A series of short posts, focusing on the challenges of teaching all students successfully, informed by lesson observations.

Sometimes I do a thought experiment when I’m watching a lesson, sitting next to a student at the back. Let’s call her Izzy. I imagine all the other children in room have disappeared and the teacher only has Izzy to teach but they teach her in exactly the same way as if there were 30 children in the class and Izzy is just one. It throws various things into relief. If you were teaching Izzy on her own, you wouldn’t stand 6 metres away and call over to her; you wouldn’t assume she was writing the right things down; you wouldn’t assume she was on the right page or doing a good piece of writing just by looking over to her from a distance; you wouldn’t only go up close once in an hour, if at all. If Izzy was on her own, you would definitely go over to her and teach her up close, interacting repeatedly verbally and with her work, playing close attention to what she was doing. It would be weird not to.

So, back to reality. Izzy is there still trying to learn. The ‘weird not to’ scenario is what actually happens. She only gets the amount of attention a full-on teacher can find to give her as well as everyone else. It’s tricky. However, the teacher does have the capacity to move away from their control-present station if they have the space and the inclination. One of my observations from the back is there is huge variation in the extent to which teachers move around their classrooms – and, therefore, in the amount of up-close attention students get if they are sitting far away. Sometimes it’s just zero. The teacher never ever comes to the back. It’s like another land ALL THE WAY OVER THERE that can’t be reached. A no-go zone.

This has implications:

• teachers don’t notice the details of students’ work as it progresses; they have to rely on what they glean from questioning and whiteboards – information that can travel across the distance.
• students don’t feel the benefit of teachers taking interest in their work or the healthy scrutiny pressure that supports and motivates them to do things really well. It’s more likely for them to feel their bookwork doesn’t really matter much – nobody will really see it.
• it’s much more likely for the peer chat off-task bubbles to hold firm because students feel their interactions fall outside the scope of teacher scrutiny

Where teachers circulate, actively and intentionally seeking out the corners, it seems to me that life is much better for students at the back. They are more involved, more included, more motivated and supported and the teacher has better information to respond to, especially during guided practice when students are meant to be heads down, getting on with their individual work.

I dare say that there is some Covid-era hangover here, with habits formed when teachers were teaching from behind the line on purpose out of necessity. But really I think that instinct to get out there to circulate should be something all teachers have; it’s a powerful habit to form. Make it a mission… to hit the back row, pay them a visit – several visits. Make them feel seen. Check-in and check-up on them. It makes such a difference.