Thinking about...modelling and mastery

We can’t learn from simply watching experts, if we could we’d all be elite sports performers. We need this performance broken down into chunks that can be carefully examined. Modelling is a strategy that is frequently employed, by teachers, to allow pupils to know ‘what a good one looks like’. Modelling is an effective cognitive support but it is much more than just showing pupils a good piece of work.

I have experienced lessons where teachers have provided an explanation of a concept and modelled what they expected from the pupils before swiftly setting a number of tasks for them to complete independently. It quickly became apparent that the pupils lacked the understanding to complete the work and, as a result, the teacher spent the majority of the lesson racing around the room trying to explain, with little effect, what to do. Similarly, Barak Roshenshine recognises this in his paper on Principles of Effective Instruction. He identifies that the least successful teachers provide very short explanations before passing out worksheets and asking pupils to complete a range of problems. Under these conditions the pupils made too many errors and had to be retaught the lesson. Whereas, in contrast, the most effective teachers guide pupils’ practice by providing more detailed explanations and instructions, giving a wider range of examples and more regularly posing questions and checking understanding

Pupils obviously need time to engage in independent practice if they are to become fluent in a skill or in order to embed essential knowledge. During this time a teacher should only need to interact with a pupil for up to 30 seconds. If teachers need to take any longer, like in the scenario explained above, then they are too dependent on the teacher, indicating that they are not secure enough in their understanding to engage in independent practice.

The diagram below, from Make Every Lesson Count, indicates the process that teachers need to take their pupils through to achieve greater independence. The least successful teachers tend to provide less feedback, pose fewer questions and they often neglect the 'joint practice and construction' phase altogether. Although they may appear to be progressing at a quicker rate their pupils' knowledge is less secure. A successful teacher’s lesson will have pace, but it will be pace in depth rather than breadth. They will provide sufficient instruction, pose questions to probe and clarify, they will connect new information to previously learnt content and provide a range of examples during explanations. Whilst modelling, successful, teachers will deconstruct and simplify work and they will discuss the comparisons between exemplar and non-exemplar work. Their pupils’ will be guided through practice by breaking a task down into simple steps, through interactive modelling and they will probe for understanding with process questions. Throughout the whole process an effective teacher will be continually monitoring their pupils and only when they are confident that they have achieved a high success rate will they progress on to independent practice.

I believe that the processes employed by successful teachers reflect mastery teaching; a pedagogical approach that involves breaking content down into a series of sequential steps. Teaching, in this way, enables teachers to deal with the limitations of working memory more effectively and also ensure that pupils spend more time thinking about content, which in turn makes it more likely that learning will occur.

The two principles discussed within Rosenshine’s paper that resonates most with mastery teaching are ‘spending more time guiding practice of new material’ and ‘obtaining a high success rate’.

Pupils need to spend lots of time rephrasing, elaborating and summarising new material in order to store it within their long-term memory. If this rehearsal time is too short, pupils are less able to store, remember or use the new material. Another finding is that the more time spent guiding students, the better prepared for independent work they are and the fewer mistakes they make. Whereas, if the rate of progression to independence is too quick pupils may end up encoding misconceptions.

Pupils must demonstrate a high level of success on tests, typically at about 80% level, before progressing. This ratio of success to mistake shows that pupils are learning material, yet also challenged by it. If a child is not secure in a topic and they are moved on too quickly, then they will carry gaps in knowledge and misconceptions to the next topic. Previously teachers have moved on too quickly because they feel a need to show progression despite the fact that knowledge is insecure and it is likely that it will need to be retaught again.

We cannot provide limited explanations, model a good piece of work and expect our pupils to make progress in their learning. If our pupils are to acquire important knowledge and skills and have them readily available to apply to a range of problems, we not only need to be aware of the science of learning but we need to be able to carefully craft a process that moves pupils from dependence to independence.  

Thinking about... how to encourage teachers to take risks

Are you a teacher that has taught for ten years or a teacher who has taught one year, ten times?

We often associate taking risks with doing something different. Before taking a different course of action we carefully consider the pros and cons associated. However, the scales are often skewed in favor of inaction.

When it is suggested that we adopt a new form of pedagogy we are very effective at considering all the potential consequences. But how often do we consider the consequences of changing nothing, carrying on as normal and teaching the same way for yet another academic year? 

Last academic year, as one of the Teaching & Learning whole school priorities, we asked staff to consider how they can take measured risks in order to increase innovative practice within the classroom. But, how do you take (acceptable) risks within the classroom?

First of all we need to loose the negative connotations associated with risks. Instead of perceiving risks as bad we should see them as unavoidable. A risk is the possibility of bad consequences, therefore we can’t avoid them; every action or inaction carries some degree of risk. Once we acknowledge and accept this we can focus our energies into figuring out the risks that are worth taking in order for us to become innovative, more successful practitioners.

To encourage staff to develop their teaching and try something new we introduced ‘Risk it Weeks’. The first two weeks after February half term were devoted to ‘Risk it Weeks’ to provide staff with an opportunity take a risk in the classroom. During this time we asked staff to make a personal commitment to trying something new which would have an impact on pupils' learning. It is hoped that by taking a risk and trying something new teachers would:

• Increase their comfort zone.
• Improve their practice.
• Add more skills/activities to their teaching repertoire.

Prior to the ‘Risk it Weeks’ we held a professional dialogue session. These are regularly scheduled to provide teachers with the chance to engage in meaningful discussions with colleagues from across the school. In this session we provided a range of pedagogical approaches and scenarios and asked groups to discuss each and arrange them on to a flip chart paper, containing a sketch of a fried egg, to indicate how comfortable they would feel using that approach within their classroom. The yolk represented the comfort zone, the egg white the stretch zone and the fried crispy bits on the outside represented their panic zone.

Two weeks after the session we delivered a range of T&L Forums that teachers could opt into. These sessions were based around those pedagogical approaches that teachers felt were in their panic and stretch zone. We hoped to give teachers the understanding and tools to use these strategies and grow their teaching repertoire.

This was a perfect time to launch our ‘Risk it Weeks’ as each individual teacher had been involved in the process of considering a range of teaching practices that they would not normally use and they had been given training on how to implement them effectively. Now, was the perfect time to ‘give it a go’.

The poster below details exactly what Risk It Weeks involved

Following 'Risk It Weeks' we held an internal TeachMeet where teachers shared the risks they took and the impact these had on learning. It was great to hear teachers reflecting and sharing moments of success in their classrooms. However, it provided me with a great opportunity to identify and share any best practice.

The following year I developed Risk it Weeks further by challenging teachers to take on the ‘are you a hobnob teacher challenge?’ (See details below).

Is the whole thing a bit of a gimmick? Yes it is. Is this necessarily a bad thing? No, it is not! Teachers embraced the idea, engaged with meaningful CPD and committed to something that developed their practice in a light-hearted way. Creating pleasurable experiences for teachers can only be a good thing, especially when considering how stressful and stringent our profession has become in recent years. In my opinion, this was a basic form of classroom-based action research; All teachers investigated what will and will not work for their pupils in their classrooms. As a result of Risk it Week teachers:

• were talking more about T&L.
• had increased opportunities to reflect on their practice.
• could attend learning walks to observe their colleagues teach.
• were given training in various areas of pedagogy that they didn’t feel comfortable with.
• most importantly, were given the message that it is ok take a risk and for it to go wrong.

‘Failing forward’ is a fantastic concept and emphasises that we must learn to ‘fail intelligently’ as a result of risk taking and not carelessness