#25
Analogies.
“As students create incorrect analogies, analyze the relationships their analogies are suggesting, and then correct them accordingly, they are grappling with ideas, monitoring and revising their thinking, and otherwise actively consider the often complex relationships between disparate things.” (Heick. Accessed 2022)
Consider:
- Working with a framework like this – A: B :: C: D, or a real example - Hot: Cold :: Wet: Dry
- How to carefully create analogies so they contain key concepts from the topic alongside relatable examples
- Using analogy gap-fills on a pre-made slip as a starter or plenary activity, such as – Cabinet Committees: Government :: _______: Parliament
- Making students complete an analogy sentence that best describes the relation between items A & B first, before moving onto C & D
- Move from teacher-made analogy tasks towards student-made ones, allowing collaborative questioning
For the article on Teaching With Analogies, click here.
#24
Whole Class Feedback.
“Students found it beneficial to see the feedback illustrated through models that I’d put together (live and pre-prepared), rather than a list of ‘dos and don’ts’, as they felt that it ‘explained how’ to achieve their targets instead of only telling them ‘what’ needed to be improved. ” (McDonald. 2021)
Consider:
- Providing feedback to the entire class through a teacher crib sheet, which you work through systematically, including teacher instruction, student model answers, and acting on feed-forward…
- …instead of marking line-by-line every element of every student’s work every time
- Which aspect of each piece of work should be focused on in your feedback
- Maintaining a portfolio/book/OneNote markbook of each class’s feedback and model answers over time
- How to offset the student perception of a lack of marking/feedback on their work – verbal conversations, specific ‘do next’ tasks, collaborative work to follow up feed-forward
For the full article on Whole Class Feedback, click here.
#23
Student Memory.
“Every time a memory is recalled it is effectively retrieved, examined, and then recreated from scratch to be stored again” (Shaw. The Memory Illusion. 2016)
Consider:
- Your schemes of work as a spiral curriculum – revisiting knowledge, skills, and values (KSV) cyclically and iteratively
- Which KSV requires most repetition in your subject
- Spacing and interleaving these KSV, with new and different concepts and contexts in-between
- Manipulating student memory by providing more experiential application of foundational KSV at each revisitation
- Frequent testing and quizzing of these KSV
#22
Knowledge does not exist in a vacuum.
“Life and learning is like an ill-lit aquarium; we can never see the whole and instead peer in through a variety of small windows. Each viewpoint has a truth but it can’t enable us to experience what the whole truth might be”. (Midgley 2005, in Robinson 2019, p. 100).
Consider:
- Which foundational knowledge and skills students need to progress to the higher order approaches of questioning, evaluation, synthesizing
- How you can create resources that offer students more than one perspective on a topic
- Planning activities that promote dialogue over complex topics
- More collaboration of ideas in the classroom
- Assessing more frequently and deliberately skills such as collaboration, communication, questioning, …
#21
Continued Professional Development is not just for induction.
“[Come up with] a well-defined aspect of the curriculum – intended outcomes – then deliver - get feedback – adjust and repeat” (Impact Magazine 2021)
Consider:
- Focussing on one small change (such as a skill or value) at a time
- Journaling your reflections on reading, design, and practice – OneNote is great for this
- The experiences we can provide for our students to make their learning more memorable
- Carrying out action research/practitioner inquiry/lesson study with your colleagues (this could be focused on CD)
- Change is not always necessary – perfecting what we already do is preferable
#20
Ipsative Marking
“The emphasis shifts away from meeting criteria towards formally acknowledging learner development and progress against criteria. Thus, instead of drawing excessive attention to external motivators such as grades, ipsative feedback directly encourages an intrinsic motivation to progress “
Consider:
- Marking every piece of work with the previous assessed piece in mind – all work is relational, nothing in isolation
- Providing feedback on progress and process, not product
- Opening up discussions (written and verbal) about the general skills and knowledge students can work on towards their longer-term goals
- Referring to PBs rather than (target) grades
- How you could gamify this process with rewards and thresholds of progression
- Moving beyond Hattie and Timperley’s 2007 work - https://visible-learning.org/2013/02/john-hattie-helen-timperley-visible-learning-and-feedback/
For the research paper behind this post, have a look here (p.14 onwards).
#19
Models of Excellence.
“The key to excellence is this: It is born from a culture. When children enter a family culture, a community culture, or a school culture that demands and supports excellence, they work to fit into that culture. It doesn’t matter what their background is. Once those children enter a culture with a powerful ethic – an ethic of excellence – that ethic becomes their norm. It’s what they know. (Berger. 2003)
Consider:
- Keeping a digital and/or hard copy of models of excellence – particularly for those students who struggle to produce ‘final pieces’ or who miss lessons
- Before starting a process, what makes your/an expert’s model of excellence so good? What was the process of achieving such high quality? What mistakes and revisions were probably part of the process? Create your culture at this stage
- Recording yourself and colleagues going through worked examples – this could be practiced in a low stakes environment, during lesson, or as asynchronous content on Stream
- Teaming up with colleagues new to teaching to model how you provide direct instruction of tricky topics
For more information, including quotes and videos from Ron Berger and his timeless book, An Ethic of Excellence, click here.
