Tips for Teachers by Craig Barton

Tips for Teachers Podcast

Here are all the Tips for Teachers podcast episodes in one place, with the most recent episode first. Just click on the name of the guest to listen to it, where you can also access the episode show notes and audio transcription.

You can also subscribe to the Tips for Teachers podcast (for free, of course!) so you never miss an episode by using the links below, or by searching for the Tips for Teachers podcast in your favourite podcast player.

If you would like to sponsor the Tips for Teachers podcast, please email me at [email protected].

Happy listening!

Tips for Teachers – Top 5s

These collections of tips – available in audio and video – are all taken from my Tips for Teachers book

  1. Paired discussions
  2. Mini-whiteboards
  3. Checking for understanding
  4. Silent Teacher
  5. The Do Now

Alex Quigley

  1. Ask students to make a pre-topic mind map
  2. Focus on developing keystone vocabulary
  3. Try using a collage collection to stimulate ideas
  4. Play “Just a minute!”
  5. Support your students using sentence expanding

David Goodwin

  1. Provide opportunities for students to read in lessons
  2. Develop vocabulary
  3. Rebrand homework as practice
  4. How to improve students’ ability to write
  5. How to make retrieval practice work

Ollie Lovell

  1. How to overcome the limits of working memory
  2. Backwards plan. ALWAYS backwards plan!
  3. Check for understanding
  4. Inquire into mechanisms
  5. You can learn something from everybody

Sarah Donarski

  1. Know how to effectively assess
  2. Choose the right feedback type
  3. Be aware of student bias
  4. Use, where possible, dialogic teaching
  5. Ignite the CPD culture

Jade Pearce

  1. Use explicit instruction for novice learners
  2. How to ensure questioning involves all pupils
  3. Understand the active ingredients of retrieval practice
  4. How to improve feedback
  5. The power of teachers reading research

Craig Latimir

  1. Explicitly teach the skills an expert in your domain uses
  2. Leave a legacy
  3. The principles of Cog Sci apply to humans (not just students)
  4. Learning doesn’t start in Year 7
  5. The secret to a happy life

Mary Myatt

  1. We should all be focussing on doing fewer things and greater depth
  2. Focus on the concepts and the Big Ideas in our curriculum
  3. We know more and remember more when we’ve heard it in a story
  4. Provoke curiosity in our students
  5. Ask “who is this for?”

Kieran Mackle

  1. Leave space between reading and implementation
  2. Treat the act of teacher development like teaching
  3. Be explicit when modelling for colleagues
  4. Some behaviours are more important than others
  5. Nobody really knows what they are doing

Femi Adeniran

  1. Teach behaviour lesson one by making ‘developing the right classroom culture’ your objective for the early lessons
  2. Focus on explanations, not resources
  3. Teach in small chunks and fool kids into doing lots of work initially
  4. Have your coffee whilst sitting in the classrooms of effective teachers
  5. Provide answers so pupils can check their work in real-time

Michael Pershan

  1. Begin your explanations as a series of questions that everyone can answer
  2. The best feedback is a learning activity, and it’s much better than written feedback on the page
  3. Get used to asking “what if” after explaining something
  4. Use partner work as a chance to recruit quiet kids to share their thinking
  5. End every conversation with the student saying something smart

Jake Gordon

  1. Share photos of students’ work
  2. Reduce clutter from everything students see and hear
  3. Try teaching from anywhere in the room
  4. Modify your lessons as you go
  5. Give worked examples with retrieval starters

Mark Roberts

  1. Use Post-it notes to find out what they don’t understand
  2. Use non-verbal gestures for better behaviour management
  3. Don’t give negative managerial feedback
  4. Stop talking about grades
  5. Rephrase to amaze

Daisy Christodoulou

  1. Review every lesson plan in terms of what the student is thinking about
  2. Ask a question at the end of every lesson that every student should be able to get right
  3. Don’t do written comments
  4. Use examples, not definitions, when teaching & assessing
  5. Get your pupils to spell their name backwards

Clare Sealy

  1. Every teacher should make the teaching of literacy a high priority
  2. Be super clear about what you want children to learn
  3. Always check for understanding
  4. No feedback, more teaching
  5. Have a robust culture of retrieval

