More tips from Sammy Kempner
Video transcript
what’s your second tip for us um okay so uh english is equally snappy um when doing group work make clear the group is responsible not the individual i like it right tell me more about this then so essentially if you’ve like in keeping with i’m going to ask the student least likely to know um if the student gets it wrong following a group word task it’s the group that’s getting blamed you don’t even mention the individual who’s got it wrong you like sometimes physics don’t even i don’t i actively avoid looking at them and i’ll tell my body to face the other three members of the group um and like they might sometimes they might even be like oh sir sorry i meant to say i was like no no no don’t worry and you turn somebody say this is not about you you’ve done your best right these guys just haven’t helped you properly of course like you really like dramatize it all um it’s uh it’s a big pants pantomime um but obviously equally if the group if the person gets it right you don’t praise them at all you massively just you said a data group what an amazing job they’ve understood that so clearly and so they’ve explained every single bit of it and i’ve questioned you’ve questioned them you’re going to stretch it questioning and you’re you’ve really made sure you’ve maybe given them a different question that’s similar um and they’ve they’ve got it and you say this is amazing superb work and like these two things hand in hand just but the group responsibility is that yeah it’s transformative the first time i ever did it and so it was it was a teacher at school we were talking about um how to how to review tests and we were talking about like i used to give students model solutions and like tell them how to do it and think that i think i’ve done a quite a good job of explaining really clearly which is part of it um but they uh then like someone said how do you know they’ve understood and i was like oh good question maybe maybe a retest sometimes if i have time um anyway so they were like we do group i do group work um at the end i project i send i put photos of their mistakes i’ve taken and whilst marking on the board and that person has to explain um like how to do that question and if they can’t then i blame the group and if they can i praise the group but the first time i did this um there’s an amazing tip from this guy that i work with and then i’ve i uh physically like did this like whole turning away from the kid that got it wrong and like looked totally like safe to agree what’s going on you could see their minds being rewired like they were like i’ve never even considered this before uh wow um sorry sorry they’re always apologetic to the like they’ve tried but they’ve just never had this kind of accountability before um and it was yeah like since then since i can i can literally picture the moment in room 26 whatever it is it’s just uh yeah it’s just a really great uh thing to do right so we’ve got to dive into this you you’ve blown my mind here with this one um firstly just a a on a practical question i’m i always love the idea of getting kids work up onto the board kind of as quickly as possible you’re taking photos just talk us through that what um what what app are you using what tech are we what second we talk in here yeah so um i i use cam scanner um which is just a photo to pdf converter um but like just as i’m marking if i see a really good mistake um take a photo yeah i write on my sort of like work solutions that i just got just for myself so that before i start marking i write then that student’s name on that question on the on my test and i do this maybe like three or four times um for different students mistakes that are like nice mistakes the common misconceptions or you know things that we’ve talked about during the unit and yet they’ve still made that mistake whatever it may be um and then i said like you use this cam scanner app and it kind of does like a nice kind of um like editing thing so the colors are brighter and clearer and then you just emailed yourself and i just opened the email and then at the end of the review before the review you say that i’m gonna project mistakes on the board the people better be ready to answer could be anyone anyone at all and it really could be anyone and saw like um i quite often target um pupil premium students and my lower tailing students but like just because i think that’s a generally good rule to follow for things if you’re not if you’re in two minds but more important is the like the mistake that’s been made if it’s a really nice mistake anyway um after the after that when the review part of the group was finished then it’s just like one mistake at a time this mistake is and you can sometimes see the kid who’s mistake it is or the group who’s you really know they’ve got it when the group are like this is so-and-so’s right here we go um and then uh and yeah you just say right it’s your turn you talk talk us through it um and then if they do it then obviously you praise the group and if they don’t you blame the group like to varying degrees of um like severity of consequence like it might be you just say um they don’t understand it well like sometimes i it’s quite harsh like they explain it but then you kind of stretch it a bit you ask them some more questions and four questions and they get a bit stumped and like i would do that for if if the the group members that helped them were really high attainers and i was just trying to like