CPL Teaching & Learning at St Dunstan’s College
Lent 2025
‘Education for today and tomorrow’
Whole-School Focus: Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction
The Art of Explanations
Our work on Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction led us to consider the art of explanation. Much of the guidance we used in CPL this term was inspired by BBC journalist Ros Aitkin’s book The Art of Explanation, which he presented at ResearchEd in September.
We should consider the following when we prepare explanations of complex ideas:
• Structure –what are you going to tell your students them, and how will this be broken down?
• Detail – “information atoms” – what information is essential?
• Anticipate questions – and consider how you might counter common misconceptions
• Practice your tricky bits – words or phrases that you are less secure on
• Keep checking for understanding – what questions will you ask to ensure they “get it”?
For broader reading on this consider Ros Aitkin’s The Art of Explanation – a summary of which is available via video HERE
Explanations Project
Congratulations to Zen Ng for winning the ‘best explanation prize’! He was nominated by Danny Butcher for the following explanation:
“The topic was electrochemical cells and he was asked about conflicting definitions from Chem and Physics - Voltage and EMF. Zen enjoys these challenging questions from the top students and is able to use guided discovery to ascertain their current understanding and effective questioning to lead them to the right answer.”
Working Memory and Cognitive Overload
Respecting the limitations of our working memory: avoid cognitive overload
In M2 we continued to embed our application of Rosenshine’s Principles, with particular consideration of the dangers of cognitive overload.
The very actionable things we can all do to avoid student overload include;
• Streamline lesson content to focus on key learning point.
• Avoid reading aloud from slides that contain text
• Ensure that visual aids, written content, and spoken instructions complement rather than distract from each other
• Incorporate moments of silence or reflection in lessons, allowing students time to process information without distraction
• Use dyslexic friendly fonts (such as Calibri, Arial or Verdana)
• Use colour sparingly and purposefully to highlight key points, avoiding overuse of distracting colours
• Use pastel backgrounds on my slides (e.g. cream, peach, yellow or blue), rather than glaring white.
• Use adequate spacing and borders in materials, to visually organize content and reduce cognitive load.
• Provide paper-based materials instead of relying solely on screen reading in order to improve focus and retention
Mutual Observation Fortnight:
• 95 lessons were observed across the fortnight
• Congratulations to Geography, DE & History - 3 departments where all teachers observed a lesson!
• Well done to Clare Winder as the individual who observed the highest number of lessons!
Learn At Lunch: AI Top Tips
Department Top Time-Saving Tips
History
Geography
• Use Chat GPT to create model summaries of texts – helpful for both students and teachers as a resource
• Create mnemonics as a scaffold for students to effectively recall key exam technique/content
• Click on ‘Explore Chat GPTs’ to find different versions that are better suited to particular tasks e.g. an image generator, a version specifically for academic research etc.
• Use AI to create a risk assessment for your upcoming trip
• Upload an example and ask Chat GPT to copy the style
• Anonymise sensitive data e.g. medical conditions
• Ask Chat GPT to consider all types of issues for a comprehensive assessment
• Generate partially completed model answers as a scaffold for students to complete
For more information, speak to…
Joseph Yu
Daryush Moussavi
English
Biology
MFL
• Prompt Chat GPT to ‘write X as though you are person Y’ is great for highlighting clichés! E.g. “Create a pastiche of Charles Dickens” – great way for students to quickly spot typical features to look out for
• Use Chat GPT to create assessments, quizzes, multiple choice tasks
• Ask AI to convert a complicated mark scheme into a checklist in student-friendly language
• Ask Chat GPT to create a behaviour and mobile phone policy for trips abroad
Joseph Giles
Logan Blair
Suggested reading: The AI Classroom by Daniel Fitzpatrick
Elisabeth Poirel
Teachers from various departments shared effective AI uses this term, highlighting tools like ChatGPT for reducing workload. Here are their top tips!
Top Takeaways from The Boy Question
The Boy Question, by Mark Roberts has targeted focus on how to improve boys’ academic outcomes. Each chapter poses a specific question relating to boys’ attainment, using data to clearly outline the current issues facing boys at school, and responding to these issues with practical, evidence-based strategies. Below are some of the most effective strategies that we have discussed and implemented through book group this term. Which ones might you be able to use in your lessons?
Chapter 1: How can we motivate boys to succeed in our classroom?
Eden Wood
• Provide a taste of success: Set the class on a task but ensure that you give those boys who are disengaged/switched off a scaffold and ensure they have the answer before calling the group back together. At this point, you ask those disengaged boys for the answer and when they get it right, you are able to praise them.
