The ability to read is possibly the most important skill that students should master whilst at school. It is so important, in fact, that a simple Google search of the phrase “The importance of reading for students” brings up hundreds of millions of hits (around 717 million at the time of writing this article, to be exact).
Do your students love to read?
There are numerous benefits of reading: for adults and children alike. I could choose to spend the rest of this article describing those benefits, but I fear that I would be preaching to the converted. As teachers, we already know that reading is important. I hope you will permit me, however, to at least include my favourite quote about reading from one of my favourite actors:
For reading: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There’s no new problem you could have–with your parents, with school, with a bully. There’s no new problem that someone hasn’t already had and written about it in a book.
Will Smith
So, we know that our students must learn to read. However, what’s equally important is that our students learn to love reading. And this is what I want to explore with you today: How do we get our students, or our children, to enjoy reading? How do we prevent reading from becoming a laborious, dull part of their schooling and instead turn it into to a relaxing and, dare I say it, exciting past-time?
Tip #1: Turn reading into a collaborative task (with a creative output)
Reading is all-to-often seen as a solitary activity, which is most unfortunate. Set up times, or clubs, where students can read to each other and perhaps generate some kind of creative output – perhaps building a model of what they’ve read (Design Technology), calculating and mapping the frequency of different words (Mathematics) or even creating the costumes the characters might be wearing (Textiles). When reading becomes an active process, students realize that there’s actually a lot of ‘juice’ one can squeeze from a book, or even a short segment of text.
Perhaps you could couple collaborative reading with a technological task too – such as creating a Minecraft landscape of the setting for the story, or even setting up a Google Site online journal of learning.
My award-winning book for teachers is a popular choice for teacher book clubs.
The possibilities for collaboration in reading, coupled with creative outputs, really are limited only by one’s imagination. In fact, you may wish to ‘crowdsource’ ideas from the children themselves, perhaps by using a worksheet/prompt like the one below:
Could this be a tool to help your students read collaboratively?
If you like the above tool, then you can download it as a pdfhere.
#2: Host reading and reading-related competitions and events
Some ideas to consider are:
Celebrate World Book Day by allowing students to come into school dressed as their favourite book characters. Perhaps offer special prizes for the best costumes, or even run a fashion show on the day. Award plus points/merits/whatever your school’s ‘reward tokens’ are for students who bring in their favourite books on the day.
Invite a local author to come into school to talk about their work. As an author myself, I know for a fact that the author will love the opportunity to gain some exposure, and if you ask politely you may even get some free, signed books for school out of it.
Run book clubs or events by genre – specialization can generate more interest in reading. Have a day for self-help books, one for non-fiction, one for animals – anything that the students are interested in.
Take the students to a reading-related place, such as a local library or actual location from a book. Students will often be unaware that these places exist in the first place, and their discovery may set in-motion some profound changes that result in a love of reading. My primary school took me to my local library as child, for example, and that place became my study-hangout in my teens. I just loved being surrounded by all of those books. It’s a feeling that’s very unique.
#3: Read with your students, and to your students, with passion
Get involved in all of the activities listed above. Join the collaboration groups, for example, even if only for 10 minutes at a time. Read topical news articles, extracts from books, quotes of the day or any materials that provide positive messages for students. Have a sign outside your door that tells students what you are reading at that time.
Bottom line – get stuck in yourself! Never underestimate the subliminal messages that students pick up on when they see us model positive behaviors.
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Videos are a staple of the modern practitioner’s arsenal. They’re often easy to source, well-made and free.
Video hosting platforms like YouTube and Vimeo have allowed us, as teachers, to turn our classrooms into makeshift cinemas (and our virtual classrooms into large resource banks). This is a revolution of sorts – one that has been spurred on by many factors, not least the declining cost of smart boards, sound systems and data projectors as the years have gone by.
As a teacher myself I have made use of videos in my practice extensively over the past sixteen years: even earning the invisible badge of honour that comes with wheeling in a TV on a trolley with accompanying DVD player back in 2008.
Videos can offer great instructional material for students – but only when they are sourced and executed carefully by the teacher. Whilst this may seem like a simple and straightforward process, further analysis reveals that there is much to consider.
In today’s blog post I will draw upon my experience of using videos extensively over my entire career. My aim is to provide you with strategies and points to consider, so that you don’t make some big mistakes along the way (like I have!).
So, without further ado, let’s hit the ‘Play’ button and get right into these top tips for using videos as teacher.
Tip #1: ALWAYS watch the video yourself before you show it to your students
This can be a challenge when time is limited, but it is a crucial first step that we should always take. Watching the video beforehand allows us to check the following:
Is the content at the right level?
Is it age-appropriate? Are there scenarios within the video that could be culturally insensitive?
Does the video contain any swearing?
Is the volume of the video loud-enough?
Will I show the auto-generated captions/subtitles within the video? Are these subtitles an accurate reflection of the spoken words within the video? Do the captions contain any swear words by mistake (or on-purpose)?
Are there any points-of-interest that I can capitalise on? Are there any real-life examples or applications that I can think of that link directly to the video’s content?
One key mistake I’ve made a number of times as a teacher is sourcing a video quickly, only to find that much of the material was either too advanced or too basic for my students. Be particularly careful with captions/subtitles – a old colleague of mine got into some hot water for showing a video to students that contained clean spoken language, but subtitles containing swear words.
Surely it must be every teacher’s worst nightmare to show a video to students that wasn’t checked beforehand, only to hear or see crassness, immorality or inappropriate scenarios on the video when played in on a big screen in front of the students. The fear of embarrassment alone should be enough for us to remember the cardinal rule of using videos in teaching: ALWAYS watch the videos before we share them with our students.
Tip #2: Keep Videos Between 5 and 15 minutes long (as a general Rule of Thumb)
I’ve made the mistake on a number of occasions of finding a reputable, clean, amazing video, only to then play it to the class for 40 minutes or longer (e.g. in the case of lengthy documentaries). When the videos we choose are too long (or the segments we choose to play are too long) then many students will become disengaged and irritable. This is understandable – in today’s digitized social landscape students are more distracted than ever before in human history.
For me personally, I attempt to keep my videos to 15 minutes maximum. For this to happen, I have to choose videos (or video segments) very carefully. Sometimes I’ll source videos that get straight to the point (e.g. a laboratory demonstration of an experiment) and that take less than 5 minutes to play through.
In short – be aware of how much time the students spend watching the video. Is that time being efficiently used, or does the video explore topics that the students don’t need to know?
Tip #3: Watch the students as you’re watching the video
I once was blasted by my mentor during my teacher-training year. Why? – I had committed the atrocious crime of showing a video to my students, and then casually sitting down to watch the video with them.
Of course, any experienced teacher will immediately be able to identify the inadequacies of this strategy – when you don’t watch the students as the video is playing, then small pockets of chatter, disruptiveness and distraction can manifest.
My mentor put it bluntly: “When you show a video to your students you must watch the students. Don’t watch the video!”. I had been reprimanded (well, probably just advised, but it felt like a reprimand).
That was sixteen years ago. Today, I would have to say that I disagree with my old mentor, at least to some degree.
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I believe that as a video is playing it is most effective for a teacher to watch the students AND watch the video. Consider the following:
Walk over to students who are chatting during a video, or who are being disruptive, and stand next to them. Normally this will bring them back on-task, but if it doesn’t, then a quiet one-to-one word should do the trick. “I really need you to focus on this video, Lucy”, for example.
