Tips for Teachers by Craig Barton

Video and audio tips

Here are some tips, available in video and audio format, shared by me and my guests on my Tips for Teachers podcast. Feel free to play the slips as part of any CPD you run.

Tips for Teachers – Top 5s

These collections of tips 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

Habits and routines

  1. Build habits, not one-off things – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
  2. Willpower is overrated – Peps McCrea – video
  3. Consistency before challenge – Peps McCrea – video
  4. Be aware of the Valley of Latent Potential – Craig Barton – video
  5. Don’t just describe a routine, justify it – Craig Barton – video
  6. Don’t just introduce a routine, retrieve it – Craig Barton – video
  7. Teach students what to do when they are stuck – Tom Bennett – audio – video
  8. Beware the distraction addiction – Jamie Thom – audio – video
  9. Interruptions leave a wake – Peps McCrea – video

Behaviour and relationships

  1. Validate introverts – Jamie Thom – audio – video
  2. Three reflections on behaviour in schools – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  3. Teach behaviour lesson one – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
  4. Use the school behaviour policy – Tom Bennett – audio – video
  5. Use non-verbal gestures for better behaviour management – Mark Roberts – audio – video
  6. Students need to know you are in charge of the classroom – Tom Bennett – audio – video
  7. Be clear and follow through – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
  8. Think creatively when attempting to improve engagement/performance of boys – Jon Mumford – audio – video
  9. Enjoy the kids’ company – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
  10. To develop resilience you need both high challenge and high support – Bradley Busch – audio – video
  11. Teach students how to behave in a supply or cover lesson – Tom Bennett – audio – video
  12. Teach students how to have the right equipment – Tom Bennett – audio – video
  13. Make detention work fit the crime – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
  14. Ban mobile phones – Bradley Busch – audio – video
  15. Some behaviours are more important than others – Kieran Mackle – audio – video

Increasing the participation ratio

  1. Lesson phases and formative assessment strategies: an exercise – Craig Barton – video
  2. Securing 100% student attention – Pritesh Raichura – audio – video
  3. To reduce “choppy time” in lessons, use a Front Loaded Means of Participation and wait for Golden Silence – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  4. Ask the whole class questions – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
  5. Use All Hands Up Cold Calling – Pritesh Raichura – audio – video

Mini-whiteboards

  1. To make sure your students are ready to practise, use mini-whiteboards – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  2. Mini-whiteboards: go deep on the routine – Craig Barton – video
  3. Mini-whiteboards: start from the back – Craig Barton – video
  4. Keep spare mini-whiteboard pen lids – Emma Turner – audio – video

Paired and group work

  1. Use partner work as a chance to recruit quiet kids to share their thinking – Michael Pershan – audio – video
  2. When doing group work, make clear the group is responsible – Sammy Kempner – audio – video

Checking for understanding

  1. Find a tool that tells you what’s really happening – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
  2. Be aware of student bias – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
  3. Three reasons students don’t know the answer – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  4. Check for understanding – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
  5. Always build from what they know – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
  6. Always check for understanding – Clare Sealy – audio – video
  7. No hints before a check for understanding – Ollie Lovell + Craig Barton – video
  8. Planning the checks for understanding – Craig Latimir – video
  9. Ask a question at the end of every lesson that every student should be able to get right – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
  10. Planning the end of a lesson – Craig Latimir – video
  11. Consider lengthening wait times to maximise retrieval – Bradley Busch – audio – video
  12. How to ensure questioning involves all pupils – Jade Pearce – audio – video
  13. The Tick Trick – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  14. Ask students to make a pre-topic mind map – Alex Quigley – audio – video
  15. Use talk cubes to encourage students to contribute – Emma Turner – audio – video
  16. Start with whoever got 8 out of 10 – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
  17. Use Post-it notes to find out what they don’t understand – Mark Roberts – audio – video
  18. Play “Just a minute!” – Alex Quigley – audio – video
  19. Provide explicit scaffolds for verbal responses – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
  20. Pick the student least likely to know – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
  21. Foster cross-class accountability – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
  22. Trick your students to test if they really understand – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
  23. Depressurise learning – Chris Such – audio – video
  24. Diagnostic Questions – the perfect exit ticket? – Craig Barton – video
  25. How to design good multiple-choice questions – Kate Jones – audio – video

Responsive teaching

  1. Don’t forget the “respond” part of responsive teaching – Jo Morgan – audio – video
  2. Planning responsive teaching – Craig Latimir – video
  3. Modify your lessons as you go – Jake Gordon – audio – video
  4. Responsive teaching: what to do when some students understand, and some don’t – Craig Barton – video
  5. Don’t let “Don’t know” be the end of the conversation – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
  6. End every conversation with the student saying something smart – Michael Pershan – audio – video
  7. Rephrase to amaze – Mark Roberts – audio – video
  8. Share photos of students’ work – Jake Gordon – audio – video

