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  • Support for early career teachers
  • Education Development Trust
  • Year 1: First half-term: developing effective classroom practice
    • Spring week 5

    Mentor materials

    Getting students to think hard

    Intended outcomes

    The intended outcomes of this topic are for Early Career Teachers to:

    Learn that:

    • Effective teaching can transform pupils’ knowledge, capabilities and beliefs about learning

    Learn how to stimulate pupil thinking and check for understanding, by:

    • Planning activities around what you want pupils to think hard about

    Activities

    Reflecting on learning (5 minutes)

    This topic is about understanding that pupils need to think hard about what it is we are trying to teach them. Remind the ECT that when we teach effectively, we transform pupils’ knowledge, capabilities and beliefs about learning.

    The mentor may have a story to share about a pupil in their school (that the ECT might know or not) who went on to achieve something or transform their beliefs about learning through effective teaching. The mentor should share from their own experience if they can.

    Pose the question: Have you ever been taught something so effectively that it transformed your knowledge, capabilities or beliefs about learning?

    Follow up question: Did it involve thinking hard about what you were trying to learn?

    Learning happens when people have to think hard (10 minutes)

    Read together the following extract from Coe:

    Learning happens when people have to think hard.

    Obviously, this is over-simplistic, vague and not original. But if it helps teachers to ask questions like, ‘Where in this lesson will students have to think hard?’ it may be useful.

    Some research evidence, along with more anecdotal experience, also suggests that students themselves may not necessarily have real learning at the top of their agenda either. For example, Nuthall (2005) reports a study in which most students “were thinking about how to get finished quickly or how to get the answer with the least possible effort”. If given the choice between copying out a set of correct answers, with no effort, but no understanding of how to get them, and having to think hard to derive their own answers, check them, correct them and try to develop their own understanding of the underlying logic behind them, how many students would freely choose the latter? And yet, by choosing the former, they are effectively saying, ‘I am not interested in learning.’

    Coe, 2013 http://www.cem.org/attachments/publications/ImprovingEducation2013.pdf

    Questions for reflection:

    • Can you think of a time when you asked the question ‘where in this lesson will students have to think hard?’
    • Why do you think pupils are more likely to choose the easier option?
    • Do you think by choosing the easier option they are saying ‘I am not interested in learning?’
    • How can we as teachers influence them to not always choose the easier option?

    Poor proxies for learning (10 minutes)

    Guidance for mentors:

    • Coe has developed a list of ‘poor proxies for learning’.
    • These are behaviours that we might observe in classrooms and automatically assume the learning we intended for our pupils has taken place.
    • It is useful to consider these as inexperienced teachers (and experienced ones) might mistake one or more of these proxies for learning as ‘real learning’ having taken place.
    • For example, we might make assumptions that if pupils are highly engaged in an activity, they have learnt what we needed them to from it.

    Suggested dialogue for mentors: Professor Robert Coe came up with the idea of ‘poor proxies for learning’ in a piece he wrote called Improving Education. The idea behind the list is that there are things we might observe within our classrooms that we confuse for ‘learning’. This is not to say learning isn’t happening on some level, but do we definitely know pupils are learning what we intended them to learn? Let’s have a look at the proxies:

    1. Students are busy: lots of work done (especially written work)
    2. Students are engaged, interested, motivated
    3. Students are getting attention: feedback, explanations
    4. Classroom is ordered, calm, under control
    5. Curriculum has been ‘covered’ (i.e. presented to students in some form)
    6. (At least some) students have supplied correct answers (whether or not they have really understood them or could reproduce them independently)

    The key learning point here is that we must not assume that because our classroom is quiet and students are busy, that the learning we intended has definitely taken place. If learning isn’t the things above, then what is it? It’s when our pupils have to think hard!

    What are your students thinking hard about? (25 minutes)

    Guidance for mentors:

    • The following part of the session is based on the Daniel Willingham Book Why Don’t Students Like School

    Read the following to the ECT:

    A teacher once told me that for a fourth-grade unit on the Underground Railroad he had his students bake biscuits, because this was a staple food for runaway slaves. He asked me what I thought about the assignment. I pointed out that his students probably thought for forty seconds about the relationship of biscuits to the Underground Railroad, and for forty minutes about measuring flour, mixing shortening, and so on. Whatever students think about is what they will remember….memory is the residue of thought.

    Daniel Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School?

    Pose the question: What is Willingham trying to say?

    • That when we plan activities, we need to make sure that they support students to think hard about what it is we need them to learn.
    • If we think too much about what’s engaging or fun, we might miss designing activities that support the learning we need pupils to do.

    In light of this, review together a lesson or sequence of lessons that the ECT is going to teach in the next week:

    • What are the lesson objectives?
    • What are the tasks?
    • Do the tasks support the pupils to meet the lesson objectives?
    • What will pupils be thinking hard about in the tasks? Does this link to the lesson objectives?
    • Does anything need to change? If so, what and how?

    Planning for action

    Agree with the ECT when they are going to teach the lesson or sequence of lessons that they focused on in the previous part of the topic. Ask them to note down some reflections that they can bring to the next topic.

    The final topic of this module will be an opportunity to review what has been learnt, where the ECT feels they have developed and what they still need to develop. They should complete the final activity of the self-directed study materials to prepare for this conversation.

    The mentor and ECT will also discuss lesson observations that the ECT has done of other staff. The ECT may have also been observed themselves. This will be an opportunity to discuss those observations. The ECT should prepare for this by making sure they have completed the activity in the self-directed study materials.