• How to deal with mediocre responses: Avoid giving praise unnecessarily. Instead, consider rephrasing a response from a boy to make it a good answer - this ensures there is no empty praise while also giving a sense of achievement.
• Use of model answers: Lower attaining boys can copy these out or develop them. Again, this helps them see and feel what it is like to have a good answer and promoting an ethos of mastery rather than performance
All of these ideas help to motivate boys by showing them they are capable, whilst encouraging continued, consistent improvement. It was so interesting to see the impact of some of these techniques in my own lessons and a valuable lesson to remember that we have the ability to change how boys view their education just with small, simple changes to our lessons.
Chapter 2: How should I react to boys who misbehave in my classroom?
Sarah Atkinson
• Research shows that teachers “tend to have lower expectations of boys and see boys’ behaviour as more problematic that that of girls, even when similar behaviour occurs”. This leads to a vicious cycle; teachers expect worse behaviour in boys than in girls, so pick up on it more frequently, meaning that boys feel ‘picked on’ and are therefore more likely to react negatively to this... and so the cycle continues.
• How do we interrupt this cycle and develop more positive relationships with the boys we teach? The key is to manage our own reactions to poor behaviour more effectively, by adopting an approach of ‘integrative-assertion’.
There are a number of effective strategies we can use to do this:
1. Turn down the heat – pause before engaging in a conversation about poor behaviour. This is key to the success of a callback – there is a pause built into this process to allow both you and the student to reflect before tackling the issue.
2. Raise the bar, not your voice – “high levels of noise hinder cognitive processing”, meaning that raising your voice is unlikely to help you communicate the messages you really want to be heard. Instead, clearly state your high expectations e.g. “I expect you to work hard each lesson because I have high expectations of what you can achieve in this subject.”
3. Don’t make it about you (but don’t make it about them either) - remember that all behaviour is ‘the tip of the iceberg’; we don’t know what else has happened to each student prior to them walking into our classroom and it is unlikely that their behaviour is ‘about’ us personally. By handling the situation in a balanced, objective manner, we are also modelling to students how we would like them to approach difficult conversations, too, which is particularly important if we want to teach boys that aggression is not the best way to resolve conflict.
4. Take care of your own mental health – by managing our own levels of stress, we are less likely to react negatively, making it more likely that we can implement the strategies above effectively. Remember to speak to your line manager, colleagues, welfare representative or use Simply Health for support if you need it.
Top Takeaways from The Boy Question continued...
Chapter 4: How can I improve the study skills of the boys I teach? Abbie Collard
The ‘grim truth’ is that boys are more likely to start homework later than girls, more likely to come to school unprepared, less likely to seek academic support if they’re stuck, less likely to set themselves up in a helpful study environment, and more likely to produce poorly planned, scruffy work that lacks detail.
Some of the reasons behind this are that, often, boys are less likely to want to study at home – reflecting the wider societal trend that men view home as a place for play and create clear boundaries between their work and home environments, whilst women are more likely to juggle work with domestic tasks. Furthermore, boys are more likely to overestimate their own abilities and have an ‘everything is going to be fine’ mindset. It is therefore vital that we actively teach our students about effective study habits. This includes explicitly teaching students how to:
• Plan and prepare to revise
• Monitor and evaluate their work
• Create helpful study environments at home
We can also be active in checking students have the equipment/resources they need, and by helping them understand the benefits of short, frequent study sessions. Co-creating revision timetables is also important, building in flexibility so that they don’t give up if it doesn’t always go to plan, as is explicitly modelling every step of the revision process.
Chapter 5: How can I give boys effective feedback? Veronica Lenz
Keep expectations high: Putting it simply, don’t undermine their intellectual capability. Respond to this by giving “precise, high-quality information about [their] learning.” In other words, what you ask of them is to respond to your feedback, so make it intellectually challenging and targeted. Expect a prompt response to given feedback.
High quality feedback: Feedback can have negative impact on boys if it is illegible (hands up if you’ve been guilty of fast-paced messy handwriting), untimely (waited too long to correct), vague and focusing on SPAG rather than the content of the work (“Please look at punctuation and capital letters” instead of “how would you evaluate x?”)
Although presentation, SPaG and legibility do matter, spending too much time pointing this out detracts from the main point we are trying to make as effective teachers, which is to enhance the critical thinking of learners by demanding high-level responses from them.
Thoughtful use of praise: Don’t over-praise or over-do it with rewards. We are trying to instil a love of learning by engaging in meaningful discussions - this can be done through effective feedback.
