Teaching & Learning July 2013 magazine

Welcome to Philips High School’S Teaching and Learning Magazine – July 2013 - Sharing ideas with teachers!

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Happy Holidays!

Well, it’s that time of year again and thoughts turn to the Summer holidays - no lesson planning, no marking and no pupils....well for a few weeks any way. All I would ask is for you to reflect on the year that was 2012-13 at Philips High School! An interesting year to say the least!

This year has been a real turning point for us and I really think the pupils have moved forward in their attitude towards learning. Pupils are more aware of their targets and how to get there and more importantly there seems to have been a shift in their focus towards achieving their goals at the end of the year. At times it is all too easy to forget that Ofsted said, ‘Students’ behaviour and attitudes to learning are outstanding’ and, ‘Students make good progress and achieve well’. All this is down to you!

I know we have the odd one or two pupils who are not quite there yet, but on the whole, I think the 2012-2013 academic year at Philips High School has been a success. Yes, there have been trials and tribulations along the way but if you think back to where we were as a school two years ago and where we are now, I think I can say that we are making a difference and this should be celebrated! As teachers we need to celebrate our own personal successes from this year no matter how small – whether it be a pupil who has finally put their hand up without shouting out to answer a question or just seeing the light bulb finally come on when a pupil understands a difficult concept – all this is down to you and your hard work and perseverance. The pupils of Philips High School cannot learn without you teaching them and guiding them along the way and I think we forget this sometimes. So, to you all, thank you! Thank you for teaching the pupils so effectively, thank you for doing a great job and thank you for all the little things you do that make a difference to our young peoples’ lives.

So, whatever it is you’re doing this Summer, enjoy yourselves! You really do deserve the rest and relaxation for what has been at times, a difficult year.

And in the words of Nelson Mandela...

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Contents 1) The pedagogy leaders project: how our staff drive teaching and learning – Page 3 2) The Ying & Yang of the Question Grid – Page 6

3) So, what does ‘Gifted’ mean anyway? – Page 11

4) How do you Develop a Strong Learning Culture Amongst Staff? – Page 14

5) The Guardian Secret Teacher – Ofsted Inspectors, You Need a Reality Check! – Page 16

6) Putting the ‘Less’ into ‘Lessons’ – Page 18

7) Three Phrases Teachers Should never use in School – Page 20

8) Question Wall – Page 22

9) Ofsted: Good to Great in Seven Steps – Page 23

10)

Ten Ways to Deal with Low-Level Disruption in the Classroom – Page 26

11)

‘Question Time’ and Asking ‘Why’? – Page 28

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The pedagogy leaders project: how our staff drive teaching and learning.

Canons High appointed a team of pedagogy leaders to spread good teaching practice throughout school. Here, deputy head Keven Bartle discusses their work

I have a number of words for it. Organic is my favourite, but I also like 'bottom-up', and 'classroom-led' is always a winner too. Recently I have begun to conceptualise it in terms of 'guerrilla teachers' and 'Trojan mice', but for the purposes of this post I shall call it backseat driving.

I am referring to an approach to the development of teaching and learning at Canons High School that doesn't come top-down from a member of the senior leadership team with an "amazing idea" but instead emerges from the experiences and insights of those true classroom-heroes who teach four out of five periods every day.

This backseat-driving vision was spearheaded from 2010 by our outstanding pedagogy project (OPP), a group that identifies an area of pedagogic focus and finds a way to roll it out across the whole school. OPP is a self-nominated group of teachers whose aim and membership changes annually. So far they have looked at 'Pedagogy as an art, craft and science', the 'Accelerated Learning Cycle' and 'The use of tablet devices to improve collaborative learning'.

All was going well with this organic approach to teaching and learning but then in April 2012, as part of a plan to build our capacity to fully engage with the teaching school movement, we created the posts of pedagogy leaders.

Designed to mimic the structures of teaching school alliances and challenge partnership hubs, we wanted these pedagogy leaders to function as key figures within the leadership structure, providing expertise in teaching, fashioning a coherent whole-school approach and coaching colleagues in implementing this approach; ultimately creating the 'Canons pedagogy'.

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We internally advertised five, paid fixed-term pedagogy leader posts and were astonished by the level of interest: 18 colleagues applied for the post.

There were only two criteria: they needed an 'outstanding' rating in a recent lesson observation (or teach an outstanding lesson on demand for the post) and that they submit a letter of application explaining an area of focus for teaching and learning that they wanted to put in place. The selection process was simply an analysis and evaluation of whose visions for pedagogy at the school were most compelling and how these visions might be able to interlock most effectively for the benefit of the school. It was the hardest selection process I have been a part of, but also the most rewarding.

We ended up with six pedagogy leaders; comprised of two newly-qualified teachers, an advanced skills teacher, a key stage leader and two heads of department.

Their first task was to build on the work of the OPP group, bringing together a coherent and compelling pedagogical model for the school, and introduce it to the staff. After a day off site to really think through their work, they wove together the accelerated learning cycle, their own priority themes and some specific teaching strategies to form the core of our Canons pedagogy.

They then devised and delivered their own Inset day to introduce their model.

Their second term saw them outshine the irrepressible Alistair Smith, while running an Inset day that deepened staff understanding of the Canons pedagogy through cross-curricular planning time.

It also saw some of the pedagogy leaders challenged by their peers, as school leaders should be.

They rose to that challenge, as they have risen to all challenges, and persuaded colleagues or adapted the plan as appropriate. Nobody bailed them out, partly because nobody needed to but mainly because distributive leadership requires the distribution of both professional autonomy and accountability: they needed to face the flak for any unpopular actions or ideas.

In this second term the pedagogy leaders also took on the responsibility of leading our teacher learning communities (TLCs). These TLCs are small-scale action-research peer-to-peer groups which we aligned with the six areas of focus identified in their application letters. Among these are groups looking at 'language for learning', 'interdependent learning' and 'questioning for learning' and in these groups the leaders have been able to practice and develop (in themselves and others) the coaching skills that underpinned the third of our pedagogy-focused Inset days.

After the Christmas break the pedagogy leaders created their third Inset day, showing great awareness of the needs of their colleagues in devising a programme on the theme of classroombased evaluation of learning, that was all about staff choosing what they wanted to do, rather than a one-size-fits-all day.

That Inset day saw more than 20 colleagues deliver sessions to their peers and the introduction of our first mini Teachmeets (an event where peers deliver very short presentations on a range of topics). I suspect pedagogy-focused training days at Canons will never be the same again.

