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Making Every Primary Lesson Count
Six principles to support great teaching and learning
Jo Payne
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eBook - ePub
Making Every Primary Lesson Count
Six principles to support great teaching and learning
Jo Payne
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About This Book
InMaking Every Primary Lesson Count: Six Principles to Support Great Teaching and Learning, full-time primary teachers Jo Payne and Mel Scott share evidence-informed practice and gimmick-free advice for ensuring that every lesson makes a difference for young learners. Writing in the engaging style of Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby's award-winning Making Every Lesson Count, the book is underpinned by six pedagogical principles challenge, explanation, modelling, practice, feedback and questioning and provides simple, realistic strategies to develop a culture of growth and excellence with pupils. Jo and Mel advocate an approach designed to cultivate a growth mindset in the classroom and guide children towards independence: motivating both teachers and pupils to aim high and put in the effort required to be successful in all subject areas. The authors also offer tips from across the Early Years and Key Stages 1 to 2 phases on how to implement effective routines and procedures so that pupils are clear about what is expected from them in the classroom. Making Every Primary LessonCountis for new and experienced teachers alike. It does not pretend to be a magic bullet. It does not claim to have all the answers. Rather the aim of the book is to provide effective strategies to bring the six principles to life, with each chapter introduced by two fictional scenarios rooted in situations primary teachers typically encounter and concluding in a series of questions to inspire reflective thought and help you relate the content to your own practice. In an age of educational quick fixes and ever-moving goalposts, this precise and insightful addition to the Making Every Lesson Count series will have a high impact on learning in the classroom: enabling pupils to leave primary school as confident, successful learners equipped with the skills and knowledge required of them. Suitable for all Early Years and primary teachers.
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Topic
EducationSubtopic
Education GeneralChapter 1
Challenge
Elisa â the circle
When Elisa moved out of Early Years, her Year 1 teacher put her in the Circles group for maths. She spent the year completing fairly easy work and she often had the support of a teaching assistant to do this. As she moved into Year 2, she was, once again, placed on the Circles table. Elisa no longer wondered what she must do to get into the Triangles group and had stopped trying to aim for it. Now she is starting Year 6 and is concerned that she will still be seated with the Circles. On her first day of term, Elisaâs new teacher gives each child a sticky note and asks them to write down one thing that they really wish their new teacher knew about them. Elisa writes, âI would like to be on the Hexagons table, like my sister was, because I am clever.â
Benâs beeline for help
Year 3 pupil Ben relied on support. In fact, he would make a beeline for any teaching assistant entering the classroom and ask them to work with him. He was also very reward hungry. The only way to encourage him to produce any work or follow a task was to dangle the carrot of a sticker or house points. Although this served the purpose of enticing him to engage with a task, it taught Ben that it was the outcome that mattered rather than the process. This also meant that he expected an extrinsic reward for whatever he produced, no matter the quality.
Challenge â What It Is and Why It Matters
Challenge gives pupils the opportunity to stretch themselves and encourages them to believe that hard work and perseverance will lead to progress. Within the classroom, this means setting challenging targets that all pupils have the opportunity to access and work that probes the pupilsâ thinking, enabling them to learn in greater depth. Malcolm Gladwell observes in Outliers that, as a society, we âcling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual meritâ.1 He suggests that we are too much in awe of successful individuals and far too dismissive of those who fail. Society encourages competitiveness and comparison from the very start of life, from parents who compare Apgar scores (a simple test to determine how ready a newborn is to meet the world) to those who praise toddlers for ability rather than effort: âYouâre so clever!â
Dweckâs research into mindsets has found that as soon as children become able to evaluate themselves, some of them become afraid of challenges. They become worried about how their intelligence will be perceived if they do not succeed. Elisa knows that âcleverâ people should always succeed and is already, at the age of 10, comparing herself unfavourably with a sibling. Elisa needs to be encouraged to change her mindset: to believe that the success she craves can be developed through effort, stretching herself, taking on more challenging work and accepting that failure may be a painful part of the struggle â but one from which she can learn. As Dweck points out, âItâs not about immediate perfection. Itâs about learning something over time: confronting a challenge and making progress.â2
A careful balance needs to be struck â as in the figure below. As Allison and Tharby explain, âWhile we want to move students out of their comfort zone into the struggle zone, we also need to ensure that we do not push them so far that they end up in the panic zone.â3 The skill of the teacher is in pushing pupils just far enough so that they are engaging with worthwhile and productive struggle.
