Tag: homework

COVID-19: Advice for Teachers, School Administrators and School Nurses

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

An article by Richard James Rogers (Bestselling author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback).

UPDATED 17TH MARCH 2020

It’s the story that everyone is talking about, and that also has many school leaders concerned: COVID-19. 

The recent outbreak of this novel strain of coronavirus has caused a domino effect resulting in school closures, travel restrictions and a general, heightened sense of anxiety for many people. For schools, three major priorities now exist:

  • Protecting the student and staff body from infection
  • Having effective, simple plans in place to support students with their learning in the event of a sudden school closure
  • Educating the community about good hygiene practice and dispelling any myths about the virus that may surface, and which may add to anxiety

In this week’s blog post I aim to tackle all three of these priorities in a non-biased, objective way. Original sources will be hyperlinked and a full list of citations can be found at the end of this article.

img_0068

Priority 1: Protecting the student and staff body from infection

This has to be a school’s first priority right now, as not only do the symptoms of COVID-19 infection vary slightly from person-to-person, but the resulting disease caused by the virus can progress to a serious stage in some people. A community in which high numbers of people work in close proximity to one another (such as a school) is also an ideal place for human-to-human transmission to occur, should an infected person be on-campus. 

The latest official information about COVID-19 allows us to evaluate risk to some extent:

  • Transmission can occur from person to person, usually after close contact with an infected patient through droplet transmission. This is why it is important to stay more than 1 meter (3 feet) away from a person who is sick. (World Health Organisation)
  • Current estimates of the incubation period range from 1-14 days with a median estimate of 5 days (World Health Organisation)
  • At the time of writing (March 17th), official confirmed cases globally stand at 185,067 infected with 7330 total deaths and 80,236 official recoveries (Johns Hopkins)

This interactive map from John Hopkins University is a clear a quick way to track the official numbers. 

it integrated

According to the Washington State Department of Health, schools should be doing the following to protect their communities:

  1. Develop, or review, the school’s emergency operations plan. Review strategies for reducing the spread of disease and establish mechanisms for ongoing communication with staff, students, volunteers, families, and the community. Collaborate with local health departments and other relevant partners.
  2. It is advised that students, staff, parents and guardians, are excluded from sites if they are showing symptoms of COVID-19 or have been in contact with someone with COVID-19 in the last 14 days.
  3. When possible, regular health checks (e.g., temperature and respiratory symptom screening on arrival at school) of students, staff, and visitors. Those who are symptomatic should be excluded. For students experiencing homelessness, use your current procedures to ensure their safety.
  4. Older adults and individuals with underlying medical conditions that are at increased risk of serious COVID-19 are encouraged not to come to the child care and food service setting (including employees).
  5. Practice social distancing (i.e., limit contact of people within 6 feet from each other).
  6. Provide adequate supplies for good hygiene, including clean and functional handwashing stations, soap, paper towels, and alcohol‐based hand sanitizer.
  7. Follow environmental cleaning guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are followed (e.g., clean and disinfect high touch surfaces daily or more frequently).
  8. Plan ways to care for students and staff who become sick and separate them from students and staff who are well. Use face masks as needed should this occur. Staff should go home immediately if they become sick. Contact the student’s parent or guardian immediately if they show symptoms of COVID-19.

poll-everywhere

Priority 2: Having effective, simple plans in place to support students with their learning in the event of a sudden school closure

I’ve come up with what I believe to be a simple method to facilitate learning in the event of a school closure:

The Online Learning Journal [A suggestion for schools]

Step 1: Every student in the school creates a website that will act as an ‘ePortfolio’ or learning journal. Each website should contain a separate page for each subject the student learns. Google Sites is amazing for this (it’s very user friendly), but Wix, WordPress and Blogger are also good (and free) alternatives. Just make sure the students are using their school e-mail addresses to sign-up to these platforms.

Step 2: The URL for every ePortfolio for every kid in the school is kept on a centralized spreadsheet (e.g. a Google Sheet or an MS Excel sheet) that every teacher has access to.

Step 3: Work is set by the teacher through the school’s online Virtual Learning Environment or MOOC (such as Google Classroom, Firefly or Moodle) or even via e-mail. Students are required to complete their work on their website (e.g. by writing notes on each page, uploading photos of work that’s handwritten, embedding Google Slides, etc.)

Step 4: Teachers simply need to click on the URL for each website of the kids they teach and check their work. Feedback can be written on the website itself (Google Sites makes this very easy, but the student needs to click ‘share’ and share it with the class teacher), or feedback can be directly e-mailed to each student. 