That spring term also saw the pedagogy leaders put together our first student pedagogy day, something like an Inset day for students in years seven to 10. This involved them creating a rich and varied programme that introduced our students to the same pedagogical structures, themes and techniques that our staff had been introduced to. The day was a great success but not without its challenges. It is to the credit of the team that they were brutally honest in their analysis of the day and incisive in their evaluation of what will need to be retained and what will need to be changed in any future student learning days.

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All of which brings us to the current term and the current work of the pedagogy leaders. Because we front-loaded our Inset provision, this term is about consolidation. This involves drawing together the work of their TLCs, engaging with new processes for peer-coaching and sharing of best practice, evaluating the impact of their work, responding to an ever-increasing amount of requests from colleagues who have seen how good they are, and beginning to show to the outside world what they have done.

On 21 June, they will be presenting their journey (and our school's journey with them at the steering wheel of teaching and learning) at the SSAT's Achievement Show at Twickenham. In the continued spirit of fully distributed responsibility they have complete autonomy over what and how they present on that day. We hope to see many of you there.

What does the future hold for our pedagogy leaders? Their term of office is ending but they have done such a fantastic job for Canons High School that the role is now seen as invaluable. We have just advertised for a second generation of pedagogy leaders with a new brief that will build upon the work of the first generation.

It will be good to see who the new leaders are, what animates them and how they want to strike out in new and unexpected directions. The one thing that remains certain is that once the new team are formed they will continue to have significant freedom to drive teaching and learning from the front seat rather than being passengers to be carried along. It is a model of staff development, deployment and influence that I can't recommend highly enough to any and every school leader with the will to make it happen.

Keven Bartle is deputy headteacher at Canons High School, Harrow.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/jun/14/pedagogystaff-initiative-teaching-learning-project

The Ying and Yang of the Question Grid I have been a fan of @JOHNSAYERS question grid for sometime. Not only is it making me phrase my questions in lessons much better, it is enabling pupils to develop their own questioning skills.

What's not to like, or indeed love?!

I began using it with my genial guinea pigs that are the Year 13 Language and Literature group and have gradually introduced it to my KS3 classes. The KS4 class, my 'snake-wrangling' Year 10s had been swerved a little, because I was not sure how best to use it with that class, and after this post, you'll know I'm still not sure! As people tell me, 'God loves a trier.'

This is a more warts than all post than most because I shall reveal the epic failure of my attempt to use it with the year 10 class, followed by a far more successful use with my Year 8 group before they began to read 'Face' by Benjamin Zephaniah.

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Year 10 and the Ying of the Question Grid or For God's Sake, don't to this: We are studying Romeo and Juliet for the WJEC Poetry and Shakespeare Controlled Assessment which to use a bloomin' Gove-ism, is really rather rigorous. The CA focus is on family relationships so, with a boy heavy class I have decided to focus on Romeo, Lord Montague and Friar Lawrence in more street speak I am asking, 'Who's the daddy?' - Montague or Lawrence?

We have done plentiful work, exploring father son relationships in the real world, film and television and now The Bard, a backwards slip down a timeline if you will.

Furthermore, before Easter, I really felt, through a huge amount of blood sweat and tears, I'd had this group sussed at last as they were really beginning to develop some higher level responses in lessons, alongside a much more positive attitude to learning. 'Oh I am fortune's fool!' I now cry, two weeks roaming free at Easter and we are back to square one. It really has been horrifically difficult to be with them in a classroom since the start of term!

So, brimming with confidence I had planned lessons based on the class I saw before Easter, not the one that arrived back to me afterwards. #errornumber1 Here is what I put in the question grid for them to have a go at using:

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My intention was to arouse their curiosity about the character's actions and behaviour through writing their own questions about the first words, spoken by Friar Lawrence in Act 3 Scene 3 of 'Romeo and Juliet'. It would also enable them to consider the language and write questions about it that we can use in later lessons. It was also about building their confidence by removing me from the role of inquisitor, and placing that idea at their feet, giving them more autonomy in the lesson. How to use the grid to create questions was modelled with the class.

The idea came from a discussion with @hgaldinoshea and I thought, 'Cunning' must give it a go!

Oh but it DID back fire spectacularly. I saw the sort of behaviours in that lesson that you have nightmares about as PGCE student and an NQT. They were totally disengaged, often defiant, argumentative, rude, disruptive and frankly, this would have fallen off the bottom of the Ofsted lesson grading scale. I sat down, drained and disappointed at the end of the lesson. It was a car crash.

Where had else had I gone wrong?       

They needed introducing to John's grid in a less 'high stakes' situation perhaps not involving language but using images instead The task made them feel vulnerable as learners and children, they felt they couldn't do it, so demonstrated as such through their behaviour I could have led them to where I wanted to be in more 'bite size' chunks There were so many that were not even trying to co-operate, my energy was sapped out of me part way through the lesson, leaving me less able to keep my head and my calm I should have just abandoned it and had a plan B handy that would have achieved the same aims.

It was the wrong task for the wrong group, well at least in this moment in time!

I had not tried the quote in the grid idea before with more amiable students - always useful as it irons out glitches and builds your confidence with a new technique.

How to pull it all back?

    

Friday we had a lesson that did directly deal with their behaviour, reminding them of their responsibilities as learners, rules and consequences I also admitted that I need to change how I teach them so they feel like they are learning and making progress.

The Head of Year came into support.

Some previous CA marks were handed back and they were chuffed, as some of them should be, with their marks (note not grades....)

We managed to finish on a high.

Lesson learned Miss. Nelson, lesson learned.

The Yang of the Question grid or When 'Phew!' it works!

This time it was used with a Year 8 class who had used it in a prior pre-reading lesson (for 'Face') where they were shown pictures of Katie Piper and The Elephant Man and had to use the question grid to write questions as one of these people, to the other. This was to get them thinking, on their own terms, about facial disfigurement. It was fascinating as one lad physically recoiled from the photographs; while others were enormously empathic.

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So, this time, I showed them the grid again but with the book cover in. The aim was similar to the

car crash Year 10 lesson plus I had more explicitly asked them to hypothesise about the content of the novel via the grid and the book cover. I only needed to do a short re-cap of how to use the grid.

The lesson start was aided and abetted by Jim Smith's Meta-Starters from 'The Lazy Teacher's Handbook because they were asked to reflect on when they've had to generate questions before, from any lesson.

Oh it was lovely! The class initially focused on the layout of the book design and wrote their questions based on that. But, as a little more time was given, pupils began to write questions using the 'Why might...' stem to start hypothesising about the content of the book and what has happened to the person without a face on the cover.

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Here is an example of a pupil's work from this lesson (note the literacy peer marking):

This pupil is a total gem. One of those kids, that when you meet their parent's, it's all you can do NOT to say, 'Thank you so much for consumating your marriage and producing your child.'

Why was this not a car crash?

