More tips from Craig Barton
Video transcript
hello i’m craig barton and welcome to this tips for teachers video now a cross tip for teachers we’ve already spoken quite a bit about mini whiteboards for me the go-to video on this was my conversation with adam boxer where he spoke for about 20-25 minutes about his routine for mini whiteboards why he uses them how he uses them loads of tips it’s absolute gold dust but in this short video i just wanted to go a little bit deeper if that’s possible into routines for using mini whiteboards when used well i truly believe mini whiteboards can be one of the most powerful tools as a classroom teacher we have available to us i go back to what adam’s i think it was his head of department said to him or the person observing him why would you ever ask a question and get the response of one student when you could get the responses of 25 or 30 students and for me that’s kind of the end of the story of why we should use tools like mini whiteboards for getting all our students thinking and seeing all their responses but if you’re a mini whiteboard user yourself you’ll have seen quite a few things can go wrong if we take a look at this picture i mean i don’t know what’s going on here with this wonky egg but that’s not the worst thing at the back here you might not be able to quite see but i think there’s a rabbit going on there i’m not sure that was quite the answer the teacher was looking for so a while ago i was lucky enough to attend one of the best workshops i’ve ever been to it was run by my very good friend danny quinn the former head of maths at michaela school and if you know anything about michaela and anything about dany you’ll know they go deep into routines they leave no stone uncovered in this workshop danny shared a booklet that michaela uses and in that booklet there was an excerpt about mini whiteboards and i wanted just to share this with you here and the first few lines so lines 9 to 13 are for teachers and then lines 14 to 28 are what’s reproduced in the student booklets you might only just pause the video at this stage so you have a chance to read this and then i’ll just pick out a few points that i thought were fascinating okay if you had a chance to read it right let’s chat about it first this goes into some detail right as i say no stone is left they’re unturned um i’ll just do a few things that i thought were fascinating i i never thought to do something like this the like the position of the whiteboard on the desk if we think of students desks there’s potential for them to get quite cluttered they’ve got a book they’ve got a mini whiteboard they’ve got a mini whiteboard pen maybe if it’s math they’ve got a calculator they’ve got a pencil case and so on i really like this we place the boards right on top of our work so we don’t waste time and as soon as we take the pen out we put the lid on top all these things that seem minor but when lids are rolling around the place they’ve lost the lids they start to eat up time of our lessons and lead to disruption and i really like this if you’ve seen my tips for teachers video about routines for diagnostic questions you’ll know i’m a big fan of this and not just saying to students don’t show your answer to anybody but justifying why and i think that’s a lovely justification for it and i like this we saw in that previous picture some of the writing was so small it’s hard to see i can’t see it the best of times so write in large clear writing well why well so the teacher can clearly see our answers it’s going deep into the routine and providing a justification and i like this as well what i’ve done in the past with this one is i’ve said put your pens down so i know that you’re ready to um show me your answer so i know that you’re finished the problem with that is you put the pen down the pen could roll off it takes time you put the lid on and so on and then the student is then going to pick the board up and blah blah blah but i really like this hover so the students are primed and ready so they can just whip the board up when the teacher says that’s just again a tiny thing i thought this is a again i would have never thought of this we use both hands so it doesn’t wobble nothing worse than a wobbly board it’s wobbling and it’s distracting but it’s also then it makes it harder for the teacher to see so i just thought that was great so it’s one thing designing and thinking deep about routines like this then it’s communicating it to the kids with justifications and then of course it’s practicing and revisiting these time and time again and i’ve shared a teacher tip video about this about retrieving routines that you can look up as well so what do you think about that um do you go that deep into mini whiteboard juice i know i certainly don’t could you make use of that was that useful to you if so please like the video and subscribe to the tips for teachers youtube channel and visit tipstheteachers.com uk where you’ll find more tips like this thanks so much for watching