Expectations: If you don’t ask you don’t get.

Nobody would think they have low expectations of students but I regularly observe that some teachers have much higher expectations than others. They create a more intense sense of purpose; they’re that bit more bothered about standards of behaviour, talk, writing; they insist on accuracy and detail and don’t accept mediocrity; they’re more demanding of students in terms of their effort and general work load. They drive lessons with an energy that says ‘you can achieve, you can succeed; you can improve; you can do better.’ There’s a sense of belief.

Build self-esteem from accomplishments.

At a time when there’s a lot of talk about post-lockdown recovery, it’s important to emphasise the role of successful learning in building students’ confidence and general well-being. Ron Berger, for example, talks of the importance of building students’ esteem through accomplishments, supporting them to achieve excellence – including some modelling and redrafting Austin’s Butterfly style. The ‘strategy v comfort’ study reported here highlights how students can feel more supported when they are enabled to learn more – rather than simply being given care and comfort. And Peps McCrae describes the role of success as a driver for motivation in his superb book, Motivated Teaching. This all adds up to the need to construct learning sequences such that all students feel successful- building steadily on what they can already do, using what they already know, not letting them flounder or feel out of their depth.

Weaving a fabric of knowledge goals.

If you think in terms of schema-building, students’ understanding and competence will develop over time as they knit together a) experiences and observations b) themes, narratives and broad ideas -their general sense of the study domain – and c) specific facts and knowledge elements. This means we have to attend to all three elements in our teaching:

• building understanding on concrete foundations, starting with students’ prior knowledge and experience.
• using narratives that guide students through the material, linking it all up,
• ensuring students gain the experiences and access the visual supports needed to help make sense of the material in hand.
• allowing time for students to explore their own understanding, self-explaining, rehearsing, self-testing and checking.
• ensuring retrieval practice is varied, based on material that’s been thoroughly explored already. mixing specific skills and factual elements with more holistic, synoptic elements.

To use the weaving metaphor, we’re partly making the structure of the overall fabric so it has strength and continuity and we’re partly creating patterns from specific details of colour and texture that make it interesting, joyful, beautiful. We can’t do one without the other. It means that we need an eye on the overall conceptual framework in the material we teach, and perhaps obsess less on students knowing every little detail.

Responsiveness. Be ready to go back as well as forwards.

Heed the sage advice of Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black in Inside the Black Box. Formative assessment has greatest power when it provides real time information that teachers use to adapt their teaching in light of how well students have understood. Responsive teaching is key. It means being on your toes, ready to move back as well as forward. It means being agile, nimble.. ready with extra questions, different ways to explain the same idea and ready to adjust the learning goals. No – you do not need to get to the end of your pre-prepared powerpoint every lesson; not if the students aren’t ready. Plan long and then adjust flexibly, lesson to lesson.

Making the best decision about going on or going back relies on getting a good sample from your checks for understanding or micro-quizzing or ‘show-me boards’. But always be ready to go back. Some people find this harder than it needs to be. It’s not just OK to do it – it’s essential that you do.

Scaffold high, then bring it down intentionally and gradually.

Personally I feel this is an area with a lot more potential. I still find teachers inhibited by a fear they’re ‘spoon feeding’ so they let students wallow in the limits of their mediocrity – because at least they’re doing it independently.

However, scaffolding is a brilliant concept: let me show you exactly how to do this, now let’s do it together.. now, let me give you some prompts and supports to do it yourself.. now try it totally on your own.

The key is to scaffold high – to show students how to do something that represents real excellence; be ambitious. Then design supports – the prompts and guides that can lead them through. Get them to succeed with the supports – to produce the full-marks answers or excellent creative product. Then, get them to try without the supports. Make this an intentional, explicit moment. Do it brilliantly with help – practise, practise, practise …. now do the very best you can without help. The scaffolding must come down. Turn over those crib-sheets – put them out of reach.