challenge them even more and be like look look at the questions that i’ve asked did you ask these questions though but no and i know that because this person might be able to answer these questions this is what you’ve got to be doing so it might be like that quite measured and like really really high expectations of what i want them to do in their groups but it might also be this is quite a basic mistake there’s no way you should have like not got this wrong so you’re not it’s not a detention you’re not misbehaved but you’re going to stay behind until this person can explain it it happened today my year 11 lesson actually um like they they do a paper homework of like mixed exam questions from um uh their most recent like prep tests that they’re doing actually this is this is another teaser for later on but anyway um they they come they do this every day after each lesson they come in um and they immediately the answers on the board they immediately start doing group work review um because i’ve taught them for like four and a half years now so they’ve done a lot of group work and they’re quite they’re all right and then but at the end of the 20 minutes they have to do this i then like pick someone and the student who i picked was a student who actually missed the last lesson and hadn’t heard the explanation um but like if the crunch time he has to know what to do for these questions so i just said like this this class this group’s got to stay and then at the end they have to stay for 20 minutes 20 out of like 35 minute lunch which was annoying for me and then because i wanted to get my lunch yeah he wasn’t getting it and they like they had to do it and they didn’t complain because they know how it works and they they do want him to understand um but yeah that that’s the other end of the the severity god sammy so many questions on this let me just make sure i’ve definitely got my head around this this cam scam out you’re taking the photo which converts it to a pdf you’ll send you’re just emailing it to yourself straight away then you can just go to your kind of tower at the front or whatever crack open the email and it’s on the board as that is yeah exactly love it right groups so first question about this i’m intrigued by the type of tasks that you’re setting for your group because whenever i’ve used group work in the past it’s been the more kind of investigative open-ended less structured things i’m getting the sense that you’re using it for a kind of a a broader range of activities can you just describe some of the things that you may get your kids working in groups to do yeah so there’s um before like before we start group work um it’s good you have to know the reason that you’re doing it and in my mind there’s three good reasons there’s uh generating ideas just just generating ideas doesn’t apply so much in maths um occasionally it does but not loads uh processing or practicing something so you might think of it as the we do part of the lesson but it’s not necessarily teacher-led so usually we do as the teacher obviously guiding students through questioning whatever but it might be that the knowledge is in the room but it’s not it’s not like um it’s not consolidated yet and it would be beneficial for them to have the opportunity to kind of explain rehearse and just question each other a little bit to like test out little misconceptions because some of them will know and something won’t and that one by the way is a bit risky because if they do have misconceptions then obviously those can get perpetuated so you’ve got to be really careful with that and the third one is when you know the knowledge is in the room because you’ve tested them somehow it might be mini wide boards it might be a topic test it might be a big big assessment and you’ve marked their work or you told them who’s right and who’s wrong and you’re expecting them to teach each other um so those are the three reasons that i would use group work like pretty much not at all for investigation um yeah probably because i think with investigations like um i’m not i’m not saying there’s never a time and place for it um at all because i i it’s like often lessons can take all kinds of forms and like sometimes it’s just good to have something really exciting which actually isn’t going to help them necessarily do really well in the exam um but if it’s exciting and worthwhile and maybe relevant and whatever then there’s definitely like i’m all for it um but i think with investigations like once someone’s realized and then they just tell the group that the investigation is not a thing anymore for those people so if i’m ever trying to get them to spot patterns or whatever it’s more i’ll be like looking at this board can you see a pattern here and i’ll give them real time like silent time and they put their hand up because they think they’ve spotted a pattern and not and then i’ll get a gauge of the room at least to see if they think they’ve understood which is very difficult if they have understood but i think that that has to be done um silently and actually a lot of things need to be done silently um things where once you’re told then there’s no more thinking um like uh just think of an example done badly well so some some questions really lend themselves to group work regardless of how good the students are group work um so trying to find the area of a compound shape just because like um or the area of shaving section i think even if they’re not very good at questioning and stuff um without