My Teacher Promises for 2019: Part 2

An article by Richard James Rogers (Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management). 

Illustrated by Sutthiya Lertyongphati

This week’s blog post is going to be rather concise and direct, so that I can publish it with adequate quality in the one-hour ‘window’ that I have.

It’s been an incredibly busy week for me. After completing my online IBDP Chemistry Category 2 course on Wednesday, it was straight on to discussions with Catherine (my book editor – she’s amazing!) on The Rogers’ Pedagogical Planner.

Maybe you are even reading this article in the planner right now? If you are, then thank you for your purchase and I really hope this planner has been useful for you!

For web-users, please read this exciting update here.

This planner promises to be more advanced and more useful than any other teacher’s planner out there and leads me nicely on to my first promise for 2019……..

I promise to push beyond mediocrity

I could have easily took a short trip to Pattaya, just up the road from Bangkok (where I currently work as a high school science teacher), and took the remaining two weeks of my holiday off.

img_0009-1

Sunny beaches and the tastiest food the world can offer awaits me there.

I probably will find time for a short holiday before I go back to school, but in order to push myself beyond my body and mind’s natural tendency for mediocrity, I have had to impose the following duties upon myself

  • To get my IB chemistry course finished (done)
  • To annotate all of my Year 13 student coursework before I go back to school (this is going to save me many a rushed lesson and sleepless night upon my return)
  • Get all of my requisitions done for the term ahead (i.e. ordering all of the chemicals and apparatus I need for my science lessons)
  • Planning and resourcing all of my lessons for the first few weeks back

As I’m sure you can imagine, I’m not very popular in some circles of education.

Q & A

I do not subscribe to the idea that a teacher’s holiday should be completely holiday time (now, please remember, I did say completely). When I go to school every day I like my lessons to run like well-oiled machines: everything ready; everything in place.

This saves me many a headache, and all it takes is a little bit of work in the holidays.

As part of this promise I also make a vow to push beyond mediocrity by:

  • Always providing good feedback to my students
  • Being on time, every time
  • Making detailed notes in meetings, and always following through on commitments
  • Preparing resources thoroughly
  • Planning lessons properly
  • Keeping the fact that, as a teacher, I’m a role-model to all of my students, in mind at all times. Keeping this thought in mind will allow for correct decision making when it comes to everyday activities.
  • Reading-up, listening to audio-books and improving my game

How will you ‘push-beyond’ the natural tendency towards mediocrity that we are all plagued with, but very few ever acknowledge?

I promise to work productively with my colleagues

sit n talk

I work with one of the best teams I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. I’ve also reached an age where I recognize that:

  • Gossip is the death of all productive colleague-colleague relationships. I will avoid gossip like I would infectious diseases, and I’ll be sure not to contribute whenever (if ever) I hear gossip. 
  • If I can help, then I will help. If I can’t, then I won’t. I’ve been guilty of falling into the ‘favor’ trap all too often in my professional career. “Richard, can I ask you a favor?”, to which I would automatically reply with “yes”. Sometimes my mouth would commit me to things I couldn’t do, and I would end up letting people down (and getting stressed out along the way). Now, when someone asks me “Richard, can I ask a favor?”, I politely respond with “It depends what it is”. I then proceed to assess whether or not I can actually do what I have been asked to do.

I’ve written before about how we can work productively with our colleagues, especially when dishing out ‘productive praise’ to our students (praise must be collective to be effective). Please read my article about that here.

What are your promises for the New Year?

I believe that we need ‘Professional Promises’ along with ‘Personal Promises’. If you could change anything about the way you teach or how you work at school, then what would go on your list?

Wishing all of my readers, fans and followers a very Merry Christmas and a successful and happy New Year!

IMG_5938

richard-rogers-online

We welcome you to join the Richard Rogers online community. Like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter for daily updates.

Latest hybrid

My Teacher Promises for 2019 (Part 1)

An article by Richard James Rogers (Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management). 

Illustrated by Sutthiya Lertyongphati

I’ve also made a video to go with this blog post here:

At this time of the year we start thinking about possible ‘New Year’s Resolutions’: things that we resolve to do better next year. Targets we aim to achieve. New goals that we set for ourselves.

I believe that teachers should have a separate set of ‘teacher resolutions’, and I’d like to share mine with you for 2019. Maybe some of my New Year Teacher Promises can become your promises too?

img_0009-1

1. I will provide high-quality feedback to all of my students

Feedback is everything in teaching. It is the best way to help students improve. However, do we always give the best feedback we can?