You can read more about this method at my blog post here. I also made an accompanying video:

I’ve done some recent research with my own students about which online learning platforms work and my findings are given below (please share this image far and wide):

wp-15844306882203187194629006995684.jpg

Priority 3: Educating the community about good hygiene practice and dispelling any myths about the virus that may surface, and may add to anxiety

Keeping good communication lines open and providing regular updates is always a good idea at times like this. Consider the following ideas:

  • Send out a weekly newsletter to parents that goes through the steps the school is taking to protect the community from infection and general advice about good hygiene and best practice.
  • Encourage parents to e-mail any questions or queries they have to a designated person, or to their child’s homeroom teacher.
  • Assemblies and meetings with students and staff to go through good hygiene measures and offer advice and reassurance.
  • Find out where everyone in the community is travelling to during school vacations (Google Forms is great for this – send it out and collect responses). Analyse the data received and plan accordingly.

References and Sources

  1. World Health Organisation Q&A on Coronaviruses [https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses]
  2. Johns Hopkins University Interactive Map of COVID-19 Cases [https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6]
  3. Washington State Department of Health: School Resources for Novel Coronavirus [https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/Coronavirus/Schools?fbclid=IwAR1N5BPyPXKhK-aCTQqEnYSsVca3QzjY5ejuHgc-vm6v-U4YsrG7er_gsng]
  4. Online Learning That Actually Works! Richard James Rogers [https://richardjamesrogers.com/2020/03/17/online-learning-that-actually-works/]

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 Top Three Tips for Teachers

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

An article by Richard James Rogers (Bestselling author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback).

Accompanying Video:

I like it when colleagues share golden nuggets of hard-earned information: things that took a long time to figure out. Things that really work and are easy to implement.

If you could list only three things that would maximize a teacher’s impact in the classroom, then what would those three things be? 

The aim of today’s blog post is for me to share my three top tips with the whole world – in the hope that those reading this will implement my suggestions. 

The Power of Praise
“Simply Brilliant!” – Readers’ Favorite

So, without further-a-do and without a lengthy CPD lesson plan that would be impossible to implement in real-life, let’s take a deep-dive into some easy-to-implement strategies that offer maximum return-on-investment.

img_0533

Top Tip Number 1: Get up early!

Getting up and out of bed well-before school starts is a habit that has paid me massive dividends in my career as a high-school teacher. Getting up early allows me to:

  1. Read over my lesson plans for the day ahead.
  2. Take my time in the morning and not rush, which puts me in a good mood.
  3. Have breakfast and some coffee – helping me to be biochemically and physiologically ready for the day ahead (a subject matter which is not discussed enough in the teaching profession, in my personal opinion).
  4. Get clear about any meetings or events I have to attend.
  5. Do a little bit of exercise – giving me a good energy boost and a feeling of accomplishment before my day even starts!
  6. Read over any topics I am unfamiliar with – giving me the confidence I need to deliver all of the content I need to.
  7. Leave home on-time, and get to school on time.

Getting up early is a really basic skill but few adults ever really master it. I must admit that for me personally it took years to get into a good ‘waking-up routine’. Once I had built-up momentum, however (through tremendous and painful self-discipline), the benefits came quickly. I was in a better mood at the start of each day and my lesson delivery improved dramatically. 

2-01

Top Tip Number 2: Plan lessons well in-advance

Time invested in lesson-planning always pays dividends. By waking up early on a Sunday morning to plan my week-ahead, I find that I can get really clear about:

  1. The topics I’ll be covering.
  2. The activities I need to do.
  3. Any resources that I need to upload to my school’s virtual learning environment (Google Classroom, in my case).
  4. The logistics of each lesson (where students will sit, where they will move during activities, etc.).
  5. Any homework I need to set and collect in.
  6. When I’m going to mark work.
  7. Any meetings or events I need to attend in the coming week.
  8. Any reading-ahead that I need to do.
  9. Any printing that I need to do.

I don’t believe in planning lesson-by-lesson too far into the future: plans may change as time goes by (e.g. I may get through more material than planned on any particular lesson). However, I believe that a week’s worth of planning, in advance, is highly appropriate and beneficial. 

3.1-01

Top Tip Number 3: Use ‘Live-Marking’

‘Live-Marking’ is basically a way of providing feedback to students in real-time (saving you a ton of after-school and weekend marking). There are two main live-marking strategies:

Strategy 1: Diffusive Live-Marking

This is really simple:

  1. Set a task for your students to complete (it could be a Google Slides presentation, a worksheet to complete, some questions from their textbook to do, etc.)
  2. When a few minutes have passed, ‘diffuse’ through the classroom by walking around with a marking pen in hand (I use a red pen). 
  3. Mark student work in real-time, as they are doing it. Of course – reinforce your written comments with verbal feedback (and you can even write ‘verbal feedback given’ or ‘VF’ on the work).

Hey presto – you just saved yourself an hour or so of after-school marking time!

