Research and Practice Summary

Case studies

These case studies explore how four teachers – improving their practice and without adding to their workload – conducted their own practitioner inquiries into developing quality pedagogy and making productive use of assessment. All are interesting but you should focus on the one or two that most closely relate to the exploratory question you are working on. The case studies set out the issue the teacher was interested in, how they gathered evidence about the impact upon pupils of their own normal practice, and how they decided to introduce an alteration to the way they taught. (Later in the module, you will return to these case studies to learn what they did next.)

When reading these case studies, you will need to take account of your own pupils’ characteristics, the context of your classroom and the nature of the material that you are teaching.

Case study A: Grouping pupils effectively

Andy has several vulnerable children in his Year 1 class: very many suffer from low self-confidence or poor self-regulation.

At the start of the year, he organised his table groups randomly, making only small changes when he sensed that two or more pupils in a group were disengaging.

He was unhappy with their apparent levels of motivation and found that he was struggling to offer the more tailored support to groups that he felt they needed. To explore how he might overcome these problems by improving the effectiveness of his grouping strategy, Andy decided to undertake a practitioner inquiry.

Andy first wanted to get to the bottom of what the impacts were of his current practice of random grouping, and why it appeared not to be working. He had a highly experienced teaching assistant (TA), so he began with this exploratory question:

• what has the class TA noticed about the grouping of pupils and its effect on their attainment, behaviour and motivation?

Since the start of the year, Andy and his TA have established the habit of taking 10 minutes for a cup of tea at the end of the day on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to talk about how the pupils have been progressing. He uses one of these informal meetings to gather his TA’s thoughts on what effects his grouping strategy is having on their pupils’ attainment, behaviour and motivation, and compares this with his own reflections.

Their joint conclusions were that:

• some pupils were reluctant to work with others because they didn’t know them. This was causing low-level disruption to occur in the lesson
• some were worried about what the other pupils might think if they made a mistake with their learning. They were becoming averse to trying out their ideas

Neither the TA nor Andy was being effective in how they were targeting their support for their pupils, neither for those who required greater scaffolding nor for those who were ready for more challenge.

Andy also undertook some reading around pupil groupings, to explore a range of options. He re-read the Research and Practice Summaries from Module 3 of the programme and checked his Learning Log.

He was especially interested in how, when grouping pupils, care should be taken to monitor the impact of groupings on pupil attainment, behaviour and motivation. That, when this was done, paired and group activities can increase pupil success, changing groups regularly can help avoid the perception that groups are fixed, and flexibly grouping pupils within a class could help him provide more tailored support. He understood that one important factor in supporting effective collaborative or paired work would be building his pupils’ familiarity with routines.

What alteration to his teaching might Andy make to improve the effectiveness of his pupils’ work in groups?

Andy’s approach to grouping pupils effectively

Following discussion with his TA, Andy devised a system whereby all pupils would be obliged to work regularly with two different groups. He took the following steps:

• from the start of a half-term, he introduced a ‘dual grouping’ system in which each pupil was assigned one table group by mixed attainment; and another by a hierarchy of need – where pupils were grouped with others with similar prior attainment for their literacy lessons
• Andy and his TA kept a close eye on the effects of the mixed attainment groups on motivation and behaviour: in the thrice weekly meetings, they discussed these arrangements and were prepared to make adjustments – these adjustments might help communicate to the pupils that their grouping (and their attainment levels) were not fixed
• he made sure each day that there was a structured opportunity for the mixed attainment groups to talk together - for example, about their favourite toys, pets, subjects or favourite television programmes: he hoped this would improve motivation and behaviour
• in their literacy lessons the pupils were regrouped by near attainment. He gave them paper, coloured pencils and a stimulus – such as a toy – for the group to create a story, which they would tell back to the class. Andy concentrated his support on two groups, his TA on one group, and two groups were allowed to work independently. The extra support was to ensure that all pupils were involved in contributing to the group’s story. He was also able to stretch the higher attaining pupils to expand upon their stories by asking them some ‘what if’ questions.

Case study B: Modelling and scaffolding

Vashti (a Year 4 teacher) wants to develop an aspect of her practice in relation to literacy.

She has found that around one-third of her pupils are still making basic errors with writing week in, week out. In particular, that they are inconsistent in their use of capital letters, full stops and finger spacing. They don’t seem to respond to her written feedback, and she often has to spend time in lessons going over the same ground.

She decides she must develop this aspect of her practice so, with her mentor, she agrees to undertake a practitioner inquiry. To begin her inquiry, she writes two exploratory questions:

• how do effective teachers of literacy at Key Stage 2 provide scaffolding and support for struggling writers?
• what are the characteristics of pupils who struggle with written literacy in Year 4?