As teachers, we need to do more than just talk about growth mindset in order to encourage pupils. The phrasing of our feedback and the way we approach errors and setbacks can help pupils on their own journey to acquiring the traits of a growth mindset. Since publishing her research, Dweck has cautioned about the creation of false growth mindsets. We should not be banning the fixed mindset from our classrooms because it is important to acknowledge that â(1) weâre all a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets, (2) we will probably always be, and (3) if we want to move closer to a growth mindset in our thoughts and practices, we need to stay in touch with our fixed-mindset thoughts and deedsâ.4 Dweck advocates watching out for our fixed mindset triggers. This is true of ourselves as teachers as well as of our pupils. Once we recognise these triggers, both ours and our pupilsâ, be it anxiety when facing a setback or reluctance to accept criticism, we are better able to accept them and work through them.
So, how do we challenge all children in the class and help them to develop the traits of a growth mindset? Setting high expectations for all pupils regardless of their starting point will help to ensure that the challenge is kept high. Your response to individuals and the ways in which they are supported to reach these high standards will vary according to the needs of each pupil. The following figure demonstrates Allison and Tharbyâs solution to the problem of ensuring that needs are met yet challenge is kept high.
Our colleague, Year 3 teacher Sam Blaker, demonstrated these high expectations when working with Ben, mentioned in the second scenario. The class had been studying Roald Dahlâs The Twits and discovered that Mrs Twit had become ugly due to her having ugly thoughts. The class were engaged in writing some good thoughts to prevent such hideousness! As usual, Ben had written the bare minimum and expected this to be acceptable. He demonstrated the traits of having a fixed mindset. Sam was determined to help Ben change his mindset. This was the conversation that ensued:
Sam: Well done for writing your thoughts on your own. I see youâve written âGoing to Spainâ. That sounds nice. Why does going to Spain make you happy?
Ben (in a low growly voice, looking away and turning his back on her): Why should I tell you?
Sam: Because I was interested and wanted to help you make your writing even better. But if you wish to leave it like that, then thatâs fine.
(She turned to walk away.)
Ben: Okay, okay, Iâll tell you!
He then proceeded to tell her how the hotel where he stays has a great swimming pool and that it cools you down when it is âsuper-hotâ. Sam then suggested ideas about how he could extend his existing sentence with âbecauseâ and supported him accordingly. Once he had done this she praised him for improving his work and for accepting advice, not for the final outcome.
Over the next term, she continued to praise Ben for his independent efforts (though he still liked to have an adult with him to talk through and model ideas) and always found an element on which to give positive feedback, before offering suggestions for improvement. Slowly Benâs attitude towards his learning changed. He realised that it was good to find things to change, it was good to borrow brilliance from others, it was good to ask for advice and it was good to work independently â that is what Mrs Blaker liked. He had learned to become more of an enthusiastic, resilient, determined and successful learner.
The following strategies guide you through some practical ideas that can be used to help you challenge your pupils as well as yourself.
1. Be Precise
How do I cultivate a classroom culture of challenge through the routines and language I use?
Establishing efficient routines is key in primary education, beginning in the Early Years classroom â from where to hang their coats, how to sit on the carpet and when to look at the teacher to exactly which items of clothing to remove when changing for PE and how to zip their coats at the end of the day! Early Years practitioners are experts ...