Choosing Your Students

Each year a full-time teacher receives in the region of 250-300 students who they will deliver quality learning and teaching. As teaching professionals we don’t get to choose our students, of course not, our middle leaders and the Assistant Head in charge of time-tabling will organise what classes we teach. But, can we in fact have a say in what sort of students we eventually get to mould into independent thinkers?

I came across a brief post by Seth Godin who exclaimed that businesses and companies choose their customers:

Yes, you get to choose them, not the other way around. You choose them with your pricing, your content, your promotion, your outreach and your product line…

In many respects Seth Godin’s quote echoes many truths about education and how teachers must think carefully about what students they would like in their classrooms. If we breakdown Godin’s quote and rewrite it to fit schools it could sound something like this:

Choosing your students:

Yes, you get to choose them, not the other way around. You choose them with your lesson planning, your creative skills to engage, your offer of challenge and progress, your subject and professional expertise and your respect for them…

Let’s look at each element briefly.

1. Planning:

Purposeful planning and careful lesson design will help making students want to learn and see that skills progression matters both to life as a student but also beyond the classroom. Planning takes time, particularly if you’re recently new to teaching, but this time is worth every minute. Good planning leads to good learning but this is not to say it is easy to achieve as structuring an outstanding lesson is difficult. We have written extensively about lesson planning and design in our books and in recent posts which are also worth taking a look at: Planning GCSE with a Smile, Creativity in Teaching: start designing lessons and Educational Mashups part three: creative ideas from the ‘Industry’.

2. Creativity and Engagement

Thinking carefully about the outcome(s) of the lesson is crucial so that students learn and their skills develop. Creative and engaging lesson activities will help you and them to meet those outcomes. For example, how can you make a difficult concept easier to understand or in what ways can you help them find a topic more enjoyable? As teachers we know very well that if we plan good lessons with engaging and creative ideas students are more likely to enjoy it which means they stand a greater chance of learning and not behaving in such a way that would be detrimental to their and others’ learning. We have devoted a lot of time to developing creative and engaging lesson activities which will help you to plan effective lessons that are packed with learning, take a look at these posts: Educational Mashups Part four: creativity boosts from the wiseSimplicity at its best and Handheld Learning beyond the Classroom.

3. Challenge and Progress

I once heard a student talk about their options and they were to select them depending on how ‘easy’ they were. I later taught this student and in one conversation she explained that the easy subjects had become boring and that those that made her think were more enjoyable. Even if a student asks to watch a film it is unlikely they will enjoy that as much as having to work hard at solving a problem, collaborating on a project or receiving positive feedback on a piece of writing. This is why it is important to produce activities that not only challenge them to think but also moves their thinking forward. Purposeful feedback will help here. Take a look at these posts for further ideas about challenging students and motivating them through good feedback: Shred Their Work: or Reflections on Student Motivation and Using ‘The Ten Faces of Innovation ‘ in the classroom.

4. Subject and Professional Expertise

Terry Haydn, Senior Reader at the University of East Anglia and our old mentor (well, he’s not really old just very experienced!), always said that sound subject knowledge contributes to sound lesson content and that the power of good exposition should not be forgotten. Indeed, good story telling can enliven topics and give structure and a road-map to the ‘bigger picture’ that the class to follow. We also strongly believe that a broad understanding of our profession is key to becoming an excellent teacher and that this should never end. However, we urge you to read books that may not directly link with our profession, so not books about teaching but to cross-pollinate ideas from other fields like marketing, design, music, art and business. In return for reading, listening, watching and discussing with people from other industries other than education you will be rewarded with a myriad of stimulating and creative ideas. We have written a series of posts on cross-pollination called Educational Mashups which could be used as a starting point: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 .

5. Respect

In my work as Advisor I often get the opportunity to talk to OFSTED inspectors or receive training on lesson observations. One thing that always crop up both during lesson debriefs and in whole school feedback is the relationships between students and their teachers. Those teachers that have strong relations with their classes rarely have many behavioural problems compared to those who do not. However, this type of relationship does not happen quickly and involves more than jokes and understanding students backgrounds. Strong relationships between the teacher and their class happen when there is a clear and continued dialogue as well as exchange of thoughts. This is where good feedback, Assessment for Learning, Student Voice and just plain politeness are needed in order for this dialogue and exchange to occur. This post deals with how relationships can be solidified via purposeful feedback and enhanced student involvement:  Shred Their Work: or Reflections on Student Motivation.