Strategy 2: Absorptive Live-Marking

In this scenario, one can imagine the teacher being like a ‘sponge’ that ‘absorbs’ the students: instead of walking around the classroom to mark work in ‘real-time’, you sit at your desk (or at a designated ‘consultation point’ in the room) and call the students to your desk one-at-a-time. 

Q & A

Same result – you just saved yourself a ton of after-school marking time. 

Which is better – absorptive or diffusive live-marking?

In my personal opinion, both forms of marking have their place. 

Diffusive live-marking can actually double-up as an excellent behavior management technique – when you walk around the classroom and check work in real-time, pockets of low-level disruption tend to fade away because of the teacher’s proximity. The disadvantage of diffusive live-marking is that it can be difficult to stand behind, or to the side, of a student and mark work on a crowded desk. 

I tend to use absorptive live-marking more than diffusive as I am lucky enough to work in a school where the overwhelming majority of the students are very well-behaved. This means that I can call them to my desk one-at-a-time and the class will still stay on-task. A big advantage of the absorptive method is that I can give more detailed and personal feedback to each student and I have my whole desk-space to neatly mark the work on. 

Here’s a video I made about live-marking (very highly recommended):

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 Importance of Planning

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

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

Accompanying video: 

My PGCE course was a long, dark road of pain. Not only was I new to teaching, and finding it difficult to teach in a way that was engaging and rightly-paced, but the paperwork was tremendous. 

studying with com

Back then, I was required to write out each lesson plan on an A4 piece of paper and have it checked by the main class teacher. I also had to submit the work to my PGCE mentor. 

The process was laborious but it did get me thinking about:

  • How to start my lessons quickly and appropriately.
  • Where students should sit at each point in the lesson and what equipment they would need.
  • How to work through the syllabus at an acceptable pace.
  • How to end each lesson with a stimulating summary.

woman-reading

Nowadays, however, my lesson planning is done in a one-week-per-two-pages diary [this is the planner I use], and supported by departmental curriculum maps (which outline the topics to be covered for the whole year) and Schemes of Work.

It’s less work, and more ‘long-term’ in focus. 

Planning is a skill that outstanding teachers have mastered. In this article, I want to share my advice on how to best plan our:

  • Lessons
  • Marking
  • Homework schedule
  • Events
  • Free time

img_4889

Outstanding teaching is supported by outstanding planning – and this goes beyond the simple planning of one’s lessons. 

The Power of Praise
“Simply Brilliant!” – Readers’ Favorite

Let’s now go through each item in the above list together.

Lesson planning

Experience has taught me that time spent planning lessons always reaps rewards. It requires one to spend a good hour or two of non-contact time doing the following:

  • Looking over the week ahead and scheduling the topics that will be covered on each day
  • Thinking about when homework will be set, when it will be collected in and when it will be marked
  • Accounting for meetings, events and any planned (or possible) disruption to one’s timetable
  • Planning our resource-preparation time

Here’s a video I made about efficient lesson-planning, and in that you will see the lesson planner that I use:

For me, I use part of my Sunday morning each week to plan the week ahead. It always pays dividends in terms of:

  • Reduced stress during the week
  • Better lessons

snacking

Marking

Do we really need to assign so much homework?: If we’re not taking the time to sit with our students to provide high quality feedback, then is that homework assignment we’ve set really that useful?  

We need to think carefully about the quantity of marking we are creating for ourselves, and whether or not this is an effective way to enhance the learning of our students.

I believe strongly in the power of planning our marking. Every week I need to know:

  • When I will set homework, tests and assignments
  • When I’ll collect in homework, tests and assignments
  • When I’ll mark it all
  • How I’ll mark it (in-class strategies, such as a peer and self-assessment, can save us a ton of time)

This is another Sunday morning task of mine – I plan my week’s worth of marking. 

it integrated

Events and free time

As well as planning my work, I also know how important it is to plan my free time. 

Knowing that I have a badminton session on a Sunday afternoon, for instance, gives me the motivation to get my work done promptly. Scheduling a Friday night of relaxation gives me a reward for my hard-work during the week. 

Conclusion

I believe that productivity has to permeate and infuse into every cell of our bodies. Productivity must be a way of life – not simply a good habit to deploy at work.

By planning everything, we are more likely to implement the things that move us forwards. 

In the early part of my career my poor time-management and planning skills left me wasting my weekend time, wasting my mornings and creating undue stress for myself. 

Never again. I deserve better. My students deserve better. 

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 ‘Lazy Mindset’ – Some Teachers Don’t Even Try

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

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

It was a typical morning tea break in the school staff room. Typical morning grumbles. Typical morning camaraderie.

“It’s like talking to a brick wall with John”, piped in one colleague.

