What stands out when you're outstanding?

If you're on an initial teacher training (ITT) programme or are a qualified teacher, you're expected to meet (at least) and, as a rule, exceed a set of standards, the Teachers' Standards.  You'll be observed and judgements about the extent to which you're meeting or exceeding the Standards will be made.  You'll be encouraged (I hope) to make judgements about your own practice based on a set of criteria that will have been shared with you. UCET and NASBTT (April 2012) suggest that 

Trainees graded as `outstanding’ teach consistently good lessons that often demonstrate outstanding features across a range of different contexts (for example, different ages, backgrounds, group sizes, and abilities) by the end of their training.

I thought it would be interesting to ask a group of mentors what they were looking for in 'outstanding' trainees.  I Wordled what they wrote and here's what came out: 

Here engagement refers to pupil engagement (trainee engagement is implicit), relationship to the relationship between the trainee and the pupils, and differentiated to the extent of provision for all pupils' strengths and needs.  Creative carries many implications, but here refers to the extent to which learning is delivered in ways which ensure pupil engagement.  I've picked up the implications of ownership elsewhere.

Group mentality: thinking about 'group work'

Group work means working as a group.  It's something we understand and appreciate: many hands make light work, two brains are better than one.  (Too many cooks spoil the broth - there's always a counter argument.)  "Group work" implies collaboration.   Collaboration underpins learning and teaching.  Remember Vygotsky? ..."problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers”?

So when you think about group work, are you thinking about purposeful activities which pupils can complete collaboratively?  You may have planned an activity requiring pupils to contribute to a single outcome (a presentation, a solution, or a method).  Or the activity might be intrinsically collaborative (a game, or a challenge that involves combining a range of skills).  Or it might involve peer support or evaluation with pupils providing positive, constructive or critical feedback to each other (solid Assessment for Learning practice) in order to fulfil the requirements of the activity.  That's group work.

This kind of group activity doesn't just work.  You'll have to model it, perhaps give it some structure (hand out roles: scribe, spokesperson, manager, etc), set clear expectations, train pupils to collaborate effectively.  Once you've got this established, group work - collaborative group work - will pay dividends.

But if "group work" means "sitting at a table with five other pupils, each pupil working on an individual task", then it's individual work.  "Group work" used in this context is an organisational euphemism for the way pupils are distributed around the classroom.  It's to do with management rather than learning. That's fine, and it often makes sense for pupils to work without the explicit support of others.  But it's not group work.

Why giving children stickers is intrinsically wrong

Why give a child a sticker?  The typical answer touches on motivation, positive praise, the acknowledgement of good behaviour or good work, the encouragement of non-compliant pupils to stick to rules or to stay on task.  Giving out stickers is accepted practice, not in all schools, but in lots of schools.  So why's this a problem?

Children's motivation to engage in learning should be intrinsic, driven by their own internal sense of enjoyment and fulfilment, by what Ryan and Deci describe as the "psychological needs for competence and autonomy".  Teachers fuel children's intrinsic motivation by providing high quality learning experiences (lessons, activities, resources), by offering a relevant and/or stimulating curriculum, and by fostering individual pupils' sense or understanding of their own progress.  When motivation is intrinsic, rewards are unnecessary.  Let me expand.

a) If the lesson/activity/resource is interesting, purposeful and challenges everyone at an appropriate level, then pupils will be motivated.  If you recognise and address the barriers that may impact upon individual pupils' engagement, then all pupils will be motivated.  You don't need stickers - the lesson is a reward in itself.   If, on the other hand, the lesson is dull, unchallenging, and/or involves the completion of mundane, dully repetitive and/or irrelevant tasks, you may feel the need to resort to stickers.  However, they don't represent a reward: they represent a point on a continuum that runs from apology at one end ("I'm sorry that activity was so mundane") to bribe at the other ("If you complete this mundane activity you'll get a sticker").