      

I have done lots of work with this class generating questions in previous lessons The meta-starter enabled them to realise they were on familiar territory The previous lesson had piqued their interest in the subject matter The class were 'on side' and co-operative, even last lesson of the day!

The purpose of the work was clear to them They have had a good experience reading novels with me in the past To paraphrase @LearningSpy - the stuff below the water mark of the ice-berg allowed the tip, the bit above the water, the lesson, to be successful.

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The novel was produced in the last 20 minutes of the lesson and the enthusiasm for it was so very noticable. They even requested to read out different character parts like we had done so before with Louis Sachar's 'Holes'. They policed each other to be quiet so we could read more of the book. The opening of the book is fabulously witty. We laughed a lot.

A pupil walked past me at the end of the lesson, and said, 'It is really fun to share reading a book together.'

Soooooo much more important to us teachers than the big sticks of data, league tables and Ofsted inspections. It is what feeds the teacher soul. More please!

http://takenoheedofher.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-ying-and-yang-of-question-grid.html

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So, what does ‘gifted’ mean anyway?

As you may be aware, non-selective secondary schools are failing the ‘most able’. How do we know? Because a brand new Ofsted report tells us so.

The report’s key findings include such revelations as the fact that “expectations of what the most able students should achieve are too low” and that not enough has been done “to create a culture of scholastic excellence” which leads, unsurprisingly, to, “Many students become used to performing at a lower level than they are capable of.”

The problem is attributed to ineffective transition arrangements, poor Key Stage 3 curricula and early entry to GCSE exams. Homework also gets a bashing; too much of it is “insufficiently challenging” and “fails to interest students, extend their thinking or develop their skills.”

The result is that “just over a quarter of the pupils who achieved Level 5 in English and mathematics at the end of Year 6 did not make the progress expected of them in their nonselective secondary schools”.

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So that’s that: QED. Now you may well quibble, as Geoff Barton has done over their means of measurement and the woeful laziness of many newspaper reports but really, I find it hard to argue with the likelihood that secondary schools’ expectations of their students are way too low.

I know I’ve certainly been guilty of this. A few years ago I taught a girl called Charlotte. Charlotte had an E grade target and, I confess, my expectations of her were low. In the opening weeks of Year 10 she told me that she wanted to get an A grade and I, to my shame, tried to manage her expectations and let her know that his was unlikely. It would be enough of a miracle if she were to managed a C! The first piece of coursework she turned in was a lowly D. She was devastated. She took it away (remember, this was the old days) acted on my advice and handed in a C grade essay.

I was chuffed; she was still devastated. She took her English GCSE at the end of Year 10 (something else we’re now no longer allowed to do) and got a C. Two grades above her target grade. By this time I knew she’d be gutted with this result, and she was. She still professed cockeyed, unwavering faith she could get an A. But, I knew she couldn’t. Obviously.

I’m sure you can see where this is going, can’t you? Charlotte continued to plug away and retook the exam in November getting a B grade. C’mon, I told her. Enough’s enough. Be happy with your B. But she wasn’t and retook for a third time in June of Year 11. And still she didn’t get an A. She got an A*.

Now you can say what you like about lack of challenge and low expectations and the wonky Key Stage 3 curriculum and early entry being the enemy of promise; this girl was a grafter. She believed that she could be better than she was. No one ever told her she was gifted at anything, and she didn’t care; she knew that if she worked hard enough she could get what she wanted.

Of course for every Charlotte I’ve taught a thousand kids with nothing like her mindset or capacity for trying. Many of these were identified as G&T and went on to coast a B grade or similar. But Charlotte taught me far more than probably I ever managed to teach her. She taught me that my expectations were, for most kids, a determining factor in their achievement. And what’s the point in having high expectations for just some of our students? Where on earth is the sense in picking off our ‘most able’ 10% and deciding to push this elite to scholastic excellence?

Charlotte taught me that this was a nonsens and that effort trumps talent.

Tom Bennett gives us The Orthodoxy in his TES article How best are the gifted lifted? Above average, but below the radar: the problem of G&T kids. His solution is based on the following these 3 familiar steps: 1) identify your potential brainiacs, 2) provide something special for them, and then 3) monitor that this hothousing is having the desired effect.

I have absolutely no argument with point 2 and 3. None. But, oh my goodness! I’m not at all happy with point 1. To his credit Tom does say that ”high expectations should be tattooed inside our hearts for every child, until the minute they leave school for good – maybe not even then.”

Quite right. But how does corralling the boffins and treating them differently serve this aim?

Take out the word ‘gifted’ and this could be a marvellous manifesto: Page 12

Teachers need to be trained more clearly on simple techniques that can revolutionise the work a gifted pupil does, eg setting them tasks a year above their age; accelerating them into the year above (astounding, but caution required); asking for work to be redone – after school if necessary – if it doesn’t meet the required level. Forcing yourself to give them time in lessons to explain things at a higher level, just as if they were as important as a weaker kid (fancy that); setting slightly different homework, and so on.

I get that Tom, and Ofsted for that matter, are berating us for chasing the grail of the C/D borderline, but still.

Grammar school head Tom Sherrington talks about having a Total G&T Philosophy and how lessons should be designed with rigour and high expectations to ‘lift the lid’ to what students can achieve. He advocates that we should ‘teach to the top’ instead of the usual slow ball middle pitch Tom Bennett describes. And yes, teach to the top, support at the bottom. Everyone’s aspirations are raised and they start to believe in they can achieve more than they ever believed possible.

I had the pleasure of hearing Mr Sherrington speak about his approach to teaching yesterday and one throwaway line got me thinking. He said something about teachers often removing layers of complexity because kids would be turned off if the work seemed too hard. Instead he suggested giving kids work which seems impossible. What if we scrapped our Year 7 curriculum and just taught ‘em the Year 8 stuff? Would it matter? And this got me thinking: maybe I could try teaching work which ‘seems impossible to see what’s possible’?

Last week I taught a transition lesson to a class of Year 6 students to prepare them for the ‘step up’ to big school. I didn’t find out I would be doing this until that morning and just for the hell of it I decided to teach them a lesson I’d taught to my Year 11s on analysing Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116. At the end of the lesson I asked them to tell me on a scale of 1 – 10 (1 being insultingly easy, 10 being ear bleedingly difficult) and guess what? They gave me a 5! When I told them the lesson’s provenance I’m not sure if they were more impressed with themselves or disappointed by the lack of challenge presented by GSCEs. The point was, I treated them all as if they could do it and, by God, they could do it!

If I’d told ‘em in advance that they were going to tackle poetry from the GCSE Literature anthology it might have ‘seemed impossible’. But maybe (maybe) they’ve seen what’s possible.