“Yeah he’s pretty distant isn’t he?”, said another.

“He just doesn’t try. I doubt he’ll even get a grade D in GCSE Maths”, says the colleague who started this conversation.

Then I make the biggest cardinal sin a teacher can make in such moaning contests. It was the ultimate point of flippancy for a 23-year-old like me: “He’s great in my lessons”, I arrogantly say.

img_0413
“An AMAZING book!”

The conversation went quiet.

Back then I wasn’t as polished in my speech as I am now. For some reason my colleagues still put-up with me, and I think they liked me. Perhaps I was given the benefit of the doubt because I was, essentially, a kid myself.

The truth, however, is that John was, actually, great in my lessons. The question is this: Why?

img_0064

Coursework Conundrum

Then there was that time when something I said went down like a lead balloon at a departmental meeting.

A challenging Year 10 class, who were completing Science coursework, were given to me to cover for a lesson. Their teacher was absent that day.

I write about this story in my first book as a classic example of how teacher organisation and rapport-building can generate dramatically different results to the status quo when applied consistently. Basically, I booked the ICT lab and simply walked around the class and helped the students with their work. I also took all of the loose bits of paper that were loosely organised in a blue tray (their ‘coursework’ tray), and put them in plastic wallets with each students’ name on.

A simple tactic, but it worked really well. It meant that the students didn’t have to fish through papers at the start of each lesson and complain that bits were missing – adding to disruption.

chatting in class

I mentioned this story at that meeting, and whilst my Head of Deportment was impressed with me (he was, secretly, the person I was trying to impress anyway), the teachers of that class were not so happy with my ruthless expose’.

“If I was kid in that class and I had to root through a pile of mixed-up papers to find my coursework, then I’d be disruptive too” I said with a judgmental, 23-year-old voice.

I probably would use more tact and subtlety were I to raise the same issue today. Our colleagues are our allies, not our enemies.

So, what’s the point you’re trying to make?

Simply this:

A teacher’s behavior can have a profound, long-lasting effect on student behavior. 

Robert Greene, in his bestselling book The 48 Laws of Power describes something called the ‘Mirror Effect’. Basically, it’s a way of showing someone their faults and failures by mirroring their actions.

self-assessment

For teachers, the Mirror Effect works best by modelling the passion and determination we want to see in our students:

  • When we are passionate, our students become passionate
  • When we are relaxed, our students are relaxed [be careful how far you take relaxation, however. Relaxed demeanor: yes. Relaxed attitude to your professional role: no.]
  • When we strive for excellence ourselves, our students also strive for excellence
  • When we praise and encourage, with passion and real emotion, we inspire our students to work harder, and perform better 

One of my proudest moments as a teacher was when I was given a very shy young girl from Iceland to teach. Starting in Year 11 and studying IGCSE Chemistry with me, she had two main challenges to overcome:

  1. She had never learnt any chemistry before, and was due to take an IGCSE exam in Chemistry in 6 months time (that’s hard, by the way)
  2. English was not her first language, and I was teaching her through the medium of English

After my first lesson with her had finished she told me straight: “Mr Rogers, I didn’t understand anything you taught me this lesson.”

Discussing homework

That’s when I knew that this was serious, because I’d taught a lesson covering the basic fundamentals.

Her first test came back in two weeks – she got a grade U. She was devastated.

“I’m just going to fail Chemistry, aren’t I?” – she said

“No way. We won’t let that happen. Your target for your next test is an E, and come and see me on Monday lunchtimes so I can teach you the fundamentals. I believe in you.”

It saddens me to say this, but I received a massive public backlash about a year and a half ago when I suggested that one way that we can help exam-level classes is by giving up a few minutes at lunchtimes to tutor weak students on the run-up to the finals. One person went so far as to write damning review of my book (which, I assume, he hadn’t even read):

Luch is for losers
Another happy customer!

I’m not suggesting for one minute that top-up sessions are the only way to help students who are falling behind, but in the case of this student (who had zero prior knowledge of chemistry) it was an essential intervention move. 

That student, incidentally, went on to achieve a grade A* in IGCSE Chemistry six months later – beating almost everyone else in Year 11. 

This happened because:

  • The student worked really hard (this is the main reason)
  • The student wanted to work hard because I kept on pushing her, telling her that I believed in her (and I meant it), and because I gave believable and achievable targets for each test (she scored a U, E, E, D, B, A and then an A* in the final).

This is a living testament of the efficacy of my core philosophy, which is this:

I believe that ANY student’s success can be engineered by a great teacher

You’ll find that statement in my bio on Twitter – it’s the personal philosophy that has guided me for more than 15 years. It works, because I’ve seen it work.

award

But how do we implement this philosophy?