Stand to the side or behind the class so that every student is within your field of vision.
If disruption becomes too pervasive, then don’t be afraid to stop the video and talk to the class. For example: “I’m so sorry to those students who were listening quietly to the video. It is unfortunate that some students are not paying attention”. Then play the video again ONLY when every student is focused.
However, why should we watch the video as we are watching the students? Well, there are many answers to that question, but the core principle is that you may wish to use key material within the video for discussion or tasks later. You may even want to pause the video at key points to discuss a real-life example or application, or even to re-phrase something the video has just described. Don’t be afraid of pausing videos at key moments like this, by the way – students learn a lot when prior concepts are linked to content that has been very recently covered.
Tip #4: Make sure the video has a purpose, and is utilized afterwards
We must not get into the habit of showing videos to students for the sole purpose of filling time, however. We must attempt to extract all of the juice that we can out of a video. Consider asking your students to do the following:
Make a list of key bullet points as the video is playing (which could be used as source material later in a group activity for example).
Complete a worksheet based on the video.
Use information from the video to complete exam-style questions or past-paper questions.
Follow the instructions within the video, step-by-step (e.g. if it’s a ‘How to’ video’). This could apply to tasks as diverse as coding, model-making, conducting scientific experiments, cooking, etc.
Collaborate with others to create a presentation, infographic, mind-map, news report or debating panel based on the concepts and information covered.
There are exceptions to this rule, of course. Sometimes we might want to show students videos as stimuli material, or to build passion for and interest in a subject. Recently, for example, I was teaching a physics lesson about forces and motion. The lesson covered pretty rudimentary calculations involving speed, distance, time and acceleration. However, I was presented with a most unusual gift – NASA had just landed a new rover on Mars. This was a golden opportunity to excite my students – so I played some footage from the Mars landing and initiated a short discussion about the physics involved.
Conclusion
I feel that we’ve become so used to the accessibility of high-quality videos that we’ve become somewhat complacent. We must always ensure that video content is sourced, planned and executed well. We do this by:
Watching the videos before we show them to our students
Being mindful of video duration
Keeping our eyes on our students, as we’re watching the video with them
Making sure that there’s some kind of activity or task included in the lesson that links to the video in some way (where possible)
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Parents and teachers have long been concerned about the mental health effects of excessive screen time on the children we care for, and teach. Oftentimes, we compare the lived experiences of modern day teens and young adults with what we went through at that age. Legitimate worries are attributed to questions surrounding disproportionate tech use – questions such as:
Are students today less fit and healthy than they were before the World Wide Web became mainstream?
What are the negative mental health effects of social media on adolescents?
Is there a causal link between tech use and mental health issues in teens?
Has technology usage increased the prevalence of mental health issues in teens?
The short answer to the last question is that there’s not enough evidence to suggest that tech use has increased mental health issues in teens – that, at least, is the conclusion of a recent Oxford Universitystudy. Unfortunately, however, the directness of this conclusion was lost on the BBC who made the unforgivable blunder of misrepresenting the study completely. Their headline shockingly reads‘Teens, tech and mental health: Oxford study finds no link’
To most professionals in education this BBC headline, and indeed the conclusions of the actual study itself, seem premature, inaccurate and potentially misleading given evidence that has arisen from other studies that aimed to investigate causal links between screen time and mental health issues in children, teens and young adults.
So, what was special about the Oxford study? Were the researchers even able to come to such a broad, valid conclusion in the first place? I will answer these questions via a series of bullet-points:
The sample size was large, with 430,561 teenagers and high school children being involved in the study
Only UK and US students were studied
Participants were aged 10 – 15 years old
The data was collected by MTF (since 1991), UndSoc (since 2009) and YRBS (since 1991). Only 40,000 out of the 430,561 students were from the UK.
Only 139,264 of of the participants were asked about their social media usage (because, of course, much of the data was collected before 2009, which is when social media became accessible via mobile devices).
So, basically, what have the Oxford team done? That’s right – they’ve taken legacy data, overwhelmingly biased towards the American demographic, and analyzed the results using some statistical tests. Apparently, this is enough for the esteemed academics at Oxford to come to the conclusion that “There Is No Evidence That Associations Between Adolescents’ Digital Technology Engagement and Mental Health Problems Have Increased”. The BBC takes this adulteration further by boldly stating that “There remains ‘little association’ between technology use and mental-health problems, a study of more than 430,000 10 to 15-year-olds suggests.“
A teacher’s perspective
I’m personally quite angry by the misleading messages that these inaccurate conclusions have transmitted to the masses. Anyone reading the BBC article, in particular, would think that there’s no need to be concerned about excessive screen time and social media usage in teens. The real story, however, is quite different:
ADutch studyinvolving 10,000 participants in Rotterdam concluded that smartphones are causing nearsightedness in children. This has also been backed up by studies and observations inCanada, AmericaandIreland.
The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health caused shockwaves in 2016 with the conclusion of itsstudy: that smartphone and tablet use correlates strongly with obesity in teens. Similar findings have come from a number of respectable sources, including a massive,global joint studybetween Stanford University and the American National Institutes of Health which was concluded in 2015.
Sleep-deprivation is a common side-effect of smartphone and tablet addiction. Research from the Division of Cardiology at the University of California (San Francisco), for example, has found that the use of mobile devices near bedtime is connected with low-quality sleep.
However, these aforementioned studies focus on the physical effects of screen time on children: nearsightedness, obesity and sleep-deprivation. The Oxford ‘study’ focused on mental health issues, so what point am I am trying to make?
Do causal links exist between nearsightedness, obesity, sleep-deprivation and mental health in children and teens?
A number of studies have reported significant associations between obesity and poor psychological wellbeing in children but findings have been inconsistent. A 2007 study of 3,898 children from England concluded that “being overweight, rather than obese, had no impact on overall reported mental health.” However, “17% of children with obesity were above the suggested screening threshold for emotional problems“.
Perhaps the most obvious link occurs between sleep-deprivation and mental health, and numerous studies conclude that a causal relationship does exist. A 2013studyconcluded, for example, that “early sleep deprivation in childhood may result in long-term behaviour issues” and even that “sleep problems impact core symptoms of common neurodevelopmental disorders”.
Studies such as these seem to have been ignored by the Oxford team. Maybe, however, I’m making tentative links between mental health and physical problems, and then linking those tentatively to screen-time and social media usage?
Hold your horses, because there’s more.
Areportpublished by the Telegraph includes a headline is enough to stun any parent or teacher:
Children spend up to 10 hours a day ‘mindlessly swiping’ their mobiles, study finds
The article summarizes the findings of technological research into what young people actually do online. It’s thought to be the first time that technology has been used to analyse the mobile-device usage habits of children.
The findings are alarming:
Behavior is compulsive, with young people typically spending no longer than one-minute looking at any particular page of content before swiping to something else
Social media takes up hours and hours of teenagers’ free time
Children from ‘low-income’ households seem more prone to compulsive use of social media than others
Many children in the study admitted to falling asleep at night whilst on their phones
Many children admitted that they felt that their compulsions were “mindless” and “pointless”, but felt compelled to use their smartphones on a near-constant basis anyway because there’s a feeling of incompleteness or ‘losing out’ when the phone is not being checked.