John Hattie knows the power of good feedback:

Ask why we ever set tests; indeed, the best answer to this question is ‘so that we, as teachers, know who we taught well, what they mastered or failed to master, who made larger and smaller gains, and what we may need to re-teach’. Tests are primarily to help teachers to gather formative information about their impact. With this mind frame, the students reap the dividends.

The way I would put it is this: Students need to know WHAT they’ve done wrong and HOW to fix it. They also need to know what they’ve done well, so that they can keep doing that in the future.

I was rather alarmed in 2015 when the son of a family friend brought home this maths homework that had been returned to him from his school:

71C110A2-4C63-4EA4-8094-0BC5B337C558

From this we see that the student had been told which questions were wrong, along with the correct answers, but had not been shown HOW to get those answers.

He hadn’t been shown the mode of operations needed to calculate the areas (the formula you see on the work, consequently, is my annotation as I was tutoring him that day).

The teacher who marked this work was probably very busy, as most teachers are. However, there are a number of well-established methods for showing students how to fix their problems which don’t eat into our free time:

  • Peer-assessment: providing students with the official worked solutions and allowing them to swap work and make full corrections
  • Self-assessment: same as peer-assessment except the student marks their own work
  • Automated assessment: this is when a computer programme marks work for the student. Programmes and websites like Kahoot!, MyMaths, EduCake and ProProfs are becoming more and more popular because they provide instant feedback and require zero marking time from the teacher.
  • Live-marking’: this one is simple. Go around the class whilst the students are doing a task and mark their work in ‘real-time’. Alternatively, call students to your desk one-at-a-time and mark their work in front of them, then-and-there.

Live-marking, the last one I mentioned, is so powerful that I made a whole-video about it here:

Giving feedback

There’s no way around the issue of marking – it’s vital. Marking doesn’t always have to be written traditionally by a teacher, but somewhere along the line the feedback needs to be written somewhere – whether that’s on a Google Doc by another student, on a test by the student who took it or on a piece of homework by a teacher.

My first promise is an important one – my students will always receive deep, meaningful feedback. It’s the only way they can improve.

2I will care and I will show that I care

Caring is possibly the most important thing a teacher does every day. We entered this profession because we care, and when we care we have the following effects on our students:

  • We raise their self-esteem
  • We increase their enjoyment of our subject
  • We remind them of their achievements and character, which builds self-identity and resilience

We can show that we care in very simple ways:

  • Saying ‘Hi’  and “Good morning’ to our students and having conversations with them: this builds up rapport and shows that we value them and that we have a genuine interest in their well-being
  • Gathering professional intelligence: remembering our students hobbies, interests and life-events and capitalizing on those in the lesson-planning and assessment process
  • Being vigilant: remembering the things they’ve done well and immediately addressing and slip-ups and ‘falls’ in attainment. Providing ‘second-chances’ for students to redeem themselves. Following up. Monitoring progress on a regular basis.

3. I will communicate effectively with parents

discussion-mother-and-daughter

  • Parents are our friends, not our enemies. They generally want the best for their children, which is what we want too.
  • Our parents are our customers, and we have a duty to provide the highest-level of service to them.
  • When parents feel valued and encouraged to contribute to the life of the school, they can often bring amazing logistical help, resources, ideas and contacts to the school-community

shake-hands

I honestly believe that the full deployment of parents in the teaching profession has the power to make big changes to schools.

Some ways that teachers can build-up good professional relationships with parents are as follows:

  • Email: After any chat or parent’s evening/consultation, e-mail the parent to summarise what was discussed (just like you would with an important business client or customer)
  • SayThank you’: I recently received some beautiful Christmas presents from a number of students and parents. It was a lovely gesture and a lot of thought (and expense) went into those gifts. I had to e-mail my gratitude.
  • Chat: When we see parents at school or out of school, we should take the time to say ‘hi’. Conversations like these can yield very interesting insights into the ‘home-lives’ of our students and can often provide new information and open new doors.

A good example of the ‘fruits’ of a good chat came to me only last month.

I bumped into a parent in my school’s coffee shop and we had a short conversation. I found out that she worked with a number of scientists in her professional life, and as a result of our conversation she agreed to put one of my CREST Award students in touch with a scientist to act as her mentor.

Who knows where that contact could lead in the future?

How about you?

What are your ‘teacher promises’ for 2019? Have my promises inspired you to make some of your own? Feel free to comment in the box below and please share this article!

Happy holidays!

Richard

img_5938

richard-rogers-online

We welcome you to join the Richard Rogers online community. Like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter for daily updates.