Use the four-step T.I.P.S. method:

Step 1: Track progress. Look for patterns in grades. Keep a spreadsheet of scores. 

Step 2: Intervene when grades slip. Have a short conversation with the student in which you use……..

Step 3: Professional Intelligence: Gather and use knowledge about the students’ past achievements, achievements in other subject areas and skills used outside of school to praise the student and remind him/her of the ability that he/she naturally possesses. Talk with other teachers to gather this intelligence if needs be. Couple this with…..

Step 4: Subtle Reinforcement: Be on-the-ball and remind your student regularly what his/her target is. Introduce new resources and offer your time to help. Remind him/her about a test that’s coming up and how you believe in their ability to get a good score. Praise small steps of progress along the way, or any positive work in your subject area. 

You can read more about Subtle Reinforcement here. Some info on Professional Intelligence gathering can be found here. 

TIPS RICHARD JAMES ROGERS

714symbol

We welcome you to join the Richard James Rogers online community! Join us on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates, giveaways of Richard’s books, special offers, upcoming events and news.

img_0549

 

What Should Teachers do With Their Time Off?

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

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

Updated August 2022

Accompanying video:

One of the massive perks about being a schoolteacher is that we get loads and loads of holidays. In fact, in my particular case, I’m only actually in school for around 180 days per year. That’s a lot of free time to deal with. 

snacking

So, with this in mind, I find myself asking a rather controversial question: Are we using this free time productively?  

I’ve been lambasted quite viciously in the past for expressing my views on this particular issue. My views haven’t changed, however, so if you’re one of those snowflakes who gets easily triggered, easily offended or who has a nervous breakdown when someone has a different opinion than you, then you might want to stop reading now.

The laziness of it all?

With all of this free time in-hand, I often wonder why more teachers aren’t starting their own businesses, writing books, setting up podcasts, starting up blogs, doing online marketing or anything to better themselves or improve their quality of life. 

sit n talk

What would Elon Musk, one of the world’s most successful businessmen, do with 185 free days each year? Perhaps this quote from an interview he did (video embedded below) will shed some light on things:

Interviewer:

Did you ever consider retiring?

Elon:

No, not really. I did take a bit of time off. I did reasonably well from Paypal. I was the largest shareholder in the company and we were acquired for about a billion and a half in stock and then the stock doubled. So yeah, I did reasonably well, but the idea of lying on a beach as my main thing, just sounds like the worst – it sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I’d be super-duper bored. I like high intensity – I mean, I like going to the beach for a short period of time, but not much longer than a few days or something like that.

So what can we conclude that this formidable titan? Some would say that he is an example of what we should all aspire to become, and that he would use 185 days productively. He’d take some short-bursts of time-off, but mostly he’d be working on new projects and new ideas, or furthering current ones. 

An ancient Chinese proverb that keeps me striving and moving ‘forward’ when I have free time is this:

An inch of time is an inch of gold, but an inch of time cannot be purchased for an inch of gold.

Mediocrity breeds more mediocrity?

One core philosophy that I think all teachers agree with is that with enough hard work and effort, our students can become anything they want to become (notwithstanding significant physical and psychological hindrances). 

Surely then, as teachers, we also need to be at the top our game if we are to truly live that message: that a human really can become anything with enough effort. 

img_0064

Why then do so many teachers fall short of this principle? So many of us are one-timers: we got a university degree, trained to be a teacher and that was it. Zero significant achievements since then. 

And yet, we expect our students to be excellent. We expect them to make excellent progress. We expect them to use their free time productively. We expect them to aspire, push themselves, have goals and achieve big. 

Maybe it’s about time that we modeled that process. Only then can we really know what excellence is.

As for me, I’m not perfect but I’m no hypocrite either. This Christmas vacation, for which I get three weeks off school, will be divided between a number of tasks. I’ll take a short holiday for a few days, but the rest will be spent becoming a Google Certified Educator, completing a Certificate in Data Science from Berkeley and a number of additional tasks linked to this blog, my books, a new business and things to get me ready for my classes in January (including a rigorous gym schedule). 

jenga

If we’re not advancing personally, then how can we encourage our students to advance?

I’ll post an update at the end of my Christmas vacation, to let you know how I’ve managed. After all, if I’m going to preach the ‘be useful and be productive’ mantra to you, my readers, then I absolutely need to lead by example and practice what I preach. 

Update: August 2022

This update has come a lot later than promised (sorry), but here it is anyway:

  • A LOT happened since this blog post was published (i.e. the pandemic). However, I was able to make some progress towards my goals.
  • I became a Google Certified Educator (Level 1), and I’m now working towards my level 2 certificate. I wrote a blog post all about becoming a Google Certified Educator here. 
  • I stopped pursuing the Professional Certificate in Data Science with Berkeley, and opted instead for the Professional Certificate in FinTech with the University of Hong Kong. I completed this in December 2021. You can view my credential here. 