Some children in the study felt the need to check their phones whilst actually being interviewed by the research panel
In many cases, children are spending up to 12 hours on their phones per day! Take this shocking example for instance (quoted from the Telegraph article):
Typical was Olympia, aged 17, who in one 24-hour period spent 3.3 hours on Snapchat, 2.5 hours on Instagram, 2 hours on Face Time, 2.4 hours on What’s App and 1.8 hours on Safari – a total of 12 hours.
I could go on to explore more sources to support the argument that social media usage, and screen-time, negatively affect the mental health of teens and children. I fear that this blog post would become a behemoth of statistics if I were to do that, however, so I’ll leave you with a few links to peruse yourself:
Ofcom 2017 ‘Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report‘. Amongst the key findings were the shocking revelation that 77% of 12-15 year olds play computer games for around 12 hours per week, and 99% go online for around 21 hours per week. The 2020 reportsuggests that screen-time has increased, with children using devices for a much wider-variety of purposes than in 2017.
A November 2020studyby the University of British Columbia found that “Longer screen time (more than two hours a day) was associated with lower levels of life satisfaction and optimism, and higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms.”
Overall conclusions
I think it was highly negligent of the University of Oxford to ignore the links that clearly exist between screen time and….
Nearsightedness
Obesity
Sleep-deprivation
Lower levels of life satisfaction and optimism[UBC]
Higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms[UBC]
As an influential university, Oxford should really have done it’s due diligence before releasing the paper. The message that has been interpreted: that no causal link exists between tech use and poor mental health, is just plain wrong. The BBC, also, should be held to account for their blatant dilution of the study’s findings: from “There’s not enough evidence to suggest that mental health issues have increased as a result of tech” (the Oxford conclusion) to “No link exists between teens, tech and mental health”.
If anything, today’s blog post has been an interesting expose’ of big institutions, and their overwhelming negligence despite their good public standing.
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The bell rang at 12.30pm to the typical sigh of relief from students who’d been sat in lessons all morning. Bustling through the corridors towards the school canteen, library, school field or some other designated ‘turf’ were the majority of my classmates at St. Richard Gwyn R.C. High School. I, on the other hand, had an appointment with my favorite teacher.
It felt like an easy journey to the German classroom. I was excited because I would be practicing my German oral phrases and responses with my teacher, who had been giving up a good portion of her lunchtimes for the past few weeks to help me become more confident and competent. She was always patient, and always willing to help.
Then, there was that time when my Biology teacher talked me through an end-of-unit test I had completed, so that I could know exactly where I had lost marks. I still remember the conversation word-for-word, almost thirty years later. I finally grasped some important concepts that day.
At the core of my good fortune to attend an outstanding school as a teenager was one most important thing: outstanding teachers. All of my teachers really cared for my wellbeing, and they often went above-and-beyond to provide me with extra tuition, or even to have one-on-one conversations with me to put me on-track, or to reprimand me when I had slipped up. Great teachers, I found, were more important than great facilities.
There are other factors that make a school outstanding, however. Even the best efforts of a team of outstanding teachers can be thwarted by the subterfuge of negligence, bad policies or even school culture. In this blog post, I will explore all of the key factors that work together to make a school outstanding.
#1: The school’s vision and missionare the starting points
A well-crafted mission statement that infuses everything the school does as a community can have a massive and profound impact on students’ lives.
At Saint Richard Gwyn, for example, our slogan was “Learning Together In Christ“. This phrase was spoken at every assembly, written in many school publications (such as the school’s weekly newsletter) and was reinforced by teachers during some of our lessons. I don’t think I and my peers fully realized the power of this collective action by the school back then, but that statement was actually having a dramatic effect on the way we saw the world, and ourselves. Whether you are religious or not, you can appreciate that this statement sent home a bigger message than just those four words:
At our school we learn together. Our focus is serious, and we help each other.
We have faith in Christ at our school. We are expected to follow the moral principles outlined in the gospels.
America’s Center for School Change has the following to say about a school’s Vision and Mission:
Developing the school’s vision and mission are two of the most important steps toward creating a successful program. Done well, they give clarity and direction for a school. A muddy vision or mission can help lead to continuing conflicts, and a school that has difficulty identifying priorities.
Center for School Change
I like that last part about “identifying priorities”. What does your school’s vision and mission and say about your institution’s priorities, and how well-embedded are those priorities?
Over the years, many educational scholars have stressed the importance of the school’s vision and mission, and how well those ideas are communicated and transformed into expectations. A classic amongst these scholars is William Rutherford of the University of Texas who, as far back as 1985, stated that effective school leaders need to:
have clear, informed visions of what they want their schools to become; visions that focus on students and their needs
translate these visions into goals for their schools and expectations for their teachers, students and administrators
So it would seem that simply having a vision and mission for a school is not enough to make a school truly outstanding. That vision and mission must focus on students and their needs, be translated into workable goals and be formulated as expectations for teachers, students and all staff members.
#2: Outstanding teachers make an outstanding school
A school’s best resource, by far, is the body of staff that comprise that school. Get that right and a school will usually be able to cope with the ebb and flow of daily circumstance in an effective manner. However, still to this day, schools are focusing far too much on teachers’ qualifications rather than experience, references and reputations, in my opinion.
This is the point where I’m going to have to speak bluntly and directly: an advanced degree does not make someone an amazing teacher; nor does a degree or qualification from a top university. Those credentials, actually, are meaningless in the context of determining one’s ability to manage behaviour, plan lessons thoroughly, teach with clarity and teach at an appropriate pace. Those qualifications may, however, allow a school to better market itself to parents and potential clients/customers (particularly in the private sector), but those qualifications never, in my honest opinion, determine a person’s ability to teach properly.
Teaching is a vocation: plain and simple. It’s a profession that one has to be built for, and one has to be passionate about in order to succeed. Experience has taught me that qualifications alone are not enough to determine a teacher’s suitability to teach. I, for example, have worked with a number of Oxford, Cambridge and PhD graduates over the years who were awful teachers who couldn’t communicate effectively with students and, in a significant number of cases, couldn’t teach at an acceptable pace or keep students engaged for long periods of time. On the other hand, I’ve also worked many such high-level graduates who were excellent teachers and helpful team-players.
Have you experienced the same in your time as a teacher?
My message for schools is simple: Focus on what the students and colleagues think of the teacher you’re hiring. Place more emphasis on teacher-portfolios and references – evidence of actual teaching ability – rather than the quality of a candidate’s qualifications.
#3: Effective systems make a school outstanding
Systems are like the glue that holds everything together. When a school has a clear vision and mission that’s backed-up by outstanding teachers and effective systems, everything then falls into place and runs smoothly (most of the time).
The most essential systems that schools need to have in-place can be remembered by what I hope is a useful acronym:C.A.R.S. – Communication,Action,Rewards andSanctions.
Communication systems need to be easy to use, and suitable for purpose. Schools that use the same system to communicate with parents, students, teachers and other stakeholders tend to experience better overall harmony than those that do not. Many schools, for example, choose to use e-mail for these purposes as it is a professional system that everyone can access. However, some schools (e.g. those in China) prefer to use a more real-time system for staff (e.g. chat apps like QQ and WeChat) and more traditional systems, like e-mail, for communicating with parents. Systems like this can cause undue stress to teachers, however, as it can be easy to miss messages posted within a chat stream. Teachers can also feel under constant pressure to respond, even outside of official working hours.