What if they’d been streamed as Wilshire suggests and all the ‘gifted’ kids fed a steady diet of ‘scholastic excellence’? What kind of message does this give to everyone else?

Every year I expect my students to get A grades. And every year I’m disappointed when some don’t. I’m sure, come August, I’ll be disappointed again. Never mind, next year I can try to fail better.

http://learningspy.co.uk/2013/06/14/so-what-does-gifted-mean-anyway/#.UbwF6Y87pnE.twitter

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How do you develop a strong learning culture amongst staff?

CPD is a funny old thing. For some, it means being talked at for an hour accompanied by a dull PowerPoint; for others, it means logging onto Twitter and tweeting fellow teachers. The thing that most teachers agree on is that CPD delivered from the top with no input from staff contributes little to anyone’s development. Nobody wants something done to them. We want to be part of something we can believe in. The question is: how do you create a learning culture where there are myriad opportunities for staff to – in the words of Dylan Wiliam – ‘improve, not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better?’

Ofsted: the kiss of death for high-quality CPD I don’t know about you but I am ridiculously bored of hearing about Ofsted. In my eyes, this word should hold the same status as ‘Voldemort’. I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t make me want to be a better teacher; it makes me think about planning lessons for someone I don’t know rather than the students in my class. Should I stop a perfectly good activity to demonstrate progress? Should I spend 10 minutes banging out about my learning outcomes so the inspector knows I’ve thought about them? Shall I get them to do this activity as a group so they can show cooperative behaviour, even though I think they probably would do just as well working by themselves?

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A couple of years ago, Mel and I ran a ‘Good to Outstanding’ programme to help staff chase the elusive grade. We received a lot of positive feedback from staff and a year later the school did receive an Outstanding. In retrospect, SLT were keen to market them in a very ‘Ofsted’ way’ but what we delivered should have been called ‘Great teaching’. There were three aspects of the programme: stretch and challenge; marking and feedback; and independent learning. What made the sessions worthwhile wasn’t making teachers understand what Ofsted were looking for but rather that we ran each session many times in order to have small group sizes. What made these sessions better than anything else we’d delivered up until that point was that a group of approximately 10 teachers got to sit down and talk about their teaching and think about what was working for them and what needed tweaking. However, I must admit, there was sugar paper in one session – I know that for some of you out there, that’s a complete no-no!

So it’s talking that makes teachers better?

The lesson to be learnt from that programme was that teachers are crying out for opportunities to talk to each other about pedagogy. If only we could replace the endless cycle of meetings with more time for coaching, sharing best practice and collaborative projects. At the recent #SLTeachMeet, @headguruteacher gave a presentation on Rainforest Thinking. One of his ideas is to scrap some meetings and replace the time with departments collaborating. Imagine spending time after school developing innovative pedagogy rather than being read to from a PowerPoint – radical!

To listen to @headguruteacher, this is his presentation: http://www.l4l.co.uk/?p=6917 (this is the opening #SLTeachMeet presentation).

If we are agreed that the best chance we have of developing a strong learning culture is devising opportunities centred on staff talking and reflecting on their pedagogy, what steps should SLT take to make this happen? My assistant head teacher responsibility is to lead on teaching and learning and I want to get it right. Considering I can be a right old bossy-boots and known for never shutting up, I have to reign myself in and remind myself that it’s not all about me me me!

Luckily, there have been some great opportunities recently for me to listen to many teachers’ views on how to best create a learning culture. Two things in particular have made me stop and think about the direction I was taking. Initially, when I started my new job in January, I had too many ideas about what I was going to do (that’s even before I’d met the staff!) Now I realise that I need to slow down and listen to what they want and need. Recently, I had a great Skype conversation with @TeamTait – yes, he is just a brilliant in the real world! My plan had been to share all of my ideas for September to create this great learning culture. He said he was going to be doing a drip-feed over time, with lots of different ideas that staff could get involved in. This seems like a much better approach. Over the next half term, I’ll be sharing my drip-feed of ideas with staff and ask them which ones they think will be most useful in helping us to become a more curious and reflective group of pedagogues.

Finally, my headteacher shared with me research from The London Challenge entitled Butterflies for school improvement. The idea in this document is forget the big gestures: it’s the culmination of small changes that make a real difference.

In the spirit of seeking high leverage both in the important things in school life and in reinforcing how the important things are done, we believe that small interventions can have a disproportionate effect. We call them ‘butterflies’ after the chaos or complexity theorist’s story that if sufficient butterflies were to beat their wings in the Amazonian forest they could trigger a hurricane thousands of miles away. High leverage indeed – but sometimes, if you were to put Page 15

yourself in the position of the butterfly, quite a lot of effort. Perhaps, too, an unintended consequence.

Tim Brighouse and David Woods, Butterflies for school improvement (p.9) To read the whole document, you can download it here: http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/7719/1/19242005PDF-EN-01.pdf So that’s the way I’m going to try and develop a strong learning culture. Small changes over time that, when looked at as a whole, have shaped us into better teachers. Well, after all, our Twitter handle is @TeacherTweaks. We’re all for making a big difference through small changes.

http://teachertweaks.wordpress.com/2013/05/26/how-do-you-develop-a-strong-learning-cultureamongst-staff/

The Guardian Secret Teacher: Ofsted inspectors, you need a reality check!

Secret Teacher pens a heart-felt letter to an inspector to offer a true picture of life in school and the stress caused by Ofsted's intrusion

Dear Ofsted inspector, I think I might have misunderstood you. Perhaps you're a very nice person, it's just that you don't fully understand the realities of what is happening in education at the moment and the detrimental Page 16

effect that you're having on it. After all, you're only in schools for a flying visit, so you don't get to see the true picture as we do. Let me help you understand that picture more clearly.

Did you know that you and your colleagues are the most important people in our school? That's right, crazy isn't it? Even more important than the children we teach. We talk about you more far more than any of our children in staff meetings.

In fact, sometimes, I'm not sure we have children anymore. Our children have just become tools with which we can achieve progress. And do you know why? So we can impress you and then, if we're very lucky, you might leave us alone.

Some of your judgement criteria seem a bit ludicrous to us. Can I ask you why it is now necessary for every child in a class, no matter how big, to achieve measurable progress within 20 minutes?

You see, from my many years of teaching experience, I think that progress often takes longer to embed in some children than this and is subsequently more profound. But you're the expert inspector, I'm just a teacher. Some schools are even teaching their lessons in 20 minute chunks to try and win favour with you.

I hope you don't work under such stresses, although maybe you do? Your boss likes it. Do you ever disagree with him? It must be hard to, he's quite intimidating isn't he? And he often speaks very aggressively – about us anyway. We often disagree with him and his view on stress is a point in case.