Overall, I would say that I was only partly successful in achieving the goals I had set for myself. The lessons I have learned from this process are as follows:

  • Set realistic goals – sometimes we can have very high aspirations, which is good, but our personal deadlines are unrealistic
  • It takes a lot of self-discipline to achieve challenging goals. That’s why there are only a very small number of titans and tycoons in the world – these people relentlessly go after what they want, and set up systems and routines to make that happen. 


IMG_5938

We welcome you to join the Richard James Rogers online community! Join us on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates, giveaways of Richard’s books, special offers, upcoming events and news. 

richard-rogers-online

Preparing Students for Mock Exams

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

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

Mock exams offer an excellent opportunity for teachers and students to assess current knowledge and discover common misconceptions. They (should) provide a rigorous and thorough ‘trial run’ of the finals and may even act as a sharp and frightening wake-up call to some learners. 

chatting in class

Considering the immense importance placed on mock exams (not least for providing a good basis for making final grade predictions), one would assume that the preparation of students for them should be organised like a well-planned military operation. 

That’s certainly what should happen, and the aim of this article is to cover the ‘battleground’ that your students will need to fight through in order to be well-trained for those all-important practice exams. 

Roger that! Let’s get right into it then!

Go through past-exam papers

These are by far the best revision materials for exam-level students. Rigorous past-paper practice, under timed conditions, offers a number of benefits:

  • Students become used to the ‘style’ of questions that will be asked in the real thing.
  • Frequent exposure to the ‘command terms’ that will be used in the real exam (words like ‘Deduce’, ‘Explain’, ‘Sketch’ etc.).
  • The level of challenge presented by past-paper questions will be at the level expected by students of that age-group. 
  • When taken under timed conditions, students can develop their time-management techniques too (ensuring that they don’t run out of time in the real mock exam – a common problem!).

Giving feedback

Some examination boards share their past papers for free (e.g. Edexcel), whilst others sell them them for a small fee. If you have the money (or if your school has the budget), then they are always worth the spend. Some ideas for saving money when purchasing exam papers include:

  • Keep any spare examination papers that you get sent each year by the exam board, and scan them to pdfs. Within a few years you’ll have a comprehensive bank of exam papers ready to share with your students.
  • Purchase a user account to an exam-board’s question bank and share the account with colleagues.

Make sure your students go through the model answers (mark schemes) when they’re done, and make sure they know how to actually use the mark schemes (Do they know that OWTTE means ‘Or Words to That Extent’, for example? Do they know what M1, M2, etc mean?).

Should your students be strict or lenient when marking past-paper questions? 

Always be strict, because the examiner will strict and the final exams will probably contain questions that the students will never have seen before. If the answer does not match the mark scheme, then mark it wrong.

What about handwriting?

If the examiner cannot read the answers given, then your students will be penalized. Make this point really clear, as it is an issue that does affect many students (especially when rushing under exam conditions – another reason to train students by exposing them to past-papers under timed conditions).

sit n talk

Go through exam-style questions

These are a little different to past-paper questions and tend to be found within textbooks, on great websites (like BBC Bitesize) and inside revision guides and workbooks (like those made by CGP, for example). 

These provide much of the same benefits as a past-exam paper questions and are often organised by topic, allowing students to reinforce their subject knowledge in stages and target areas of weakness with relative ease. 

Make sure that model answers are provided and that students mark their work strictly (just like with past-papers).

sitting on the carpet

Provide a topic revision list

An obvious one I know, but worth mentioning. If students don’t know the topics that are going to come up on their mock exams, then how can they possibly prepare?

Share the official syllabus, perhaps through your school’s VLE, MOOC or even by e-mail if you have to. Make sure the students know which topics from the syllabus are going to come up in the mocks. 

Provide topic summaries

Summaries of key topic areas can really help students to grab the essentials in a short space of time. Share these as Mind Maps, bulleted lists, end-of-chapter summaries in textbooks and even, again, revision websites that you recommend.

making plans

Share textbooks

A lot of schools cannot afford physical textbooks for every student. However, we should at least be recommending textbooks that the students can buy themselves if they want to. 

One way to solve the problem of textbook costs is for schools to build their own (e.g. from slide presentations that teachers create), get students to create textbooks for themselves by setting up a learning journals system and even paying for an online subscription through the publisher’s website (which is often cheaper than purchasing physical books).

Recommend revision websites

There are many great websites that offer excellent, free resources for revision. My personal favorites are:

IMG_5938

We welcome you to join the Richard James Rogers online community! Join us on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates, giveaways of Richard’s books, special offers, upcoming events and news. 

richard-rogers-online

 

Exciting New Online Course for Teachers!

