More tips from Jemma Sherwood video playlist
Video transcript
right gemma tip number three please right this is what you say matters oh god i like it cryptic come on tell me more this is probably the worst one for me to say because i’m very very waffly here we go so um you need to pick your words carefully um it’s very easy to get nervous in a classroom whether you are novice or experienced and when you get nervous you waffle you repeat things you say things in a way that’s not particularly clear i’m deliberately trying to be very good i like very conscious of it and that’s not helpful because we have pupils as we’ve said already who are trying to learn something normally completely new and they need the explanations to be as clear and as uncluttered as possible if they’re going to make sense of it quicker so i think i now believe that people math teachers should be or any teachers should be practicing their explanations going away and thinking carefully about how how they’re going to explain something what vocabulary they’re going to use what but not just that what questions they’re going to ask and when and why um it really it links back to what i said before about being a reflective practitioner this was something that was taught to me on my pgce years ago by dave here and pat perks and they were constantly telling us you’ve got to be reflective you’ve got to look back at what you’ve done and when i was early on in my teaching i suppose i didn’t really know what i was reflecting on because my own kind of schemer of teaching maths was so limited and but you have to start the process so that it becomes embedded and so that it becomes internalized um so i think that it’s hugely important that we plan not only what we want the kids to do in our lessons but what we are going to say and how we’re going to say it it’s lovely that i um saw a couple of things on this it was i don’t know if again this may not have been true for you gentlemen but for many years it was the last well one i never even thought about what i was going to say so i just put that on the table and now i just kind of wing that as i went along but even like the examples i was going to ask my kids to what i was going to use for modeling they were the last thing i would plan my planning was all activity driven task driven and so on and so forth so that’s the first thing and i completely 100 agree with you about the the words we say i’m i waffle i mean you think you are full gem right i never shut up it’s like why say things one way when you say it 58 times and i just keep repeating repeating and peeing and it’s too much for the kids how do you get better at this now you mentioned they’re practicing are we literally talking here like in your bedroom or whatever like practicing how what how you’re going to talk kids through an example or how you’re going to introduce are we is that the best way you find to to do this at least initially i think initially yeah writing down the key things that you want to say so that you’re you’re conscious of them so that you’re aware of them but then also it’s it’s cringe-worthy but if you stand in front of a mirror and practice the way you’re going to explain something you’re able to watch yourself when you’re able to pick up on your irritating mannerisms early in my second year of teaching the school i was in had one of those classrooms where they would video you oh yeah um and so they gave me this dvd and they said go away and watch this and i said okay after every third word okay so now it goes okay and by the end of watching this video i just wanted to shoot myself yeah yeah yeah it was so good because i didn’t know that i did it yes um so i think it’s really i think it’s it’s it’s cringe-worthy and potentially very frustrating but if you want to get better at communicating it’s actually a very important thing to do see it’s interesting that we’ve uh we’ve had on the put on my mr mark maths podcast and a couple of times teachers who who use booklets in their lessons so danny quinn’s been on naveen and so on and a lot of people criticize booklets for many reasons but uh one thing there and it kind of fits into this mode of coming in in vertical as the scripted lesson but if you have a really well thought through explanation that’s in bullet point form and as you say removes all the clutter and a teacher reads out that explanation there’s a lot to be said for that isn’t there particularly if you’re a novice teacher you find it hard to to to get that explanation concise and clear and the right amount of information without overwhelming having a kind of script that you perhaps don’t stand in front of the kids and read out but you’ve rehearsed yourself that an experienced teacher has helped you with i think there’s a lot to be said for that what do you think absolutely and at the very least some key words and key phrases that you know i absolutely must say this and i absolutely must emphasize this because like we said before when you stood in front of your classroom it’s easy to get distracted by things it’s easy to get nervous it’s easy to forget stuff because it’s just the way our brains work isn’t it so if you have these things that you know are the absolute musts that you want to get across and you’ve practiced them you’re less likely to forget these things and what it’s what it means of course is the more you do it the less you have to rely on that yes i’m relatively confident now that i could walk into a classroom just like that and i could give a pretty strong explanation on pretty much anything across 11 to 18 mats but that’s because i’ve done it for however many years but it’s taken that kind of conscious repetition and reflection and practice to get to that point i’m going to chuck some of it i i don’t know if this is a good idea or the worst idea so i’m just going i’m going to run it by you and see what i see what you think of this gemma right so whenever remote teaching was happening i did a series of podcasts with people who were teaching from home and just their tips and so on and adam boxer uh was was on there and he was saying how he was creating a lot of videos for oak national um national academy at the time and he said his explanations in those videos were far better than any explanations he would do in the classroom for the very reason you’re speaking about there because he could just focus all the only thing he was thinking about was his explanation because he was recording it into a microphone and a screen so it got me thinking and as i said this is this is where the worst idea you’ve ever heard comes into play what’s the argument against let’s say that you you’re going to teach solving equations and you at home have written out this essentially a script and you’ve recorded yourself explaining it microphone screen maybe you’ve used the tablet or whatever you’ve got you’ve got it perfect you’ve got this example of this explanation perfect what’s the argument against you pre-recording that you play in the classroom for your kids and you’re there kind of on hand if the kids are stuck they can put their hand up you can just kind of have a whisper to them you’re you get to put your full attention on to your kids whilst your kind of virtual self is giving this crystal clear explanation where’s the floor in that if there is a floor uh okay it’s not interactive enough and there is a huge difference between uh teaching something on a video or explaining something on a video which is more akin to a lecture yeah than and there’s a huge difference between that and teaching something in a classroom teaching something the classroom relies on um being able to have those very human interactions being able to respond to cues non-verbal cues as well um so for me that would be sub-optimal because i’m not able to interact with what happens as i go along but if i’ve already thought really carefully about how i want to explain something then i’ve got my own kind of brain space freed up to actually do the to actually respond and to and to to question in the right places and to go you’re not paying attention come on and all of those things because i am more confident in in the kind of the core substance of what i’m doing and saying got it sub-optimal is a nice way to sum up that idea generally that was nice i like that that’s perfect and there was something else on that as well and that was that um when i said what you say matters i think it’s also important to um to to be aware of the things that you want pupils to internalize as well so there will be certain phrases and concepts that when i’m teaching i want my pupils to associate with certain ideas so um when i don’t know let’s say when we’re solving equations i want them to know that the second they see an equation and the word soul that they’re going to be thinking about balancing so i will be saying what we’re going to do now and i’ll be at all the people to go balance and getting them to repeat these things over and over again because they’re more likely to internalize something if they’re rehearsing it as well yes so for me when i say what you say matters it’s not only about the way i explain something but it’s about the the repetition that i’m building for pupils and the opportunities i give for them to be able to actually vocalize things as well nice lovely stuff you