100 Things Awesome Teachers Do
By William Emeny
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 William Emeny
About the Author
William Emeny is a secondary school maths teacher working in the South of England. He has a passion for using ICT to enhance student learning and leads his department in this area. He runs the popular maths teaching resource and ideas blog, Great Maths Teaching Ideas (http://www.greatmathsteachingideas.com) that receives over 150,000 visits a year.
Before going into teaching, William worked as a Structural Design Engineer for the prestigious engineering consultancy, Arup. Prior to this, he attained a First Class Masters Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Exeter.
When not teaching, William enjoys spending time with his family, reading, writing and online blogging. Feel free to get in touch with William online in any of the following ways:
Email: williamgeorgeemeny@gmail.com
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/111288446773159834123/posts
Twitter: @Maths_Master
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/william-emeny/33/ba2/b33
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Contents
1. Introduction
If a doctor, lawyer, or a dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job.
Donald D. Quinn
It's been a fantastic day. You feel inspired to try out this new teaching strategy that you've just learned about. Your mind is frantically buzzing about how it could be 'the key' which opens up a whole new world of learning to one of your disengaged pupils.
Ok, maybe you're not quite so keen as that, but you're not the kind of person who views all INSET training days as learning how to suck eggs. You're a teacher who's in the job for the right reasons and you're committed to being a good one. You're willing to take on ideas when you think they are good ones and running with them to improve your own teaching. You're humble enough to admit that you don't know it all.
There's just one problem.
Despite having the very best of intentions, tomorrow 'real life' will take over again. Real life, where you've got to finish marking those exam papers, prepare six lessons for the next day and finish doing your Year 10 reports. That new idea will have to wait. Ultimately it never seems to become the priority because, despite the potential long-term benefits, the short-term fact is that it will take time to prepare for and introduce it; time you just don't have. Ultimately it goes on the pile of 'great ideas that I'll do one day', along with all the other good pieces of advice people have given you over the years to help you become a better teacher.
Maybe it's a brilliant idea and one that you do have time to introduce. You run with it for a couple of weeks before it becomes a little stale and you move on. You promise yourself to resurrect it in the future when it's time for a change again. Will you remember a year down the line? When you're feeling a bit rusty and samey and you're looking for a change, will you remember it? Maybe. Maybe not. If you're like me then probably not. What a waste!
I feel like this person on a daily basis. There's nothing worse than letting a good idea drift off your radar, never to be retrieved. If this predicament describes you then you've made an excellent choice by buying this book. Well done!
Now you own this book, if you every find yourself with a moment to spare and looking for a good idea to try out, speed through pages to find something that you want to give a try and go for it! You see, this book was written for those moments when you're feeling stale and boring as a teacher and you want some inspiration. Think of it as a bullet list of things to try out when you want to keep both your own and your pupils' motivation up. If you stored these ideas in your head you'd probably forget them over time, but now you've got this book, you can go searching for a new idea anytime in the safe knowledge that they will still be here sitting on these pages ready and waiting for you.
Have you ever watched one of your colleagues teach? If not, why not?! I find it a totally liberating experience. Whenever I watch one of my colleagues teach I always walk away with something brand new in my mind to try out with my own classes. It may be a new way to introduce a topic, a behaviour management strategy or just some reassurance that despite feeling like the world (or just all the kids) are against me somedays, other colleagues are facing the same challenges. I have always found watching a colleague teach to be a positive experience and I honestly believe it's the best INSET you can get.
Nonetheless, I promise that the moment you ask your fellow teacher if they'd mind if you just sat quietly in the back of their room to get some new ideas you will be met with one of the following phrases in a pained, self-conscious, caught-on-the-hop voice:
"Err, yeah if you want to but be aware this is going to be a bit of a dull one today"
"Sure, but it's not going to be anything special, just textbooks today I'm afraid"
The first time someone asked if they could informally come to watch me I caught myself doing the same! Why are teachers so defensive? It's a lonely job most of the time (in terms of adult-to-adult interaction) so why are we so anxious when a colleague wants to see you do what you're good at, what you're paid to do? I think it's to do with the 'formal observation' system. The OFSTED directed criteria where you have to pull off an 'outstanding' lesson at a specified time with a specified class. I don't want to get bogged down in thoughts about this system of being able to pull the rabbit out of the hat when it really matters except to say that I think it's much more important what's going on in your classroom on a day-by-day basis, what the average quality of learning is rather than in a one-off lesson. In a job where many of the factors that influence the learning of your pupils are outside of your control, I suppose it makes sense that teachers are defensive when they get told to pull an outstanding one out of the bag on Friday period 5 just after a wet and windy lunchtime.