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

UKEd-Acad

The Fundamentals of Classroom Management: An online course designed by Richard James Rogers in Partnership with UKEd Academy 

I’m very excited to announce that I’ve been busy building an online course that covers all of the fundamental concepts in my widely acclaimed debut book: The Quick Guide to Classroom Management, in partnership with my good friends at UKEd Academy. Details are given below:

Course link: https://uked.academy/product/cmf/

Price: £30.00 (which includes a copy of my book) or £20.00 if you’ve already got a copy of my book (you’ll have to enter a discount code found within the book)

Launch date: October 21st 2019 (but you can start the course at anytime)

End of course certificate? – Yes, endorsed by UKEd Academy and Richard James Rogers 

Course structure: Videos, quizzes, study notes, reflections and activities

Course schedule: Flexible (work at your own pace)

After successful completion of this course you’ll earn a certificate that will look very impressive on your C.V. and you will gain lots of knowledge, new techniques, tools and skills.  

I look forward to mentoring and guiding you through the key concepts that make an excellent teacher, well, excellent!

If you have any questions at all about this exciting course, then please e-mail me at info@richardjamesrogers.com

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 Disconnect: How Over-Rewarding Fails Students

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

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

Illustrated by Sutthiya Lertyongphati

Accompanying podcast episode:

A dangerous culture has quietly found its way into a large number of American and British schools in the past decade. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing that seems pretty on the surface but harbors malice within; over-rewarding continues to take hold like a malignancy to this day. 

Betty Berdan was an American high-school junior at the time of writing this excellent opinion piece in the New York Times. She eloquently summarizes her thoughts on over-rewarding as follows:

Like many other kids my age, I grew up receiving trophy after trophy, medal after medal, ribbon after ribbon for every sports season, science fair and spelling bee I participated in. Today the dozens of trophies, ribbons and medals sit in a corner of my room, collecting dust. They do not mean much to me because I know that identical awards sit in other children’s rooms all over town and probably in millions of other homes across the country.

Rewarding kids with trophies, medals and certificates for absolutely everything they do, including participation in a sports event, seems harmless at first glance: what’s wrong with encouraging kids to take part, right? 

jenga

My thoughts on this are simple: the real-world doesn’t reward mediocrity, and if school’s are designed to prepare kids for the real world, then they shouldn’t be rewarding mediocrity either. 

Your boss doesn’t give you a pay-raise or certificate for turning up to a meeting: it’s a basic expectation. You don’t get instant recognition and brand awareness for starting an online business: you have to slog your guts out and make it happen.

The world is cruel, but it’s especially cruel to high-school graduates who’ve been babied right the way through their schooling and come out the other side believing that they’re entitled to everything: that they’ll receive recognition for doing the bare-minimum. 

Some teachers may feel that rewarding everyone, but keeping ‘special rewards for winners’ is a good way to go. But what benefits can be extrapolated from removing first, second and third place prizes at a sporting event, or even removing winner’s trophies completely?

award

According to Alfie Kohn, author of Punished by Rewards: 

A key takeaway here is that awards aren’t bad just because the losers are disappointed; everyone (including the winners) ultimately lose when schooling is turned into a scramble to defeat one’s peers

Really, Alfie? So awards are bad because losers and winners feel bitter? I think school culture has got a lot do with that. In school’s where students are encouraged to celebrate each other’s achievements, and aspire to do their best, overall achievement and attainment increases.  A massive study by the University of East Tennessee, for example, found that classroom celebrations of achievement enhanced:

  • Group solidarity
  • Sense of belonging
  • Teacher’s ability to find joy and meaning in teaching

I don’t see much about bitterness there, Alfie. 

Here’s another one I pulled-up: A meta-analysis of 96 different studies conducted by researchers at the University of Alberta found that (look at the last sentence especially):

…….reward does not decrease intrinsic motivation. When interaction effects are examined, findings show that verbal praise produces an increase in intrinsic motivation. The only negative effect appears when expected tangible rewards are given to individuals simply for doing a task.

This confirms what teachers have known for years (at least those with brains in their heads): that awards have no value when they are given to everyone, but have lots of value when they have to be earned. This coincides with the Four Rules of Praise that I wrote about in 2018 (supporting video below). 

Conclusion

Teaching profession, some words of wisdom: Awards and rewards only work to improve motivation, attainment and achievement when the students have had to earn them. Foster a school culture of collective celebration when students achieve success (such as using awards assemblies), and articulate the skills and qualities needed to achieve success to those students who sit and watch the winners, hopefully with smiles on their face and pride in knowing that one of their own made it happen, and they can too. 

