My Diminishing Returns

The formative book in my teacher training was Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov, containing a wide range of techniques to implement to maximise pupil learning. I have re-read parts of it this week to consider what techniques I either do not use or do not use consistently or not. As a trainee teacher, I tried to focus on 2 things at any one time to ensure my working memory was not overloaded in the classroom trying to do too much. In my NQT year I then tried to focus on 3 things and now I am going to look at 4 techniques that I want to practice until they become a habit in the first term back: Culture of Error I do have pupils volunteering answers in my class but there has been a slightly ‘over-competitiveness’ in some classes. I have tried to clamp down on pupils sniggering when a pupil gets an answer wrong or tries to whisper an answer to assist a peer who is struggling. I want to create a culture where mistakes are an opportunity to improve and pupils feel more confident abou...

The latest cohort of Teach First trainees are about to start their (virtual) Summer Institute where they get initial training on the programme and teaching in general. It is now 2 years since I embarked on the same journey and it is normal to feel a little apprehensive, especially this year when it will all look a little different. I had a wonderful time during my own summer institute and the Teach First team do a fantastic job but if I could go back again there are a few things I would do differently to get even more out of the experience. A few things I would recommend to get the most out of Summer Institute are: 1.        Embrace the research It was a bit of a running joke how much Teach First referenced Teach Like a Champion during SI but the research-informed training Teach First offer is excellent. Some of it is hard to appreciate when it is theoretical and you may need to be in a classroom trying out some of the techniques to recognise the fu...

It was 6pm and it was pitch black outside. I had spent the last hour perched on one of the pupil’s desks staring at the ceiling and trying to avoid crying. It had been a tough day, but nothing had happened. It was just that everything felt like it was too much. I don’t ever remember feeling so isolated. I spoke to another teacher who very generously gave up a large portion of her evening to talk through how I was feeling. It was after that that realised that my mental health had deteriorated to the point that I needed to seek professional help. I find this quite a challenging blog to write. Since starting therapy, I have only discussed it with a very select number of people. I think this is due to a combination of mild embarrassment about how I felt as well as a prevailing sense that it would be seen as a sign of weakness; the fear of not being ‘tough enough’ to cut it as a teacher. For me, the biggest challenge I felt was of loneliness. I used to work in the city which has a rep...

During my initial teacher training, Teach First introduced me to the Teach Like a Champion technique of ‘begin with the end’ which I mistakenly thought meant that every lesson should build up to an exam-style essay question on the topic of the day.  After all, if I ultimately want pupils to critically evaluate the impact of an indirect tax to deal with a negative externality, then surely pupils should complete an essay on this? That's what they will need to do in the exam after all. I would then mark it and pupils would get feedback to improve it with comments like ‘you need to extend your chains of reasoning’ or ‘you should consider both sides of the argument in your evaluation.’ These lessons and corresponding DIRT tasks got excellent feedback in lesson observations, but pupils were not improving. It was reading Daisy Christodoulou’s ‘Making Good Progress’ that transformed how I considered assessment for learning, and the idea that formative assessment does not have to be the...