and right, like, let’s dive into this a little bit more, can you give us an example perhaps of of either some training that you’ve led, or some coaching that you’ve done, where you’ve adopted this explain model practice approach?
Kieran Mackle 12:27 I mean, typically, I’ll have a math specific sort of input with all our teachers on the first Tuesday of a term. And so I’ll say, Okay, right, we’re going to look at worked examples, for instance, okay, here, here’s what worked examples are. And then over the next six weeks, I’ll go into classes, I’ll teach people’s classes, you know, this is how I interpret this, this is how I might do this. And then gradually, if I’m working with someone, and they’re an early career teacher, then they might get more support than others. So it’d be me teaching 100% of the lesson at the start. And then by the time you get to three weeks later, responsibility has shifted to them. So we gradually feared just with just like we would do with sort of backwards, for example, teacher takes more responsibility for that particular part. Until eventually at the end, I can sort of leave their plate spinning because they’re more effective than I have at the, at the whatever we’ve sort of explored.
Craig Barton 13:24 This is really interested in this. So I’ve been messing around with this myself. So first thing to say, I’ll just put my cards on the table, massive error I’ve made is the way I delivered, CPD was nothing how i like how I taught, and it was a disaster waiting to happen. So like I’ve said this before, I’m a real group work sceptic. I’m terrible at group work here. And Sammy cabina, when he was on the show, he’s changed my life thinking about group work, but I’m woeful after and yet CPD. What How would things be set up the tables would be in groups with the teachers. And again, whenever I attend CPD, and I see tablesetting groups, I think this is just a bit of a sit off waiting to happen here. And it’s just that I never fully engage with it. So now I really try and think of my CPD as as how I would kind of teach lessons exactly as you say. So what am I focusing the attention on here? How can I remove distractions and so on. So that was the first thing I wanted to say. And then just two concrete examples that that I’ve used. And I just want to get your take or if there’s anything you want to add to this. And mini whiteboards comes up every set every single tips for teachers conversation. And if it was a drinking game, people be hammered on whiteboards here because it comes up all the time. But recently, I’ve been doing quite a bit of CPD around mini whiteboards. And I found the best way to get people on board is to show them how useful mini whiteboards are almost via by stealth. So you make it look like the CPD is on something else like you know planning for depth or whatever it may be. But you use the mini whiteboard to facilitate paired discussion or to facilitate checking for understanding. And then at the end you can say oh, Okay, look, we’ve been using this tool, how could we then apply it to our lesson? So I think that works quite well, almost when you, you almost use the medium that you want to kind of train staff on, but you use it in a slightly different context to show the power. I don’t know if that makes sense at all.
Kieran Mackle 15:15 No idea does makes total sense. I think, you know, when you’re delivering CPD, utilising your sort of teaching strategies from the classroom, I think can really help. You know, because if you, for instance, wanted, did some CPD on perhaps I don’t know, cognitive load theory, and you looked at them, you know, the combination, you know, very crude example of images and sort of key vocabulary. And, well, then you might use that in the rest of your CPD. So that you’re assuring teachers, you know, this is stuff we do all the time, you know, or the use of multiple choice questions, you know, I’ll quite often put a multiple choice question from, you know, spacing things out something from the first session, something from the last session, you know, and and then when we come to the session on memory, people are going, okay, you know, I get it, and then they feel it. Yeah. So I totally agree with you.
Craig Barton 16:10 Let me just ask you one final one on this case, I’ve been looking forward to asking somebody this, and you’re my mom for this. So why only what I try and do whenever I kind of coach teachers, or work, do CPD, and so on, is to try and do two things, make them feel like the students so they can experience what it’s going to be like for their learners. And then so I get them doing like the maps and the activities and so on. And then I say, Okay, right, now we’re going to jump out of that. And now let’s put our teacher hat on and think kind of pedagogically what we need to change to make this work and so on. But the difficulty I haven’t even this is at secondary level. So I’m this why I’m interested when it’s like a primary level, is it’s quite hard to make the teachers feel like students, because of like, the examples we invariably use are a pretty straightforward one. So like in maths, I’ll say, I’ll say I’m doing something I’m learning generated examples, or whatever it may be, I’ll say, Okay, think of two fractions that add together to make one or whatever it is, teachers just wizard down straightaway. Whereas obviously, the students, they’re going to take a bit more time, maybe they’re going to want to ask somebody, and so on. So I find it hard to fully replicate how the students will will act in the thing that I’m doing the CPD on, but that feels like a real problem with the CPD because I need teachers to appreciate that. So they they can then empathise with their learners and so on. So that was a bit of a rumble. Do you know what I mean there? And have you experienced this because I imagine at primary level, this is an even bigger issue.
Kieran Mackle 17:37 I think it’s potentially easier when you know, the teachers you’re working with. So I’ve been working with our guides for five years. And I will always use examples that are just beyond where they’re working mathematically. So you’ll find questions with triangular numbers. And the solution being or if you think about on Watson, the paper on taxicab geometry, they’re managed to make those teachers even though they were specialists, you know, believe that they were working in Euclidean geometry, but actually, they’re working in non Euclidean geometry. So it’s almost you know, that was like a watershed moment, all care. So this is just beyond Yeah, so. But I do think it’s easier when you work with the teachers every day, and you know what their mathematics is. And
Craig Barton 18:18 that’s interesting. So you’re the, let’s take your word example thing, if you’re doing work, for example, training, and you wanted the teachers to experience what the worst examples like you wouldn’t do a worked example, from kind of year two mathematics, you may in fact, do a worked example, from a higher level of math so that the teachers feel like the novice is that the kids would be would that be right here.
Kieran Mackle 18:37 And at the point that I want them to feel that sensation, obviously, I will illuminate and illustrate with examples that are fear specific. But when I want them to have the sensation of the learner that I would choose something that’s maybe the cases three, bridge into key stage four. That’s
Craig Barton 18:57 right, I’m gonna have to brush up on my further maths and start making some of that out for the secondary colleagues. That’s brilliant. Love it. Right here. And why is tip number three, please.
Kieran Mackle 19:06 So think, tip number three ties in it’s be explicit when modelling for colleagues.
Craig Barton 19:12 Yeah, let’s dive into this stuff.
Kieran Mackle 19:15 So let’s say I think this comes from reading Alan Sims teacher gap, where they talk about small actionable teaching assignments, and the idea that some schools improve their teachers better than others. And it’s usually bid through specificity. And, you know, so when colleagues are watching me teach, I’ll ask them to focus on one thing, and vice versa when I’m watching them. It won’t be your old school. This lesson was a good or an outstanding lesson it’d be okay. How did the worked examples go? And, you know, was there sufficient difference between the consecutive examples, you know, being really, really specific and what exactly it was, and I She saw the benefit of this the other day, because one of our early career teachers, we’ve been working specifically on routines and behaviours. And as I was going for I was taking some people around the school, and we happen to be in a class, he was using mini whiteboards. And they had a signal for when they were ready to continue. She had a system for checking in different parts of the class different times. And then she was ready to move in. And this is, you know, she’s executing this better than I could ever have imagined. But that’s because we spent three weeks only looking at that part of her practice, because she’s going to be teaching for 30 years, there has to be something that she learns in here to learn to the year three. And yeah, so I find that really helpful. And, you know, I think one caveat is that safeguarding is an exception. If there’s something to do with that, then that needs to be addressed at the right time. But what I took from renown and Sims and then there’s a, there’s an American book called, and I can’t remember, the name escapes me right now. But it’s basically a an exploration of business and education, and learning to improve as the name and they take examples from business that that might apply in education. And they said something very similar. When the feedback you give and the and the criteria is more specific, you’re more likely to enact change. And so that’s something we’ve been doing for a while. And I think it you know, again, it’s, it’s what you do with pupils, but let’s do it with the teachers as well.
Craig Barton 21:21 This is great here and write a couple of follow ups on there. So the first thing is that the teacher gap, that’s a brilliant book, isn’t it? Hey, I, I don’t think that gets the attention it deserves. That’s, that’s one of the best ones I’ve ever read it. And I can bet Becky Ellen and some are absolutely brilliant. But I’ll tell you one thing. She’s not returning my emails at the moment back down. And so she’s in my bad books. I’m trying to get her on here at a gamble. So I’ve got off for a little bit, but I will, I will say that that book is absolutely excellent. It’s a Brit. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. But I’m really interested in this gear. And this this this? Firstly, I love that point that let’s just focus on one thing she can be teaching for 30 years there’s there’s no rush that ties in with a lot of things that have been said on on tips for teachers about not not trying to accelerate your career too much. Just taking your time focusing on one thing getting better at that and then move it on. I love that. But I’m really interested in the practicalities of this. So let’s imagine you’re working with an early careers teacher. Firstly, who decides the focus? Is that did you suggest things that they suggest things? Is it? How does the focus come about?
Kieran Mackle 22:21 I mean, I think it’s changed since the early career framework was brought into place. I mean, that was the end of the first academic year. But there’s a real roadmap for generic sort of pedagogy that we can that we can follow. You know, obviously, my support is often math specific. But I think that there’s a lot of crossover. And so before the framework, I would use my knowledge of my practice and what I thought was effective teaching. And we would sort of, we codify what we thought effective teaching looked like. And so it’s almost a combination of both now where there will be some specific things that I focus on, but a lot of things will work in just as well, with the with the new framework.
Craig Barton 23:04 Got it? And if you’re let’s say you’re working with a specific teacher, and you’ve agreed on a focus, you know, whatever it may be, let’s say it’s worked examples or whatever. What, what would the conversation before the lesson where you watch them look like would you be? Would you be saying, Look, I’m literally just gonna be focusing on this one thing, so don’t worry about anything else that what what does that conversation be? Because the reason I’m asking you this, Kieran is, is often there isn’t a conversation before a kind of supporting observation like this. And it feels to me like that conversation is quite important.
Kieran Mackle 23:35 It is. And it was probably more important for me at the start, because I need to establish that I wasn’t in my schools as another stick to beat the teachers with, you know, because they’ve been through the only the only constant was changed for quite a while. But I, you know, I’ve removed myself from the accountability process. My notes are my notes, because my working memory is limited. And I need to remember this conversation at 6pm. Because I might be working with the teacher at 910 and 11. And then plan at that someone in the afternoon. And so yeah, so I think it’s very important that you establish that this is, you know, getting better now, because we need to, but because we we have to or not because we can, and yeah, I think the more experienced the teacher is, the more freedom I think they have to decide where they’re coming from. But generally, I think the things I introduce, will be just beyond normal practice enough that they’ll think oh, I’d quite like to get better at that thing. We talked about your staff meeting.
Craig Barton 24:29 God, it’s just the final one on this. And it’s the obvious question, what is the conversation afterwards look like? Is it I mean, do you started with the classic How do you think that that went or what are those conversations play out? Like?
Kieran Mackle 24:41 It depends on if I’ve done the teaching or not. So I’ll ask them what did you notice if I was the teacher? And I probably will start with you know, how did you think that went? Alright. But again, being really specific to you know, how did that worked example work? You know what What did you notice about the people’s responses? And because I think, you know, it’s very easy for us to give value judgments on ourselves, oh, I was terrible. They weren’t listening, you know, that kind of thing. But actually, that’s not important. Were the questions similar enough that we could draw generalisations, you know, so I think, normally very informal, because, you know, we’re doing very important work. But we can almost build this relationship where we’re, we’re, it’s supportive, you know, because we want everybody to be the best teacher so that pupils get the best education we can possibly have.
Craig Barton 25:30 Just the final points on this. So Chris, such a I’d obviously, you know, very well was was on the show a few episodes ago, and he talks a lot about depressurizing learning. And one of his strategies was the, as a teacher, he’d make a mistake fairly early on, when he meets a class just to show that everybody’s human, it doesn’t matter if you make a mistake, and so on. It almost feels like that, you know, kind of depressurizing this, this, this coaching, or this observation feels like an important thing. Would you ever? I’m not saying that? I mean, I do this without even knowing. But would you ever deliberately do something sub optimally? For two reasons? Just so one, you’ve got something to talk about? And two, it kind of takes you off your pedestal? And the teacher realises that that everybody’s human, or does that not feel like a good idea?
Kieran Mackle 26:17 I mean, I haven’t done it on purpose. But when I do make a mistake, because no lessons ever gonna be perfect, I will own it. And I’ll say, Well, that wasn’t ideal. What can we do to improve that next time? You know, and because we’re, you know, what have we got, we’ve got a three form or two forms one form, there are lots and lots of teachers. So I will have these conversations openly in the staff room about where I’ve gone wrong, you know, so I think, you know, maybe in the future, I will plant and mistakes, but you don’t have to look very far to see mistakes that are getting made worse than anywhere.
Craig Barton 26:50 Kevin Claire, she just won bonus on this gear. Now apologies for for keep digging into this. But I’m just fascinated. And I can see this model working really well in your school where, obviously, you know, the staff, you’d probably know most of the kids, and you can do this, I’ll teach this lesson, you teach the next maybe we’ll do it together and so on. Let’s just say you were kind of transported into another school, or perhaps you’re an external, you’re an external consultant, or whatever you are, would you still do the kind of our teach? Do you think that’s still the best way to start this process for them to watch the the strategy, you’re talking about inaction? Or is the fact that you’re not familiar with the school? The pupils? Is that too much of a barrier?
Kieran Mackle 27:32 I mean, it’s always tough. You know, the strength of teaching comes from knowing your pupils, doesn’t it? But I think that we want to almost disarm anyone who were looking to support, you know, he’s gonna put his money where his mouth is, you know, because you know, it’s very easy for people to come in and say, Do this, do this and do this, we’ll be back in two weeks to check up on you. I think I got a lot of them a lot of currency from my teachers, and I think I wouldn’t and other scripts, if I sort of was the one who led because then I think people who are reticent, get a bit of breathing space and think, Okay, this isn’t so bad.
Craig Barton 28:07 Yeah, I think that’s really important. That’s brilliant. All right, Karen. Tip number four, please.
Kieran Mackle 28:14 So I don’t know if this has got consensus, but some behaviours are more important than others.
Craig Barton 28:20 I like this, because I can, you know, I love the clickbait headline, this is a good one, this is this is bringing in the numbers that we need here and right, tell us about this.
Kieran Mackle 28:29 So I don’t think hierarchy is a perfect metaphor, but I think it’s a workable metaphor. And that gives us the space to think about how we teach, you know, so you’ve had lots of people talking about behaviour. And so for instance, in any hierarchy, behaviour will be the first thing that you need to get right in your classroom before you can do anything else, you know, can make it make everything as possible, because the routines we have the expectations of learning, then allow you to focus on your on your pedagogy. So, you know, at the start of thinking about primary mathematics, I said, read Tom Bennis work before you even start this book, you know, because it’s gonna save, you know, I learned that the hard way, and I think probably most teachers do don’t. And then I would have explanation and instruction. Because I think if you get good at those, and you can explain things, then you build some space from your senior leadership team, because they’re when they’re a partner in the class, they’ll see, oh, that there’s, there’s what they would call good teaching going on. And, you know, we know it’s only part of the picture. But I think if we can establish that with some modelling, perhaps as a bare minimum, then you you could teach kids and I think they could make progress and, and once you’ve got those in place, then you start thinking about things like variation, like task design, and, and maybe strategy selection, you know, because that’s the, you know, the nuts and bolts of the thinking we need to do in our PPR time. You know, so we’re planning, we’re thinking about the question selection, we’re thinking about what Do I want to have a background of sort of a variant background? Or is it in variants? You know, I don’t think you can think about that. If you haven’t cracked the, the fundamentals. And so I would almost have, you know, there are many, many more things that go into what it means to be a teacher. And, but I would say that general hierarchy gives you the most rapid and sustained progress because it gives you space, but it also establishes a minimum competency very, very, very early on
Craig Barton 30:29 God, it just gives us a hierarchy, one more time care.
Kieran Mackle 30:33 So behaviour, explanation, instruction and modelling. And then your things like variation tasks, design, strategy, selection, but in that group, I’m having everything that we you know, if we’re reading about education, and we’re thinking about confidence, we’d have multiple choice questions, that they’re not the first thing you explore. But they’re definitely very powerful once you’ve got the hang of the basic rule.
Craig Barton 30:57 Right, this is brilliant. So the first thing to say is obvious. Obviously, when I first started teaching, I did the exact opposite. So all my thoughts was on the tasks, and it was I wasn’t even good at that. It was just like, poor task selection. And that’s all I was was focusing on. I’m really ensure I completely agree with you. I’m gonna ask you the worst question in the world. Karen? And I know the answer is going to be depends. But how long? How long does it take to kind of move the I guess, down the hierarchy? Like, how long will it typically take to get your behaviour to the point where then you can start thinking about your explanations and modelling.
Kieran Mackle 31:33 I mean, you would hope that within the first six weeks, you know, you’re right, it does depend, and teachers will take it to more naturally. But I think we’re a school has really good systems in place. And it’s just a matter of adopting those systems, that’s much more manageable than having to establish them against the against the tide, you know, but I would hope that by October, November, we could start thinking about pedagogy because, you know, the class we’re, we’re learning this and, you know, as default.
Craig Barton 32:03 So this is the obvious follow up question. And I apologise, it sounds really kind of aggressive. This one, I don’t mean it to what’s happening in those six weeks in terms of learning that if if if they kind of focus at the teachers on behaviour, is it just a case of, you know, the explanations and task design will be suboptimal. But that’s just what the way it’s got to be.
Kieran Mackle 32:22 I mean, my preference is for the utilisation of high quality textbooks. So you’re almost guaranteeing a minimum standard of instruction, even if you just follow the script. You know, I’m not saying that’s the best way to use high quality textbooks, but it’s on a fundamental level possible, where that’s absent, having really high quality curricula, you know, things like the rich curriculum in history, geography and science, you know, they go a long way to supporting teachers in their delivery. And then the more competent and confident you become, then you can experiment with your with those really interesting bits of pedagogy. You know, I accept that if those aren’t in place in all schools, particularly not in primary schools. But that’s what I would recommend, you know, and I think, even if those aren’t in place, if the behaviour isn’t sorted, the learner is going to be suboptimal. Anyway. So I don’t necessarily think there’s a comparison to be it. Yeah, this
Craig Barton 33:19 this makes a lot of sense. I’ve spoken about this, perhaps on the Mr. Bart muffs podcast that for if you’d have asked me, you know, anytime in the first 12 years of my career, is it a good idea to have kind of centrally planned lessons or, you know, prescribed approaches, I would say, definitely not like the whole point of being a teacher, you want to be creative freedom, express yourself and all that. But I look back now, and I was talking nonsense, because as you say, if you’re you’re starting out teaching, and even if you’re an experienced teacher in a new school, if you don’t have that behaviour, right, it’s, it’s going to be an absolute disaster. And it’s such a weight off your mind, if somebody says, Look, just use this example, we thought this through this is probably a good example to use. And I’ll tell you what, once you’ve explained it, give them this task, because this is probably a good task to use. And as you say, there’s that will get them through wonton mode, you know, most of those those kinds of six weeks or so. And then you can then start to look at look at the next year, as opposed to either looking at things the wrong way around or trying to just sort everything out all at once. It just it just doesn’t work. So the more I think about it, prescription particularly early on, it’s probably a good thing, isn’t it?
Kieran Mackle 34:28 Yeah, I mean, I tell people this all the time, but I had her when I started teaching, and within 18 months, it was gone. And I think it was the inspection criteria. You know, because it was six activities for every single lesson, you know, throughout the day. So you know, there’s only so, so long your follicles can put up with
Craig Barton 34:48 it. Let me ask you just this thing down here, just in case I forget to ask you this. So obviously, we’ve talked we’ve done four tips here and this one in particular just highlights how much thought needs to go into bid to be in it. maths teacher, you’ve got to get behaviour right? Then you’ve got to think about explanations modelling and then you start thinking about all the nuances tested on variation. But the thing is primary teachers, they’ve got to do this for all subjects. How the hell did he like you? There is not enough money in the world to pay me to be a primary teacher? How does he do it here and someone’s got to give us
Kieran Mackle 35:20 I think we’re schools have really sensible approaches to workload, you can prioritise thinking and learning your for I’ve got a colleague, Lloyd Williams joins me on the podcast quite a lot. He will give His teachers hold errs at the start of term to brush up on their subject knowledge. You know, and I think we’re that kind of situation exists and people are allowed to explore say they’re teaching the Vikings and Scandinavian history in that sort of, you know, 11 for was first century, wouldn’t it? And then spending six hours getting to grips with it, you know, I think goes a long way. And I think when I think about school development, I’m thinking about well, in five years time, if we have a body of teachers who are sufficiently knowledgeable of bytes, you know, both the subject knowledge and the pedagogical content knowledge of a broader range of subjects, then I think we’re moving in the right direction. You know, I do think that too much is asked, you know, I think the curriculum is too broad, my preference would be for a specialist model. But I do know that that’s, again, not a consensus view. And schools have just got to do the best they can to provide their teachers with time to think so they’re not doing unnecessary paperwork, then you can spend time thinking, and if you’re not doing and, you know, other bureaucratic chores, you know, staff meetings that could have been emails, and then you again, you have more time in your day. So it’s about how you use the idea of being 45 hours in a week, how do you use those 45 hours, we’re gonna use a substantial amount teaching, but the rest, I want to focus on what’s important, rather than things that are there because they’ve always been there,
Craig Barton 37:01 too quick follow ups on this, I’m fat, I’m fascinated by primary schools care. How is maths the subject that gets the biggest focus in terms of kind of CPD pedagogy? And so on? I’d imagine English should be be at a similar similar level. What about the other subjects? Like? Is there enough time to think deeply about geography and art and all that kind of stuff?
Kieran Mackle 37:28 I think at the minute, the expectation is that there is, you know, schools would maybe have, on an inset day, we’ll do some focus on art. But the new inspection framework is sort of guided schools towards a model where they do have to spend more time thinking about sort of subjects that would have been neglected before 2018. You know, because I remember when I first started teaching, it really was reading writing and mathematics that we had to get right, because that was what the school will be judged on, essentially. And, and the rest? Well, it was it was okay. You know, I mean, I was lucky that her teacher who valued lots of those subjects, and so provided us with additional opportunities, but I think it’s becoming the norm. And I don’t think we’ve got it right, a primary in terms of how we use our staff meeting time, and they’re definitely people like Matt Swain, who are talking about how we might use it in a different way. And, you know, maybe breaking one long meeting into two smaller meetings and having a focus over five or six weeks, rather than a different focus every week. And but yeah, I think the jury’s still out on that one. And we’ll see where we are in maybe four or five years time once we’ve been through a full cycle.
Craig Barton 38:35 Last question on this, Karen. I’m always fascinated by how much of maths pedagogy transfers to other subjects. So anytime a school asked me to come in and do a whole kind of staff training session, I also look and I don’t have a clue what I’m doing outside of my nice little secondary maths bubble. But then I know some of my books are read by teachers outside of maths and they can find the strategies apply, and so on. How do you find that a primary? So let’s take for example, you were saying about words, examples? Would that transfer across would would teachers be able to use what they do words is obviously maths in in history and English. And so one of the other aspects of maths at transfer quite nicely across?
Kieran Mackle 39:16 I think so I think, particularly those that had been researched by cognitive psychologists. And it might be easier for maths teachers are teaching maths, because a lot of the examples are quite often mathematics based. But you know, for instance, something like retrieval practice will work equally effectively across the, across the curriculum. And I think, you know, one of the things that we’ve tried as an as a country and mathematics is to establish the idea that all pupils can attain Well, if they’re given the right support, and so we use manipulatives. Quite often, we used multiple examples. We use them, scaffolds, but there’s no reason why we can’t do that in history. Now on scaffold and really, you know, thinking carefully about the, the information we present to pupils. And so then that will almost alleviate some of the cognitive burden on those people. So I think it does take a lot more thought. And perhaps because the broader conversation has fewer examples from the other subjects. But if you look at the principles, like I was told Michael Tom, but in general behaviours, you look at those general principles and highlight this look, there’s nothing to lose from trying those, I don’t think
Craig Barton 40:27 it’s as thick. Right here. And what is your fifth and final tip, please?
Kieran Mackle 40:33 Nobody really knows what they’re doing.
Craig Barton 40:37 I like it. So tell me about this.
Kieran Mackle 40:40 Okay, so it’s really hard to do this one without offending anybody and others definitely as in my attention, that my intention, and I’m the worst for accepting this is true, but I will defer far too much to people with experience and expertise, to the point where, sometimes if I meet them socially, I will struggle, and because of how much I don’t want to sort of make my samsat self sound silly in front of them, you know, interviewing perhaps was really difficult because it’s so much respect for his intellect, thinking, right? Okay, I’m gonna have to cut everything I said in this episode. But, but really, it’s a mental health, or mental space tip. And I think we should always strive to be better, and we should learn from ever more experienced, but I don’t think we should beat ourselves up. There’ll be aren’t other people or that we seem to be making mistakes that other people don’t make. You know, I always talk about how, you know, the universe is what maybe 14 billion years old and a bad lesson hasn’t ended it yet. And so, you know, maybe it’s not going to be career ending if we make a mistake, you know, but like I said, I will spend hours when I’m supposed to be sleeping, worrying about things that happen and works on I need to take this advice myself. And I we acknowledge that everybody’s just muddling along the same, you know, regardless of their position in, in sort of the system, you know, and the default attribute of most teachers is that they want to help other people. So ask them for help and give yourself a break from from time to time.
Craig Barton 42:09 It’s a really really important one that Karen well when I started the tips for teachers thing I really wanted obviously the pedagogical advice but also this this kind of stuff and Jamie Tom did a similar thing about turning down the negativity radio he describes hours where you know, you teach for decent lessons while crap lesson and that’s the crap ones the only one that you think about when I did my Mr. Barton laughs podcast, my favourite question to ask was, what’s your favourite failure? Because then people like Dylan, William and Pepes would say, look, I messed up by doing this. And it’s quite refreshing to hear as you know, as a teacher trying your best that you know, the so called grades also also struggling. You’re absolutely right. And everybody, everybody else that has Yeah, struggles from time to time. The only thing I just wanted to say about this is Twitter’s an interesting one for this Kieran. Because it can be like, I would say, it’s my single best source of ideas, where I see people kind of sharing things, I think, Wow, that is really, really good. But it can also make you feel bad in a couple of ways. Firstly, there are some idiots on there who just you know, take everything out of context and try and try and upset you. But also, it’s this fear of missing out thing we spoke about before, where you’re seeing people who are doing things and you think I’m not doing good enough for that. Like there’s a secondary school teacher, Helen Constantine, who designs some of the best questions I’ve ever seen in my life. And I think I’m not, I’m nowhere near that level, like my kids are dipping out, because I’m not doing that. So Twitter’s an interesting one, isn’t it? Because you kind of want to be on there to get the ideas. But very rarely do I leave it feeling like a better person or a better teacher? You know, it’s tricky, isn’t it?
Kieran Mackle 43:45 Yeah, I mean, I’ve got a pretty healthy, block mute process. And because I don’t think people go on Twitter, too, you know, when they speak on Twitter, it’s not necessarily to engage in meaningful dialogue, and the form restricts it. So really, what you want to do is you want to embrace the echo chamber, you know, and okay, here are some people who I really respect, I’m going to see what they have to say, and you know, and if people are out to be bad faith actors will then I have no interest. So I’m going to block or I’m going to mute you know, maybe not in that order. And but it’s difficult because I think, across the air across the spectrum, you know, I’m Adam Buxton does a podcast and I think at the start of his he used to make fun of Twitter all the time. You know, it all is a place for reasonable discussion stuff. You know, he’s absolutely right. And if they’re having similar issues, you know, then there’s not much hope for us. But I think in terms of switching off, I will physically switch my phone off, because it’s very hard to resist and remember Doug Lemov either tweeted about it or he wrote in one of his books about the the experiment where the only way your attention wasn’t going towards your phone was when it was switched off and in a different room, even if it was switched off in the same room. You were still, you know, students were still looking at or haven’t study with. So yeah, so it’s a try To smartphone free like bread already for a while, but I was missing too many important phone calls because the signal wasn’t good enough. So yeah, so but so turned off in a different room, and we go from there, and we go from there. But yeah, it’s, it’s far from a perfect model.
Craig Barton 45:15 That’s very good. And last last question on this camera, let’s imagine you you’ve you’ve had a bad day, lessons haven’t gone well and so on. How are you dealing with that? How are you kind of stopping yourself because I’m, I’m terrible at it. I lay awake, as you mentioned before thinking about it, what works for you to switch you off it.
Kieran Mackle 45:33 So I mean, I started the thick daily podcast during lockdown when there was a lot more free time. And if that was going to continue, then I needed to be more specific about when I was going to do it, and what would constitute an acceptable amount of time in my evening. So we’ve actually carved out, there’s one night a week, that’s when recording happens. And then we’ve got a selection of activities that my wife and I will do when the kids have gone to bed. And so we’ll think okay, do you wanna do the puzzles? You want to do the paint by numbers? And you know, that for us at the moment works, you know, and I think weekends are becoming busier because we’re allowed outside and things. And but yeah, because I was definitely at risk at one point of spending far too much time editing podcasts that didn’t need to be edited anymore. Sure, you can relate.
Craig Barton 46:19 That’s brilliant. Well, they’ve been five absolutely brilliant tips here. And I absolutely love that. So let me hand over to you. Well, what should listeners check out?
Kieran Mackle 46:28 I mean, I don’t think my friends would give me if I didn’t say that at the Saturday isn’t nine o’clock, you can check out the thinking dibuat prime education podcast. And, you know, because I think I probably lucky that very interesting. People will talk to me about education. And so yeah, well worth checking out.
Craig Barton 46:44 You know, just on my campus. I’m a big fan. Just just if listeners because you’ve got a massive back catalogue now. Right? So maybe pick out one or two episodes. If if listeners were to start with something well, where would you advise assembling them?
Kieran Mackle 46:57 Yeah, so I mean, I go for a maths and literacy one. So obviously, Christopher such he did. I think he’s done maybe six hours on reading, but his first episode in, I think it was season one, season two, his second episode, he told us season two, Episode Six, he spent two hours talking about reading. And essentially, it was just before the art and science was published and got a chance to really pick his brilliant because I didn’t know half the stuff that he was talking about. And then mad swing talks about mastery and how he’s made it work at the primary level with the step Academy trust. So I think those two seem to interest people, but also I think they go pretty deep. But to be honest, we’ve done 80 episodes, maybe 81, but a timeless go site. And you know, all the guests are fantastic. You know, I think we’re blessed with the the deep thinkers, we’ve got
Craig Barton 47:46 fantastic and everything else. What about your book?
Kieran Mackle 47:50 Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I’m hopeless of publishing my own stuff. I promote my own stuff. And yeah, I mean, I’ve got thinking deeply about primary mathematics, which links quite well into this is sort of these tips, because it’s based on my work, and okay, I’m seeing general patterns here, I’ll write it down. And so I see it as a blueprint for teachers who are inexperienced or would like to improve their professional development. And, and hopefully, it’s both accessible and to a challenge and at the same time and add some junk here. And actually, we shared an editor. I think the editor of your second book, Craig was the was the editor of that one, so I knew it was in good hands when I when I sent it off.
Craig Barton 48:30 Oh, that’s fantastic, superb stuff. Well, I’ll put links to all those in the show notes and all that reminds me to say here and it’s this has been an absolute pleasure. So it’s thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
Kieran Mackle 48:39 It’s been lovely. Thank you very much.
Craig Barton 0:00 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. This episode I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to head of maths and co host of the excellent beyond good podcast, Femi D’Andrea, and you are in for an absolute treat. Four quick ones before we dive in. Firstly, sponsors lots of the podcasts are open. So if you want to let the world’s most interesting listeners know about your book, product or event, just drop me an email. You can view videos of all famous tips on the tips for teachers website. These are ideal to share on a departmental meeting or a training session. Number three, you can sign up to the all new tips for teachers newsletter. I’ve been working on this over the summer, I’m dead happy with this new format. You’ll get a tip in your inbox on Monday mornings to try out that week. You’ll get a video to share with a colleague and you’ll also get a podcast to listen to on your way home. And finally, if you find this podcast useful, please could you take a moment of your time to review it on your podcast player of choice? Pause the episode now if you can just give us a quick rating. It really does make a difference. Thanks so much. Okay, back to the show. Let’s get learning with today’s guest, the wonderful Femi ademir. Spoiler alert here are Fermi’s five tips. Tip One, Teach behaviour lesson one by making developing the right classroom culture your objective for the early lessons. Tip two, focus on explanations, not resources. Number three, teaching small chunks and four kids into doing lots of work. Tip Four, have your coffee while sitting in the classrooms of effective teachers. And Tip five provide answers so pupils can check their work in real time. If you look on the episode description on your podcast player or visit the episode page on tips for teachers.co. UK, you’ll see I’ve timestamp each of these tips so you can jump straight to anyone you want to listen to first, or we listen. Enjoy the show. Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Femi adeniran to the tips for teachers podcast. Hello, Femi. How are you?
Femi Adeniran 2:13 Hello. Nice to speak to you, Craig. Thank you having me on.
Craig Barton 2:17 Nice to speak. Nice to speak to you too. Dr. Femi. For the benefit of listeners. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself ideally in a sentence?
Femi Adeniran 2:24 Yeah, so I am head of math in a large, private school. That’s after 13 years of being a math teacher, a second department and a head of department in the in the state sector.
Craig Barton 2:37 Fantastic. Right. Let’s dive straight in. What’s tip number one for us today.
Femi Adeniran 2:42 So tip number one is teach behaviour lesson one, by making developing the right classroom culture, your lesson objective in those early lessons.
Craig Barton 2:53 Like, tell me about this?
Femi Adeniran 2:56 Well, I think this one really comes from me, first of all, explaining what I believe the goal should be as as a teacher of any subject. So you know, I’m, I’m maths, but it could be any subject, I honestly do believe that the goal should be that you’re aiming for 100% of the things that you say in the lesson or about your subject, and 0% or about behaviour. Now clay has a very high failure to have. And you’re never going to achieve that every lesson every day. But I do think it’s what you should be aiming for. And it’s really interesting. So that day there was a young lady on Twitter who I think very genuinely put a message on saying, I’m an EC T started a few weeks time, how should I start a September, and loads of people came in with with similar things, what I’m saying. So start with being very clear about where you stand, how you want the class to run and running the room, and Tom Bennett and all that sort of stuff. And a lot of people just came back to saying that no, I don’t believe that just start teaching, they’ll pick it up. The school should have explained the rules to them. They’re already teenagers, they should know all this. And I just don’t buy into that at all. Really, I really don’t think that as educators we can criticise young people for not behaving, if we haven’t explained to them what that behaviour should look like or should be. So I’m all for starting with how we’re going to run this class. And it also you know, I listen to Tom Bennett. And it was it was really good to hear him because I was kind of doing all this stuff to get away back really before I was really any Tom Bennett or listening to podcasts. And it was really interesting to Him Come on and say exactly the same thing. So I mean, what I will say is this is not a rules lesson. This is not a whole hour where you’re at the front going through my 45 rules of my class and write them all down and annoying. I’m going to test it’s not it’s not nothing like that. It’s just being really clear about how you want the class to to function.
Craig Barton 4:43 Right, this is great. Let’s dive in. dive into this a little bit. So I’ve I’ve done both sides of this. I’ve tried both. When I first started teaching, I was all about laying down the kind of rules first, and then I thought, I’m not so sure maybe it’s do the content first and the rules kind of come a bit later. I’m swinging back The other way around. But I’m really interested in the in the practicalities of this for me. So I want to Can you talk us through what what would this first lesson look like perhaps starting out with these Lesson Objectives? Because that’s an area where it often kicks off here. Are you? Are you writing those down on the board? And no, no, I say objectives? No, I
Femi Adeniran 5:16 don’t mean that. What I mean is that often teachers will say, Oh, yes, lesson one. Today, I’m starting off with Pythagoras, what are you doing, or I’m going to do expanding brackets. And they’ve already got a lesson objective, which is maths related. In their head, they want the people in the hour to understand how to expand single brackets, which, of course, is what we would normally do, what I’m advocating more is my Lesson Objective. Lesson one, Lesson Two is that we create the right culture. So of course, you’re teaching maths, but actually, I’m not that interested in how much matters learn in those few lessons, or I’m interested in is do I get the culture right, so that I can teach maths very quickly, and effectively in the lessons that come after the first couple. So I’m not I’m not putting up anywhere, it’s just that I’m having that in my mind is how I want this to go. So I would always be you know, if you have less than one and you say to your colleague in the class next door, how did it go? And he or she says, Oh, yeah, they can all expand brackets. Now. They’re all finding multipliers really good. That’s not really kind of what I was asking. What would I be asking for is how did it go in terms of setting the tone for the year?
Craig Barton 6:18 Got it? Got it? All right. Well, let’s talk about setting the tone for me. What what are some of the things you’re looking for in that first lesson? And how are you bringing them about? Is it? Are you modelling it and then getting the kids to practice? How does this play out practically?
Femi Adeniran 6:31 So I think very similar to what you said earlier, is that I got it a little bit wrong in my earlier years of going for too much depth and rules. And trying to go through sort of eight, nine things I wanted the kids to know, now I’ve boiled it down to just three things that I explained very clearly, I do make the kids write it down. We never ever refer back to that those those bullet points. But I do write the write it down, I think to get across to them that this is really something that’s really important to me. And those rules are just three things. One is seating plan, you will sit where I’ve asked you to sit. And the reason for that is that if I had you in a seating plan, I straightaway know who all of you are. And I can address you all by name. So it’s not about behaviour. I haven’t gone to check with your head of year or your tutors who the worst behaved people in year eight, were nothing like that. It’s just I want to be able to eyeball you and say, Tom, how do you feel about question for Liam, and if you know, and I could do that, if I’ve got your the seating plan. That’s the first one. The second word is status. I always say to them that other than this lesson, because of course, it’s less than one. When you walk into this room straightaway, there will be a starter on the board, and you are expected to come in and get on with that immediately, you’re not going to open the window, you’re not going to go get a bottle of Coke off your mate, you’re not gonna go check out your phone or anything like that you are straight in sat down and get get on whether you call it star so retrieval do now whatever it is, it’s all just something that we’ve learned in the past that you’re recapping. And the last one is social skills. There is one of me, there are 2530 of you. This can only work if, if you’ve got something to say you put your hand up. And I just basically just kick off. But they’ve written that down. They’ve got it in their book. And I think the really key thing from there is that you you devilishly follow through with that. So oft quite often very early on, you’ll see someone just just either quite honestly, sometimes or genuinely just, sir. Depends. Sorry, mom. But that’s that’s calling out, you know, or in lesson two, you’ll see a pupil come in and just wander over to the back of the room because it hasn’t been your classroom before. And he just wants to see the rugby pitch because you can see it from your club, and he wants to see if he can see his bike. No, that is that is that is that is not coming in and getting on with the style straightaway. So you’re setting these up, and then you’re then you’re always going back to them or you’re kind of being a bit of a dog with a bone with it. And I think that’s really important.
