High Dive Teaching

David wonders, who is the Evil Knieval in your school? Who metaphorically jumps buses? David thinks it MIT be us, because we’re here today.

Groups in your staff room. The ungrateful dead – they’ve retired, but they just haven’t told anyone yet. The sleeping bears – they’re good at it but they don’t share and engage with other people. How do we take what we’ve learned today back and share with everyone else, especially the sleeping bears?

David talks about his annus horribilis. His school was meant to move into a brand new building, not once, but twice. The second time they had to move everything back to the old building, and then Ofsted came in and put them in measures. This encouraged something of a siege mentality; to improve morale they had a charity event, but this got them negative press in the Daily Mail. But then something positive happened: David Laws invited them to come to London as one of the top 25 most improved schools in the country because, as a new school, their results had gone up from 0% the previous year. Clearly not actually finger on the pulse, Mr Laws.

David shares a Salvador Dali quote: when I paint, the sea roars; the rest splash about in the bath. As teachers, when we teach, the sea should roar for the pupils.

Summer is talking about reading and how it can influence whole school literacy.

Summer is a head of English at a school in East London and has been working on strategies to develop a whole school reading culture. We introduce ourselves: lots of English teachers here looking for ways to encourage reluctant readers.

Summer gives us a Geoff Barton quote which reflects the importance of excellent, subject-specific literacy in order to become an expert in that subject. Behind the headlines about children reading less is a question: would you do Maths in your spare time because it would make you better at Maths? Why, then, do we expect children to read – why is it really important? Lots of research backs up the idea that it improves literacy, boosts vocab mastery and has an impact on the gender gap: these are all good reasons to promote it.

At Summer’s school they have been focusing on “Aiming Higher with Reading”. Research suggests that owning books improves student engagement with them (glad I make my a level students buy their history textbook now) so students have been given tablets on a hire-purchase scheme and there is a big variety of free books they can put on these tablets which gives them greater ownership of their reading. A book, or a book on the tablet, is now part of the equipment check. Teachers move from class to class instead of students at this school, and in between times are spent, by students, reading. Classes get quite excited about reading now.

Strategies. Library Invaders: helped students to get over the idea of “it’s cool to saying don’t like reading”; late at night Summer filmed herself breaking into the school library late at night and stealing a book; students had to follow the clues and the video cues to work it which book it was. Got them excited about the books and they had to do some reading in order to solve the mystery. Competitions and challenges can work really well as extrinsic motivation but it needs to avoid being gimmicky – students need to get quality reading out of it.

Community of readers. As well as students wading, parents need to promote the value of reading and events focused on readings that parents are invited to will help them to do this.

Different reading approaches. We break into discussions to look at a variety of these. We look at talking about reading – sharing ideas about what you’re reading and what it’s like. We also look at targeted whole school reading, where the English department provides an article, short story or poem for the whole school to fit into a specific theme. This must be really useful to help with the conversations abut reading. I like the idea of giving a reading out to everyone and it would be great if departments took ownership of this and contributed readings relevant to their subject. I ask if anything really controversial has ever been shared with students: this could be quite interesting.

(As an aside I have been considering, for no particular reason, the merits of having tutor time at the end of the day. It strikes me that these reading conversations would more easily spill out of tutor time among students and all the way home if that was to happen).

Other groups looked at….
Journey through books. Someone shares the different books that have had an impact on them through their lives. Often this someone is a member of staff who then helps students to put together their own journey through books. In a year 7 lesson a few weeks ago we were talking about what book has had the biggest impact on their lives and it was sad that some students claimed they couldn’t remember any of the books they had read at primary school and therefore some of them felt reading had never had an impact on them.

Summer has also started to appoint reading captains, who had to apply in writing, and who promote reading around the school with things like reading magazines. This gives reading a higher status. Conversations about reading and about why it is fun and debates about why it is important are filmed and then shared: “what about if you were in a desert? You need a book. These tablets won’t work there. It’s too hot for them.”

In the feedback, it’s suggested that perhaps there is a subject specific reading week throughout the year, where the expectation is that students will read all the time and then discuss it. Like this idea, too.

The sessions today have all been really interesting but I feel like this one has best armed me with strategies I can be using next week to make a difference. Therefore, it wins the day!

Chris is talking about differentiation or, match challenge and expectation. It’s also, naturally, about personalisation.

