In my new role as Assistant Head I have done a lot of lesson observations lately and they haves been brilliant. My Head has asked me to put together some advice for staff on how to teach a lesson that can safely be judged as Good. This is my first draft and is based on some of the things I have seen in the last half-term. I would be very grateful if any of the wonderful teachers who occasionally stumble upon my ramblings could read it and make suggestions. What have I missed? I know there will be lots as this is vey much a first-stab at this. I look forward to lots of your comments.
How to teach a Good lesson
Preparation
Give the observer a seating plan which is annotated to show student targets and current level of progress. The best ones also have comments about particular students, i.e. "very quiet but making good progress with group activities". This shows the observer that you know the students well. You do not have to produce a lesson plan but for a planned lesson observation you might want to. The lesson plan could be your opportunity to explain the context for this lesson, work covered already or, particularly if this is a 30-minute observation, let the observer know what will happen in the second part of the lesson which they will not see. The lesson plan could also be useful if this lesson comes at the wrong time to show off your skills at group work or active learning because they have to do Controlled Assessment today or the exam is tomorrow.
Starter
In a good lesson, students are learning from the moment they arrive at the lesson. Meet and greet them at the door - this shows you know them and have a good relationship with them. It can also get minor behaviour issues such as earphones and wearing a coat out of the way before they come in.
The starter activity can be on the board or screen - if you know the class always arrives in dribs and drabs for this lesson because they come from different places, you might want to do a settling starter that each student can get onto individually as they arrive. Activities like asking students to draw a brain (or head) and fill it with words used last lesson work well for this.
In a good lesson students need to be making progress. Make sure you let them do things to show that progress. It is extremely difficult to show they have made any progress if they have spent a lot of the lesson sitting listening to you. Explain what the lesson is about and their progress targets - but do it quickly. The information can be on a PowerPoint slide or on a handout to go back to but don't spend 10 minutes telling them about it.
Pace and Progress
Structure the lesson around a series of activities. Although it may have been discredited by some educational experts and thinkers, I still use the idea of concentration span as age in minutes + 2 minutes as a pretty good guide for how long to make an activity last. It is a very good idea to stop any activity after around 12-15 minutes at most. In an observed lesson you may want to make a quick stop after around 6 minutes to just check they are all on task.
With any activity check the 3 T's - Task, Team and Time. Explain exactly what the task is, tell them whether this is individual, paired or larger group and exactly how much time they have. Keep the instructions for the task to a minimum. There is no point in giving them a long list of instructions as they will have lost you by about the 2nd or 3rd one. Give them 1-2 instructions to get started and then use a brief stop a few minutes later to give the next instruction.
If working in groups, put them in the groups yourself. If you allow them to choose their own groups you are inviting questions, discussion and negotiation which at best will delay them starting on the task and at worst lead to students challenging you. Students rarely complain about groupings if they know it is for a specific reason and a short period of time. Group work is best when it is something that students are used to and have done with you many times. It is dangerous to do anything in an observed lesson you have never done before. Use group work often so that students are familiar with it, with you and in your room.
An observer will want to walk around and have a look at what students are doing. They want to ask them questions and probably look in their exercise books. Group work gives them an opportunity to do this. It also gives you a chance to show how good you are at working with students in smaller groups and individually. Get around to every group and speak to them. Check they understand the instruction, answer any questions they may have, encourage those that haven't quite got round to starting yet and ask them about the work they have done. These question-and-answer sessions are another good way of showing how much progress they have made in the lesson. Publicly praise groups or individuals who have completed tasks, asked a great question or done something interesting.
Feedback
Make an opportunity for students to give feedback to you and/or each other. Stop activities and do quick question-and-answer sessions. Use these sessions to stretch the most able students. Push them with your questioning and explain what is required at the highest levels or grades.