Action systems need to be workable. Teachers need to do things every day in a timely manner. Printing and photocopying, for example, should never be problematic (massive headaches are caused when printers don’t work, or when teachers are restricted to quotas, for example). Reports need to written via systems that are shared, and easy to navigate and access. Mock exams and internal exams need to be delivered via systems that make it easy for everyone to get their papers printed and organized in a timely manner. Timetabling needs to be seamless. Student locker systems need to be accessible and workable. The role of the form tutor/homeroom teacher within the school, and the systems needed to fulfill that role, need to be easy-to-use (a house system can often help with this). Registration systems need to be workable. Assessment systems and instructional software need to be carefully chosen and subscriptions need to be renewed on-time.File-sharing systems need to be in-place so that teachers can share useful resources with one-another.
Which action systems do you use in your school, and how could they be made to be more workable and accessible?
Rewards and sanctions systems – with emphasis placed more on rewards than sanctions. The consensus on the approach that should be taken is pretty clear in educational circles, and has been for some time. The UK’sDepartment for Education and Skills summarizes the key components of such systems best in my opinion:
Rewards, or positive consequences, are likely to encourage pupils to repeat the associated behaviour. Systems that emphasise praise for positive behaviour or regular attendance are more effective in motivating pupils to make appropriate choices. These appropriate choices contribute to a positive ethos in the school, thereby creating an environment for effective teaching and learning. . . . [S]anctions might be used only as a last resort, because using every opportunity to reinforce positive behaviour will have a greater and longer lasting effect than the constant use of sanctions for negative behaviour.
UK Department for Education and Skills, “Behaviour and Attendance Strand. Toolkit Unit 2. Key Stage 3 National Strategy. Everyday Policies: Rewards, Sanctions and Promotion of Positive Behaviour.” pp. 21. [Online] Available at: https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/5708/1/6c37a9499c7e75eaa76fd736c63ca731.pdf
In fact, it’s been known for some time that rewards work better than sanctions for promoting positive behaviour. The most notable foundational statement on this matter, for example, was made in the concluding text of The Elton Report (1989):
Schools which put too much faith in punishments to deter bad behaviour are likely to be disappointed
Outstanding schools always have the following elements in place:
A clear vision and mission that’s student-centered and easily translates into goals and expectations for students, teachers and all stakeholders
Outstanding teachers, with a proven track record of excellence in teaching (not necessarily academic excellence)
Effective communication, action, rewards and sanctions systems
Bibliography and references (in order of appearance)
W.L. Rutherford. School principals as effective leaders. Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 67 number1, 1985, pp. 31-34
UK Department for Education and Skills. Behaviour and Attendance Strand. Toolkit Unit 2. Key Stage 3 National Strategy. Everyday Policies: Rewards, Sanctions and Promotion of Positive Behaviour. pp. 21. [Online] Available at: https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/5708/1/6c37a9499c7e75eaa76fd736c63ca731.pdf
Students and teachers the world over faced unprecedented challenges as the pandemic raged through its first and second waves. Staff and children were sent home (and back to school) on multiple occasions in many cases, and teaching methodologies had to undergo a massive revamp out of the sheer necessity to adapt to the immediate situation schools were (and, in some cases, still are) faced with. This ‘jolt’ of circumstance has changed education forever.
In today’s blog post I will explore the main ways in which I believe teaching and learning have changed, and what the implications are for students and teachers today.Readers should bear in-mind that this is an opinion piece, albeit based on my experience in the field as a high-school science teacher (at an international school) and my own research.
#1: Students have realized that traditional university education offers little return-on-investment
Coronavirus had a double-whammy effect on universities and colleges:
Students were sent home and had to learn online, raising questions about the effectiveness of instruction delivered at traditional lecture halls crammed with hundreds of students.
Overseas students stopped applying for courses in the UK and the United States in large numbers, and sought local alternatives.
These issues have been further compounded by the fact that a university degree no longer prepares a person for a lifelong career.
The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU), for example, surveyed about 400 employers and 613 college students about how prepared those students were to enter the professional world in 2015. Somekey findingswere:
65 percent of the students surveyed felt their writing skills were strong enough for the professional world, but only 27 percent of employers felt the same way.
55 percent of students felt they were well prepared to work with people in which they had little in-common, but only 18 percent of employers agreed.
You can download the AACU’s research paper as a pdf for freehere.
The merits of a university-level education have been questioned for decades, and now that the pandemic has forced so-many to ‘learn from home’ we are experiencing a new realization that education needs to be modern and delivered in real-time. As a result, online courses arebooming, and students are now quickly realizing that there are affordable, higher-quality alternatives to a traditional university degree.
#2: Practical skills training has gained in popularity
There are many skills that students can’t fully acquire via remote-learning:
Dangerous/specialized science experiments (e.g. dissections and chemical reactions)
Woodwork, metalwork, carpentry, plumbing and other vocational skills
Mechanical and electronic engineering and robotics
Specialized cookery
As a result, many schools focused heavily on practical-skills training when students returned to school after the first-wave subsided (in large part due to fear of losing this opportunity in the event of a second-wave, which many schools did actually experience later on). In my opinion, this has caused a renewed interest in the practical skills enrichment activities that are often non-compulsory, yet very useful, components of school courses. I believe that we will see schools incorporating more hands-on tasks and activities in the years to come as a product of this realization.
#3: High-quality online courses are booming
Remote-learning is all-the-rage right now, and the numbers are staggering:
According to arecent surveyby China Youth Daily, more than 87 percent of Chinese parents have signed their children up for online tutoring sessions to enrich their education
Financing for education technology start-ups has more than doubled, rising to $12.58 billion worldwide in 2020 – up from $4.81 billion in 2019, according to a report fromCB Insights
Students are becoming increasingly aware that short-certificate courses from high-quality providers like EdX and Udemy are not-only affordable, but will provide the very latest industry-leading, accredited information. This poses a big challenge for traditional schools that are somewhat stuck-in-the-past following syllabuses and curricula that are at least several years old. In my opinion, schools will need to adopt fluid schemes of work and modernize fast, so that students can learn relevant, current, topical information in a traditional classroom setting.
#4: EdTech used for remote-teaching is now being used in traditional classrooms
Video-conferencing skyrocketed during the pandemic:
Zoom’s sales in the last three months of 2020were up 370%compared to the same period in 2019, hitting $882.5 million.
During the peak of the first wave of the pandemic, Google Meets was addingaround 3 millionusers per day.
Schools are now using video-conferencing within the school buildings themselves for assemblies, staff-meetings, whole-school quizzes and even screen-share tasks (a newly realized application for many teachers).
Video-conferencing’s adoption will make teachers more accountable, in my opinion, as illness may not be accepted as a reason to miss meetings which can be accessed remotely from home (even if only audio is activated). Schools will also adopt new ways to allow students to showcase work in real-time, as the screen-share features offered by video-conferencing systems facilitate this process quickly and easily (especially as student-work becomes more and more digitized).
#5: Schools are appreciating the need for kids to catch-up
Gaps in knowledge and misconceptions acquired during the remote-learning phase are surfacing quickly as students return to classrooms. This is generating a renewed interest in traditional pedagogical techniques such asaccelerated learninganddifferentiation. Another positive is that many teachers are realizing further the importance of pace, and how students often have to have information presented in a number of ways, multiple times, before it is truly embedded. These discoveries will challenge schools to adopt the very-best instructional techniques and offer catch-up camps and classes for students who fall behind, long after the pandemic is over. This may provide school teachers with extra sources of income, as well as offering students the enrichment they need to succeed.