Craig Barton 8:54 I like it. Okay, just one observation. And then just a couple follow up questions. Our team where I see this go wrong for me is Yeah, with your scheme of work with with schemes of work, particularly those that are jam packed around that first term, and particularly schemes of work that are lesson by lesson and have a big problem with them just just full stop anyway, a teacher can look and think, Oh, I’ve got I’ve got to get through these objectives in this lesson. So I don’t have time for this behaviour thing. I’m guessing that because you said you’re not that bothered how much maths gets done, but you can imagine for a less experienced teacher, it’s quite hard to make that call isn’t it and say I’m going to essentially sacrifice content in the short term because I’m going to get dividends in the long term is quite big shout for less experienced teacher.
Femi Adeniran 9:35 No, no, it is it actually isn’t as you’ve heard that because I’m because I’ve asked him to work at my school, which I’ve written myself they specifically in lesson in week one, say something like classroom routines and setting culture. And that’s all it says for the week. Now now, I wouldn’t expect a teacher to be doing that for a week. But I’ve deliberately put that there so that there isn’t straight away pressure of how far are you out with your eighth grade what you want? I want All behind the way I don’t want that. So it’s not it’s not going to happen for a week I would expect that teachers will be teaching the scheme of work in less than one or definitely less than two. But I put it there to take away that pressure but uh, but that’s only my school. So I agree with you and I’ve worked in schools before I was a head of department, right miscues work myself, where you go in and it is straightaway circle theorems, lesson one. And I think you know that that comes something from leadership really is heads department should be realising that actually probably for a young teacher, the number one thing that’s making them sweat and worry a little bit over the summer will be the behaviour, it won’t be teaching expanding brackets, it won’t be circling, these people have got degrees, it will be it will be guest setting the climate of their classroom. So that’s the kind of conversation that people should be having with their mentors or their heads of department. And if that isn’t happening, that go and have that conversation with your mentor, your head department, or actually, I’ve got another tip later on, which will help with that as well.
Craig Barton 10:53 Fantastic. Just two more quick points on this. And how long roughly family would it take to go through these, these these three rules in that first lesson?
Femi Adeniran 11:01 Yeah, well, again, I mean, I made the mistake in my early is it my first of all of it taking half an hour, 45 minutes, and it shouldn’t be that we are talking before between the last pupil walking in, and the first bit of maths be done at most 10 to 15 minutes by people. So we’re so we’re pretty quickly getting on to math. Yeah.
Craig Barton 11:25 Got it. Got it. And final question. You mentioned, kind of revisiting these rules, retrieving these rules, keeping the standards high. And in subsequent lessons. Is that a case of just you looking out for the behaviour? And if it’s not where you want it, kind of picking the kids up on it? Or are you explicitly providing retrieval opportunities? I’m thinking along the lines of in your start, and maybe saying things like, what are three rules in this classroom? Or is it more just a more organic process than that?
Femi Adeniran 11:52 Yeah, no, I’d see, I’d see I would personally see referring back to those rules with teenagers or kids who are secondary, as being a little bit corny, you know, my daughter’s eighth year are going into year one. And I would say it’d be perfectly reasonable for the teachers there to say like, yeah, what were our rules for hand washing, or we always do it, but that’s alright. But I think we’ve teenagers I wouldn’t be I wouldn’t be putting it in a star, sir. But I would be constantly going, going back to it, I can still remember in my in one school, I worked in teaching a boss was set you 11. And I did all this stuff. And I started teaching. And I was about 10 minutes into my first topic of whatever it was I was doing, and a kid in a well meaning way, because I got to know him better actually, just to shout it out. So is it true, it used to be doctor and that was him just because he was he was he was that kind of quite jumpy. I want to ask, I want to say for the clinic kid. And straightaway, just bang, I got on a straightaway with you know, what did we say about calling out? What did I say to you 10 minutes ago about how I want to, and you can always see the mood of the class which to okay, this isn’t just a teacher who’s got rules. This is how he’s actually going to follow up on that. And we just basically didn’t have that for the rest of the year. I’ve made in my mind a little corrections. But it’s really important that you’ve that you follow through it.
Craig Barton 13:07 Fantastic. Right.
Femi Adeniran 13:09 So I’m actually Oh, sorry, I’m sorry. I’m actually really hostile as head of department as well. People not interrupting those first lessons. I’ve been known to send people away because they’ve come less than one. Hi, sir. We just want to can we borrow a set of compasses for the sun? No, sorry, you can’t. Now that would never be happening in less than 567. But in less than one, you know, I want to show the pupils. There’s nothing more important for me that setting up the culture of this class. I actually I’ve actually sent that person away. And you often see kids like, he just he just said what happened? You know, you know, I think it’s quite good message. Send the kids there’s nothing more important than being you having this conversation.
Craig Barton 13:52 I like it. I mean, who on earth is doing it using compasses lesson one? That be my question. Well,
Femi Adeniran 13:56 there you go. There you go. It does happen.
Craig Barton 14:00 Right. What is tip number two, please.
Femi Adeniran 14:03 Okay, so tip number two is focused on explanations, not resources. And this is quite an issue and it’s in no way criticising you know, you know, what you do with your podcasts or or my podcast that I do, or any any books that you can read or Twister. But I do think there’s a big problem in education with teachers spreading too long discussing resources, and not enough time discussing pure pedagogy. And I think actually a lot of teachers incorrectly think that a pedagogical discussion is a discussion about websites and whether or not you use maths watch or my maths or corporate maths or Pixi maths or whatever, and all that it’s got a purpose and it all needs to be discussed. And there are definitely some things that are better than others to use at a math lesson. But But actually, real pedagogy in my opinion is discussing how we’re transmitting what we know as mathematicians or math teachers into the minds of the pupils. And that’s more about how you favourite things, because I actually believe that the resources are just like a sort of a tool of practice for the pupils. And I’ve been to lessons, I can think of one teacher, my second school, who used to use some resources that nobody would touch. Now, he always used his book called LBN revision and practice. And it was this really dusty old book for the 1970s. And he had to photocopy it and blow up the photocopier so that it was big enough, because these tiny little exercises, but you’d go into his class and watch him teach. And he was an absolute expert. And you could hear a pin drop and the kids were on it and working well and loving them out and focusing on working really hard, because he’d got his explanations absolutely watertight. And I’d actually went to another school quite recently, just for the day to have a look at what they were doing. This is a private school, really quite expensive, private school. And every lesson I walked into, I wanted to steal their resources, because they were really good. And you could say, Why do you get this wrong? But actually, the the explanations, and the pedagogy of their teaching was was was poor, and the kids actually weren’t making much progress. So I really do believe that we need to talk about explanations less than we talk about resources. And actually, in my last school, I had department just for one or two years, we had a really, really strong team. And we really got this and we had a lot of what I call sitting on tables, which is when after school, you could walk down the corridor and the math teacher to sat on the table talking to each other. And they’d be saying things like, yeah, Craig, I was teaching, rationalising though later this morning, and I started with example, that had three plus root five on the boss said, what didn’t go very well. What would you do? Oh, no, I’d never do that. Let me show you what I use. I always felt this example because it helps you to link it to normal. All right. That’s, that’s what I think pedagogy is not, you know, if he worksheets and talks to talking about apps and things like that.
Craig Barton 16:48 This is nice. I love this one. Right. Okay, so let’s, let’s dive into this a little bit. So first, just a very quick reflection. I often hear teachers, whether it’s in person or on Twitter, you often get the question. Have you got anything good on this? So I’m teaching straight lines? If you got anything good on straight lines? Or if you got if you got on that? Yeah. And again, you’re absolutely right. It’s always resource focused. So I completely agree with you that the emphasis is always on resources. And the other thing Well, there’s a few things I’m interested in here. Your I think there’s a difference between that explanation, but also something else you picked up on, which is the choice of example, and sometimes even the best explanation in the world. But if that choice of examples wrong, either kids are going to overgeneralize, or they’re going to pick up on something that shouldn’t be there. So there’s two parts to it in the family. There’s there’s getting how you explain it will be for that. One example you’re going to choose to start with and that feels like a big part of this.
Femi Adeniran 17:40 Absolutely. And I just don’t, even in schools I’ve worked in recently, I just don’t hear enough conversations about this stuff. Because it can it can win or lose a lesson, knowing what to pick what examples to go with how many examples to do, how to understand when the kids got that look in their eyes when Yeah, you’ve got this. Okay, we could do some practice now. Or no, I think you need one more example on this. So we want more guys. Yeah, okay. Well, that is that is where when I go watch lessons, I see the be won or lost. It’s not on what it was rarely on the example the teacher the the the exercises that the teachers are using, because there’s so much stuff out there now.
Craig Barton 18:20 They say really interested in this. So another reflection, I see a lot of departmental meetings, when I visit schools, I’m obsessed with departmental meetings. And what what you often see in there is that they just add their their admin Central and that that’s a disaster waiting to happen. It’s all about discussions about targets and so on. Whenever you shift the emphasis more to in inverted commas, pedagogy, what that pedagogy often looks like is what you’re describing where it’s it’s not a discussion on explanations. It’s okay, here’s a good resource I’ve used for straight line graphs. Here’s a good resource I’ve used for sequences. So I wonder what does an effective pedagogy focus departmental meeting look like for you semi
Femi Adeniran 18:58 Cray, brilliant, brilliant chat. I love that question. And my honest answer to that is, I’m still working on it. And it’s still one error in my leadership that I want to get better at. But we have now gotten to the point in my school where we have what I call no non admin meetings. So there is absolutely zero admin discuss at all. And it’s really interesting actually, because when I first started doing it, I knew that people probably would be a bit uncomfortable with that. So I used to say at the I used to put on the agenda at the end item three admin discussion and people would often at the end and nice and fast right okay guys really good, meaty anything for item three admin, people often just feel quite uncomfortable and they say something. Yeah. Can we just discuss the year nine target grades? Are we going to still go with the higher grade that we have? Yeah, I put that email. We’re still gonna do that still going to be the same as the email I sent yesterday. Okay, good. And actually, I thought and over time, people stopped doing that. And now I still put it on there. But everyone just goes no fine lunch. We’re done. Now. We move on. So there’s lots of things I’ve tried, I would say the most effective thing that I’ve done that I really liked doing is recording lessons. And actually, on the board, and it’s so easy to do now with an iPad, just having an example of someone teaching a lesson from our department, to our kids, and asking the team to do to do three things. Firstly, is write down one thing that you thought that was effective. One thing that you noticed, and one question you would have for the teacher, and it’s quite a vulnerable place to put someone I’ve deliberately started with people that I know, won’t have a problem with that. And I’m quite confident in their practice. Because I think it’s you know, ideally, we want everyone to do this. But it really is opening us up to write we’re really going to discuss what’s really happening in the lessons we’re not going to talk about our my eight terrible today they are they couldn’t be straight line graph. Oh, by with the same, this is a pointless conversation, because we can’t see what happened. And actually, one person’s bad lesson is another person’s greatness.
Craig Barton 21:08 This is great. I love this final question on this Femi. As a head of department, how concerned are you with consistency of of explanation and examples across across your team? And I’m just thinking, if you, you know, you have this discussion, this pedagogical discussion, perhaps you start drawing out, okay, this is a really good way of explaining this, this is a good example, are you then happy for teachers to then make their own mind up about whether they use that
Femi Adeniran 21:33 is really interesting, you say, so when I when I started a small amount. Now, I really wanted we have a real drive on pedagogy. And I knew that as a department, we weren’t yet ready to start talking about, we’re all going to teach expand our brackets in the same way. We’re all going to teach Pythagoras in the same way, there was variation across the across the school, across the department. But actually, I think the general pedagogy of things like recap starters, and where the kids are talking, or you’re talking to kids are silent, all that sorts of needed addressing. Before we got to that, we’re now at a point where we’re starting to think about actually, as I go around the department as I do a lot, I do see lots of different methods be used for things. And we do need to start bringing that together. Because there’s no point in year 10, having peoples who have been taught six different ways of doing something, because the teacher, the town’s gonna have to try and pick that. So we are now starting to talk about let’s have some uniformity, over the way that we’re explaining things. But we but it’s by no means PowerPoints, it’s by no means email at the PowerPoints, and you just go through that. And it’s all there. I’m actually quite, I’m actually quite against that I don’t I don’t like that. I’m for teachers to start to, you know, planning their own lessons and deciding how they’re going to example, show things. I was really pleased when I listened to your point we had a boxer on he was talking about modelling, you must model rather than click click click. So they can explain it how they like but I think we do need to have some kind of uniformity about how we’re going to do it so that it’s consistent as I got school.
Craig Barton 23:02 All right. For me, what is tip number three, please.
Femi Adeniran 23:06 Okay, so tip number three is teach in small chunks. And for kids, it’s doing lots and lots of work. And this is especially important in the initial stages of the so this comes from I would say I’ve got no data on this right. But I would say that I think that the number one reason why teachers across the country get frustrated in maths lessons is that they during the practice part of the lesson where the kids are working, teachers are trying to circulate the room and you see this all the time where you can observe lessons and they’re having to do two things at once to have to try and correct maths and having to also try and keep kids on task. So they go over to one pupil it’s alright Tom No, no x times x is x squared you’ve put to it all right, okay. Boys, boys turnaround place. I’ve said you already right you weren’t What’s that? What are they get that well, and actually, we no one wants to do that. And it’s one of the reasons what makes teaching just really tiring doing that all day, five lessons a day successes day is really tiring. And it and it’s probably happens more in tougher in inverted commas schools. So the way that I actually first got interested in maths from my uncle was he used to get little scraps of paper. And he was set me five questions to do on a bit of paper. So when I was like eight, nine years old, and he told me off, go go do those. And I go back to him. And I said I’ve done them all and he go right number one is right number twos, right, number three is right, our fours roll for our right three out of four. Okay, have a go again, and like off again. When I started teaching us I sort of thought, what can we bring that kind of dopamine hit that you get as a child doing a couple of questions to find out whether they’re right or wrong. Can we bring it and use it on the on the wider scale? So so often with more tricky classes, or classes that haven’t got a really strong work ethic, I use that model. So I will teach them something and I will give them five to do plus some extensions that I will go through those five, and they’ll get instant feedback and how they’ve gone with lots of cold calling lots of questioning, okay, I think you’ve got that now, now five or something else. And then I’ll go through those. And then five more of the two things combined. And actually, you could fall of pupils into doing lots of work, and lots of questions in a lesson. By doing it like that, rather than a bottle that you see a lot of teachers try, which is, I’ll do till the board, and then on your desk is she and you’ve got 40 minutes, come on, stay on task, please come on what you’re doing, guys. And actually, I think you need to sometimes form kids into working hard. So for the model that I’ve described, I wouldn’t advocate using for the whole year, if you came into my class in December, I wouldn’t be doing that so much anymore. But in those early lessons, you can fool people into do lots of work. And you know, you’ve cracked it. Because they’ll say things like, listen, there’s so much work I’ve done, I’ve talked to I’ve done more this year, in less than a halt. And that’s what you want, you want them to do loads and loads of practice. So it’s teaching in really, really small chunks. So I’m gonna get tissue. From here, I’ll try to
do Sorry about that. So it’s itchy, really, really small trunks and getting the kids do lots of work in really small periods, rather than in, in really long periods. You see a lot in sport, actually, I’m quite into rugby. And a really, really skilled rugby coach will get a group of undenied or under twelves, doing little short drills for five minutes that will pull them all in right what we learned there guys are we learned that you’ve got to spaced out as a tee Right? Good. Now you’re going to try this, by the mid what you learned here, or you learned that kicking the ball can be really useful to create space, good, bring the back end, that is a really good sports method that I think you could bring into the classroom.
Craig Barton 26:52 Or this is a really, really good one this family. So I’ve got a couple of thoughts on this. And I’d be interested to get your your take on. So I’m very lucky these days, I get to visit loads and loads of schools and I see some really, really ropey classes approaching the teachers. Exactly, exactly what you describe the kind of long periods of sustained work, and it’s just a car crash. And it’s an absolute car crash because as you say, the teacher is just running around the room, and and so on and so forth. So my advice, I always think, Okay, right? Well, let’s flip this on its head, let’s go for the short, sharp kind of periods of work. Here’s some questions you have ago, let’s feed back and so on. But then a little voice in my head says, Well, how are these kids ever going to get to the point where they can do those prolonged periods of focused work? So what is the transition look like for your family? How, if I came to see your class later in the year, how have you got them kind of almost off this model to being able to work for say 20 minutes independently?
Femi Adeniran 27:48 I think that the number one thing there is you’ve you’ve bred a culture of success. People, people, humans, not just children, Huber’s like doing things that they are succeeding at. So so if you’ve got a high success rate, and I was really, really excited when I first read rose and shine a couple of years ago, and it talked about a high success rate, because effective teachers have been talking to me about that for years. And it’s like, yes, of course that makes sense. So if you’ve got a background of them having a higher success rate on these little mini sections of work, that if you came later in the year, they will be doing big sheets working for 25 minutes, 35 minutes, because the culture in the room is one of quiet study independent on the whole practice. And they’ve got used to doing that in your classroom of Edward M one or m nine or whatever it is. So suddenly, when you ask them to do a worksheet for 50 minutes, well, we always work quite hard and quite quite lamest about this class. So of course, I’m not gonna start walking around the room or chucking a pen or being rude or shouting out or getting my phone up, because we never do that in here. You’ve trained them. But I think it’s a mistake to think they’re going to do that in September. And I know that the Olympus AP teachers make is often classes will do that less than one or two in September, because they’re they’ve been off for six weeks, and they’re quite pleased to be back. And it’s a new teacher. They don’t know you en que te or someone haven’t met before and it’s a new class. They’re in a different room sat with somebody they don’t really know that well. They will kind of work quite quietly. You know, I always worry a little bit. What do you hear teachers coming out? So yeah, yeah, those eights I had, I was told it was quite difficult. But yeah, you hear a pin drop for the whole hour in there. Well, okay. I hope that when I come back in in November or October, it’s going to be the same. So you’re breathing success, basically is the answer to your question.
Craig Barton 29:34 Let me play devil’s advocate a little bit here, Femi. Justice. I think I’m on board with you on this. But is there a danger that we sacrifice depth in those earlier months because I’m a great, I love Cal Newports kind of work on deep work and this notion that you really get some valuable stuff done. You need this sustained period of focus and I can see how you’re going to get it maybe you know, January onwards, but how are you going to get the kids you know, thinking deep Play for in September thoroughly ever doing the short chunks?
Femi Adeniran 30:04 Well, the short chunks are not necessarily only very brief video activities. So it’s not only, you know, expand to open bracket x plus three, it can’t be something deeper. But the key thing to it is it’s not for that longer period. So it could be a deeper question, it could be something that involves a little bit more thought. But I would also say that, you know, I by no means get around schools as much as you do. But so often, the number one reason that I would say that pupils are not willing to do deep thought, deep work, as you quite rightly call it, if they haven’t got the components in place to do it. So I’ll go into lessons and some schools that I visit, and you’ll say a kids want to do a really deep difficult for them, you know, trigonometry question of a kite attached to a house and a kid’s holding the string of a kite, and the angle of elevation is 45 degrees and they want to know, and you say to a kid, okay, just okay, you can’t do that. That’s fine. That’s one side project. All right angled triangle here, just forget about all the Kyla, how would you find that? How would you label it? Yeah, I don’t know. I can’t. Well, this is why we haven’t got the deep thought and the deep work. So I think it can it will come if the components are in place.
Craig Barton 31:17 Got it. Got it. right for me. What’s Tip number four, please.
Femi Adeniran 31:23 Tip number four is have your coffee whilst sat in effective teachers classrooms. At this goes back to why you know, we started our own podcast a few months ago. I believe that too often, this isn’t all schools that when people listen to this saying not in my school, and that’s great if it’s not in your school, but too often in schools, there is a culture of being a good teacher means that you basically get your ticket to be left alone. So be a good teacher means that you’re nowhere near competency. Your general you’re not necessarily going on to middle leadership or head or SLT, but you’re quite good. There’s no behaviour issues, there’s no practical planes, and oh, Jared, and five gets left alone. And I actually believe that there’s some there’s some great stuff in terms of pedagogy, no, sorry, CPD from things like this podcast and books you can read. But there’s always so much really rich knowledge that comes in your own school. And two things always blows my mind in education. One is that people are willing to get on a train to go west London for a course. But they won’t go watch people who are in school teach. And the second is that people will discuss other members of their department, sometimes very positively that he’s great. Craig’s great, or sometimes very negatively, are Craig noise in his classroom, but haven’t actually ever been seen as people teach. They haven’t ever been to see the people that they are working with Teach. And departments will sit around tables at four o’clock, discussing things quite right. Like you said earlier, you know, admin and setting target grades, and I haven’t seen it. So the teach. So I’m a real advocate for getting around the school and seeing other teachers teach. And don’t Iran, I know that in schools, time is really tight. And you may only have one free in a day, or you may only have one free across two days. And it is really difficult to do. But there’s no better CPD in my view than taking your cup of coffee, and you’re marking or your laptop, and just sitting in a classroom of another teacher that you think is effective. And just soaking up what is going wrong. It doesn’t mean sitting there taking notes. It doesn’t mean sitting there and watching everything that’s going on a lot of that you’ll know that, okay, they’re just doing this data. And everyone’s quiet, I don’t need to sit and watch this. I could do a bit of marking, I could do females. But but you will learn a lot from just being in that classroom. The best teacher I’ve ever worked with in my early years guy called Hugh that we talk about on our podcast. And I used to do that a lot with him. And the things that I would pick up from just being in his room and just seeing him in action. I just don’t think you could get any better CPD than that.
Craig Barton 33:58 I love this. I absolutely love this. So I completely agree with this. I again, I visit lots of schools. And What’s always interesting there is in the mornings, I always ask if I can see as many teachers as possible in as many lessons as possible. And prior to my visit, I’ve had a chat with the head of department and they’ve said right, we’re a bit weak in this area, we need a bit of support in this area. And invariably, and it happens every single time, I always see examples of the very kind of practice the head of department wants to bring into play in the team that I’m watching, you know, the drill more during the morning session. And it’s because the head of department hasn’t had an opportunity or a willingness to go and kind of see all his team in action. And as you say the expertise is almost always found within the school. And it’s it’s even better than you know, going on on a train to London because it’s contextual. You know, it’s teachers doing it with the kids that you teach, and so on and so forth. But here’s my two questions for your family. So I’m fully on board with this. But my first question is, how do you get the teachers on board to you know, allow or want to be happy? He with teachers coming in to watch them. Because that for a lot of teachers, that’s quite a big, isn’t it? You know, because we, especially teachers who’ve grown up in this observation culture where being observed is, you know, high stakes and so on and so forth. How do you develop the culture where it’s absolutely fine for anybody to come into your classroom and sit and watch you teach?
Femi Adeniran 35:17 Yeah, it’s, it’s not easy. And I think one of the benefits that I’ve got is that when you do your second stint as a head department, you often know the things that you maybe didn’t get right in your first. So I know that in the school that I work in now, I told the team day one, BT one, I’m going to be getting around loads less than that, of course, it’s just because I want to go and see how maths is taught here. And I want to be visible to the pupils. And I want to know what’s going on with the department and get to know people. And I think people because I was new, accepted that more as a kind of new thing that the guy new guy wants to do more than they would be if it if a head department of four years, announced in September, I’m going to start coming out to watch a UT flip, we’ve never been in once we’re going to start even four years. So it is difficult. And I think that anybody who’s starting new as a head department or ahead of year, because partially you should do it as well. You know, tutor groups and things get around and watch your tutor groups in your your group. It’s good to do it and announce it early. I think also big, big really transparent, and saying to people, please, you know, that also works backwards as well come into my classroom, any lesson anytime and watch anything that I’m doing. And that’s why I think you have to be good at what you’re doing to be head department, you know, if you’re, if you’re head department, but you’re still not too sure about your year ninth class, because they’re a bit difficult. And you haven’t really got your year sevens where you want to be that you’re kind of going to open yourself up to criticism if you try and go into other people’s classrooms. So I think you’ve got to make sure that you spent a good few years honing your craft first. And then I think just just positivity. So there will always be things that when you go and see a class that you think are effective. And if you can start to get people having their coffee, and say yeah, Craig Craig came into my lesson today just unannounced just kind of walked into that labour. Oh, did he? What did he say? Oh, he just said how effective it was that I was using my visualizer. And how nice he thought it was that the kids were all sort of working on a recap start to say quietly. Alright, so So the word gets around that this isn’t kind of a stick to beat people with. You know, we introduce now Strickland recently. And he was he does the same thing. I think he said he devotes two hours as a head per day to just walk in the corridors, which is incredible. And and he talks about how this is not, this is not deliberate stocktaking, this is not quality assurance, this is not a clipboard going around, ticking off the good ones and crossing the bad ones. He just gets around and wants to make sure that everything is I think he’s a phrase like, is everything to the teachers liking. So he’s actually coming at it from the point of view of, uh, you’re right in here, rather than I’ve come to watch you teach and critique you, I think there is a time when that possibly has to come. So if you’re constantly go back into a teacher’s classroom, you’re seeing something that needs to be corrected, you’ve got to be willing to have those tough conversations, but initially, just just be in there and get used to the fact that that you’re coming in, and that’s happening.
Craig Barton 38:09 Nice. Well, I guess the flip side to that is what about how do you convince a teacher who is you know, doing okay, they’re getting good results, that everything’s going fine. But they’re also really busy. They’ve got, you know, a couple of free periods throughout the week, they’ve got a load of stuff on how do you convince them to use that free time to go and see somebody else?
Femi Adeniran 38:27 Ya know that that is difficult, because because I think teachers are busy. And it is often nice to have some time away from children when you’re during during the school day. And it may be you’ve already got one hour and that school day. I think the number one way I would say is to not get loads and loads of meaningless thing to do that make them really busy. So I would say that in my department, you know, this isn’t this isn’t on my list of five things. But but in terms of in terms of things like marking, we are only marking one piece of work per week for pupils. We are not not bookmarking. I’m completely happy with people using textbooks. I’m completely happy people using corporate maths sheets, because they’re just really good. So why you sat there with a ruler and a pen making your own wood, they’re really good. So let’s try and create a culture where we have actually got a little bit of time, we’re not kind of frantically running around and doing things that are not that useful, you know, sticky targets on books, and you’re filling in rag rag sheets on Excel, and it’s all been deleted by the previous teacher and you can’t work out why they spent their whole free period, sorting it out. All that sort of stuff shouldn’t be going on really. And also I think, try to create a culture where people see how excited you are by talking about pedagogy. There is no more beautiful thing I think, than watching somebody who’s really skillful at anything, doing doing their doing their thing, whether it’s a builder, whether it’s a teacher, whether it’s someone who’s really good at juggling, and if you can get make people realise that actually See, this is a really difficult job that we do. There aren’t that many people who are beyond good. So so let’s talk about it. And let’s kind of try and get better as we as together. I mean, you know, that doesn’t answer the question extensively, there are still people who are saying that I am happy just teaching my lessons and they go home. And I get that. But I think if you can build a culture of it, then that it does start to grow the department and also interview day, just try and sound people out on this sort of stuff. You know, what, tell me about the last bass lesson you went to watch? You know, you can start to see who does that and who doesn’t.
Craig Barton 40:36 That’s great. Again, you just want one extra point to add to this for me, I really like it as well, whenever you’ve got teachers who regularly dip into each other’s lesson within a department, I think it sends a really strong message to the kids to say, look, we’re all in this together, you know, okay, I’m your teacher. But also, you know, the rest of the department, this is a math department, this is a math team. And, you know, often behaviour improves when another Merc colleagues in the class but also it’s, it’s nice to have somebody else in there another adult in there, you can sometimes bring them into the lesson and so on. It’s a it’s just a really nice positive feeling whenever staff dip in and it’s not, you know, to observe or to crack down on behaviour. It’s just there to, you know, be a part of the learning environment. I think it’s a lovely thing. But when that works,
Femi Adeniran 41:20 absolutely, I can still remember right? Okay, taking you back to about 1995. Now under 12 rugby, my first game for the school team, and a teacher called Mr. child came along to watch the game, even though he wasn’t coaching, he’d have like, it’s a Saturday, right? So you get you get off his Saturdays come in and watch the game. And, you know, I scored a couple of tries. And he pulled me over at the end, he said, You know what, you were really good today. And that meant more to me than any other teacher or parents say. And he’d given up his time to come on a Saturday to watch the game and then said you were really good. And if that happens in math lessons, so if another teacher comes in to watch another, another teacher teach, and then says to a group of kids girls at the back, you know, you guys were awesome. Today, your ability to manipulate said is so strong for you. And I want girls, that is gonna mean so much to them. And that’s another reason why I think it’s really important.
Craig Barton 42:12 Love it. Love it. Right. Okay, for me, what is your fifth and final tip, please?
Femi Adeniran 42:18 To the last one. And I’m not ashamed to say that I was really excited on the night when I was listening to your podcast. And I heard Joe Morgan saying the exact same thing. So I’m afraid we are sharing a tip. But it is answers on real time. And explain to kids how to use them answers in real time, I should say. So this is moving away from the way that I was taught maths right. When the teacher had got the front. They do two examples. They didn’t say Right guys, exercise 40 B. And then they sit down and read my books. And we do work or well the exercise. And at the end she says Oh, oh, seven minutes to go. Right. Okay, let’s go through the answers. The Question one is, is five root three? Yes, I’ve got it right. Question two is 10. root three is Yeah. Question three is five, root three plus four are nine. And the next six all wrong. You’ve got cross cross cross. And this is right. Okay, off you go guys have a nice lunch. I mean, that is that is just ridiculous. And then I went to do my levels, and a different school. And we were very much encouraged there to use the textbook and check our answers in real time. So we’d work through an exercise, and we would mark it ourselves. And we know whether we were right or wrong. So we knew we were making progress. We knew where we needed to ask the teacher for help, because we got an answer of 16.2. But the book says 38.6. We knew where we were we were equipped to help somebody else. Because Craig’s got it right. And I’ve got it wrong. So Craig, can I have some help? And it was just so obvious and so much more powerful, that when I started teaching myself, I just thought I’ve got to give the people’s answers as well as the questions. And then they can check their work in real time. And I as a teacher could circulate the room and only deal with problems, rather than having to go over a tip. take someone’s work. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. That’s right. And also, you don’t get the classic thing of the boy who gets the ball rolling and leaves with his head down or no good at maths I do I wasn’t, you get rid of that, because then you get to find out how he’s doing as we go. So it’s a really simple tip, but I use it pretty much all the time. There are some times when you can’t use it, right? So things like negative numbers with your seven, I might be doing minus two minus five. And the answer is minus seven. You can’t have the answer at the bottom, because you’ve got no idea whether that kid has just written down the answer from the bottom. So there are other ways of doing that. But with things like trigonometry, or the quadratic formula, or solving equations of complicated equations, where the answer is X is sick, you got to have lots of lines of working, get them marking their own work. It’s just so obvious. And it blows my mind the number of teachers who still revert back to this kind of like answers at the end kind of a war take your books in the market. So answers in real time.
Craig Barton 44:58 I love it right. Okay, so three questions. is on this family for years. So the first one is the obvious objection to this, which is, some kids are just going to use that as an excuse to not do work and just kind of copy stuff down. How would you counteract that?
Femi Adeniran 45:13 My answer that would be similar to what I said to you earlier, really, which is people like having success. So why is it that people go to escape rooms, and will spend hours in escape rooms, and we could all and they could easily get their phones out Google the answers to all the all the escape rooms, but they don’t, because they want to work it out for themselves. Children are no different to that they on the whole, and I’m talking like some quite tough inner city schools that I’ve worked in, I’ve done this won’t do that. If they feel they are equipped with the understanding to do it themselves. You often see that happening when kids just don’t get it. So they just think off flipping out? Well, I don’t know. 1824. There you go. I’ve done it. Yeah, tick, tick, tick. Got all right. So they won’t do that. If they’ve been if they’ve been taught? Well, it’s been explained to them. Clearly, they’ve had a couple of check questions to do before they went on to the sheet, where they got the chance to find out if they are right without the answers, and they got those right and are happy with the method, they then will will will work without cheating. In my in my experience, I’m talking about you know, low ability or low periods prior attaining kids in tough areas will do this if it if the environment is created for them. The other thing I’ll say about actually, is it really helps what I call the seven side of the students. And that is roughly I say in every class of 30, there are about seven students, I’ve got no research phase, it’s just kind of my estimation, who unless they’re directly spoken to and challenged, or spoken to, will say nothing at all, they’re not beaut they’re not kind of nothing wrong with it, they’re quite vocal at home with their mates. But in an ESA, they just don’t like to say too much. And it really helps them as well, because they often get left behind, because the bigger personalities will dominate with behaviour or with being really bright or better than you know better than the others in the class. And he goes to them first. And these guys just want to get on. But they often get things wrong and just very quietly have found ways of kind of masking that without ever having to speak to the teacher, whether they got the answer as well, they could go for it and know whether they’re getting it right or wrong. So I think it really helps them.
Craig Barton 47:13 God. Okay, so follow up question number two, I think this works quite straight easily in terms of sixth form or a level classes because perhaps they’re working from textbooks and so on. And they you know, they can flip to the back or whatever it is, if you’ve got a year seven, eight or nine class and you’re maybe doing it from a worksheet or something, or questions on the board, how practically do you give access to the answers?
Femi Adeniran 47:37 So normally, if I’m working on a worksheet, they are on the back. So there’s not really he just to fit your eyes down to the bottom. And you can see, well the answer is five. So there you go, they will be on the back. And I would be very much circulating the room. And as well as I am checking them out. So making sure that people are adding two to both sides and divided by 11. But I’m also checking that people are using the exercise in the right way. So I will go is now behind kids as they work, just watch them yet. Okay, I can see. And you can see the difference with a kid who is solving equations and checking in there, right? And a kid who is making sure they check the answer first and then using that and working backwards. So just by circulating it by creating that culture. Of course we would do that, you know? Yeah, again, it comes down to martial culture. But uh, but but but I will say I get we say about about year seven and year eight. But But normally, I find in my experience anyway, the work we’re doing in secondary school has at least got some steps to it. So not that much of what I do it is to have an upwards is just one step. So I don’t know, find 10% or 42? Well, the answer is 4.2. There’s no working out, there’s really needed there, a kid could just write down 42 quite quickly with low ability kids, I’m getting on to something that requires some kind of work. So it might be five to 15% or 42. Right, we’ve got to write down 10% is 4.25% is 2.1 50. I want to see all that written down before you turn on the sheet over and check your answer. And I want to go through that on the board before I let loose on the sheet.
Craig Barton 49:12 Well, my final question on this, for me kind of comes back to that because I think there’s quite a few areas of mathematics, particularly the fundamentals where if you have the answer, you kind of have everything so we’ll go back to your negative numbers one before so you negative number operations, you know it’s if you have if the answer is there, it’s hard to do you know what work and you want the kid support for you know, negative five Yeah, to even something like expanding a single bracket, expanding a single bracket. If you see the answer there. It’s you know, it’s kind of done and dusted rounding. There’s a whole host of maths where if you have the answer that’s he’s kind of everything sort of is what you do with that kind of stuff.
Femi Adeniran 49:51 Yeah, so things like that. I think you still can use the same approach. And I found it really interesting actually on your public domain. Morgan said very honestly, she said there may Be a few pupils in my class who are sneakily using the answers to some extent, to gain an advantage. But but I’m still gaining a lot more than I’m using losing if they weren’t there. And the second thing I’d say to that is also, at least once a week in my department and other departments I’ve worked in, we are taking all of that away. And they do do a mini assessment on the test conditions on all the work we’ve done recently. So over time, they not that we ever would explicitly say this, but they do realise that what we’re doing in the practice phase and lessons we’re practising, we’re training if you like, so there’s no point going back to the rugby analogy. You talk about rugby, have in our trading session, we throw the ball forward, because it’s easier. And we can score lots of tries doing that, but and on Saturday, we play or the referee actually stops us doing that. And that week, so we can’t do anymore. So we’re going to struggle on Saturday, aren’t we because we can’t do that. So they do realise that this is just kind of practice for my weekly assessment for my independent tests for my GCSE. And I don’t honestly don’t think if he came to one of my lessons and spoke to even some of the year sevens and eights and variability and said to them, just out of interest, do you use the answers to cheat? Or do you use them to actually check you out? I think they would say, Hey, mister, I use it because I want to know if it’s right or not. So I do five, and I check them and then I either work out that, that I’ve got got wrong, or I put my hand out and he comes round. And then he he checks because it’s actually quite interesting. Something that I have had from non maths observers that come in, is they’re not recognising that this can be done until they see it done. So I think it definitely can be done if they realised that it’s practice, you’re gaining nothing for doing this.
Craig Barton 51:44 That’s brilliant eyes. Brilliant, right? Love those semi, they are fine, absolutely great tips. And I love them, because there’s some brand new stuff that we’ve not considered there, but also stuff that builds upon things that other guests have said. So that’s fantastic. So let me hand over to you. What should listeners be checking out of yours?
