More videos from Jon Mumford
Video transcript
okay mate what is your second tip please right so let me just move on here right the second tip right one of the again this is this is related to to something that i saw at you this morning on tv then if you watched good morning britain this morning you’re probably too busy aren’t you today but i was watching this morning and the head teacher of michaela uh was on there i’m sure you’ve you’ve probably had on your podcast before i haven’t yet i’m sure um and she was talking about um math students and physics students being primarily boys um and i think she got taken out of context in what she’d said and there was there was another it was a professor on there talking about um how wrong she was that you know we need to open up all these different avenues for for for boys and girls etc and make it as equal as we possibly can and but one thing that i’ve found in languages is that boys in general um find languages are maybe not cool and i don’t know that’s very hard to believe not looking at me looking at my haircut um but they they find it and especially because they’re exposed usually you know i’ve always been one of the only male languages teachers in my department it is primarily a female lead um department that have worked in um and that those role models just aren’t there for for boys really um i always try to you know try and sort of shoehorn in you know famous celebrities like we remember like ronaldo kaku he speaks this many languages and and the kids love that and they’re amazed by it but boys they really struggle uh with that engagement so what what i had a few number of years ago was that a bottom set like and you’d probably call it a sink group a group where where they were bottom set they were in year nine they definitely weren’t going to take french any further um and it was actually spanish sorry they weren’t going to take spanish any further um and it was basically me with them for a year trying to teach them spanish knowing that they didn’t want to be there knowing that they weren’t very good at it really and that they would rather be doing something else and extreme boys and girls in the class primarily boys primarily there’s a few there’s a handful of girls and but what my next tip is is being creative in how we can engage boys in the classroom and what the idea that i had was that the boy used to and for this particular class i would say that more than any class in my entire teaching career and i said before i’ve been i’ve been teaching for 16 years i just couldn’t get through to them i couldn’t you know i i feel like i’m quite a personable person in the classroom and i think that normally i can find a way through to students whether it’s via you know a common interest that we might have or even just you know just bigging them up in some sort of way um but i just could not get through to this class at all i couldn’t i don’t think like they liked me at all for some reason i think because they found the subject boring um so i was thinking what what can i do to to ensure that these boys primarily are gonna run at least put their efforts in because they weren’t putting any efforts in some boys in the class we’re not writing one single thing in the list you just refuse to write and you know where’d you go with that especially when you’re trying to get them to write in a foreign language so what i did was i created um something called la liga so the league that’s the league for you thank you in spanish um and what i did was i assigned i mixed the groups up so i think there’s about it was only a smallish it was about 20 in the group uh because it was a lower lower ability group and i mixed them all up tactically as well so trying to think okay well i know that students argue with that students who can’t have them together and i know that this student runs out the room when this so i knew i had to try and be as tactical as possible when i was i was arranging the class um and the idea was that they were all going to represent a football team because the majority of the boys like football and what did i chose spanish football team so i chose real madrid i chose barcelona and a few other football teams um and i said to them right what you’re going to do is you’re going to be representing this football team for a half term or even a full term or whatever now what one thing i will say is that the whole purpose of this um of this this bit like a game really but this idea that i had it was based on um some there was a report there was a report done or some recommendation that came out a report from the british council uh i think was in the year 2000 2019 i think it was um where they they were looking at um boys and languages and they spent a bit of time looking at what was some success stories across the uk so there was a number of schools who were booking a trend in terms of how the the boys were forming they were out performing girls and they were finding okay speaking to the teachers they’re talking to students and saying what is it that you’re doing that is ensuring that these results are so so good for boys and it came with a series of recommendations and there was things like um you know ensuring that they’re well supported and that they that in your class you use humor which you know that you’ve always struggled with and and things like competitive activities that we know always works well with boys and one of them was the use of uh rewards and sanctions and rewards was the one i wanted to hone in on so this la liga idea is a long-term reward and i’ve never been one for you you know having sweets in the classrooms i just think they are such short-term fixes and in the end they just create more problems than they solve um but one thing i would say is that i introduced this as a long-term reward so over maybe a half time eight weeks and a half turn and explain to the students right over this half over this half term we’re going to be in groups we’re going to be working together as a group in teams against other teams in the room and the the prize at the end of our eight weeks is and i tried to guess what they wanted and i would say like we can have a can of coke each and we can have some crisps or sweets each in the classroom so in our