We think schools are the single most important place where we should strive to leave all stresses at the doorstep. Teachers have always understood this and skilfully tried to provide peaceful, positive settings for their pupils no matter what their individual everyday life stresses might be.

You make it very hard for us to achieve this. If parents fully understood the atmosphere of stress permeating through many classrooms and schools they might begin to understand that teachers aren't just whingers. My own children have now recounted a couple of stories now about different teachers crying or 'losing it' emotionally in front of their classes. This image has disturbed them profoundly. Does it disturb you? I don't know the stories of these individual teachers but I bet you figure in them.

I've seen you make my colleagues cry directly with fear and despair or, when your powerful judgements go in their favour, be jubilant. Both extremes illustrate just how distasteful your impact is. We operate within an entire system totally obsessed with your labels. You label us as individual teachers and then you label our entire school.

Education has operated within this paradigm for far too long and it is wrong. Schools should not be prioritising your judgements above our children. Children are the single reason why we all entered this profession in the first place. How can you expect our children to receive the best education, when your organisation puts unbearable pressure upon the whole system?

Yet we are all to blame; we have gone along unquestioningly with your game for too long.

Treating your teams like VIPs; providing them with cordoned off car parking spaces, flowers, cakes and special china along with many an obsequious smile. All in the hope that you will bestow a favourable report upon us and then just leave us alone to get on with our jobs.

What value do you add to the education of our children and raising standards? Please don't say your reports. We all know that many of those would be better used as toilet paper. Even parents seem to be starting to understand this.

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So can Ofsted's contribution to our children's learning be measured and quantified? I really hope so because I'm absolutely certain that your organisation, and the businesses that have sprung up around it, must cost the taxpayer a lot of money. Is it all just a smokescreen? Some people don't think your purpose is about raising standards at all. They believe that you are simply a political poodle.

As I said I think you're probably a nice person. There's been increased criticism of your organisation recently from my profession. Many of us are are hoping that this momentum will build and result in a change. I bet you've got some interesting stories to tell of what really goes on behind your closed office and meeting doors. I bet your conscience must prick you sometimes; perhaps it's time for you and like-minded colleagues to start being honest.

This week's Secret Teacher works at a primary school in the north east of England. http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/jun/01/ofsted-inspectors-realitycheck-secret-teacher

Putting the 'Less' into 'Lessons'.

Schools are complex organisations, and the job of a teacher is far from simple. There is, frankly, a lot to do, and significant good judgement and skill is required to perform the constant decision-making, management of interactions and relationships, time management, lesson organisation and so on which make up the daily life of teacher.

The systems and processes in which we work don't always seem to help; often, those responsible for devising said systems seem to me to get it the wrong way round. There are measures in place to simplify things which are in fact highly complex and should be recognised as such - accountability measures and judgements for individual schools for example. At the same time, there is a trend to over-complicate those things which could be made simple, or at least considerably simpler: the twenty strands which the APP materials suggest are a prerequisite in order to understand a child's capacity in English, the complexity and abstractions of the various mark schemes, the way that, in some schools, filling all the AFL / VAK / Learning Styles / Differentiation / SEN / Literacy / Numeracy etc etc boxes Page 18

required on the lesson planning form represents a feat significantly more challenging and even time-consuming than teaching the actual lesson itself...

My own view is that approaching our work with an emphasis on simplifying as many aspects as we can may be a considerable step forward. I've been influenced by being lent Simplicity Parenting - Using the Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier and More Secure Kids , which argues for simplification and 'de-cluttering' of the lives of children in the home. One technique to achieve that (which I have to admit caused some raised toddler-eyebrows, not to say massive screaming tantrums, when we 'launched the initiative' in our own home) is to reduce the number of toys that kids have access to. The average number of toys in UK homes per child was estimated at something like 150 (can't remember exactly - but a lot), and the book recommends bringing this down, on the basis that children are more likely to find depth and enjoyment in what they have through a greater restriction of choice, whilst access to too many possible outlets or activities can lead to shallow play which is repeatedly abandoned in favour of the promise of novelty and the new.

So how might this apply to schools or teachers? I may be wrong here, but having been in a lot of lessons over the past five years or so, if asked to make one suggestion for how lessons could be improved, I would offer this: simplify the structure of lessons by including fewer activities, but then put more time and thought into setting them up. On average, I'd guess lessons contain about 4 or 5 activities that kids are asked to complete.

Seems reasonable, but these kids are in 5 lessons per day; if the pattern is repeated, this means up to 25 different activities every day. From that perspective, is it any wonder that we worry about engagement, about too many students drifting through their schooling, listlessly attempting at all these different things they have to do? And practically, setting up any single activity so that it contains the potential for depth and challenge for each student is hard to do - it requires time and emphasis in the lesson, students need to be made clear about the purpose and the criteria for success; tasks need modelling and discussion, and that's even before considering the need for significant time and space for feedback on how they've got on and opportunities to improve. Trying to do this with even two activities in a lesson is hard enough - more than this and we are in serious danger of providing a succession of hastily set, low-value tasks which students engage with superficially. We leave them safe in the knowledge that the lesson will inevitably move on soon anyway, that they are unlikely to be immediately held to account for the quality of what they've produced, or expected to think and reflect carefully on what they are doing and why.

I do this myself, of course - it's a difficult one to get right. In a recent observed lesson, I snatched what could have been a pretty good lesson on 'deepening explanations' from the very jaws of success by trying to fit in a quick starter about intonation. In my mind, it was to take but a few minutes (it's actually quite good - give the students the line 'Do you want ice and lemon with that?' from a barman, and they experiment with how they can influence the meaning of the line by putting emphasis on different individual words). What actually happened, inevitably, was that they didn't get it; twenty minutes in, I was still trying to get them to understand what intonation was before being forced to bring the Page 19

whole activity to a sorry and rushed close, in order to even begin to get going on what I really needed them to learn in the lesson. And that required me, in just that portion of the lesson where ideally the students would be settling down to some proper, focused work, to be again teaching from the front, introducing new ideas, setting up the main activity etc, with the difficulty that their capacity at this point to continue to concentrate and think about new content was reduced. The over-complication of the lesson meant that I was asking them to jump around mentally between thinking about distinctly different skills and ideas, overloading their working memories; as a result, engagement with each part of the lesson was more superficial and the students weren't really enabled to think deeply enough about the learning.