Good differentiation requires analysing to start with: know your children, get your room together so it does its job too, bring together your resources and create a learning space. Plan for progression, but knowing the individual children at the bottom of that and knowing where you want them to be is really important. Context is vital. Consider your timescale: when will you drop the essentials in? Reviewing and recording are important, but the doing – the classroom activity – is the most important. Having a dynamic, rather than just teach-and-learn, is quite important.

We look at the teacher standards, particularly the one about expectations.

Differentiation by outcome is useful once, as a test. Through support can be dangerous, because students can become dependent. By task is a bit more difficult: spreading a task over several levels can be time consuming. Differentiation by expectation?

How about planning as a hypothesis? If you set your lesson up as a hypothesis, you’re testing it out. This might make you more able to consider what is going well and what is engaging students, and then more able to tweak your plans afterwards to improve them for next time. It even allows for adaptive teaching within the lessons, which is part of the teacher standards.

Don’t write a script, write big highlights. When you’re on a road trip you note down the big towns you’ll be passing through, to every village, and the same goes for planning lessons. This will help you to build momentum towards the best possible progress.

The big question is how to ensure that each child is challenged at an appropriate level. The learning objective becomes what the lesson is about, while the success criteria describe the steps that need to be taken to get there.

Chris suggests having targets on a flip out sheet at the front of the book, so that students can always see what the targets are, both in terms of level/grade and the things they need to do to get there. This can also provide discussion points in class, or the basis for intervention, or the context for individualised commentary when marking. Use the levels as progress descriptors within this system, and focus on what they can do.

John is talking about the importance of a growth mindset.

We learn over time that there’s no output without input: you only get out what you put in. As Edison said, there is no substitute for hard work. John wanted to set up a junior leadership team of six people with a single focus: to improve student motivation. They went away and did some research and picked out Dweck’s Mindset as a key piece of research for helping them to achieve this.

At John’s school, Huntington, they have two strands to their plan – teacher coaching, and growth mindset, run by eye junior leadership team. The focus has been on changing the culture. Staff have been trained on what the growth mindset is – ALL staff, not just teachers.

Trait 1: learn at all costs. Learn from criticism and suggestions; seek strategies to improve.
Trait 2: confront mistakes and deficiencies. Actively seek out learning opportunities: setbacks highlight issues and problems that need to be dealt with and learnt from. “There is no failure, there is only success and learning”.
Trait 3: talent vs effort – work hard, effort is key. Understand that no matter what your natural aptitude, effort is essential to improve and achieve. Persistent commitment and motivation are vital.

Students are given a growth mindset questionnaire and given sessions on the neuroscience of the brain as part of the tutor program. John shows examples of two girls with the same starting levels, their GCSE grades and their scores on the growth mindset questionnaire: the one with the higher score achieved better grades, which is interesting. Data like this helps to convince staff that there might be something in it.

It’s difficult to be growth mindset about everything, of course. Sometimes it’s really hard to learn from perceived failures. Also, labelling students as AGT is not helpful, because they think of themselves as gifted students who don’t need to try. Huntington has High Starters in 7, 10 and 12 who are students who are doing particularly well at key phases: this gives students something t aspire to but doesn’t allow them to rest on their laurels.

There’s a weekly growth mindset tip email, a laminate with the three traits for the front of everybody’s planner, and sessions for parents so they can use the growth mindset language with their students at home. Staff encouraged to do small things, such as respond to students who say, “I can’t do that” with “…yet”. They have adjusted “Work smarter, not harder” to be “Work harder to be smarter”.

We do our own questionnaire about our mindsets. There’s a statement about spending time with like-minded colleagues and whether we push ourselves to spend time with people that challenge us that incites some discussion. I come out at a 4.3 average. I like spending time with people that think like me, too.

The JLT at John’s school are quite evangelical about the growth mindset, even suggesting a bootcamp for those who need to develop theirs. There is huge enthusiasm from the bottom up and there’s a drive to make students work harder that has delighted a number of staff.

Kevin works at Canons High School in Edgware. His session is called the Trojan Mouse story.

He begins with the Gruffalo as an allegory. The mouse is the teacher, strolling through a big dark wood, which is their work. They’re threatened by a fox, aka political class; a snake, aka Ofsted, which has a particular impact on leadership teams; and an owl, aka SLT, who threaten with things like initiative overload and C-grade chasing. The biggest threat is the Gruffalo: teacher autonomy. It can be a blessing or a curse. Teachers need to be empowered and autonomous…

Kevin then shares the journey from his school towards making teachers autonomous and empowered. The Ofsted in 2010 was outstanding, with 1s in all categories except teaching and learning, which put them right in Wilshaw’s sights. Ofsted said they needed to raise attainment and improve progress by increasing the amount of inspirational teaching that challenges and engages all students.