much subtlety they can help students get to the answer without just telling them whereas by contrast like let’s say factorizing quadratic expressions um i know this is math specific um but if if you’re not very very very good at helping people you might just tell them what goes in the brackets and then like there’s no worth to the group work and so that kind of thing needs to be done silently individually because they need to get used to thinking in the right way so you have to be really careful about your when like when you’re when is a good time to use group work um and it can vary from topic to topic and it can vary from lesson to lesson and subject to subject it’s fascinating the problem here summaries everything you say i then write down three more questions of things to ask you so i mean i’m intrigued here well just a very quick question on this group work ever would you say majority of lessons would involve some form of group work for you would that be fair yeah very like as i say quite rarely generating ideas um but usually like even if it’s just mini whiteboards if they’re if let’s say two-thirds of the classes have got it right and a third haven’t or even less actually half and half and it’s fairly evenly spread throughout the room um with the students trained up well in group work i think it’s the most productive way to deal with mistakes once they know who’s right um if you just explain it from the front half of them it’s irrelevant to and if you um you can’t move on because there’s not enough of them in the classroom you know so like i can’t really imagine teaching without that as my fallback option because not only does it provide the support for those that got it wrong but the ones who got it right like i really believe it’s really powerful for them to challenge them to get them to think deeply about it to help someone understand just on that summit so i i have the exact same strategy but i i don’t have the group accountability at the end so it never works as well right because it’s the the thing there is the the kids who’ve got it right sure i’m saying to them explain to you know your partner is struggling blah blah blah but if they do they do if they don’t it doesn’t matter but then if if i’m holding them account if their partner can’t explain it well then the incentives and stakes are there so right i’m i’m on to that one here’s my question for you sami what does paired work play a role here at all is is it is it either independent silent work and group work or is there is a room for pad work i i bracket paired work um pretty it’s it’s pretty the principles applied as they do to group work and the same principles the only thing is if you’re using pairs rather than groups the best thing about like the lowest number of people if you’ve got eight groups in the class eight groups of four let’s say um you need eight students in the room to have understood something properly for the group work to work yeah if you have pairs you need 16 and so it makes it harder to do the teaching and to do the the processing becomes a little bit more risky the teaching is harder um it’s just a little bit harder i think um like what sometimes happens when they’re doing group work because they might naturally just fall into a group of two and two and like if they’re having different conversations but i really um emphasize to them that’s okay but they have to be checking each other’s pair as well and like you have to the people on your table you’re responsible for even if you’ve been talking individually with something because it’s worked out that you’re going to fix that while someone else fixes that you still need to grab their test look at their purple pen note and i’m if i if they get it wrong and i ask them later on i’m still going to be like looking at you to say what’s happened i like it i like it right final few just questions logistic questions on group work and then if there’s anything else you want to add that we haven’t covered please do sammy so um where to start your size of groups would it tend to be falls or will that would that depend yeah so three um so two to four um works five is hard uh like because then it’s harder to ensure that you’re not getting um people doing nothing and it’s harder for the kids to notice when people aren’t doing anything as well um and what you often find is a five turns into a three and a two and and it’s harder to hold into account as a group when the one on the the one from the two is on one end of the like desk and the one from the three on the other end like it’s quite hard for them to look after each other but it’s still i mean in all honesty like i’ve got quite big classes from my year eights and nines and we do often have five and it does work it’s just a little bit harder got it um a choice of kids in the group are you grouping them in any specific way i like to have um let’s say you’ve got eight groups highest attaining second highest saying third high saying fourth all the way down to eight and then i will take the ninth highest training put them on the table with the eighth and then go backwards away okay and then i’ll go again and then again um obviously all of this relies heavily on behavior and yeah clashes and so like and honestly with my year 11s there’s so many personalities in there it’s entirely sadly entirely about personality pretty much like i’ve made sure there’s a there’s a higher paying on each group but beyond that it’s about who’s going to work well with who would not get