More videos from Tom Bennett
Video transcript
okay tom what’s tip number two please uh tip number two okay number two is teach students what to do when they’re stuck teach students what to do when they’re stuck now this is this is um part of my more broader emphasis that we need to teach kids the behavior that they need to use in order to be successful in school right there’s no point in assuming that kids know how what to do there’s no point assuming that kids are as resourceful as you’d like them to be you know many of them aren’t and many of us are so rather than sitting there kind of touching and thinking oh they’re stuck teach them what to do when they’re stuck and you’ll give them a much greater chance of doing the right thing let me give an example very frequently you walk into a lesson and you’ll be teaching away and you know even in the most brilliant of lessons even in a craig barton lesson for example there might be a few kids that you haven’t got around to in in 30 or 40 minutes or even if you’re a primary teacher in a morning or an afternoon and then you look at them after about 45 minutes you realize that they’ve done bugger all there’s nothing in their books whatsoever or worse their hands are covered in ink you know and it’s always the same kid’s hand cover them ink for some reason and they must buy shop pens from the same local shop now you look to the kid you say why haven’t you done anything little craig and and a little craig looks here with an angelic look and says i’m stuck no it may well be that the children was was was stuck didn’t know what to do and um i was embarrassed to ask i mean it’s a pretty you know it’s perfectly acceptable if obviously sub optimal circumstance um or it might be that they just think oh stuff i don’t want to do this and you know i’m gonna i’m just gonna sit out as long as i can until somebody notices that then really makes me do it and even then i’ll just say oh i don’t understand and knowing so well that by that point it’ll be too late for them to catch up and so on and so forth and then maybe they’ll get to go and play with the diplo or something in the year 10 class um so i don’t know how you teach maybe you used it um so the point is this say tonight see when you’re stuck here’s what to do and make this a really explicit part of your kind of welcome to the class not because you want to be a hard ass but because you want them to be successful so if you’re stuck here’s how to get unstuck so for instance you might say to them something like uh you know look at your book maybe the answer’s there or look at the board and and and and ask yourself you know have i read everything in the board properly turn to your shoulder partner and say right what’s going on here i’ll leave it started can you help me maybe they can assist you maybe there’s a book they can go and get maybe there’s something in the wall of course that they’re supposed to look at whatever there should be a process within the school room for them to do and then finally there should be an expectation to ask for help and if they don’t do that then you know there should be some kind of this pastoral discussion or even maybe perhaps even a consequential punitive discussion based on whether or not they just didn’t bother their backsides so really emphasize here’s what you should do rather than just sit there and be stuck i mean i used to run duke of edinburgh courses which for those of you listening from kathmandu is that kind of outward bound uh orienteering you know hunter gatherer training session for schools you would teach children what to do if they got lost you would teach students what to do if their compass broke or their phone power you know disastrously ran out or indeed they couldn’t get reception you teach them how to read landmarks and milestones and how to navigate i you know you would teach them how to be powerful you would teach them how to be independent and that’s my second top tip i like it just just one quick follow-up question tom and it might be a really bad one this but in terms of like it teaching them what to do when they’re stuck this is a really bad question but what’s the best way to teach them is is it like you would teach them anything else is it okay when you are stuck do this and then when you see good examples of that like stop because oh look lucy’s stuck on this but she’s done this so well is it that kind of stuff how do you kind of get them to the point where it becomes automatic that they know what to do when they’re stuck i mean i guess the way i would describe this is you have to you have to describe it to them and then you have to get them to to practice it so essentially it’s a pedagogical process yeah it’s like coaching it’s like it’s basically teaching you know and i often say this the teaching behavior is teaching and that it’s not something i mean you can’t just you couldn’t tell somebody how to drive a car yeah you couldn’t say here’s how you drive a car and then someone would go ah now i know how to drive a car you have to teach them which involves you know wait for it and i hope you’re sitting down for this that you take a a you know a small basic a foundational fact or skill and you demonstrate and then you get them to demonstrate it back to you you observe what they’ve done and then you give them high quality feedback on what they’ve just done and maybe you re-teach it or you practice or you do something different you move on something else and then you build up all those micro skills until you achieve you know through what is essentially a very basic mastery model you know you you you achieve some kind of greater competence and the thing is that’s how you teach behavior as well you demonstrate the behaviors you talk about you make it explicit you get them to do it you give them feedback on it and then you rinse and repeat until the the sun burns cold i think that’s the single biggest mistake i’ve made with behavior over the years and it’s only from speaking to people like yourself and more recently adam boxer to realize that you’ve got to teach behavior in the same way you teach anything else and like one of the singles biggest changes i’ve made is i’ve i’ve demonstrated the behavior include it in retrieval opportunities so to take your tip here about what you do when you’re stuck that’ll be from one of my starters a couple of weeks later you know the question won’t have these fractions question two write down what do you what do we do in this class when we’re stuck on things because if i want kids to remember how to add fractions as much as i want them to remember what they do when they’re stuck i’ve got to provide retrieval opportunities for both of them but i would never have thought to do that with behavior it was just this explain what to them what to do first day in september and then just hope some miracle happens and they remember it but it doesn’t work does it like that this is essentially the curse of knowledge you know the curse of expertise which which i go back to time and time again when it comes to educators that um if you don’t know how to do something don’t assume that sorry if you know how to do something really well don’t assume that someone else is as expert as you at it and the problem is when you read you know inspirational quotes from richard friendman or albert einstein or something like that you know you very frequently get um really expert level tips about how to teach stuff and it’s just it’s no good for novices you know you might hear richard famous saying something like teach them the joy of numbers and you go that’s brilliant but they can’t do number one so there’s not much bloody joy going on there so teaching the basics and then we can get to that wonderful expert level of ascendancy that you’ve achieved perfect