TLT15 Part 2: In-class interventions

Every lesson has at least one moment where the teacher has to decide whether to move on. ‘Have they got it?’ we ask. The next step seems clear: stay with something when students don’t ‘get it’ and move on when they do. But is it ever as simple as all of the students understanding or not understanding something? Not in my experience- it will usually be proportions of the class who get it. So re-teaching or moving on aren’t the only possibilities. It is much more complicated than that.

The moment we teach something, we may have one, two or fifteen students who don’t get it. We need to know who they are and do something about it. In this, the second part of my TLT15 presentation, I will explain how we can use in-class interventions to close gaps even as they appear.

The right questions > intentional checking > in-class intervention

If we are going to intervene effectively, the information we get needs to be valid and it needs to be from everyone. It can’t just be the odd student, like the one who shouts out “I don’t get it”, leading the teacher to stop the whole class for an explanation that they don’t all need. Questioning a selection of students will only tell about those students and asking students if they get it will only tell us about perception. The only methods that can give us a true picture require every student to participate and give an answer that is unambiguous. Hinge questions are particularly useful for effective diagnosis- read Harry Fletcher-Wood’s excellent series of posts on this topic. Mini whiteboards are the easiest low-tech way to gather accurate student information across a whole class and there are of course some high-tech ways too. We can also make decisions about individual understanding from simply reading students’ work.

We need to be intentional in our data gathering, ready to intervene in the most appropriate way. When students are completing tasks, or when they are answering questions on mini-whiteboards, teachers should be looking for specific things that they will address. When we teach the lesson and design the questions, we know what the common misconceptions are and need to look for them-it shouldn’t only be responding to whatever comes up.

At this point, teachers should be deciding what happens next: the in-class intervention. If 3 or 4 students are struggling with something, then they can be retaught while the rest of the class works. If a small number ‘get it’ then perhaps they can work on an additional task while the whole class is retaught. You might have a case where one group of students has struggled with one aspect while another has struggled with something else- set them all off on a task and then teach each half in turn. There are any number of possibilities.

I watched a Maths lesson recently where the teacher put a question on the board and gave students 3 minutes to complete it on whiteboards. Instead of simply waiting for students to hold them up, the teacher walked round and looked at every single student. When it came to holding boards up, struggling students had already been identified, as had those who understood, common misconceptions were gathered, two different methods spotted. A student was asked to share an example of the misconception, which allowed the teacher to explain the correct method again. After this, a group of three were taken to the front for another go while the rest of the class completed more questions. It was a sequence designed and implemented to ensure that all students understood.

Create the culture for it

I actually don’t think the concept or the implementation of in-class interventions like this are difficult. I think the hardest part is creating a school and classroom culture to allow these to take place effectively.

If teachers are going to teach small groups while the rest of the class work, they need to have classrooms designed to facilitate this. These images of classrooms from my school show areas designed specifically for intervention. In the first image, the table in the corner is used and its position ensures that the teacher can scan the rest of the room as she intervenes. The horseshoe shape of the second image is a space that can accommodate several students and is right at the front to allow the teacher to monitor the rest of the class.

Int1Teachers cannot establish the right culture of diagnosis and immediate intervention if  the rest of the class start misbehaving when they intervene. That is why it is crucial that school systems take the hard work of managing behaviour away from teachers. If teachers have to deal with many incidences of poor behaviour, interventions won’t work, and if they are chasing up detentions and making endless calls home then they are not planning. Clear expectations of behaviour, consistently demonstrated by teachers and supported by senior leaders with centralised detentions, means that this small group teaching is much easier to manage. I have written about our consistent approach to behaviour at Dixons Kings Academy here.

We don’t even get to the intervention stage without useful information, so teachers need to see mini whiteboards as routine and not a nuisance. (How many mini whiteboards sit unloved in stock cupboards?) At DKA, we have whiteboard language and routines designed to make using them hassle-free. Students must carry a whiteboard pen around with them as part of their essential equipment (with a detention on the day if they don’t), once again making it as straightforward as possible to use whiteboards.

