More tips from Tom Sherrington
Video transcript
right top what about tip number four okay tip number four is called foster cross class accountability now what this what this is is it’s quite common in lessons to see teachers asking lots of students questions but they often totally tune out when someone else is talking like it’s just not like if i’m not on i’m not interested and cross-class accountability means that it’s part of the norm that you’re expected to respond to what other people are saying kind of all the time which is yet more effortful but it becomes a habit you form and the way you do it is by making a routine part of your questioning sequence that you when you’re asking a student’s question when you’re cold calling you’re not just saying what do you think you’re saying what do you think someone else was saying or do you agree with someone else or can you can you did you understand tell me what you think susan was saying when she explained that question and so you have this and that’s the norm so people are kind of on their toes a bit more because they they listen because at any moment i might be asked to report back what that person said and and that and that means you get it’s a really good way of bringing shy of students into the conversation because quite often they’re not keen to initiate because they’re worried about being wrong but because they’ve heard someone else you can you can get them to just bounce back so it’s a really good way sort of checking for understanding that just people are even hearing each other so i’ve asked jennifer she’s given me a great answer she’s she’s got it right 7 cubed is 343 well done so isaac just let me just check what do you think jennifer said did you do you think she was right it’s like what does she say you know yeah and it’s like that’s the first time he’s going to go i don’t know what was she saying you go well come on you’re supposed to be listening and that becomes normal did you agree with her method how did you how did you work out seven cubed and he’s not just having to think for his own sake and sometimes students will just tell you their own answer and you say yeah that’s your answer but i was asking you what she was saying and it just it just makes it more a bit more intense definitely but that’s in a but in a good way and the other thing is that when you’re talking you’re explaining something you know the teacher often asks other people to uh check what you were saying so you’re more conscious that the audience is everyone not just a teacher and so you speak a bit louder you go into a bit more detail so i i just think that’s a really powerful uh thing to develop in a class it’s lovely that tom it reminds me and i’m interested to get your take on this so i’m adam boxer as a previous guest on the tips for teachers podcast and he spoke about um his his love of using mini whiteboards and his argument is always why would you want to just get one response from a class of 25 when you could get 25 responses and would mini whiteboards kind of would they work with this idea as well i’m just thinking that you do cold call on one person and then everyone on their mini whiteboards could write down what they said and why they said it and then you know you could hold them up and then dive in have you ever seen would that work kind of fusing the two ideas together at all yeah it would i mean if someone’s given a really good verbal answer uh you could just say okay every i saw i saw a lesson a couple weeks ago where a year four kid gave this absolutely blinding answer like he was basically i fell off her chair with how sophisticated it was and it was like but then she kind of blew it because she was so blown away she just went oh wow amazing and then moved on i was thinking but what about everybody else you know what about everyone else that was an opportunity for everyone else to capitalize on the fact that this girl in your class is incredibly articulate so yeah that would be good let’s all just write down then what do you think the main two things that makeda was saying there what were the main words she used bump and then whiteboards and that that would work definitely uh it’s just that feeling of yeah i mean adam’s right about the whiteboards it’s it’s good i think there are some things where it’s easier to sort of give a verbal answer than to like 207 cubed is a classic whiteboard question so that’s not the greatest example but a more subtle one which takes quite a long time to write down uh it’s definitely you need that you know and this is why questioning techniques need to be a repertoire you’re sort of one minute it’s right towards the net necessarily it’s this checking for understanding that way that way um and it’s quite good to build confidence of students verbalizing an answer so yeah but i think i think that would make a good combination we’ve got like it’s like a boxer we’ve got moves it’s lovely that’s top tip one then top tip two yeah it’s a little bit out of but what i really like about that that tip just in general is the fact that the kids have got an incentive to listen hard to their classmates responses because you’re absolutely right you get kids who’ll think hard when the question’s being asked but as soon as they realize they’re not the ones answering it ah they have a little relax cognitively switch off a bit but i really like the fact that they’re just they’ve got that extra incentive to listen hard to their peers that feels really powerful i i just one of the things i see so often is it and i don’t think it takes any more time it’s just that a student’s giving you a brilliant answer it’s a teacher have the sort of mental habit of thinking that is an opportunity for others to learn from that not just park it there and go lovely that’s well done and i just do see that very often that that kind of it’s that you’ve got one great answer but what about everybody else did they did they even hear it do they even understand it and just use using this cross cross accountability kind of expectation just makes it much easier to do that lovely stuff