So what do we learn from that? Well - simplify. Stop working so hard when planning - the real tragedy of this one is that it's failure stemming from diligence and commitment, from teachers thinking too much and putting too much in with the very best of intentions, anxious to make sure that the students are engaged, interested and stimulated by the variety and range of what they are asked to do. Arguably, attending lessons in five different disciplines each day builds plenty of variety in to their school lives already; if planning from the principle of simplicity means that we get kids working harder and teachers working smarter (and less), that seems like an aim well worth pursuing.

http://thinkingonlearning.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/putting-less-into-lessons.html#!/2013/05/putting-lessinto-lessons.html

Three phrases teachers should never use at school!

What common teaching phrase would you ban teachers from using?

Peter Smith shares his top three: Sometimes you have a day in school when you deal with a lot of difficult issues; the other day I had one of those days. It got me thinking about some of the unhelpful phrases used by teachers that I hear repeated and how we can remove them from our collective teaching vocabulary.

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"They're alright for me" Picture the scene. It's the end of a long day. A frustrated newly-qualified teacher (NQT) flops down in a chair nearly in tears after year 9 were barbaric to her. One student in particular was appalling. The NQT recounts with a lump in her throat the way in which they behaved. Another voice pipes up: "Jon Jacobs? Really? Behaved like that? He's alright for me."

Four words that undermine a colleague. What you're trying to say is that they can behave differently, normally, and the NQT may just have caught them on a bad day. How it actually sounds is: "Jon Jacobs? You can't control him? I can." Don't do it. Instead offer tips on how they're better when not sat near the back or a strategy that will help them cope. But do all that once you've made them a cup of tea. And provided tissues. And possibly some chocolate.

"It's not our place to teach them that. They've got to learn" As a head of department this phrase used to drive me mad. Good teachers in my department would make this claim when it was suggested we supported students as much as we could to get them to understand, and therefore pass the course.

"But when they go to university no one will tell them which bit to read," or "If I have to correct every part of it..." are arguments that just don't work. That's like saying I shouldn't feed my infant son with anything other than an adult knife and fork as he'll only have to do it that way in the future. Our job as teachers is to get them over the line that's set for them and to teach them the right things along the way. Developing independence? Yes, certainly. But don't use it as an excuse for not giving all the support you can. Build their confidence with all the support necessary, then withdraw the support gradually. Let the university/college/secondary school figure out what to do with them once they get there.

"I've got X next. They'll be awful" When my wife and I watch the news and there's a mug shot of a criminal, my wife always proudly announces: "You can see he/she is guilty. Just look at him/her." It's something of a running joke.

If you changed the news story to the fact this person had discovered a cure for polio or had rescued a baby swan from the jaws of a fox, my wife wouldn't comment. It's only when the label has been applied that she reinforces it. In the same way, listen to the conversations in staff rooms over a rushed cup of coffee where teachers perform this same routine. The conversation goes something like this: "Who have you got next?" "Year 8. Pete Smith's in there. He'll be awful."

And watch. Go and look outside that member of staff's classroom, because eight times out of 10 that student will be standing outside for some misdemeanour. The pre-applied label by the teacher has meant they've gone in and watched young Smith like a hawk and waited for them to do something wrong. And if you watch for something hard enough, you'll find it. The student will have walked in provocatively, or swung on their chair, and already riled by the thought of the student, the teacher will immediately give them a sanction. By pre-judging, teachers aren't giving the student a chance.

As a member of the senior leadership team, I regularly pick up students ejected from rooms who claim that a particular teacher has it in for them. As professionals we say we don't have favourites, or hate any students, but the truth is some students are pre-judged. It's usually fair and based on prior behaviour, but they all deserve a clean slate every lesson. Change your seating plan, have a quiet word in their ear on arrival to remind them of your expectations, but don't think someone will be dreadful before they've stepped foot in the room. Or if you do, take the right steps to Page 21

prevent the dreadful behaviour. Ensure the lesson planned is one that challenges students, but also one they can access. The hardest thing to do is look at yourself and ask: "Did I actually help that situation? Or am I the cause of the problem?"

I used to work with a colleague who every summer term used to perform this on a bigger scale.

When the new class lists were released for the following year, they'd stand over the NQT's shoulder and tell him or her which students would be a nightmare. "Oh you've got X, awful. And in with Y as well, they never work well together." I'm sure his intentions weren't malicious, but what purpose did it serve? To warn the teacher? These students aren't armed. They deserve to be served a fresh start. So don't pre-judge behaviour. Look at it the other way, would you really want to hear a conversation between two students that said: "Who have you got for history this year?"

"Smith." "He's awful, my sister was taught by him when she was here. Never learnt a thing."

Peter Smith is the assistant headteacher at East Bergholt High School in Suffolk. He has been teaching for 10 years and has written several textbooks. http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/may/31/phrases-teachers-banprofessional-development-behaviour

Question wall.

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A really good idea to have a question wall as part of your classroom display, set aside for students to attach post it notes to.

I use it for History mystery exercises, students at the start of the lesson make a hypothesis as to what they think may have happened in an event. They can return to the wall at the end of the lesson or mid way through to change or add to their opinion.

Also useful if at the start of a lesson students write down two questions they still have about the previous lesson's learning. You can then start your lesson by answering a number of questions and taking the opportunity to clear up any misunderstandings.

Exit questions can also be used as students leave the lesson, what do they think are the three most important things that have been learned in this lesson?

Endless possibilities and all you need is a pack of post its! http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/giveitago/comments/question-wall

Ofsted: Good to Great in Seven Steps!

In February, Ofsted graded Hall Mead School as outstanding across all categories.

Headteacher Simon London takes us through seven steps on their journey from good to great, all connected by a relentless focus on teaching and learning.

In 2008, less than a term after I became headteacher at Hall Mead, we were subject to a one-day reduced tariff inspection in which were given the classic “good with outstanding features� judgement and left feeling like the whole event was something of an anti-climax.

As a new head, I suppose it gave me the breathing space to take stock of what we needed to develop as a school and which aspects were part of the fabric of what made the school the long-term success it was and continues to be.

However, for the staff it was a real non-event as just a couple of odd lessons were visited briefly and a few other teachers may have caught a random glimpse of our HMI as she glided through the corridors confirming what the data had already told her.

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Despite sometimes feeling we were on a permanent war footing as we watched successive frameworks come and go, suspecting our inspection was imminent, we eventually stopped mentioning the “O” word every staff briefing and concentrated on “sticking to the knitting”; making teaching and learning the cornerstone of every improvement plan we developed.

Our results climbed steadily as we honed our practice but resisted jumping on the GCSE equivalents bandwagon, and we evolved to meet the changing landscape of educational policy.

Then, in summer 2012, despite believing that our teaching and learning was the best it had ever been and looking forward to a record set of results, like many schools we suffered at the hands of the GCSE English scandal. And this was the year Ofsted would definitely come!

We held our nerve, knowing that across the school progress was at least good and often outstanding and we had faith in the pedagogy our teachers had developed and the response we had made to the moving of the GCSE goalposts.