last class of turn you can enjoy that in front of everybody else you can be you you know you can you can boast about it and you can rub it in the faces in that last last lesson attention straight away i hooked them in with that because you don’t get that do you normally don’t you don’t get the opportunity to do stuff like that and so i sort of dangle that carrot and i said to him right you’re going to be representing a football team and over the course of these eight weeks what you can do is you can score these fictional goals for your team so you can you can score points for your team and i said there are four ways in which you can do that you can either um you can behave well so one of the things one of the big issues was behavior that they just would not when i was talking they just would not listen they were talking over me they were having conversations between themselves so one thing and you had to do something like that so i said um if you are behaving well if you’re displaying positive behavior in the classroom then you can end points for your team and if you uh answer a question right by putting your hand up because what they were doing they were all shouting out so i said to him right if you can put your hand up and i ask you i ask you what the answer is and you get that question right or you give a really good go then you can you can end some points for your team that way um i also said that you can end points by asking an interesting question so whether you if you can show some real sort of you know real interest in how the language works or you can um maybe in conversation with another one of your peers if you can come up with a really good idea that we can that that shows me you’re being enthusiastic about our subject then that’s another way you can you can end points about and i think another one was if you if you went if you score well in a test or an assessment to try and get them into the the sort of mindset of working hard outside the classroom as well so they would they were the sort of four ways that which we could you could earn points but i did say to you as well you can actually lose points as well and you can lose points by um shouting out or getting your name on the board if that’s your thing that that’s not my thing but if if you’re shouting out not not behaving well um and and if you i think i said what was the other thing there’s something not behaving well and not not doing your work not doing the work it’s set in the lesson that was it um and i explained that to you man one of the key things that i said to them was do you think we might do you think you might fancy having a goal with this then for this afternoon and you’re all dead enthusiastic yeah sounds brilliant yet so getting there buy-in and getting their agreements that it was a good idea first and foremost really important um and then i said to them i said so is this something that you think might be might be good in terms of improving your language skills and you’re like yeah yeah we’ll we’ll give it a go yet so they were really enthusiastic about it because they knew what the end goal was as well what the the prize was they all bought into it but even when i introduced it i still thought there was still a bit of pushback from a certain number of stupid i’d say one or two students when a first introduced anyway and they’re the students aren’t you you know the students who no matter what you introduce they’re gonna try and sabotage it they’re gonna try what can i do to mr barton’s lesson here to ensure that it goes off track so what you have to do with them students is you’ve got to try and okay well what i’ll do here is i’m just going to try as best i can to be as tactical as possible and try and get them on board as quickly as i can so what i introduced was um captain captain so i invested in some captain’s armbands and from ebay they were like i think we did ten or four five or something so each team had a team captain each lesson and that that team captain has rotated every lesson and i ensured that the you know the students who knew most likely to disrupt it or not buy into it with the captains for the first team so they got a bit of responsibility they knew that they were gonna be representing their team so they did that with a bit of pride so that was the first thing i did and also at the end of each lesson when i’ve collated all the all the points and things about how they’ve done then what i did was at the start of the next lesson i had a league table so like a running lead table so at the start of each lesson when i turned my whiteboard monitor on the the screen will come in and you know when when whiteboards come on they sort of fade in the screen i want to be like looking at it looking at the um the delete table and you know cheering if they were in the lead and maybe at this point if they weren’t near the top but what i would also do is and i’ve done a way where you sit ethically on this but i would fix it a little bit so that everybody was very very close so that because you know if if once one team were lagging behind and there’s no incentive for them to carry on into the show i was a bit tactical with it to be honest and i have been ever since just to ensure that everyone’s bought into it everyone’s taking part but what the beauty of it and this i would say that in my teaching career of 16 years this is the thing i’m most proud of because when it comes to what once once the students are bought into you can you can visibly see that they’re all engaged you can you can visually you could give them a task and say okay well this is a task where we’re actually competing against everyone else in the classroom and the students will be like okay even though you know the most most disengaged boys are working away but they start to manage each other the beauty of it is they start to self start to manage themselves their own behavior and then if a teammate of theirs is not behaving well i’m not not putting the right efforts in because they know they can lose points because it’s a collective you know collective entity isn’t it it’s a team game and then they’re saying come on you need to make sure you’re doing this because settle take a point and it it just works so well i said once they bought