The correct ingredients in making the perfect class is of course variable and the list provided above is by no means exhaustive, but will hopefully give some insight into what we as teachers try to do. In this respect, perhaps Seth Godin’s advice works in education as in business – we do get a say in choosing what sort of customers/students we get to work with or teach…eventually?

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Educational Mashups part three: creative ideas from the ‘Industry’

As teachers we strive to perfect our practice by observing colleagues, reading good literature as well as communicating with other enthusiasts at conferences, workshops and online. We also seek out new resources whenever the opportunity arise or wherever we may be in the world. We generally know what to look for because it tends to be within the boundaries of education, however, have you ever considered exploring ideas from ‘big business’ with your classes to get them to remember more and for a longer period of time?

Make it stick: can marketing strategies help teachers?

A Sixth Form student once told me a story he’d read in the Guardian:

A guy in the midlands, Sam Jones, had a 1957 Harley Davidson in his garage which he took out for a spin every summer. The rest of the year he’d polish and maintain the bike until the next summer. Last year Sam decided to buy a side cart so he could take his wife for a drive as well so he phoned Harley Davidson USA to try to get hold of an authentic 1950s version of the cart. They said that there were no such cart available but they could build one at a cost. Money wasn’t really an issue for this guy so he gave them the model number which they required to match the side cart to his model. Three days later a sales rep from Harley phones and asks for the model number again as it was incorrect. A few hours after the conversation there’s another phone call, this time it’s a different person from the company. The man introduces himself as Stan Hendriksen, CEO for Harley Davidson Inc. USA. He asked if Sam could check that the model number was correct and if he could read it out to him over the phone? Sam did so whereby the CEO asked if he could lift up the saddle and see if there was any text there. Sam found this to be a rather odd request but so was the whole phone call but he did what the man asked him. Sam lifted the saddle and inscripted into the metal at the back of the saddle read the message:

‘Happy 40th Birthday Elvis, from you friend Johnny Cash’.

Sam sold his Harley Davidson after much media interest for $4.7 million.

The question is of course whether this story us true? Maybe, perhaps not. I searched online for the story but I never found it. Yet, I remember the story almost word for word. Why did I remember this story so vividly? Think about it: why do we remember some facts and information and why do we quickly forget others? As teachers we know our syllabus inside-out, we know our audience well and we are great communicators. So, the goal is clear, the audience is identified and the format of our lessons is clear. Yet, the design of the messages we are trying to put across is far from obvious as not all students remember the core message, the ‘Golden Nugget’, of our lessons all the time. There are infinite ways to teach a topic but which one will stick and what skills will they take with them?

The brothers Chip and Dan Heath have explored the idea why some things stick and why some disappear in their brilliant book Made to Stick. They believe that the main reason why people, such as teachers, fail to create effective, memorable – ‘sticky’ – messages or lessons is because what they call ‘The Curse of Knowledge‘. This refers to the notion that educators and presenters of information sometimes fail to see that abstractions, the wealth of knowledge which they have and which makes sense to them, may not make sense to the students. In order to ensure that their their lesson become memorable and therefore ‘sticky’, according to the authors, we need to consider six simple principles which the Heath brothers call SUCCESs:

Simple: Stripping off everything so that only the core remains. Think of this as a sentence so profound that someone could spend a lifetime learning from it. Well, you get what we mean,

Unexpectedness: Get interest using surprise and get students to see that there is a gap in their knowledge. Fill that gap by providing insight.

Concreteness: Make it clear so that everyone, no matter who they are, understand what you mean.

Credibility: This will ensure students believe in what you have to say.

Emotions: Make sure students care and feel something about your idea, message, topic and about learning new or improving current skills.

Stories: By telling stories or embedding your ‘golden nugget’ in a story, students learn to remember them easier as the internal simulator kicks-in. Stories can also inspire students to act which helps them understand complex issues better.

Ok let’s see how these six principles can work in the context of the classroom.

Simple

Why have Flip video cameras become so popular recently? Sure, they’re fairly cheap and pretty portable but that’s not the reason why they sell so well. Their popularity lay in the simplicity of the camcorder itself : point, click and flip. That’s all you have to do to film and transfer to you PC ready to upload to Youtube. How does ‘simple’ translate to education and, more importantly, to your lesson? In order for students to understand, learn and remember what you teach them you must strip away the abstractions and provide a clear explanation. For example, in Business Studies all students understand the basics of the concept ”recession’ thanks to the credit crunch’ without you having to explain global economics. It’s simple, the country is not doing well, people are getting laid off and (!) Wollies closed down, enough said. Whatever you’re about to teach them think about what the core message is and what’s in the way of that core. It is a matter of breaking down those barriers to learning and teachers are very good at doing just that. However, we can learn to utilise ‘simple’ more often and directly in a day-to-day basis with students.