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 Power of Praise: My Second Book

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

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

Illustrated by Sutthiya Lertyongphati

I’m very happy to announce that my second-book, which has (to my shame) been in the pipeline for many years, has finally been published on the Amazon Kindle store. The paperback will be released in mid-September. If you click on the image below, it’ll take you directly to the Amazon sales page. 

The Power of Praise

My new book is split into three sections:

  • The philosophy of praise (why praise is important and what its effects can be)
  • The mechanics of praise (how to actually implement the various tactics available)
  • Ways to accentuate the efficiency of praise (how to ensure that praise and feedback only takes up the time and effort that it needs to)

From the outset I make the point that praise in the form of marking provides acknowledgement for work completed. This is essential, as every student needs to know that their time and effort has been noticed, is being monitored and has been recognized.

The implication of this statement is that quick turn-around of work is necessary so that students understand the reasons behind their feedback, gain empowerment maximally and receive positive reinforcement of the skills, knowledge and concepts that they are currently learning in class.

jenga

Teachers (me included) can find it a challenge to provide high-quality feedback in a timely manner, however. This is where praise mechanics and efficiency come into play. 

There are a number of techniques that teachers can employ to save time whilst providing excellent feedback. In this new book, you’ll find sections on:

  • Peer-assessment
  • Self-assessment
  • The effective deployment of verbal feedback 
  • Automated assessment – the use of software to test our students 
  • Live marking
  • Many others

You can purchase my book here if you’d like a good, deep exploration of of a variety of praise-based techniques. As a little teaser for you, however, I’d like to share a particularly powerful technique with you.

‘Diffusive’ and ‘Absorptive’ live – marking

Diffusive live-marking is when the teacher walks around the classroom when the kids are working on a a task, pen-in-hand, and marks student work in real-time (i.e. ‘diffusing’ through the students).

Absorptive live-marking is when the teacher sits at a designated point in the classroom and calls the students to his or her desk. one-at-a-time, and marks work in real-time (i.e. figuratively ‘absorbing’ the students).

Coupled with verbal feedback, both techniques can be incredibly powerful. If you train the students to write “Mr Rogers said that………….(insert feedback here)” in a different color on their work, then you allow the students to process your feedback on a very deep-level, and this builds long-term memory. Obviously, use your name instead of mine!

Eventually, students will remember key mistakes that are repeating in their work and they will act to rectify those (they won’t like writing the same things over and over again). 

IMG_5938richard-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

Curriculum Clarity: Making Things Clear for Students

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

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

Illustrated by Sutthiya Lertyongphati

Accompanying video:

Preparing resources for students can be a really massive job: especially when you have the responsibility of getting kids ready for external exams. 

They’ll need:

  • Presentations (usually a series of PowerPoints)
  • Worksheets
  • Homework
  • Exam-style questions
  • Practical activities (for Science, D.T. and other practical subjects)
  • Learning activities along the way to make things ‘fun’ and ‘engaging’. 

mess around in class

In the olden days I used to source a ton of stuff from the web and make some stuff from scratch. The problems this caused were as follows:

  • An inconsistent teaching method/approach for each topic 
  • Inconsistent format and detail of resources (some PPTs were excellent. others only skimmed the surface of the topic)
  • Inconsistent direction and focus of the class (i.e. the ‘road ahead’)

Kids need to be very clear about what they need to learn for their exams, and in what order/topic sequence. So please sit back and relax as I share my consistency-generating tips for exam-level students. 

The Power of Praise
Richard’s new Kindle book. Only $3.99

Share the syllabus with the students on day one 

This will really help to make the ‘road ahead’ clear. Some teachers like to make a ‘kid friendly’ version of the syllabus – using language that is more easily understandable. In my experience, however, I find that this isn’t generally necessary – syllabuses tend to be clear enough. 

In addition to sharing the syllabus, map out the sequence of topics you will teach for the year ahead and share this with your students too. Some more able and hard-working kids will definitely read ahead, and it’ll help prepare your students for end-of-unit tests too. 

snacking

Keep the format and detail of all PPTs the same

I realized the importance of this when I was lucky enough to find Merinda Sautel’s amazing IB Chemistry PPTs on the internet. 

Check them out if you want to really understand the importance of this aspect of Curriculum Clarity – her PPTs follow the same format and layout for each topic and are all detailed enough so that a complete course is created. 

IB Chemistry is split into distinct topics that follow the Course Guide – there’s a PPT at Mindy Sautel’s site for topics 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, etc. Everything is sequenced and clear.

Keep homework and questions consistent and linked to the syllabus 

Maybe your syllabus is split into topics A,B,C and D with subtopics for each section. Do you have exam-style questions for topics A1, A2, A3, etc?

Organizing your questions by topic in this way will really build-up the subject knowledge that your students need to pass the final exam.

IMG_5938richard-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