More tips from Jemma Sherwood
Video transcript
all right gemma fifth and final tip please right teach what you mean to teach you’ve really thought through these these titles i like this right tell me about this one okay so um i’m going to illustrate this one with an example a few years ago i was watching somebody teach a lesson on velocity time graphs and they were teaching the idea that if you find the gradient of the line it will give you the acceleration and the the teacher explained this idea and they worked through an example and they got to the point where it was something like acceleration equals six divided by three and craig what’s six divided by three and the people said two and he said great you’ve got it and this this then happened over and over and over again and i spoke to the teacher at the end of the lesson and i just said i want to point something out to you every single question in the 10 minutes that i watched was around mental arithmetic and the only things that people had to answer was mental arithmetic do you know that they understand understood that the gradient of the line is the acceleration or do you know that they knew they know their division facts and that was it was the first time i’d ever noticed it and then i saw it more and more and then i was aware that i did it as well yeah and i suddenly realized that we i think it’s very easy to ask pupils the kind of the simple end bit of the question the mental arithmetic because we know they know it and maybe it’s because we want them to feel successful yeah and we want them we want but actually if we think about what we know from cognitive science we know that what people think about are the things they’re going to remember and if we can prompt more pupils to be thinking hard for more time about the key thing we’re trying to teach them they’re more likely to remember that thing so if we have one or two pupils thinking about mental arithmetic and not the acceleration of the gradient of the line we are less likely to have our pupils remembering that concept oh it’s great this gentleman i’ve i’ve done this tons and tons of times for the exact reason you say because the kids feel great and you can con yourself into thinking what a great explanation i’ve done here of this complex thing because the kids it’s like the punchline to it six divided by three is two are brilliant they’ve understood calculus or whatever it’s terrible but i’ll tell you the interesting thing about this a lot of focus on kind of classroom techniques is based around formative assessment check for understanding use mini whiteboards diagnostic questions whatever it is but the point you’re making there i think anyway what i’ve taken from it is you’ve got to be careful what understanding you’re checking for so you can imagine you do the lesson on grading that you described there on velocity term graphs and the diagnostic question or the mini white blood check is okay so write down what the final gradient is but if it’s all just checking that they can do the six divided by three you get a room full of mini whiteboards where everyone’s nailed it and you think i’ve done that formative assessment i’ve checked everyone’s understanding amazing stuff but it’s what understanding are you checking for is the key to it and that that feels quite it’s quite a complex skill isn’t it for a teacher to to get right i think it is one thing that i have to say to staff increasingly now especially when i notice that they are they are more inclined to do this is as a way of kind of trying to reduce it initially as i say i don’t want you to ask a question unless it’s about the very specific thing that you’re teaching so if you’re teaching expanding brackets for instance i don’t want you to ask any questions unless it’s one actually about the expansion of that bracket yes and everything else you’ve just got to say it yeah that’s lovely love that one there’s another part to it as well and it is kind of very closely related and that is that if you let’s pick the example of expanding brackets again um if you are doing a kind of a a period of instruction in the classroom and you’ve got this this bracket that you want to expand and you can see the people struggling so you show them how to do the expansion whichever method you’ve chosen and you uh then ask them questions about just the multiplying bit at the end and let’s imagine that you’re kind of interspersing this example with all these questions oh and what’s 5 times 3x and what’s 2 times what’s 5 times 2 here you then have it kind of links to my my tip from earlier you then have the problem but you haven’t given a clear explanation at any one point because your your explanation of the process has been um punctuated with questions about mental arithmetic so the pupils who are able to make sense of the process have made sense of the process but the ones who couldn’t have benefited from a really clear explanation from the teacher because it’s been they’ve been distracted by all these questions going on that’s interesting so is the solution to that and again this this could be nonsense is it if you get your prerequisite knowledge check right because that’s when you can sort out all these bitty parts of it right so to take your expanding brackets that’s where you can check that they can multiply a term together that’s where you can check that they’re found with negative number arithmetic or all the things that they need to that that’s fine to be bitty that bit and then when they come to do this new concept of expanding brackets that’s when you can be a bit more coherent to your explanation because the the bitty bits should be familiar to them you don’t have to assess their understanding of that so they can focus on on the whole narrative if that makes sense absolutely and then you once you’ve you’ve explained it really clearly you can use as much questioning and as many whiteboards as you want to see whether or not they can make sense of this whether or not they can replicate the process whether or not and then you go into kind of how they can read about it in more depth and all those things that come afterwards but you’ve got to make sure that you are focusing your let me let me go back a second um every question you ask will direct a people’s attention at something so you’ve got to make sure that you direct their attention at the thing you want them to learn not the mental arithmetic lovely lovely