Unexpectedness

This is perhaps one of the most powerful aspect of ensuring that your teaching stick with students over a longer period of time. Now you could of course dash into the classroom screaming like a banshee and that would probably be unexpected behaviour from you (if it isn’t then you’re under a lot of pressure…). The best way of making something unexpected is to grab students’ attention and show them that there’s a gap in their knowledge. You essentially ‘tease’ them into wanting to find out more, but of course surprise doesn’t last so we must hold their interest and then finally fill the gap in their knowledge by providing them with insight. Let us look at a couple of examples of how a seemingly low impact story can reveal something completely unexpected.

The Car Park

I played this clip and students came into the classroom. It took awhile before they realised what actually was taking place. The video clip of a seemingly uninteresting car park suddenly change and students begin to infer what they already think they know but also asked questions about the clip. I used this video to discuss what makes something ‘significant’ in history.


Thinking Skills mysteries are also ideal. The ‘Paul Tibbets’ mystery below begins by asking students what they think about the man they see in the movie and then provides them with suprise and later insight whilst constantly asking them to reason what they believe and if/why they have changed their opinions of Tibbet.

Concreteness

Teaching skills can sometimes be a difficult task, especially if you want students to understand the core of the skill itself as this can sometimes be be perplexing and too abstract for young adults. An excellent way to get students understanding skills is to provide them with examples and activities that are not only relevant but show them that the skills actually matter in reality and not only in their exams. Take a look at the clip below. This example makes ‘inferencing’ source material more concrete and encourages students to consider the way they view photographs beyond the classroom.

[This selection of images were provided by Terry Haydn, Senior Reader at the University of East Anglia].

The Cafe Test

Another example of making students see that skills will be useful later in life is to set them a challenge that could potentially happen any day. In a nutshell:

You’re sitting in a cafe sipping on a nice cup of tea when suddenly Paul Tibbets walks in and sit by the table opposite you. You know Tibbets to be the pilot in charge of the Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945. You look over at Tibbets, he’s drinking an espresso so he’ll only stay in the cafe for a few minutes… here’s your chance to ask him a question! What will you ask him?

Of course, if you want to make it even more concrete then you do a brief role play where you get one student to be Tibbets, or even better get your Head Teacher to act wise and sophisticated 😉 It is always interesting to see how nervous they get when having to think on their feet!

Credibility

A great example of getting students to believe in your message is to discuss the importance of developing skills and so that they can understand and gauge the accuracy of information and then use content on the Internet as an example. Take a look at this video clip from a lecture by Alan November where he discusses ‘Who owns the websites your kids look at’:

Credible Statistics

Although using statistics is one way of making, let’s say, an argument more credible they can sometimes become vague and lack that important ingredient for student to make them believe in them. One way to make certain they believe in what you tell them is to explain the statistics you use in a more ‘sticky’ way. For example telling students that the UK  lost 1 million people at war over the last 100 years may seem staggering but if you instead say that if you divide that up across the century that would mean 1 person dying every 48 minutes.

Emotion

This may seem like the most straight forward principle to do as it deals with how we feel. However, it is not simply empathy we need to tap into but something more powerful, that is, challenging students to want to feel and understand what you are telling them – like becoming part of a story.

The Loan Photograph

The Loan Execution

This is an intriguing mage as it does not provide evidence about ‘guilt’, and students are left wondering about the story behind the photograph. As the truth behind the photograph still remains unclear i.e. why the man on the left was executed, issues dealing with war crimes or rules of engagement, it is an ideal enquiry activity and we can provide them with current discussions about the nature of the image.

Prize-winning photograph in Sudan

This shocking image of a little Sudanese toddler and vulture brings up many reactions with students. Initially they ask questions about where this happened, and what happened next but eventually the crucial question arise: Why did the photographer take this image?

Discussions can become rather heated when students begin to explore the background of the photograph and about Kevin Carter, the photographer who took this photo. Carter won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature photography in May 1994 the same year the photo was taken. Two months later he committed suicide.

Story

Stories are perhaps the most powerful tool we have as teachers as they bring together information and knowledge and makes sense of it all – if told well. Stories can open up complex and abstract ideas and concepts and provide students with something to hold on to which will help them remember and understand. Let’s look at an example of a story that does just that.