Emma Turner

  1. Use talk cubes to encourage students to contribute
  2. Encourage students to say “stop!” if they are confused during an explanation
  3. Ask students “What was the most useful thing I did today?”
  4. Plan for error
  5. Keep spare mini-whiteboard pen lids

Chris Such

  1. Learn about reading development
  2. Analyse words using morphology and etymology
  3. Assess reading difficulties and respond
  4. Feign enthusiasm when necessary
  5. Depressurise learning
  6. BONUS: 7 micro-tips

Jamie Thom

  1. Remember the tortoise and the hare
  2. Tackle the negativity radio
  3. Beware the distraction addiction
  4. Hone your public speaking
  5. Validate introverts

Julia Smith

  1. Practice, practice, practice…not until you can get it right but until you cannot get it wrong
  2. Revision should start from day one of a course, not at the end
  3. It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it…and that’s what gets results
  4. Fluency in the four operations is a cornerstone of developing mathematical understanding
  5. How to deal with students who say they hate maths or are no good at maths

Sonia Thompson

  1. Read for pleasure and read for progress
  2. Be clear about your career pathway
  3. Make use of the NPQs
  4. Go out and visit other schools
  5. Think about implementation

Sarah Cottingham

  1. Use tips when they act as solutions to problems you face
  2. Always build from what they know
  3. Beware the curse of knowledge
  4. Use research on learning not as a prescription but as a compass
  5. Retrieval practice is worth investing time to understand and use

Bradley Busch

  1. Consider lengthening wait times to maximise retrieval
  2. To develop resilience you need both high challenge and high support
  3. Challenge students on what they like versus what’s best for them
  4. Ban mobile phones
  5. Ask yourself “what evidence would change your mind?”

Tom Bennett

  1. Use the school behaviour policy
  2. Teach students what to do when they are stuck
  3. Teach students how to behave in a supply or cover lesson
  4. Teach students how to have the right equipment
  5. Students need to know you are in charge of the classroom

Jon Mumford

  1. Consider the impact of audio feedback
  2. Think creatively when attempting to improve engagement/performance of boys
  3. Use D.I.R.T. as a post-assessment formative tool
  4. How to get students peer assessing with group critique
  5. How to organise the disorganised

Kate Jones

  1. Sometimes it is better to review than retrieve
  2. Make use of the Encoding Specificity Principle
  3. Take a low effort, high impact approach to task and question design
  4. How to make the best use of technology for retrieval practice
  5. How to design good multiple choice questions

Charlie Burkitt

  1. Be clear and follow through
  2. Enjoy the kids’ company
  3. Ask the whole class questions
  4. Develop systematic revision
  5. Study the teachers you respect

Sammy Kempner

  1. Pick the student least likely to know
  2. When doing group work, make clear the group is responsible
  3. Use the same questions, with different numbers
  4. Question, don’t tell
  5. Trick your students to test if they really understand

Dylan Wiliam

  1. Make feedback into detective work
  2. Make detention work fit the crime
  3. Make question planning part of lesson planning
  4. We have little insight into our learning
  5. Don’t let “Don’t know” be the end of the conversation

Harry Fletcher-Wood

  1. Do less, but better
  2. Find a tool that tells you what’s really happening
  3. Build habits, not one-off things
  4. Work out why things work
  5. Maintain perspective

Jemma Sherwood

  1. Plan sequences not lessons
  2. Doing maths is not the same as teaching maths
  3. What you say matters
  4. What you don’t say matters
  5. Teach what you mean to teach

Tom Sherrington

  1. Set out the big picture
  2. Provide explicit scaffolds for verbal responses
  3. Start with whoever got 8 out of 10
  4. Foster cross-class accountability
  5. Set occasional open-response tasks

Jo Morgan

  1. Model techniques live
  2. Make sure students know whether they are right or wrong, and don’t wait until it’s too late
  3. Use calculators with students from the earliest opportunity
  4. Use visual aids, including props and online tools to bring explanations alive
  5. Don’t forget the respond part of responsive teaching

Adam Boxer

  1. To make sure your students are ready to practise, use mini-whiteboards
  2. To lower workload and build a better team ethic, make culture explicit
  3. To reduce “choppy time” in lessons, use a Front Loaded Means of Participation and wait for Golden Silence
  4. To make good use of data, compare to other subjects
  5. To make homework more effective, integrate it with classwork