Showing progress
One of the key criteria now for judging lessons is whether students made progress during the lesson. This can be very difficult in a 30-minute observation but there are strategies which might show it. The Dump Test or Pages of Progress is one way. This is simply a sheet of paper or a page in the back of the exercise book. At the start of the lesson ask students to write down in just 60 seconds anything they know about a topic. 10 or 15 minutes later, revisit the paper and add in as much as possible in 60 seconds in a different colour - a simple, visible and measurable record of progress. Later sessions can ask students to make links between words or ideas. Another way of showing progress is to have a list of questions posed either by you or by the students on the wall or board and stop occasionally to ask students which ones they can answer now. I observed a lesson once where students were given a C grade exam answer to look at and at different stages in the lesson asked to add things to it to turn it into a B and then an A grade answer.
Key points for a good lesson:
Let the students do the work - most of the lesson should involve them doing things
Allow students to interact with each other - create opportunities for them to talk to each other and feedback to each other
Short focused tasks - if any one activity is going to last more than 15 minutes make sure there is a really good reason for it
Allow the students to show that they have made some progress in the lesson
Every student in the room needs to be engaged and part of the lesson - it is part of your job to make that happen
Don't talk for long periods of the lesson - focus on teaching the lesson rather than trying to show the observer something
Aim to do all of these things every lesson and they will work better in an observed lesson. Students will do them naturally because they are used to them, you will be more confident in doing them and an observer may ask students if this is typical. So be careful if you have never done group work and throw it into an observed lesson!
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Friday 2 November 2012
Thursday 10 May 2012
The Big Red Ball of Wool
I came up with this idea a few weeks ago and recently tried it out with my 2 GCSE groups. The results were really encouraging, particularly in engaging the kids - and all you need is a big ball of red wool.
I got the students to sit in a big circle - I also sat in the circle. The aim was to get the students to think of links between different historical events and people and see how they influenced each other. I chose the topic. With my yr 11 group it was Votes for Women, my Yr 10 s had the Cold War. I started off by naming an event or idea. I then threw the big red ball of wool to a student across the circle whilst keeping tight hold of the end of the wool. The student had to then name another event/person/idea and explain how it was linked to my word. They then threw the ball on to another student, keeping hold of their end of the wool - the next student had to say something else and explain how it was linked. This was great fun - the students had to think quickly and, at times out of the box. By the time we reached the last student we had created a striking visual - a red web of wool linking each student together and each idea together. I knew it was a hit when several kids asked if they could get their phones out so they could take a photo of it because it looked so cool.
We then reversed the whole process with each student throwing the wool back and winding it up as we went, this time they asked each other quiz questions.
A really good revision exercise or plenary - but one which also encourages kids to make links, one of the higher order thinking skills which gets them a lot of marks in the exam - and more importantly had them talking about the lesson in the corridor afterwards.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I got the students to sit in a big circle - I also sat in the circle. The aim was to get the students to think of links between different historical events and people and see how they influenced each other. I chose the topic. With my yr 11 group it was Votes for Women, my Yr 10 s had the Cold War. I started off by naming an event or idea. I then threw the big red ball of wool to a student across the circle whilst keeping tight hold of the end of the wool. The student had to then name another event/person/idea and explain how it was linked to my word. They then threw the ball on to another student, keeping hold of their end of the wool - the next student had to say something else and explain how it was linked. This was great fun - the students had to think quickly and, at times out of the box. By the time we reached the last student we had created a striking visual - a red web of wool linking each student together and each idea together. I knew it was a hit when several kids asked if they could get their phones out so they could take a photo of it because it looked so cool.
We then reversed the whole process with each student throwing the wool back and winding it up as we went, this time they asked each other quiz questions.
A really good revision exercise or plenary - but one which also encourages kids to make links, one of the higher order thinking skills which gets them a lot of marks in the exam - and more importantly had them talking about the lesson in the corridor afterwards.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Monday 7 May 2012
New job and new opportunities
The last week has proved just how little I know. In my last post I wrote about how I was not hopeful about getting a job I had just interviewed for. This week, to my delight and surprise I found out I had got the job and from September I will be an Assistant Head for Teaching and Learning.
