What do we talk about when we talk about "climate"?

Classroom climate makes a significant contribution to effective teaching, according to the Sutton Trust's review of evidence.  Now it's back on the agenda it's even more likely that classroom climate will crop up at interview.   Describe the climate in your classroom.  What do you understand by classroom climate?  How do you create an effective classroom climate? So what is classroom climate?

Essentially it's the characteristic atmosphere/ambience/feel of your classroom.  The adjective positive tends to be attached to the notion of climate.  Kyriacou talks about a positive classroom climate that is "purposeful, task-oriented, relaxed, warm and supportive and has a sense of order".  Bucholz and Sheffler encourage readers to aspire to a "warm and inclusive classroom environment" in which "cooperation and acceptance" is fostered.  There's some danger here that the notion of climate could descend into a spiral of woolly pleasantries.  My classroom provides a warm and welcoming environment in which everyone is accepted and supported.  That seems sceptical, perhaps, but climate is important and it's too easy to launch into a string of vague but positive-sounding adjectives. 

You can get around this by talking about the philosophy that underpins the way your classroom operates.  This philosophy must be rooted in pupil progress - after all, if pupils aren't making progress then what's the point?  Ask yourself what it is about the climate (ambience/feel) of your classroom that enables pupils to progress.  This philosophy should be rooted in inclusivity - this is about all children not just some children.  How do all the children in your classroom know that they are valued, that their learning is important?

Think about the other elements that characterise your classroom practice.  Is the climate pupil-centred or teacher-centred?  Are pupils encouraged to reflect on their learning?  Is pupil ownership a characteristic of the climate in you classroom?

However you see and describe your classroom climate, you need to place yourself at the centre of it.  There's not a contradiction here if you see your classroom as child-centred - you are central to the establishment of this type of climate: you are responsible for the way it is.  Rogers uses the phrase "the nature of teacher leadership" to describe this: through teacher leadership, pupils know how things are (i.e. expectations are clear).

Thinking about classroom climate gives you a critical platform to examine how what you say you believe matches up to what you do in practice.  You may say (to your friends, tutors, mentors, head teachers, etc.) that you believe in one set of principles, but in the classroom you may work to a different set of principles (driven by what feels like necessity, or accepted practice, or by what you really believe).  Brookfield describes the friction “between what we say we believe and what we privately suspect to be true” as cognitive dissonance.  You could ask yourself about how closely the climate you aspire to is matched by the climate in reality.

It's worth thinking about this carefully before interview - you want to end up in a school where the values are in line with your own.

Guiding pupils to reflect on their progress

Teachers' Standard 2 requires you to guide pupils to reflect on the progress they have made and their emerging needs.

How can you do this?  You could get pupils to write reflectively, give them a reflective writing frame, or a questionnaire to complete.  But this will immediately exclude some pupils.  The requirement is not to guide only those pupils who can write reflectively to reflect.  This is all pupils.

To ensure this is an inclusive part of your practice this needs to be about thinking (reflecting) and speaking and listening.  There will be pupils in the class who are less confident about talking and some who are unable to speak in certain social situations.  You may work with pupils who have significant communications difficulties - the suggestions here will need further thinking, but guiding pupils to reflect remains an expectation: it's not acceptable to say "My pupils can't do that."  If you're working in a Nursery or Reception class there's no reason why pupils can't think about or articulate what they can and can't do, but you might need to adapt the language in the suggestions below.

For the substantial majority, talking is the most inclusive way for pupils to articulate their thinking.  Developing the role of reflective talk also a good way to establish a culture in your classroom that will prepare you well for observation (by tutors, mentors, school senior leaders, Ofsted inspectors).  Those who observe you teach will often talk to pupils about their learning, their progress and their learning needs.  Typically, observers will be drawn to the pupil/s in your class who you would least like them to be drawn to.  So equipping all pupils with the capacity to articulate their thinking isn't just about meeting the Standards.  It's about having successful observations.  And, most importantly, it's about pupil entitlement.

A useful way to think about how to do this is to start with the questions that pupils might be asked and then to think about the answers that you'd like to hear them come up with.  Here are some examples:

It's important to emphasise that these aren't responses that pupils can meaningfully learn by rote. You can't use My Turn/Your Turn as a strategy to embed reflection.  This is about creating a climate in your classroom in which pupils talk confidently about their progress and the barriers they encounter.  So it's not just about what happens in one lesson ("We did reflection on Tuesday morning"), this should be a part of all learning.  And you're not going to get this to happen overnight - so if Ofsted are visiting tomorrow and this isn't already part of your classroom climate, then it's too late.

So start now.  You could use the questions above as prompts.  Create enough space in your lessons for thinking and dialogue, and get pupils used to talking about what they can and can't do, and the progress they've made.

"How inclusive was that?" - evaluating lessons 2

Teachers' Standard 8 requires you to take responsibility for improving teaching.  Wherever there are opportunities, I'd encourage you to take ownership: decide which aspects of your practice you'd like to discuss with colleagues.  You can do this by deciding in advance the focus for you response to "How did that go?"

You could consider how inclusive your lesson was.  The Venn diagram below is a useful way of thinking about this.  With each of the elements you could ask yourself to what extent... For example, To what extent did I set suitable learning challenges (for all children)? As with any evaluation you then need to be prepared to provide evidence of this.  How do you know that the learning challenges were suitable?  (This links back to how you have planned the lesson.)  

You could evaluate the inclusivity of your practice independently, without the support of or feedback from an observer.  The DfES produced a useful teaching observation checklist intended for school self-evaluation but you could apply it to your own evaluative thinking.  It's important to remember that inclusion is about all pupils, not just pupils with an identified educational need.

Focusing lesson evaluation on inclusivity addresses Teachers' Standards 8 and 5 - you're demonstrating that you have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils and can evaluate 

distinctive teaching approaches to engage and support them.