Supporting Growth Through Peer Observation and Coaching
In Michaelmas our Year 2 ECTs participated in a focused Peer Observation and Coaching Program as part of their professional development. This initiative aims to help ECTs reflect on their teaching practice, learn from their colleagues, and develop actionable strategies for improvement in a supportive and collaborative environment.
What have our ECTs been doing?
Peer Observations:
In pairs or trios, ECTs observed sections of each other’s lessons. The focus of these observations was determined by the teacher being observed, enabling targeted feedback on areas such as classroom management, student engagement, or differentiation.
Coaching Conversations:
The observer and the observe then engaged in a coaching-style feedback session, using the GROW model. This approach helps deep reflection, allowing the coachee to identify their own next steps for improvement.
“Observing others teach is always valuable, but doing so through the lens of coaching was particularly insightful. I found the role of a coach especially beneficial in learning how to mentor effectively while ensuring the process remains self-directed and driven by the individual being coached.”
Zen
“This was really valuable both for me to observe my peers and gain things from their lessons and also to have supportive conversations with one another about things that I might be struggling with.”
Molly
“Through coaching, I have benefited from a non-judgemental space to gain fresh perspectives on my teaching, which has helped me pinpoint what is truly happening in my classroom. This process has allowed me to reflect more deeply and make meaningful, targeted improvements to my practice.”
Logan
“Peer observing has been a great opportunity to observe my colleagues adapt the format of their activities into fun and engaging shorter tasks, to keep all students on task in content-heavy lessons. I’ve enjoyed learning how to plan more dynamic lessons that flow smoothly and hold students’ focus throughout.”
Simone
Supporting Growth Through Peer Observation and Coaching
How can you use a coaching approach?
The coaching approach used in this programme isn’t just for observations—it’s a valuable tool that any staff member can incorporate into conversations with colleagues or students:
Listen Actively
• Give the other person your full attention.
• Avoid interrupting and focus on understanding their perspective.
1 2
Ask Open-Ended Questions
Instead of offering solutions immediately, ask questions like:
• What do you want to achieve?
• What’s working well for you right now?
• What could you try to overcome this challenge?
Encourage Reflection and Visualisation:
• What options do you think might work?
• How will you know if you’ve been successful?
3
Support Action:
Help them create a plan by asking:
• What’s the first step you’ll take?
• What support do you need to move forward?
By incorporating a coaching mindset into your interactions with colleagues or students, you can help foster a culture of reflection, empowerment, and growth across the school.
4
How to ensure students are using specific terminology habitually and successfully
Georgia Entwisle
Georgia’s ECT reflective enquiry project (Trinity 2024) applied Rosenshine’s Principles to our previous focus on academic literacy. Read her findings below:
All subjects have a large range of subject specific vocabulary that we expect students to understand and implement in their written responses. How we introduce this language is an integral part of how successful our students will be in using this language. As Tom Sherrington wrote in Rosenshine’s Principles in Action, ‘successful teachers spend more time guiding students’.
I initially wanted to focus on Year 10, as after their Benchmarks I noticed a pattern across the cohort that their longer written answers were lacking in the specific terminology they needed to score in the top band. However, through actively planning and thinking of creative ways to implement this, I found myself focussing on language and the elevation of language throughout all my classes from Year 7-13. The way to ensure that students are using the highest level of subject specific language habitually must then come from us habitually implementing time into our lessons. From my research I found 2 methods that became habitual within my lessons to support the development of the habits of the students:
‘BANNED’ VOCABULARY
When introducing new terminology for example the dynamic forte meaning loud in Music, I would create a ‘banned’ list for each class, such as loud in this example. Every lesson I would have the banned list up for each class which meant if in a verbal discussion or verbal questioning I would be able to prompt students to use the higherlevel specific terminology quickly.
FILL IN THE GAPS ACTIVITY
Students coming into GCSE have a good level of specific terminology, however they are also needing to not only learn more terminology, continue using their prior knowledge but are also expected to write a high level of prose.
Noticing that students found multitasking on this challenging I created fill in the gaps for their longer written answers. The gaps would be the subject specific terminology. Not only did this model how to use the terminology, it also modelled how to write a successful longer written answer. For the first couple of lessons each activity was focussed a particular group of specific terms. After a couple of weeks, I started to have more gaps, mixing up the types of terms that were missing and then ended the term on the students writing full answers themselves. Fill in the gaps activities tend to result in a high success rate across all Key Stages which Sherrington discusses further in Chapter 7. By having a high success rate Sherrington discusses how this ‘provides a stronger platform for subsequent learning’.