They decided to do it by enthusing people about pedagogy – they wanted to make it contagious. They wanted to change the culture so that it didn’t feel Ofsted was the key driver, and they wanted to create an in-house pedagogy based on some solid underpinning principles.
Bottom up.
Classroom focused.
Organic and agile – which can make it scary because there’s no clear plan.
Surplus model – audits to find out what’s good and where the best practice is. Kev thinks this one might have had the biggest impact on the teachers.

They began with a core voluntary pedagogy group. These people would work on what they chose on a project to to introduce in the following academic year. This ran for two years, and then some money arrived to build teaching school capacity which they invested in pedagogy leaders. It was a bursary, available to everybody, for people to be responsible for pedagogy. It was a project management role rather than a TLR.

Somebody asks about getting the curmudgeons on board. Kevin says that there were 20 applications out of 60 teachers. Two step application – a sheet of A4 laying out vision for the school, and an outstanding lesson judgement, though this one is being reviewed. Somebody else asks if it would work in a hierarchical environment and Kevin says, probably yes, it worked in his.

The ped leaders ran a teaching and learning community in an area of strength that they had referenced in their application. Teachers were able to choose their own TLC to go along to. Ped leaders meet with SLT to keep them in the loop. There was no time allowance, but chunks of time were offered as necessary. The bursary was for 4 terms and had an equivalent to a TLR 2a. The second cohort are not all the same but the original team are still in the school who act as ambassadors for the scheme. Aspiring ped leaders make an effort to get involved in more whole school things to strengthen their application.

The first thing they had to do was a CPD day on accelerated learning, which attracted some really positive feedback. This feedback, over time, has become richer and more critical as necessary, which has provided opportunities for the ped team to adjust their plans. Recent inset involved a variety of sessions that staff opted into, and the latest inset day had sessions run almost entirely by non-ped leaders – clearly bottom up.

Ped leaders then ran a student pedagogy day, although this was the least successful thing that they’d done. (This might work quite well with sixth form: sessions on note taking, wider reading etc, to build on what we did on y12 induction day).

The impact on the school has been hugely positive. Other schools are adopting the model and reading/viewing the Canons Broadside; there’s a coaching culture and peer support; a pedagogy directory, based on teacher strengths; teaching and learning has improved, as validated by Ofsted:

Also results have improved hugely, especially at sixth form – and it’s not an exam factory model.

Kevin uses paper mâché as a metaphor: Canons provides the wire frame in the middle for staff to lay their own strips on top. The ped leaders have taken it further than he ever thought they could.

Jamie Portman is kicking off TLT13 at Southampton University with the question, “Why are we here?” It’s impressive to see so many people here so close to the end of term and exciting to catch up with many old friends. Tweets going on the board in the background: one person has called us the “allies of promise”.

He starts by making the point that he is speaking from his personal point of view, and not as a representative of his school. Then he talks about a teacher, Mr B, and his student, Jamie. Mr B, says Jamie, was not a part of the teaching and learning movement in the UK. He wasn’t interested in the students or improving. There are teachers out there today who are the same, and those of us that are here today need to be like teaching and learning disciples, taking the message back to our schools, and to the curmudgeons who don’t recognise that they are a part of the movement too, whether they like it or not.

Sometimes it’s tough to work with people who just aren’t interested, but sometimes the status quo needs to be challenged in schools because it just isn’t good enough for the students that we care so passionately about. Keep sharing good teaching and learning reactive within your schools (Jamie’s has internal teachmeets, for example) because collaboration needs to be at the heart of everything we do; but we need courage too. Jamie cites Shackleton’s advert for the Arctic expedition: “low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness, safe return doubtful” – courage is a key message.

And, an ode to the grafters: the ones on the shop floor: don’t be put off by the politics of education at the moment.

Jamie finishes by talking about his experience of his school burning down. He said that it proved that schools are more than just the buildings. The collegiate approach that exists out there on Twitter helped staff to come up with low energy, high impact strategies for, for example, teaching 60 students at the same time in a youth club. It’s a teaching and learning community without walls.

It’s a call to arms, really. Our current situation as teachers is horrible, but we need to reclaim the headlines: broadcast the message that there is hope.

So, why are we here? We are here to be the best in he world at what we do, and we’ll do that when we go about it in a collegiate manner, challenging ourselves and the status quo.