In February, when the inspectors did finally arrive, we were ready and we were comfortable in our own skin.

Two days later, I sat in our conference room with one of my deputies and the chair of governors and heard the confirmation: outstanding in all categories, including teaching.

Here is a summary of the approaches we have taken to move our teaching forwards and achieve outstanding: Ethos Hall Mead has always been founded on the strength of its family ethos, with positive relationships between pupils and staff.

Everyone who visit us comments upon it and through any development that has evolved within teaching and learning, we have kept a keen eye on ensuring that the very essence of what gives us a climate for learning that enables teachers to take risks, set high expectations and challenge pupils through effective differentiation and questioning is never lost.

The high standards of behaviour we expect and the warm atmosphere of collaboration we have are critical essentials for us which allow teachers the freedom to teach and give pupils a culture for learning.

The Learning Challenge Since 2008, we start each new academic year by giving staff a fresh “Learning Challenge”. This sets out the focus area for pedagogy in the coming year and is accompanied by a folder which contains relevant resources, details of CPD for the year, and records for training and appraisal information.

This year our mantra was “Plan More, Teach Less”, with which we branded all staff training and improvement plan objectives.

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For this year we really wanted pupils to be the ones working the hardest in the lessons, but for teachers to collaborate more with joint departmental planning, to make greater consideration of the various sub-groups within their classes, and for cross-curricular links to be factored more thoughtfully into lessons.

Above all however, the main focus was on planning for progress, being able to allow pupils to “show what they know” at least three to four times during the lesson.

Lesson planning To meet the demands of this year’s Learning Challenge we revised our lesson plan format. We have an expectation that any observed lesson will be accompanied by a written plan in the house style which if at all possible is emailed in advance of the observation so that rhetorical feedback on the plan can be posed by the observer.

For day-to-day lesson planning, staff have freedom to use their planners but all lessons at Hall Mead should be planned under the framework of the writing template.

The template is concise, in many ways de-cluttered from previous ones, but it contains key prompts to encourage regular progress checks and consideration of literacy, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, and pupils’ prior learning and attainment.

Academy lead teachers Following our conversion to an academy in 2011, we have created a small number of posts for teachers across subjects who have demonstrated consistently outstanding practice.

These “Academy Lead Teachers” work closely with individual colleagues in a coaching capacity to help address areas identified through observations.

They also network and collaborate with our academy partners and help lead and advise on teaching and learning policies and professional development sessions.

SEND Hall Mead has had an excellent reputation for its learning support work for many years.

Under the leadership of its director of access and autism, the SEN and disabilities agenda has dovetailed smoothly into the “Plan More, Teach Less” approach.

The department has provided teachers with bespoke training, coaching and feedback on differentiation for specific pupils with great success. Bite-size morning case conferences have helped address wider issues in a manageable way and the empowering of learning support assistants to become more involved in the lessons and provide teachers with “Post-it note” lesson feedback relevant to the pupils they are in the classroom to support led Ofsted to remark on how effectively “other adults” were deployed in the school.

CPD Our CPD diet has been rich and varied over recent years but in the last two years we have elected to maintain the richness but reduce the variety. This has taken us away from the scatter-gun approach that sometimes infects school CPD menus and allowed us Page 25

to match twilight training, improvement plan objectives, teacher appraisal and the work of the Academy Lead Teachers into a coherent picture under the “Plan More, Teach Less” banner.

Critically, it has been an alignment of focusing on pupil progress, differentiation across the whole ability spectrum, effective questioning, literacy, and spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Linking these aspects to teacher appraisal targets and being supported in constructively developing more rigour in our judgements through consultancy from a registered Ofsted inspector have helped ensure that our work on this agenda has had high impact and is sustainable.

An added bonus A really exciting outcome from all our work on teaching and learning this year has been the extension of “discretionary effort”.

There is enormous satisfaction as a senior leader when you find out second-hand that two or three teachers have got together to develop their pedagogy just through word of mouth or shared interests and you can see the development of pedagogy take on a life all of its own. 

Simon London is headteacher of Hall Mead School in Essex, a co-educational, 11 to 16, converter academy with Leading Edge status and specialisms in technology and modern foreign languages. It was graded as “outstanding” across all categories in February 2013

http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/best-practice/going-from-ofsted-good-togreat/?utm_content=&utm_campaign=Resend%20of%20SecEd%20May%2023&utm_source=SecEd&utm _medium=adestra_email&utm_term=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sec-ed.co.uk%2Fbest-practice%2Fgoingfrom-ofsted-good-to-great%2F

10 ways to deal with low-level disruption in the classroom.

Whether it's passing notes or tapping a pen, low-level disruption is a challenge in many schools. Tracey Lawrence offers some strategies to help Lately, the most effective professional development I have undertaken has been free and extremely valuable. It has taken place on Twitter, every Monday night during term from 8 to 8.30pm on the #Behaviourchat hashtag.

Often, advice given during these sessions looks at violent pupils or more extreme behaviour; Page 26

however, it can be the low-level disruptions that can have a high impact on the learning atmosphere within your classroom. We have all experienced low-level disruption in class; chair rocking, humming, pen tapping, note passing. Just disruptive enough to slow the pace of your lesson but not dramatic enough to draw it to a halt.

During a recent Monday night slot of behaviour chat, a variety of professionals, including teaching professionals, learning support assistants and consultants, devised some tips to deal with low level disruptions. Here's a summary of them.

Adjust the volume With loud classes, avoid raising your voice. It only increases the noise. Lowering your voice can be much more effective. If the volume of your voice is always high, it loses its effect and doesn't help to control the situation.

Move around Your presence is extremely powerful. Don't stay stagnant at the front of your class. Move around and don't allow the children to become distracted. Talk to them about their task. Give them deadlines. For example say: "I'd love to see two more ideas by the time I come back as your ideas are really interesting." Then walk and visit another child/pair but make sure you come back.

Shut out negativity Don't allow negativity to enter your classroom. If a child isn't ready to come in, stop them and provide a distraction. Allow the child to calm down so that they can enter in a calmer frame of mind.

Be prepared This one is a basic one but doesn't always happen. Prepare your resources before you start teaching. It allows you to challenge the children's energy as much as you can. Rustling papers and setting out resources while children wait only encourages low-level disruptions and sets the mood for the lesson.

It's your classroom Control your space. You are the decisive element in your classroom. Stand at the door as they enter. Talk, change moods. Say hello to the children regardless of whether you have their eye contact or not. Always say goodbye.

Keep calm Have a calm outlook. If you can't leave the room but are getting annoyed, flick through your assessing pupil progress (APP) sheets or walk away from the situation to calm yourself down before returning.

