More videos from Sarah Cottingham
Video transcript
let’s dive straight in what’s your first tip for us today sarah and so my first tip is is perhaps a bit rogue given that i’m giving a tip on how to use tips and so my first tip is that when you want to use tips about teaching you should always try to match them with problems that you’re having in the classroom and those problems should be rooted in learning wow so i’ll give you a bit more uh detail on that so um when i was teaching back in the day uh we were encouraged to be like magpies it was kind of like the fast fashion uh teaching where we’d pick up a technique we try it out and then we bin it off and we do something different and it was just like what’s the next shiny thing um i don’t think that that made my teaching uh much better and it probably made me quite stressed out trying to keep up with all their their new stuff and so my my tip is that when you’re taking on tips you want to be thinking about what problems am i having in my classroom right now that i need to solve does this tip act as a solution to the problem i’m trying to solve and and how is it going to benefit learning for my peoples and that presupposes quite a lot of knowledge about like the problem in your classroom or the problems that you’re trying to solve and i don’t mean problem in a really negative way i think we’re all trying to solve problems um in our classrooms like all the time and but we want to understand what we should be like trying to solve and get better at rather than just like collecting loads of um solutions to things in want of a problem i love this this this is greatness i definitely want to dig a bit deeper into this you’re absolutely right i was exactly the same for many many years you go looking for the bright shiny thing and i think it’s almost even more problematic these days with i mean certainly in the maths world but i’m assuming this is the same in english and other subjects there’s so much good stuff out there like your bango you go on twitter and you’ve got ideas flying at your left right and center and it’s almost like the classic fear of missing out you think well if i’m not doing that oh my god that’s that’s not a good thing so you all i’ll try that tomorrow try that tomorrow try that tomorrow but i guess the point is that that might be that that’s all well and good but if there are bigger problems that are more fundamental they should be the things that you you’re aiming to tackle first what would that be about right yeah i think so and when you’re talking there craig about like you know that fear of missing out and that and touching all the different things you see there’s an opportunity cost with that isn’t there if you’re doing one thing you’re not doing another thing and so my my kind of advice is like let’s try and understand what problems you are actually trying to solve there is a caveat to that though um there is a kind of engineering thing in teaching like everything you do could be done slightly more efficiently in some ways and i think where someone offers you a tip on how to make something that you’re doing already a little bit more efficient then that’s the kind of thing you could take on quickly so let me give you an example um when i was um a teacher i used to use mini whiteboards i know a lot of us do and one time a teacher came in to observe me and they were like you can’t see those mini whiteboards very easily when you look around the room what you want to do is you want to get the kids at the back to hold them higher the kids in the middle to hold them here and the kids at the front to hold them here that’s the kind of tip you can just take on straight away and that’s where i think what i’m saying kind of falls down a little bit but generally speaking if you’re going to take on something that’s going to change your teaching it should be a solution to a problem this is fascinating just on the on the whiteboard thing i can’t stop talking or thinking about whiteboards at the moment and i i had a similar thing where for years i’ve been using mini whiteboards and you get that visual overwhelm whenever you hold them the kids hold them up you’re like oh okay what’s going on here and i i heard a similar thing just on twitter a guy said and just ask the row at the back to show you theirs first so you can just take that in and then okay put those are now the middle row so you can take it in you’re absolutely right little things like that that can tweak existing practice i i’m all in favor of those and i want to return to that other part of the kind of fundamental the the big changes i think you alluded to this sarah that sometimes as novice teachers it can be quite hard for us to identify where we’re struggling sometimes we know but often like things just don’t feel right in the lesson and it’s like what am i doing wrong here any advice on where teachers can how how we can identify those kind of big areas that we do need to find tips and advice on and anything springs to mind there yeah it’s a really good question so i think um often and you you’ve kind of alluded to this craig and what you just said like we don’t really know what’s what’s wrong um we sort of get a sense of it maybe but we may not know especially if we’re if we’re quite new to the profession and so having someone who’s able to come into your classroom who’s trained to do that and there’s a lot of schools now who are using training coaches to do to do that kind of work um it could just be a peer though who’s able to kind of come in and just be that extra pair of eyes and to have a look at what’s going on and however i think it’s really useful to think about the problems that we’re all facing as teachers in the classroom and try to frame them around those sorts of problems so one example would be focusing attention if the pupils aren’t focusing attention on on the on the key learning in your lesson and on the person who’s speaking be it you or one of their peers then they they just cannot take in uh what’s being said so it could be that um a school kind of as part of their teaching and learning policy has a sort of set of problems a well understood set of problems and a shared language i know a lot of schools are kind of starting to do this now around teaching and learning and if you think about how how much easier that makes this process if i go into your lesson craig and we’ve got a shared understanding of what learning is and we’ve got a shared understanding of these problems i can go in and i can say actually um i think today you know you do this doing this really well helping to solve this problem and i think that this problem’s the one we want to be working on together and here’s a potential solution to this problem just a hypothesis you know i don’t know if it’s going to solve it but here’s my potential solution and that way what we’re doing is we’re not just throwing techniques at ukraine where you have to sort of pick up the next thing we’re actually saying that let’s talk about a diagnosis here what’s the problem how do we diagnose this what’s a potential solution and you could say sarah that sounds like a great solution let’s practice that give it a go together and then i’ll put it implement it in my classroom or you could say i’ve got another solution would this work i’d feel more comfortable