Femi Adeniran 52:01 So myself and a friend Matt Finley, a good friend of mine who worked with in my second school, we have another math podcast, which we call beyond good. It’s called Beyond Good, because something that I talked about earlier. And I think we should always be striving to go beyond that kind of very standard. He’s He’s law right math teacher that you see in a lot of schools or he serviceable, you know, no parental complaints gets all right exam results, and the kids are quite well behaved, all that sort of stuff. So it’s really a discussion, a discussion about what can we be doing in our classroom to go beyond good? And it’s not, it’s not the amount of thinking that we are the we are the experts of this, that we know it all. We’ve got as many questions as we have answered, you know, that’s one thing I love about your podcasts, and that you speak to people, lots different people, people who are very well known, and a boxer, you know, people who are not well known like the but you’ve got as many questions as you have answers. And I think that’s how we should be. So we speak to other teachers, we speak to head teachers, we’ve got a recent couple episodes with pupils, which we love, because we just asked pupils, how do you feel when you’re just when you’re putting sets? How do you feel when a teacher says right, pick someone to work with. It’s just, it’s just fascinating people voice. So we do that, and we just love talking about it. So that’s, that’s beyond good, which you can find in most podcast places. Also, I would recommend a book called The behaviour manual by Sam Strickland, which is actually a manual, right. So it’s got like 105 chapters or something, little bits that you could just dip into, if you will learn about behaviour, or setting or settling a class down or assembly or whatever it is, he’s really good on just giving little nuggets. So it’s like you’re getting five minutes of his time. Every time that you you read a chapter. That’s pretty good. And another book called nails Natta, which is a book guy called Phil Naylor, who used to do a podcast and has now put together a book, which is all the brilliant conversations that he’s had with people on his podcast. And the really cool thing about his book is that if you read something, you think that’s really interesting. You can just scan your phone or the page, the QR code, and it takes you into the podcast, and then you can listen to it. So I think that’s really cool. So that’s really good. And the last one are really big plug for school visits, go and see other schools, ask your head of department, can I go visit that big private school down the road? Because I want to see what they’re doing? Can I go visit that pupil referral unit because I want to see what they do with really, really challenging kids. That in my view is the basketball was CPD.
Craig Barton 54:33 Fantastic, brilliant stuff. And yeah, as you know, for me, I’m a huge fan of your podcast. I think you’ve got a really good dynamic go in there and you cover things that not a lot of other podcasts do. So I’m a big fan of that. I’m I’m a regular listener, and I’m really pleased you’ve been able to come on this show and share some of your insights. So Femi, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure speaking to you. Thanks. Great. Thanks for having me.
Craig Barton 0:00 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. This episode I had the pleasure of speaking to a math teacher, an author all the way from New York, Michael Persian. And if you’ve heard Michael on my podcast before, you know you’re in for a treat. Four quick things before we start up, sponsor spots for the podcasts are open. So if you want to let the world’s most interesting listeners know about your books, product or event, just drop me an email. You can view videos of all Michaels tips on the tips for teachers website. These are great to show in a departmental meeting or a training session, you can sign up to the tips of teachers newsletter to receive a tip in your inbox most Monday mornings to try it with your classes in the coming week. And finally, if you find the podcast useful, I will be ever so grateful. If you could take a moment ideally now, just pause the podcast and give us a lovely review on your podcast player of choice. Thanks so much. Okay, let’s get learning with today’s guest the wonderful Michael Persian spiral spiral spoiler alert. Here are Michael’s five tips. Tip one, begin your explanations as a series of questions that everyone can answer. That’s kind of the opposite of what I do, which I like as what I like about. Tip two, the best feedback is a learning activity and it’s much better than written feedback on the page. Tip three get used to asking what if after explaining something, I absolutely love that one tip for use partner work as a chance to recruit quiet kids to share their thinking. And finally, Tip five and every conversation with the student saying something smart. absolute cracker this one I promise you. So if you look at the episode description on your podcast player, or visit the episode page on tips for teachers that communicate you’ll see the timestamp teacher the tips so you can jump straight to anyone you want to listen to first or re listen. Enjoy the show.
Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Mr. Michael Persian to the tips for teachers podcast. Hi, Michael, how are you? I am great. Right, Michael, for the benefit of listeners. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself ideally in a sentence?
Michael Pershan 2:21 Absolutely. My name is Michael Persian. I live in New York City where I work as a classroom mathematics teacher for children. And I’m also a writer about math, mathematics, teaching and others.
Craig Barton 2:36 Fantastic. Well, let’s dive straight in what is technical on today?
Michael Pershan 2:41 Tip number one is something that I only realised a couple of months ago, I think. And it’s to begin explanations is a series of questions that most people can answer. Maybe everybody in the class can answer.
Craig Barton 2:59 This is an intro.
Michael Pershan 3:01 That was a complicated sentence.
Craig Barton 3:03 No, I’m living in my car. I’ll let the dramatic pause your left there. It’s perfect. Because it’s ideal. It’s because it’s as we often chat about explanations, we have similar things but different things. And this is definitely different. So So tell me how this plays out and tell me why you do this.
Michael Pershan 3:19 So here’s what I’ve realised what I realised is it was during a lesson for I teach young kids and older kids just as a funny thing about my school. So I teach third graders here is one of the classes I teach. And those kids are, what are they eight, maybe nine? Or is it seven or eight? No way, my son is seven. So let’s say eight or nine. So they’re on the young end. And I was getting ready to teach a lesson about symmetry. And the first thing I tried, the first thing that came out of my mouth was today we’re studying symmetry class. And symmetry is and I immediately, I backed off in my head this is I saw their poor ashen faces, how sad they were that I was dieting like that. I took a step back then. And I said, Okay, wait a second, tell me a shape that you could fold in half. And that was much better. Because then all the hands went up. And I suddenly had a class that was thinking and thinking in the right direction also, and thinking about things that would be necessary to think about before you could understand what symmetry is. I so so then I started doing that more often I was doing a lesson about algebra with some older kids. And it was about systems of equations. And I said, Oh, I know what to do now. And I said, Tell me two numbers that add up to 10. And they did. They told me and everybody in the class could do that even the students who would have found it hard for me to start with variables and an equation would have found that that hard if I had written x plus y equals 10. What are two numbers that satisfy this equation? There are some students by class who would have been able to answer that so so so that’s what I started thinking Oh, what I should really do is, before I explain anything, I should think I should try to translate basically, as much of the explanation as I can into questions. And ideally, it’s questions that at the very beginning, everybody can answer so that I have given everybody kind of a clear signal that they can be part of this. And there’s probably cognitive benefits to that also, right? Besides the kind of engagement stuff. I imagine, I love. Because, you know, you’re saying to kids, you’re reminding kids of things. So that’s, that’s, that’s my tip.
Craig Barton 5:33 Right? Well, let’s dig into his marks. I love this. But as I say, it’s different to what I do. But I think I get the feeling you’re right. And
Michael Pershan 5:41 I’ve read your books, and yet I can’t remember. I’m sorry, I, it’s please.
Craig Barton 5:46 Well, I’m very much kind of, you know, this is the way you do this. Listen to me really carefully. Now you do it as in a nutshell. But what I want to dig into here with with with yours is, are these questions your kind of prerequisite knowledge check? Or is this a different thing? Are you so it’s like systems of equations is a good example. Are you assessing the find they know what a variable is? They know how to, you know, add two equations together? Has that come before? And then these questions are kind of to engage and get them into it? Or is this? Are they much the same?
Michael Pershan 6:19 I don’t know. That’s a great question. I feel they’re very similar territory, right? I think that’s what you’re picking up on. There’s, it feels like a lot of different types of lessons benefit from a slow ramp up, right, where you have something like this, even if it’s not exactly this, I don’t think of them as the same way. But maybe I should write maybe I should think of this as the preamble, a kind of a check for understanding a prerequisite knowledge before I dive into, you know, a worked example or an explanation or modelling something. But that’s not how I think about it. The way I think about it is, when I’m about to explain something, I need to slow down. When I’m about to open my mouth and explain something to kids, I need to translate that. And maybe what that’s doing is, is like you’re saying, reminding myself maybe the reason why that works is because it’s checking prerequisite knowledge or kind of reminding kids of prerequisite knowledge. But I think it might be more, I think it might be also because it’s an invitation to join in, it’s a clear signal, you are going to understand this, it’s a way to I love how in English, we say pay attention, as there’s like, oh is if there’s currency involved, it’s almost like you’re putting down some money on attention. And now you’re invested, if you want to take the metaphor further. So that’s kind of how I think but you know, the thing is, is that a lot of things in teaching, it feels like when they don’t work, it’s because of a couple of reasons. And when they do work, there’s a couple of ways to see it, you can see a lot of things socially or cognitively. You know, so should we see this as reminding students of prerequisite knowledge? Or should we see it as inviting students to participate? I don’t know. They kind of sometimes feel like very hard to separate, they always happen together and teacher, or most of the time they do, I guess you can tear him apart at the edges.
Craig Barton 8:08 It’s really interesting. This Michael, it feels to me like if I was to build this into the way I do things, then it feels to me like it is it is a little bit different to prerequisite logic in a really good way. Like I think your symmetry runs a good example of this, like asking kids, can you think of a shape that you can fold in half that feels to me a very different than a prerequisite knowledge check that feels to me as you say, I like this idea of this invitation that you’re part of what’s about to happen this this new knowledge. So it feels like this could kind of sandwich in between a my my concern with making this a prerequisite knowledge check, is the thing that prerequisite knowledge checks that I think anyway, is you need to get mass participation, you’ve got to get all the kids responding. Because if you don’t, then there’s a real danger, you start making assumptions that just because one child knows this, everybody knows this. And that’s bad news anyway, but particularly for prerequisite knowledge, because then the whole the whole deck of cards could could fall apart. So I’m interested in how you’re kind of collecting responses in this what I would consider kind of this middle phase where you’re where you’re asking questions, as part of your explanation. Is it one to one Is it white board? What how does that play out my call?
Michael Pershan 9:17 It’s not systematic. I mean, it could be systematic, but I’m thinking about this third grade class where they were often transitioning between things I was I the way this works is for these little kids, I come into this classroom, and they’re in the middle of doing something with their homeroom teachers. And then I come in, and I say, hey, it’s math time. Mathematics time, maths time. It’s time to you know, to do some arithmetic or whatever. And so I’m really sensitive to gathering attention and having it feel as fun and communal as what was happening before. So often what Oh, the other thing about this though, Have to say just one response to your question is my addled brain sort of like, remembers things that I wanted to say in the wrong order. So I’m sorry about that. But the other thing I wanted to say was part of asking a question that everyone can answer is that it’s an easier question. So so how do you deal with that it’s not engaging for a very sharp child to be asked a question that’s much too easy for them. So. So the way this would often work is I would say, maybe that symmetry question, tell me a shape that you could fold. Actually, I’m gonna go with the other one. Tell me two numbers that can add up to 10. And I would look at my around the room, and I’d try to see as many hands up and I’d be like, Daisy, because I’m calling on Daisy, because Daisy never raises her hand. And she, you know, often has a hard time in math class. So DAISY, go first aid into brilliant, who’s got another one? And picking another kid. Okay. And, and maybe that’s Mark and Mark is five and five, amazing Mark. I’m reading on the board. And then I see, you know, oh, Oliver, Oliver has his hand up. And Oliver is an all star. So I call on Oliver. And Oliver says, you know, five and a quarter, and four and three quarters, and I say, great. And then I write that down. And I want to honour the fact that he’s thinking, so I would sometimes ask a follow up question. In that case, I would say, Oh, that’s amazing. And how did you know that? How did you figure that out? How did you decide that it was going to be that? I mean, I noticed that that’s smaller than five, you went four and three quarters? Can you say a little bit about that, trying to show that to those kids in the class that, that cuz there’s this contract that you need to have, right? Of the promise I’m sort of making here with this activity is, I’m promising kids who often have a hard time in math class, that they’re gonna be able to understand what happens. And I’m promising also, to kids who feel sometimes as if the class is moving too slow for them. Or if they got it already, I’m promising you’re gonna learn something, too, you’re gonna have to think hard also. So I’m trying to promise everybody that the good stuff is coming.
Craig Barton 12:17 This is great, Michael. But just one final question on this. You know, I’m always intrigued by the way you do work to examples where your students study their completed work, to example, read it, then answer the self explanation prompts, and so on. How would that fit in with this? Would it be a kind of series of these kind of what almost kind of warm up or participation questions and then it’d be okay, now, here’s, here’s a new thing for you to study. What’s What’s the transition between the questioning to the studying the example of like?
Michael Pershan 12:47 I think it’s exactly like you said, and it ties to what we were saying earlier, which is that things like this, things like these invitations or these open or questions, more open questions are a frequent part of, of instructional models. When you look around, it’s almost like a part of the everybody’s paradigm, it’s a good idea that a lot of people have is in one way or another, you want to start with something more accessible either for cognitive reasons, or for social. So with worked examples. I’m thinking, hey, there’s a lot of I know where we’re heading. And I want us all to notice stuff that is going to be necessary for the work example, I want us to remember the things that are going to show up in the work example, perhaps so it might be more tightly tightly connected to prerequisite knowledge. And then I would say, well, everybody, we’ve just found a bunch of numbers that add up to 10. Now, what if I also told you that the difference between I’m thinking of two numbers that add up to 10? And the difference between them? Is eyes? Three? How would you find that let’s study an example. Let’s look at how one student did that. And then we’re, you know, we’re on to the next thing. But in a way, that’s, that’s right, because worked examples are is what we do, I think, typically for when we want to teach a procedure, right? Or a strategy, and explanations, I think of is, oh, we want to explain what a category is or what a concept is. And that’s part of like the parallel worlds thing here. Like in the world example, procedural world, the way I think of it is, if I’m trying to teach kids a skill or a procedure or strategy, I’m in the worked example world, and I want to start with some sort of prerequisite question that will help them notice and remember knowledge, and then we’re gonna go to a worked example. And then I guess what I’m saying with this tip is, it’s broader than that, right? The same kind of two part thing applies more broadly, whenever you’re trying to explain anything. It’s good to start with some questions that everybody is able to answer. Because of all the reasons we’ve been saying, so So if I wanted to teach kids what a triangle was, I With I don’t know, I don’t know what I would the concept of a triangle. I don’t know I, I, I kind of just committed myself to something that I don’t know how to do. I got young kids. But I suppose what I do is I’d say, you know, what can you what are all the things you don’t know Maybe? What are all the things you can make with three, three lines? What are all the shapes you can make with three lines? And I’d say n cubed, raise their hand and say a triangle and be like, Great, I’ll draw on the board. And then I’d say, what else can you do? And maybe some would say, I don’t know, just like three lines at the centre. And we knew that and we’d say, okay, these things. Now I want to teach you some of these things are triangles, and some of them are not just just being rigorous about in my head remembering to open up the question, the beginning, is, I suppose, with a little bit
Craig Barton 15:46 likely, it’s definitely one I’m going to need to reflect on this. I don’t think I involve my students enough. I like this almost this invitation, this is definitely something I need to reflect on loving Michael. Alright, what is tip number two, please?
Michael Pershan 16:00 Tip number two is another hard one. hard one? One, a hard one tip? Okay. All right, it’s day number two is the best kind of feedback, in my experience, the best kind of feedback to offer a student or a class when there is mistakes, or when there’s errors or when there’s things that they haven’t done, right, the best type of feedback is a learning activity. And it’s not even close. It’s much better than written feedback on a page of their work. That’s my, that’s my, in my experience learning activities is or better feedback than writing comments on a page. And it’s not even close.
Craig Barton 16:43 I like it. I like I love no hasn’t had any kind of definitive answer. This is good. Michael, good. Give me some give me some examples of this, how you might use this in to sell your argument?
Michael Pershan 16:53 Absolutely. Well. I started reading research. Ah, okay. I’ve been a teacher since 2010. And I try in my own way, I was reading research. Back then, I think I ramped up over the first couple of years, I went from reading. Like Paul tufts books, I don’t know if you know who he is. pop psychology, mindset things. I got kind of ramped up to like, find my way around research papers and stuff. And then I’m okay, so I said, I’m going to understand now I want to understand all the research about feedback, and I want to think about, I know I can be doing better. So I want to understand this. So at first my project was I’m going to learn how to write the best comments ever on pages, I’m going to understand how to take a stack of quizzes or a question that I’ve collected from the class, and I’m going to write the thing, the thing that will work, and I will write it on that page, and it will lead to learning. That’s what will happen. Because I read that feedback was immensely impactful. And super important. And I wanted to do it, I wanted to do the thing that is the best I wanted to, to master that part of teaching, it would lead to better learning would turn mistakes and for learning. And so I started reading. And I started looking for things that I started writing them. And I would take a lot of time and I read a lot of comments. And inevitably, they’d still go into garbage, the comments on the papers after I was done. Students wouldn’t always read them carefully. And I said, why is that? Why is this at all and that I kept reading research. And I read dealing Williams, writing about research and formative formative assessment. I know he’s a friend of the podcast. And and he pointed me to cougar and Denise’s writing about research, reading on feedback. And from them, I got really something that what I took to be like, a very direct question about feedback, one that made me basically give up on my project of writing comments. Because the question was, how does feedback work? And how could it work? Really? Right? You don’t usually teach a class the first time by writing comments on the side of the page, right? You don’t do that. I don’t do that. I don’t say Okay, class. Here’s some comments. Here’s just a piece of piece of paper that says how you’re supposed to do this. You don’t do that. I don’t do that. It’s a bad idea. No one would pay attention to that. So. So what are you doing? So you’re either cougar and Denise, he said, in terms of understanding feedback. And really they were trying to understand why feedback sometimes backfires so often, and so many of the research studies that were done at the time, and why so why work sometimes and what they ended up saying which was very clarifying to me is like look at it’s funny what you pick up from research, right? This is not the point of their paper, but this is what I took out of it. They said conceptually, you’re either teaching by giving feedback, that’s one thing that you could be doing probably Adding new information to students helping them understand something they didn’t understand before, or you’re motivating them. Literally, what else is there? But what else could you be doing? When you’re writing a comment on a page? So your comments on the page must either be teaching kids something, or motivating them to study harder or to pay better attention or something like that. And I’ll say, just on the side, there is a third purpose that comments can have, I think, which is, you’re showing that it’s not directly tied to learning, right? You’re showing, I read your paper, I value what you did. You put in a lot of time to this project, or you wrote this essay, and I read it, and I valued it. And, and there’s good things here. And there’s things that could be better. But we’re learning it could it could have a different role is what I’m trying to say. But if it’s just about teaching and learning what it has to be, there’s not much helps. You’re either providing instruction or motivating. And I asked myself, What am I doing with these comments, and I wasn’t good instruction. And it was clearly on motivating. So I said, What else can I do? And then I started thinking, Wait a second, how do I teach? How do I teach? If it’s instruction motivation? I don’t really know how I motivate.
I don’t I don’t have a systematic thoughts about that. But I do have a pretty clear idea of how I teach things. So I said, Okay, so what do I have to teach? And that changed things for me that I changed the questions I was asking, when I saw a pile of quizzes with mistakes, I started asking myself, what can I teach? What is the thing here that and there’s always something to teach more or less. So I started looking at the kids papers, their their quizzes, their homework, whatever it happens to be, and I started looking at it for the I have, I would like to do a follow up lesson tomorrow to get feedback. I would like to. I mean, I guess I would also Okay, well, I would prefer if everything was perfect, and they understand that and they’re like, Oh, you’re the best teacher in the world. We love you. Yeah, fine. But realistically, I love to teach a follow up less than the next day with a learning activity of some kind. That could be easily modifiable. So I get like Mega specific about what I need to teach. And I would teach it. So that changed what I started doing. I started looking at these papers, and I tried to get very specific on the assumption being they understand some things. I shouldn’t just repeat the instruction I did before I tried to focus in on say, okay, they know how to solve Pythagoras theorem problems. In these cases, perhaps this is a common thing that I think a lot of teachers experience, perhaps when the hypotenuse is missing. But a lot of the mistakes are when a leg is missing, they still squared both sides and add them. It’s maddening. So that’s the thing that they need to learn. So my lesson tomorrow will be a quick lesson about that. And there are easily modifiable formats worked examples are one of them. But there’s others too, where I’ve got instructional activities that I can do and I can just kind of like slot in the thing I need to teach. And I started doing that. And I started seeing learning more, which made sense because I was now doing teaching the way I usually do it not the kind of weird way where you kind of write down in a sentence 40 times and, and hopefully kids learn from that sentence. And I think that’s much better and you can’t throw out, you can’t crumple up and throw out my lesson. Because you’re there for it. And you can’t throw it on the floor. I don’t have to pick up my lesson that I’ve taught, you know, from from from from the garbage and look at my carefully crafted comments. Like sitting with a very sad face, like the toys and Toy Story at the end in the garbage as kids left the room so that it’s a
Craig Barton 23:53 winner, like, well, I’ve got one reflection and then one question for you on this one. So my reflection is when I read similar research, my I thought, right? If I improve my written comments to set kind of follow up work for kids to do like, almost like, come up with a worked example for one of the questions they’ve got wrong in their book and then set them almost like a your term that will be great. The problem is it took so long to do. And still some of the kids weren’t particularly engaged in doing it. So just like you, I thought, Okay, I need to scrap this. It’s not working. So let’s go to what we probably call in the UK like a whole class feedback model. So we look for these kinds of common trends and issues within you know, a set of assignments or homework, and we address the big ones in front of the whole class. But I’ll tell you the kickback I always get on this mic when I start talking about this and I’m hoping you can answer this for me is what do you do about the kids who who don’t need that whole class feedback? What do you do about the kids who have nailed their assignment? They’ve got it all sorted. They’re ready to move on and yet you are spending valuable lesson time with the rest of the class. Well, what’s what’s your response to that?
Michael Pershan 25:00 do we How much time are we devoting? And what are we doing? Is I guess the question. When I have done this, what I’ve tried to do is not repeat instruction. But to give more specific instruction on a more specific aspect of the mathematics, or whatever the skill happens to be right. My model for this is that you were always trying to teach, I’m tracing a circle, a blob area, with my with my pencil, right? If we’re always trying to nail in original instruction, like, if we’re trying to teach kids a skill of a constrained area, and it’s not the biggest we could possibly do. And it’s not the smallest either, because we’re trying to find the right size skill to teach the right you know, we don’t want them to just be able to write one kind of essay, one kind of paragraph one kind of sentence, one, be able to solve one type of equation, multiply specific types of numbers, but we don’t want it to be everything, we’re teaching a certain thing. And so we guess on that size, and the way I think about it is sometimes we what’s revealed on one of these things is that we guess, too big, too small, we taught most of the territory, but not a little corner of it. And very frequently we’ve taught, you know, you’re trying to the kind of weird thing about teaching, I guess is you try to teach a blob by teaching specific points inside. And you try to build this territory out from the inside, usually. So you’ll learn through certain things reflect on why they’re true. And you’re kind of hoping to sketch out this area, but you inevitably fail, or leave areas blurry. And that’s what I’m trying to do in the follow up thing. So I don’t think of it as repeating any instruction, I think of it as new instruction, that is flushing out an area that we hadn’t really properly flushed out before. And so I think that, you know, I can go to your podcast and say anything. And you have to either believe me or not, right, I could save you. There’s no reason why you have to believe me when I say I think you know, it’s worked out, okay, with my students, they don’t seem bored, even the kids who got it, right. But I can tell a story about why those kids don’t react in that way, why they’re engaged, as engaged as they are, you know, usually, and it’s because what’s happening when I say, teacher worked example lesson about some more specific area, you know, kids are having a chance to explain why something’s wrong, apply, you know, their knowledge to a specific type of question that maybe they already know how to do, or, but they’ve never, we haven’t featured it in the lesson yet. Really, because of how that was revealed. By, you know, it’d be a little bit weird, if I know weird, I guess this happens all the time. But I wouldn’t devote this kind of, I wouldn’t choose to do it. Again, if it was just a clone of something we’ve done before, I’m always trying to hit it in a slightly different way, have a different kind of learning activity than when we did before? So that’s the hope. I don’t know. I think it usually works out. But the other thing is that you keep it short. There’s only so long the kids can get bored for so, you know, this is a 1015 Minute activity that you’re doing to give feedback on a crucial matter, then, then, then, how bad can it be?
Craig Barton 28:20 Yeah, I completely agree. Michael, I’m always intrigued by this, the more I work with teachers, the more I hear differentiation being used as a way to scrap a load of really good practices, like because it’s perhaps not suiting the needs of every single child where we can’t do it then. So that gets kind of thrown out the window. But but like you if it’s a relatively short time, and it’s not reteaching I think it’s super powerful. I just am really worried about this kind of almost like the like, it’s like a game as soon as you say some people just sort of like differentiation, and you’re like, alright, well, I can’t do anything about that. Because it’s impossible to differentiate perfectly. And it just, yeah, it concerns me. So I’m just interested to get your take. But that’s great.
Michael Pershan 28:58 That’s fantastic. Yeah, it’s interesting, like because it because if it’s a game, it’s always possible to do that, right? It’s like, Ah, I found it. What about kids from New Jersey, they already know. They already know, this bridge, less. And I don’t know anything about New Jersey, New Jersey, for those in the UK is right next to New York is where Bruce Springsteen has fun from, and other musical acts subsequent to Bruce Springsteen, and it’s very close to New York. I’m not actually as provincial as many New Yorkers, because I’m from the Midwest of the country. This is a little bit of American spice just
Craig Barton 29:38 promotes the idea. We’re a global podcast, Michael. So I like that. That’s good.
Michael Pershan 29:43 That’s great. The the, the pushback I get from teachers when I talk about feedback is typically what do you do when there’s a million mistakes across a long test? And there’s no great answer to that because it’s not easy to get fit. Back on a big test with a big exam that’s got like 40 questions on it and five kids got this one wrong? That’s That’s a harder question for me because I because I kind of want to say, well, there’s no good way. It’s hard. Like, how are you going to figure out what to focus on you, there’s AI and there’s things you can do but but your learning activity needs to get much cleverer, because it’s much more difficult to give feedback on something so varied. So that when you started, I thought, you’re going to tell me that
Craig Barton 30:29 it was some ballista as well. But when you when you’re back on in a couple of years time when I start having to re invite guests on, Michael, you can answer that question. That’d be fantastic. All right. Michael Walker, what’s your third tip for us today, please?
Michael Pershan 30:44 My third tip is get used. I said, used get used to asking what if? What if questions after explaining something almost constantly and the way when I say get used to get accustomed to, I think there’s, in my own teaching life, there’s two. There’s two things about teaching that helped me get better. And I think that this, you know, goes to the heart, a little bit of what makes teaching a challenging profession. It’s some some ways that I get better at teaching or by understanding more things. Better understanding some aspects of teaching or mathematics or whatever. Or children, and another. But even the things that you understand about your subject, the classroom, pedagogy, research, whatever, it’s so easy to forget them during the course of a busy year, right, and then that goes along, it’s almost like a think of it as a sports analogy. As some more American colour, you know, in basketball, you can be a student of the game and understanding it, but part of it is, is is trying to it’s, you know, it’s a performance thing. If you can’t bring it to the court every day. You’re you’re not performing at a high enough level. And so there’s, there’s kind of an intellectual side to why I think asking what if questions during explorations is very powerful. But for me, I have to kind of like, put a sticky note on my computer remind myself that this is something that I want to be accustomed to. Because if I forget, I sometimes after a couple of weeks be like, Why don’t I stop doing that? It’s such an easy, small thing. And I’m constantly like, trying to keep it together and make things second nature that are not naturally second nature to me. So I’m trying to get accustomed to it.
Craig Barton 32:46 Can you give me give us some examples of these what ifs, Michael?
Michael Pershan 32:50 Absolutely. Absolutely. So what what do you think? Should we tell the story of like the intellectual story? Now let me just listen. Okay. You said to give an example of this, so, so I’ve just finished explaining. A student has just finished explaining. I don’t know. No, I had to go back to a previous thing. My student raises his hand to answer How do you make? How do you add two numbers to make 10? And says, I hear what I said before five and a quarter and four and three quarters? And I say that’s great. And what if we were trying to make 15? Or what if we were trying to make 14? Maybe that’s the question I’d rather answer because, because just thinking quickly here, you know, five plus five is 10. But you can go up and you can go down. And maybe what I would like to nudge this child to think about is to make a generalisation. Oh, seven plus seven is 14 go up and down. And what if we’re trying to make 100 Whatever trying to make 1000. But the broader point being that what if questions are ways of supporting people and making generalisations? It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s poking precisely on the generalisation button in your mind. And in going back to this kind of blob that I was tracing out in front of this camera. You know, not so long ago, right? We try to teach a blob, we try to create a blob like skill out of particular things. And in my vision there, you know, each particular thing is a question that a child successfully understands or has answered. And when I asked that child, what if I’m trying to draw a kind of a blob around that? I’m trying to get that kid to explore more territory build a generalisation around that particular point? So I’m trying to flesh out each particular question example, idea that a child is having. We’re understanding I want to get a little more territory. I want to get a little bit more I want to build that into a generalisation. Otherwise, it’s just a question. It’s just a isolated bit of knowledge. It’s just a lonesome fact.
Craig Barton 35:10 It’s really, really interesting as Mike, let me just reflect on this for a moment. So one change I’ve made to when I’m working with kids these days, is I like to do a lot more kind of learner generated examples. And I never used to do this, everything used to come from from me, but I reread thinkers by and Watson, John Mason, and Chris and Liz, Bill’s recently, and they have some really good structures in there for learner generate examples. So a good one is, give me an example of and another and another. So something like, give me an example of a fraction that’s equivalent to four fifths, and give me another one, and give me another and I tend to chuck a little twist at the end, make that last example as interesting as you can. So to try and get kind of boundary examples, I really like that one. And I also really like they have one called additional constraints, which is something like, think of two fractions that are together to make one. So that’s the first one and then the constraint comes in, but the denominators need to be different. And then another constraint for you next, and the numerators need to be the same, and so on. But what I like it feels like this will slot in nicely along there, it feels like it’s kind of it’s kind of like a learner generated example, because you’ve asked, you’ve asked one question, they’ve come back with an answer. And then it’s okay, well, what if I changed it a little bit? What would you need to do to your answer? So I really like this, because what I like about learning generated examples is they lead towards generality. They also show students understanding really clearly because particularly if you push towards the boundaries, you can really see whether they grasp the concept or not. But after that big, long ramble, my question is, when do when do these come in to like a learning journey, Michael? Because my fear is, if these are coming in the explanation part, it may be too much too soon. But they come in after an explanation or come in after a bit of practice. When When do the what if questions work best for you? Do you think?
Michael Pershan 37:00 Well, I think about it in terms of distraction, right? I wouldn’t want a what if question to distract from our understanding of going back to this analogy that, for whatever reason is stuck in my head this morning. If we’re trying to draw a particular point, on this map, we want to make sure to actually get the point. And we want to make sure everybody gets the point in the room before we start expanding. So so there is a bit of a constraint there, right? We don’t want to if, if, if we’ve just explained something, and I assess that in the room, not everybody has had it, and the first student that I call on seems to understand it, I’m not going to push What if, because I don’t want to distract from the learning in the room. We can’t generalise from something that we collectively don’t yet understand. Well, now it when I do a worked example, routine, the way that I’ve kind of incorporated this is I think about this as a self explanation prompt. In other words, I think about this as a, it’s very hard. So self explanation prompts, are supposedly, are supposed to not supposedly supposed to help students. support students from learning from examples. So if you have an example of something, a model paragraph that you’d like students to write, to write in the style similar to or if you have a procedural way to solve some problem, and that is an example of that on the board, self explanation prompts are supposed to help students, you know, find a way around that. And what if questions, I think, are examples of those things. And they’re just easy to say. They’re easy to, they don’t require tremendous creativity to come up with so. So when I’m doing a work example, just to straightforwardly answer your question, students will analyse the example. And then they will discuss it and often, I will say kids, okay, go ahead. Your first analysis question is about making sure that you can, your first explanation question is make sure that you understand everything here and make sure that you understand the particulars. You’ve paid attention to everything you’re you’re not dropping the ball anywhere here. And then the second question is, okay, now generalise it. So I guess the way I think about it is, once we once we understand this thing, why not generalise? It doesn’t need to wait until practice.
Craig Barton 39:31 Really interested in again, I’m going to need to is one of those things, I’m going to need to think where they fit in for me, I’d never thought of putting them in the self explanation. For me, it feels like something that comes after some kind of teacher directed practice. But to take your point, I don’t see why it shouldn’t come in. Early on. That’s interesting.
Michael Pershan 39:47 Well, let me make the case a little bit further. Craig. Yeah, doctor puts pressure on you. Okay, but just just to make the case. How are students supposed to use an example for practice? Right, there are different trials. We’ve all experienced students who perfectly seem to understand an example and then are unable to apply them in practice. So how I think some people think, Oh, you just copy it, you just you just do the thing. But But you and I know that even the slightest differences in surface level details are often meaningfully different to students when they’re beginning learning. So it’s not enough to say just do the same thing, an equation that looks ever so slightly different, makes it impossible for them to do the same thing. So we are talking about generalisation through and through. We are necessarily when we when we say apply this example to this problem. We are talking about generalisation, so some amount of generalisation has to happen. And we do need to support students in making those generalisations whether what if questions are, are you know, we could talk about that we could talk about whether that’s the right way to do it. But something needs to be done to help subsume these things under the same framework.
Craig Barton 40:58 It’s interesting this and just so I’ve got that said,
Michael Pershan 41:00 I think I think one thing that in your work, you would very, very slightly right, you do very small variations between between examples and practice. And I think that we could do that also with what if questions? I think that’s not so you know, very different from what you do. Right? We could say, whatever variation you would do in a sequence of problems, in your approach, Craig, where you’ve got like, minimally different practice. We can do that too. Right? We would say what if instead of 12, it’s 13? You know?
Craig Barton 41:30 Yeah, this is fascinating. This, Michael. Yeah, I’m going to need to, I’m going to need to ponder where this fits in. Because when you when you were saying this, I’m thinking, yeah, that’s. So what happens if this six was a 12? What happens if the length doubled? It’s, it’s this kind of thing that I would fit into the practice. But I wonder whether you can slot in a bit early, you always made me think Michael which, which is why I wanted you on the show. That’s, that’s brilliant stuff. Whilst what’s Tip number four, please.
Michael Pershan 41:55 Okay, tip number four, is to use partner work as a chance to recruit quieter kids to share their thinking. So, so the idea is, is that we all have students in our classes that are reluctant to share their thinking for whatever reasons, and it’s good for them to share their thinking for various reasons. And we can talk about those various reasons on both ends. But one way of bridging that gap for the kids is, I think, if you ask a question, and then ask partners to talk about it, or to work on it, that gives me a, a very clear picture of what they’re working on. And I can see them, hopefully being successful. And I can go up to them and say, hey, great job. Great job. Craig, you, you did a wonderful job talking about this just now. Would you mind? If I called on you? I’d like to call on you, actually. Now, would you mind? I’d like to call on you. Greg, this is brilliant. I’d like to call on you to share your idea with the class when we’re discussing. I’m going to do it okay. And every once in a while a child will say no. And you know, that’s okay. I’ll say are you sure? It’s great. I’ll just call me it’s no big deal. If they say no, it’s fine. I’m not gonna get into a weird power thing about it. But But, but sure, you know, that often works. That often works for me. Right? They’ll say yes. And then I get to feature them in front of the class.
Craig Barton 43:27 dishy Great. Well, let’s let’s dig into this. Michael, I’m always fascinated by the practicalities, what what would be an example of the kind of question you would ask to get them to then start discussing? I’m assuming it’s not just the kind of straightforward? The answer to this is seven or or is it? Is it those kind of right or wrong questions? Or is it more kind of discussion based ones?
Michael Pershan 43:47 Well, it you know, it could be, there’s no reason why it can’t be if I asked students to solve problems, and they’re doing it with partners, and we’re on mini whiteboards, or whatever it happens to be i There’s no reason why I can’t call on a child and say, can you tell us what the first steps going to be? I’d like to call on you for that. That’s fine. It’s also more discussion based things. And you’re right. I mean, I find more value in asking partners to discuss things that are more discussing based because that, you know, it’s right there in the title discussion based. It goes better if you ask partners to do something that needs partners works for. And it’s also easier, you know, more seriously, I want kids talking to each other very frequently. Very, it’s very often the case that I’ll have kids in class that think, oh, I don’t belong here. I am not as smart as the other kids here. I can’t do the things the other kids can do. I’m just going to keep my head down. I’ll do my work. And just going to this is not something where I’m going to speak up. And I had students like that in my classes this year, my 1314 year olds this year. I had this child and and there’s tremendous benefits for getting kids talking to each other in this way because it builds confidence. I think giving explanations is a great way to learn. And if you are terrified to share your ideas, you will learn less. And also feeling like you belong in a classroom. This is this is every I think every classroom teacher would agree that’s often very important for some kids to feel as if they belong socially with a group. It changes their ability to take intellectual risks in the classroom. And it allows it makes it much easier for the teacher to talk about mistakes that might have been made or, or to support their learning in various other ways. It just feeling like you belong matter. So so I will ask kids to talk about stuff together, I going back to work examples, self explanation prompts are a great thing for partners to talk about taking turns explaining things to each other. Okay, everybody, here’s your questions to we just study this example up here on the board. Here’s what I want you and your partners to talk about. First of all, talk to your partner, make go through each step, make sure each person is understands everything that’s written on the board for each step. And then what I’d like you to do is, first of all answer this first question over here, which is why did they choose to do this? Couldn’t they have done that? And then what if instead of 12, the number 13, was in this president plus 12, it could have been plus 13, but would have been similar or different. If they’d done that ready, the sign partners go. And then here I am walking around the room, kind of like looking very casual. Kind of just like I’m not paying attention, just hands in my pockets. Walking around people. I’m not even paying attention. I’m just enjoy. I’m sipping my drink. I’m good. You know, and then I Oh, here I am. I happen to be standing next to the quiet child. I’m like, Oh, wait, I was just I was just happened to be standing here. That’s a brilliant point. Hey, could I call on you during the discussion? Just to share that it’s a really good point. People should hear it. Oh, yeah. Okay, great. Okay, then. All right, class. Welcome back. Okay. So they’re great discussions, everybody we’re gonna call on Tony. First, Tony. Why do you say, you know, what would have been different it was plus 13, instead of plus 12. Tony. All right. And then Tony talks and and then 10 years past, and he writes me a heartfelt letter about how that lesson changed his life. And he one day becomes a congress person in America. And he dedicates a museum to me. That’s the goal. That’s the plan, at least unlike in step two of that plan.