The Teszler Story

The following talk has been taken from Ted.com, one of our favorite websites. This story deals with several issues and can be used in many subjects and for different reasons and is truly remarkable. Perhaps the strength of the story lay with the notion of the powerful lone ‘individual’. Students love the story about Mr. Teszler.

The principles mentioned above are useful and they work to help students remember and understand. We are not saying that we must plan our lessons according to these ideas, not at all and in fact we are already using some of these naturally anyway. However, it’s worth exploring them further.

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Musings on Creativity in Teaching (Part 1: Knowing Your Knowledge)

If you read most blog posts or books about creativity and becoming creative, they will tell you to read more stuff – step outside your comfort zone and try something new (for example, see Don the Idea Guy on Idea Lightning Rods and the brilliant book A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink).

There is nothing wrong with this advice, just that it is a step in a process that needs to start way before this. Reading lots will only make you more creative in the classroom if you know what to do with new ideas that have amazed you.

Finding inspiration from non-educational sources is a crucial step to being creative. New ideas are essential because they create a spark, a spark that ignites a link to a lesson or scheme you need to create. We have been urging people to read Wired UK for months now because it thrives on new ideas and people talking about ideas. We have harvested several from here and turned them into lessons (see our wallwisher on creativity for more ideas).

It is precisely at this point that you can come unstuck if you aren’t prepared. Knowing which ideas might work and where needs good professional judgement and a great deal of subject knowledge. Increasing what you know about the topic you teach has to be the starting point for any teacher wanting to be more creative in the classroom. From extended subject knowledge comes the advantage of selecting from a sources and strands, rather than just having one option – especially if this is a textbook that the students also have access to. If you can draw on web research or other texts, then lessons should become more interesting for the students. We recenrtly observed a fantastic GCSE lesson where a teacher started by saying, “You know we talked about ‘motivation’ last week? Well, look what I found on the BBC News website yesterday…” The students were intrigued enough to want to know more and we watched as a group of 15 year old boys sat and read an article about the news and then talked about it, offering opinions which theories in matched up to and why the techniques mentioned might work.

The teacher had done little more than type in a keyword to a search box, but the key thing was that they wanted to know more about the topic. Securing your own subject knowledge and being able to draw on a range of sources is the first step to creativity.

Here a couple of famous examples. The hip-hop star Jay-Z truns up to the recording studio without a single sheet of paper and then spits out an entire album of songs just from head. It might seem that the man is just incredibly gifted, and he is, but the recording is the last part of a long process for him. He speaks the songs in his head thousands of times before he commits to tape and refines them over and over, calling new influences and words along the way. When the producer hits the record button, Jay-Z has knowledge – both of how to construct a song and what each new track will be filled with. If Jay-Z had just read Mark Kermode’s Film Blog during his ride to the studio then the results would have been disastrous for his music (although he would have gained some insight into the workings of film censorship).

Eddie Izzard used to do something similar. He never created a script for his shows and gigs. He would make a board that contained ideas and topics, things that were in his head and talk around them. This was not simply improvisation, it was a aide to remember the main gags that were already in his head. What followed was a highly original and organic show that mesmerised the audience, but the craft and understanding of comedy and material was behind it all the time.

There is hard research to back this up too. K. Ecclestone has identified three levels of autonomy for learning. She suggests that before a someone can play around with ideas and interact with others, using them as sparks of inspiration, they must first possess ‘procedural autonomy’ – the nuts and bolts of the the subject; the language and the necessary techniques that create an understanding of how the subject works. Once this is achieved, creativity can be achieved because space has been created for autonomy of thought (Ecclestone, 2002).

This applies to creativity as well. In order to be creative, you need to understand your subject so that you know where the creative bits can fit without destroying the core of the learning within the lesson or scheme you are creating.

Reading new and weird things is great, but reading about your subject and finding a range of sources and stories is essential.

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Planning GCSE with a smile

GCSE is a bit like going to the dentist for a check-up: you know that it is good for you in the long-run, but it leaves such a horrible taste in your mouth. Every so often it is worth going back to basics and designing a course from scratch. In this way you can ensure that it is enjoyable and contains learning that has real worth. The TEEP cycle can offer assistance when trying to achieve this not just for lessons, but in planning a whole scheme. Outlined below are six easy steps for creating a scheme of work that challenges students and makes GCSE much more rigorous:

 

1.       Prepare for Learning

The Big Picture is essential – both for teachers and students. Without it, the learning becomes a series of virtually independent chunks that bare no relation to each other. Planning without the big picture tends to produce a scheme that is heavy on content and light on memorable learning. From the perspective of the students, there is little to hang on to.

