Becoming an Outstanding Geography Teacher

Mark Harris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315522357
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Becoming an Outstanding Geography Teacher supports all geography teachers in offering a wide range of approaches to teaching and learning that will stimulate and engage students.

Providing a variety of techniques for planning inspiring geography lessons, the book shows teachers how they can use current resources in a more innovative way to produce outstanding results. Chapters include sample lesson plans which demonstrate each technique with a step-by-step discussion of the development of the lessons, and have a strong focus on activating learning and supporting pupils on their individual learning journeys. The book covers all aspects of geography teaching, including:

• designing programmes of study
• differentiation
• questioning
• literacy and numeracy
• teaching A Level
• enquiry geography
• feedback and assessment.

Packed full of strategies and activities that are easy to implement, Becoming an Outstanding Geography Teacher is essential reading for newly qualified and experienced geography teachers who want to ensure outstanding teaching and learning in their classrooms.

Chapter 1

An introduction to outstanding teaching

Outstanding teaching is something that has been much written about over the years. Just as the educational discussion and dialogue have morphed and changed, so too has the term evolved. Once ‘outstanding’ was a definable set of criteria that could be ticked off and measured, but more recently it seems to have become an intangible term, misinterpreted and exploited. Regardless of the term’s connotations, it is the pursuit of excellence that is the endeavour. Outstanding teaching is simply teaching that stands out, teaching that is ‘inspirational’, ‘inspiring’ ‘challenging’, ‘consistent’ and all those other terms used to describe what teachers feel outstanding teaching is all about.

The premise of this chapter is not to create a tick list of what to include in a lesson to make it outstanding, but rather that if you employ the features within this book on a regular and consistent basis you will develop a degree of automaticity. The habits you will have developed will result in your lessons becoming outstanding; the process you follow will lead to excellence. As you practise these techniques and strategies, whilst also strengthening your own already developed skill set, then you will begin to operate at a higher level, at a level that sees your students excel. As with many things, the success of these habits and strategies will depend on you. It is through practice that these strategies can develop into habits, and once you have instilled outstanding habits you are more than halfway there. This point cannot be emphasised enough: you must keep practising and never stop learning. ‘Outstanding’ is a mindset: if you have decided to be outstanding you must be prepared to work at it, because it is the result of hard work and consistent application of the strategies you have learnt. Practice is key.

What does ‘outstanding’ look like?

As we have already identified, ‘outstanding’ means different things to different people. However, following is a list of features I feel are necessary if a lesson is to be considered ‘outstanding’.

For students, ‘outstanding’ is achieved when:

1. Students are actively engaged. This may be demonstrated by students asking considered geographical questions, willingly participating in questioning, offering answers and making relevant comments.
2. Students take ownership of their learning: the students make decisions on which challenges or questions they wish to complete and how they will go about discovering and answering them. These challenges can be within and outside of the classroom, and both are met with the same degree of engagement and enthusiasm.
3. Students take ownership of the assessment process: they are directly involved in the assessment process by reviewing what they have learnt, acknowledging what they need to do to improve and then acting on those targets. This is also achieved by their involvement in the development of the success criteria for assessments.
4. Students are able to learn, consolidate and then apply their skills, knowledge and understanding in a variety of settings, including extended writing, presentation and through oracy.
5. Students can learn effectively through an enquiry process. They are able to develop questions, recognise opportunities to discover and then explore their own learning, in order to solve problems and further their understanding.
6. Students demonstrate a growth mindset. They show tenacity and resilience when faced with challenges, and see setbacks and failure as learning opportunities.

For teachers, ‘outstanding’ is achieved when:

1. Geographical thinking is promoted at every opportunity. Students are encouraged to think like a geographer. They are challenged to make connections, link ideas and ask questions to further their knowledge and understanding.
2. Geographical skills are developed pragmatically.
3. Students are encouraged and supported to work independently to develop their skill set and conceptual understanding.
4. The teacher’s enthusiasm and subject knowledge is shared with the class. This engages and inspires the students to greater achievements.
5. All students are appropriately challenged to work to the best of their ability.
6. Marking and assessment is used by the teacher to identify gaps in learning. This assessment process is then used to plan the next steps for the students, and offer support so that all students can make progress.
7. Planning is used to map the students’ learning to give every possible opportunity for the students to make the best possible progress.
8. Questioning is used astutely and with skill to further students’ understanding and assess progress.