Craig Barton 47:47 That’s what we’re all in it for. Because my question I wrote down was, was exactly what you respond to. They’re like, what do you do whilst this partner talks happening, because there’s a real danger we can get in the way, right? Particularly if you’ve got a quieter child, a shy child, a less confident child, we call as we walk round, they they’ll tend to shut down a little bit, or maybe even I don’t know, if you see this, like kids, when they see you close by, they want to almost perform so they stop there kind of natural rhythm that they were having in their conversation. All of a sudden, it’s, it’s a phoney dynamic, it’s different than not having that one to one conversation that we’re having. So aside from kind of walking around casually, with with your drink, how do you not get in the way, if that makes sense, but still be able to listen? So you can pick up on these these key insights? It’s tricky, isn’t it?
Michael Pershan 48:35 It is tricky. I mean, this, I’d say the thing that I try not to do is I try not to, I know that we’re going to have a discussion. So I try to be thoughtful about when I interrupt. I try to only interrupt if if there’s a real need. Not just to correct a mistake that I’ll be able to correct in the whole group in just a moment. You know, I think a lot of the the other thing that I was there’s a there’s an educator in Canada, who has a book that is a hit in the United States. It’s called Building thinking classrooms. And one of the things that he identifies in this book is the concept of I think he calls it proximity questions, questions that students wouldn’t ask, but they only asked because you’re, you’re nearby. Like you’re standing nearby, so like, I might as well ask, we don’t know this. We’re talking about it, but he and he’s right there. So so I’m trying my body language is not. I thought about different body language and ways of attending. When it’s clear that I’m looking for questions to answer. And when I’m trying to give room for people I’m standing a little But farther back, I’m not really making as much eye contact. And basically, I’m not not doing the things that I’m not acting the way I am. I’m not like poking my head. And all the time, though the way I am when I’m looking for questions to answer, I do have those different modes in the classroom, I do have a, you know, attention. Question seeking mode, where I’m saying, who’s got questions, I want to answer your questions. I want you to ask questions, please ask questions. And this is a different mode. I’m standing back, I’m trying to think about how far I am. I’m not. I’m trying to train them to be a little bit more independent in this way. That again, I’ve had classes where they need me to be a little bit more attending, and, and any independence, any student independence is something that you’re trying to help them become more independent, but they might not be ready for it yet. So it’s a balance in that way to tastic. I don’t know. All right, Michael. Yeah. Whenever you ask a hard question, I just talk and it’s because because that’s the way teaching is right. There’s, there are there are things that are hard and solvable. And there are things that are hard, and they’re just hard.
Craig Barton 51:12 Got it. Brian, Michael, fifth and final tip, please.
Michael Pershan 51:17 Alright, so my my fifth and final tip. Now I am looking at my notes. And there’s four tips here. Now you think I’m looking at my document, the fifth one has been deleted. So so you’ll have to tell me I before we talked, I shared this fifth one. It does exist of bad news. So I remember I think I remember it. Okay, because I have bad news for you. But
Craig Barton 51:43 you said one of them was bad news for you because I am looking at your same document because it’s a shared one. You’ve caught it off. So I it’s a mystery to me. I can vaguely remember it. But it’d be a nice surprise for me what the fifth one is.
Michael Pershan 51:56 What you I remember before you told me that one of my tips wasn’t as good as the other. And so we deleted one. So I’m hoping I remember the right one. If this tip doesn’t make sense, it’s my fault. I mean, obviously, it’s my fault, but it’s my fault in a bigger way. Anyway, I think what I wanted to say is I think that tip number five was when you call on a student do not move on from that student. Until they have said some felt
Craig Barton 52:23 sorry about that.
Michael Pershan 52:25 Yeah, okay, good. That’s the good one. Okay, good. Right. And that’s another one of those habits that I’m trying to constantly remind myself on, because I think it’s a good one. I think it’s something that I tried to hold on to it’s one of those things that I when I don’t do it, I’m like, Oh, I did it again, I moved on from a kid. And the last thing they said was wrong. And that didn’t feel right.
Craig Barton 52:44 How would you how would you do it, Michael to talk talk us through this as an example.
Michael Pershan 52:49 What I, what I used to do is I’d call on a kid and I’d say, you know, some of the times I asked questions like the ones before, like what are what are two numbers that add up to 10? That seems to be the one that that’s safe territory for me in this interview, I can always go back to that question. And so I say that and you know, kids like one and three, like so. So a very easy thing to do that I find myself falling into sometimes is is I’ll say, No, that’s not right. Anybody else? Who else has an idea? Which just trying to like steer away from the one plus three idea, which is not true. One plus three is not 10. So what do you do in those situations? And so what I’ve tried to do is I’ve tried to, and because and just to add on to why, like what’s going on there, right? Because teachers are good people. I think what’s going on there is at least psychologically, for me, I hear a one plus three is not 10. And I think to myself, Oh no, I need to get away from this situation. This is an embarrassing situation for this child. The more time I dwell on this child’s mistake, the more embarrassing it’s going to be. This child is going to I’m going to write and there’s so many bad ways to do it. Right one plus three. I’d say no, no, what is one plus three though? And then they say 10? Because they just said that one plus three is 10. And I’ll say no, no, but but can you Okay, start with one. Let’s walk you through it. And what one plus 121 plus and it’s gonna it’s gonna go badly and everybody will there’ll be Snickers there’ll be kids going while this kids doing you know, there’ll be whispers and then like a kid behind will be like st st watching your pastime. You know it’s a far because kids are trying to save because they’re all so nice trying to save their friends from embarrassment. Okay, so how so but But so every instinct in my head is saying get away from the situation. And yet I think that that’s sad, because then the lat you haven’t given this kid a chance to be smart. And then the last thing they’ve said is something wrong. And we don’t even know if they’re gonna learn anything from it. So what can we do? So my goal now, in those situations, I try to remind myself, let’s get this kid to smart territory. And let’s end when this kid says something smart, because if you say something smart, doesn’t matter what he said before that was wrong. That’s fine. You’ve learned something and you said something smart, you’re part of the community of smart people. We’re all we all understand math. We’re all working on this together, but we’re ending in the same direction. So how do I do that? How do I get this kid to say something smart? That’s what’s what’s in my head, and I’ve got a couple moves. I don’t have a tonne. But But one thing I do is I corrected for the kid. And then I shift to explanation. So I’ll say actually, one plus three is not 10. It’s four, can you prove that it’s four? If I think that the kid can do it. Why Why does it make sense that it’s four, actually. And a lot of that’s, it’s a little bit risky still, because the kid might not know. But very often, if you choose your battles correctly, the child, in my experience has been able to say, oh, right, it’s four. Oh, yeah. Because Frey because because one, and then two, and then three, and four. And that, and I like, there we go. Yes. Brilliant. That’s absolutely right. So can anyone build on what Ari has said, He’s proven that one plus three is four. So one plus one wouldn’t be 10. You know, and I can kind of, it feels better. It feels better. The kids learn something, I’ve corrected it. And I think that’s an example of how, what feels like it might be meaner in some ways to say No, that’s wrong can actually be be kinder if it as long as it’s not the end of the story. So So quick correction. And then new question. Or sometimes that explanation is, is powerful in my experience? So the paradigm is like, wrong answer from a kid, quick correction for me. Quick follow up question that the kid can successfully answer now that they’ve hopefully realised something from feedback. And, and then we move on.
Craig Barton 57:22 I love it. Michael, did you say you had a couple of moves? Was that was that the two moves? Is it kind of quick correction, followed by a follow up question and quick correction, followed by asking them for an explanation? Or is there another move? Obviously, there?
Michael Pershan 57:34 That’s the one that works the best. You know, I think the other things that I do I think more teachers would would, I think recognise as like, familiar territory, you know, you say? What’s the other one? Yeah, like, you know, kid says one plus three. So you know, what’s one plus two? That kind of thing is, is I think,
you know, trying to get a kid to realise a mistake that they made by asking a question that they think that you think that they can answer on their own. And I think more familiar territory, though, the, this is new to me, this is this is this is this is something that, that I don’t know that I need to keep my eye out for in my own teaching and see what comes up and try to kind of see what other moves I do have.
Craig Barton 58:36 A lot more, Michael. And just one final reflection for me on this. One of the things that I find myself doing a lot or found myself doing a lot is what Doug Lemov says, calls rounding up. So this idea that the students has a wrong or an incomplete answer. And you as a teacher have the critical part to make that answer. Right. And it feels great in the moment, but then you think you know what, this isn’t good this because the kid thinks they’ve actually understood something when in fact, they haven’t really they’ve given like the the incomplete answer. And then you’ve added the kind of key bit and it’s not checking for understanding, it’s kind of a bit of a bit of a cover up where everyone’s involved. But the thing about rounding up is the kid feels good at the end of it. But what I like about what you’re saying here is you’re not you know, you’re making it clear that that answer is wrong. You’re also not moving on to say okay, I’m going to come back to you let me ask some of the child because that the kids feeling a bit bad about themselves. They’re, I like this idea that you’re being really open and genuine. But you’re given them that other opportunity to feel successful in a in a genuine way. It feels really powerful. It’s it’s not rounding up. But it’s not kind of almost like no opt out. It’s not like you’ve got it wrong, but keep listening. So I’m going to come back to it feels like this is a different strategy to that, that has the best of both worlds. You’ve got your kind of understanding, but you’ve also got the kind of motivational positive feeling. I don’t know if I any of that makes sense at all.
Michael Pershan 59:59 No It makes sense. The thing I would add is that I think what makes this possible for me is when I started realising when I start having a better understanding of the types of questions that I asked, it opened things up, because if the only question you’re asking is the only learning question you’re asking is, what’s the answer? Yeah. What what’s an answer? Then Then a new are kind of stuck if a kid says something wrong. Because, or you can try to find the right answer. But when you expand things to explanation questions, or generalisation making questions when you have a repertoire of right, another thing that I’ll do is a quick correction. And then, so if the kid seems to be like, oh, yeah, I’ll be like this. So why is that wrong? What’s wrong with that? You just realised that it was wrong. Share that, please. That’s another once you have, you know, once you can rattle off, which I feel lately that I’m better able to do like, Okay, well, you can answer a question, you can explain why something’s right. You can explain why something’s wrong. You can extend a question you can do a What’s if what if question, when you have a repertoire of questions that you ask, then, okay, we’ve knocked down one possibility for a kid there. So, you know, four or five others that we could ask this child to answer that they are potentially capable of, and potentially now, especially capable of now that they have realised, oh, that’s wrong. So, so, so, so I do agree, I do kind of the, I think you you nailed it. We’re trying to have kids rounded up, I suppose. I mean, rounding up is is not the image I guess I would use here at all, if we’re trying to orient everybody in the same positive direction, towards learning towards understanding towards contributing to our collective understanding. And a tool for doing that is giving feedback. And here’s an here’s a lobbying thing and normalising error. I mean, that’s not just him, but but normalising error is, is is part of the tool here, right? If error is a big deal, then we have to kind of rear away but if it just like, No, that was wrong, but let’s talk about something, you know, something related to that. Yeah, and but and just this just add on, because I kind of waffled a little bit earlier, because I don’t have a perfect understanding of how, I don’t know if you feel this way. I feel like when I’m teaching things come up, and then I have to kind of like sift through it over the course of the subway, ride home or whatever. And try to be like, did I do that? Does that work? Should I try that again? So I think another thing that I’m realising as we’re talking about this, and I’m reflecting on this is write a quick correction sometimes works. But in the situations where that doesn’t work, sometimes a longer correction still sets things up for the child, right? Right. One plus three is not. There’s not 10. It’s four. There’s no AHA that I hear there’s no oh, I’m like, right, because one plus one is to one plus two is three, one plus three is four. So what would one plus four be? Child? Right? Right. I’ve got a better shot there. If I’ve said a little bit more so so I can, My correction can be quick, it can be longer, but I’m always trying to end with the child saying something true.
Craig Barton 1:03:20 Fantastic, Michael. Love that. Love that love these five tips. So just before we say goodbye, what should listeners check out of yours? Well, what do you want them to take away?
Michael Pershan 1:03:31 Well, I do have a book if you wanted to buy it. That’d be very nice. The book is teaching mathematics, teaching math with examples from John cat. And, again, if you wanted to buy it, that would be very nice. I do have children. This would support us in buying Honey Nut Cheerios for them, which is their favourite food. They eat so much honey nut cheerios. Other than that, there’s nothing really in mind that if you’re interested in more of my things, by all means, I have a website Michael Pirsch n.com. I’m on Twitter. And for Michael followed by person, but that’s all good. You follow me or not?
Craig Barton 1:04:15 That’s great. Twitter habit. I’ll put links to your Twitter, your website, your books will all be in the show notes. And again, we’ve spoken before on my podcast you know, I’m a huge fan of your work and especially if your book I think it’s fantastic. So Michael, all that remains me to do is thank you for giving up your time to be able to tips for teachers podcast, always a pleasure speaking to you. Thanks so much, Michael.
Michael Pershan 1:04:38 Absolutely, Craig, have a great day.
Craig Barton 0:02 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. This episode I have the pleasure of speaking to math teacher, web designing wonder, Jake Gordon and I promise you this is an absolute classic. on tips for teachers I want to learn from the household names such as Dylan, William Daisy Christodoulou and Tom Sherrington. But also give a platform to people like Jake who may not be quite as well known, but have some incredible insights to share. If you don’t know Jake is the creator of the website, math universe.com. And if you’ve not checked it out my word you are in for a treat. For quick ones before we dive in, and sponsor slots to the podcast in our open so if you want to let the world’s most interesting listeners know about your book, product or event, just drop me an email. You can view videos of all Jake’s tips on the tips for teachers website. These are great to share in a departmental meeting or a training session. And as I’ll mention in a moment, I’m pretty sure you’re going to want to check out Jake’s in particular and number three, you can sign up sign up to the tips for teachers newsletter to receive a tip in your inbox most Monday mornings to try out with your classes in the coming week. And finally, just a plea for me if you find this podcast useful. Please take a moment ideally now just hit pause and give this podcast a rating. And ideally, we’re a review on your podcast player of choice. It really does make a difference. Okay, back to the show. Let’s get learning with today’s guest the wonderful J Gordon spoiler alert. Here are Jake’s five tips. Tip one, share photos of students work, tip to reduce clutter from everything students see and hear. Tip Four, try teaching from anywhere in the room number so that was Tip three. Tip Four, modify your lessons as you go. And Tip five give worked examples with retrieval starters. Now in a tips for teachers first, Jake has kindly recorded bonus video content for each tip, where he shows exactly how to do the things we talk about in the conversation. To access these videos, just visit the tips for teachers website. That’s tips for teachers dot code at UK, you will not be disappointed. And as usual, if you look at the episode description on your podcast player or visit the episode page on tips for teachers, you’ll see I’ve timestamped each of these tips. So you can jump straight to anyone you want to listen to first or read listen to right make sure you’re sitting comfortably for this one. It is a classic. Enjoy the show.
Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Jake Gordon to the tips for teachers podcast. Hello, Jake,
Jake Gordon 2:44 how are you? Politely headed up to Oh, thank you.
Craig Barton 2:47 That’s great, right for the benefit of listeners. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself ideally in a sentence?
Jake Gordon 2:53 Gosh, okay, so I’m quite new to teaching. That’s that’s the big thing. I feel like a little bit of a fraud in a way being on here compared to some of the other kind of researchers head of heads of department. What I really was or still am is a software developer, and I’ve only been teaching for the last three years. So yeah, fantastic. And you’re teaching math, I should point that out.
Craig Barton 3:13 Ideal. And just a bit of background here. I’ll mention I’ll probably I mentioned this in the intro, but I saw some of your stuff that you’ve been sharing on Twitter. And as soon as I saw I was blown away. And I thought I’ve got to get this guy on the show. So I’m really pleased that the year Jake, well, let’s dive straight in. What is tip number one?
Jake Gordon 3:27 Right. Tip number one is share photos of students work.
Craig Barton 3:32 I like it right? Tell us more about this.
Jake Gordon 3:36 Okay, so I used to try and share photos of students work and it worked absolutely dreadfully. So this is what I used to do. And maybe it’s similar to what you do, or you know, maybe other people have better ways of doing it. But what I used to do is I would set my computer up with a bookmark to my Google Drive in Chrome, then I’d go to my phone, I would take a photo, I would then hit the share button, press to Google Drive, it would upload a like three megabyte file to Google Drive, I’d go to my computer, I’d refreshed the bookmark until it finally appeared and then realised that the Wi Fi wasn’t working or something else was basically wrong. And finally get it on my on my computer, then I go and put it up on the other screen so kids can see it. And then well, I can’t really annotate over the top of it anyway, to show them anything I can just I can just kind of point. I know some people use visualizers for this. I have used visualizers before but then you’ve got to go and take your kids work, borrow it, put it under than they don’t have the work. You could remember who to take it back to better than using Google Drive probably. But I wanted to make a quicker way in a better way. So I’d already been kind of developing some whiteboard software, which I had been using for a couple of months. And I made a way. It only took me a couple of hours actually was over. It was in was February half term. I think someone mentioned it would be at work. It’d be nice to be able to take photos of kids work and took me a couple of hours. Do the code for it. So what you can do now using the software I’ve made at Massey University comm slash whiteboard, is you just on your phone, take a photo, and within half a second, it appears on the board and you can annotate over the top. And it really is as simple as that.
Craig Barton 5:14 Now I can testify to this, I’m really reluctant Jake, sometimes whenever, you know, as much as teachers, we’re very fortunate. And it’s true of all teachers, but I think particular math teachers, we see loads of new like websites popping up left, right and centre and some need a login some you for some is a big old cost in terms of not not necessarily monetary, but time cost, trying to get your head around how they work, and so on. So I’m really reluctant to recommend kind of teachers try new things if it’s gonna take a big long time. But this is act testify. It’s not like a dodgy salesman. I mean, there’s there’s no money in it for you. So certainly no money. And
Jake Gordon 5:46 I’m not charging anything for this completely free.
Craig Barton 5:49 It is really slick how it works. And what you’re going to do, I guess I’ll mentioned this in the intro, but you’re going to show a little video demonstration of based on what what we talked about here that will for the benefit of the people watching, the video will be able to see. But it really is seamless, right. And that’s a big thing, because you don’t want this to be a big old time cost. And I’ve done exactly what you said, I love sharing kids work. And we’ll talk pedagogically about that in a second. But I’ve done exactly the same, I’ve taken the picture. First I tried Dropbox and forget it. If you’re trying to do Dropbox on school systems, that is an absolute recipe for disaster. But Google Drive, there’s a big old time cost, sometimes the photos don’t come out in great quality is a real pain to them, I then copy them, put them in a PowerPoint, so then I can annotate them and that the kids now has gone at this point, you know, it’s an absolute disaster. So just just literally just just talk us through the like, let’s let’s paint the picture of a lesson here. So what stage of a lesson are you using this and just talk us through it as a scenario of what kind of work you might put on there and what you might do with it?
Jake Gordon 6:51 Yeah, of course. So I use it in probably about two or three of my five lessons a day, particularly with my year sevens at the moment, it seems because they just really love to share their work. So there’s different ways I might use it. One is maybe a brainstorming session, maybe we’re doing a bit of revision on a tip topic that we did a couple of times ago. And I’ll just ask the kids to open a new page in their book and just start writing down anything they can remember about that topic. So I might say algebra, for example. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to walk around the room with my phone out already loaded to the to the website with the right room code, so it matches what’s up on the board at the front. And whenever I see your kids with some work, which I think looks like it’s worth sharing, I just take a photo of that, and it appears up on the board straightaway. And I’d like everyone to look at the board and say, you know, have a look at the board. Look at what Mathilde has been doing here. What do we call this? Yes, that’s right. It’s substitution or whatever else it might be. Might also annotate over the top a bit, you know, or maybe there’s a mistake here as well. You know, maybe they’ve maybe they’ve done this little bit right a little bit wrong, what can we what can we do to help them with that? So yeah, there’s that brainstorming part. Another one might be, for example, we’re doing solving equations, let’s say, and they’re doing a practice question. And we’ve just gone through a worked example. And I noticed that you know, there are some mistakes around the room. So they’re adding when they should be subtracting, I’m sure we’ve all seen that one before. Or they’re not doing it in the method that I’ve just shown them, or they’re just showing the answers, because it’s an easy question. They’ve just worked it out in their head. So as I’m going around the room of taking photos of what they’ve done, I’m asking them first. But really, I’m not letting them opt out of that. So even if they’ve made a mistake might witness, I’d love to help you with this with this so that other people can help you. Other people are going to be making the same mistake that you’re making here. So it’d be great if we can share that with the class and put it up on the board and not ask people to put the hands up and suggest what’s right or what’s you know, what could be improved on that coat on that example?
Craig Barton 8:45 This is brilliant, absolutely brilliant. tonnes of questions for you here. So yeah, just just on that kind of attributing names to to get to work. Sometimes you need, as you say, kids can be a bit funny about this particularly well, sometimes if they’ve got it wrong. They don’t obviously want that shown publicly, but sometimes in some classes if they’ve got it right, and you’re kind of showcasing excellence, they don’t necessarily want their name attached to it. I agree with you. I think it’s I think there are ways of creating a culture where that’s not so much a problem. But again, again, I’m guessing this can be kind of fairly anonymous, right? You’re snapping a picture. And as he it’s not like you grabbing the child’s book, it’s almost easier to cover up whose work it is, I would imagine.
Jake Gordon 9:25 Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, I like I say, I do usually almost always say whose work it is. There are some occasions where I don’t know I’ve got a child to you know, I know that they’ve had a bad experience in the past with another teacher or something. Yeah, so you can do it anonymously. Like you say, you’ve just taken a photo somewhere in the room and you’ve hit a button on your phone appears on the screen. So you don’t have to then go and give them their book back and have the whole class see whose work it was that was just shared.
Craig Barton 9:50 It’s really nice this. So a couple of other things here. So we there’s a bit of a running joke on the show that every episode mini whiteboards get mentioned. I would imagine this works quite well with colour taking photos of mini whiteboards as well as book work just because the kids write a bit bigger on them and so on. Would you have experienced without? Or does it tend to be books that
Jake Gordon 10:08 I haven’t seen, but you’ll be very displeased to hear. I don’t tend to make big use yet of mini whiteboards in my classroom, partly because there’s just the logistics of giving them out and pens not working and all that kind of stuff. What I am trying to do is build something which is like a little mini whiteboarding thing online, a bit like whiteboard, FYI. To help with that, but then they’ve got to have their phones out to do that. So I guess I don’t, it could work with mini whiteboards, but it doesn’t need to be bigger. As long as your phone has a decent enough camera, which almost everyone’s will do, then it doesn’t matter really how big the work is, because you can just put the camera closer to it. So but yeah, it could work with any whiteboards as well.
Craig Barton 10:44 That’s fantastic. You also mentioned and it’s I think it’s worth emphasising it’s not just that the picture appears on the screen, you’ve got then got annotating tools. Is that right? Can you just talk us through how those work? Do you have to be at the board to do that? Can you do that on your phone? What do you tend to do with that?
Jake Gordon 10:59 Yes, so all of my lessons, what is on the, in my classroom, I’ve got a desktop computer with its own monitor. And then I’ve got the big screen at the front of the room, which in since December is an interactive whiteboard. It used to be a projector. But now it’s an interactive whiteboard. So on the white board, I’ve got extended desktop mode. So I’ve got something different on my desktop monitor, see what’s on the big whiteboard that the kids can see. And what the kids see is just a browser tab, Chrome browser tab to mass universe.com/white board slash my room number. And that’s in full screen, so they can’t see anything else at all. And so it just appears on there basically, along with anything else I might be delivering for the lesson. So everything gets delivered through that same website. Got it? Got it. And does that answer your question? I’m sorry, I can’t quite remember where she was No,
Craig Barton 11:50 no, just about the annotating tools. What What have you got the you’ve got like a basic pen a bit of highlighter, what what are some of the what are some of the tools there?
Jake Gordon 11:58 Yeah, sure. So there’s five different colours that you can use, there’s a couple of highlighters, you can also erase things. And all of this is really simple to do just with gestures with two fingers. So if I want to change colour, rather than having to sort of go to a menu over on the left hand side, change, change your colour. Or if you’ve ever done it in PowerPoint before where you’re doing like PowerPoint, in slideshow mode, there’s like this tiny little button in the bottom left corner, you click on that, and then you get a red pen, and then you’ve got to go and another one, you get a green pen, it just takes so long. So it’s particularly built for changing between two or three colours very quickly, you can just kind of swipe down with two fingers, and it changes colour then you can swipe down again with two fingers and it goes back to the other colour.
Craig Barton 12:36 And I know you’ll demonstrate this on the video. But are you doing that on your phone? Or are you the the interactive whiteboard for that?
Jake Gordon 12:43 So yeah, you can do either, I don’t tend to use my phone. Much for that I tend to use a tablet, if anything, except I currently don’t, because the Wi Fi is not good enough, which is really annoying. And I have no mobile phone reception in my classroom as well. But the idea is Yeah, on my on my tablet computer, I just kind of open it up and I start writing on here and doing whatever else is and whatever I’m doing on that screen is going to appear on the whiteboard for the kids as well.
Craig Barton 13:11 And that shouldn’t be underestimated, right. That’s a powerful thing. The fact you can be anywhere in the classroom, you can you’ve not got your eyes turned to the board, you can be at the back of the room seen everybody and you’re making it appear that that feels like quite a powerful part of this teaching in general, but specifically this one when we’re digging into
Jake Gordon 13:29 Absolutely. Tip number three is going to be try teaching from anywhere in the room. So tip number three, think about how I can work.
Craig Barton 13:37 I like it. That’s brilliant. And right. So a couple more things. And be honest with me, Jake, any problems with this? Well, what are the kind of teething issues perhaps not that you have because you know, in and out but but new users would have with this.
Jake Gordon 13:48 So one potential issue is it uses a technology called WebSockets. Which is something that like DFM likelihoods or Dr. Frost math lives, you live users as well. And that’s something that for some strange reason, some school IT departments block. So you might need to send a message to your IT department and say to them, can you please unblock WebSockets for mass universe.com to get that to work? And they should say that’s fine. There’s there’s no reason why it wouldn’t be fine. That’s one issue or people might accidentally put in the different room code. So you’ve got to have the same room code on your computer and on your tablet or your phone. Otherwise, that’s not gonna, that’s not going to connect up together.
Craig Barton 14:27 And is there any way I mean, we know what kids are like, I’m just picture the child somehow kind of hacking into this. Could that be a thing like you’re and all of a sudden a flippin part of the body appears on the board? Because that could that be?
Jake Gordon 14:38 Yeah. So it’s as if you tell the kids what the room code is, then they could go and put something in that same room in theory. Yeah. That’s never happened to me. Because partly because of kids. You know, the students in my school don’t have their phones or their laptops or whatever else. But yeah, potentially, you could have that happening, in which case you can just change the room code to a different one. I prefer to Keep it so you don’t have to log in or anything, it really is a matter of just going to the website. And it loads in like way under a second. And that’s it. Yeah. If in the future, I have to do something like that, because people start misusing it. And I guess that’s something, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.
Craig Barton 15:15 Of course, kids are annoying like that. Right. Two final questions on this, Jake. And first of you, we have we have lots of non maths teachers listen to this. Is this something that you’ve had colleagues in other subjects use?
Jake Gordon 15:27 Yes, so actually, it was I just, I just come back from half term. And there was a science teacher in my class doing a chess club with some sick farmers at the time. And I was demonstrating to another colleague, this new fancy feature I built where you could upload student photos. And I think I actually saw his his jaw drop when he saw it. And yeah, so he started using that. But again, unfortunately, he had a bit of a problem with Wi Fi in the room. So you do want to have good quality Wi Fi on your phone, or at least an internet connection doesn’t need to be Wi Fi. Right? As long as you got an internet connection on your phone, then you can get the work up on the board. I’ve also, basically in May, I kind of told the world about it on Twitter by messaging you and Joe Morgan and a couple of other people, and then you sort of spread it around a little bit. And I’ve had people use it for Yeah, science lessons for English lessons for modern foreign languages. So yeah, can absolutely be used for any kind of lesson.
Craig Barton 16:23 That’s fantastic. And final question on this. And one of the things when I started messing around with just taking photos of kids work and using either Google Drive or Dropbox, whilst it was an absolute pain, one of the big positives that I liked was, I could use the the photos in the lesson, but I could also use them outside of the lesson so I could use them. If it was a mistake, I could use that as like prompt for another class to identify the mistake, give us an example of excellence, we could study that I could use it in CPD sessions, when departmental meetings, all those kinds of things. Now, I assume, obviously, you will, of course, you can do the same because you’re taking the photos, what, how do you you, you personally use the photos of kids work outside of the lesson, if at all.
Jake Gordon 17:08 So at the moment, not very much. So. And by default, if you take the photo in the quickest way possible to get it onto the board, it doesn’t save it at all, like nothing is stored on my server whatsoever. I don’t even record how many people use the server every day or anything like that. So there’s no way to kind of log in and get things that you’ve taken before. So if you want to save that photo that a kid has taken, there’s a button on the website to download it, or you can just kind of Ctrl C to copy it out of there and then paste it into your PowerPoint or Smart Notebook or whatever it is you’ve got. I have you I’ve done something similar in the past once or twice, where we take those photos and make multiple copies and print them off. And then the students have to actually kind of on paper, annotate what they think is good and what they think is bad about another student’s work. But I don’t currently do much of that.
Craig Barton 17:55 That’s fantastic. Well, this will be the point Jake, where if you’re watching the video, fingers crossed seamlessly, this will blend into some lovely tutorial that you’ve put together. So podcasters to match. Exactly forecast listeners, if you hop over to the show notes, there’ll be a link to that as well as the link to to Jake’s wonderful website. Right, Jake, what is tip number two, please.
Jake Gordon 18:17 Okay, so tip number two is to reduce clutter from everything students see and hear.
Craig Barton 18:24 Or this is right up my street. Right? Tell me more about this.
Jake Gordon 18:28 So it’s more on the visual side of things. But more recently, I’ve actually been really reducing the amount of say, in lessons, particularly with worked examples, you know, the whole silent teacher kind of idea there. I go into starting on the visual side of it. So what students see, I find myself cringing a lot when I see other teachers teaching sometimes because you know, they’ve opened up an exam paper, they’re kind of trained to annotate over the top, and they’ve opened it up in Acrobat, and you’ve got all these toolbars. On the right hand side, there’s a big button that says edit PDF combined files, there are like multiple toolbars. At the top, you’ve got the Windows taskbar at the bottom as well. And as a result, everything’s a little bit smaller. And the kids might be reading these other things as well. And I just think, why don’t we do that? You know, why? Why are we wasting all this space? Or the the other thing is, quite often, if something’s made by someone else in a school, there’ll be like a school logo on it plus the school. You know, these three words aspire and communicate whatever it is that your school, you know, chooses are the three words that they care about. And like what why does that have to be on the board? Every time I’m teaching something, I want them to focus on fractions right now. I don’t want them to care about all these other distractions. So I think we really want to just reduce what they see, and to what’s important here. And the other things Yeah, with the audio as well. Just really trying to reduce. It’s something that I’m really focusing on at the moment is reducing the amount that I say in class. So anytime I open my mouth, I’m thinking, do I need to say this? Do I didn’t say set for the whole class, can I do some kind of a gesture? Instead of my hands and my eyes? Can I go up to an individual student and just sort of, you know, point at their book. So just just reducing the clutter from lessons.
Craig Barton 20:13 This is a brilliant one, right? Right, as I say, right to my street for this one. So I’m all completely with you with these. If you download, particularly if you download someone’s PowerPoint, either off tears, or Joe Morgan site or something like that, often they’re branded, right. And so you get like the logo of as you say, the school or whatever. And it’s normally like a slide master on a PowerPoint. And it’s worth going to that effort to get rid of that to either just copy and paste into a blank PowerPoint or something like that, because, as you said, best case, kids are going to ignore it. But worst case, they’re going to pay attention to it or have to divert attention to effort fully ignore it. And that’s not going to be conducive to learn. And so I’m all over it there. Let me so first journalism is
Jake Gordon 20:57 all about, it’s all about cognitive load, isn’t it, you have got that limited working memory, any any attention they give to anything else. If they’re attending to something that isn’t what you want them to teach, then you’ve lost a bit of them.
Craig Barton 21:09 Now, you’ll be loving this, you know, there’s a name for this right this this? Well, there’s there’s two names first, in Cognitive Load Theory literature, the redundancy effect is where you’ve got redundant information that you have to have to like ethically ignore. But it’s actually a really good name for this, whenever you’ve got something that the teacher includes designed to kind of engage. So you get things like where you’ll add a little bit of clipart, just to spice up your PowerPoint a little bit or a little gif or something like that. And it’s called the seductive details effect. And it’s really problematic because teachers put them in there to you know, seduce and engage the kids, but they engage the kids away from, you know, thinking about, as you say, fractions or something like that. Let me ask you this, though, I see a lot of schools where you have to have on each slide like learning objectives visible sometimes like the down the left hand side of the PowerPoint, or like that, by default, the date is always visible on every slide of the PowerPoint, or perhaps along the bottom key words for the lesson or on every flippin slide, or once you take,
Jake Gordon 22:06 we have so we have we have this sort of MYP programme thing coming into the school. So we’re meant to put an inquiry prompt visible for students at all times. So I will put that on the physical whiteboard rather than the virtual one and sort of maybe, maybe sometimes accidentally forget to do that. Yeah. But yeah, it just takes up space, it just takes up the space on the slide. And I don’t I don’t want them to see that. So I try as much as possible not to really think
Craig Barton 22:31 there’s, there’s another argument here, Jake, as well, that, let’s get learning objective is a good one. I mean, we can debate whether they’re a waste of time, we just generally is another matter. But if you have to on every slide, all it reduces their impacts, like, you know, kids, probably thinking about them all the time. Whereas what you want to do, if you want to use learning objectives, what you want to do is you want to draw kids attention to when they’re relevant. So if they’re always visited, so
Jake Gordon 22:55 that’s exactly so that’s what I do. Yes, I will have a slide that says, And today, the big question is dot, dot dot, and I get them all really, you know, kind of anticipating. And then the next slide is just those words, or maybe I don’t even put a slide up, I just just, you know, say the words out loud to them. What the learning what the inquiry is that lesson? Yeah. Or want them to pay attention in that moment.
Craig Barton 23:15 Exactly. Or they’re, like, you know, halfway through the lesson call back to it like now let’s revisit that big question was now it’s now it becomes irrelevant. But if it’s, if it’s there all the time, it’s a bit counterintuitive, but it’s not relevant at all. And PDFs is an interesting one. I’m just on an on a I mean, I’ve been guilty of this as well, right? You get an exam papers, a PDF, you just double click it, crack it open, and away you go. And as you say it is redundancy Central. What do you do with the EFS? Then what like exam papers do just chop them up? And so my PowerPoint slides, or yeah,
Jake Gordon 23:45 all of my lessons are monster PowerPoint files, basically. So I’ll have like, every half term for each class, I’ll have one massive Powerpoint file until it gets too big to open, then I’ll create another one. And I just, I’ll take that PDF, and I’ll just keep on taking screenshots with Windows shift S and pasting them into new slides until until I’ve got everything I want in there.
Craig Barton 24:07 So you’ve not just a PowerPoint per topic at PowerPoint per per class, would that be 100
Jake Gordon 24:14 per put per half term? So we’ll get to about 300 pages probably anatomy like okay, that’s that’s enough for the slow computers at school. It’s fine at home, but it’s taking me too long to open let’s go to another Powerpoint file now.
Craig Barton 24:26 What’s the logic against like, starting a new PowerPoint per topic? How can you do
Jake Gordon 24:31 like yeah, so it might be I mean, it might be per topic, right? So it’s every half term will roughly be one or two topics. So yeah, it is roughly that it is roughly one to two I like
Craig Barton 24:39 this I like this now let’s just go on to the verbal side of things. I think this is a big one this this took me many years to kind of cut down on the amount I say I’d always say what say things one way than just keep saying different ways and just never shut up. Yeah, as a relatively new teacher Jake, how do you how’d you how’d you find you do this because it feels to me like it’s something that just comes with experience that you learn You need to say less. Do you how practically you say it’s something you’re working on? How are you working on it? How are you reducing what you say?
Jake Gordon 25:08 Okay, so for the starters, it’s very much, you know, I’ve got a format for the starters, they’ve got six questions. In fact, I’ll talk about for number five, what those six questions are for my starters. And they know that when they come in, they’re coming in in silence. But I also try just not to speak myself as well. So I’m not going around the room. Now I know, lots of people were saying you want to go around the room and say, Well done for getting a pen out well done for doing this. But I don’t I don’t do that. Because I think my silence helps them concentrate as well. So that’s that’s one, one place where I don’t write down talk. The other one is, well, starting off from your book. So when I first thought about being a teacher, first thing my brother said, was to buy the blue Craig Barton book. So ideas about what examples and all of that all very good, Craig. And more recently, the shorter book by Michael Pherson. on teaching math with examples, which looks remarkably like your books,
Craig Barton 26:05 lawyers will be in touch there, don’t worry.
Jake Gordon 26:09 But some specific things from there to how I do my work two examples now. So for my worked examples, I have I do them, I do them by preparing them in advance, like five or six PowerPoint slides, you’ve got the question and it just I tell the whole class, we’re going to do a worked example, put your pens down, look at the board. And they know it’s going to be silent, they know I’m going to be silent, they know they’re going to be silent. And the whole process of going through a worked example probably takes about five minutes until it’s their turn to start talking to each other. So that’s definitely a period where we have silence in a class including myself.
Craig Barton 26:43 That’s interesting. And do you just dig into this just a little bit further, with your words, examples do you annotate and all the PowerPoints are your handwriting and they’re kind of working out there?
Jake Gordon 26:54 Yeah, so I do all my preparation at home, I can’t work on a school computer because they’re too slow to prepare my lessons. But at home, I’ve got a Surface Pro with a big screen as well. And I will pre prepare them all as PowerPoint slides where the question itself is done with text in the document. And then I will handwrite the work solutions either as one step or multiple steps, and put those in the PowerPoint file. So that is all done in advance of the lesson. I’m not doing that live in the lesson, I’ve thought very carefully about how I want to present it. And then they’ve all got a printed copy of that worked example with your turn question on as well, which they do really interesting. We’ve gone through it.