into it it just looks after itself and you don’t really have to do much just you you facilitate the room rather than you know rather than having to sort of pick students up on the poor behaviors well it’s something which i said i would say probably the the thing that i’m most proud of um over the course of my teaching career because it’s something which i know that if i’m not getting through to a particular class and it’s usually it’s the boys who um who aren’t buying into what i’m doing then i can i can wheel this out i can just say right well what we’re gonna do i’m gonna try this and funnily enough i remember that i had a year nine french group about this about three or four years ago and i was allowed to know it was probably the most ill poorly behaved boy in school really was terribly behaved and i’m not saying that in my lessons he was an angel he wasn’t but what i remember in year 11 i was at the prom and he hadn’t taken i don’t think he was french he hadn’t taken french for three years since year nine and he said to me i used to love your lesson here and that game we played and he still remembered it and he’s like i used to love aaron points and that was not that he didn’t say it was really motivational really didn’t say it like that of course he didn’t but he said actually looked forward to that competition we were doing and that that’s good enough for me i’m not i’m not i wasn’t attempting to make him you know into the world’s best language but what i was trying to get him to do was to engage in my lessons and he was engaged and so that that’s la liga or um the league uh something which i found as a as a long-term reward has worked really well that’s brilliant mate i love this anna so i’ve got a couple of questions a few obvious ones and first like how do you know it works did you have anything to compete like did those kids did not just hear me from telling a story about that but tears were in my eyes here but i just with with the group as well did they perform better than perhaps they would be expecting usually get ta with those lower abilities groups don’t you yeah and at the start i remember i always remember what this lad said when he first entered my my group in year nine he looked around the room because because it’s setted looked around the room he said oh this group’s heavy isn’t it because of all the characters in there i thought oh god is that going to be that bad is it and the teaching assistant said this class or a nightmare across the school but the feedback she was giving me was this is really working she was saying that this game is something they talk about in other lessons and they ask all the teachers can we play a game that we do in french so i know that you know sort of speaking to other teachers and um you know second hand third hand that that it works um and it’s i’ll say in terms of the i wouldn’t say that in terms of that there would you know the engagement with the students that that’s not the thing that i’m following if we’re looking at the how they perform i wouldn’t say there’s a massive difference i wouldn’t i wouldn’t say that you know those students are taking french when they weren’t going to take french before that’s not what i was in it for i was in it for ensuring that the students were engaged in my lesson so they were getting something out of it they would they were working hard they were getting something from it but what they what one thing that i did always do with those lower ability groups was have a sort of cultural side of the because they struggle with the language side of it i had a cultural element so almost all of my classes with those groups so ensure they were appreciative of other cultures and that you know just developing their knowledge that way rather than the linguist because the linguistic quite unfortunately it was not for them really but just broadening their horizons thinking about the world being bigger than you know the four walls of our classroom and was really important for me and getting them to engage in that debate when it comes to um you know how important languages are and where they sit in their lives because a lot of the students that i dealt with a lot of their athletes bordered on the xenophobic quite quite a lot of the time which is really sad but i would say that engaging them this way and getting them to to engage with whether it was you know a reading task or even a v it could even just be a video that i’ve shown and i like asking questions on the video about how people live in you know in other countries who speak french whatever it might be i i can just save it i know probably not you want it you want something measurable don’t you but all i can say is with what i’ve i can see from the student’s engagement and that was that was all positive really um a really obvious question here mate well what about the kids who either don’t like footy or don’t like the competitive element was was that an issue or not not really no um football was obviously the the first way in that i utilized but i i i did what else did i do i did monuments some monuments across europe so did like the eiffel tower um brandon bear gate things like that so they were representing that they represent countries so that i think there was a world cup at one particular time so it shows spanish-speaking countries so it doesn’t have to be to do with football it just it just lent itself well because that particular group that i started it with and they did primarily you know they love football um i don’t know you probably you might be asking me in a sec or you might be thinking about the girls in the classroom as well how how they reacted to it i always think that you know when you say to students we’re going to play a game now because i know that new boy is really really competitive the girls are competitive as well the girls want to win as well it’s not it’s not just something you know a trait that the boys have girls you know like like competing as well and i’ve found that in the lessons that as long as the girls are in the right group and usually they do like to be with another at least one other girl in the group and they they buy into it as well and they they get as much out of it as the boys do um so i say something which i’ve i’ve