To answer these questions, Vashti first looked at the evidence she already had to hand:

• she analysed progress data in her mark-book to identify particular pupils
• she inspected those pupils’ literacy books to compile a list of their common errors
• she also looked back at her Research and Practice Summary from Module 2 and in her Learning Log where she had noted writing composition strategies through modelling and supported practice
• she did one extra thing: for twenty minutes, she observed a colleague from Key Stage 2 who is known for making good progress in literacy

Having pulled together this exploratory data, Vashti drew the following tentative conclusions:

• effective teachers use physical resources to provide scaffolding for struggling writers. For example, laminated sheets
• effective teachers teach different forms of writing by modelling the processes of planning, drafting and editing
• effective teachers use symbols and icons alongside short, written prompts
• effective teachers harness the power of classroom talk to help children organise their thoughts before they put pen to paper
• effective teachers often pair up struggling writers with higher attaining writers

Of the six pupils she had identified as struggling, she noticed that five were identified as having a Speech, Language and Communication Need (SpLCN).

What alteration to her normal modelling and scaffolding might Vashti make to support her class to improve their writing?

Vashti’s use of modelling and scaffolds to support writing

Vashti decided to create a ‘speaking sentences’ intervention, comprised of the following elements:

• create a physical resource – a laminated sheet with an icon and a key word to remind pupils of the basic features of sentence-writing (e.g. capital letter at start of sentence, capital letter for any names, quote marks to denote spoken language, full stop at end of sentence, finger spacing between words) (4a). She used this scaffold first with all pupils, monitored how her pupils used it then gradually withdrew it from those who were successful without it (4c)
• model the use of the resource, graphically and verbally using the visualizer (4g) – she modelled this first, narrating her thought processes explicitly (4i), then three confident pupils used the visualizer to show their classmates how they used the laminated sheet
• create talk partners where target pupils are paired up with stronger writers (4o)
• model and then require high-quality pair talk as a way of supporting the development of their writing – by practising the talking together in full sentences (3r)
• in pairs, each pupil talks through the stages of writing a successful sentence, using the laminated sheet as a scaffold (4p) and then they practise writing together for 10 minutes (4d)
• model the planning, drafting and editing process, whereby pairs have the opportunity to use the laminated sheet to do some interim peer assessment and make improvements to each other’s work (3s)
• after a writing exercise, ensuring peer feedback is specific and helpful (6k), all pupils use the laminated sheet as a checklist to check their partner’s work and suggest corrections if necessary

Case Study C: Making marking manageable

Louise (secondary history) is concerned about her marking workload. Department policy states that books should be marked at least once every two weeks.

Louise teaches 9 classes this year, and it takes her 2 hours to mark a set of books. This means that she typically spends 8 to 10 hours a week marking books.

Louise is concerned about the fact that she isn’t able to spend as much time planning lessons as she would like. She is also concerned that some of her pupils don’t seem to find her written feedback useful, as they often make similar mistakes to those she has corrected the previous week.

Following a meeting where she asked her head of department whether she could try some different approaches to marking, Louise agreed with him that she should develop this area of her practice. She decided to undertake a practitioner inquiry to explore some other approaches to providing her pupils with feedback.

To get started, she wrote the following, exploratory question:

• what alternative approaches to providing children with feedback are there, as an alternative to written marking?

To answer this question, Louise first looked at the evidence she could access easily:

• she raised it as an item in a department meeting, and noted her colleagues’ alternative ideas about assessment and feedback
• she looked back to her learning log from Module 4, in particular the references to ‘Making marking manageable and effective’
• she re-read the Research and Practice Summary for Week 5 of Module 4, which gave practical guidance on alternative approaches, and she read again the example of Sara on ‘Reducing the opportunity costs of marking’

Louise then chose to read more widely. (ECTs will not often have time to do this.) She read the Education Endowment Foundation’s ‘A marked improvement? A review of the evidence on written marking (2016)’.

As a result of this exploratory data collection, Louise identified two approaches that she wanted to explore further:

• whole-class verbal feedback
• an approach known as ‘minimal marking’ whereby the teacher provides feedback in the form of abbreviations and codes, rather than making corrections and writing out ‘what went well / even better if’ comments in longhand

What alteration to her marking might Louise make so that it is both effective and manageable?

Louise’s new approach to marking

Louise consulted her department’s marking policy. Then she:

Use of codes (6p):

• created a set of codes to represent the most common kinds of feedback relating to spelling, punctuation and grammar
• created codes to represent the success criteria for each written task she set: whether the pupils had referred to source material (SM), and whether they had written a balanced argument (BA), etc. (6k)
• when marking books, instead of writing comments, wrote short codes in the margin (she found that this took around 1 minute per book, or 30 minutes to mark the class set) (6o)
• created a slide with a key explaining what each code meant

Verbal feedback (6.5):

• in the feedback lesson, she would also provide whole-class verbal feedback to highlight any common misconceptions she had noticed when marking the books (6n)
• made sure that her codes led to specific actions for pupils, and provided 15 minutes at the start of lessons for her pupils to respond to the feedback (6h)

Case Study D: Questioning

Mo wants to work on his use of questioning with his Year 11 GCSE PE class.