I am conscious that an approach which requires planning for different outcomes to a question may in fact lead to excessive planning. While it is true that planning may be made more complex, it doesn’t necessarily require creating resources as intervention can just be teaching. Anyway, any resources created, to use Joe Kirby’s word, are renewable. It’s just feedback- and it will take much less time than marking a set of books. And if you get it right with the initial teaching of concepts then you probably don’t have to waste as much time or energy later coming back and dealing with the problems.

Doing things so you don’t have to do them…

One of the best things about my job is that I get to see lots of other people teaching, and this week I noticed a common thread in lessons that allowed me to reflect on my questioning, and then, in a roundabout way, on my teaching of writing.

In particular, I saw No Opt Out, a technique taken from Teach Like a Champion, used expertly in several lessons. This is the idea that when a student says “I don’t know”, you stay with them until they get it, or give various cues to support, or ask another student before returning to them. As Lemov writes: “In the end, there’s far less incentive to refuse to try if doing so doesn’t save you any work, so No Opt Out’s attribute of causing students to answer a question they’ve attempted to avoid is a key lever.” It’s something that we practised in CPD last year and it was great to see it being used in lessons.

Yet there are some very real problems that can occur when this is used. Momentum can be lost when you stick with a student, especially when the question might just be a quick check that forms part of an explanation. It can mean that others in the class switch off, which is not great, especially when the strategy is designed to eliminate this kind of thing. I felt a little of this ‘switching off’ in one of my own lessons this week.

These are the pitfalls of No Opt Out. But the strategy exists for the long term gains rather than just for addressing the moment where students don’t get it. This happens over time by building a culture in the classroom where “I don’t know” is rewarded with “Great. I’m going to help you so you will know.” It becomes easier to think when the question is asked than to avoid it. Showing that you will probe is a way of ensuring that you don’t have to probe in the long run, but you have to keep doing it until everyone works it out. This can then mean that the best exponents of No Opt Out rarely have to use it! Or, at the very least, they know that “I don’t know” actually means that and not “I haven’t thought about it.”

So why did this lead me to think about writing? Well, by coincidence I have been teaching redrafting, which is another method which we can make obsolete after a while. When we explicitly teach it well, we can get to a point where we rarely have to do redrafting. Once students have the habits effective in redrafting, they can become proficient in revising work, editing things as they write. I have been using Kelly Gallagher’s STAR Revision mnemonic (which I think is one of the few useful ones in English) to model this. You can read more about this in Revision Before Redrafting.

It takes work to build these habits, but once students know how to do it, they can do it in their head, they can do it mid sentence, they can reorder sentences in paragraphs as they write. You barely have to teach it again.

Revision 1Here are some examples of how this works, taken from one of my classes this week. In the first example, the task was to redraft the opening. You can see lots of changes, with perhaps the most interesting one that it now starts with a simile.

 

Revision 2In the next example, a different student is now consciously revising as they write. This was the very next lesson after the explicit teaching of redrafting. You can see them change their mind halfway through ‘beautifully’ and constantly  revise their writing. Is it perfect? Not yet. But it is almost a second draft without writing the first.

Revision 3The final example has just one word changed. The man holds a photograph on his heart rather than his stomach. I love that.

Looking at the messy examples above reminds me that another keep-doing-it-so-you-don’t-have-to-do-it strategy is being fussy about presentation! Whether it is thinking, revising or using a ruler, persevering at the start means that you will rarely have to do it again.

The space between the question and the answer

Here is a puzzle:

If a great question is asked, but only a small proportion of your class actually think about it, is it a great question?

This post isn’t about the questions we ask and it isn’t really about the answers- it’s about the space in between. It is about ensuring great questions are met with a suitable depth of thought from students, because if we can’t guarantee that students are thinking about our questions, then we can’t guarantee that they are learning anything. Using questioning as a teaching tool, as a diagnostic tool, as a key element of our explanations, becomes ineffective because students are not really participating.

The problem is that thinking is a pretty invisible process. How on earth can we somehow get inside students’ minds and ensure that they are actually thinking?