distracted but with my year eight it’s pretty much exactly by the book um like that and basing it on is it static because that was going to be my follow-up question what data are you kind of judging this on yeah so it’s um obviously informed by summative assessment data but some intervention data is always limited and i feel like so we i’m fortunate enough to have taught my classes since they arrived in year seven all of them so i know them really well and so i i wouldn’t my gut and what they understand is much better than yes summative data but it also i think what summative assessment data is really really useful for flagging up students that know less than you realize um but i think there are students that know loads that might do badly in a test in a big test and so i wouldn’t um it’s obviously it’s worth seeing it’s like it’s very useful data because something’s gone wrong for them but um i’d be much more willing to say that’s a bad day for them compared to a student who’s done really really bad really badly and is like bottom of the class on yeah major would you change the groups a fair bit then so after so i i if based on new summative data yeah or just end just anything how long would a group kind of stay in place before the members were shuffled it’s a great question um which i’ve been thinking about recently because i realized with my yeah eights it’s been pretty much static since the start of this year um so that’s what uh seven months the advantages of this is that they start to they start to understand their own ideas in the groups and they can start to really work towards that and fill those gaps which is amazing and they also they also over time start to really care and like there’s a when we do tests sometimes i’m well if if a group occasionally a whole group let’s say the whole group gets 100 or something like that you can say to the class you know obviously it’s great when a kid gets 100 but if you take the class yeah this group here yeah they’ve looked after each other so much in the last few weeks in the topic that we’ve been doing with that every single one of them’s got 100 and they look at each other and you can see they’re really proud of each other and it’s just it’s class and um yeah that so so that’s that’s stopping me moving around yeah of course then equally when they um as discussed with year 11 like sometimes they become very familiar with each other and it just takes it it can mean that they get overly comfortable yeah and then obviously you put the accountability measures to stop that happening but sometimes just changing it up um gives them a fresh impetus and they’re not familiar they’re not so familiar so they’re a bit more professional about it and yeah this is all like i definitely don’t have an i’m just i should have probably started with by saying i don’t have an answer for that question um it’s just this is what i’m i’ve been going around in my head recently as i think about it because it’s been now seven months since the start of the year and there hasn’t been much movement and i think if it’s working then keep it of course a simple solution um and if you have a feeling that it might not be or you have a feeling it could be better then trot then just change it up um which i guess applies to a lot of things if not everything so this is great something last two questions for me on on group work i could speak to all night on groups um i’m intrigued by your room layouts how do you have your desks um so i’ve got if we so let’s say rectangular room yeah and there’s a teacher desk in the corner where um so if you’re facing the board at the front the teach desk is to the right and it’s kind of it’s i’ve tried this for the first time this year i’ve never liked it being horizontal or well perpendicular or parallel to the board or the yeah board so i’ve tried just moving it quite grotesquely 45 degrees um which is strange but like it’s working for me i’m liking it um because there’s all kinds of reasons you might want to do that but um i like the fact that i can see the board teach from the front of my laptop if i’m sat down um like modeling but can also see the class at the same time yes it’s a good combination um but then in front of me so if we’re still facing the front of the room with the board at the front of the desk to the far right corner yeah there’s in front directly in front of me there’s there’s a group of four and a group of four behind that bottom right now um and so the and then there’s two more rows of groups uh the middle row has three groups of four yeah and the left row which probably should be saying columns the left column has three more groups of four as well guard it and is it the kids i assume that when you’re modelling or whatever it’s quite easy for them to all be facing the front this was all the reason i’m saying this is always one of my big arguments in my internal arguments why i think no no i always prefer rows just because the kids are facing the front yeah it’s a really good question i like again um grotesquely have tilted the desks 45 degrees and the ones that start with the ones the side of the room they’re tilted otherwise be kind of having to turn around yeah see the board only have to sort of tilt the head a little bit right okay that’s nice so the all desks um if you look at the if you look at a sort of plan view of the room would be facing towards the board um some sort of angle so that to minimize the amount they have to turn got it got it perfect and last question