b) If the curriculum is relevant and stimulating then pupils will be motivated.  This isn't about the National Curriculum, over which we have little control.  This is about the curriculum you offer the pupils in your class, the way you frame the National Curriculum in order to make it relevant.  If pupils understand how the curriculum is relevant to them or see the subject as stimulating, they'll be engaged (providing the lesson is interesting, purposeful and challenging).  You don't need stickers - the curriculum is a reward in itself.  If, on the other hand, the pupils are not able to see the relevance of what they're learning about or are unstimulated by the content, you may feel the need to resort to stickers.  See above - there's a pattern.

c) If pupils understand their own progress, can see that time in school is impacting on the development of new understanding or skills and have mechanisms to express this (all elements of Assessment for Learning), they will be motivated.  Why wouldn't this be so?  Picture the disengaged pupils in your class - how many of them can talk positively about the progress that they've made or are making?  Progress is its own reward - stickers are redundant.  ("You've learnt to do something you couldn't do before.  Well done - have a sticker."  It makes no sense.)  Pupils who are not making progress or who don't perceive or can't articulate progress will become disengaged.  You might resort to stickers in the hope....they don't notice they're not learning?

For lots of pupils stickers are part and parcel of how school works.  They come to accept the ubiquity of the sticker, and expect achievement or compliance to be rewarded. What makes it worse is that stickers (and other extrinsic rewards) undermine intrinsic motivation.  

Why homework needs more thinking

Picture this.  It's the end of Thursday or Friday afternoon and you're handing out a worksheet to each child to take home with maths or comprehension questions to complete or spellings to learn or class work to finish.  What's wrong with this?

The problem isn't about children spending insufficient time playing or the disruption to quality family time.  Homework was never intended to be something that helped families bond or enabled children to play more.  The problem with homework is that too often it has no effective impact on learning.  Why?

1) Homework provides opportunities for pupils to consolidate misunderstanding or to learn things wrongly.  This isn't the fault of parents/carers.  If you want a child to learn something, sort it out in school.  (Of course there's the stuff that children learn at home, from interacting with people and things outside school, but I'm talking about homework, set by teachers for children to do when they're not at school.)

2) Homework too often emphasises or extends the gap between high and low achievers.  Let's imagine you've set the same five multiplication problems as homework for all, the children who get it will complete successfully, the children who don't, won't.  (This is a problem with worksheets in general.)  

3) You have no way of accurately monitoring who did what.  Some parents/carers will complete the questions on behalf of their children - so the children won't have understood how to do it but you'll think they have.  And some parents/carers will complete the work incorrectly.

4) Some parents/carers are better equipped to support their children than others.  Often these will be the parents/carers of the most able pupils in your class.  So, again, homework will serve to widen the gap between the least and the most able child.

5) Homework creates unnecessary workload, particularly if you're expected to mark work which children (or parents/carers) complete at home.  This reduces your time to focus on learning and teaching in the classroom.

What's the solution?  Your school will have homework policy ("...parents and school working in partnership...regular homework...linked to the taught curriculum...") and Teachers' Standard 4 requires that you set homework to consolidate and extend the knowledge and understanding pupils have acquired.  The government have stepped back from telling schools how many hours of homework a 5-year old should do so there's nothing stopping you (within the bounds of the school homework policy) from deciding what to ask pupils to do.  So when you're setting homework, make it something that children can take ownership of, that doesn't contribute to widening the gap between more and less able, that allows you to check on misconceptions or misunderstandings, and that doesn't add to your marking workload.  How?

• Set tasks which don't  necessarily involve writing or recording on paper.  These could be "Think about..." activities, observation or physical/kinaesthetic activities.
• Link these tasks to lessons you'll be teaching in a couple of days, or next week.  Be clear with your pupils that the set task is in preparation for such-and-such lesson.
• Use the introduction of this lesson as an opportunity to hear children's contributions and adjust the homework tasks you set to ensure that all children can participate.

For example:  Think about why some people walk to work, others drive, and some cycle or use public transport (in preparation for a lesson on writing a balanced argument or a geography lesson on urban transport choices).  Or: Sit in as many different chairs as you can find (in preparation for a D&T or history project on furniture design).  Or Look for right angles around your home (in preparation for a lesson on the properties of shapes).