More tips from Adam Boxer
Video transcript
adam tip number three tip number three to reduce choppy time in listens use a front loaded means of participation and wait for golden silence now there’s a few buzzwords in here so we’ve got choppy time front loaded and golden silence right take us through each of these okay choppy time is is like noisy time yeah when kids aren’t misbehaving yeah but there’s noise so for example when they’re giving out the mini white boards yeah if you say yeah so you know you want mini whiteboards to be given out you say give out the mini whiteboards that leads to choppy time got it now what we saw before earlier is that that choppy time can escalate and um i i had a whole thing that i i used to say it was like yoda style you know you’re like hey it’s for suffering suffering leads to anger anger jealousy and jealousy yeah basically like noise leads to hubbub leads to disruption leads to conflict leads to defiance nice yeah and and experienced teachers know that if you nip it early it ends up always being better and that little bit of hubbub and that bubble that noise that you think is okay very very quickly turns into stuff that isn’t okay and is uncontrollable um so if you want to like reduce that that choppy time you need to be clear with your instructions now telling people to be clear with their instructions is not good advice yeah because how do you if i said you’d be more clear yeah well like enunciate yeah like that would it’s like when people tell kids like yeah you didn’t read the question they read the question yeah they read no they they they need to read the question more carefully okay how do you read more carefully yeah what like you just do it slowly like can you read slowly reading slowly is hard yeah it’s actually worked so it’s just a nonsense yeah so telling people they need to be clear is rubbish right so what they need to do is they need to front load their means of participation okay so it means that means of participation is how you want the students to do the thing so let’s say you’re asking a question you want hands up you’re saying um hands up and you’re being explicit about that if you want them to answer on a mini whiteboard you’re saying on your mini white balls if you say if you want them to do it in silence they’re going to do it in silence if you’re going to do it quietly talking to your partner you’re going to do it quietly talking to your partner that kind of stuff and front loading is putting that at the beginning of your instruction because if you say something like um you know everybody write down the equation for speed distance all right so if you say no if we did mini whiteboards is easier if i say okay i want everyone to get the mini whiteboards uh but i want you to do it quietly by the time i get to the but i want you to do it quietly they’ve started getting the mini whiteboards and they’re noisy yeah and you’ve lost it because they’re not listening to you anymore they’re focused on the mini whiteboards and then noise hubbub disruption chaos pandemonium nuclear thermonuclear war right um all of those can you imagine that the silence one’s a big one as well right if you don’t look loaded with the silence they’re already exactly the person next so you say things like okay guys we’re gonna do this next bit in complete silence god nobody’s gonna talk quietly grab your mini white balls nice and then key wait and wait the one of the most important ingredients to an instruction is the weight afterwards because what i see a lot is people start their instruction then they take a question from a kid over here there’s a question from the kid over there and then they start talking to someone at the back and then they start repeating their instruction or whatever and before you know it that hubbub is like off the charts you’ve got some kids working some kids chatting then a teacher starts circulating talking to this kid that kid yeah it’s all about that weight right it’s about making sure that everyone’s on the same page so so you’re doing the meaning i wasn’t gonna we’re gonna do without talking completely quietly everyone’s gonna get their mini whiteboards and then if a kid says oh sorry i don’t have my pen and you start walking over and you give a pen anyone else not got a pen go over there go over there before you know that kids are talking yeah cause why wouldn’t they yeah okay so we modify the instruction again we say okay we’re gonna we’re gonna do this completely without talking if you find you don’t have a pen and again i’m not even saying them to get the mini whiteboards yet i’m waiting for that to the end yeah if you find you don’t have a pen you just raise your hands i don’t want to hear any noise i don’t hear you calling out or speaking to anybody about your pen you just pop your hand in the air uh what we gonna do if we don’t have a pen david very good you’re going to put wait are you going to call out to me that you don’t have pendant no no just perfect well done it’s just going to go up in the air nice and quiet excellent okay eyes back up here that weight that way good lovely right very very quietly and if we don’t have a pen our hands going to go up we’re just going to grab our mini white boards go now and then i wait kids put their hand up i’m still waiting i go like this give them a thumbs up i go alright sign weight yeah make it on the sign for weight that’s that one yeah um it’s funny because like i spend a lot of time in israel in israel everyone signs weight like this you put like two heads and you go like this like this it’s like a really common sign that means weight ease and um i always i keep doing these the kids are like look at me like i’m completely mad yeah because the second you start to introduce that noise it all flips up um and there’s this hubbub noise chaos etc um so yeah it’s about that weight and then once everyone’s got that many white boards and those kids have got their pen up you just quietly call one kid towards you give them a box and you just say go take a pen to everyone with a hand up yeah okay right eyes up here guys lovely and then you can ask your question you know and that just like if you apply that to every single occasion where you give instructions yeah let’s say the kids are about to practice okay uk so you’ve