Craig Barton 27:30 Really interesting. Just final thing on this, I saw credit, Christopher such you been a guest on the show. He’s a primary English reading specialist, he bangs out these micro tips on Twitter. And I just saw this just on just yesterday. So I just wanted to kind of get it on record. And this feels like a great time to do it. Jake, he had a really good tip about explaining things during worst examples. He says that as teachers, we will will think through like a really careful explanation or say it. And then if it doesn’t, if the kids don’t fully get it, or whatever doesn’t seem to work, what we’ll do is try and think of a different way to say it in a different way. Whereas what Chris says is maybe just say the same thing. Again, like if you’ve thought of a really good explanation, kids might just need to hear it two times or three times before it really sinks really sinks home, as opposed to keep trying to come out with his po potentially inferior explanations or different ways of saying it. And I just thought that was just quite a nice tip. So I just want
Jake Gordon 28:24 Yeah, and I think also, to maybe explain less, right, the whole idea is they’re going to learn more, probably, I’m assuming this is the case, from research and stuff, it seems to be the case, from my lessons, they’re going to learn more by self explaining it. So, you know, in my work examples, I skip out some steps, you know, I don’t write down parts of my working, because I want them to figure that out. And I do prompt them, you know, why did I write in number four over here? Where did this come from? Why did this not happen here? But it’s sometimes it’s the bits that you omit that helps them actually think a little bit more about what is really happening? Absolutely, yes, rather than by explaining it in five, six different ways. That’s lovely.
Craig Barton 29:02 Oh, Jake, boss, tip number three, please.
Jake Gordon 29:06 Right. So tip number three, is to try to teach from anywhere
Craig Barton 29:11 in the room. I should tease this before. So tell us about this.
Jake Gordon 29:15 Yeah, so gosh, okay, so okay, how do I go about doing this graphic. So there’s multiple different ways to teach anywhere in the room. And I’ve tried a few of those. And you don’t need to use software to do any of this as well. But there are different ways you can do it with different kinds of software, different kinds of hardware. I know people who get a Surface Pro, or an iPad or something and they’re gonna teach to the back of the room and the kids see like a mirror of what is on their screen. But then you have that problem based on Tip number two, which is there’s going to be that clutter still potentially there’s going to be toolbars at the top like the OneNote toolbars or whatever. So there are some potential problems with that one. Another one is you can go and use a graphics tablet. I know people who buy like 50 pound graphics tablets, and they’re standing at the back of the room. But if there’s no screen on the graphics tablet Then they’ve got a look at the board. And it’s quite hard to draw like an actual vertical line or horizontal line if you’re trying to do a graph or something. So yeah, so for me, teaching the back of the room often means or I’d like it to mean if the Wi Fi was good enough, taking a tablet to the back of the room, and sitting down next to a student, basically. So maybe a student who’s behaving poorly, or someone who needs a little bit of extra help with something, and taking a tablet and sitting down next to them, and starting to write on there, and do the work for examples wherever else it might be, or not the worst examples, and it’s something else in the lesson. And yeah, that’s, that’s the large part of what I mean here by teach anywhere in the room. But also, you’ve got now the tablet, and you can go and give that to someone else, you can give it to a student, and they can do the they can do the work as well. And I’ve done that quite a lot. My kids love to get the tablet, they love to start writing on it themselves and pass it around the room and all that they’re pointing out the problems live as they’re happening.
Craig Barton 30:55 Ah, this is interesting. So let me get this right. Jake, are you is something appearing on the big screen whilst you’re doing this? Or is this all just on the tablet?
Jake Gordon 31:02 Yeah, sorry. So the idea here is that the you’ve got a tablet at the back of the room, which is in sync with what’s on the board. So if you’ve got math University, comm slash whiteboard and your room code up on the board, and you’ve got the same one on your tablet, then as you write on the tablet, you get it on the board. But you can have an interface on your tablet, which shows you different pen colours and different options. And you can keep all of that clutter completely off the whiteboard. So there’s no toolbars on the whiteboard doesn’t know any of that. And you’re not even getting in the way of the board. Right? That’s one of the things about it is you’re not standing in front of the board, the kids can’t see something, you’re completely out the way they can focus on what’s happening on the board.
Craig Barton 31:36 I see the bid I miss there is the software or whatever you’re using your your website as their the kind of tool to do as I see. Right. Whereas if you use OneNote, you get the toolbars PowerPoint is a flippin disaster waiting to happen if you try to use it for that kind of thing, right? I see. So you use and is it the same? Is it a different different part of the website different URL than the one?
Jake Gordon 32:01 No, it’s completely the same. So math University, comm slash whiteboard, all of this stuff will work at massive but other same web address. And like I say this, this is the only thing that’s on the board on my screen the whole lesson. So there’s a power, but basically, my PowerPoint is the lesson. But I’ve got PowerPoint open on my on my desktop in edit mode rather than slideshow mode. So I’ve got all the toolbars and the thumbnails on the left, and I can add text and I can add pictures to icons wherever else I want to do on my desktop computer. And then that is kind of screen shared across to the whiteboard, except I cropped down. So it’s just the page area of it. So you don’t get all those toolbars. And then if I take a tablet to the back of the room, then I’ve also I can also see that, that on that tablet as well. So as I go between the slides, and I’d go between the slides using like one of these little USB presenter things, as I go between the slides on there, it changes what the kids see on the board, and it changes what I see on the tablet as well. Wow. So it’s kind of three screens, it’s quite hard. It’s quite hard to kind of explain it because it is quite technically complex, I guess. But it’s a little bit like using Microsoft Teams and doing it you’re casting your your screen so that everyone else can see it, except you’re just doing that locally, from one screen to the other and cropping it down. Plus, you’re remotely transmitting it to your tablet in the back of the room as well.
Craig Barton 33:22 This is lovely. And thank goodness, you’re going to do a video for us on this. Yeah, it really is. But it’s fascinating. I think I’ve seen one of your videos on this. And it was the cropping bit that I’d missed as well. It’s the fact you can have your desktop kind of as cluttered as you like, all your tools ready, but you’re just cropping. So it’s really just a blank canvas, essentially that the kids see. So you can really focus in on it. I really, really liked this. And it reminds me, Jake as well a kind of a real low tech way of doing this that I see a lot. I mean, you’re always really low tech as well. But even
Jake Gordon 33:55 I love low tech ways of doing things like sometimes I just keep the screen off completely and go, you know, just on the physical whiteboards, I much prefer white writing on physical whiteboards to the digital one at the front.
Craig Barton 34:06 No, and after I do what I like as well is to know what your view on this is. I’ve got this theory that there’s a bit of a however we do it there’s a bit of a disconnect between what we do at the board and what the kids do in their books. For real plain and simple reason that the kids in the boat the kids books have got like square little mini squares on there, the whiteboard is big blank, the kids book our piles, get these wrong around portraits, the whiteboard tends to be landscape, blah, blah, blah. Whereas what I really like is when teachers under the visualizer literally just have the exact same book that the kids have, and they do like the working out and the modelling so and they get the rulers out and the angle measures out not some fancy digital version, like literally what the kids are going to be using. And that it feels to me this fits in with your pedagogy, that it’s just it’s it’s stripping out all the tech and everything. And it’s just it reduces that disconnect so that literally what I’m doing In the board is the teacher, you know, you can do the exact same thing that I’m doing, because I’m using the same tools as you if that makes sense.
Jake Gordon 35:07 Yeah, yeah. Visually, I mean, visualizer really is the best way to do that I don’t currently have a visualizer. This is kind of, in a way, the second best way. But it’s also better in some other ways as well, like actually being able to, it takes a long time to get students come up to the board and do something, right. I rarely actually do that often they want to, and I’m thinking is it worth the 20 seconds of them getting out of their chair, and you know, finally getting their way to the board and then getting very embarrassed and not doing very well. And then another student wanting to go up, it just takes a long time. So if you can, if you kind of pass them a tablet to do on instead, and they just start writing on there. Yeah, but I think that’s generally a better solution than getting them up to the board
Craig Barton 35:47 was really interesting when in terms of so obviously, now you’ve got this set up, you can be anywhere in the room at any different point in time when you’re doing my Wi Fi work. When you’re doing your examples, and kind of explanations and so on, do you always tend to be at the front? Would there ever be an argument going into the class?
Jake Gordon 36:08 Yeah, so when so when I’m doing my work examples, that is literally just like one PowerPoint slide than another than another than another, except I’m doing it from my clicker at the back of the room. So I will tend to go to the back of the room, tenements have worked example. I’ll stand there wait for silence. And then I’ll just click through it. And I’m watching their heads to make sure they’re looking at the board. And then every now and then I go to the front of the room just to check their eyes are on the board. But yeah, generally, I’m out of the way. They’re not looking at me, I want them to be looking at the work not me. Wow,
Craig Barton 36:36 that’s fascinating. Yeah, really? Yeah, if not, for me, like, I’d need to be at the front to kind of gesture to kind of point what they need to be attending to at any one stage. Yeah, but I’ve got to, I’ve got to weigh up the pro of that versus the potential kind of distracting elements of having me there as well, that’s, yeah, I’m gonna have to,
Jake Gordon 36:55 there is a there is a software solution to that exact problem, Craig. So if you have a tablet with a pen and not an Apple Pencil, because Apple Pencil can’t, it doesn’t know, when it’s hovering over an Android tablet with a pen, then you’re doing something from from the tablet at the back of the room on my software, then you get a little yellow circle where you are. So you can highlight something on the board using that without actually standing there at the front. So as I hover my pen over somewhere, you can see a yellow.on the front. And yeah, that tells you what you do. Flip an aircraft, I’m gonna have to Oh, there’s another nice. There’s another nice feature as well that you’ve just done something. And then like, you can’t remember the order that you did something or the kids can’t remember. Okay, I can see the whole worked example on the board. But like, what did he do first. And there’s a really easy way to just like live replay everything that you’ve done on the current annotation. So that’s a little bit of a killer feature.
Craig Barton 37:50 Off, you’ve just dropped dropped Madden as a little bombshell at the end. Because that is mega powerful, right? Because it’s, it’s like the power of single works example live is exactly that you focus in on the order, it’s not just all the information, it’s what am I doing to get from line one to line two. And if you can already see line two, that’s nowhere near as powerful. But if you can then replay that and watch that unfold, you get all the advantages of watching something on a video and so on that you can see the audit feels like that is that feels big, you’re gonna have to do a video, it’s going to be some video this j to convey all that info. But that is, yeah, that is a lovely stuff. And
Jake Gordon 38:28 I’m looking at a way of kind of easily exporting those videos as well into like as a GIF into your PowerPoint file. So you can make it in the software that you can just copy and paste it into a PowerPoint. So I think that will help a lot of people
Craig Barton 38:40 flipping back. Right, Jake, what’s Tip number four, please?
Jake Gordon 38:44 Right? Tip number four is to modify your lessons as you go.
Craig Barton 38:49 Please tell us more.
Jake Gordon 38:53 Right, so I spend a lot of time planning lessons. I’m only my third year, this is my arc, UT, whatever it’s called now, probably spent too long planning. But yeah, so I like to plan but also sometimes part of planning is just to plan for there to be something that you’re going to do live in the lesson. And I’m sure we all do this, although maybe less. So now that like people have things like PowerPoint or Smart Notebook like some people do just kind of go through the PowerPoint, the whole lesson. That’s, that’s it, especially when like your department or your academy chain is making these things and you don’t really know what the content is or you know, but I think it’s really important that you do modify it as you go both in response to what the students are doing. And, and just generally because it’s enjoyable. Because it’s a fun thing to do. But yeah, definitely down to you know, checking for understanding. And if you realise that you’d thought well, the kids would know instantly how to do tree diagrams, you notice that they can’t, then you’ve got to go into it then you can’t just go on to the next slide.
Craig Barton 39:56 Yeah, this is this is a big one lesson again. It’s a way Shai was aware of this, my stay when I was at your stage of my teaching career as you RJ, because it’s, this is the kind of the Bane or the kind of weakness of many novice teachers is whatever they’ve planned, that’s what’s going to be delivered no matter what. So just a couple of questions on this. And is your planning? Is it done on a kind of per lesson basis? Or have you planned like three or four lessons in advance? How do you how do you plan what you’re going to teach generally?
Jake Gordon 40:26 So I’ve changed a lot over the last three years since I started teaching at one point, it was topic based, right now it is 5am. In the morning of the lesson, I do all my planning before school. So I don’t know if that’s necessarily sustainable. But I timebox it at the moment so that I don’t spend too long doing it in the evening. Almost all my planning is done in sort of a two, three hour time window in the morning. And there might be a little bit of thinking outside of that. But I’m generally a morning person, that’s a good time for me to do my planning.
Craig Barton 40:55 Got it? And would it be you say it used to be topic based, but now is it kind of per per lesson? So would you 5am, you’re looking at your kind of three, four or five lessons for the day. And you’re planning just those those lessons, not not the kind of what’s going to happen in the three or four lessons afterwards? Would that be right?
Jake Gordon 41:12 Yes, I’m just I’m just planning on the date based on the previous lesson very much flows on from that previous lesson, maybe we just started a worksheet where we’re going to start the next lesson, continuing with the same worksheet. But yeah, I try and put this little, at least a couple of slides in every PowerPoint, which are either blank or have like tiny text at the bottom just to prompt me on what to do on that one. So for example, we might have been doing some probability or about to start probability. And I’m going to write some words down to remind me of the kind of thing I’m going to be doing during the lesson, make it tiny, so that like, if the kids want to read it, they can but really, it’s just there to prompt me. And, and then I’m going to be using the physical whiteboards, I’m going to be using the tablet at the back of the room or something to actually kind of demonstrate something in the lesson based on the kinds of things that people have students are saying as they put their hands up. So it’s a great way to do some brainstorming. Again, you get the kids to put their hands up, you’re writing things down. But you can do that on a tablet, the back of the room, or you can do on your on your whiteboards or one thing that I like to do, because I’ve got PowerPoint open in edit mode, is I will actually start like putting a new textbox on the page and typing it. So I’m gonna be standing the front of the room, like with my keyboard at the ready, because it’s quicker for me to type on my keyboard. And it as the students through words at me or sentences, I’m just going to start typing those in and make them appear up on the screen for them.
Craig Barton 42:27 That’s nice, because obviously I was going to ask what the the, if you need to change your lesson mid flow. Again, it can be a bit fiddly, I’ve experienced this myself, I’ve planned the lesson on PowerPoint, I’ve done a check for understanding these clear the understanding isn’t there. So I’ve got to now do something about it. So then I have to, I’m a bit lost. Actually, sometimes I’ll I mean, the worst thing to do is I’ll try and create a new blank slide, but I have to call out my PowerPoint presentation to do this, create a new blank slide, then exactly as you say, I’m trying to find that little flipping thing in the bottom left hand corner, a PowerPoint to get my pen tool up and blah, blah. Because what I’d love to do is essentially kind of turn off the kind of projector or whatever. But so the projector sometimes takes about 20 minutes to warm back up again. So So that’s so what what you doing kind of tech wise, are you if you fit if you suddenly realise that you can’t go ahead onto the next slide of your presentation, you need to do something else. Where are you doing that something else, if that makes sense.
Jake Gordon 43:27 So ideally, I’m doing it on a tablet at the back of the room, if Wi Fi was working, but at the moment I’m usually doing on a physical whiteboards. Sometimes it’s like if I if I want to do some quick fire questions, I will do it with the interactive whiteboard at the front of the room in my software using the annotating feature, because it is so quick and easy to change between colours, it’s so quick and easy to blank out the slide to undo something. And so for example, one lesson I’ve done, I’ve done this lesson several times is with parallel lines. So I will very quickly with my with my finger on the whiteboard, I will just draw two two lines, then a transversal across them. And I will highlight one of the angles and I will say okay, what angle is this? Maybe if I’ve actually bothered to give out the mini whiteboards, they’ll do that on mini whiteboards, otherwise, I’ll get them to put their hands up or allow students at random to tell me what the angle is going to be. And as soon as they’ve done that question, I then just flick two fingers up to wipe the board and they start doing another question. It’s the I think with some things like PowerPoint, it just takes too long to do things like switch between colours, it takes too long to blank out the slide that you end up not doing it that way. But I’ve really designed this software to make things super light, all the things I actually want to do live really, really quick. So switching between five different colours to highlighters and raising wiping the whole board. I’ve tried to make this thing so incredibly quick that it’s really easy to do things like
Craig Barton 44:50 pay is exciting stuff again, I’ve been messing around with this Jake but I feel like I’m only kind of just scratching the surface of some of the things that the your your site can do. So that’s that’s fantastic. Alright, Jake, what is your fifth and final tip for us please?
Jake Gordon 45:04 Write fifth and final tip is to give students worked examples with their retrieval status. All
Craig Barton 45:12 right, this sounds a bit controversial. I like it right? Tell me exactly what this looks like and why you do it.
Jake Gordon 45:19 I should have printed one off, that’s my, here we go. This is sort of one board over here. So I do that. So students basically get for four questions. Here you go. These are ones that I’ve answered myself. Yeah, I guess people listening can’t can’t hear it. And then next to that they’ve got four similar questions with worked examples on them as well. So all kind of hand drawn solutions to these just similar questions, not the the same numbers, it’s different numbers, right. And they have it printed, it’s printed off for per page. So it’s gonna save a bit of paper. As they come into the room, they’ve got on their desk, six questions to do in a grid. But if they’re stuck on any of those questions, they can turn over that piece of paper, and they got work solutions to similar columns, but not the same ones on the back.
Craig Barton 46:06 is good, that is good.
Jake Gordon 46:08 And this, this, this comes from my year 10. class last year, because we had to give them corporate maths five days, which, which is brilliant. I think it’s brilliant in many different ways, especially for those students who are in the top sets. But when you’ve got a class and their confidence is generally quite low. It’s sort of that foundation class somewhere at the bottom in your in your year group. And they sit they see that grid, and it’s too hot. And they they there’s no way in, right that they’re looking at those questions. They can’t do them just getting demoralised. And you’re starting this lesson with students who think they can’t do maths. And I just don’t think that’s fair, I think we’re setting them up to fail. If we’re doing it if we’re given them questions, which I guess I guess there we should be given them questions, which is, which are slightly easier, but then they’re not going to get that harder content as well. So I want to give them questions at the at the level that I want them to be working out. But if they can’t do them, they can just turn that over. And they’ve got some work solutions to help them. So it also reduces the beginning of the lesson, you’re doing the register, you’re trying to deal with maybe some behaviour issues in the room and, and other things going on, bring up your PowerPoint, whatever else it might be. So you want the students to be able to help themselves as much as possible. And that’s a big thing for me. I think I think you’re a big believer in giving students answers to worksheets. Is that right as well? Yes. Yeah. So it’s a similar thing here, except it’s not the answer. It’s a work solution that’s going to help them with those with those questions.
Craig Barton 47:26 Jig that is one of the best ones to last year that that’s absolutely. If we do that, and starters, one of the now to be effective is that the kids have got to be able to get on. Absolutely right. You see a lot of students even though that for whatever reason, they can’t access one of the questions, you just sit there. They’re asking you, and then you can’t get on with whatever it is that you have given them help. But not giving them the raffle and the fact you’re not giving them the amp, they can do a bit of work with the with the with. It’s really powerful. So a few questions for you on. How long does that take into to put together like one of the six and then yeah, the six words. Yeah,
Jake Gordon 48:22 so I’ve, it’s I’ve put about 72 Different, different skills together so far. Now, I want to have done a lot more. But I find it very hard to motivate myself to do this. But I’ve got 72 different skills, each one has four days worth of the same questions. The idea is that the students are going to do the same question four days in a row, except different numbers, right. But they’re getting to know that skill. So they’re really mastering it by the end of like a week’s worth of lessons. It takes me about 15 minutes roughly to do each of these skills. But it’s hard to motivate myself to do that. But once I’ve made them, I put them on my website, and then anyone can use them. So that’s the important part for you to use them. It’s gonna take you about like 20 seconds to put together one of these grids from my website.
Craig Barton 49:07 Okay, next question, how and the bulk of on this Jay? How are you choosing what? To assess them together to retrieve what’s your what’s your strategy?
Jake Gordon 49:22 So I’d like it to be very scientific, but we’ve only 72 that I’ve made so far. It’s yeah, which ones haven’t they done yet that we’ve already covered in the scheme of learning or that I could kind of pre teach them on a little bit here. So I try and vary around a bit. So all this stuff is on my website at Massey University comm slash skills. And I’ve got various different ways I’m going to extend this in the future as well. But there’s a way to basically locally save without having to log in which skills you’ve given the students before. So you kind of create a class you know, year 8x, two, whatever it might be. You set six different skills for them and it’s kind of a drag and drop interface. You are choosing which skills to have it for that week, and and then when it comes to the next week, it will kind of grey out the ones you’ve already done the previous week. So you don’t do those ones again. But I’m creating them at the moment kind of based on the scheme of learning in my current school. So I’ve kind of got things based on that. But the idea is to be able to create different schemes or learning from that in the future as well. And yeah, have it in some sort of intelligent way. So that there’s some spacing between different topics during the year or during the whole curriculum in a school.
Craig Barton 50:27 Right, well, and final couple of questions on this idea that as I’ve just said, the kids can leave no extra stuff. And if they’re stuck, they can turn the page over and have an example. Once the kids have you know, spent. Are you just projecting answers up? How are you checking? Yep? What’s the how do you wrap that process up?
Jake Gordon 50:52 Yes, I’ve changed the process a bit since I started making these about a year and a half ago. So the current process is I will have my PowerPoint slide in that slide, there will be a link to the six questions. So these six questions they’re just saved in a link basically just saves what codes, these questions. The next slide will be the six questions themselves, that’s what’s going to be on the board as the students come on the room in the room, that’s going to be on the front side of the sheet in front of them. And then the next slide is going to be the solutions to those which is it’s not the ones on the back of the sheet, is it because that’s solutions to the previous day’s questions, basically, but so I’ve got, I’ve got my PowerPoint all set up in that way. And before the lessons, I’ve chosen my six questions, I then click on that link, and then hit print, and it automatically prints it for per page, double sided Save, save paper, which is always nice. And the students come into the room, they’ve got around about four or five minutes to work on these questions in silence. So like I say that it’s really a sign I’m not going around and telling them or you’re doing really well. None of that even just really, really is in silence. After those five minutes, I’ve done the register as well, if I’ve had to like read out their names there, I say to them, and talk in your pairs. And then they are discussing each with each other. They’re going over their answers to see if they got the same answer as each other to see if they can help each other at all. So there is that period of silence and then they’ve got a time to talk through the answers together. And then maybe a minute into that 30 seconds, two minutes, depending on how they’re getting on. I’m going to go and project the answers on the board. I don’t even tell them I’ve projected them on and then 30 seconds later I tell them the answer on the board, they can check them. Sometimes we might discuss some of the questions. Oh, the other thing I do is I write down answers on a little bit of paper before the lesson or in like the first 30 seconds of the lesson. And then I just go around the room with that little piece of paper. And all I’m saying to the students is No, that’s wrong. Let’s try that one. Again. I’m not really giving them much more guide than that. If it feels like they need a bit more guide, we’ll just be have a look at the back. Like have a look at the word solution try and figure out for yourself.
Craig Barton 52:51 What’s compact, I first thought that the answers are that’s it that’s a game changer I have in that like the lesson has these days and I’ve been guilty of this myself where you wander around the room, you’ll try to run somewhere to know what the answer is because it’s on your desk or whatever. And if
Jake Gordon 53:13 that’s something I’ve only started doing in the last couple of weeks I’m I got this like pile of bits of paper like this size, I just do a quick grid and I copy down from a slide like a freeze one of the one of the things on the board for them to see I write down the six answers and I’m just looking if they’ve got those right or not, basically, and I’m just saying No, that’s wrong. I’m not giving them tips as I go around because that’s going to take too long. They just generally assumed if I’ve been over their shoulder and I’ve seen their work it’s correct unless I’ve told them it’s unless I told them it’s wrong.
Craig Barton 53:43 I really like that and the other thing
Jake Gordon 53:45 of course I’m looking for I’m looking for problems as well right I’m looking for misconceptions. I’m looking for common mistakes, I might if lots of people are making the same mistake I might say something like the answer to question one isn’t 12 Or I might say Don’t Don’t forget your units. I’m fed up or kids not putting their units on like they’ve done it math, like they got the quantity right but they just haven’t put centimetre squared or whatever on the end so I might give them a few little hints like that. And then if there is something they haven’t mentioned during that larger period of silence then before I put the solutions up, I might say Okay, question three you know lots of us have got this wrong let’s go into this one together. got it got it.
Craig Barton 54:20 There’s a couple of final things I really love about massive fan of the combination of letting our own first but then before answers come up to useless with the person next to them because it solves so many problems and by snap chance at the same conversation with loads of different shoes I love the final absolutely love is that you not then this is how you do question when watch me everybody or how do you get one blah blah, blah. It’s all the answers are on the board. The kids can you can then deal with any problems versus yeah Who’s got who’s got 1234 and five, right and his weight and feet? It got to sit and watch you take, I think where it’s gonna fail to serve on the board. Because I’m the exact thing that they need to focus on. I’m a big advocate for that.
Jake Gordon 55:14 That’s right. And again, it’s not just the answer on the board, it is a work solution, answer to that question. So if they don’t understand how the number got there, they can hopefully follow through as they’re sticking it into their book or whatever. Yeah, how to get to that answer. And then that’s then going to be the work solution that’s on the back of the next day sheet, which is going to have similar questions on
Craig Barton 55:35 that is clever. Yeah, I’m gonna need to rethink doing it. I never thought to combine the do now with the related buys, God will flip it out. Jake, this has been amazing. They’re five absolutely incredible tips, and you’re gonna supplement some of these. Absolutely brilliant. So let me hand back over to you. What do you want with your website? So just tell us tell us where we can find that. Is there anything else you want?
Jake Gordon 56:03 Um, no, no, I mean, not particularly. I’m as of May on Twitter, I can’t even remember the handle was at Jake G. Maths, I think put a link on Jake G maths on Twitter. But yeah, the website is math universe.com. And the two big things on there is slash whiteboard and slash skills slash whiteboard is the thing I use every single lesson since January. Now that’s what’s on the whiteboard at the front of the room. That’s what kids see during the lesson. And that’s the thing that does the synchronisation with your phone so that you can take the photos so you can use a tablet at the back of the room, all that stuff. And the other one is math University comm slash skills. And that’s where I’m putting this skills database together, where it’s like, super, super simple to make a printed worksheet for per page, double sided for the starters. And I’m going to be hopefully, especially if people use it more, I’m going to be adding more of those, because I run out with them with my classes, right? So I’ve got only 72 of them. So I’m gonna order I’ve done these questions too recently. Let’s let’s make some more. So there will be more coming if people like them and want to help make some as well then I guess, that I’ve got a PowerPoint, template PowerPoint, and they can maybe like, contact me and tell me Yeah, I want to make someone you know, whatever topics I haven’t done yet. And that’ll be that’ll be useful.
Craig Barton 57:09 I think. I’ve absolutely loved every minute of this, Jake. I’ve got loads to think about loads of little. That’s brilliant. So J Gordon, thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much. Great
Craig Barton 0:00 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. This episode I had the pleasure of speaking to English Teacher and Author Mark Roberts and this is a great one. Four quick things before we start. Firstly, sponsor slots for the podcast are open. So if you want to let the world’s most interesting listeners know about your book, product or event, just drop me an email. Number two, you can view videos of all marks tips on the tips for teachers website. These videos are great to share in a department meeting or training session. Number three, you can sign up to the tips for teachers newsletter, to receive a tip in your inbox most Monday mornings to travel with your classes in the coming week. And finally, and this is probably the most important one for me on a selfish level. If you find the podcast useful, please could you take a moment to review it on your podcast player of choice. It really does make a difference. Thanks so much. Okay, back to the show. Let’s get learning with today’s guest the wonderful Mark Roberts spoiler alert. Here are marks five tips. Tip one, use posting notes to find out what they don’t understand. Tip two, use non verbal gestures for better behaviour management. Number three, don’t give negative managerial feedback. Tip Four stop talking about great. Tip Five, rephrase to amaze. It’s a really good old machine. If you look at the episode description on your podcast player, or visit the episode page on tips for teachers.co. UK, you’ll see a timestamp to these tips. So you jump straight to anyone you want to listen to first of all we listen. Enjoy the show
well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Mark Robertson the tips for teachers podcast. Hello, Mark, how are you?
Mark Roberts 1:56 I’m fine, Greg. Good evening, it was good to speak to you.
Craig Barton 1:59 Good to speak to you too. And for the benefit of listeners. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself ideally in a sentence?
Mark Roberts 2:05 Yeah. So I currently work at Carrickfergus Grammar School in Northern Ireland. I’m the country’s first director of research. And I also teach English as well.
Craig Barton 2:16 Amazing, right? I’d say well, let’s dive straight in, what’s your first tip you’ve got for us today.
Mark Roberts 2:21 So my first tip is to make sure that you use post it notes to find out what they don’t understand. Now, this is specifically a particular time in your curriculum sequence. And I use these post it notes in the lead up to assessments. And the reason I do this, I’ll explain first of all, what I used to do, and then why I do what I do and how it works in practice. But what I used to do is say to students, does anybody have any questions about this assessment that we’ve got coming up? And sure enough, you know, one or two students would put their hands up? Because I’ve since realised that asking students any questions is just about the most pointless question that you can ask. And that there’s actually research that’s been done into students their response when you ask them any questions, and they don’t answer because they’re worried that if they put their hand up and say, I don’t understand this, that they’re gonna look stupid in front of their peers. So I wanted to get around this. And it took me a little bit of time to cut them onto the fact that they did have questions, they just weren’t going to publicly admit them. And I tried different things where I’d go round and ask each table, you know, can anybody tell me one thing that worried about and that wasn’t working either. So So one dad said, Okay, I’ve had enough of this, gave them all a post it notes anonymously, I want you to write down, every single person has to write down one thing about the upcoming assessment that they’re worried about, that they don’t understand that they’d like me to come over, go over again. It can be anything at all, there’s no stupid questions, everybody’s got to do one. And then what they do they come and stick them on the board whenever they’re done. And what I do in the lesson, if I can cover them, or if not in the next one or two lessons, I go through these post it notes and I answer them one by one. But I say one by one actually, what you find is that tends to be patterns where students usually have the same kind of worries, the same kind of misconceptions, the same kind of things that I’ve not taught effectively, are not explained carefully. And I start to group them together, and we’ll start to answer them within topics. And one thing that’s particularly helpful, it gives me immediate feedback in terms of areas that I need to cover rather than just asking them generally what they think. And secondly, I think it’s really reassuring for students to know that actually, they they’re usually worried about the same kind of things and that they’re not this anomaly where they they’re stupid and they’ve struggled with something and that is something that is brought about from students saying, you know, No nothing I want to ask to having some fun from every single person in the class.
Craig Barton 5:04 While I love this, I absolutely love this right. So 211 kind of observation. And one question for you here, Mark. Yeah, so the observation is, I completely agree with you with this. Anybody got any questions? I used to ask that for years and years and years. And I’ll tell you the mistake I made, I assumed that silence was a signal of understanding. So if nobody said anything, I just assume everyone must get it. But of course, it’s, if anything, it’s the complete opposite. If if if people aren’t saying anything, and it’s either that they’re, as you say, too scared, they don’t want to be embarrassed in front of their peers, or sometimes they’ve such a lack of understanding that they can’t even formulate exactly what it is they want to ask the question about. So yeah, getting rid of as anybody got any questions, that’s been a big improvement in my teaching. So I love that. But here’s my question for you. Whenever REM I use diagnostic questions, and I say to students, okay, 321, show me your answers. And they vote ABCD. What you often get is like a tactical delay, where you’ll get some kids who just wait that extra second just to check what their mates have done. And then they’ll either swap their answer to match that, or they’ll stick with their answer if a lot of other people have gone for it. I’m just wondering, even though you anonymized the post it notes, you get that some kids just want to wait a little bit until a few post it notes are on the board is is there a way that you just ensure that even with this strategy, you’ve got that students are still kind of open and willing to share their questions, if that makes sense?
Mark Roberts 6:28 Yeah, it’s a fair point, I think that the beauty of of sticking them on the board, even students who sat really nearby can’t actually read what are on the other students post it notes. So there’s less that that sense of I’ll just put what they put. And also I get them to do it right at the start of the lesson. Usually when I’m doing my retrieval practice, and it’s very much individually in silence. And I’ll go around and just make sure that that’s not happening. So I usually get questions from from our students. And there’s usually a range even within the same topics. And some of them are really, really basic questions such as, can you tell me how long the assessment is? What what do we do if we can’t remember a quotation or things like this, whereas others will be particularly specific and technical? You keep mentioning this one particular word, can you give me a definition of it again, because I’m still struggling with it. So you get a whole range of questions. And I just find it particularly useful and I’ve not had any kind of pushback or complaints about it. It’s something that they all just just go along with now. I love it.
Craig Barton 7:32 I love it. All. Right, Mark, what is tip number two, please.
Mark Roberts 7:37 So tip number two is to use nonverbal gestures for better behaviour management.
Craig Barton 7:44 Tell me why you’ve intrigued me straightaway.
Mark Roberts 7:46 I’m gonna give you seven reasons why I think students, white students respond much better to nonverbal gestures, rather than being told explicitly. And I think that this is something that I’ve posted about before I’ve tweeted about this, and it’s gathered a real lot of attention. And for me, it’s something that I just always assumed was a bit of a no brainer, that the less that you have to talk as a teacher is a good thing. So the first thing is that it saves your voice I know is we’re coming towards the end of the year, that’s a really important thing. As a teacher, I know when I get to this stage of the year, I start to get increasingly croquet. So on a very practical level, just putting your finger to your lips, instead of having to say can you be please be quiet is saving the vocal cords. The second thing is it stops you from disrupting the flow of your explanations or if you’re reading aloud or something. So say for example, today, I was reading to my, your eighth class, notice that a couple of students were just having a tiny little off task, little giggle at each other very low key, but I could kind of give them the signal, look down your phone. And I could carry on reading at the same time. So it’s really seamless. And it stops me from having to add that kind of cognitive load of stopping the rest of the cluster to tell some one off. The other thing is that it doesn’t draw attention to those particular students. If I just said the two students names be quiet, immediately, it brings attention to them. And some students like that attention because it brings them that the kind of kudos of the social rewards of being shown that you’re messing around. So it takes away the opportunity to do that. Which also The next reason is it avoids any kind of conflict. You know, you’re always picking on me, you’re always, you know, saying I’m doing stuff wrong. And I know there’s a few students that I teach that if I said to them, you know, can you stop doing that? It would immediately get their backs up. But if I if I just kind of give them a lock or if I kind of point to say sit down or something like that, immediately, it reduces that sense of confrontation. Now, the other thing is, and I think this is massive for teachers, is it’s proactive, it’s preventative. So rather than allowing things to escalate, and getting to the stage where I’ve got to stop giving out warnings, and demerits, and so on, it enables me to do something in a way that’s nipping something in the board, without really anybody else noticing, immediately. And that the next part of that is that it really can reduce your stress levels, you can be really calm by not having to raise your voice, you might kind of raise the intensity of your stare when you give them that look, things like that. But it’s something that a lot of the research that I’ve read around teacher wellbeing shows that that proactive gestures can really cut out this sense of stress and anxiety that we feel when we get into that kind of conflict situation. And the final reason is that these signals are pretty much universally understood. So there’s not really that that issue around am I saying something in a potentially sarcastic tone, I’ve said something that comes across as a bit snappy. Instead, if I if I turn my fingers around like that to say, sit down, it’s obvious what I’m saying. And they all understand that. So yeah, seven reasons why you should use those nonverbals.
Craig Barton 11:24 I love I love anything like I love anything that like this, these little kind of micro Tips and Tips within tips. I absolutely love this right up my street, there’s so so again, same thing, kind of one observation, the flow thing isn’t something I’d considered before. But you’re absolutely right, there is nothing worse than when you’re mid flow through an explanation or a student’s given a response. And then you have to stop because somebody’s messing around. And then you’ve then got to try and reset and think where you’re at. And you know, you’ve lost a load of the kids and are so annoying. So this nonverbal, I absolutely love that. Now, the thing I was gonna say is, so I record these interviews, we put these out as an audio podcast, and we also chop them up as videos and put them in as videos. I’m always trying to push more people to the video. So this is a perfect opportunity. Give us some of the best gestures here, Mark What so this is for the benefit of the podcast listeners, you’re gonna have to watch the video on this. What are some of the big hitters? So you’ve done the the kind of turn around? I’m
Mark Roberts 12:22 sure she’s obviously well, no, you’ve also got the kind of settle down yet like you should be reading now. Ah, nice. You should be writing now. You’ve also got the kind of the finger work should not be should not be doing that. And then also you can do the kind of like referee Get a move on on of signal. Yes, yes. Come here. Those kinds of things. So yeah, so that’s the ones that they kind of come to mind. And then of course the classic the teacher stare
Craig Barton 13:06 I love it. I absolutely love those. So podcast, listeners will have to hop on the video to see the full range of those. I also love just the final point, HELOC. The fact that it almost again, I never considered this before to you’ve just mentioned that the fact that you can be more consistent with these nonverbal ones because there’s not that change in the either the tone of your voice, the pitch the volume of your voice. So you can I mean, we all were always told with behaviour, that consistency is a really important thing. You deliver these signals in the same way to every single child that so it’s not the case that sometimes you’re a bit more tired, you’re in a bad mood yourself, so you lose it a bit more. It’s always a sign that feels like it’s a really important part of this. Yeah. Fantastic. Robach, what is tip number three?