Firstly, a big idea or question is needed that will guide students through the work and offer them a line to pin their new learning on. Questions work well, because they encourage an answer and this in turn leads to better engagement. A unit on Crime might be approached with the following question:

 

Is Britain more violent and crime ridden than it has ever been?

 

The first lessons in the scheme – your way of grabbing them and getting them to think as soon as they came through the door – might focus on creating a debate or dilemma. For example, cutting out reports from newspapers about crime and creating a class montage helps to establish how the topic is viewed by the Media. This can then be analysed for dominate themes, e.g. crime is violent, on the increase, involving more children, more sexual in nature, etc. Offering an alternative viewpoint to this forces students to think about the following content and filter it through the debate. They will need to ask questions of and engage with the materials you provide.

When students see Steven Pinker providing an argument that the world is less violent than it has ever been and saying he can prove it, the reaction is always one of shock (see the film at http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html). This approach establishes a real problem that students will want to spend the unit investigating.

 The students will now be thinking about the topic and actually caring about its contents – for a moment they might actually forget it is a GCSE exam unit.

  

2.       Agree Learning Outcomes

The next step should be to establish how the question is going to be tackled. In lessons teachers discuss the content, process and benefits, and extending this to a whole scheme helps to increase understanding. The content is easy, you have a Big Question and the specifications state the boundaries. The process might take a little longer, but agreeing on a logical framework in order to answer the question is needed to assist understanding. Equally vital is identifying the skills needed and tools at hand. Now for the benefits. Exam preparation is a clear one, but then unpicking other benefits can lead to greater motivation among students. This is substantially easier if the big question is rooted in a real and genuine problem.

 

 3.       Present New Information

Before launching into the content proper, overview activities encourage students to make links and tease out the key words and ideas in the topic. This process allows students time to familiarise themselves with the topic before they begin. It is a chance to embed the main ideas of the unit. It could essentially be seen as an early revision opportunity.

 ‘Chunked up’ learning and creating mini-enquiries, each with a question and a relevance to the main enquiry will also help to aid understanding and maintain interest. Tackling the smaller parts makes it more manageable for students and allows for regular review of the Big Question. These reviews can be linked to exam question practice that will allow staff the track and monitor performance.

 

4.       Construct Understanding

Content should be delivered through a range of activities that engage students with problems to solve and hypotheses to test.

For example, mystery activities can not only deliver new information, but provide dilemmas that engage students in the process of analysis. This Billy the Kid Pardon Activity gets students working on a real life dilemma from 2007.

 

5.       Apply to Demonstrate

Each section of the course can be concluded with activities to extend thinking and help students piece together information to answer the Big Question. One strategy for this is model making. The models can physically represent the information in a way that was easy to remember. It could be as simple as making a hat for each part of the course, where the inside, outside and brim all represent something different. Another strategy is to use concept maps and get students to make links between the key facts within the section. Links help with memory and develop understanding.

 

6.       Review

Starting the year with a blank display board and gradually added work, evidence and models under the Big Question is a great way to keep track of learning and develop a clear approach. Reviews in each lesson should be easy to plan as teachers can refer back to the Big Question and discuss whether an answer is anywhere near being established. Answers can be unpicked to see how students have come to their conclusions. The strategies they used can be recorded for future use, creating a kind of GCSE toolkit for them to refer to and use.

A unit can seem like a long time, but sandwiched together it is only about twenty four hours (of teaching). However, leaving students with an activity that is creative and exciting will help with positive feelins aout the work. The tendency can be to assess at the end of the unit, but this does not always provide students with an opportunity to look at a unit in its entirety and make sense of it. Neither does it provide a natural high with which you would want them have. No actor would want to go through weeks of rehearsals only to find they were writing the programme notes. It doesn’t have to be grand, just fun and cover the whole unit. Making a song about the topic set to an appropriate tune would be simple and not very time consuming, but it would also be memorable. 

The process of learning at GCSE should engage students and focus them in a way we expect from Key Stage 3. They must feel part of the learning and care about the final outcome.

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Learn 2.0

Clay Shirky raises some interesting issues in his TED talk (http://tinyurl.com/lphud3) about how groups work. The issue for educators has to be how do we transform the learning experience to match the processes of those who regularly contribute to online activities. Sharing is part of the online culture and many young people are able to share videos and files without a second thought. How would Facebook or World of Warcraft look if it were a classroom activity. Our initial thoughts are that activities be open ended and should offer students a choice over expression and output. More ideas to follow…