The problems presented by students needing to catch-up are not easy to solve, however. The British government’s recent programme to help pupils who missed school to catch up may not be reaching the most disadvantaged children, according to a recentreportby the National Audit Office. The issues here seem to relate to tutoring not being provided in the first place to disadvantaged children, as opposed to any flaws in the methodologies being used [BBC News]. Schools will therefore need to ensure that attendance for catch-up courses is being monitored, along with the methodologies being executed.
#6: Terminal examinations have lost some of their credibility
Many exam-boards have cancelled examinations for the 2020/2021 academic year, as was the case last year. Grades have been assigned on the basis of teacher-predictions and coursework, and I believe that this has caused many students to question the validity of terminal examinations as an effective assessment tool. This shift in thought has also rippled into the online-learning market, which is gaining in popularity due to the very fact that terminal examinations are often absent from key course assessment components. Qualifications and certificates that are awarded on the basis of a student’s portfolio of achievements (such as course assignments) are gaining respect and kudos, and I foresee this trend continuing well-into the future.
#7: Students and teachers have become more tech-savvy
Classwork, homework, coursework and exams are being assigned, completed and assessed by evermore creative means. Students have had to learn to how to use specific learning apps out of necessity, and teachers have benefitted from automated assessment systems such as Google Forms, Educake, MyMaths, Lexia Learning and others. If the pandemic has had only one positive effect on education, then it is this: computer literacy has improved across the board.
This emergence of teaching and learning software and disruptive EdTech systems is not all sunshine and rainbows, however. It threatens to destroy the very fabric of conventional teaching. It is not inconceivable, for example, to foresee human teachers being fully replaced with software, droids and surveillance systems within a decade from now (easily). The main takeaway for teachers, in my opinion, is this: skill-up in EdTech, coding and computer science fast – we may be out of a job if we don’t.
This gradual erosion of a teacher’s role from ‘sage on a stage’ to ‘guide on the side’, and perhaps even one day to ‘chieftaincy to see with infrequency’, is something I’ve written aboutbefore. I’ve also made a video about this very subject matter which I’ve embedded below.
#8: More support is being made available for staff and student mental-health and wellbeing
The pandemic has had a devastating effect on staff and student mental health. Reuters, for example, surveyed school districts across America in February 2021 to assess the mental health impacts of school shutdowns. These districts serve more than 2.2 million students. Of the 74 districts that responded, 74% reported multiple indicators of increased mental health stresses among students. More than 50% reported rises in mental health referrals and counseling. [Yahoo News].
One positive of this is that school leaders are recognizing that staff and student well-being matters, and that can only be a good thing. Schools would do well to recruit counselors to assist with student referrals. and staff workload should be monitored closely. Happy teachers make happy students, and downtime gives teachers time to plan better lessons.
#9: The dangers of excessive screen-time and gaming addiction have been highlighted
I’ve written about the dangers of screen-timebefore, and we must not forget that an EdTech revolution brings with it some nasty realities, highlighted by one expansivereport:
On-screenbehavior is often compulsive, with young people typically spending no longer than one-minute looking at any particular page of content before swiping to something else
Social media takes up hours and hours of teenagers’ free time
Children from ‘low-income’ households seem more prone to compulsive use of social media than others
Many children in the study admitted to falling asleep at night whilst on their phones
Many children admitted that they felt that their compulsions were “mindless” and “pointless”, but felt compelled to use their smartphones on a near-constant basis anyway because there’s a feeling of incompleteness or ‘losing out’ when the phone is not being checked.
Some children in the study felt the need to check their phones whilst actually being interviewed by the research panel
The supervision of students whilst using EdTech is going to become a bigger and bigger issue as we move forward as educators. How many times, for example, have you walked around the classroom during some student-centered online activity to find students abruptly switching/closing some gaming/chat screens? I know I have, on much more than one occasion.
The solution may be a technological one – allow students to connect only through LAN or school WIFI and filter/monitor usage. Another solution may be surveillance systems inside classrooms, or perhaps even mandating that screens be always visible to the teacher (e.g. by having students sit in rows with their screens facing the teacher’s desk). There are obvious pros and cons to each of these proposals, and the decisions made will depend strongly on school culture and individual course/student aims.
#10: The pandemic pointed anew to blatant inequalities of income
Students in low-income areas have had to contend with less access toschool counselors, technologyand the training needed to access said technology. Some school districts in various countries around the world have responded by shipping laptops to schools and individual students.
As teaching continues to digitize, the needs of low-income students will continue to grow. Schools will need to address these issues, and that may put financial strain on districts and education authorities. Eventually, we may even see technology investment being pitted against the salaries of human teachers, and this will make our need to compete more immediate. As teachers, we are no longer fighting for jobs with each other – we’re contending with educational technology that threatens to completely replace us.
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In the quest to better ourselves on a daily basis we often consume self-help advice from places like YouTube, blogs and books. Most of this advice focusses on proactive things we should do to achieve success. With titles to choose from such as4 Straight Forward Steps to Success and If You Commit to Yourself, Here’s What Will Happen, there’s certainly is no shortage of motivational and personal growth guidance out there.
Most of this self-help material, however, focusses on new things we should implement on a regular basis. Strategies that provide us with new things to do to improve productivity, health or wealth.
Many people use to-do lists to clarify priorities for the day, week or longer. How many of us, however, have thought to use not-to-do lists?
Few resources focus on what NOT to do, and this is a pity as such advice can often be the clearest and simplest to understand.
This video resonated with me because of its simplicity, and my somewhat skewed opinion that it’s easier to stop myself doing destructive things than it is to implement a completely new habit. Perhaps I felt that I should stop doing destructive things first, and get used to that, before implementing some new strategies in my life.
So, let’s get right into how the past 14 days of trialing these 10 habit-stoppers went.
Habit Stopping Tip #1: Don’t hit the snooze button
This is something I’ve ashamedly preached aboutbefore, but in my daily life I’ve found it really difficult to implement. My warm bed entices me to climb back into it when my alarm goes off, and this is further compounded by an extreme feeling of tiredness for at least 10 minutes after waking (something that has gotten worse, I think, as I’ve grown older).
I managed to do this on 9 out of 14 days.
On those days that I did get right out of bed as soon as the alarmsounded, I found that I was in a much better mood during my teaching day (and in a state of better physical alertness) than on those days when I snoozed. I also found out that if I have an immediate ‘get out of bed’ ritual to follow, then I am much more likely to actually get out of bed. At the moment, that ritual involves switching off my alarm and immediately walking to the nearest 7-11 convenience store to buy coffee and breakfast – this acts as a kind of reward for not hitting snooze. If I were to snooze, then I probably wouldn’t have time for this.
As a result of not hitting the snooze button on 9 out of 14 days I was able to eat breakfast before school started, read over lesson plans and even avoid traffic because I left my home earlier, which brings me on to tip number 2…………
Habit Stopping Tip #2: Don’t get mad at traffic
Leaving home earlier (because I didn’t snooze) meant that there was less traffic to get mad at, so tip number one definitely rippled into tip number 2.