Latest hybrid

 

 

The Rogers Pedagogical Planner

Hi everyone.

My next book will be a teacher’s planner with articles from this blog inside. Which planning template do you like the most? Do you have any thoughts or suggestions on what would make your favorite template better? Any general comments?

5 free copies are up for grabs! To enter, just comment on this blog post (with something constructive that will help). If you post something really good then I may even include you in the acknowledgements section of the planner!

Please share! 🕹🚕🧩🚡🎆

Thank you!

Richard

Option 1: Each day over two pages

B266CABA-5736-46C2-9081-1F8AE83C3635

Option 2: Each day on one page

7678FA1E-7843-4489-A4F3-A3268D057195.png

Update: 17th December

Hi everyone. The feedback I’m getting from a number of people on the teacher’s planner is that we would like to lose the notes and targets on the planning page but have a full notes and targets page prior to each lesson planning section. So the sequence would be:

1. Notes and targets page

2. Lesson planning section (two pages)

3. Pedagogical article from my blog

4. Repeat

Every notes page (there will be 45 of them in total) should have a different illustration from pop at the top. Thanks for your feedback, everyone! It’s going to be an amazing teacher planner! 

We’ll be going for the ‘day over two pages’ template. 

 

The Power of Pausing

An article by Richard James Rogers (Award-Winning Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback)

Illustrated by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati 

Accompanying podcast episode:

Our cover teacher was late to class and we were having a right old laugh! It wouldn’t be allowed these days, but we walked into the empty chemistry lab and sat at our seats.

Some of us were chatting, some were making silly noises that inspired a raucous of laughter. We were chilling-out like pros!

chatting in class

Then he walked in.

As the most notorious maths teacher in the school all he had to do was walk in with a grumpy look on his face to cause instant retreat into silence.

“Oh no!” was the look that was plastered across everyone’s faces.

“Get up off your backsides!” He snarled.

We stood, and gulped, and he stared at us. He waited until absolutely everyone was paying full attention. It didn’t take long.

“You all know what you’re supposed to be doing, don’t you?”

“I can’t hear you!”

“Yes” we all synchronistically chimed.

We got on with our work without a fuss. Some of us itched with the desire to chat, but we didn’t dare to.

Q & A

Fighting fire with water

This maths teacher had what only the best teachers possess: presence. One of his defining techniques was the power of waiting, or more succinctly, pausing.

Pausing provides the modern teacher with a number of distinct benefits:

  1. It can be used as an effective behavior management tool
  2. It can be used to make concepts and content really clear
  3. It allows students time to articulate their answers
  4. It generates that enchanted and mysterious teacher quality known as presence
  5. It can increase the perceived seriousness of a situation, which may be appropriate in certain situations
  6. It de-escalates conflict

That last point is an important one: as a new teacher all of those years ago I would often try to ‘fight fire with fire’, which almost always failed. If a class was chatty I would shout at them to calm them down (N.B. – it had the opposite effect).

With UKEdChat

Sometimes I would even shout on a one-to-one basis with individual students.

I soon learned that shouting was almost always a bad idea. It creates an atmosphere of instant negativity, and that affects everyone: even the compliant, hard-working, ‘good’ kids.

new doc 20_5

Ways to use pausing as a behavior management tool:

For whole-class low-level disruption (e.g. at the very start of a lesson, or at the end of a task), simply wait, silently. Look at the students with a look of “I’m waiting” on your face. After waiting a short-time, you can say something such as “Thank you to those who are listening, and thank you to those who are facing me. I’m still waiting for one-or-two.” Normally, in this scenario, the students will say ‘shh’ and ‘be quiet’ to each other, removing the need for the teacher to get loud and aggressive (which usually doesn’t work as a long-term strategy anyway).

At those times when you need to have a serious one-to-one talk with individuals or small groups, pausing can really have a dramatic effect and can emphasize the seriousness of the situation. A good example I can think of from my practice happened a few years ago. A group of boys had been chatting for a large part of the lesson, instead of doing the work I had assigned them. They thought I hadn’t noticed, but I had.

PC activity with mouse pen

I called the boys to my desk at the end of the lesson and waited for them, silently, to sit and listen. I then asked to see their work, which they reluctantly gave me. I must have stared at the dismal trash that was handed to me for a good minute, not saying a word. The boys looked mortified.

This simply isn’t good enough” I said.

Err, sorry. Sorry sir” piped in one of them.

We’ll hand it in tomorrow”

Yes, you’d better, and it had better be a lot better than this” I concluded.