just done your check for understanding you say okay um eyes up here please oh here’s a really good one yeah when the kids put their mini whiteboard up to show you their answer yeah you have a look you say have a look you go okay i don’t want anyone to rub off their answer put it down now why does that work it works because if you say put it down some of them start rubbing off others of them aren’t rubbing off you start talking some of the kids are listening to you some of the kids aren’t listening to you you want them to look at their work but they don’t have their work so you say okay um who wrote someone wrote 24 who was it that wrote 24 and a kid was like oh i think it was me gone lost it you lost the magic right so you make sure you say don’t wrap it off put it down and they don’t rub off and they put it down and then you talk through the answers and you say okay guys i want you now to quietly rub it off lovely next question smooth clean clear crisp every time kids are about to start practicing you say okay guys um eyes up hipples we’ve all finished with how many whiteboards lovely eyes up here okay um i want everyone quietly to turn in their exercise book please to the clean page okay really good i want everyone to get their booklet turn to page 14 please lovely question six don’t need to write out the question quietly by yourself answer questions six to fourteen and even then i messed up so i said question six first i shouldn’t have done i should have started by saying we’re not gonna write full sentences we’re not going to write the question quietly by ourselves i want you to answer some questions 6 to 14. compare that say to we’ve now finished with the many whiteboards okay everyone get your books and start questions 6 to 14. yeah chaos yeah yeah because some kids are squirreling looking for their book whatever then they’re like which question was it which question chaos noise blah blah blah yeah that’s good give me give me the give me the so i’ve got like the linga right here adam give me that tip one more time tell me oh wait i haven’t oh yeah go yeah go go okay so a quiet class is not necessarily a class that you can disturb with noise yes so so the the the example that i like to use is the register yes let’s say your kids come in there’s work for them on the board in silence yeah yeah and they’ve just got quiet and they’re then they’re starting to work if you call the register that then bad call yeah because i don’t 100 have a good theory to fully explain this yet but what i think is that people get engrossed in a task and when they first start a task they’re not engrossed in it and any noise will like disturb them like this or that or whatever and if a kid like says they don’t have a book whatever you start having a conversation with that kid you you add to the noise noise hub up etc but once kids are like focused and in the task when you then put a bit of noise in it’s okay it works that point isn’t the point at which silence is reached that’s you know a minute after and i call that golden silence yeah it’s the point in time at which they are engrossed in their work and you can interrupt it just a little bit with a little bit of noise either register or talking to a kid or whatever and you don’t flick that noise up some classes by the way will never reach golden silence yeah and you need to keep a lid on them the whole whole time yeah and classes like that for example if you ever you know if your kid puts their hand up to ask a question you start having a question with them across the room it’s disaster yeah yeah you never ever do that i mean you should never do it anyway but with some classes it’s worse than others most classes will reach a point of gone silence at which point you can like interrupt it a bit by going to talk to one key taking your eye off this kid you know going a little bit of circulation over here or there whatever um but but yeah if you go too early you kill it that’s interesting you know what that answers a problem i’ve had for many years and that’s i always used to get in trouble for taking the register too late like if it’s not done within the first five minutes of the lesson some of the illegal things happened or something i used to get told regularly yeah yeah well his own belts go off in whitehall yeah yeah that’s exactly but like taking the register whilst they’re trying to get on with the do now or something it’s just a disaster waiting to happen because and now having heard you describe it it’s because they’re not in that kind of deep focused state where anything from me is distracting them left right and center so the perfect time to do the register maybe like 20 minutes into the lesson whilst whilst they’re practicing away but sometimes you just can’t do that that makes perfect sense it’s it’s one of those where like we’re like once you’ve had a bit of experience in the classroom it like you’re like oh right obviously um and you know things like let’s say a kid trips on a chair yeah let’s say kids are quiet and working right yeah imagine two scenarios yeah yeah the same class yeah they’re both quiet they’re both working a kid is moving to the bin to put some pencil shavings or whatever and trips a bit on a chair in both classes in one class everyone starts to turn around like that oh yeah yeah in the other class which is the same kids people don’t even clock that’s because the second class has hit golden silence in the first class hasn’t yeah and and that’s like it’s like a magic moment when you know that you’re in the yes right and if people tell you to break it before then they’re wrong that’s interesting i like that right so i’m gonna ask you again give me give me the three key phrases there right so we had to reduce choppy time which is that like noisy bustly bit yeah front loaded it’s about putting it at the beginning means participation is how you want them to participate yeah and uh so like quietly or in your books or whatever and then golden science is the point at which you could disturb things a little bit and there won’t be chaos and in terms of phrases that i’ve borrowed so means participation i’ve stolen from douglas uh choppy time isn’t a real phrase it’s just like noise or whatever and then front loaded and golden silence i made up myself there you go love it love it