I have gotten mad at traffic many times in the past – and at my taxi driver for not driving fast enough; not turning quickly enough or even for going along a route I didn’t prefer. All of this mental complaining would put me in an angry frame of mind before my school day had even started.
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I managed to not complain at traffic for 14 out of the 14 days, and I found that I was in a better mood at school because of it.
Habit Stopping Tip #3: Don’t be late
This is one I’ve always advocated, and it’s significance will surely be obvious to the readers of this blog. When we’re late, then what we are saying is that ‘Your time is not valuable enough for me to be on-time’.
A good analogy I was once told is that if you had to turn up at a designated location to receive 10 million pounds in cash at 6am tomorrow, then you would certainly be there on-time, perhaps even arriving very early for this appointment.
We turn up early and on-time to those things we consider important enough to be punctual for. We therefore need to assign a high-level of importance to meetings, duties and any other activities/events that require us to be punctual.
Once again, tip number 1 (Don’t hit the snooze button) allows us to be on-time, every time.
Habit Stopping Tip #4: Don’t tolerate gossip
This is a principle I have (thankfully) had the sense to follow since day one of my teaching career, and I wrote about the devastating effects that gossip can have for teachers in my debut book,The Quick Guide to Classroom Management.
When we gossip, we show people that we cannot be trusted. Secretly, our coworkers are thinking “I can’t trust him – what if he gossips about me one day”. Gossip also circulates quickly, and so-called friends can very often be duplicitous: acting as ‘double-agents’ who pass on information to those who have been gossiped about.
Just don’t gossip – it’s that simple.
Not tolerating gossip takes this principle to another level – the advice being that if you hear gossip, then you should shut it down with, perhaps, a statement like “I don’t think it’s appropriate for this conversation to be happening”. This advanced-level step, however, requires bravery, and its consequences will depend on your workplace ethos and culture. You may just wish to take the easy way out by simply standing up and walking out of the room, or walking away from the gossip, whenever you hear it.
Habit Stopping Tip #5: Don’t watch the news
I found this one SO DIFFICULT to implement, and this really surprised me! By consciously attempting to stop myself from reading the news, I discovered that I often scroll through news websites because I’m simply bored. I’m hooked – and it was hard to break to this habit.
The idea behind this is that news is a distraction, and is very often biased anyway. The majority of the news we read is bad news, and most of it describes events that are beyond our control. Why waste our time and energy feeling sad about things we can’t change?
On those days that I stopped myself reading the news, I found myself with little else to distract me besides work. This increased my productivity.
Habit Stopping Tip #6: Don’t pass judgement
I’ve fallen out of the sky many times in my life. I started from nothing, and I know what it feels like to have nothing. I’m not trying to paint myself as someone special here – many people can relate, I’m sure. However, I try my best not to look down on people where possible because:
I never know the full story
I’m far from perfect myself
I know what it feels like to be inadequate – both in terms of skill and finances
Passing judgement is just another one of life’s energy drainers that we could all be better without.
Habit Stopping Tip #7: Don’t eat and scroll…….
…………and don’t scroll at any social gathering, for that matter.
When I see couples or families at restaurants and coffee shops, and all they are doing is playing on devices, it makes me very sad (but also happy that I have a great relationship with someone in which this never happens). People are quickly losing the ability to interact physically, in my opinion.
The principle behind this habit-stopper is presence – we should be present in everything we do if we’re to get the most out of it. As I write this blog post, for example, I’ve mostly ‘gone dark’ – my phone is out of reach as I know that if I check it I’ll never get this blog post finished.
I’m more productive and present when I’m not on my phone, unless I’m using my phone for a specific purpose.
Habit stopping tip #8 – Don’t check e-mail before noon
Does this apply to teachers? I’m not sure.
E-mail has become an essential part of my job, but some would say it is yet another distraction. I’m still on-the-fence about this one, as important announcements often come to me by e-mail, and they often need to be acted upon quickly.Are there e-mails that I don’t need to check before noon? Probably. E-mail is evolving quickly into a messaging tool, however, and as teachers we are fast-approaching a stage where we need to be reachable at all times at work. GMail, for example, is becoming more skewed towards Google Hangouts and instant messaging. As workplace messaging technology evolves, teaching will surely evolve with it.
Habit Stopping Tip #9: Don’t leave dishes in the sink
I loved seeing how this particular habit affected my life. It was very powerful.
I am typical ‘dish-leaver’, and once I started to pro-actively wash dishes as soon as I used them I found myself also doing laundry right away; tidying up after myself right away; putting my work clothes in my wardrobe instead of over the back of a chair; putting old cosmetics’ bottles in the bin right away, and on and on it went.
My home became tidier more quickly – and less clutter at home meant an overall sense of happiness.
I highly recommend this tip.
Habit Stopping Tip #10: Don’t wait for perfect
In the video provided at the start of this blog post, Ben uses the phrase “Jump, and grow wings on the way down”. As a result of this one statement, I found myself going to the gym more often, despite being in not-so-perfect shape.
That’s got to be a good start, right?
Have you grown your wings yet, or are they still growing?
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Happy teachers make happy students. When we’re happy we have energy, passion for the job and a greater sense of overall purpose in life. Happiness can be difficult to achieve, however, when we’re dealing with the daily stresses of being a teacher: duties such as paperwork, writing reports, meeting tight deadlines, marking, and even trying to teach remotely and face-to-face at the same time (a very recent challenge that teachers all over the world have had to deal with). Today, I’ve invited Jessica Robinson, educational writer atThe Speaking Polymath, to share her insights and tips for being, and staying, happy in your role as a teacher.
If we look closely, everything we do in life is focused on one thing – becoming happy. The same is true for our profession. Most of us have chosen teaching as our profession, most likely for two reasons. One is that we feel happy to teach students. The second is to earn money. If we look at both these reasons, they are related to happiness. Teaching gives us happiness, and money helps us buy things we need to be happy. Now here is an important question we need to ask ourselves: Are we delighted? The answer is most likely a no. This is because teaching is a stressful profession. Every day we have to deal with several stressful events as teachers. Noisy students, teaching effectively, and shouldering our responsibilities well are all in some way causes of stress for us, and when there is stress, there cannot be true happiness. But, we all need happiness, right? As discussed above, it is the primary goal behind everything we do. Now, the question is how to become happy teachers? Here are five tips that will help you.
#1:Cultivate acceptance for your students’ behavior
One of the biggest causes of stress we face every day is our students’ wrong behavior. Even if we are thrilled, it takes just a single lousy remark from a student to make us feel stressed and unhappy. However, if we simply understand that kids are kids, then we will be in a much better place of acceptance. They will make such mistakes, and there is no need for us to take things personally. Instead, we can try to help them become better human beings. This simple acceptance of our students’ behavior can help us become happy teachers. So, we should all try to cultivate acceptance for our students’ behavior and then take steps to improve their behavior without being impacted by them.
“An AMAZING book for teachers!”
#2: Spend some time playing with your students
Playing is the key to feeling happy. I know we are teachers, but don’t we all have a little child who is always excited to play? Yes, we do! At times, we should try to let this inner child out and spend some time playing with our students. There is nothing terrible in playing with kids for 10 to 15 minutes. When we play with our students, they become more connected to us. As a result, they pay more attention in our classes, which is the key to effective classroom management. So, if you like, you can give this tip a try. I’m sure if you do, you’ll end up falling in love with it.[Note from Richard: This can be done with students of any age, even high-school students. Read my blog post entitled 10 Learning Games to Play With Your Studentshere.].