They left the classroom and I got that work back the next day. I said “Thank you, let’s have a fresh start next lesson”.

That’s important isn’t it – a fresh start. We all need one of those at some point in our lives.

I rarely had a problem from those boys after that. Sure, I had to reel-them-in once or twice, but generally they got on with their work because they knew I was serious, and they knew that I wanted what was best for them.

it integrated

The ‘Shouting Myth’

Is it still a myth? I’m not even sure.

I, like many teachers, have found that pausing works much better than shouting, almost every single time. In fact, unless a student is in an emergency situation (e.g. about to fall down the stairs), shouting is never effective.

Here are the problems I have with shouting:

  • Over time, it ruins the teacher’s health. It creates internal stress that permeates the body tissues deeply. Stress is not good for us – it even accelerates the ageing process. 
  • It immediately creates an atmosphere of negativity in the classroom, and it can be hard to flip-that later on when you have control of the kids and you want them to approach you and ask questions.
  • When shouting is adopted as a consistent teacher behavior, it loses its effectiveness over time. Like a drug that one has become dependent on, larger doses are needed to maintain control in the future. It’s intimidating and can make students fear you, rather than respect you.

There are many advantages of using pauses as a behavior management tool (such as avoiding the consequences I just listed above), but the main reason pausing is so effective is that it creates an atmosphere of willful clarity, where excellence is achievable and desirable, rather than mandatory and burdensome.

sit n talk

Pausing as an instructional tool

One obvious adavantage of pausing in an instructional context is that it allows students time to think and process information. When used effectively it can also be a great way to ‘coax’ answers and responses out of students who would otherwise be shy or disinterested (or simply too tired to focus in the moment).

Try the following techniques and watch miracles happen!:

  • Pause halfway when saying a key word or phrase, and coax the rest of the word from the students. “The stomach produces digestive en, en…………., enzymes! Yes, well done. Enzymes is correct”. This technique aids memory and gets kids focused on the content.
  • Stop part-way through a lesson and do a quick review. Bring the kids to the front of the class if you must. Ask individual students some pertinent questions. Pause and allow enough time for the students to answer.
  • Pause and check that the students understand what you have said thus far. “Okay, put your thumbs up if you understand everything so far. Does anyone have any questions? (Pause). Okay, in that case can I move on? Thank you.”
  • Did you just notice the pause after asking if anyone has any questions? That’s important isn’t it? We must pause for ‘question time’ at least once every 30 minutes. Sometimes our pace can be very fast (especially with exam-level classes) and students may not feel confident enough to ‘butt-in’ and ask questions when you are mid-sentence. Allow them time to ask. Make your students feel that asking questions is a good thing, and that you are happy, very happy, to help when needed.
  • Pause between topics and sub-topics, and allow students to think for a moment. When you’re teaching at the pace of a steam-train it can become quite overwhelming for your students.
  • Look at your students and notice how many have finished writing their notes. Pause to allow time to finish the note-taking. If you’re not sure who’s not finished, then you can simply ask “Does anyone need more time?”.

Conclusion

Pausing is a very powerful technique, when it is used properly. Use pausing to:

  • Get your students focused and listening without being confrontational in the process
  • Reinforce the seriousness of a situation (e.g. when homework isn’t handed in)
  • Aid instruction through response ‘coaxing’, pausing for ‘question-time’, checking that students understand everything, allowing students to think between topics and subtopics and allowing adequate time for note-taking
IMG_5938

richard-rogers-online

We welcome you to join the Richard Rogers online community. Like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter for daily updates.

Latest hybrid

Teaching Key Words: Part 1

An article by Richard James Rogers (Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management)

Illustrated by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati 

Key words are those vital elements of any subject that determine whether or not students…..

  • get the best grades in exams
  • understand the content properly
  • articulate the content effectively
  • master a language they are learning

Key words are essential components of subject knowledge that both native speakers and E.A.L. learners find challenging to master. 

In my 13 years of teaching I have found that there are many effective ways to teach key words to students, with the techniques falling into 5 main categories:

  • Interactive: Games and spatial learning
  • Proactive: Writing frames, scaffolds and models
  • Teacher-driven: Vigilance in pointing out key-words and encouraging action during teacher-led instruction
  • Automated: through software
  • Documented: Through exam-paper mark schemes and model answers, and command-terms exposure and training

With UKEdChat

In today’s blog post I’ll describe (there’s a ‘command term’ to begin with!) the most effective interactive and proactive ways I have found to reinforce key vocabulary. You may have more to add to this list – please contribute to the new forum or add a comment below this post!