I am really excited about this new opportunity and can't wait to get started. I have a 1,000 things I want to do and will spend a lot of time over the next few weeks deciding how to approach my new role. The key thing for me is that this job is about improving teaching and learning. I get to work with teachers and students to be at the forefront of new ideas and strategies. I want to encourage teachers to take risks and try out new things - especially when they are not sure if they will work.
I am also looking forward to watching lots of new teachers at work in their classrooms - and steal ideas from them as often as possible, as I have always done. Expect to see lots of those ideas on this blog in the future. I am sure I will make loads of mistakes and there will be some tough times ahead but I am absolutely convinced this is the right move for me - and that I am the right person for this school.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I am really excited about this new opportunity and can't wait to get started. I have a 1,000 things I want to do and will spend a lot of time over the next few weeks deciding how to approach my new role. The key thing for me is that this job is about improving teaching and learning. I get to work with teachers and students to be at the forefront of new ideas and strategies. I want to encourage teachers to take risks and try out new things - especially when they are not sure if they will work.
I am also looking forward to watching lots of new teachers at work in their classrooms - and steal ideas from them as often as possible, as I have always done. Expect to see lots of those ideas on this blog in the future. I am sure I will make loads of mistakes and there will be some tough times ahead but I am absolutely convinced this is the right move for me - and that I am the right person for this school.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Saturday 28 April 2012
Learning from Experience
I had my 1st interview for an Assistant Head post this week and it was my first real interview for anything in 12 years - and it has been a long time since I played this game. I won't find out the result until early next week but I am not hopeful. The day wasn't a disaster but I know I didn't do as well as I could have. I am disappointed about this because I really liked the school and felt that I could do a good job there.
The experience has made me realise that I do want to be an Assistant Head - something I have fought against for a long time. I do believe I have something to offer School Leadership because I am passionate about teaching and learning being the 1st and last priority in schools.
I have also learned from this experience that I need to prepare more thoroughly for interviews and spend more time planning how to answer interview questions. Whilst most of the day went well, I wasn't happy with how I performed in the final interview. I tended to answer questions too quickly without really thinking them through and not explain my thoughts in enough detail.
I am determined to learn from this experience. I have tried to write down every question I can remember being asked so I can start to build up a bank of them and will continue to apply for jobs - but I do now fully realise j it's how much I am going I have to raise my game.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Sunday 5 February 2012
Recreating the Past
Oops - suddenly realised I just went through the whole of January without blogging. Sorry - been a busy month.
The real highlight of this month was undoubtedly a workshop I was involved in for Yr 11 GCSE History students. They are just starting the OCR Depth Study Unit on Britain 1890-1918 - the Paper 2 unit which they often find difficult to get into. I think they find it hard to switch mentally from focussing on black civil rights in the USA to going right back to the beginning of the Twentieth Century. As this unit also involves using evidence, it seems to add an extra layer of difficulty.
I had decided to put together a workshop which would give students a real sense of time and place of what it was like to live in Britain as it moved into the Twentieth Century. I enlisted the help of 2 good friends that I had really enjoyed working with in the past: Tracey Clowes, Outreach Officer at the RCM in Truro and Chloe Phillips, Learning Officer for Cornwall Records Office. We worked together on the Civil War project last year and I know how brilliant they both are to work with.
Over the course of several meetings we put together a 2 hour experience which took them from 1891 to the outbreak of the Great War. Tracey got the workshop off to a great start by recreating a Victorian classroom and getting the students to play along with a 20-minute lesson including writing on slates, mental maths with pre-decimal money, inspection of hands and nails and even a singing lesson. The students quickly got into role and many of them were happy to dress up. Chloe had scoured school log-books to find some brilliant excuses for missing school which students read out as we did the register - my particular favourite was the boy who took a day off because a man in the village had just bought a car for the 1st time and he had to go and see it.
Chloe then took over and put the students into families by giving each of them a name and they then had to study extracts from the census to find out where they lived and who with. The fact that they were genuine entries from Liskeard really mattered to the students who were able to locate where some of the places were. Tracey had brought a huge number of artefacts along and students chose things which they thought their "family" would have used. To me, this was the best part of the day as students gathered informally around objects, investigating them, picking them up and asking questions about them - real hands-on history.