and it’s the worst question sammy um i i would love to get kids to the stage where they can do this working groups like you can how how long do you reckon it takes and what are some of the things what are some of the things that you’ve learned that are essential to put into place in those early kind of lessons where they’re getting to grips with this um i think genuinely the difference when i started just blaming the group um which is what i guess this tip is all about and praising the group that was like an overnight clear difference nice nice which is like ridiculous because these things never work like that yeah yeah yeah [Applause] they never arrived we never arrived we never know we’re never going to get to the point where we’re perfect in anything but we aspire to get better and better and it’s the same for the group work i think in the trajectory it’ll go up and down a little bit and then up a bit more and down a little bit more but ultimately there’ll be a positive trend if you keep practicing yeah and um you can kind of start adding new things like like with my year i’ve got eight year nine at the moment um who i’ve had since year seven and midway through year seven i started you had to build up the accountability just in them understanding how it was working but then maybe after a few months you can then start like doing it regularly in a lot of lessons and doing all the all the consequences and whatever it may be um starting to teach them to question each other um which adds a completely new uh layer to it and honestly like some of their questioning is ridiculous right they teach me a thing or two and the way they scaffold and guide through questioning and like but then once you open that up then you hit another huge increase in like productivity yes um and so anyway like i think it’s just practicing for a few months well you’ll start to notice a difference um but that overnight transformation just suddenly blaming praising the group will like is it is really good sometimes i should probably like i feel like i should say just make sure that you’re judging the situation well because i can just imagine like a slightly spicier group of kids suddenly being like what i’m getting blamed for this like yeah this kid hasn’t been listening and like and you have to really make sure that you’re um separating bad behavior like if one of the kids isn’t engaging like that’s a different thing to group work accountability um and i don’t want people to suddenly find themselves getting loads of fights with kids um because they’ve like you know held into account with group work in a way they’d never thought about before but um the principal is there that’s great i said last question somebody bob just thought of one more so i do apologize i’m intrigued by what you’re doing as a teacher whilst the kids are working in their groups on two levels here one because you mentioned a potential problem with group work is that the kids can be practicing the wrong things misconceptions can be going around so i’m intrigued how are you keeping on top of that but also i’m intrigued by a point i first heard colin foster make that as teachers sometimes we can really get in the way of kids thinking like the kids will be having a great discussion and we’ll be hovering at the back and all of a sudden either the discussion shuts down or the kids feel they need to perform or it just becomes stilted so what are you doing as a teacher whilst your kids are kids are doing the group work yeah great question um trying not to get and not get involved as much as possible yeah and trying to keep every group in view as much as possible so i stand in the corner so i only have to turn a quarter turn to see the whole room nice and i try my best to zone into conversations as much as i can and so that i can figure out whether misconceptions are being petried or but also just like figure out if they’re on task in a really basic level and if i have a suspicion that they are off task try really hard to listen to that conversation and try to try and read body language but also if it’s not working subtly try and move to that part of the room while still keeping the rest of the classroom view and then you can like maybe do that thing i was talking about where you let them play out and then you pick someone and you’d be like right i was listening you might not thought it cause i stood on the other side of the room but i was listening and i can tell it might have been that um what that’s like if you most of the time you’ll have to do that i think and that’s a good thing to do what i’ve started doing with this year 9 class is um when they’re doing their group work and because their behavior is excellent um and it’s very very rare i’ve noticed them being off task i go around with a mini whiteboard and basically just listen and it’s like i’m observing a trainee teacher or whatever just i’m just writing down what was an even better riffs in terms of their their help and then every so often i’ll just stop the class and give a few individuals feedback publicly and so it might be modeling a bad conversation it might be modeling a really nice line of questioning which took their partner to the right answer and but just like basically just giving them feedback um as i would a teacher and that’s it’s a that’s you have to model what good conversations look like um and that is one way of doing it it’s great sally i want to completely change how i teach here listen to this it’s it’s brilliant stuff [Music]