Why am I mentioning all this? I want to be clear that this book is not about tips for producing an outstanding one-off lesson that OFSTED would drool over. This book is about pragmatic, tried and tested strategies for improving the quality of learning in your classroom on a daily basis. This book aims to promote a culture of outstanding and one that remains valid even when OFSTED change their outstanding criteria yet again. Given all that has just been said about teachers' defensiveness, it does take some guts to stand up and say 'X is a good idea'. What is a good idea to one teacher is a poor one to another. We all teach differently because you can't do this job well without your personality shining through. Therefore, as we are all human (I hope), and all different, I can't promise you that you'll find every idea in this book life-changingly brilliant, but I can say that they have been shared with me by people I respect as being in the know; people doing the job in the classroom rather than those telling others how to do it from the sidelines. Each idea makes sense to me as something that I could incorporate into my own practice for the benefit of my pupils' learning and I hope you feel the same way about many of them too.
You won’t find me referencing lots of academic literature in this book. I do fully understand the view that if you are saying ‘research has shown’, it needs to be backed up by references. However, I don’t want that for this book. Whilst I have huge respect for the academic field, I am a practising teacher who does not have time to read the minutiae of details, assumptions and context behind every piece of academic research. ‘Would it work for me?’ is the only question I am concerned with. Please don’t think I’m not wanting to give credit to the highly skilled and invaluable academic scholars out there. They do really great work and deserve their recognition where it is due. They push the boundaries of our understanding. However, this is not a book where an academic is telling you about research findings that improve learning in theory. Rather, I want you to think of it as one teacher talking to another, sharing things they have found that work for them. If some of it has come from academic research then great, if other parts have come from the University of Life and Experience then that is as worthwhile too in my opinion so long as it works. With the internet and online journals available almost ubiquitously now you can find detailed research publications if you’d like to read in more depth on a topic. I personally don’t get much time to do so and I’m sure you don’t too if you are a full time teacher. Thus you’ll find in this book I may say ‘research has found’ without fully referencing it. If this enrages and disgusts you please feel free to read one of the more academic based teaching books. Otherwise, if you are interested in the sharing of good ideas from one teacher to another as we would over a cup of tea at breaktime then read on!
I’m not the world’s best or most experienced teacher but I do want to be the best one I can. It’s a journey and I’m learning every day. I’m glad you’re on this journey with me. This book shares the best bits I’ve learned so far. I hope you learn something new and feel inspired to try it out in your own classroom.
William Emeny
Disclaimer: Please note, all views and opinions expressed in this book are my own and are not necessarily those of my employer. I have made considerable effort to ensure all the information in this book is factually correct, but in the case that I have got something wrong, please let me know and I will be happy to correct it in a future edition of the book. Thank you.
~***~
2. Lesson Planning
The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate "apparently ordinary" people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.
K. Patricia Cross
Idea 1- Concentrate on the learning, not the teaching
When I started teaching I spent a lot of time creating worksheets, presentations and other resources. Whilst I hadn't identified my motivation in these terms at the time, I was creating resources pursuing the belief that to be a better teacher you needed to be able to explain things better. If teachers were the givers of knowledge, then the best ones were those that conveyed it the best, ideally with a charismatic, engaging personality. Naive? Yes!
Whilst being able to explain ideas well is certainly an important part of the job, pupils can be totally engaged and engrossed in a presentation or an activity without learning anything. Edutainment is not learning.