Don't deviate from teaching There is no need for an excessive response to low-level disruption. Don't interrupt your teaching to deal with it. It can be corrected by including the child's name into your explanation, a look or a signal of some sort.

Be positive Deal with low-level disruptions by using positive language. "We sit in our chairs so that our handwriting is beautiful." It doesn't give the child the opportunity to opt out but also sets the expectation.

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Share your expectations Don't assume children understand what your version of acceptable is. Tapping, shouting, and throwing could be acceptable at home. A child needs to have reinforcement of your expectations.

Have a routine Having a routine in your classroom can help. Children can be uneasy when they do not know what is going to happen in the day. Children need to feel secure in their classroom and with their activities. They like to know what is coming up in their day so if things are going to change give them warning that something different will be happening and explain what to expect.

All of these tips are not guaranteed to work. But having said that they are all tried and tested ideas from someone else's classroom. Try them, amend them, adapt them and make a comment to let us know of any other methods that have helped your with low level behaviours.

Tracey Lawrence is a primary school teacher and a specialist leader in education (SLE) with a focus on behaviour and attendance. http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/may/21/classroom-disruption-toptips?CMP=twt_gu

‘Question Time’ and Asking ‘Why’.

No, this post isn’t a dissection of David Dimbleby’s negotiation of a bent table full of politicking talking heads. I’m sorry if you came looking for political debates! My post is an exploration of one of the simplest, but most fundamental, aspects of how students learn and how students display their learning in lessons: higher order questioning. It is simply about getting students to ask ‘why‘ and an exploration of the crucial value of such deep questioning.

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‘Daddy, why is the sky blue? Daddy, why are poppies red?’ Learning about the world by asking ‘why‘ questions is just about one of the most natural states for children. Here my daughter is sitting in the back seat of the car making sense of the chaotic world flying by the window. This scene conveys a basic truth that we must always harness in the classroom: children have an instinctive curiosity about the world. My daughter doesn’t yet comprehend why she should ask ‘why‘ questions (a later metacognitive state so crucial to learning), she just instinctively attempts to make sense with ‘why‘. It is the open nature of ‘why‘ questions which make them so powerful and essential to learning.

Despite being naturally inclined to ask such questions, students ask relatively few questions in the classroom setting. In fact, it takes six to seven hours for a typical student to ask a single question in class (Graesser and Person, 1994). Perhaps it is less surprising when we consider in a class full of anything from twenty to thirty inquisitive students that there is relatively little direct questioning of the teacher in class. Some students hog the attention of the teacher, skewing the balance of such questioning still further. Compare this to over twenty six questions from the same archetypal student in a one-to-one tutoring session. The numbers are striking. With this data is makes it even more essential to ensure that we make sure that students ask the right questions.

Most questions in the classroom are closed questions that don’t elicit the deeper comprehension provoked by open questions such as ‘why…‘, ‘how…‘ and ”what if…‘. Questions like Isaac Newton asking ‘why did the apple fall from the tree?‘ or Copernicus asking ‘what if the earth orbits the sun?‘ Asking such deeper questions are important because, put simply, they make you more intelligent!

By asking ‘why‘ questions – rather grandly described as ‘elaborate interrogation’ by cognitive scientists – students can actually make new knowledge stick and become more memorable. By asking questions about their new knowledge they become more active learners, which, again, aids recall. The questions elaborate upon what they are learning, hooking the knowledge more deeply in their long term memory, as such questions connect new ideas and concepts to their prior knowledge. Searching ‘why‘ questions are the mental pathways that connects their prior knowledge with what they are attempting to learn. Research on questioning shows it contributes to reading comprehension, getting students to hypothesise and focus their attention on the key aspects of the text, whilst crucially helping students identify what they know and don’t know. The meta-cognitive basis of questioning is crucial: that essential ability for students to think about their own thinking, working out what they need to know next and articulating their knowledge.

As teachers we should monitor our questions to ensure we are asking many more of these open questions which generate deeper thinking. We can use students themselves as ‘question monitors‘ to note and evaluate such questions. In some video technology, like IRIS Connect, you can tally your question types to reflect on your own questioning. Not only that, by monitoring the questions of students we can better judge their level of understanding. Knowing what the students know, and what they don’t know, is crucial for a teacher in accurately identifying what students are learning and understanding. We can ask ourselves the question: Are students asking enough ‘why’ questions in my classroom? This connects intimately with the question: ‘are my students making progress?’

Furthermore, with the reality of the lack of questions being answered by teachers, we must better scaffold questions shared between students. The research on ‘guided reciprocal peer questioning‘ provides further evidence why we should actively focus on students asking ‘why‘ questions of one another. This table, from Alison King’s, ‘Structuring Peer Interaction to Promote High-Level Cognitive Processing: From Theory Into Practice’ (2002), provides a really useful framework to share with students to ensure that they are asking deeper questions: Guided reciprocal peer questioning: question bank Page 29

What is a new example of…?

How would you use…to…?

What would happen if…?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of…? How does…tie in with what we learned before?

Explain why… Explain how…

How does… What is the… Why is… How are…different?

Compare…and…with regard to…

What do you think causes…?

What conclusions can you draw about…?

Do you agree or disagree with this statement:…? Support your answer.

How are…and…similar?

How are… and…best…and why?

By scaffolding these questions you can better structure the quality of group discussion whilst also honing their metacognitive understanding, allowing them to actively make their next step in their learning. If we can calibrate students to ask better questions we will make them better learners.

Once more, this process of metacognition is proven by a vast amount of cognitive science research to be a key component in successful learning.

Few teachers would ever seriously say they didn’t encourage questioning in their classroom, but perhaps we need to better monitor the quality of our questioning and that of the students. Deeper questioning doesn’t just happen: it is modelled and scaffolded by the class teacher. We could undertake some very simple action research and see if the research that states students ask on average one question over the course of six or seven hours is true of our classroom. My most popular post from my blog is all about questioning and creating a ‘culture of enquiry‘. Many of the ‘top ten tip’ focus in upon generating more questions: such as the ‘Question Wall‘, and the ‘Just One More Question‘ strategies. Whereas other strategies, such as ‘The Question Continuum‘, the ‘Question Monitor‘ and ‘Socratic Questioning’, focus upon the quality of the questions students ask.

Building a thoughtful ‘culture of enquiry‘ in our classrooms should be a priority if we want to improve how students learn. By monitoring the quality of their questions we can identify their progress and what they know. By enhancing and scaffolding their questions we can deepen their knowledge.

Why, given the evidence, would we not focus our energies upon improving the quality and quantity of our students’ questions?

http://huntingenglish.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/question-time-and-asking-why/

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