Connecting with Learners

Relationships are at the heart of learning and this article certainly illustrates this. We recently held interviews for teaching positions and one of the questions was about what you would do if you realised that a child was not reaching potential in your class. This article, by Lisa Medoff, is full of fantastic ideas that are centred on improving the relationship with the child. The child the author references has ADHD but I believe the suggestions would work with most learners.

Click here for the full article.

• Ask the student to help you figure out what he needs and how you can help him. 
• Frame new strategies as experiments, not decrees.
• Teach students how to question and challenge in a manner that will get them heard.
• Rather than trying to clamp down on off-task behaviours, use them to get to know students better. 
• Share stories with students about your own struggles.
• Make deals with students about behaviours that you both want to change. 
• Try as hard as you can to limit negativity in your interactions with a challenging student.
• Have students teach you something. 
• Take a beat to stop and acknowledge that a student may have the right answer even though it is different from what you were expecting.
• If a student seems to be off-task or is having trouble getting started, don't assume he hasn't been paying attention; 
• Allow students to work just outside the classroom door.
• Be patient. 

Feedback Tool

Love the resources from Ewan McIntosh via No Tosh

This is a great visual about giving feedback, great for senior students or teachers for a range of situations.

Mindsets and Feedback

This is great website to go to for resources and thinking about using Mindset work in your classroom.
This particular item caught my eye as it talks about simple things we can all do to promote growth mindsets in our learning communities.
It talks about:

• Questioning and thinking about what you publicly reward and value in your class and school.
• Belonging to an academic community that includes adults.
• Believing in success.
• Seeing value in the learning.
• Belief that intelligence can grow.

The Importance of Feedback and Other Interventions

I have always believed that effective feedback is the teaching strategy that makes the most difference to learners. When asking for feedback about my teaching from my past students they often commented on this being a strength of my teaching, stately simply, "you let us know our next step or what we need to do to make it better."

There is often debate as to whether this should be written or verbal. The age of the learner and their ability to read written feedback certainly impacts this decision. The quality of the feedback is important and I reflect on this considering the work of Dweck et al when working with students. Praising effort and hard work is critical whilst given the student an indication of next steps is also crucial.

Feedback is central focus of the original article. It outlines ways of giving feedback and the writer shares their school's policy. Links to other readings related to feedback are also given. What is of interest is the graph that is also provided and the information that is linked to evidenced based interventions.

The graph from the site simply illustrates the effect of a number of interventions. It plots them on a graph considering their cost and the impact they have on student achievement. What I particularly like is that you can click on a strategy and go to a synopsis of the research that led to the placement of that strategy on the graph. For example, I had always believed that homework isn't very effective for improving student outcomes of students. When you look at the research you see that this is indeed the case and it summarises where and when homework is effective. The website where you find this information is found here.

You can visit the source used to place these interventions on the graph at the Education Endowment Foundation. It is very useful to select an intervention and then be able to connect to the research that led the author to place it on the graph. Great access to a wealth of information about solid interventions you can try in the classroom.

Mindsets and Praise

On my nightly Facebook wander I saw this clip that had been shared by a friend. It is simple and powerful and captures some of Carol Dweck's research about praise in a concise way. What we say to students matters.

Feedback and a Growth Mindset

Austin's Butterfly is a fabulous illustration of how children are able to respond to quality feedback and make improvements to their work. In order to do this children must have a growth mindset and be aware that learning is a process, seeking to challenge and improve. The use of praise is interesting too, Austin is given praise for persevering and his efforts that lead to improvements.





Dylan Wiliam shares a snippet of his work with self and peer assessment.  This is not the marking of another's work but time for students to formatively assess each others work which has huge benefits for both children involved in the process.