I learned quickly that if you use only teacher-led lessons where you spend a significant proportion of the time explaining, demonstrating and ultimately, talking at the pupils, everything that they learn will have come through you. You are the funnel through which all knowledge is disseminated and acquired, and ultimately this is a very inefficient method of learning. How many teachers complain about how poor students are as independent learners yet give them five hours a day of being talked at? As teachers, we have all been trained to differentiate in our lessons to cater for pupils of varying attainment but this is very hard in a traditional teacher-led lesson. No matter what you do, if you have pupils of different attainment in your class, a 'chalk-and-talk' lesson will be pitched too quickly for some of your pupils and too slowly for others. If you are skilled then maybe you'll get the balance 'right' and have a 50/50 split! I'm sure the one pupil 'in-the-middle' made excellent progress!
These days I know, particularly when I teach a topic that some pupils in the class will have some previous knowledge of, that more learning takes place if the pupils are working on questions and challenges much earlier on than I traditionally would have given them. Let their intuition guide them on questions to get them engaged in a topic. If they get stuck, asking their peers is often sufficient to get a correct answer and if it's not we can always pause the lesson for a mini 'pitstop' where they ask me to explain something to the class. They are so much more engaged if they come up with the question that asks me to explain something because it relates directly to solving a problem they have in their hands. It's learning through doing rather than learning by being passive.
How this idea relates to your subject and your teaching will be very personal to you. How you incorporate it into your own teaching will take some thought and creativity. All the generality that I can share here is that when you look at a planned lesson, take the opportunities to reduce the amount of time you spend presenting and explaining and get the pupils into the activities sooner. It develops their intuition, problem solving skills and improves engagement.
It's the learning that counts, not the teaching, and learning doesn't have to just come through you.
Idea 2- Use Bloom's Taxonomy. It's good. Really good
I'm not fan of making things any more complex than they need to be and also I dislike edu-jargon. That said, Bloom's Taxonomy does give a nice structure to think about progression in your lessons and how to get your pupils to really learn a topic well.
In 1956 Benjamin Bloom chaired a committee of educators who published Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals. The original taxonomy focussed on three 'domains': cognitive, affective and psychomotor corresponding to different areas of intelligence. The cognitive domain is of particular interest to most teachers and looked like this:
Original Bloom's Taxonomy:
Evaluation
Synthesis
Analysis
Application
Comprehension
Knowledge
The idea is that all cognitive learning is based on this hierarchy. The most basic type of cognitive learning is knowledge and the types of learning rise in difficulty and complexity up to evaluation. The taxonomy is based on the assumption that you cannot climb up the pyramid until you are competent in the types of learning below any given level. For example you can't analyse the similarities and differences between red dwarf, white dwarf or neutron stars until you have the knowledge of what they are, the comprehension of that knowledge and the ability to apply it to solve problems.
Bloom's Taxonomy was revised in 2000 by Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom. The two significant changes were the swapping of evaluation and synthesis in the order of the hierarchy and the changing of the names from nouns to verbs. In my opinion the verb-form of Bloom's Taxonomy is much more user-friendly and easier to apply to your own lesson planning.
Revised Bloom's Taxonomy:
Creating
Evaluating
Analysing
Applying
Understanding
Remembering
To assist in applying Bloom's Revised Taxonomy to your own lesson planning here are some key words that can be used to guide the creation of questions or activities that correspond to each category in the hierarchy:
Creating- compose, create, devise, design, generate, modify, plan, reconstruct, reorganise, revise, rewrite, summarise
Evaluating- appraise, compare, criticise, conclude, defend, describe, evaluate, justify, interpret, relate, decide
Analysing- break down, analyse, identify, infer, outline, select, separate
Applying- compute, calculate, demonstrate, modify, operate, predict, prepare, produce, solve, apply
Understanding- convert, estimate, explain, generalise, explain
Remembering- describe, identify, label, list, match, name, recall, select
I find the real usefulness of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy to come when I think about planning progression across a few lessons. The activities I give pupils on a topic rise through the levels in Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. So for example, pupils learning about straight edge and compass constructions in my maths lessons might learn to remember what angle bisectors and perpendicular bisectors are, then understand how to construct them. They may then apply this knowledge to drawing inscribed and circumscribed circles. Then they could analyse why the series of prescribed actions to construct the bisectors produce the geometric results they do. They could then look at angle bisectors of angles close to 180 degrees and evaluate the similarities and differences of those with perpendicular bisector constructions before finally creating their own investigations into perpendicular and angle bisectors of sides and angles of regular and non-regular polygons respectively.