Mark Roberts 13:51 Okay, this next one is a little bit bigger. So, when you’re giving feedback, don’t give negative managerial feedback. I’m gonna have to explain that that term. It’s a term that I first came across in the work of Carolyn Morgan 2001, this study came out. And she defined negative managerial feedback is feedback that is obsessed with task completion, presentation, those kinds of study habits, rather than necessarily the work itself. And the reason I became really interested in is in it is that she found in her research that boys are far more likely to get that kind of feedback, whereas girls are far more likely to get feedback that improves them as learners. So the kind of thing that you often see with written feedback, you should have finished this. Why are all the boxes filled in? I expect more detail for this. This is to scruffy, you need to use pencil instead of pen. Those kinds of things I’ve even seen is this it question mark written on unbox and my hamsters those were clearly obviously it is it because it had demography it wasn’t, but those kinds of things. Now, I’m not saying that presentation is not important and I’m not saying that productivity is not important but when we obsess with how much boxes have been filled in rather than looking at the actual quality of the work and what they’ve done that could be improved and, and getting down to the nitty gritty of the success criteria. When we do that we’re sending out these messages that say, we we care more about whether boxes are filled in rather than you think in art. And I know that Mary Maya speaks and writes about this really eloquently as you would expect. And it’s something that I see frequently that teachers are doing. And when when teachers say, Well, you know, I want to I want to control the presentation, I don’t want it to be sloppy, and so on. And so what you can have those kinds of conversations, but don’t make that the main feature of your feedback, don’t make it the only thing that you pick out on if you’ve bothered to sit down and mark their books, or you bother to give them verbal feedback. And all you’re talking about is those kinds of things, you’re creating this really negative relationship, whilst at the same time, you’re not really helping them know what they need to do to get better. And this research shows that it leads with students who get this kind of feedback, it leads to them enjoying activities, less, they lose confidence in their own ability. And they do also start to dislike the teacher. So there’s various reasons why you shouldn’t do it. But I think it’s something that teachers often fall into the trap of doing this, you know, they’re frustrated, they’ve marked 17 books, and they keep on seeing this same kind of trend. They’re frustrated and they kind of take it out on the on the ink and and that’s something that I think we need to really reconsider. While this
Craig Barton 16:57 is a good one, you’ve you’ve got me thinking again, you Mike I love there. So so the first thing that springs to mind, I don’t think I’ve done one of these interviews yet where I haven’t referenced Dylan William, I always like when he says about feedback that it should improve the the learner, not the work, not the specific task. And this feels right up the street of of second second thing says, I’ve been guilty of all these mark, because it’s so easy to give that kind of feedback, isn’t it? Because it’s very visual, isn’t it? Like if you see a scruffy piece of work, it’s the first thing you notice is that it’s scruffy. Or if you’ve given some rule, like you’ve always got to underline whatever, it’s so easy to spot that hasn’t been done. So I’ve definitely been guilty of all that. I find it fascinating that the research suggests that it’s given to boys more than girls, it’s one of those things now doesn’t surprise me that you’ve sat at some thinking that’s exactly what I’m doing when or when I’m giving feedback to buy. So this This is terrible. So my my big question for you is, and it’s a bit of an unfair question, but I’ve got to ask it. So if you’ve got someone in your class, who is really, really their work is really scruffy, it’s really poorly presented. And the thing is, we know that their work, like there’s some good stuff in their work. But we also know that if they produce that kind of work in an exam, they’re going to do well to get a lot of the marks because the examiner is not going to take the time to read it perhaps that we would do and so on and so forth. How do we help that child improve their presentation, because my go to would be to write those kinds of things on their work. But now I realise that’s not a good idea.
Mark Roberts 18:21 So let’s say a student’s work is genuinely illegible. That is a massive issue. And we can’t leave that we have to do something about that. So I’m not necessarily talking about students, so you just can’t understand it. That’s a real problem. And that has to be tackled. But we’re talking scruffy is different to illegible. And if it’s something that it’s indicative of a kind of poor attitude towards their work and not really paying attention and so on, rather than the fact that they’ve not got particularly neat habits in my exercise books were never particularly needs, my handwriting is pretty, pretty ropey. But if it is something where you think this is an issue, what I’ll do is when I’m giving my feedback to them, and usually I do this verbally, I’m not a big fan of market. I’ll talk to them about their work, I’ll talk to them about things that I want them to improve on real areas that they can develop. And then often a bit later, usually on the way I’ll ever quit work with them. I’ll just say one other thing I want you to think about is just look at the state of your book and just show to me that you really care about it. And just smarten up a bit with your efforts. And I think that that because I’ve spent a lot of time giving them that that helpful feedback, they’re far more likely to take it on board.
Craig Barton 19:38 Absolutely. And final one just on this mark. Now, if anybody was sad enough to listen to these and do a drinking game at the same time, many whiteboards will be a good thing to have a shot to because it comes up every single conversation. I’m thinking here that I visit quite a lot of high performing schools that aren’t particularly bothered about students exercise books, and I’m talking from a maths perspective here, because they realised that the the kind of the the way to get good at maths is just to do maths. And if you spend in 10 minutes trying to set a question out really neatly versus 10 minutes answering five questions, as long as they’re legible as you say, you’re better off doing doing the latter. I just wonder whether mini whiteboards another potential benefit of them here is for those students who are a bit scruffy, one encourages them to write a little bit bigger to you don’t have that permanence that is like scruffy work in their book that’s always there. You know, it doesn’t matter. If you scruffy the mini whiteboard, hold it up, and now we can rub it off or what watch it. What’s your view on that?
Mark Roberts 20:34 Yeah, I think that makes sense. And I, I think that the question you’re asking, though, is kind of what what are our exercise books for? Yeah, if they’re there that is just there to allow you to do lots of practice. And to, you know, to write down the answers to retrieval practice and things like that, that’s fine. But I suppose that we were hopeful that they’re going to be really useful when it comes to revision as well, when it comes to them using them for study skills. And I suppose this is where the presentation side of it comes into it. And people think, Okay, well, if they take really effective neat notes, they’re far more likely to use them. I think that it is a bit of both isn’t that I think that you on the one hand, you don’t want them to obsess about everything being neat and underlined carefully and spending hours on that. But on the other hand, you would like to think that there are certain parts, at the very least, where they’re using Cornell notes, and so on, and that they’re going to be really effective. Basis is for the study. So I think a bit of both to be honest, but yeah, there’s certainly no reason why you can’t make greater use of the mini whiteboards as a way to get away from this obsession.
Craig Barton 21:41 Just just one bonus question on this mark. I’m always I love speaking to non mathematicians about this. So my theory or my view on maths exercise books is that kids never ever use them for revision, like once they’ve been used in the lesson. Forget it, because it’s so hard for two reasons. One, it’s so hard to find what you know, in your exercise, but what you want to revise, it’s often kind of scattered all over the place. But to that it’s very hard to wait. It’s quite a poor technique to revise math simply by rereading your notes or whatever you want to really be doing it. And it is quite hard to quiz yourself using an exercise. But how does it work in English, like Dickens genuinely use their exercise books and classwork to revise in an effective way.
Mark Roberts 22:24 I think certain parts that say for example, we watch a documentary that allows enables you to have context into the background of one of the novels that you’re studying. And you get them to take notes using the Cornell notes format. And that’s something that then can be put into flashcards and they can use them as part of their revision. One of the things that I strongly encourage my students to do is if if we write practice paragraphs in lessons and they do a really good practice paragraph, or maybe they write down my model paragraph or something like that, I then ask them to try to memorise chunks of that to use in the exam. So they might use bits of it that are going to go on to flashcards or that they might use them to incorporate them into new practice essays. So I think there is a little bit more of a sense that they are useful springboards for revision.
Craig Barton 23:14 Got Fantastic. Okay, Mark, tip number four, please.
Mark Roberts 23:20 Okay, it’s funny, you mentioned that deliberately. And because I’m going to mention him in this next one. And it’s about teaching in the classroom trying to stop talking about grades wherever possible. And I think there’s, there’s various reasons for this one, I will go back to the classic William Black 1998, or the black box stuff, where if you stick grades on marking, we know that they don’t focus on the actual feedback. And we know that it can lead to them avoiding Tricky, tricky work in future. And there’s all of the kind of issues around settling for the expected grades, the minimum grades, those kinds of things. And I think that’s that’s something that a lot of teachers probably understand that if we keep saying to a student, you know, if you work on this, it will, it will change it from a grade three to grade four, it might limit them to thinking only about just getting a grade four. But I think that the deeper issues with it as well. And it comes down to all of ideas around intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And I think that the more that we talk about grades, which are really these external factors, this idea of passing grades, getting a certain grade passing exams to get something out of it, you know, you get a place onto Sixth Form to do a levels. Or you might get some kind of reward from your parents, if you do particularly well. Or you might see that it is a kind of a stepping stone to a particular career where you’re going to be well paid off, or all these kinds of things. Or it might be that you get the recognition of doing really well and you get one over your peers and so on all these kinds of external extrinsic factors, the research, particularly around boys shows that it’s not a healthy type of motivation to have. And that students who are intrinsically motivated by the fact that they study and they learn for the joy of knowing more about their topic and becoming more knowledgeable and being more skilled at a particular subject, that’s far more likely to lead to long term academic success. So I think that if we keep on going in our feedback going on about grades, and going on about Mark schemes and going on about Mark bands, and so on, we’re falling into this trap of encouraging students to have these extrinsic motivations rather than the more intrinsic if you if you would develop this, you’re going to become an even more skilled mathematician, that kind of thing.
Craig Barton 25:54 Another biggie, this one flipping, right. Okay, so a few few things on this. So the first is, yeah, I mean, I won’t name the particular school. But one, one school I worked at the policy was the all the kids as soon as they got a new exercise book at the front of the book, big on the I’m talking on the cover here. They’re big target grades. So whether it was a or six or something like that. And you’re absolutely right. The problem was for some kids, like that target grade for start was based on SAT scores, and they had a tutor for the SATs, and they were never gonna get it in a million years. So they were so far away from it, that it was no motivation whatsoever. And if you say all the kids will just settle on that, and think, Well, I’ve got that in a particular assignment. So let’s just ease off for the rest of the year. So yeah, definitely, definitely see that along. And now, when I was writing my first book, I tried to get my head around all the literature on rewards and extrinsic. And actually, it’s a flipping nightmare markets, really, I find it really confusing. So one of the things I picked up on is that whilst intrinsic motivation is obviously the dream that we’ve got to go to, sometimes you perhaps need a bit of extrinsic motivation to kind of kickstart this kind of virtuous cycle where you then put a bit more effort in, then you find out you’re doing a bit better, you enjoy the subject a bit more. So you put a bit more effort in and so on, would you bind to this degrades play a role in that in in any way? Like, if a kid’s like not doing much work? And you say, What, you’re in danger of failing here. But if you put a bit of effort in or Well, now you’ve improved it by too great. Does that play any role in the short term? Do you think at all?
Mark Roberts 27:28 No, I’m not convinced, I appreciate that the kind of dichotomy between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, it’s not that simple. And we all have certain elements of extrinsic factors that motivate us and so on, you know, obviously, we go to work because we’re paid. But we stay in jobs in the long run, because we get the satisfaction out of the job, we feel valued. So yes, there may be these these kind of little short term influences. But I’m convinced that that taking grades out of your conversation in the classroom, really reduces that not just the the intrinsic motivation for students reviews reduces the concept of extra extrinsic factors, it also takes a bit of pressure off them. And there’s not this sense of constantly having to think about the exams all the time. And when students say to me, you know, what’s my target grade or stuff like that, I’ll say what you mentioned, you know, I can go on the computer if you want, and I can have a look. And it’ll tell me, what you should be getting based on what the computer thinks you will like it 11, we can do that if you want. I don’t think that’s going to be particularly useful. But we can do that if you want. And I always say to them, if you do what I’ve asked you to do, and if you keep working on these particular areas, the greater the exams will take care of themselves. So let’s not get bogged down by worrying about that. As far as I’m concerned, we’re going to work on becoming better at English. And over time, anything can happen. And I just think that this is something that we start to limit students ourselves as well. If at the start of the year you go on and have a look at all your classes target grades, you start to think okay, well, yeah, yeah. Okay, so he’s gonna be a baby. And I want I want to do this, actually, again, I won’t name schools or anything, but I want to have a teacher at the start of the year, start of year 10. Set out all the rows of students, the grade fours are at the front, grapevines, the next, and so on. And I was like, why are you doing that? Oh, well, it enables me to get around and offer them more kind of precise differentiation. And I said, alright, well, you’ve decided what they’re gonna get right at the start of the year, in a two year course. Oh, yeah. I’ve not thought of it like that. So I just think that it influences also influences students and whilst there may be some short term boost out of it, in the long run, those kinds of performance goals, those kind of performance targets, don’t help them it makes students lose Confidence, it makes students feel as if they’re going to be found out in the long run. And it makes them more likely to avoid complex tasks. Where if we just say, Okay, let’s not worry about grades, let’s just worry about becoming better at this. And we’ll see what happens.
Craig Barton 30:14 Right. Okay, let me let me push it a little bit on this one. Now, I will say for the record, I’m almost entirely on board with you here. But let me just ask you two things. So the firstly, just on a practical level, if you mark an assignment, or maybe even a mock exam or whatever, do you put a grade on that? Or is it just a mark? And could you argue the Mark has the same impact as the grade? Or are they different?
Mark Roberts 30:37 There’s certain times when you This is unavoidable. So absolutely, when it comes to these big assessments, where my school we key stage three, we use a percentage out of 100. We bounced that up against the average score within the year group, and so on, so that they parents get an understanding the students get an understanding of where they are roughly. And when we get to do so, so us and we do mock exams, yes, we give them a percentage, and we give them a grade. And that’s unavoidable. It’s something they have to do. But I noticed as soon as I give back the papers for them to look back at the feedback, what did they do? First of all, they look at the grades and they all share, what did you get? What do you get what you get? And I want to reduce that as much as possible, I want to take that out of the equation as much as possible. So whilst I have to do that a few times a year, the rest of the time, I’m not going to play that game.
Craig Barton 31:32 Right. Okay. Last point on this one, before I hand over the final tip. What about let’s picture this scene? What about you’ve got a kids and I’ve taught a few of these, and maybe you have two, who is genuinely motivated by by grades and getting better, you know, you’ve got this kid who prompts you know, they they’re currently that they’ve done an assessment or whatever, they’re on a grade six, and they say, you know, I really want to get this grade nine. So I’m going to keep working hard, and I keep it and you You’re, you’re saying, Okay, well keep working out, but I’m not coming in to tell you where you’re at and so on. Could you think that there is an argument to be made, that grades can be intrinsically motivating or not?
Mark Roberts 32:12 So I see it in those kinds of circumstances, a student who’s aiming for the very top, you’re you’re not going to limit them in any kind of way. I would say, Okay, well, this is what you need to do to be trying to present the best possible essay, the best possible answer, the best possible story? Is this going to get a great mind? But I’m not sure. I think that if you put all these things together, it would probably get that, but it’s something that is out of your control. And you know, the old cliche about controlling the controllables, you know, worrying about am I going to get this grade nine, we know as teachers that only about two and a half percent nationally get it. And I’ve taught lots of students who’ve got it. So I’m not saying it’s not, it’s something that’s out of reach. But I suppose that I tried to reframe it and just say, Listen, you want to get a really, really good mark for this, that’s absolutely fine. I’m gonna show you how to do it, you do this? Let’s see what happens. And I just think, again, you can minimise it, whilst at the same time not dampening down their motivations. And we’re gonna,
Craig Barton 33:21 yeah, sorry, I was just gonna say, I guess the same thing would apply. You’ve got a kid who, though they really want that grade five, because it’s going to open some doors or something like that, I guess it would be the same argument, right? That, you know, it’s let’s not focus on the grade five, let’s focus on doing all the work and then hopefully, it’ll take care of itself. Would that be the message?
Mark Roberts 33:39 Yes, I’m just thinking of a student who’s just just sat is GCSEs. For me. And I know that we do modular in Northern Ireland still, so they did some exams in November. And in the lead up to the exams, he kept saying, I’ll be happy with a CMA if I can get a C in English, I’m sorted. And I’ve got a little bit cross with him only for the benefit of the rest of the group and descent, I won’t be I think you’re, you’re capable of doing really well. And I don’t want to want to see anyone settling for less and just, you know, being comfortable and coasting. And he got his modules and in one of the exams, one of the units he got an A and I said to him at a point you’re saying to him afterwards, you know, that’s why I wasn’t happy with the see for you. And he he saw that and that’s something that I think can be a really valuable lesson for them. And yeah, we ended up talking about grades in that occasion, but it was one of the reasons why we fall into this trap. Earlier on we start to limit
Craig Barton 34:35 cheese that that would have been some story could have ended up getting a d at the end of that but looking Alright, my last tip number five, please.
Mark Roberts 34:44 Okay, so tip number five is my little kind of one of my little favourite sayings. When I’m talking to teachers about the kinds of things that you can do to boost students confidence is rephrased to amaze. So rephrase to amaze is my little catchphrase for when you’re questioning students, and a student gives you a response. And this response is correct, but very basic. So it’s lacking say, in technical terminology, is lacking in detail is lacking impressive vocab, something like that. And what you do is you rephrase it, and you add in the technical terminology, you add in the extra detail, you add in a bit more impressive vocab. And guess what their answer is suddenly really impressive. It’s really impressive, because you’ve done a lot to embellish it and to to make it sound amazing. Now, that is something that I think some teachers do that already and that’s fine. But the thing that I do that I think is something that other teachers might find particularly useful, is you don’t just leave it there. You come back to this, this answer at some point, either in the lesson or preferably in future lessons, where you say, you remember the other day when we had that amazing answer about how volcanoes erupt. And you remember how we looked at the concept of bursts and we use this particular word and so and the student who’s given this answer is motivated because they’ve given this this amazing answer. And the other students start to look to to them as this kind of resident volcanologists, this resident expert within within the classroom, and it’s a little bit of a it’s a bit of a cheat. It’s something that you orchestrating get a little bit and it might not be for the teaching purists. But I found that this is a really good way to switch on demotivated students, and I’d never do it have an incorrect answer. If it’s incorrect, I’m gonna say no, because that would be that would be wrong. And that wouldn’t be helpful. But if it’s correct, but but basic answer, yeah, go to town with it and make it sound brilliant.
Craig Barton 36:55 All right, this, this is interesting. So let me see if I’ve got my head around this. So is this is it the case that student gives a correct but basic answer, and do you say then rephrase to amazing, then they do the work? Or do you support them with a rephrase it? How does it work?
Mark Roberts 37:11 I just rephrase that. So so say I say to a student, okay. Why do we think that Dr. Jekyll is creative, Mr. Hyde? And they come back with a basic answer? Well, he wants to be able to get away with with doing things he wouldn’t be able to get away with otherwise? And I say, yeah, absolutely. So what we’re looking at, what you’re telling me is this idea of duality. And the idea that Dr. Jekyll has been able to have this kind of facade of the respectable gentleman, but secretly is indulging in all these secret vices. And then later on a couple of lessons later, you remember having the conversation the other day where Steven gave us this answer about duality and the repressed Victorian gentleman. Let’s think about that again now and stuff like that. So that’s, that’s how I tend to do it. Or this,
Craig Barton 38:03 I’ll tell you what we could be ending on a controversial note here, Mr. Because this, that we need a bit of conflict here, this might not 100%, I agree with this, I’ll make my case. And then you can come back at me here. And so I can completely see it from a motivational point of view, I can completely see how for some kids, and probably most kids, that’d be a really powerful experience. And I’ve never thought to do the coming back, you know, the next lesson that feels like something really powerful. My fear is that the child will think they’ve understood that concept to the level that they need to because you’ve kind of reframed it. And I think like Doug Lemov, would call this rounding up, where they’ve given an answer and but you’ve then kind of added the the key ingredients that make it a real sophisticated answer, my fear would be that that child thinks are brilliant, I understand that amazing. So I can almost kind of stop thinking about that now. Whereas if you kind of say, Alright, great answer, but you’re not quite there, you need to can you think what else you need to add? Maybe then that kind of extra effort goes in to get all that what would you say to that,
Mark Roberts 39:04 you’d need to check for understanding to make sure that this is something it’s not just you kind of pontificating and, and showing off and not actually going through. So I would then be be looking at examples of work, modelling, using these kinds of ideas, checking that students are using this kind of language, making that a real focus of some of the work and going back and just checking this embedded, because yeah, there’s no point having these fancy debates, discussions, throwing words around like confetti unless they’re actually being used in exercise books, and you’re seeing real evidence of it. So I might say, Okay, well, let’s go back to this idea. I think that we’re still not quite grasping actually what this concept is about, you know, Steven gave us this really good example of it, but let’s just have a look at it in a bit more detail and really break down exactly what’s going on there. And I think that that you would have to do You can’t just expect that because you’ve said something fancy, they’re automatically just going to take it in. But it’s the first step in getting them feeling successful about themselves within English, which is going to motivate them to want to do more of it.
Craig Barton 40:14 That’s really interesting is one of the things I’m going to need to think about harder about this, because it’s, it’s kind of what is the trade off? Isn’t it you the motivation, such a powerful thing? And I can imagine for some kids, that’s exactly what they need. But then I can also possibly see the flip side where they, they kind of the message they take from that is, well, I’ve actually given that answer. So I’ve what’s actually what the teacher said, that’s kind of what I said. So you know, I’ve got that understanding, I just need to think that through my final thing on this, though, Mark, this is something I’ve been thinking about myself at the moment, and I just be interested to get your take on this. I don’t want when I first started my career, I was really lazy in the sense that I would knit. So I’m talking maths here, I would set the kids a load of questions. But I would never work out all the answers myself before the lesson. Because I’d think I’m a decent mathematician, I’ll just wing it and the lesson they’ll be fine. And that was terrible. Because I lost a load of time in lessons and sometimes a really bad question. It snuck in there and not the kids confidence and so on. When I got a bit better, I always would work out all the kind of written problems, and I’ll give the kids and that was fine. But one thing I never did. And I’ve only started doing this recently, and it seems to tie in to what you’re saying there is, if I was asking kind of a question where the kids were gonna give a verbal response, I would never think to kind of script out like an ideal answer, like the answer that I I really want them to do. Because again, I’d think well, I’ll just make it up on the spot. But what I’m what I’ve started to realise now is that if I don’t kind of map that out, I can forget it. Like I get so lost in trying to listen to what the child saying there’s a million other things going on in the lesson that actually, when I then do what you’re doing there rephrase to amaze or whatever it may be. I I never get it as good as I should have done because I’ve written it down. So would you be kind of writing these things down? Would that be something that will be something that you kind of advocate for these questions, just so you can guarantee that you’re going to get that explanation the way you intended? If that makes sense?
Mark Roberts 42:08 I tend not to do in this situation, it tends to be a little bit more ad libbed, really, depending on what it is that they say. But I think that when you’re talking about things like modelling really effective answers, I suppose in maths, you’d be looking at work at work two examples a bit more, I will often think very carefully. And sometimes I will write out one in advance. And then other times, I will just do one off the top of my head because I want them to see me edit and struggle and make mistakes and give them the insight into how my mind works as a writer. So I think there’s pros and cons with these. And I think you have to think about the stage that the classes are to begin with, I want them to have like a perfectly polished answer that sort of level that they can immediately find useful as a model. When once we get a bit more beyond that I want them to see me struggle and think on my feet a little bit more, particularly if I’m doing something like an exam question against the clock. But when it comes to the kind of rephrase to emotions, now, I tend to just come up with these off the top of my head, and some of them will probably be better than others. And if some of them aren’t great, I might forget about them. If some of them are particularly impressive, I might get them to write down something on the board. I often say Oh, I like that. Let’s all write that one down. You know, wasn’t that a good thing that I just came up by now. But we’re students I’d kind of I like that idea. We’re gonna write that one down and make it seem as if the students done it as well. So these things can be captured another way I suppose.
Craig Barton 43:43 Fantastic. Well, I’ll say what might they were five obviously really brilliant tips off loads to think of there so let me just turn it back to you. What should our listeners check out what what should they need to be looking at that you’ve you’ve been working on?
Mark Roberts 43:54 So if you’re more interested in reading my work around boys my most recent book that came out in June last year is the boy question how to teach boys to succeed in school that’s available via the Routledge website on Amazon if you prefer before that Ico Alfred boys don’t try which came out in 2019 Loads of people have got that already. And then if you are more interested about my writing as an English teacher, I released a couple of years ago worst timing ever because it was slap bang in the middle of no exams a guide to how to revise in English which is called you can’t revise for GCSE English? Yes, you can. And Mark Roberts shows you how snappy title. And then I did a follow up version of that which was the a level literature version of them. And despite the timing fiasco with the exams there, it has actually been very successful because lots of students are buying it now. But also lots of English teachers have bought it because it’s really helped them with little tips and techniques, the kinds of things Now that I’ve been mentioned in today, so those are things that you might want to check out. And of course, feel free to follow me on Twitter at Mr. Underscore, English teach.
Craig Barton 45:11 Fantastic Well, I’m gonna put links to all the all the work and your Twitter on the show notes page so listeners can check that out. Final thing I’ll say just before we wrap things up. I remember it was a research head national and it was I don’t know how many years ago this must have been. I’m assuming it’s pre COVID. But my sense of time has gone completely. And you and Matt would do Mani boys don’t try sessions and I don’t know what Tom Bennett was thinking but he put you on in some like little classroom or something. And I arrived I must be 15 minutes early. So I was desperate apps. I got the book and I was desperate to your loads of questions for you. And they were queuing outside it was absolutely absolutely pandemonium so I just got I couldn’t get into watch it. So that’s why I’ve been desperate to get you on the show. To to get some of those insights are some of those questions? So Mark Roberts, this has been absolutely brilliant. Thanks so much.
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. This episode I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to former English teacher and now author and the queen of comparative judgement. It is of course, Daisy Christodoulou. And you’ll be not surprised at all to hear that this is a bit of a classic couple of things to tell you about before we get cracking. Firstly, sponsor slots for the tips of teachers podcasts are now open. So if you want to let the world’s most interesting listeners know about your book, product or event, just drop me an email. You can view videos of all of Daisy’s tips, plus the tips of my other guests on the tips for teachers website. These are great to share in a departmental meeting or a training session. You can also sign up for the tips for teachers newsletter to receive a tip in your inbox most Monday mornings to try with your classes in the coming week. And finally, just one little request for me and if you could do it now, that’d be amazing. Just hit pause on the podcast and just give us a quick review. Ideally, a positive one on your podcast player of choice. It really does make a difference. Thanks so much. Right back to the show. Let’s get learning with today’s guests. The wonderful Daisy Christodoulou. Spoiler alert, here are Daisy’s five tips. Tip one, review each lesson plan in terms of what the student is thinking about. Number two, ask a question at the end of every lesson that every student should be able to get right. Tip three, ready for this one. Don’t do written comments. Tip Four use examples, not definitions when teaching and assessing. And finally, Tip Five, get your pupils to spell their name backwards. Now I think Daisy’s lost the plot a little bit when she gets to Tip five but just stick with it. It’ll let’s just go with it. It’ll be fine. All right. If you look at the episode description on your podcast player or visit the episode page on tips for teachers, Dakota, UK, you’ll see how it’s time stamped each of the tips. So you can jump straight to anyone you want to listen to first of all universal. Enjoy the show.
Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Daisy Christodoulou to the tips for teachers podcast. Hello, Daisy, how are you? Hi, Craig. I’m well. Thanks. Fantastic. And for the benefit of listeners, can you tell us a little bit about yourself ideally in a sentence?
Daisy Christodoulou 2:13 Yeah, sure. I’m the Director of Education at no more marketing. We provide online comparative judgement schools for 1000s of schools in lots of different countries.
Craig Barton 2:22 Fantastic. All right, let’s dive straight in. What’s tip number one for us today?
Daisy Christodoulou 2:27 So tip number one are shamelessly stolen from it from Professor Dan Willingham. And it is let me make sure I get it right. It is review every lesson plan in terms of what the students are thinking about. And Dan Willingham says that he’s professor of cognitive science, I think at the University of Virginia. And he’s what he tried to do is tell you what cognitive science can what useful advice cognitive science can give teachers. So what do teachers need to know about how the mind works? And he said, this is actually one of the most useful pieces of advice of advice, given everything we know about cognitive science. So it might sound really simple, it might sound really basic, I’ll say it again, review every lesson plan in terms of what the students are thinking about. You might think that’s really obvious. That’s just really, really silly. But first of all, I’ll explain why it’s important. And then I’ll explain this is something that I did with my own teaching, I’ll explain kind of the difference simply. So why is this important? Why is it important to think about what the students are thinking about? Well, it’s important because it’s also a long term memory, we know that long term memory is really important. And we know that all of the higher order thinking skills that we’re interested in developing in our students depend on the knowledge we have stored in long term memory. And sometimes as adults, we can forget this. But just think of a simple example, you’re just reading the newspaper in the morning, you know, you’re online, you’re flicking through in a few articles on your phone. And just to make sense of a typical article in a in a in a in a kind of a typical newspaper, the amount of background knowledge you have to bring to bear the amount of vocabulary you have to know, just to make sense of that. There’s a lot of knowledge going on there. And as adults, we do all that automatically. We take it for granted. So long term memory is really important. We need stuff in long term memory. So the really key question for teaching then becomes how do we get stuff into long term memory? How do we get students to actually remember things, and willing and makes the point that the brain or that they get what we what happens with the mind with a brain, we remember what we think about, we don’t remember what we want to remember. It’s not that we say to ourselves, I’ve really got to remember this, make sure I remember it. And that works. We all know, that doesn’t work. So the brain kind of makes a bet if I have to think about something a lot, it’s worthwhile hanging on to it, remembering it. And that’s often why there’s a lot of things in life that you never really wanted to remember that have stuck in your mind. Perhaps things that you just, you know, things that are pinned on the wall in front of you for like, I don’t know, you know, in a classroom or on a long bus journey, you know, particular advert, you know, those have been kind of sticking the mind because you’re thinking about them a lot. So that’s, that is therefore where William says review every lesson plan in terms of what the students are think came about, because what they think about is what they’ll remember. And remembering is really important, like remembering is learning in a lot of ways. So when I tried, I tried this out, I remember reading William for the first time thinking Dre, I’m gonna give this a go. And I went through some lesson plans. And I was like, what will the students be thinking about each point? Now obviously, the tricky thing tricky for you is, you don’t always know what the thinking about a lot of them are really daydreaming about dinner. But to the best extent what, what is the aim of what am I trying to get to think about. And what I realised with a lot of my lessons is that there were a lot of maybe quite complicated activities I was trying to set up that involve like a lot of admin and logistics, and a lot of explanation. And so the students were thinking about all of those and trying to work those out, and not necessarily about the content I was teaching. And, and so what it made me do is think, well, how can I simplify this and just strip it back a bit more, and get to a point where we’re just getting to thinking about, you know, the novel that I’m teaching or, you know, whichever grammatical concept, rather than, you know, a complicated worksheet, or kind of jigsaw, some kind of activity or, you know, so keeping it really simple. And then following on from that, I think, then it leads you to think that having a classroom where you do similar activities, all the time is good, because then it reduces the amount of time you have to spend explaining them. So if you particularly like think pair share, and that’s something you think is really powerful, then don’t just do it once or twice actually make it a routine, because then you haven’t got to explain it as much. So that was the impact out of my teaching. I mean, the other thing Willingham says is the example he gives in his book is a teacher who took his class to the computer lab to research the Spanish Civil War. And he said, within minutes, the assignment it went from research to Spanish Civil War to creating PowerPoint slides with cool animations of Spain, in the Spanish flag colours, right. And so that’s the other issue is that a lot of the time you set up a learning objective research or Spanish Civil War? And what are the students thinking about? They’re thinking about esoteric features of PowerPoint. So I think there’s a number of different ways in which that a piece of advice is really powerful. And it’s one of those it seems really simple, but I think give it a go. And it’s really, really interesting.
Craig Barton 7:10 I love it Daisy, one of one of my all time favourites. So I’m really pleased to bring all this up. So two quick observations from me, then one follow up question. So the first is I love the the idea of these kinds of common activity structures like think pair share something that you’re going to use, use them several times, so that you don’t have to think about and much and the kids don’t have to think about them as much. So you can dive straight into thinking about the actual content and the learning, I think is a really, really important one. And the second one just to reflect on a couple of ways this has gone wrong in my teaching. So in one of my first book, I talked about switch roles, I tried to teach fractions via the medium of Swiss rolls, it was an absolute disaster. And four years later, the kids remember the Swiss rolls, but not a thing about the content of the lesson. And Danny Quinn has a great example of this as well, where she tried to teach surface area of a sphere using an orange, and you start peeling the orange and if you peel it, you can lay it out in the exact number of circles that you need. But one it never works. And to the kids just remember all the orange peel and you know juice fine in their eyes and blind in them and left, right and centre. So there’s loads of examples of this. And my follow up question, though, Daisy, is, is this a good idea or a bad idea? Putting it into lesson plans? Because you never see him in lesson plans. It’s all about, you know, what’s the activity? Maybe what’s the teacher doing? Is it worth if you have to do a lesson plan bangin in there, what you hope the students will be thinking about? Is it worth making that explicit? Or do you think that’s that’s a step too far?
Daisy Christodoulou 8:36 I kind of think it depends. I think when I tried to teach, you know, the lesson plan had to be 15 pages long. I think everyone’s just stepped back a bit on that, and quite rightly. So I actually wouldn’t want to say anything that is going to like add to the bureaucracy. And add to that because I know how things can get out of hand with lesson plans. So I wouldn’t want to say that I would say you know, you want it more like a checklist, you know, the way like I don’t know, I guess like pilots have checklists. So I think that when you talk about the oranges there, there’s a really interesting point with that, that I do think the principle I just said review every lesson plan in terms of what the students are thinking about the slight tension that there is with that is the other another thing William talks about is we learn new things by connecting them to old things. And so this is why analogy is so important. And if you think about it, that’s a little bit intention with review every lesson plan in terms what you’re thinking about, because you want the student to think about what you want to teach them. But on the other hand, to teach you something new, you need to activate the prior learning and connect with something previous and often with subjects like maths and, and science, you’re often doing that kind of concrete to abstract and the fractions up by Swiss rolls or pizzas. But then if you’re spending all the time for my pizzas, is that then interfering with actually we’re doing fractions? And I’ve seen this happen with history too, and lots of lessons where you’re trying really hard to come up with an analogy. And actually, the analogy ends up distracting rather than how hoping. And I don’t think there’s an easy solution to that. I think you do need analogies. And I think analogies are really important. I’m not saying never use them. I just think that a good a good analogy is hard. And a lot of analogies that we as adults think are really great. And not actually that useful. They require more explanation than they do. They actually enlightened. So it’s a tricky one.
Craig Barton 10:23 It is a tricky one. Okay, Daisy, what’s Tip number two, please.
Daisy Christodoulou 10:28 So tip number two follows on from review every lesson plan. Tip number two is ask a question at the end of every lesson that every student should be able to get right. And this was something I started doing, following on from reviewing every lesson plan, because you think, well, if I want to be thinking about this, and this is a thing I wanted to be thinking about, in a sense, I’m trying to be really precise about what it is I want them to think about. And if that’s worked, if they really have been thinking about the thing I wanted, they should really all be able to answer a certain question. And by the end of the lesson that I’ve decided at the beginning, this is the question I want to be able to answer. And when I first started doing that, I thought, yeah, this should be really easy. Like, you know, actually, this should be 10 or 15 questions they should all be able to answer and get right. And then you do it. I mean, it’s a it’s a sort of blow for kind of how you know what you’re teaching it, the reality of your teaching, as opposed to what you think it is, is that you can end up asking a really, really simple question that you think surely you must have got this, and, you know, three quarters of the class get it wrong. So I think if you decide upfront, if there’s just one thing that I want you all to walk away, knowing that they didn’t know at the start, what would that be? It really focuses your mind with the planning, and it focuses your mind or makes you think, Okay, this one thing is one question. And that might even be if you’re introducing a new novel, if you’re introducing a new text, or you’re reading a chapter of a text, it might just be like, the main plot point in that chapter. It might just be the main new characters introduced. You know, so could be something. So it’s that the other point of this is, people, it’s one of these things I think people think are just too trivial. But it’s meant to be true. It’s not, it’s not designed to be Trixie. It’s meant to be easy. It’s meant to be something that 100% of students can get right. And actually, I think you’ll actually find you really struggle to find one thing. But it really focuses your teaching, it makes your teaching move, like I want them to know this one thing, obviously, you don’t want it to turn into I spend the 60 minute lesson just you know, regurgitating this one thing. But as I say, if you’re doing it in the context of a novel, that you’re you’re reading the next chapter, or you’re looking at a particular character, is there one thing at the end of this, I want everyone to get? Right? What would that be? And just being really focused on that, and maybe, you know, go on forever, forever long, you can do two or three questions. But I think that’s a really nice thing that really focuses your teaching and planning.
Craig Barton 12:36 I love this Daisy. Right. Again, same thing, two quick observations on this. And then a follow up question for you. The first is this reminds me when Dylan William was on the show a few weeks back saying about how making question planning central to lesson planning, and this feels like fits in really nicely with that. So when you’re thinking about your lesson, almost starting, in a sense with this final question that you want everyone to be able to answer, and how do you shape the lesson around how to get to that point. And that feels like that fits really nicely. Second observation. I’ve messed this up as well, Daisy in the past, which is, the last question I’ve asked kids in a lesson is always the hardest question. It’s like it builds up to this. And that’s quite bad, because, but a lot of the kids don’t get it right. So they feel crap about themselves. And also haven’t got a real good sense of how the majority of kids have understand the core elements of the lesson. Because I haven’t assessed that at the end, I’ve assessed something different, almost like the challenge or the extension. So I like the idea of not ending on the hardest question, but ending on a question that kind of assesses the core knowledge, the thing that you really wanted the all the kids to get. So I really like that. But my kind of follow up question to you on this is, how does this fit in with exit tickets? They see it? Is there is this? Would this be an exit ticket? And what’s your view generally on exit tickets? How do you see this question being asked and and playing out at the end of the lesson?