Chloe then produced some fantastic documents which showed early 20th Century solutions to problems such as old age, poverty and unmarried mothers - students were shocked to find out how easy it seemed to be to find themselves
in Bodmin Asylum.
We then looked at the impact on Cornwall of the Great War - again with some brilliant documents from Chloe from which students listed the huge number of changes they could see recorded in the documents. The session finished with the students creating their own army recruitment posters posing in costume for photographs.
We ran the session 3 times - each time the students were totally engaged and came away inspired. The evaluations from the students were stunning - you know you are doing something right when the only criticism was that it should have been longer.
I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions. To me this is what teaching History should be: students recreating a sense of the past, using genuine artefacts and documents and given the freedom to ask their own questions. It also proved the value of using outside experts to give students access to another voice. The great shame is that these opportunities are likely to become more difficult to set up. A few days after this event I learned that my AST role ends this year and restructuring at the RCM means this is probably Tracey's last outreach experience. We have to find a way to keep doing stuff like this. Education should be about creating special moments in young people's lives that inspire and excite them and give them something to remember for years to come.
The real highlight of this month was undoubtedly a workshop I was involved in for Yr 11 GCSE History students. They are just starting the OCR Depth Study Unit on Britain 1890-1918 - the Paper 2 unit which they often find difficult to get into. I think they find it hard to switch mentally from focussing on black civil rights in the USA to going right back to the beginning of the Twentieth Century. As this unit also involves using evidence, it seems to add an extra layer of difficulty.
I had decided to put together a workshop which would give students a real sense of time and place of what it was like to live in Britain as it moved into the Twentieth Century. I enlisted the help of 2 good friends that I had really enjoyed working with in the past: Tracey Clowes, Outreach Officer at the RCM in Truro and Chloe Phillips, Learning Officer for Cornwall Records Office. We worked together on the Civil War project last year and I know how brilliant they both are to work with.
Over the course of several meetings we put together a 2 hour experience which took them from 1891 to the outbreak of the Great War. Tracey got the workshop off to a great start by recreating a Victorian classroom and getting the students to play along with a 20-minute lesson including writing on slates, mental maths with pre-decimal money, inspection of hands and nails and even a singing lesson. The students quickly got into role and many of them were happy to dress up. Chloe had scoured school log-books to find some brilliant excuses for missing school which students read out as we did the register - my particular favourite was the boy who took a day off because a man in the village had just bought a car for the 1st time and he had to go and see it.
Chloe then took over and put the students into families by giving each of them a name and they then had to study extracts from the census to find out where they lived and who with. The fact that they were genuine entries from Liskeard really mattered to the students who were able to locate where some of the places were. Tracey had brought a huge number of artefacts along and students chose things which they thought their "family" would have used. To me, this was the best part of the day as students gathered informally around objects, investigating them, picking them up and asking questions about them - real hands-on history.
Chloe then produced some fantastic documents which showed early 20th Century solutions to problems such as old age, poverty and unmarried mothers - students were shocked to find out how easy it seemed to be to find themselves
in Bodmin Asylum.
We then looked at the impact on Cornwall of the Great War - again with some brilliant documents from Chloe from which students listed the huge number of changes they could see recorded in the documents. The session finished with the students creating their own army recruitment posters posing in costume for photographs.
We ran the session 3 times - each time the students were totally engaged and came away inspired. The evaluations from the students were stunning - you know you are doing something right when the only criticism was that it should have been longer.
I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions. To me this is what teaching History should be: students recreating a sense of the past, using genuine artefacts and documents and given the freedom to ask their own questions. It also proved the value of using outside experts to give students access to another voice. The great shame is that these opportunities are likely to become more difficult to set up. A few days after this event I learned that my AST role ends this year and restructuring at the RCM means this is probably Tracey's last outreach experience. We have to find a way to keep doing stuff like this. Education should be about creating special moments in young people's lives that inspire and excite them and give them something to remember for years to come.
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