This is just an example and in real life I often don't cover every level of the hierarchy as there is often not time to do so. I do find it a useful guide however for planning progression through a topic and also, importantly, a reminder to challenge students regularly with the types of task associated with the higher tiers of the taxonomy. It reminds me that you can't say a pupil has learned something just because they can remember it. I guess it does raise an interesting question of how high up the taxonomy a pupil needs to climb with a concept before they can consider it learned? I don't have an answer to that but an interesting exercise a colleague of mine once did was to see where the GCSE grade criteria for various subjects would sit on the taxonomy. Sure enough the A and A* grades were associated with synthesis and evaluation of information whereas the lower grades were just associated with remembering and comprehending knowledge.
Being aware of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy when planning a series of lessons is certainly useful in guiding your choices of activities across a topic. I recommend it highly!
Idea 3- Same starter and plenary
My current headteacher always comes out with three questions after doing a formal lesson observation. What did you want them to learn? What did they learn? How do you know? Consider using the same starter and plenary as a great way to show yourself, your pupils and any observers what pupils have learned through your lesson.
You really have to get the pitch right and think about your question carefully when you use this technique. Link the question directly to the learning objective. If you wanted the pupils to learn about the formation of oxbow lakes you might show an aerial view of one and ask how do you think this lake was formed? Get the pupils to write down their ideas. As the plenary to the lesson show the same picture and question and get pupils to write their new answer next to what they wrote in the starter. This then clearly shows you as their teacher and the pupils themselves what they have learned during the lesson.
Idea 4- The hook. Grab their attention early
Rather than "Today we are learning about the works of Pablo Picasso", how about "If he thought women had ears in the middle of their face and noses on the side of their heads, why was Picasso such a great painter?"
Instead of "Today we are learning how to add fractions", why not use "If I score 6 out of 10 on a test and 8 out of 10 on another I got 14 out of 20. Why is 6/10 + 8/10 not equal to 14/20?".
"Today we are learning about the human respiratory system" or "How much oxygen would a spaceship need to carry to get a person to Mars and back safely?". Which lesson would you rather sit in if you were 12 years old?!
A thought-provoking lesson title on the board as they walk through the door gets them engaged early. Making the lesson objective a question rather than a statement is good advice. On a good day they're even talking about the question with their mates whilst they unpack their bags!
Idea 5- 'What did I want you to learn today?'
A nice plenary to use now and again is to ask your pupils "What did I want you to learn today?" This is most effective if you haven't given your lesson objectives at the start of the lesson otherwise you just get the lesson objective recited with little thought on behalf of the pupils.
This is a great way to find out if they have learned what you intended them to and often turns up some surprises. Sometimes it is nice to get the pupils to answer this question individually in their books and then do a sharing session with the class. Other times you can get the whole class to brainstorm all their answers on a whiteboard and then have a class discussion about it.
"What did I want you to learn today?" also gets them to go through the valuable process of reflecting on their learning. Following it up with "What could I use this new knowledge for?" gets them thinking about applications of their new knowledge, giving it meaning which helps memory retention.
Idea 6- If rushed for time, just plan your questions
Teachers are very busy people and often something has to give. Now and again we all find ourselves short of time when lesson planning and thus coming up with the best possible plan in the short time available is a skill every teacher needs in their armoury.
Some advice I read once was, 'If you can only do one thing when planning your lessons, plan your questions'. The argument is that some good questions can form the basis of a brilliant lesson that is engaging, inspiring and thought-provoking. Activities and tasks can be written up on the board and made up on the spot if required but good questions often require more thought and often don't flow freely on the spot in a lesson.
Questions that are open, allowing different, but valid answers are often much more engaging than closed questions with right or wrong answers. 'Tell me as many mathematical things you can about this set of numbers: 12, 32, 3, 45 and 44' is much more thought-provoking than 'How many of these numbers are prime?'.
Idea 7- Share your resources, reap what you sow
You get back what you give in lots of situations in life and sharing resources is certainly one of them. Get into the habit of sharing your good lesson ideas and resources with your colleagues and I promise you'll get some good ones back in return. It's a great way of keeping fresh and understanding that there is more than one way to teach a topic.