In addition to those characteristics, there are a number of habits that outstanding teachers follow. It is important to recognise that outstanding teachers, whilst being proficient in many of these habits/skills, will not necessarily be outstanding in all areas. In fact they may excel in only a handful of skills, yet be considered outstanding because they optimise their ‘best’ skills and work to develop those skills they may consider to be less defined. To become outstanding it is important not to neglect those skills you already possess. In fact, it is vital that you develop and practise those skills to enhance them even more, as this is how you become an outstanding practitioner, not only learning new skills but also refining those skills that you consider to be your greatest assets.

I am sure that you will have your own thoughts and ideas on what you think constitutes ‘outstanding’. Please note that here I do not talk about an ‘outstanding lesson’. It’s important to realise that not every lesson you teach will be outstanding, and there is nothing wrong with this. In fact we often learn more from our failures than from our successes. I see a lot of teachers teaching: some teachers can ‘turn it on’ and produce a wonderful all-singing and all-dancing, outstanding lesson, and yet for the remainder of the year they produce a lack-lustre teaching performance. Then I can watch a teacher who, no matter which lesson you turn up to, will produce some consistently wonderful teaching. It may not always be ‘outstanding’, yet the diet of well-planned and delivered teaching shows clear progress over time, resulting in excellent exam results year after year. I know what I prefer to see. Consistency is key to an outstanding performance from both you and your students.

The good news is that you already possess everything you need to be outstanding: it is all within you. You must develop your mindset to achieve your ambitions. This can be both liberating and scary, but in reality ‘outstanding’ is a state of mind. You may not be outstanding yet because you haven’t decided to be. Once you make the decision to be ‘outstanding’, commit to it, go to the edge of your comfort zone and see what you can achieve. Figure 1.1 outlines some key areas to focus on to become ‘outstanding’.

As with the students you teach, you cannot get better without constructive feedback, and therefore it will be necessary to ask others to watch you teach to give you some ideas of what you could do to improve. I appreciate that this is never comfortable, yet it is a necessary step if you are to improve your performance and ergo the performance of your students. Seek assistance from your peers and your management team, and even ask for feedback from the students – which can often be truly insightful. Work on this feedback and then ask for a review of your performance after a few weeks. Regardless of the training/coaching programme that operates at your school, the best approach is for you to take ownership of your own development. Become your own coach and train yourself to peak performance.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What do outstanding teachers do?
• What do they do differently from you?
• What’s holding you back?

Figure 1.1 Outstanding teaching in a nutshell

Chapter 2

Designing and developing a sequence of lessons

When you are first designing a series of lessons or scheme of work, one of the best approaches is to begin with the end in mind. Have a clear vision of which skills you want the students to have developed and what knowledge and understanding they need to acquire to allow them to be successful, both in their assessments and also for the next stage in their learning. The content and skills you are developing may be linked to a specific qualification, specification or to a national curriculum, thus this will often dictate exactly what you need to teach your students. It is therefore important to look at the bigger picture: how your lesson will fit into the scheme of work, then how that fits into the yearly plan and the key stage, and then how the key stage fits into the long-term plan for the students. You need to consider what geography education you are going to provide from the students’ first day in the school to their last. When designing a key stage programme of study I consider how it will all fit together (see Figure 2.1, which shows the links between a single lesson to the school career of the students’ you teach). What content and skills will I want to embed and foster to make the transition from one key stage to the next as smooth as possible?

Begin with the end in mind

At first sight it may appear that my only aim is to get the students to pass their exams, yet this is far from the case. I want to enthuse and impassion my students, creating a love of geography that will stay with them all their lives. I want to deliver fun, exciting and enjoyable lessons that will remain with them always, so that in future years students can look back and still recall that some of their favourite memories of school were in my classroom. Within this desire to create zealous geographers is my overriding aim of making sure that students achieve the best score/grade possible, so that they can go on to achieve whatever it is they wish to do or pursue any career they want to embark on. The reality is that those aims will not just happen by luck; they need to be worked at and planned for. Therefore if I am going to succeed in developing high-achieving and enthusiastic geographers I need to begin with the end I have in mind, and I first need to consider the skills, knowledge and understanding that my students require in order to be successful in geography.

Figure 2.1 Connection from lesson plan to school career

Geographical skills

The skills we are trying to develop are not just useful for the geography classroom but should be the necessary skills for 21st century learners to excel at university, the work place and in gener...