#3: Make meditation a part of your daily routine
A calm mind is a happy mind. There are no two opinions regarding it. This implies that to become satisfied teachers, we need to cultivate a relaxed mindset. For this, one of the best techniques which we can practice is meditation. It doesn’t mean that there will be no fluctuations once you start meditating, and your mental state will always remain calm. No, it is not so, but with regular meditation, you will be able to re-establish a relaxed mental state soon after your peace gets disturbed. This implies that the duration of your unhappy cycles will get significantly reduced. So, to become a happy teacher, you should try to make meditation a part of your daily routine. You can use guided meditation videos to meditate initially, and later you can switch to meditating all by yourself.
#4: Make friends with your colleagues
Does spending time with your near and dear ones make you feel good? The answer is a yes, as it is right for all of us. Whenever we spend time with our loved ones, our body gets flooded with oxytocin: a happy hormone that triggers positive feelings and reduces our stress levels. One trick to stay happy at work is to have some loved ones. This means that we should try to make friends with our colleagues. We can try to cultivate a big friend circle at work. This will help us significantly increment our happiness levels as teachers. If something goes wrong in class, we can share it with our friends, or if we are feeling stressed, we can share our feelings with them and feel lighter.
#5: Take a short walk during your free time at work
It has been scientifically proven that exercise is good for our physical health and mental health. When we exercise, our brain secretes happy hormones like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin, which trigger positive feelings and make us feel satisfied. Although you cannot exercise at work, you can still take a short walk during your free time at work. This will help you induce positive feelings and feel happier.
Conclusion
Happiness is the primary motive behind everything we do. So, becoming happy teachers should be one of our goals despite all the stress associated with our profession. We can utilize the above-mentioned tips for the fulfillment of this goal. Now, I wish you all the Best and have a happy time teaching!
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Exam-level students have a lot on their plates. They have to learn, revise and articulate information effectively whilst potentially dealing with exam-stress and the challenge of adapting to the different instructional styles of their teachers. This week, I’ve invited Maria Goncharova from TutorYou to describe how teachers can help IB students prepare for their exams.
The International Baccalaureate is a demanding yet effective educational path designed to prepare students for their desired academic career. The unique structure of the IB programme provides an interdisciplinary approach to learning while allowing the students to focus on subjects they are passionate about. Furthermore, its combination of numerous learning methods and assignments hones the students’ research, writing and critical thinking skills to optimize their performance both academically and professionally.
Despite the many beneficial aspects of the 2-year programme, IB students face numerous challenges due to the rigorous schedule and high requirements. This is why tutoring and academic counselling services such as TutorYou exist to facilitate the exam process and prepare students as well as possible. With over 6 years of experience in supporting IB students and helping them maximise their academic potential, we share some of our top tips on how to prepare students for the IB exams and entry into university.
Efficient scheduling
Apart from demonstrating the importance of timeliness and organization to your students, maintaining a specified and realistic schedule can significantly ease the stress of covering the -often vast- syllabi for IB topics. In fact, doing so will facilitate multiple aspects of your work, as it will allow you to easily implement changes in the syllabi and ensure time is sufficient for an extensive review of the topic before the exams. Also, a comprehensive schedule lets you account for the (almost inevitable) extensions and delays and avoid last minute hiccups before the exam period. Lastly, you are giving yourself time to correct students’ past papers and perform mock exams to ensure they are as prepared as possible. Imparting this way of thinking to students can also be done with the help of a private tutor, who is most able to conform with the schedule of an individual student. TutorYou offers such support through our accomplished tutors, who have finished IB themselves and can accommodate both in-person and online tutoring sessions.
2. Periodically Reviewing Past Topics
A common mistake of IB students and teachers alike is not consistently reviewing past topics, leading to a scramble for last-minute revision and possibly re-learning an entire topic. Studies show thatinformation is best retained in long-term memory when it is revisited multiple times in increasingly longer intervals of time. As such, it is excellent practice to periodically examine students on past topics through topic-specific quizzes or larger revision tests. Another solution given the considerable academic load students face is introducing review sessions throughout the academic year. They don’t necessarily have to be done during school hours, and can perhaps be offered optionally to students. Finally, occasional assignments based on past topics can ensure that students do not forget all the information they have previously worked hard to maintain.
All these methods are equally useful for the final exams and for the students to slowly learn to tackle the university system, which features much larger bodies of information in a shorter amount of time. If a teacher has limited time for review because of the length of the syllabus, TutorYou offers both in-person and online tutoring on any IB subject from former IB students.
3. Exam practice
As mentioned in both previous points, staying on track with the entirety of the syllabus of any given topic is the key for students to succeed in their exams and prepare for the workload they will face in the continuation of their academic career. Providing the students with past papers will allow them to simultaneously revise the topics and familiarize themselves with the mode of examination and the different papers it comprises of.
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It is advisable to focus on this kind of assignment in the period leading up to the exams instead of overloading the students with work. This is because practical revision allows them to identify their weak points and focus on the topics they need most assistance with.
4. Support individual students
Not all students are the same. Some students may need some more support for exam preparation and the process of applying to universities. As is evident from the afore-mentioned points, the job of a teacher in the IB is equally challenging to that of students, since they are required to multi-task and ensure every single student is prepared for the exam. Services like Tutor You are specifically designed to support the work done at school, by giving students a little extra push and assisting them to bridge the gap between school and university life. Contact TutorYou today for more information on one-to-one tutoring and university application support!
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Self-reflection can be a great way to maximize the progress and attainment of our students, but how exactly do we encourage this introspection? Are there some key tools that teachers can use to facilitate this process? Today, I’ve invited Martyn Kenneth (an international educator of 15+ years, educational consultant, tutor/coach, an author of children’s books and textbooks and the creator and host of ‘The Lights Out‘ Podcast) to share his insights and tips for educators.
At the end of this blog post you will find a free pdf version of Martyn’s Self-Reflection journal for students. No sign-up required: just click and download.
We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.
John Dewey
Anyone who works in an IB school will have heard the word ‘reflection’ a thousand times. But in a world where learners’ schedules are being filled to bursting point with more ‘knowledge’ to be tested, are we sacrificing time that could be spent on reflecting on past experiences for time spent absorbing knowledge for the future?
We have to look back to move forward. By this I mean we, as teachers and learners, have to purposefully set a time when we look back on our journey up to the present in order to set an intention for future goals and actions. Without this intention we cannot set a direction and without a direction there cannot be a destination. Or at least there cannot be a destination that is reached with precision, purpose and efficiency. It is this precision, purpose and efficiency that gets you further faster – milestone after milestone, chapter after chapter or page after page. And isn’t this what we all want for our students – for them to grow and develop to their full potential?
It wasn’t until I went from EAL teacher to IB PYP teacher that this word ‘reflection’ really hit home. I used to be a great believer in task-based learning (TBL) and would happily conclude that learning was happening in the classroom as a result of a run of tasks being completed in sequential order. I never used to schedule or plan-in time for reflecting on the tasks that have been completed.