been really proud of and something which as before seems to work all the time and it’s something which i can just rely upon as being something which will maybe turn a certain certain number of students around and i know that over that eight week period or seven weeks whether it might be in a term that i’ve got them where i want them and then obviously the beauty of that is that you you get a better relationship with them then once once they’ve opened up a little bit and they’re you know they’re competing you can have a bit of i don’t know use the word banter but you can have a bit of a conversation with them you can have a bit of relationship with them they’re more likely then if you try something else with them to go with you on that and that that’s just been been something which i said before is that i’ve seen play out in reality that because what one other thing that i’ve done with them as well on the back of that is that once it’s over the students are what we’re going to do now we can’t just go back to those boring lessons so one other thing that i did was i called it the magazine the mumford what was that mean la magazine oh magazine no i’ll come on shop shop there you go so so what i want to call it i called it yeah i called it the magazine a month so what i did was same principle so you earn points or you in fact it was euros that printed off all random euros fake euros um and i said you can earn euros for the same principles that mentioned that earlier on um and then at the end of that eight weeks i’ll bring in a certain number of crisps and drinks and things and you if you order them in french you gave them a bit of help with the french as well then you can you can buy certain things so everyone was involved in that so everyone because everyone was there in euros there was no sort of winner as such um but they could all um they could all buy into that as well literally so um a few things to say this is just gonna be a big long rambling point mate so god knows if there’s any sense in this at all one thing that feels really powerful about this is that it’s a long-term reward as you say you’re not having to reward them at the end of each lesson or anything like that and then it doesn’t become about the short term it becomes about the long term that feels important and the other thing that feels important is that the points are rewarded for a variety of kind of behaviors that you want to see in the classroom you can imagine with like a mixed attainment group if you were always giving points for correct answers it’s always going to be the same kids at the top and stuff but it sounds to me like you’re rewarding kids for behaving well being considerate putting their hands up asking questions and so on so that feels like an important part of this as well sorry because the team captains played their important role as well because that because they were cyclical they were getting changed each lesson you could see that the more able students really helping the less able students as well and you could see that the less able students growing you know having that responsibility as well from from you know not really contributing much in lessons to them having that responsibility obviously some students are quite shy at first aren’t they but when when they can see that they’ve got a question right and their their teammates are well done you’ve entered some points there you can see the confidence growing visibly and it sounds like when i was first listening i’m thinking this is gonna be quite hard for you to be recording keeping track of all these points and so on and i also was thinking just before you said it about if it groups at the bottom it’s really demotivating but it sounds like as you say you’re you’re fiddling it a little bit and maybe you’re not that obsessed with tracking every single point here there and everything would that be right yeah it is right what i did one issue that i did find actually somewhat taking the points down was you know you what i used to do was i print off the i’d have the the seating plan written out or printed out and then i just using a bit of a tally chart for the points but then obviously you know day-to-day life you know you’re like oh i haven’t printed off the printed off the charity what we’re going to do so then using like a whiteboard or something didn’t work so what i did was i laminated the seating plan so that whenever it was in i was in less than like a little clipboard so the students knew it was like an official thing as well so i have a little clipboard make the notes and then at the end of the lesson put the points into the lead table and then just obviously just wipe it off and go in the next lesson that’s really nice i found a couple of points from me mate on this the um the group norms feels like a really important part of this as you say you’ve got kids who are always going to try and disrupt things but the power of the group there if you can get those kids on board short term and then the group dynamics take over and stuff that that feels really powerful and it reminds me of um sami kempner who came on the show as head of maths at totteridge academy i i’ve been a group work skeptic for many years but sammy really got me on board here and one of the things he talked about was how the group was really responsible for the performance of the individual so much so that he said that and this blew my mind this he’d ask a kid a question in the in in a group and if that kid got it wrong the rest of the group were dead essentially because he was blaming them for it because like why doesn’t he know this you know working together all one and again it feels to me like these you this fits in perfectly well with this it really fosters really strong group dynamics and everyone’s looking after each other because they’ve got that added incentive to it’s one of those as well where you know you’re looking at a kid and you’re thinking that kid doesn’t want to be here that kid doesn’t like this lesson and then you see them as you’re observing or as you’re walking around the room really engaged helping somebody else and you’re like this this is working and this you know this is something which you need to you know to build upon but yeah it definitely does work