Daisy Christodoulou 13:56 Yes, I think it can work in a number of different ways. I think it could be an exit ticket, it can be a mini whiteboard. I think. I agree with what you said about too often, you’re kind of building up the lesson, it’s getting more complicated. And then that the thing you do at the end is like the challenge. And actually almost in some ways, it’s better maybe to do a question at the end that recalls something a bit more basic from the beginning. And then it functions as a bit of retrieval practice. So much like your first retrieval, and even if it was something simple that they they got, you know, halfway through the lesson or third of the way into the lesson. Well, if it’s an hour long lesson 20 or 30, or 40 minutes might have passed since they did that. So it’s worth just refreshing it at the end, even if it’s really simple. So I think the challenge always at the end of the lesson is leaving enough time. I always found that I would like Rush, you know, you run out of time towards the end and you know, it’s really important to get it in and then you’re rushing and like the bells ringing. So I think it’s really important to give it give it enough time at the end. And I think it again with exit ticket, mini whiteboard, I you know, whatever kind of works for you. But I would go back to the first principle of, you know, not not getting massively complicated structures around it and trying to keep it as Simple and repeatable and like almost as a routine as possible. So, you know, I think many whiteboards in maps work really well. And I’ve seen them work really well, I think it sometimes I think is can be slightly trickier in English, because you’re maybe looking for maybe like a full sentence, you’re looking for something, you know, might not be right, obviously can work. But I can understand that there might be reasons why you want something a little bit a bit different. So I think, yeah, you know, find something that works for you that’s repeatable. And that isn’t, you know, the admin of it doesn’t take up too much time. You can also do if you want to do a multiple choice question. You can do that on a mini whiteboard, you can do that even simpler, just, you know, five options, raise your hand 12345. So that doesn’t require any kind of special equipment at all. But you then it’s a multiple choice question. You’ve got to really thought of it before. You can’t just come up with that on the fly.
Craig Barton 15:53 Yeah, just just on that, just as a slight aside, I mean, I’m obviously obsessed with diagnostic multiple choice questions. But I think they work really well as this final question in a lesson because they’re quick to get the kids response. And if you identify a problem, you’ve got a better insight as to why it’s a problem based on the specific answers that kids have given. And if the vast majority of kids get it right, you can then turn your attention to the wrong answers to start thinking, Well, why is this wrong, and so on. So it’s kind of the best of both worlds, you get your assessment done quickly. And then you’ve got a kind of path to go if there’s trouble, and then also a natural path to go if the understanding is there. So I’m completely biassed, of course, but I like using diagnostic questions for exit tickets. I think they work quite well as that final last question in the lesson, if that makes sense.
Daisy Christodoulou 16:38 Definitely, yeah, definitely, you know, works well as well. Different
Craig Barton 16:42 legally obliged to say that Daisy, so that’s good. All right, Daisy, what is tip number three, please.
Daisy Christodoulou 16:50 So tip number three. So I’ll be upfront here, the first two tips ones I’ve used myself when I was teaching. The third tip is one that I wish I’d had when I was teaching, but I didn’t have. It’s something that I’ve seen lots of people do, since I left the classroom. And I think it’s brilliant. And I wish it had been around when I was teaching. So my tip is don’t do written comments. It’s my third tip, don’t do written comments. And, again, when I tried to teach lengthy written comments, were all the, you know, all the rage, the real kind of thing that everyone said was you want to give students feedback based on the language in the mark scheme. And the idea was, that’ll make it really transparent, you know, you’ve got this mark scheme, this is what the students are going to do, you’re going to give them the feedback using that language. And take, you know, spent hours doing this. So if Sunday evenings reading through, sort of, you know, 2530 books, writing a comment at the bottom of them taken from the mark scheme, and then you try and find little hacks to kind of shorten it. So you basically realise there’s sort of three main issues going on. And you think, well, there’s three main comments, I’m going to basically write out the kids, we’re gonna get one, one of these free comments. And I’ve seen people kind of hack it a bit further and sort of do this in Excel and have it a bit mal murgee. But the problem with all of this is that written comments are a terrible way of giving feedback. Right? And let me give you I’ll give you a couple of example. I’ll give you three examples. One, this is from Dylan William, he looks, he talks to a student who’s been given the feedback, you need to make your scientific investigations more systematic. So that’s your classic, take the feedback from the marks game. The marks people say, you know, top grade, systematic scientific investigation. So Dylan, William says the student was that mean to you? And the student says, I don’t know, if I thought that if I if I, if I knew how to be more systematic, I would have been more systematic first time. It’s very flippant, but it’s true. And what the one I was guilty of, in that, in that way was you need to infer more insightfully. I remember writing that app more times than I care to mention. Like, what is the student going to do with that? You know, and the problem is, so again, Dylan William, he goes on to say he says, it is true, the student did need more systematic. It was true, my students did need to infer more insightfully. I mean, don’t we all right. But is, is telling a student that going to help them improve. So this kind of feedback is true, but useless. Yeah. So it may well be accurate, but it’s not giving them anything they need to get better. And that is a problem with the nature of written comments. So then people think, oh, I can give more precise comments. That is a problem with the nature of written comments. It is really hard to express some of these some of the information about how to improve to express it in a kind of one sentence prose comment that’s written down. So you know, one example. We need to make more scientific and scientific investigation, more systematic. You need to affirm or insightfully. I’ll give you another example. Imagine you’re in a driving lesson and you do a three point turn. And you know, you’re a bit shaky on it think it’s okay. And you say to the instructor at the end, but how did it go? And he goes, Yeah, I’ll give you a written comment like a week later. Matt, every moment a week later, but what you need is just you just needing to say then and there, him or her to say then and there. Look, you know, the first if you just just stayed too much the first time in probably say, Let’s have another go probably put a bit too much on the first time, you know, take a little bit off, you did really well as you were, as you were, as you were coming round, you checked everything that was great as you know, it, you need them to give you something in real time. And you need some real time it is better verbally. Because those things I’ve just said verbally No, you put a bit too much on first time. That makes sense. If someone’s saying it in real time, that’s incredibly useful. If you wrote that down, it’s just like what I put a bit too much on first time, what is that it’s the same with all kinds of feedback, that if you’re gonna give someone something written a week later, it’s just not gonna be helpful if you give them something verbally in the moment, can be incredibly useful, obviously, and this is going probably some of that verbal feedback in the moment can’t be captured, it can’t be turned into a spreadsheet. And then I know that what you know, managers will therefore say is I don’t know it’s happening, you know, like a head teacher and a deputy or so how do I know that’s happening? People want something that is recordable. They want to be able to show that it’s happening. And so I think we can view feedback almost on a spectrum is that you have these in the moment, verbal bits of feedback, which are incredibly powerful and valuable and very hard to capture and record.
And then I think there’s probably some things which are maybe still can have a bit of best of both worlds. And they’re still able to be recorded and captured, but they still have high value. And that’s why I’d say the multiple choice questions are quite good is that I think there’s something that is very recordable and very able to be put into a spreadsheet, but they’re not as vague and as as unhelpful as a written comment. So I think we’ve got to find a sweet spot, I’m not denying that it is important to catch record things. It is not I’m not trying to say it isn’t. But I think that when you get to written comments, it is like the triumph of wanting to put something into a spreadsheet over doing something that’s useful. So you know, you’ve traded off all the value for them for the wrong thing. So we have to try and get that that trade off. Right. So in terms of don’t do written comments, I’ve you know, I’ve seen so many schools now experimented with whole class feedback. So for the industry like me, where you’ve got, you got 30 books to mark, whatever the idea would be, instead of putting a written comment at the bottom of each of them, you read them all. And you make some notes about how you’re going to pre plan your next lesson, based on what you’ve seen in the writing. So what you would do is if you’ve seen lots of issues with students say the tense is very inconsistent. Instead of writing out 25 times, you need to make the tense more consistent. At the start of the next lesson, you put up two sentences where the tense is inconsistent. And you say, can you correct? Can you change the second sentence into the first thing? It’s a bit like, again, the driving lesson. Let’s do another free point turn, let’s let’s work on you know, your overshooting. So that will be what you do, you come up with an activity with an action step with something you can do that focuses on what you’ve seen. And that is so so, so much more powerful. So I really feel written comments, I think this is a really interesting one too, because there’s something that we’re already familiar with our students as to when we were students ourselves. There’s something that students I think, actually kind of probably are quite attached to, they probably do see it as my teacher cares about me. So I think it is a hard one to move away from it is quite counterintuitive. And I think, you know, people probably do just to have this thing of one of the teachers just not working hard enough, they’re not going to comment. And that’s what I’m saying. It’s one of these classic things where it is your classic sort of busy work, that this is a very visible, highly visible form of work, but it’s quite performative. But how much value does it add? And I’m just really the more and more I think about it, the more I think, I don’t think it adds much value, I think it’s worth it to try it takes away value. And the amount of time it takes is astonishing, really is astonishing.
Craig Barton 23:56 I agree with 100% Everything. I’ve said Daisy, but you’ve got to help me out on something here. Right. So the first thing is just just to reflect on that. I think you’re right. The reason that the stay in schools were why schools insist on written comments is, as you say, so there’s evidence both from you know, at management perspective, or whatever, and also, from students recognising that the teachers look to their books, and probably parents wanting to see it in the books, and so on and so forth. And I also completely agree that whole class feedback is a million times more effective. But here’s the problem I always run into. So your ideal scenario, when you mark in a set of 30 books is either everybody’s nailed everything, and then you can just move on, or everybody’s got the same problem. So you can do whole class feedback. I always find it’s a bit trickier whenever you’ve got Well, a couple of scenarios, one where there’s a scattering of different issues amongst the work. So with this, like seven or eight problems that you’ve identified, and also where you’ve got a significant group of children who really have nailed that kind of a concept, and a significant group of children who really haven’t. And then what do you do in that file? What lesson so if you can solve those problems for me, Daisy, I’m laughing. Yeah,
Daisy Christodoulou 25:03 yeah, no, I think you’re absolutely right. It is tricky. It is tricky. And I think the thing to say is those things are genuinely tricky issues. They don’t invalidate that none of them mean that written comments work. You know, they still we still have to move away from the written comment. But you’re absolutely right. They do mean that, or what do we do? They still are, you know, issues for what you replace it with and how you optimise optimise that solution. I think that one thing I’d say is, in some ways, I’m coming from a bit of an English teacher perspective here, but you almost don’t want to move to the complex written tasks too soon. And you want to make sure that you when by the time you move to it, you’re not going to be seeing a really wide variety of arrows, you almost want to get to the point that you’ve done enough teaching beforehand, such that they’re not all going to be perfect in this piece of writing. But you’re not going to see a huge variety in terms of quality. So that, you know, yes, there will still be some peoples have absolutely nailed it. Some have got errors. But you know, you’re hopefully, there’s going to be a bit a bit more of a clustering. Now make it easier to feed back. And I think some of the reasons why this can be tricky is you do get this this huge range of responses. And it’s very difficult to tease it out. And that’s because maybe the the teaching beforehand, there hadn’t been much of it. The students have moved to the written task too soon. And that’s again, why I’d say with the multiple choice questions, the short answer questions like, do more of them to begin with in a unit. So start with all those questions where it’s easier to do the diagnosis and don’t put them on to the Open Task, which will always be trickier to assess, until they’ve got to a solid point. So that’d be my first thing like trying to set it up. So you’re anticipating that I’m trying to forestall that problem. Obviously, you will still have a range of responses. And I think it depends slightly, I would still say, you know, we’ve we’ve started again, something like English, I remember from my experience, I was just reading, we’ve just done a big literature assessment on an unseen poem, you do still see, you know, it does tend to be often there will be one or two issues that are cropping up that that are the same. So I feel like even when you’ve got a range of responses, there’s always one or two things you can pick on, you know, then in terms of how you follow up with other students, I think the other thing is, it doesn’t have to necessarily be straightaway that lesson. If there are bigger issues, maybe it’s something where you’re doubting your scheme of work. Okay, so if there’s a bigger issue that they’re struggling with, I mean, an example I give with An Inspector Calls his students confusing, Eric, and Gerald. And if you see that coming up in a, in a lesson in a response, that’s something you can address straight away in the following lesson. But it’s something you can keep addressing in future lessons. You know, you’ve got that on your radar, that’s been an issue. So there’s some things you know, you can address straightaway, there’s something you can keep keep going over. I don’t think if if you’re in a situation, were you lucky enough, or you’ve got a teaching assistant, unknown primary, often that’s more often the case is something a teaching assistant can really help with that. If it’s if you’ve got a small group of students where, you know, maybe it is the Eric and Gerald example. And three of them have made that error and the other, you know, the others in your class absolutely fine. That’s a great thing where the teaching assistant can take them away and walk them through. Okay, this is Eric, this is Gerald, let’s not confuse those again. And that will be the kind of thing a teaching assistant I think could could do really well. So I think you’re absolutely put your put your finger on a really important issue with that. I think and I think it’s, it’s, you have got to think about it. What I would say is, is that even with that issue, that you know, it’s still better than written comments. Definitely don’t do it in comments.
Craig Barton 28:28 Yeah, I completely agree. And final thing I’ll just say on the Stasi, is I always found that when my check for understanding in lessons was poor, I ran into more of these problems with the homeworks. Because homework Yeah, full of surprises. Exactly. It’s better. I got to check in for understanding and less of a surprise, that wasn’t the homework. So the more it lends itself to whole class feedback, if that makes sense. It’s all intertwined, doesn’t it? Yeah, absolutely. I Daisy, tip number four, please.
Daisy Christodoulou 28:55 Yeah. So this also follows on a bit from the one before so I’ve said that written comments are not great. And my fourth tip is to use examples, not definitions when you are teaching and assessing. And this follows on a bit from written comments, because in lots of ways definitions have a lot in common with written comments. So we think of definitions as being maybe something very powerful, something that we want students to memorise, but often the problem with a definition is it only kind of sometimes makes sense when you know, know what it is to begin with. And so I often say to me, have you ever had an experience when you were a kid where it was a word you didn’t know? And you look it up in the dictionary, and you don’t only the words in the definition in the dictionary? And then what you do? Do you go and look up every word in the dictionary definition. And so it’s a bit chicken and egg here. So the paradox, this is why reference sources are great for adults are great for experts, and not so great for novices. Any references not just a dictionary, but Google online searches, is that when you have that basis of knowledge to be able to create a search and interpret what you see reference sources are amazing. If you don’t reference sources, they’re not the place to gain that knowledge. What is the way so then the question is okay, well, how Do we get that knowledge and that’s why so examples, examples of really how we learn. And there’s it’s really interesting stuff on the philosophy of science about this. So, Michael Polanyi, and Thomas Kuhn, they both write about this, in terms of scientific breakthroughs, and how scientists come up with kind of new ideas are in terms of words in sight, word energy, in physics, what does that mean? And you can call out, you can’t really come up with it with a definition for it. And they’ll also say, Thomas Kuhn writes about how a student can read a chapter of a physics textbook, say they’ve understood it, and they can get to the problems at the end of the chapter and not get them right. And he says, it’s the problem set at the end of the chapter that really communicates the concepts. And I think that’s true of all learning. And we learn with examples, not with definitions. And as I say, a lot has been written about this, that the kind of very high end of science of sort of physics and maths and how you have these big, you know, scientific revolutions, but you can see it in everything. And you can see it in the basic that our younger children learn and that the area where I’ve engaged most is in teaching grammar, and particularly, one I’m fascinated with with verbs. Because I just fit a verb, it’s a bit like energy and physics, like there’s no, I’ve just come through, there’s no really good way of defining a verb, but it’s gonna let anyone child or adult, reliably then use that definition to decide what to, you know, get 100%, right, and, you know, finding the verb in, in 200 sentences is just, and then people sort of wrestle over definition. So, obviously, the one that a lot of kids will come up with them know is the verb to doing word. And then you have people who go, oh, that’s just too trivial. And they’ll come up with this more complicated definition, a verb is a state of action or a state of being. And there’s a much better definition. And my point is, we can argue about the definition all day long. Like, I don’t think either of them a good defence, because I just don’t think it’s possible to define it to do what you want it to do. And what is the way you’re really going to learn what a verb is, is lots of examples. And then my favourite sort of, you know, the two examples, which will show where students are up to with their understanding of a verb, is give them a sentence, I run to the shops, say what’s the most students get that right? And most students will say Ron is the verb. And they’ll do that because they probably didn’t verb to doing word, something to do with running that run. So then you give them the sentence, I went for a run, say, what’s the verb? And then also run again. Okay, and then you say, No, when a no go, it can’t be won’t when it’s not doing word, right. But even if you’ve taught them, it’s a state of action or being, when doesn’t sound like a verb, it just kind of does. And yet, it’s one of the top 510 most common verbs, you know, comes from go, which is the same would be the hardest verb of all, to understand, is the most common verb. So to be is the most common word, an ing verb in English. And it’s the hardest verb to understand in terms of if you’re going to define it as a doing word like just doesn’t, doesn’t sound like that. So how do you get around this? It’s just not with definition. It’s with lots and lots and lots of examples, and seeing examples in lots and lots, lots of different contexts. And I think that’s true for all learning, that we need to have those concrete examples. And it’s through encountering lots of those, that we can then start to build them up into something a bit more of an abstract understanding, and start to see why people have come up with the idea of verbs doing word that it probably is given everything, we’ve got the best way we can define it in the abstract, but you have to build up that understanding with the examples and as I say, the reason why I think this is similar to the written comment issue is written comments are these sort of abstract is statements that mean something to an expert. So when you say I need to infer more insightfully, I know that I know the kind of typical piece of GCSE writing that doesn’t infer insightfully, and it’s staying on the surface level, and it’s not digging down any deeper. So it does have some kind of meaning. But it’s not helping the student to infer more insightfully. And so, it’s the same issue with the written comments. It’s the same issue with relying on Mark schemes to give you agreement, it’s the same issue with relying on definitions and it’s one of the reasons I do you have a slight worry about?
Knowledge organisers, and I think knowledge organisers, they can be designed very well. But they can be a bit too reliant on definitions. And I just think you have to be really careful with that. You have to be really careful that the knowledge organiser isn’t too reliant on on definitions, and it is making sure that it’s it’s, you know, it’s giving examples. So, you know, when you’ve got an argument as you’re saying, you know, what is a verb and if what you see on the other side is it’s, it’s, it’s a doing word, I’m bit uneasy about that I’d rather see. You know, what’s, what’s the verb in this sentence?
Craig Barton 34:50 Yes. Yeah. Well, this is when I saw this on your list of tips to discuss I was well happy days because it’s one of my favourite things to talk about. So let me try and sell Do you want the dream of this at once something that works in maths because I’ve been looking for someone to talk to about this, he’s not a mathematician to see if this works elsewhere. So you’re just a person for this. Right? So maths is rampant for definitions. And exactly as you say they are terrible. Like the definitions are far more complicated than the actual thing itself. So when I first started teaching, I was definition crazy, then realised that was a waste of time that I switched to kind of a single example. And that’s a bit problematic. So if we use try triangles, a good one here, the definition for a triangle is terrible. Because you’ve got to understand what a plane figure is, what a side is, what an angle is. So then you give the kids an example of a triangle. But the problem with that is you tend to stick to a really conventional one with a horizontal base, and I saw sleeves, and so on. So that’s not great. So that I learned to do more varied examples. So you have some scalene triangles, and so that’s good as well. But then to truly understand what some of it is, you’ve got to know what it isn’t. So then you switch to non example. So this is a triangle, this is not a triangle, that’s definitely better. But where I’m at at the moment is I like related examples and non examples. And I think this fits in well with your one thing there. So you start with something that is a triangle, and you change one feature on it. So maybe the orientation, and everything else stays the same, the lengths of the side, the angles stay the same, but just one critical features change, then you say, is this still a triangle? Oh, yeah, it is. Okay, so the orientation doesn’t matter. Now, let me change one thing. So let me break one of the sides, all of a sudden, it doesn’t completely close. But everything else is the same the orientation that the size of the site. All right, now, that’s not a triangle. So that critical feature has broken the kind of you know, the it’s crossed the example one example boundary. So I think that examples of non examples, one of the most powerful things you can do, but I think you’ll have a supercharged them if you make them related to each other. So kids can observe the credit, the single critical feature that’s changed, and the impact it’s had. Now, does that translate? Does that make sense? And does it transfer a customer? That’d be something you would do with verbs and things like that?
Daisy Christodoulou 36:57 Yeah, I think it definitely does. So I think what you’re trying to do is set up, it’s all about the choice of examples. I agree. Yeah. And it’s all about can you set up example sequences, essentially, where the examples are exemplifying different features? Yeah. And that you’re carefully choosing them. So they’re exemplifying the different features that are critical to the concept in this case and your case with a triangle. You said, like the orientation is actually not a critical feature. So that’s like a non example. But you know, the sides is a critical feature. So we’re going to set up something like that. And I would say it’s exactly the same with verbs in that you would say, well, the position of a word in a sentence is not a critical feature. So what happens is, the rescue can get the equivalent of just teaching a basic triangle as an example, then that’s what they think it’s the only exotic triangle is always setting up sentences where the verb is a second word in the sentence. So I run to the shops, I go home, I walk around the park, he says, Hello, kind of thing. And then the students just get the wrong idea that well, it’s always a verb, the words the second word attentiveness. So they’ve defined it too tightly in the way, if you’re just giving them a simple triangle, they’re defining it too tightly as that’s the end, it’s the orientation, you know, the base at the bottom, that they’re just saying, that’s the only triangle possible. So that’s the equivalent you would get with a verb. And that’s where I think a lot of students understanding it kind of is. So what you will then want to do is you will you get to come up with example with, with examples of whether or not the first word or the second word in the sentence, where they’re, you know, like the middle of a sentence, you know, third or fourth, that kind of thing. I think then the challenge is, when you’re first introducing something, the best way of almost drip feeding with a complex thing, like a verb or triangle, there’s lots of different features, and lots of examples and non examples. And how many of those do you want to introduce in one go? One of the things that secret England talks about when doing this with verbs, which I can never kind of make my mind up on this is, he says, straightaway, you should be introducing verbs that are more than one word, not just one word. And I sometimes think that’s kind of too hard to begin with, like is that like going in with an isosceles triangle. But I kind of think you do want to start my take is you do want to sort of start with some of the obvious ones. But you don’t want to spend so much time that they just think that obvious one is the only example. And I do think ultimately, these are empirical questions, which you can settle with research. And you can set up different sequences and say, Well, which one leads to the best, the best understanding? And so, and this is why if Engelmann talks a lot about the Picky picky detail, and this is why I think he’s picky detail, but it’s really important. You know, if you teach students to triangle and you introduce an isosceles triangle first or whatever, you know, what impact does that have? You know, how should you be doing this but if you teach them so another thing the other thing is you can’t do it. The other thing I was gonna say up front as well as the problem with all of these complex concepts is you’re never going to teach them in a lesson. Just that they are hard, they are difficult. So you’re not going to get a student to a perfect understand Anything of a verb or a triangle in a 60 minute lesson, however great you and her amazing students are, I just don’t think it’s possible. And I think that’s why the other thing I think about a lot is, again, this is a bit of an England direct instruction thing is, if you set up a perfect learning sequence, could you do it so that students never developed a misconception? And then you’d never have to be in a situation where you’d have to unpick a misconception because you’d have sequenced everything so perfectly. But there’s no chance for a misconception to come in. And like that’s kind of utopian. And I kind of liked the idea, but I just think, no, for two reasons. One reason a lot of the really complex concepts we want to teach students, they kind of exist a bit in the world anyway. So triangles, they’re going to encounter trying before they meet you burbs using verbs every day. So that, you know, they’re not coming in from like a, you know, 00 knowledge. So there’s going to be a chance that they’ve got some misconceptions before they’ve met you. And the second reason is that even if it was, by chance, a concert they’ve never encountered before, so you’re starting from both, because you cannot teach everything in one go. There’s always a chance that some misconception will develop when you’ve only taught part of what the concept is. And because it’s impossible to teach the whole concept in one go, you’re gonna have to choose to start with some kind of triangle, you’re gonna have to choose to start with a verb being somewhere, I just think there’s always going to be you want to definitely you want to minimise misconceptions, but I just think, or it’s like, there’s always going to be a chance for him to come up. So you do have to kind of anticipate and expect and come up with ways of unpicking them when they do arise. So yeah, it’s a bit of a tangent there. But yeah, really?
Craig Barton 41:42 No, I love. Absolutely fascinating. I love that. Just final question on this, before I hand over to you for your fifth tip. Just circling back to definitions, where the definitions come in, then did is it important that kids know the kind of formal definition or is just a knowledge of the concept without being able to articulate it
Daisy Christodoulou 42:00 enough? Yeah. So I mean, so then this is it. So definitions, I think, reason why they do exist. And the reason why we do have dictionaries, the reason why I’m point is when you do get to a certain point, they give you a useful shorthand to that. So if you can, so the way I talk about this, I talk about this a lot in context of the old national cricket levels. And people would say the great thing about national cricket levels, if they give you a shared language, and I would say they don’t give you a shared language, they give you something far more dangerous. That gives you the illusion of a shared language. It’s not we’re all using the word cat. And some of us are using CAT to refer to a four legged mammal and the other rest of us are using CAT to refer to a chair. Okay, so it is not a shared language. But obviously, shared languages do exist, me and you are having a conversation now we’re able to communicate like, you know, so though, when most of us when we use workout, actually, we’ve got a similar concept in mind of what case. So, you know, communication is possible, I’m not going to add some extreme kind of post modernist route here where it isn’t, I’m just saying that the national group levels, were not a good language. So the point is, is that what you want to do is build up if students you can build up their understanding enough, you can get to the point where cat or triangle, a verb, becomes a very convenient shorthand for a concept that everybody agrees so that you do want to get to that point. And Doug Lemov makes this point very well about the value of a definition, which is that he talks about democracy, that’s a really abstract term. And if you are not, if you’re just talking about in a very concrete term, all the time, you’re gonna go, oh, you know, that thing where like, we get out a big bag, and we all have a stone, and we will put the stone in the bag if we agree, or we take it out, if we don’t agree, that’s really convoluted. So if you’re gonna have an abstract word that embodies that very convoluted concrete process, that’s really useful. And that speeds up communication, and it speeds up thinking, and it speeds up the ability to communicate with others and build on thoughts. So I do think definitions are important. And I do think words are important. I just think words can be really dangerous, in that you can use them as I say, we’ve caught on with the national curriculum levels and think everybody is agreeing with you. And actually, you’re all in your own bubble. So for me, it’s about most of the aim of education is getting to a point where all these words do mean roughly the same things. And that is what enables that’s what enables communication. And more than that, that’s what to be honest. That’s what enabled civilization. Because if you can’t talk to each other, you cannot you can’t build anything together. You know, whether that’s something is building a community or a society or whether that’s something is building a complex, complex, you know, complex artefact
Craig Barton 44:35 going deep Daisy.
Daisy Christodoulou 44:39 Absolutely, just the
Craig Barton 44:40 study will be less than just the final final thing on that. That’s why I’m quite a big fan of those, you know, the Freya diagrams or the fray models where at the end of a concept, the kids write a formal definition, but then they have to give an example and a non example of it and I always like to just go one step further and say, give me an interesting example and an interesting non example The words give me an example that someone might think so non example and give me a non example that someone might think is an example because I think if you can push kids right to the boundary of that definition, that’s a really good test of whether they understand something or not. So I quite like doing that.
Daisy Christodoulou 45:16 Just sounds good. Yeah.
Craig Barton 45:19 All right, Daisy, fifth and final tip.
Daisy Christodoulou 45:21 Okay, well, we’ve done for serious one. So for the fifth one, I’m gonna do a jokey one. Alright, so this fifth one is a jokey one. I just think like this the other day, I used to teach when I say I used to teach The Book holes by Louie Sasha, which is something that I was thinking it was a bit of a staple sort of Key Stage Two key stage three book, it’s made into a very good film with Sheila birth, which I can recommend. And the main character in holds his name is Stanley donuts. And a few chapters in the offer kind of reveals that Stanley and donuts it’s the same for the backwards. So if you put Stanley backwards, it’s young acts. And if you don’t, that’s backwards to Stanley. And when the kids learn that, you know, they just love it. Oh, and then you see them starting to scribble it out, Stanley, you’re nuts. And then they want to do it their own name. So my jokey fifth tip, if you’re an English teacher is get to get the kids to you know, do the nine back and forward. It’s quite fun. So mine is INSEAD. And yours is the ark. You would be crazy. Crazy. You’d be crazy IARC or you could be no Trad BARTON I’m INSEAD I’ll be Daisy INSEAD I’m not going to be myself because just impossible. So, you know, that’s just a little bit of fun. If you’re teaching holes,
Craig Barton 46:34 I like it. Love it. Fantastic. Well, Daisy, they’ve been five absolutely brilliant tips. Let me just hand it over to you now and what should listeners check out yours.
Daisy Christodoulou 46:43 So do have a look at no marketing.com. So I work full time to never market.com We provide these online comparative judgement assessments. And we’ve got two really nice new newest developments around so one is we’ve got a website called the writing hub, which is where we store kind of all of our exemplars, writing exemplars from students lessons. So all the things I’ve said about teaching verbs, we have lots of lesson resources and teaching. We have lots of professional development on writing. So do have a look, have a look at what what we’ve got there. And the newest thing we’re about to work on, we’re working on a platform that will automatically mark paper multiple choice questions for you. And it’s called Auto mark, we’ve been trialling it with some schools, and we’ve been trialling it with writing quizzes. So lots of the things I’ve been saying about verbs and identifying the bird, but lots of quizzes set up to do that. And yeah, we’ve been trialling it for for a year, 18 months or so. And it’s about to launch with with more schools. So no more marking.com Writing hub, auto mark, those are the three things we’re working on, take a look at our website blog and find out more about them.
Craig Barton 47:47 Fantastic. And just on that as well. And we’ve spoken over the years on my podcast several times about comparative judgments. And I was lucky enough last year, I think it was to interview, Ian from Loughborough, who taught me how to use grantee judgement in maths and I’ll put a link to that as well because it’s one of those things you could there’s a dangerous and you can think about if judgement is just for a expansive writing and so on but the way in describes assessing like problem solving skills in mathematics using it was it absolutely blew my mind. So
Daisy Christodoulou 48:15 yeah, Ian has done some amazing work on that. He’s really really good. So yeah, definitely have a look at that.
Craig Barton 48:20 Fantastic. Well, Daisy, it’s always a pleasure to speak to I always learn loads and it was really enjoyed. So thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us today.
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. This episode I had the pleasure of speaking to former primary head teacher and now advisor class Seeley. And it is a sponsor slots for the podcast are now open. So if you want to let the world’s most interesting listeners know about your book products or events, just drop me an email. Two things to remind you before we get cracking, you can view all the videos of class tips plus the tips of my other guests plus a load of videos from me on the tips for teachers website. And secondly, you can sign up to the tips for teachers newsletter to receive a tip in your inbox on Monday to try with your classes in the coming. And finally if you do find the tips for teachers podcast useful this is a big one this I’d be really grateful if you just take a moment ideally now just pause the podcast and give us a quick review on your podcast player of choice. It really does make a difference. Thank you. Okay, back to the show. Let’s get learning with today’s guests. A wonderful class Sealy spoiler alert. Here I play us five tips. Tip one, every teacher should make the teaching of literacy a high priority. Tip to be super clear about what you want children to learn. Number three, always check for understanding Tip four of this one, no feedback, more teaching. And Tip Five, have a robust culture of retrieval. As ever, if you look at the episode description of your podcast player, you’ll see that I’ve timestamp teach these tips straight to anyone you want to listen to first. Listen, enjoy the show.
Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Platt Seeley to particular teachers podcast Hello, hello, how are you?
Clare Sealy 1:52 Hi, Craig. Great to see and fine. Thanks.
Craig Barton 1:55 That’s great to hear. And for the benefit of listeners. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself ideally in a sentence?
Clare Sealy 2:00 Okay, so my present job which I’ve been doing for two and a half years, is m head of education improvement for the states of Guernsey, which is in the Channel Islands for those who don’t know that previously to that. I worked for 22 years as head teacher at sympathise Primary School in Tower Hamlets in East London.
Craig Barton 2:23 Fantastic, right, let’s dive straight in. What’s your first tip you’ve got for us today?
Clare Sealy 2:28 Okay, well, this may seem obvious to some people, maybe there’s obvious other people, but that every teacher, no matter what age you teach, and what subjects you teach, should make the teaching of literacy a high priority for themselves. That includes at every subject, so it includes, you know, PE teachers and math teachers who may go Yeah, but that’s not my priority, because I’m a PE teacher or a math teacher. But fair enough. That’s true. And obviously, it has to be done in a way that is sympathetic to the fact that if you’re teaching PE like a lot of time, you should be teaching, PE, you know, running around teaching kids how to move and stuff, if you’re doing maths. Similarly, you know, neither of them are subjects that have a great deal of narrative around them, however, and you know, obviously, a geography teacher or a history teacher, or obviously a primary school teacher will spend more of our time teaching literacy, because their subjects lend itself to that, and that’s fine. But even if you’re say, You’re a PE teacher, you should use some of the time and I’m talking like, you know, two, three minutes a day lesson rather. So it’s not I’m not saying a long time. And yes, most of the times you’d be doing physical things and then a physical things. But when you can, you should use those opportunities. So for example, giving a give you an example. If you’re a PE teacher, you learn what I check my notes here. So if I’m looking that way, Hi, I’m checking my notes. You have to learn about components and fitness. You learn about them at GCSE, but obviously you can learn about them and keep reading them about them. And he says do didn’t begin to learn about them. And he says one, so one of those is agility. So, if you’re going to learn about agility, here’s a definition, which I’m obviously going to read. Agility is the ability to move and change direction and position of the body quickly and efficient ly while under control. It requires quick reflexes, coordination, balance, speed and correct response to a changing situation. So there’s a definition obviously, it needs to be unpacked and explains and so on and so forth. But here’s an example of, we can help children with illiteracy, which will pay dividends in every subject and will pay massive dividends in terms of life chances for our students. We can do that in every subject by where it fits in and doesn’t undermine In the key purpose of a subject, we can get children reading. So how I would do that to PE teacher, I want them to know about agility, I will read the sentence I will read agility is the ability to move and change direction, and position of the body quickly and efficiency while other control. So I will read that really well. I will model how to read that really well. And then we will read it together as a class, we’ll all read it together as a class, and then we might go and now turn to your partner and read it. Now I’m going to read it again. Now who wants to anyone would have wanted to read it? Is it and you go off and you do your normal PE stuff? So you’re just going I’m not going to tell you a definition, we’re actually going to read it in P in math. I don’t think reading out definitions of what a denominator is, is particularly helpful. I mean, you can’t do it. But that’s I don’t see that’s where math teachers can can do their bit for literacy. I don’t I mean, I’m not saying don’t do it, but I don’t think that’s the key thing. Because actually, those definitions, you know, just try and say denominator, the definition is harder than the concept, frankly. But what you can do, what you can do is you know, those word problems that kids go, yeah, yeah, but yeah, but so but is it that you have this big, big word problem like, but is it an answer?
Okay, and one of the reasons why kids find word problems, they might understand the operations, but they don’t understand how to apply the math onto this word. The word root problem is because of something called prosody, so prosody is the sound, tone and pace with with the music, if you like, of language, and different genres of writing different poses. So if I read a story that will have a different once upon a time that Alella a different sound and tone to if I’m reading a piece of nonfiction or you know, an explanation, science example, or a maths problem. Now think about maths problems is nobody reads them for pleasure. Well, maybe you do, Craig, but very few people, read them for pleasure. And you never heard hear them read out loud. And actually, you need to know how they sound. Because how they sound in English and lots of languages. There’s lots of stuff that isn’t in the text, that indicates which words distressed and which words are in importance, and there’s nothing written that tells you that just sort of pick it up. So I should have written down a maths problem to read out loud, and I haven’t so bad preparation on my blog, but it might have certainly, Craig has 10 pounds. I want to read the word each I’m calling I thought a really crappy word problem. Now I’m just thinking off the top of my head, but you know,
Craig Barton 7:42 each
Clare Sealy 7:44 each suite, he wants to buy costs that and I didn’t really well, I really, I can’t think of a word problems of my head. But there’s words like each or every or in total order that in a sentence in a word problem. Or you would stress those words, Craig has five biscuits, he wants to give each of his friends, one biscuits each he has kind of like five friends. So that’s a really easy welcome. But you know what I mean, they’re things like each, each of his friends has five biscuits, you need, you need to know how to stress those words in the sentence in order for it to make sense. And then people aren’t going to learn to do that unless you as a teacher read it out in real pantomime style. And intuitively, we as self experts know which words to stress. There’s one about about a calendar, and how many days are there in November, December and December. And it’s like, ah, you know, because we want to know, it’s all of them together. And these are the these are when when children do maths problems. They don’t read the problem, not because they can’t read the words, they know the words, but they don’t understand the sentence because they’re not used to the prosody. They’re not used to reading it as a math problem. So I’m really sorry, I should have picked it up was problematic. I’ve given this example. And I’m failing terribly giving it one. But you get the idea. So as a math teacher, not every not every lesson, not every not every, you know, hours and hours and hours. But for a couple of minutes. I’m going to read you the question out loud. I’m going to pantomime reading it in my best like performance voice. And then we’re going to practice it. We’re going to maybe Coralie read it all together. And then you maybe we’ll do another one just so that we get used to hearing the sounds of sentences. So that’s my top tip literacy for everybody.
Craig Barton 9:41 I love it. Well, let’s dig into this a little bit. So the first thing to say is Claire, I am clueless. One thing I’m completely clueless about is reading and we had Chris such on the show, and he’s giving a good kind of lesson and overview in so I’m all over it now. This is right up my street what you’re talking about. So a couple of things to say. I see When you say literacy to me, and I think with my math teacher, halftime, I think of two problems immediately springs to mind that students tend to struggle with. So one is whenever you ask students to write longer form prose based answers to math problems, they struggle. So you know, explain why discuss the scribe students really struggle. And I find that really hard to help students out with. The second is math is full of technical language and a lot of it you get these polysemous words that, you know, obviously mean different things in math than they do in the rest of the world. Yes, similar and frequency, they’re problematic. But I’ve never thought to do that before what you’re speaking about there, the word problems, and they are a massive problem for kids Exactly. As you say, whenever you show them how to do it, they say, Oh, if had I known that I would have been able to do it. But of course, the skill is knowing you know how to do it in the first place. I’ve never thought to read it out loud. Like that. It’s always like the things on the board. I always say to students, okay, read the problem, highlight the key words and soul, but I’ve never seen kind of stepped in there myself, as you know, so called experts to read outs, I really, really liked that idea. So that’s in the bank. Now. I’m just wondering with that kind of communication, staffing. Any thoughts on that? How can I get my kids better at the written form of literacy, if that makes sense?