He finds that lots of lesson time is spent on providing pupils with detailed instruction and feedback about how to meet particular assessment objectives for the exam, and he sometimes feels that he is working harder than his pupils in lessons.

He wants to improve his use of questioning as a way to stimulate pupils to think, talk and write more in lessons. Following a meeting with the assistant head for teaching and learning, Mo decides to undertake a practitioner inquiry to help him improve and evaluate his use of questioning in lessons.

To begin, Mo writes two exploratory questions:

• what kinds of questions do I typically ask in lessons?
• what kinds of questioning are effective for teachers to use?

Mo’s school has video cameras installed in classrooms for professional development purposes so, to answer the first question, Mo decided to film himself teaching a typical lesson and then watch it back with the assistant head for teaching and learning. If the technology had not been available, nor a colleague free to observe him, he could instead have trained a pupil to observe him for how he asks questions.

He made a tally of the kinds of questions he asked during the lesson, and brief notes on the way pupils responded to his questioning. He made the following observations:

• Mo asked a total of 23 questions in the lesson
• of these, 17 were to do with classroom management, rather than content. For example, “Are you OK?”, “Have you got what you need?”, “Do you know what you’re supposed to be doing?”
• when he did ask questions about the content of the lesson, they tended to be closed questions. For example, “Can you name the three bones in the ankle?”, “Who can tell me what the difference is between concentric and eccentric muscle contractions?”
• of the 6 questions he asked about lesson content, 3 were addressed to the whole class, rather than directing them at particular pupils
• of 3 questions he directed to particular pupils, Mo did not give the pupils much “wait time”. If they paused for more than a second or two, he would ask another pupil in order to maintain the pace of the lesson, and to avoid the pupil feeling embarrassed if they did not know the answer
• on one occasion, Mo gave the pupils the opportunity to look up and discuss a question before asking them publicly. When he did this, the pupil was able to provide a much more in-depth answer. However, Mo did not ask the pupil to elaborate further on the answer they provided

During the observation, the assistant head for teaching and learning noticed that:

• boys spoke more than girls in the lesson
• 5 pupils did not speak at all, other than to their table partner
• of these, 4 were Pupil Premium girls

To answer the second question, Mo spoke informally over lunch to some experienced colleagues in other subjects. He looked back in his Learning Log from Module 3, and re-read the Research and Practice Summaries from weeks 3 and 4, paying particular attention to the example of Christine, teaching metacognitive strategies to her class.

Through this, he identified three key ideas he wanted to explore further:

• direction
• elaboration
• metacognition

In order to develop a more dynamic, responsive approach to questioning, Mo wrote a plan based around these three key ideas. In particular, he planned the following:

• direction - direct questions at particular pupils, having given them time to prepare and discuss and answer
• focus on the ‘third turn’ (i.e. what he says in response to a pupil’s answer to a question), asking follow-up questions to encourage pupils to dig deeper in their thinking, and to build on one another’s ideas
• ask questions that promote metacognition, asking pupils to reflect on their existing (and emerging) knowledge and understanding, and helping them plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning

What alteration to his approach to questioning might help Mo to stimulate his pupils to think, talk (and write) more in GCSE PE lessons?

Mo’s use of direction and elaboration to improving questioning

He printed out a set of prompt questions and left them on his desk, so that he could refer to them at a glance during the lesson if he needed a reminder. (E.g. What if I told you the opposite was true? Why does that answer make sense to you? How do you know? How might you argue against this? Which ideas make the most sense and why?)

Mo understands that questions can be used for many purposes (4.6), therefore the kinds of questions teachers ask need to be adapted in relation to the purpose of the questioning. As a general guide, Mo creates a list of principles of ‘responsive questioning’ that he can draw on at different times, to suit the aims of the lesson:

• organise the class into pairs
• when I ask a question, give each pair 2 minutes to discuss it, and to consult their notes / the textbook if need be (4.7, 4n)
• use a class list to make sure I direct at least one question at each pupil at some point in the lesson (direction) (5.3)
• ask a variety of questions: open, closed, content-based, process-based, exploratory, retrieval, checking, linking ideas (4m)
• where appropriate, give up to 10 seconds of wait time before moving on (e.g. if they haven’t had time to prepare an answer in advance) (4n)
• where possible/appropriate, ask pupils to elaborate on their answers on the ‘third turn’ (elaboration) (6f)
• use the question list to build on each pupil’s answer, reframing questions and directing questions to other pupils in the class (5k)
• ask pupils questions that help them see the constituent parts, to encourage them to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning (metacognition) (4e)