“A BRILLIANT book for teachers”
The school where I work now utilizes the inquiry-based method with the PYP framework. If you look at any inquiry-based approach you will find that reflection usually sits at the center of the inquiry cycle (just Google ‘inquiry cycle‘).Not to say that task based learning lessons are ineffective: on the contrary they can be highly effective if they are consciously and intentionally used as a part of the inquiry cycle. But as a learning experience they are just one part of the puzzle. Reflection plays an equal if not more important role than the tasks themselves.
Reflection informs teaching and planning, too as it is only when we reflect that we can truly plan for success in the student.
An activity that I like to do with secondary students is related to having them reflect on what has happened through the week. It’s based on 6 initials.
M.E.N.D.T.G
It is a reflection based activity that asks students to write for a maximum of ten minutes about their week.
M – Memorable Moment
E – Emotions
N – News
D – Driving motivation
T – Time travel
G – Goals
I provide sentence stems to begin with such as:
M – The most memorable moment of my week was __________________________. This was memorable for me because _____________________.
E – A time this week when I felt very __________ (emotion)___________ was when _______________. This was caused by ______________
N – In the news this week I saw/read about__________. I was interested in this story because _____________
D – This week I have been motivated by __________. This has motivated me because _________________
T – If I travelled back to last class the thing I would change/do differently would be __________. Making this change would have made my week different by______________
G – My goal for the following week is ________________ To achieve this goal I will _____________.
[Optional – (I achieved/didn’t achieve my goal last week because_______)]
I have found that having learners do this exercise is really beneficial for everyone. It allows the teacher to find out more about his or her students, it can be a platform for deeper discussions and conversations, it is a quiet time at start of class to get learners focusing and ready and it can also be a time for setting and achieving small goals.
I had actually used another set of initials for a couple of years before changing to theMENDTGin the new year.
My previous reflection activity was:
B – The Best thing of the week for me was…
W – The Worst thing of the week for me was…
L – Something I learned this week was…
F – Something I failed at was…
G – This week I am grateful for…
G – My goal for the week ahead is...
As educators we now have to reflect on our practice and ask ourselves serious questions like: Am I teaching the best I can? Am I providing the best environment for learning to happen? And have I planned well enough with appropriate assessments that can be evidence to inform teaching and learning going forward?
I think our practice can change significantly if we think about the quote by Dewey and focus more attention on the recall of memory about a learning experience and less on the focus of information to be recalled at a later date.
Download Martyn’s free self-reflection journal for students as a pdf here (no sign-up required, just click and download):
Thoughts and reflections from Richard James Rogers:
Thank you, Martyn, for this detailed and useful article. I love both acronyms and the Reflective Journal that you’ve kindly shared with us all is a great tool. I will be sharing this with my colleagues at school and using it in my role as a form-tutor – I think it’s a great weekly exercise that can have a profound and positive effect on many students’ lives.
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Effective communication between teachers and their students is crucial for effective learning to take place, but how many of us are aware of how our subliminal cues via body language are interpreted and processed? What are some key non-verbal strategies that teachers can use with students? Today, I’ve invited Jessica Robinson, educational writer at The Speaking Polymath, to share her insights and tips for educators.
Teaching is a profession that requires effective communication. Only through effective communication you can teach well and help your students learn excellently. Now, communication becomes effective only when there is a perfect blend of verbal and non-verbal means of communication. With non-verbal means like facial expressions, body postures, hand gestures, and verbal messages become clear and better understandable. For example, if someone asks you which direction should he go in to find the washrooms, and you say- right. Then, he will take a second to think and then start moving in the right direction. But, if you say right and point in the right direction, he’ll immediately start moving in the right direction, even without thinking for a second. This is how magical the effect of non-verbal means of communication is.
After coming across the significance of non-verbal means of communication, let us discuss the importance of body language in teaching. Body language is the superset of the different non-verbal means of communication like facial expressions, hand gestures, and body postures. This implies that all the hand gestures, facial expressions, and body postures we make come under body language. Now let’s proceed to discuss the importance of body language in teaching.
Influential body language helps in classroom management:
When you portray persuasive body language, you naturally captivate your students’ attention. When your students are attentive in class, their mind is engrossed in learning. As a result, they don’t engage in mischief, and your classroom becomes well managed. So, one of the most significant benefits of portraying clear body language is that it makes classroom management more straightforward for you.
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Your body language impacts the energy level of your students:
Imagine meeting someone having a high energy level who uses powerful hand gestures and facial expressions while interacting with you. How do you feel? Your answer will most likely be one of the following terms- energetic, attentive, and enthusiastic. Isn’t it? Whatever it is, it is undoubtedly positive. This implies that a person with powerful and animated body language positively impacts your energy level. From this, we can conclude that our body language has a significant impact on the people around us. If you portray energetic body language in class, your students will most likely start feeling energetic and studying well. This makes it crucial for every teacher to teach powerful body language.
Your body language impacts your relationships with your students:
Have you ever experienced that you feel more comfortable around some people and slightly uncomfortable around others, even when you have just met them for the first time? I’m sure that you have because almost all of us feel so in the presence of different people. Now, if we explore why does it happen that some people make us feel comfortable while others don’t? The answer to this question is their body language.
When we look at people, the first thing we notice about them is their body language. If someone has a closed body language like doesn’t have a smiling face or relaxed body posture, we get an impression that the person isn’t friendly. As a result, we start feeling uncomfortable. This implies that our body language impacts our relationships with others. If you have an open and relaxed body language, your students will consider you friendly and loving. As a result, they’ll get inclined towards you and develop good relationships with you. When you have good relationships with your students, they naturally pay more attention in class, heed your advice, and teaching them gets more straightforward for you.
The use of supportive body language with verbal instructions helps in increasing students’ attention in class:
When you accompany your verbal instructions with suitable hand gestures, facial expressions, and body postures, your students are likely to be more attentive in class. For example, if you say look towards the left and your students aren’t listening attentively but blankly looking at you, chances are they’ll not respond. But, if you accompany your words with your finger pointing towards the left, your students are more likely to start looking towards the left. This is simply because even when they are not actively listening to you, they look at you. This way, body language helps increase your students’ attention in class.
Influential body language enhances your confidence level:
When students become too noisy and don’t listen to us, we start feeling disheartened. Then, the loop of disappointment begins, and we start questioning our abilities as a teacher. Although we feel as if we are on the verge of breaking, we also know that we cannot give up as we are teachers in our inner world. Under such circumstances, your body language can help you feel better and regain your confidence. Then, you can again start directing your efforts to quieten your students.
You can question how body language can help you increase your confidence level? Let me answer this question for you with the help of an example. When we feel afraid, our body contracts a bit. Have you ever felt that? I’m sure you have, as it is our body’s natural reaction to fear. On the contrary, when you are happy, your body expands. You feel lighter, isn’t it? This is because your emotion impacts your body language and vice versa is also true. So, whenever you feel that your confidence level is getting low, you can make some simple changes in your body language to replenish it. Now, what changes can you make? It is effortless; just try covering more space, like standing in a relaxed manner, with your arms spread out. This will give your brain a signal that your body is comfortable and everything is okay. As a result, your confidence level will increase, and you can then try to quieten your students again.
Your body language can help you teach better and more effectively. The same has been illustrated by the importance of body language in teaching, as described above. So, you can enhance your teaching skills by simply improvising your body language. Now, wishing you All the best and have happy teaching.
An ardent writer, Jessica Robinson, works for ‘The Speaking Polymath’. She uses this platform to weave her magical words into powerful strands of content and share with her readers.
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