Visible checks

Thinking is invisible, but there are ways that we can see the effect of thinking.

For example, one strategy I use when asking students to identify something in a text is to place their finger on it. If they can’t find anything, they put their finger on their head. I can scan the room and see the participation at a glance. Students know that I will often go to those who have fingers on their heads first, so the ‘opt outers’ make more of an effort, even though I’m just as likely to pick someone with their finger on something too. Now, there are definitely some chancers who just place their fingers on the page and hope, but they are less and less likely to do this.

Getting students to write an answer down to a question is another simple way of being able to track participation. Mini white boards are particularly useful for this. At Dixons Kings Academy, we have whole school routines and language for MWB use. Teachers have to spend less time establishing their own routines and the consistency of approach makes it easier to focus on responses.

One of my colleagues, Luke, uses whiteboards effectively during continuum tasks- tasks where students place themselves on a line with opposite viewpoints at each end. It is very easy for students to follow their friends, to hide in a larger group or sometimes just to move to the place which is closest to their seat. Luke asks them to take a whiteboard and explain their rationale. This way, it is harder for students to avoid thinking. Even if they take the lazy option in where they stand, they still have to justify it! The physical act of writing on whiteboards is a visible sign of participation (if not of the quality of thinking) and Luke can intervene when they are not writing. He can then use the responses to prompt discussion and diagnose understanding.

The inevitability that anyone can be asked to answer, anyone can be asked to comment on an answer (anyone can be asked to comment on the comment on the answer etc)

In my role, I am lucky to be able to see many examples of excellent questioning from teachers. The thread that runs through them all is the expectation that students answer questions because the teacher wants them to, not because they decide that they want to. Questions are asked, students think about them, and the teacher asks a particular student for their answer. Where this is routine, you get answers of a higher quality, fewer “I don’t knows” and, ultimately, better work. When there is an inkling that a student hasn’t tried to think, these teachers stay with them and make them think. There are no shortcuts from question to answer.

However, even with a culture of strong questioning, it is difficult to ensure that students are focusing on other students’ answers. I have noticed that once I go to one student for an answer, some can switch off. For example, if I stay with a student and ask them further questions, or remain with one who says “I don’t know”, there is a possibility that every other student stops listening because they are not being asked the question.

It has to be a regular feature of lessons that students are asked “Is she right?” or “Can you give me an additional reason?” Otherwise, a supposedly rigorous technique of probing questions becomes a terrible one with impact on only one student. This doesn’t always come easily. It is a day in, day out technique which creates a culture in a classroom and across a school. But just like when the initial question is asked, any follow up questions need to have an expectation that anybody could be called on.

What about random name generators such as lollipops? I am fairly ambivalent on this but I have recently shifted back to the no lollipop camp for a couple of reasons. My justification for the sticks was always that it made it clear that I could pick any student. There was a bit of theatre to it all too. But without lolly sticks, nothing changes: I still pick randomly but I also target questions. (Plus I kept losing sticks). Here are a couple of excellent blogs on the issue: Tom Bennett on the problems and Harry Fletcher-Wood on the benefits.

Waiting

This isn’t a new suggestion but it is sometimes difficult to ensure effective wait time. It can feel awkward and can be particularly difficult with a challenging class. Also, if a student isn’t thinking then giving them ten more seconds is just giving them ten more seconds of not thinking. Often, the issue isn’t opting out but perhaps not knowing how to get to the right answer or a good answer. We have to be explicit about the behaviours that we want during this thinking/ waiting time. Another of my colleagues at DKA, Maria, narrates what students should be doing. For example, she might say, “I can see 5 students checking their notes for answers- excellent,” thus making clear what is expected. We should also value silence in these moments too, as too much narration might hinder quality thinking.

Now I said that this wasn’t about the quality of questions but it is worth saying that if you want students to think deeply, the questions need to be designed so that this is possible. And if the content of the lesson is limited or the text you are studying is just not good enough then no matter how much waiting time you give, the quality of thinking- and the quality of responses- will be poor.