Planning lessons

  1. The crucial role of curriculum – Ollie Lovell + Craig Barton – video
  2. Lesson planning mistakes – Craig Latimir – video
  3. Lesson planning principles – Craig Latimir – video
  4. The first thing to think about – Craig Latimir – video
  5. Make question planning part of lesson planning – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
  6. Focus on explanations, not resources – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
  7. Plan sequences not lessons – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
  8. Backwards plan. ALWAYS backwards plan! – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
  9. Be super clear about what you want children to learn – Clare Sealy – audio – video
  10. Do less, but better – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
  11. We should all be focussing on doing fewer things and greater depth – Mary Myatt – audio – video
  12. Review every lesson plan in terms of what the student is thinking about – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
  13. Plan for error – Emma Turner – audio – video
  14. Take a low effort, high impact approach to task and question design – Kate Jones – audio – video
  15. Teach what you mean to teach – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
  16. Focus on the concepts and the Big Ideas in our curriculum – Mary Myatt – audio – video
  17. Learning doesn’t start in Year 7 – Craig Latimir – audio – video

Examples and modelling

  1. Beware the curse of knowledge – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
  2. Set out the big picture – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
  3. We know more and remember more when we’ve heard it in a story – Mary Myatt – audio – video
  4. Planning the exposition – Craig Latimir – video
  5. Planning the modelling – Craig Latimir – video
  6. Mind your modes – Peps McCrea – video
  7. Question, don’t tell – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
  8. Use explicit instruction for novice learners – Jade Pearce – audio – video
  9. Model techniques live – Jo Morgan – audio – video
  10. Try teaching from anywhere in the room – Jake Gordon – audio – video
  11. Begin your explanations as a series of questions that everyone can answer – Michael Pershan – audio – video
  12. Use, where possible, dialogic teaching – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
  13. Encourage students to say “stop!” if they are confused during an explanation – Emma Turner – audio – video
  14. Avoid the Split-Attention Effect during worked examples – Craig Barton – video
  15. What you say matters – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
  16. What you don’t say matters – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
  17. Don’t ask students to listen and read simultaneously – Craig Barton – video
  18. Explicitly teach the skills an expert in your domain uses – Craig Latimir – audio – video
  19. Use visual aids, including props and online tools to bring explanations alive – Jo Morgan – audio – video
  20. Reduce clutter from everything students see and hear – Jake Gordon – audio – video
  21. Beware of seductive details – Craig Barton – video
  22. Use examples, not definitions, when teaching & assessing – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
  23. Get used to asking “what if” after explaining something – Michael Pershan – audio – video
  24. Provoke curiosity in our students – Mary Myatt – audio – video
  25. Use related examples and non-examples to explain a concept – Craig Barton – video
  26. Further thoughts on the Myth of Copying Things Down – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  27. Hone your public speaking – Jamie Thom – audio – video
  28. Feign enthusiasm when necessary – Chris Such – audio – video

Student practice

  1. Planning the practice phase – Craig Latimir – video
  2. Securing high engagement during independent practice – Pritesh Raichura – audio – video
  3. Teach in small chunks and fool kids into doing lots of work initially – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
  4. Make sure students know whether they are right or wrong, and don’t wait until it’s too late – Jo Morgan – audio – video
  5. Provide answers so pupils can check their work in real-time – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
  6. Set occasional open-response tasks – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
  7. Two frameworks for learner-generated examples – Craig Barton – video
  8. Use SSDD Problems to improve students’ practice – Craig Barton – video
  9. How to help students avoid “silly” mistakes – Craig Barton – video

Memory and retrieval

  1. We have little insight into our learning – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
  2. Challenge students on what they like versus what’s best for them – Bradley Busch – audio – video
  3. How to overcome the limits of working memory – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
  4. Have a robust culture of retrieval – Clare Sealy – audio – video
  5. Understand the active ingredients of retrieval practice – Jade Pearce – audio – video
  6. Retrieval practice is worth investing time to understand and use – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
  7. How to make retrieval practice work – David Goodwin – audio – video
  8. Try using a collage collection to stimulate ideas – Alex Quigley – audio – video
  9. Show your students the Forgetting Curve– Craig Barton – video
  10. Show your students a model of memory – Craig Barton – video
  11. Show your students that being familiar with something is not the same as knowing it – Craig Barton – video
  12. Develop systematic revision – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
  13. Planning the Do Now – Craig Latimir – video
  14. Give worked examples with retrieval starters – Jake Gordon – audio – video
  15. Get your students to assign confidence scores to their answers – Craig Barton – video
  16. How to organise the disorganised – Jon Mumford – audio – video
  17. Make corrections quizzable – Craig Barton – video
  18. Sometimes it is better to review than retrieve – Kate Jones – audio – video
  19. Make use of the Encoding Specificity Principle – Kate Jones – audio – video
  20. How to make the best use of technology for retrieval practice – Kate Jones – audio – video
  21. Choose the purpose of your Do Now… and tell your students! – Craig Barton – video
  22. Revision should start from day one of a course, not at the end – Julia Smith – audio – video