So, let’s begin our journey with….

Interactive methods

There are a number of vocabulary games you can play with kids of any age. My favorites are ‘splat’, ‘mystery word’ and ‘who am I?’

Splat

This quick game is so easy: all you need is a whiteboard, whiteboard markers and class of kids. It’s a great game for consolidating key vocabulary, and is perfect for E.A.L. learners.

Splat

Here’s a short video showing a quick clip of me playing ‘Splat’ with my students (I will include some more lengthy clips soon, but this is a good start):

Mystery Word

Another easy game. This time, students randomly pick out written words from a hat (or cup, beaker, container, etc.), and then they have to explain their word to the class (without saying the word). The students who are listening have to guess what the word is.

Mystery word

Who am I?

A very simple game. All you need are post-it notes and a class full of energized students! Great fun. Perfect for reinforcing key vocabulary and concepts. Students sit in a circle, you stick notes on their heads with key words on them, and the students explain to each other what the key words are without saying the key words. 

Who am I

Spatial learning can also be a great interactive method to teach key words.

There are many definitions and interpretations of spatial learning on the web and in various books. Some of this pedagogical mumbo-jumbo can be really confusing, but I believe I’ve nailed it down to one sentence:

Spatial Learning is when students use bodily movements to express themselves, solve problems and model situations. 

Spatial Learning has both general and specific applications. I’ll now go through some great examples that illustrate the power of this excellent teaching tool for emphasizing key words. 

Here’s a quick video I made about Spatial Learning:

Why not try out these great spatial learning activities with your students?:
lab girls

Do you want to know the opinions of your students on a subject matter? Maybe you’re taking a survey (e.g. which day is the best for canteen food?). Maybe you have a list of multiple choice questions and you want a fun way to get the kids through them.

A human graph might be the right tool for you?

And with ‘true or false’ questions – instead of getting students to put their hands-up for ‘true’, or their hands-up for ‘false’: get them to walk and move. Choose one classroom wall to be the ‘true’ wall, and one to be the ‘false’ wall,  and get them to walk. 

Human graph and true or false

Modelling

In an attempt to show you just how pliable spatial learning is, I’ve designed a task for a subject area I don’t specialise in: ICT

Concept: A typical home network may be wired, wireless or a combination of both. Hardware components process and convey the data message from from part of the network to another.

Spatial learning task: For this task you need moving and stationary students. The stationary students stand at predetermined positions in the classroom (you can put signs on desks or on walls to help). These students represent the hardware. The rest of the students are the ‘data message’, and they move from one component to another. I hope the illustration below helps you to see just how easy this is to implement and how much fun it can be. Students should shout out the name of the hardware component they reach at each stage as they walk around the room. 

Spatial Learning ICT Richard James Rogers

Proactive Methods

Take the following body of text from my book, for example. How would you differentiate this so that all of the students in your class could understand and use it?:

Rapport

I had a great professional development session with a group of colleagues this week. We came up with some great ways to differentiate texts, which I’ve included below. Study the images carefully: I’ve linked them to the text above.

Technique #1: The Funnel

Basically this is a filtering system where the students take all of the key words in a text and filter them down into, first, a few sentences; and then, just one sentence:

Dif1

Technique #2: True or False Questions

Nice and simple and can be done in a number of ways:

  • Write the true or false questions yourself, and get the kids to answer them
  • Get the kids to write true or false questions and give them to each other (recommended for high-ability students, as this one is a little more difficult to mark/assess and takes more time and effort to complete).

Dif2

Technique #3: Flow chart

Kids create a flow chart that either describes the process involved, or the reasoning behind the text. Questions can be used as connectives:

Dif3

Technique #4: Fill in the blanks

This is a simple one and can be used to reinforce technical vocabulary, elements of speech (such as interjections and conjunctions) or anything else that’s important.

Technique #5: Cartoon Strip

The kids will need to be quite creative with this one, as they may need to illustrate the concepts using an actual example. Great fun, and can get quite entertaining!

Other techniques

There are lots of creative ways in which students can be assigned to decipher and breakdown texts. Consider these suggestions:

  • Stop-motion animations (takes a lot of time but acts as a great mini-project)
  • Drama and role-play
  • Music
  • Website creation
  • Infographic creation (much better than ‘make a poster’)
  • Make an instructional video

IMG_5938

richard-rogers-online

We welcome you to join the Richard Rogers online community. Like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter for daily updates.

Latest hybrid