#18
Sharper prep
“Homework should be short sharp 10-minute tasks to reinforce what has just been learnt” (Hattie, on Montague. 2014)
Consider:
- That cognitive science tells us that a prep of 5-10 minutes has roughly the same effect as one lasting 1-2 hours
- Providing more prep opportunities for retrieval practice – you can uphold academic honesty by using technology (Forms, etc) for this, and only allowing one submission
- Offering a take-away menu of different retrieval tasks that students can choose from
- Giving quality feedback on every prep – this could be automated if using an online test, but should also involve verbal whole-class and tailored feedback, which shapes the direction of travel of future lessons
- Promoting a love of learning! Prep is essentially useless if it fails this test – create a prize system for preps, and have stimuli, even in tests, such as videos and images.
To read the full transcript of Hattie’s 2014 interview on BBC Radio 4, click here.
#17
Simplify your PowerPoints
“Devote only one point to each slide. Yes, only one point. Express it as a phrase or short sentence, not as a note to yourself. Then place an image behind it that resonates with the message presented.”
Consider:
- Using ‘Notes’ at the bottom of the PowerPoint screen for your more extensive notes-to-self for each slide; then use ‘Presenter View’ (under the Slide Show tab at the top) to see these during your presentation
- Communicating with students ‘live’ rather than from the screen – moving around the room, telling stories, asking questions
- Starting your PowerPoint creation by brainstorming your central points for each slide and cutting out extraneous information
- Grouping your slides into a coherent order so there is a logical narrative (think back to T&L Thing #15 about Teaching Through Stories) and using font size to denote hierarchy
- Searching for larger images as your slide backgrounds (on Google image searches, click on the ‘Tools’ tab to the right and set the size filter to ‘Large’) or draw and scan in your own (the more authentic the better)
- Sharing these tips with students before setting them presentation tasks
The very accessible article on how to plan your PowerPoints can be found here.
#16
Talk
“Dialogue involves building on others’ responses and exploring different perspectives or ideas rather than just ‘discussion.” (Hennessy, Dragovic, & Warwick, 2017)
Consider:
- Planning in opportunities for meaningful student talk as a key component of your schemes of work
- Encouraging collaborative elaboration during student talk – ask questions of each other, offer reasons, build on each other’s answers, see new perspectives
- Setting ground rules and providing clear instructions on how ‘to do’ student talk – such as everyone contributes, respect for, and equality of, ideas, and group responsibility
- Assessing student talk, using a tool such as the PDF attached
- Collaboratively using technology such as interactive whiteboards, Teams, and online apps to boost paired and group dialogue
- How to employ talk in strengthening curriculum skills such as communication, thinking and social (exploratory talk has worked particularly well in maths and science)
This link #1 takes you to the full research paper on dialogic teaching and learning, whilst this link #2 provides resources to help teachers plan dialogic lessons.
#15
Teach Through Stories.
“Of course, older children enjoy stories; they attend movies, they read books. The problem is that listening to stories read aloud in class sounds like (and indeed is) what young children do.” (Willingham 2004)
Consider:
- Avoiding explicitly signalling that you are reading a story aloud, particularly for older students – cut out the dramatic tones, use age-appropriate language, break the story up to allow activities
- Stories which contain clear narratives; these are 'stickier' for our brains and aid memory
- Inventing your own stories, metaphors, and analogies to teach abstract ideas
- Using the Four Cs – causality, conflict, complication, character – in your stories
- Planning the whole lesson as though a story – spend the first 20% of the lesson introducing the problem (‘conflict’), the solution of which is the material to be learned in the next 80% of the lesson
For the full article on The Privileged Status of Story, click here.
#14
Support all students through high expectations
“True differentiation is a paradox. It is about having incredibly high expectations for every child. It’s about regarding these as an entitlement. It is about offering demanding, concept rich, complex work. And the differentiation bit comes in through ‘unpacking’. This means through high quality talk, questioning, checking for understanding, modelling, explaining. The most effective form of differentiation is through Dylan Wiliam’s responsive teaching – preparing for the top and supporting pupils to get there, rather than deciding in advance which pupils will perform which tasks.” (Myatt, M. 2020)
Consider:
- Using the same challenging text/source/material for all students to engage with
- Selecting hooks (videos, chapters, music, etc) that generate wonder
- Describing challenging activities with positive language, e.g. “this is a beautiful problem” in maths
- Returning to prior learning to activate the skill/knowledge required to access new material
- Questioning all students verbally to check and elaborate on understanding, ‘live’
- Having those who are secure in their skills and knowledge explain the process to their peers