Data and assessment

  1. To make good use of data, compare to other subjects – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  2. Know how to effectively assess – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
  3. Stop talking about grades – Mark Roberts – audio – video

Homework

  1. To make homework more effective, integrate it with classwork – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  2. My favourite homework activity – Craig Barton – video
  3. Rebrand homework as practice – David Goodwin – audio – video

Marking and feedback

  1. Don’t give negative managerial feedback – Mark Roberts – audio – video
  2. How to improve feedback – Jade Pearce – audio – video
  3. Choose the right feedback type – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
  4. Don’t do written comments – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
  5. The best feedback is a learning activity, and it’s much better than written feedback on the page – Michael Pershan – audio – video
  6. No feedback, more teaching – Clare Sealy – audio – video
  7. Make feedback into detective work – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
  8. Consider the impact of audio feedback – Jon Mumford – audio – video
  9. Use D.I.R.T. as a post-assessment formative tool – Jon Mumford – audio – video
  10. How to get students peer-assessing with group critique – Jon Mumford – audio – video

Improving as a teacher

  1. Use tips when they act as solutions to problems you face – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
  2. Ask students “What was the most useful thing I did today?” – Emma Turner – audio – video
  3. Inquire into mechanisms – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
  4. Study the teachers you respect – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
  5. Have your coffee whilst sitting in the classrooms of effective teachers – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
  6. Work out why things work – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
  7. The power of teachers reading research – Jade Pearce – audio – video
  8. Ask yourself “what evidence would change your mind? – Bradley Busch – audio – video
  9. Use research on learning not as a prescription but as a compass – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
  10. Ignite the CPD culture – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
  11. Leave space between reading and implementation – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
  12. Treat the act of teacher development like teaching – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
  13. Read for pleasure and read for progress – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
  14. Be clear about your career pathway – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
  15. Make use of the NPQs – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
  16. You can learn something from everybody – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
  17. Go out and visit other schools – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
  18. Nobody really knows what they are doing – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
  19. Ask “who is this for?” – Mary Myatt – audio – video
  20. What’s happening in AI right now, and what does it mean for education? – Peps McCrea – video
  21. Rethinking To-Do lists – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video

Observations and coaching

  1. How to observe a lesson – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  2. How to give a colleague feedback – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  3. Diagnosis in coaching – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  4. Develop competing hypotheses when observing teaching and learning – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video

Leadership and culture

  1. To lower workload and build a better team ethic, make culture explicit – Adam Boxer – audio – video
  2. Think about implementation – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
  3. Be explicit when modelling for colleagues – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
  4. The principles of Cog Sci apply to humans (not just students) – Craig Latimir – audio – video
  5. Leave a legacy – Craig Latimir – audio – video

Health and well-being

  1. Maintain perspective – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
  2. Remember the tortoise and the hare – Jamie Thom – audio – video
  3. Tackle the negativity radio – Jamie Thom – audio – video
  4. How to get better sleep – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  5. The secret to a happy life – Craig Latimir – audio – video
  6. End the day on a positive – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video

Maths, Maths, Maths!

  1. Use the same questions, with different numbers – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
  2. Use calculators with students from the earliest opportunity – Jo Morgan – audio – video
  3. The power of a slideshow for teaching mathematics – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
  4. Doing maths is not the same as teaching maths – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
  5. Practice, practice, practice…not until you can get it right but until you cannot get it wrong – Julia Smith – audio – video
  6. It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it…and that’s what gets results – Julia Smith – audio – video
  7. Fluency in the four operations is a cornerstone of developing mathematical understanding – Julia Smith – audio – video
  8. How to deal with students who say they hate maths or are no good at maths – Julia Smith – audio – video

Reading, literacy and oracy

  1. Learn about reading development – Chris Such – audio – video
  2. Provide opportunities for students to read in lessons – David Goodwin – audio – video
  3. Every teacher should make the teaching of literacy a high priority – Clare Sealy – audio – video
  4. Analyse words using morphology and etymology – Chris Such – audio – video
  5. Focus on developing keystone vocabulary – Alex Quigley – audio – video
  6. Develop vocabulary – David Goodwin – audio – video
  7. Assess reading difficulties and respond – Chris Such – audio – video
  8. How to improve students’ ability to write – David Goodwin – audio – video
  9. Support your students using sentence expanding – Alex Quigley – audio – video
  10. Get your pupils to spell their name backwards – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video

Micro-tips

  1. 7 micro-tips from Chris Such – audio – video