doing this that might work as well that’s nice i just want to dig a bit deeper into this guy this is something i’m terrible at sarah so for i’m very lucky i get to watch loads of lessons and um one thing i’ve done for many years is i’ve fallen into those classic cliches like when you sit down and chat to the person afterwards you say things like um oh you need to work on your pace your challenge your differentiation and it’s meaningless it’s absolutely meaningless because as you said without those kind of concrete kind of strategies or even even that concrete example of what you mean by by pace and challenge or otherwise it just becomes abstract nonsense and the other thing i think is when i’m when i’m lucky enough to have a teacher watching me i find it really beneficial if i can tell them ahead of time what i want them to focus on and i’ll say right i’m going to really try and improve the way i do cold call or the way i use mini whiteboards to take your previous example that then i always find gives much more effective kind of feedback and conversation afterwards than if it’s just to just kind of come in and watch me but this is a bit of a ramble i don’t even know where i’m going with this but the kind of final point of this is sometimes it can be tricky if you’re this novice teacher and you sense something’s going wrong you can’t quite pinpoint what you want the person to look at so maybe in that case you say okay come in and watch me see if you can figure out what’s going wrong and i guess then the burden of responsibilities on that observer to try and make what they see as concrete as possible and as you say offer a diagnosis and a potential solution as i said that’s just a big ramble but uh yeah i don’t know if you have any thoughts on that no oh yeah that’s that’s really interesting because i think but it’s making me think about like the purpose of someone coming into your classroom and that the purpose of coaching and like i’m lucky enough ambition to work with some people who think really hard about this stuff and and what they’ve kind of taught me is like um i used to think that coaching was about the the specific element of it and just just about the specific the specific technique you tell the teacher to do and the practice that you get them to do in the coaching and actually i’ve realized through reading and speaking to my colleagues it’s about the mental model that we’re trying to build for the teacher so if i go in and i just look at your teaching and i say you know what i wouldn’t have done it like that i would have used this technique that craig’s not doing i’m missing a trick here because i’m just teaching you a technique but if i go in and we’ve got a shared understanding of learning and i can say like this is the learning problem i think craig needs to work on this is a potential technique and i can communicate that to you and we have that shared language you’re building a mental model of not only that technique but why it works how it works how it links to learning that’s going to make eventually your knowledge a lot more flexible about how to use that technique i think yeah that’s i couldn’t agree more and again it’s the more i think about and read about and experience this this notion of shared shared vocabulary shared understanding it’s so important isn’t it because if you take some of those terrible examples i use that pace challenge i mean pace that could mean a million different things to all different people but even something like um you know checking for understanding that even something that seems really specific like that could mean different things to different people so establishing the shared vocabulary between the teachers and even the kids is is so important i love that and just to kind of bring this to a close because i’m fascinated by this you’ve really got got me thinking now about the notion of there are kind of two types of tips you want to be kind of looking for as a teacher and correct me if i’ve got this wrong so one is something that addresses something fundamental in your lessons or your practice that you think needs changing that feels like something where you’d want to get some advice or a tip for but then the other one i really like this idea of something that isn’t going to fundamentally change your classroom practice but may just improve an aspect of it so it’s not going to it doesn’t require a big wholesale change would that be right they’re the kind of two two sources of help we should be looking for i i’ve come to this conclusion i wrote a vlog where i didn’t quite say this because i thought my thinking has come along a bit you know you know what it’s like you write it down and you’re like oh no i wish i’d written something else but yeah and i think i think for me um it’s more like a tip would be more like the engineering problem about your teaching like just quickly do this this little thing and it will make this quicker and easier and the i’d say it’s more a technique if you’re trying to embed it into and that’s just that’s my language that i understand it with it’s more a technique if you’re saying like this is to achieve this goal it’s less of a tip more technique so that’s probably how i’d um i’d kind of categorize it but exactly as you’ve said like something that’s quick but something that takes a lot more embedding into my mental model to understand how to use it would be a technique that’s great i need to rebrand the site tips and techniques for teachers i’m going to go into a big rebrand after this that’s good final question on this this is probably the worst question um i’ve asked you all right already is where did you where did you go for these tips and techniques do you have kind of either favorite sources is it all kind of just looking for expertise around you would you have certain places you’d go if you were looking for a tip or you’re looking for a technique yeah it’s a really good question and so i think like to not answer your question to start with is that i think i think we need that we need that understanding of learning we need that shared understanding of learning because everything is couched in that or should be couched in that mental model so if if we’re a teacher that wants to improve our practice but we don’t know what we’re trying to aim for so we don’t really understand learning and you know there’s not one definition of learning learning’s massive and so we have to kind of read up on particularly i like the kind of cognitive science stuff stuff about making meaning if you read that sort of stuff you start to get a broader understanding of what you’re trying to achieve through your teaching and then for for techniques um i am a huge douglamov fan because not only does is he incredibly clear um about the techniques but he um in his newest version of the book he links it into learning as well so it’s like teaching with learning in mind so that’s where i i go for techniques that’s great for the benefit of the people watching uh on youtube here look so i’ve got it next to me here but once you see this so this is going to make you jealous wait to see this a flipping signed copy here is such a good book right it is just ridiculous and i’ve read i’ve read the original i’ve read 2.0 i’m reading 3. it’s like a brand new book like it’s just oh yeah what a book brilliant