There's a lot of job satisfaction to be gained when you know other people are using resources you've created. It doesn't have to stop with your colleagues. There are many sites on the internet that make your resources free to teachers the world over. I upload a lot of mine to the Times Educational Supplement website and get a real buzz when someone is positive about the resource I uploaded. You never know what it can lead to… On the back of me being a regular resource uploaded I got a free invite to the Times Educational Supplement School Awards hosted by the comedian Rory Bremner in 2011 and had lovely day meeting lots of amazing educators at the Hilton Hotel, Park Lane, London!
Some good websites for downloading free teaching resources from are:
The Times Educational Supplement: http://www.tes.co.uk/
Teaching Ideas: http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/
Guardian Teacher Network: http://teachers.guardian.co.uk
Primary Resources: http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/
Ngfl Cymru: http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc-home.htm
Idea 8- Learn how to search for resources, don't reinvent the wheel
I remember in my teacher training year as feeling like my life had to go on hold as the course consumed every waking minute. Looking back I remember feeling like I had to make a resource for every lesson that I taught. The amount of time I spent creating resources was considerable and, in hindsight, totally unnecessary.
The internet is now an absolutely fantastic place to search for resources. Whether you do a straight Google search or you use one of the many sites that collect resources in a single place and make them available by topic, you really don't need to be making resources that often.
The majority of the resources I use are also free to download and whilst there are plenty of websites out there that will sell you resources, I think with some time invested in finding the best sites you will see that high quality free resources are out there and they are faster to find than to make.
Idea 9- Get blogging and get social
On the last day of my teacher training course we had a session at the university where all of my trainee colleagues met and had to give a five minute ‘this resource worked for me’ presentation. The quality of the resources that my peers had created was very high and I left that session buzzing with enthusiasm and a notebook full of wonderful new teaching ideas and resources. From that day on I committed to regularly sharing teaching resources. I set up a blog called Great Maths Teaching Ideas (http://www.greatmathsteachingideas.com) to share maths teaching ideas and resources, which in 18 months grew to receiving over 500 visits a day. Sounds like a lot of work; it was! However, I honestly believe I have reaped more than I have have sown. I encouraged my blog visitors to connect with me on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Within 18 months I had a network of 2900 Twitter followers, 600 Facebook followers and 500 Google+ followers, the majority of whom were practicing teachers. I could post a question such as “Has anyone got an interesting way of teaching cumulative frequency?” and within minutes I would have suggestions from teachers around the world. The blog was a powerful way of connecting with people and building a network of similar minded people but the real benefits to my own teaching came through the interactions I had, and still do have with other teaching professionals on the social networks.
Creating your own blog isn’t difficult. There are many free websites that you can do this on. One of the best in my opinion is Blogger (http://www.blogger.com). If you just want to connect with other teachers to share ideas you certainly can do it without creating a blog. My advice would be to search for the blogs of other teachers and then connect with them via the links on their websites. Once you are connected with a few teachers and sharing ideas you will be surprised by how fast your network can grow.
Idea 10- Plan with the teachers of classes ‘next to’ your own
You shouldn't need to reinvent the wheel in terms of resources but why do it with lesson planning either? If you teach in a good-sized school and your classes are set by ability then there will no doubt be an overlap in the ability of pupils in your own class and those in the classes above and below your own. If you want to save time planning great lessons then why not share the planning load with the teachers of those other classes?
Often you'll find that sharing planning takes more time than you'd think to begin with but then it really starts to pay off. Not only is a problem shared a problem halved but there is something about knowing that your colleague is going to be relying some of your planning that makes you focus on producing a great lesson. When sharing your plan with them it does encourage conversations about different ways to teach topics which improves your own practice. Halve your planning and learn some new ideas... Two for one!
~***~
3. Learning Styles
If we teach today as we taught yesterday we rob our children of tomorrow.
John Dewey
Idea 11- VAK your lessons
The Theory of Multiple Intelligences formed by Howard Gardner is well-known to most teachers and so I will only summarise the main ideas here. If it’s totally new to you get on the internet and you’ll find plenty of detailed information about the theory.
Gardner came up with seven criteria for a behaviour to be classified as an ‘intelligence’. These were:
1. Potential for brain isolation by brain damage,