Clare Sealy 11:13 Well, the key thing is, and I’m sure you’ve heard this before, they can’t say it, they can’t write it. So they need to be able to you they need to be encouraged to say it and you know, all the usual tricks of like letting How can we say it talk partners. So thank you, Amanda. That was great. Can we make it better. So pushing, pushing, pushing for the best, the best sentence even said, or really, and then writing that down, and then you can write it down. And the other thing is, there’s an idea. This is one of Doug loves one part of it as well. He’s got obviously some buzzword, what it’s called, but the idea of just just get them just get into, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bit crap. You know, get them to write whatever it is, and it’s not very good. And that’s fine. So it goes, you know, denominator wasn’t denominator, what’s a fraction? It’s, it’s when you put it in bits. Okay. Okay. That’s fine. That’s a starting point. It is when he gets it in bits. Now, can we work on that? Now, is when you get to it, we use use a bit new, so parts, okay, so is it just parts? No, it’s about equal parts and a bit by bit and go back, come back, come back, come back, come back. And just just just for a little time, using whiteboards, whiteboards are great kids will write on whiteboards, which they wrote don’t like, for some reason, they just like the fact that if it’s wrong, doesn’t matter, when a whiteboard, you know, if it’s in a book, it’s like, oh, no, it’s gonna be perfect. And that’s, that hampers them. So it speak it write it, or even sometimes write it, then write it down. Even if you’re already reluctant, like something, I don’t care if he doesn’t write fraction, bits, parts thing off, I don’t know. And then we’ll and then we’ll talk and then go back to your writing write a bit more, then we’ll talk some more writes a bit more. To that back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And I think it was so good. It’s like it’s it’s David Dido’s talks about this as game as well. It’s like a a nought to 5k approach. You know, you’re building writing stamina, that is not, we’re not gonna be frightened to this, we’re going to write for 10 seconds, like everyone is going to be writing wherever you write can be, I don’t, like just ever go.
Craig Barton 13:32 That’s nice. I absolutely love that one. That’s brilliant.
Clare Sealy 13:36 seconds, then up to 15, then up to 20, or whatever, is max, so you’re not gonna get the very long.
Craig Barton 13:42 Brilliant, brilliant. Okay, what is tip number two they’ve got for us today, please.
Clare Sealy 13:47 So tip number two is actually essentially because you want five tips, don’t you? And I did a piece for the teachers here. And I talked about my five sort of planks of quality of education. So that’s quite good. You want five and these are basically the five that I’ve told them. So that works really well for me. And one of the things I say, so there’s going to sort of span that sort of three, four and 5234 and five, is that we should teach well, and teach a court clearly, and teach recall and teach for the long term. So anyway, so number two is to teach, teach well, but I mean, obviously, that’s not really a tip. Hey, teach well. But under that rubric, is be super clear about what you want children to learn. Really super game much clearer than you think you need to be. So think about what’s tricky. What are you assuming they already know? Break it down into steps, and then get each step and break that down into steps and then get each step and then yet can I break it down more? Because we have the curse of the expert, and it seems so obvious to us. So let’s have an example. So, where where does this usually go wrong? How can I preempt that? How can I be proactive? So let’s take the example of fractions since you’re a maths teacher, and say you want them to add fractions. Well, let’s think about that. Have we thought about when we say our fractions? Do we mean, adding fractions with the same denominator with different denominators? Do we mean the same numerator? And let’s be really super clear about what exactly is okay, we’re gonna say, all right, no, no actually is gonna, we are gonna start off at the same denominator. Fine, we’ll just denominator Actually, me. And this is where just giving them a definition won’t particularly help. I mean, maybe along the line, we can, but like, it’s to like the definitions or the concept, frankly, so. And when you think about denominators, the key things are, they’re not natural numbers. And I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t use this language with kids, but for us to understand are not natural numbers, irrational numbers. That’s why kids find them hard. Because they all the way along, they’ve learned that one more goes up in value by one and now we come to some other numbers where that doesn’t work. Of course, that’s gonna confuse them. Of course it is. They’ve been brainwashed in that for like, seven or eight years, when we first started doing that, and all of a sudden, we go nine, and I just might like that. Well, the they’re gonna find that really confusing, because it’s like completely going, Oh, no, now that doesn’t work like that. Well, that’s because it’s not a rational numbers, they’re not the same. So we have to make a big effort to really preempt the fact they’re gonna find that hard. So there’s that. But there’s also this whole thing about the word whole. Like, we haven’t got, you’ve got a little kids haven’t yet we don’t go 1230 three’s a whole number. We don’t say by the way, these things are talking about their whole numbers. We just all of a sudden start going out Yeah, holes. And of course, there’s also a hole like a hole in the ground. So that’s confusing anyway, but you know, hole what does that mean? A hole number. It’s so and we know going to big thing about what we mean by a whole numbers at all the numbers we’ve been talking about before, they were whole, but you know, sometimes things aren’t old numbers, and you know, your kid, probably How old are you now? But does he go on three and a half, you know, like they do go like I’m three and they go, they do like that sort of label. So do sort of know that they do sort of know, oh, I’ve got half a biscuit or something like that. They sort of know something about that. But making a big deal. And this can be you know, kids who are 13 might not quite have ever got that. And we just assume they have but what do we mean by a whole number and what’s not a whole number. So really being super, super clear. And then also in fractions a whole lot because sometimes leaving a hole, and we just assume it’s one. But of course we know in practice, there’s not always one, and sometimes a hole. And then we talk about there’s a whole numbers. But there’s also the whole of a fraction to go, you know, when these definitions are fractions, you go, Oh, what’s the hole? But a hole doesn’t have to be one does it? So you might say, and a hole doesn’t even have to be a hole number. Thanks really complicated. You might say, What’s two thirds of a quarter? Well, what’s the hole in the hole is a quarter but like, a quarter isn’t a whole number.
It’s confusing. So unless you know how confusing it is. And I’ve really thought about that, then it will all unravel quite quickly. So like, yeah, what is a whole number and just the basics, you know, fraction, what does fraction mean? fraction that comes from that, and it’s about breaking something. So here’s a number like number two, and we can break it into pieces. There we are. Or we usually call them parts rather than pieces of mass for whatever reason. But look, and then so you’ve got the idea of a whole with the idea of parts. But then and this is really key kids don’t necessarily know what an equal part is. Because they think equals means here comes the answer. And the and some kids already struggle with that they really don’t get what an equal parties or equal group. So these numbers in each each is a key number in max that you really need to understand. And believe me, I’ve had kids of 11 or 12, or something who don’t really get each. I mean, not most kids, most kids are fine. But some kids don’t get whole don’t get each and don’t get equal. So unless you preempt all of that, and a really thought about it, and really done stuff to preempt that you will get into trouble. So preempt it really know where you’ll be super clear about what you want to teach and just use fractions. As an example, it could be in English, or it could be about what is the sentence? If people go crazy because kids don’t? Why do you think all stops? Well, probably if they don’t know what a sentence is. Like, they don’t really understand what a sentence is. And it’s quite a tricky concept actually. So you need to do lots of and I should have said this for fractions as well examples, but also non examples. So here’s two things. I’ve divided this into two pieces. This is equal groups. This is not equal groups, you know, examples, not examples. This is a sentence this is not a sentence. So it’s a fragment. It’s not yet a sentence we need to add more words before it becomes a sentence. So identifying misconceptions, examples and non examples. In sentences Some kids don’t realise that you know he ran is a sentence because they have the misconception that sentences have done quite a lot of It’s an act two isn’t enough. So be super clear about what you’re going to teach. That is tip number two.
Craig Barton 20:07 Right? Let’s dig into this a little bit. First thing says I love it. Second thing to say. So I often say, when I’m speaking to primary college, you could not pay me to be a primary teacher. And I’m discovering this, this now as I saw my little boy, like trying to get my head round numbers. I remember when I spoke to Helen Williams on my Mr. Biomass podcast, we had a big discussion about what is three? And I’m like, Yeah, just one to three inches. Yeah, but it could be counting. It’s the concept of three, three nests, and my car, my God, like don’t know. Then as you say, you’re now talking about fractions. And I say fortunately, like, luckily, when I teach students in year seven, they’ve got, you know, a decent awareness of something like fractions, but to start that from Square, one flipping, because you say things about holes, each equal parts and so on. But this will be true for for any concept that secondary colleagues, teachers, you know, and I
Clare Sealy 21:00 bet you have kids who haven’t really got those things. Yeah, exactly. Right, they might have some some things that are fine, that are sort of at an appropriate level, but somewhere underneath there’s some really basic concepts that are that are really shaky that place value my husband used to be the child now math intervention teacher, but younger kids, for me, maybe probably age kids, I needed this. So it’s a bit of research on language and about place value. And kids didn’t understand value. Well, you know, value means cheap in supermarkets. So no, but place and understand place either. So like, or column. He was like, Oh, God, this is so complicated.
Craig Barton 21:46 So it’s a nightmare. So I guess my question is, because this curse of knowledge is obviously an absolute, you know, disaster waiting to happen this for for many teachers, what how do you find practically you can do this. So So talking about your fraction example, which I think is a really nice one? How can teachers do that for a any concept they’re teaching? Is it a case of, you know, write out the solution to a problem, and then try and think how they know how to get from line one to line two or other different strategies? What’s
Clare Sealy 22:13 the I think, I think it’s right at the beginning, thinking about if you think about where this, I mean, obviously doesn’t work? If you’re brand new teachers, you won’t know. But if you’ve been teaching a while, where does it always go wrong? Like we know, fractions always goes wrong, because people don’t understand what the denominator is. And therefore, that’s why they add different denominators, because they don’t really understand that. And then you think, Well, why don’t they understand that? What is it? And it’s not just what I’ve told them? I’ve told them, they can’t do it. So they need to understand why it doesn’t work. And the reason why it doesn’t work. And this is tricky, because I mean, we’re probably not gonna use that language in that kind of rational number. But it is actually a number, you know, it’s not actually a number in like, a common or garden number, how those of us who aren’t maths teachers would think about it, it’s not referring to a quantity, is it really, it’s to a ratio and that means it operates differently. So therefore, we have to unpick that and then to unpick, you know, what are we actually getting out it’s about when we’re dividing something and that gets the whole whole to what is this something that we’re dividing and we use the words Oh, in a rather Cavalier fashion. And we’re dividing it, alright, kids generally get dividing. But we’re dividing it equally. Okay. And that, that, I don’t know why kids, because we think you know, fairness. But honestly, that’s a real stumbling block for kids. And they really do need to see the examples and examples. So I think it’s like backward thinking for where does it go wrong? Why is it going wrong? And if you can, I think try and explain it. Like if you’re a maths teacher, go and get a French teacher or someone go let me teach your French Did you find fractions harder? Or you’re your partner or somebody who isn’t a math teacher? Like somebody who doesn’t know this stuff as well as you do? Did you find this hard at school? Let me explain it to you and like like be brutally honest. Like don’t do that glazing eyes when you start going, Yeah, I understand. If you don’t like tell me it’s really worth doing it’s really really worth going especially if you know the one of the things that always go wrong. Fractions always goes wrong. Negative numbers always goes wrong sentences always goes wrong tenses in. In languages always go and go around in English for that matter, as well always go wrong. You know, just find find out what those things are. And then spend a lot of time on picking why and then proactively teacher it.
Craig Barton 24:39 Let me ask you one more thing. It’s a terrible question this Claire, let me just ask you one more follow up to this. Let’s imagine you’re you’re a brand new teacher, so you’ve no experience to fall back on. And for whatever reason, you’ve either you’ve got no mates, you’ve got no support. You can teach fractions to what are you going to do there? How can kind of novice teachers Well,
Clare Sealy 24:57 obviously your school will have a break In curriculum that would have preempted that all for you, but I’m, I suppose you’re saying that that doesn’t happen either. You what you still have to just break it down, Break it down, Break it down, Break it down, Break it into steps, break each step into steps and then think, Well, surely there’s nothing. There’s nothing more to know, you know, three, three, is that no, there’s more to know, like, break it down until it’s ridiculous. And then, okay.
Craig Barton 25:28 It’s hard, isn’t it, because I do a lot of talking about, some people call this atomization, or whatever you want to put on it. And the kickback you always get from teachers as well, I don’t have time, like, if you want me to break it down this much. I’m never going to actually get to teach the thing because I’m going to be spending all my time doing each of these minor components. Well, what’s your response to something like that?
Clare Sealy 25:48 Is that Well, do you want to teach it? Or do you want them to learn it? You know, and I will get into this when I go to robust culture of retrieval, which is tip number five, it’s like, the key is that the kids learn it, not that you get to the end and go, Well, I’ve taught it now stupid kids didn’t learn it, it’s all their fault. So it’s not just about you, you getting to the end of a course, it’s, it’s about them actually learning it. And if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. And actually, in Pisa, big international assessments, the Japanese kids in the ticket 15 is in the maps. They, they only do something like two thirds of I don’t know if it’s two thirds or three quarters anyway, not all things we call anyway, a fraction that’s greater than half of the syllable of the syllabus, they haven’t talked at all by the time I do the test, and yet they come third in the world. And so even though there’s like a quarter of it, or whatever, but they haven’t done they ate, they ate it and do much better than everywhere else, because what they have learned, they know really securely.
Craig Barton 27:01 Got it. Got it. Okay, what is tip number three, please?
Clare Sealy 27:06 Tip number three is. So we’ve talked about teaching Well, teaching securely. So this is checking for understanding. So which again, sounds really, really obvious, but this is getting away from your teacher who’s going but I’ve got to get through, we’ve got to get through the whole conveyor belt curriculum. Mario Kart talks about that. But it’s a train leaving the station to mix my metaphors, it’s going it’s going, it’s going and like, we just have to carry on because we won’t get to the end, actually, well as pointless because again, it’s about what they’re learning not about what you’re teaching, and it’s better that you’ve bought, you have taught they’ve learned then then you can just go well, I’ve taught it. Hey, not my fault. I didn’t learn it. So checking for understanding lots of ways of doing that. I love Tom Sherrington says the simple sentence of saying, instead of saying, do you understand if you say Do you understand, like most kids will go? Yeah. Because for two reasons, either they’re too embarrassed to say no, not really. All they think they do understand. You know? And maybe they do, maybe they don’t. So he says, just flip that on your head and ask the question, what do you understand? Hey, so great. What do you understand about what denominator is? So Michelle, what do you understand? So, and then don’t just ask one person, they’ve just as one person think, Oh, he’s got it. So therefore, everyone’s got it. So it’d be really forensic about checking for understanding. And then of course, you check for understanding and when they all do understand Great, good to go. But when you find that they don’t, or some students don’t, then you flex your teaching in response. But you address the fact that they can’t, so that that might be in the moment. Or you might go, I am going to have to mentally park that because nearly everyone else has got it. Those who haven’t. Yet I do need to carry on. But I will bank that to do something at some point with them to release maybe within a lesson and maybe after the lesson in intervention, whatever. But you’re not just ignoring it. So you’re flexing your teaching from the information. Now, how would you do that key things are using whiteboards. And I like as a big thing on Twitter at the moment with lots of primary school teachers. Again, I can’t believe people are going whiteboards reusable for 20 years we haven’t saved yet. Well, good for you. Brilliant. You carry on doing that. Not everybody has, believe me, they haven’t. And some secondary schools have some secondary schools haven’t maybe some primary schools haven’t. So if you have good for you, if you haven’t, you’re missing a trick you need to be using Lightboard so that you can see in the moment you can see what people are doing and how they’re doing, how they’ve done so that you can flex your teaching. There’s also you know, this is from the Teach Like a Champion playbook. What is called cold calling, which I think is a really unfortunate name because it sounds I mean, it’s just meant to be like cold calling is when people phone up and try and sell you. Double balloon isn’t it? That’s where it comes from. But people just see it as cold didn t it’s about catching kids out and it can make kids anxious. like cold calling isn’t any of those things it’s only thrives in a classroom culture that’s warm and supportive, which we’re error is seen as useful. But kids feel safe to make mistakes and see them as useful. And where they understand that you asking them a question. Without them volunteering the answer, it’s that they expect to be asked questions is because you care about them and about their learning. So that’s what cold calling is. I talked about this earlier whiteboards cold calling, I talked about this a bit with literacy call and response is a really underused mechanism. So you know, what are we going to do? Now we’re gonna do questions, one for five. So they know, we’re all going to do that we’re all we all know that. And then show cool, which is a variation on cold calling, it’s the same thing. But that’s where you’re sharing a piece of writing or a piece of something written, and then critique it. So probably not so much a math thing. It could be, I suppose, it could be like, let’s look at your steps, but I worked something out but or a piece of writing, put it onto the visualizer. And whatever, you’ve got to be able to do that. And then really analyse it and critique it and make it better make it even better, you know, it’s probably fine again, but these all require classrooms with warm, supportive ethos where, you know, you don’t have kids rolling their eyes or laughing or smirking because somebody’s made a mistake. Like you have no tolerance for that whatsoever. So yeah, what do you understand checking for understanding being really forensic? And it might not be it might not necessarily be? Oh, no, that’s tip number four. It’s gonna say maybe after the lesson, but I remembered No, wait.
Craig Barton 31:51 This is great. Okay, well, let me just dig into this a little bit. I am obsessed with checking from the starting classes right up my street there. So just a couple a couple of things. I’d like Doug Lomov. Again, we’re both huge fans, right? I think it’s tip number one in Teach Like a Champion 2.0. And then he shifted it a little bit longer than 3.0, where he has either reject or now he says, replace self report. Because that’s the classic thing where, as you say, you say, do you understand what I like that dog does there is he says, if you find yourself wanting to say Do you understand that’s really good, because you’ve recognised that it’s the right point in the lesson where you need to check for understanding. And then you can step in and do something like you’ve said with Tom Sherrington is idea of just, it’s it’s not a massive change to your teaching, is it you’ve recognised it’s the point in the lesson to do it, you’ve just got to make sure it’s an actual check of understanding and not a check of students perception of understanding. So really, like, I really like that.
Clare Sealy 32:44 I also like Adam boxhead wrote this brilliant thing. It’s that this is a real way. Oh, yeah. But you know, when when we understand something in the moment, you get this sort of endorphin rush, and it feels good. Like, oh, yeah, like when it clicks, and it feels great. And so like, you think, Oh, I understand that now, if you’ve had this feeling. And so but your memory, when you go back to it, that you want to understand that now what you’re remembering is the feeling of understanding it now, but understanding is dependent on remembering it. So you can’t understand something and have forgotten it. But you might go but I understand that well, you’re what you’re remembering is the feeling of understanding it, not actually understanding it, and the two are different.
Craig Barton 33:27 That’s lovely. I’ve never never thought about this thing. So that’s really, really nice. I really liked that. And my second and final point on this, this is something I discussed with Joe Morgan, a secondary maths teacher, she said that a lot of the emphasis on check for understanding and responsive teaching, is on the checking for understanding and not so much on the responding. And you’ve alluded to this yourself, like if you do the check, and it reveals that there’s a problem, you’ve got to then respond to that if you just crack on regardless, there’s no code
you’ve put all your thoughts into the check for understanding and you haven’t thought, Alright, what am I going to do if it goes this way, or this way? It’s problematic, isn’t it? And
Clare Sealy 34:08 that’s why that goes back to my earlier point about being super clear about what you want to teach. So again, you know, you’ve got your teachers one, I’m not gonna go right back because that will be ridiculous. Okay, maybe you’re not but then you check for understanding. Oh, maybe I need to go right back. But you know what, that you know what that right back goes to certainly like, Oh, God, I don’t even know what each means, you know, like, or, you know, what is going wrong here. I know that. I’ve got I’ve got that. I know what the likely things that could have gone wrong, had gone wrong, and I’ve checked for understanding and it’s like, Oh, okay. That could go. But yeah, I really like Mark McCourt’s phrase about conveyor belt teaching and that we shouldn’t be to that and somebody I don’t know if it was him. Somebody said, We’re teachers, not broadcasters. So you know, when you broadcast the programme, it just carries on regardless doesn’t matter. And that’s why teaching during lockdown was hard, because you didn’t get you weren’t sort of in broadcast mode. And that that checking for understanding was much harder. Particularly if you didn’t want to have cameras on, or particularly if it wasn’t even live teaching, if it was a synchronous teaching, it was really hard. So you couldn’t check for understanding. And you were in broadcast mode and kids caught what they call but you know, it was sub optimal. To put it mildly. So yeah, we’re teachers, not broadcasters, which means we checking their understanding. And we’re flexing in the moment and responding to that, because we are super clear about what they want to know. We know what the misconceptions are, and we can pivot.
Craig Barton 35:41 Fantastic. Okay, what is tip number four, please.
Clare Sealy 35:47 So this is again, so this is more about checking for understanding this is after the lesson. So after the lesson, you know, you’re going to look at their books and and maybe a mask they ticked as they go they you know, like in maths, I think it works really well when they do for and then check with the either check, because you give them the answer, you know, for independent work, they might check and then you give them the answers or check in when with a group. I love this. When you check with the group. Have you got the same answer? Probably it’s right, though, you probably haven’t all made the same mistake, probably. But if you know if there’s a difference in the group, then let’s work out who’s got it wrong. And maybe it’s the three have got it wrong, and the ones got it right. Anyway. So that’s a buy divide. Sorry. So that’s really from the previous one. But so when you check their work afterwards, then again, you need to do something about it. It’s gonna go oh, God, I couldn’t do that. Nevermind next week, it’s area cracking on or, you know, Macbeth or whatever, you know. So what do you do? So what you don’t do most of the time is marking? Because why don’t you do that. And it’s not really even about workload. It’s about workload, but actually, it’s because it’s not very effective. When I was learning to drive, I wasn’t very good at parallel parking. Now, what my driving instructor didn’t do was then going, Oh, how am I going to help you with your parallel parking, and there was only one of me, of course, it wasn’t trying to teach 30 people all at once in parallel, but, but what she didn’t do was go, I’m gonna write you a little mini essay here explaining how to parallel park and then I will read it and go, right, that’s what I should be doing. You know, it’s like, it’s really unlikely to be helpful, isn’t it? You know, why? Why is writing an explanation? Why don’t you just tell them the explanation. And as we know, most of the time, the problems are pretty similar that kids are coming into. So when children can’t do something, most of the time when they try and do something, you know, they haven’t done it, but it’s not because they’re being perverse if they haven’t done it, because they don’t know how to sew, they don’t need feedback. Like, they do not need feedback, what they need is more teaching. That’s what they need. So you do a letter, anything, oh, blimey, they can’t do whatever. Then what do you do next lesson, or, you know, a third of them can’t do that, well, we’re going to do that again, then, you know, not necessarily for the whole lesson. But we are going to do some of the lesson doing some of it, rather than just thinking I know, I’m going to write it down and write it down for Craig, and we’re gonna write down again, but Alison, write it down again, for Apple, and then write something else. That’s crazy. In fact, to get workloads, it’s just really ineffective. It’s also really bad on workload as well. And that’s important, not just because it’s nice to be nice for teachers. Of course it is. But it’s like if you’re, you know, all choices and opportunity costs. If you’re spending your time marking, you’re not thinking about misconceptions, you’re not being thinking about how to be super clear, you’re not, you’re not thinking about how you’re going to check for understanding the lesson, or what you’re gonna do, they can’t do something. And that’s a much better use of your time than spending ages, marking work. So yeah, if they can’t do something, but only feedback, they need teaching. Most of the time, that mean, it’s a place for some sort of feedback, but you know, it has to be within their power to act on it. So I don’t know if you if you’ve had this, but you know, when you were had to get on the edge, get the next step of the target and the target is, learn something I haven’t taught you yet. Well, it’s not in their power to do anything about it. So that’s pointless. So it’s much better to go. Your feedback is, you know, if you did your homework that might help. Or maybe you should sleep some more, or come to school on time, you know, those sort of things are in their power. I mean, I know it’s not in all kids power, I get that some kids super challenges in their lives, but you know, for most kids the things they they can actually do. Maybe if you don’t tables, you’d find math a lot easier. Just saying. So give them give them you know if you’re giving them feedback back. It’s got to be, it’s not on what you just taught them generally, because there’s not much that’s for you. The feedback when you look at their books is for you as a teacher. So you don’t it’s called AFL and assessment for learning. Yeah, well, actually, a lot of it isn’t assessment for learning. So assessment for teaching. So, but there is assessment for learning. And actually, it is useful to say, things like, your table knowledge is really getting in the way here that could really help you, you know, so let’s do something about that.
It is really useful to give them metacognitive strategies to check their work. So for example, and these will be, you know, I’m not talking about PCs four here, but you know, if you add some numbers together, you can add them up in a different order to check. Because that should be the same answer that the quick checking mechanism to check your own work, you can use the inverse to check. So do your work, and then check it and have that those sorts of routines that you are going to check. If you’re doing long multiplication, what’s the thing that everyone forgets and the long application? Oh, they forget the zero in the second line over two zeros and the third line or whatever, like, what’s the thing that everyone does? Oh, yeah, check that Oh, and this one, this will be your like this one for PC? Four. Can you say five? Any Key Stage? This is a thing? Units? units, units, units, units units? Is this a measures? Question? Yes. Has it got units in? Yes. My the examiner, tester, whoever is at the question, have, you know deliberately mixed up metres and kilometres probably because they’re just like that they want to check. I’m going to check forensically the units. I will just do that. Whenever it says units. I will go through a question. And I’ll put a big, I don’t know other code to myself, I’ll do a big pink circle or something around it. And that will remind me that when I check, it’s like there’s a unit question. I’m likely to make a mistake with this. Integration at the zero. I will make that mistake. As soon as I read integration, I’ll put a big sign to myself. I’d see Sorry, whatever it is, what do you do the integration, I’d say whatever it is, the thing that you do that everyone forgets to do. So teaching them self checking mechanisms, fine. That works. So a bit of metacognitive feedback that feedback is more is really for you, not for them.
Craig Barton 42:32 I like it. I like it controversial. And Claire and I like this, forget the feedback, do the reteaching. If they don’t know I like that. So let’s dig into this a little bit more. So the first thing to say is I’ve made this mistake many a time, where I’ve had a big pile of books on a Sunday. And I’m having to mark them and I the first book gets a load of my attention, loads of written feedback, bla bla bla, second book, slightly less attention. So I’m getting nakid. Now third books on and then what happened by the time we get to like the 15th book, not only well, it cannot be bothered anymore, but also, I’ve spotted the same mistake again and again and again. And if I’d have known that from the start, I wouldn’t have bothered writing all this feedback, because it would have signalled that this is a whole class issue. So no point writing in the individual books. Let’s just you know, reteach it. So I think one thing that I’ve certainly found useful was having a quick flick through all the books first, just in case you can identify a bit of a common trend before you start diving in forensic ly one book at a time. Does that make sense?
Clare Sealy 43:28 Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s absolutely key. And, you know, if you get some outlier, who’s done something really bizarre, fine, you know, yeah, I still maybe writing isn’t gonna be the thing it might be. It’s not like it’s banned for evidence day. But like as your go to strategy, it’s a really weak strategy.
Craig Barton 43:49 I agree. Right. Let me ask you an awkward question about this then. So I was like to kind of play devil’s advocate a bit on this show. So let’s go awkward. So what you’re kind of hoping for when you mark is either everybody’s got it, right? Because then you’re laughing? Or everybody’s got it wrong in the same way, because then you can do your whole class feedback. But let’s take the extreme scenario. Let’s imagine half the class have got it right, half the class have got a question wrong. What are you going to do there? Because if you teach the whole class it again, it feels like you’re a bit of a disservice to the ones who know it. But then if you just try and teach a small section, what on earth is the rest of the class going to do? How does that play out?
Clare Sealy 44:23 Well, I think you could go either way. And I don’t say it’s not a problem, but I think I think people over overdo it as a problem. And I think actually overlearning is really good. So it’s not going to kill the harp you’ve got it right. To sit through it again. It really isn’t. It’s like oh, good for you. And actually, this is this is going to help you and I read this ages ago and I cannot I’ve tried you know as we know, when you read something you think, oh, where was that? And I’ve tried to find it and haven’t been able to find it. That’s really annoying, but there was a it was this paper about a level maths and And typically the jump from GCSE to a level maths is quite a shock to the system for kids. And what they find is that these high flying kids who’ve got all their grades, whatever’s seven pluses, wherever, but actually, their understanding of things like fractions or algebra or whatever, isn’t as secure as you think. Because they’ve been able to do stuff, and they’ve been stretched and challenged and pushed on to the next one, and the next one and the next one. And actually, you’ve done them a myth service, because you’re an all they can do a few. So they’re fine. And they don’t really they’ve got a superficial understanding and got a really in depth understanding of it. And actually, they could have done better, had they really been, you know, we’ve done them to death, we’ve done them done major, they really, really, really, really added to your understanding. So that overlearning actually will probably really benefit them. So it isn’t it isn’t the the terrible thing, though, you know, there might be occasions there might be some cases like no, really, really they do get it, they really do get it and I don’t think you know, you there are strategies you can use, you can be like, if you’ve got it if you really, really, really got it. Here’s another one to be getting on with, you know, here’s something you should be practising, I’m going to be talking to everyone else, you’re going to be dead quiet, I’m not going to help you. So this is for most people, but if you really think you’ve really got this fine, here you are crack on with this. So
Craig Barton 46:26 got it. Okay, flow, fifth and final tip, please
Clare Sealy 46:31 say so my last one is have a robust culture of retrieval, quoting and unboxer. Again, that is just because you’ve taught it, you’ve taught it to keep taught it well do you a super clear about what you wanted to learn, and you taught it securely. So you check for understanding, not just in a lesson, but after the lesson. But just because they’ve learnt it doesn’t mean they’ll know it in a month’s time or three months time or a year’s time. And this is Adam boxer writes brilliantly about this. So I’m basically channelling and a book. But human like forgetting is completely normal, is forgetting is not some irritating thing that children do to wind us up or because they’re feckless, or whatever. Forgetting is human. Like when humans learn stuff, they forget it, or almost immediately, we know that that’s a scientific fact that humans forget stuff. So we shouldn’t be shocked or disappointed or surprised or disheartened by the fact that what we teach will be forgotten. Like it just will be that’s just normal, and human, it’s inevitable. So therefore, we need to plan to interrupt the forgetting through doing retrieval practice. Now, that should be whether that you do that in a starter or near some other way in your lesson. Don’t think that don’t think for how there’s a million ways of doing it, I would say that secondary school level that most of your homeworks should be based on that maybe not all, but most of it should be based on that. But you know, you do need to be going over what we learned yesterday, what we learned last week, what we learned last month, what we learned way back when let’s do some way back when stuff as well. And then again, you’re checking for understanding or checking for taking they still understand it. And of course, if they can’t remember it, they won’t be able to understand it. Or they might remember, understand it. And then you get so what you’re going to say to me is what about all the teachers who go but I don’t have time. And this is where we talked about my my leaky pipe analogy, okay. So because human beings are leaky, they are leaky learners, we teach them stuff, and it leaks out their brains. So imagine you were told to be built a pipe between point A and point B, a pipe to carry water, and you built this pipe, and you could see that the pipe was leaking. But you thought, Well, I haven’t got time to go back and fix the pipe. I don’t care about the pipe, I don’t want to get from A to B. And then you get to add in your pipes. Dairy are Tada, I’ve done it. I’ve done a pipe, oh, do not much water coming through because so much is leaking out. Whereas somebody else never gets from A to B, they get sort of two thirds of the way to B or three quarters. Oops. So those two numbers, right? It gets you to get most of the way. But what they do, the reason why they don’t get there is because they do go back and fix the pipe. So actually, they get more well walwater further than somebody who just craps on and it’s really thinking about themselves and really thinking about looking good, rather than actually being good. And being good is actually making sure that the learning is revisited and isn’t forgotten because legally we’re all leaky learners. So don’t blame the pipes. Don’t blame the pipes for forgetting or for leaking. Like you it’s your job to to notice the leaking and to do something about it.
Craig Barton 49:52 I love it. All right. A couple of them are two things I absolutely love straightaway here. So firstly, I really like that emphasis. The forgetting is normal. I like that I think about Something that that doesn’t get emphasised enough, between teachers, but also teachers communicating that to kids. I’m a big, big fan of that. I absolutely adore this leaky pipe. I’m all over that one. That’s a really, really, really solid analogy. I really like that. My, I guess my only follow up question is, I’m really interested in retrieval opportunities, inside and outside of lessons. So I completely agree with you that homeworks are really good time to do retrieval. And I’ve made the mistake for many years in it having topic themed homeworks, based on what the kids have just done, and it’s fine, but they tend to do quite well on them. And then you think, Oh, fantastic, I have to worry about that again, but I call it this, like the illusion of mastery, you think they’ve got it, but they’ve only got it in the moment, and so on. So I think moving away from topic specific homeworks, to always, as a minimum, having at least some kind of revision or recap section in each homework is a good idea. But the problem with homeworks. And again, this is a cultural thing is quite a few kids don’t essentially take them all that seriously. Maybe they either don’t do them, or they rush them, or they copy, or they just do the questions they can do. So then a lot of teachers think, okay, I know, well, I’m going to shift my retrieval opportunities into the lesson instead. But then, of course, then you retain up into a kind of curriculum time. And it feels to me, retrieval should be in an idea well done outside of the lesson. Because, again, the teacher can then focus on teaching the new stuff. And if they can collect information in about what kids know, and don’t know about prior learn stuff, they can address it. But I just think, I don’t know if it’s the same in primary, but homework, it feels like the ideal opportunity for retrieval, but it never seems to work as well, as it does in theory, if that makes sense.
Clare Sealy 51:40 I think it comes back down to it is a more of a secondary thing. I think that homework in primary is, is more contentious. And you know, personally, I do think that in primary schools, it should be about reading every day, for sure. And it should be about things like it should be about retrievals you should be about number bonds and times cables. And maybe as they get older towards up a few things to it can be some of the other stuff inside the other subjects for people practice. I do think the secondary, I don’t think so there’s a question about it, it should be retrieval practice should be the sort of the the mainstay, not of every single piece, but of homework and it needs a whole school culture that is taken seriously. But it’s, you know, if it’s going to be taken seriously, that’s a whole school thing. And you need if you want if you’re going to say right, so the mainstay of our homework is going to be a really robust culture of retrieval with a culture of retrieval is we’re going to have a platform that we’re going to use or platforms that we’re going to use, there going to be consequences. If you don’t do it, it’s going to be checked up on if you don’t do it, that’s an issue. But that only works if everyone’s doing it everybody. Everybody knows what you’re meant to do. And there are genuine consequences for not for not doing it. I don’t know if you know, it sounds like this is a peon to add a boxer which in a way that is the platform he uses is carousel, not so like mass. There’s loads of other things I wouldn’t mass you’ve got your Egadi or boxes now, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s your one. And as what’s the other one? What’s the other one? Doctor? Doctor, Dr. Frost not gonna floss anyway, there’s loads of things out there. So they’re all fine. But um, so what carousel does really well, for other subjects? And again, it wouldn’t work for every single subject, but it has for the kids, right? And again, it’s so it’s not it’s not a math thing, really. But they say, right, they have to write answers. It’s not that they have got some multiple choice, it’s not many multiple choice. So they write an answer. So you know, what’s photosynthesis? It’s plants and sun, they write? Okay, not obviously not very good answer. And then they have to judge for themselves that they’ve done, then it gives them the answer, and they have to see if they’ve written it correctly or not. And then they’ve been clear, it’s not really correct, because it’s sort of on the way to being correct. And then they can do it again. And the idea is they will carry on doing it and because they will get given the answer. Do the answer, get given the answer, have a go at doing it again, teach, you can see all of that. And then it feeds into the starter for the next lesson. For the startup in the next lesson, it goes into whiteboard mode, and then you can you can go oh, here’s an answer that Craig put up or you know, you can do it anonymously. So many books, photosynthesis, plants and fun stuff. And we can critique that again, go back to our show call, we can critique that right, it’s on the way to being right, but how can we make that better, better better? And so then kids can see that actually what you did for homework it absolutely is feeding into the lesson it is absolutely is doing that. So there’s a real purpose towards it. It’s easy for teachers to set it’s easy for teachers to to check, and it’s purposeful. So if it’s a whole school culture behind it, then I think that whole thing and I haven’t been a secondary school teacher so you know, what do I know? Maybe Though Yes. But I do know having talked to schools where they do do it well, if you have a whole culture behind it, and, you know, when things don’t work, it’s because the systems haven’t been you know, it’s going back to being super clear, being super clear for teachers making it easy, easy for teachers to set easy for teachers to check. Easy for kids to know. So they don’t have John some schools you have about 59 different logins. Like if it’s maps, it’s this login. If it’s history, it says login, you know, it’s Google Classroom for this it sparked for this it’s I don’t know, what’s another one
Craig Barton 55:39 century
Clare Sealy 55:40 Quizlet something else? You know, he gets all your brainpower worked out just to work out which blooming platform you’re on, make it easy, like, keep it super clear, super easy. Parents can check. You know, parents can check up and teachers can check kids. Can they have them? No, I didn’t have my login. Like carousel you even need to log in. So yeah, make it make it easy.
Craig Barton 56:08 Love it. Absolutely love it. Well, I’ll see what colour they are five. Absolutely. Fantastic tip. So one thing I’ve made a tonne of notes for the benefit of the viewers here is tonnes to think about here. Absolutely. Fantastic. So let me come back over to you now well, what should listeners check out of yours?
Clare Sealy 56:25 Well, I can look up my blog. And it’s called it’s www primary time Re. So primary timer theory.com. And it’s got primary in because I’m a primary teacher by trade. But there’s loads in it, you don’t have to be a primary teacher to benefit from it. Because there’s loads in there. I’ve just done laminated blogs on assessment, for example, that is pretty much crossfades. And now I’m working crossways anyway. So that will be my my main thing that I’d say listen to listen to you don’t listen to it, because it’s a blog. Read it. Don’t listen to it. Sorry. I edited the researcher guide to the curriculum. So I mean, only wrote the foreword and chose the people to write things. But that said some really good pieces in that not least their final chapter by Christine Council, which is the tour de force. So they will be my two main things I’d say of mine. Do you mean? Do you mean other people? Because I mean,
Craig Barton 57:21 that’s perfect. No, no, it’s all about you. So yeah, that’s the least I could do. So yeah. Well, those links to both of those in the show notes page. Well, Cloud has been an absolute pleasure. I’ve learned absolutely loads. It’s been practical, interesting, engage, and it’s been brilliant. So thank you so much for giving up your time to speak to us.
Clare Sealy 57:39 No problem. That’s been great talking to you, Craig.
