Issuu

habits. everyday excellence

Issue 3 July 2022

WARM/STRICT "...IT MEANS ESTABLISHING THE IMPORTANCE OF DEADLINES AND EXPECTATIONS AND PROCEDURES AND, YES, RULES.“

CLASSROOM IS YOUR STAGE "IT IS HOW WE DELIVER THE PERFORMANCE OF A LIFETIME THAT SHAPES A STUDENT’S ACADEMIC CAREER AND FUTURE."

FINGERTIP KNOWLEDGE "THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE IS SOMETHING ALL SPECIALISTS WILL SUFFER FROM"

HABITS // CONTENTS

Contents 03 German Inefficiency

by Simon Elliott, Community Schools Trust 05 Warm/Strict by Thahmina Begum, Forest

Gate Community School

Highlights

07 Homework the dog won’t be eating by

Louise St Pierre, Cumberland Community

German Inefficiancy Simon Elliott explores the wisdoms behind models of success, standardising approaches and continual refinement.

School 08 Sailing through the storm… by Joynal Ali,

Cumberland Community School 09 Using Mini Whiteboards to CFU by Omer

Pazar, Cumberland Community School 11 Oh What A Feeling! by Mary Anne Davies,

Forest Gate Community School

Warm/Strict Thahmina Begum explains how it is possible to be warm AND strict, all at the same time. ..

12 You Can Teach an ‘old’ dog New Tricks

by Lisa Smith, Forest Gate Community School 13 Being Explicit by Alex Hayes, University

Technical College Norfolk 15 Deliberate Practice by Nathaniel Moody,

Waterside Academy 17 The classroom is your stage by Habeeba

Hussain, Forest Gate Community School 19 The Importance of Fingertip Knowledge

Being Explicit Alex Hayes explores the unending benefits of explicitly teaching employability skills to set our students up for life.

by Oliver Walsh, Forest Gate Community School 22 Can you truly get better faster? by

Deborah Iyere, Forest Gate Community School

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The classroom is your stage Habeeba Hussain brings the theatre to her piece on our EDI framework; from behind the scenes, strutting our stuff 'on stage' and 'breaking the fourth wall'!

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HABITS // CONTRIBUTORS

CONTRIBUTORS everyday excellence

Simon Elliott CEO Community Schools Trust

Louise St Pierre Assistant Headteacher Cumberland Community School

Mary Davies Assistant Headteacher Forest Gate Community School

Thahmina Begum Executive Headteacher Forest Gate Community and Cumberland Community School

Deborah Iyere Trainee English Teacher Forest Gate Community School

Habeeba Hussain Lead teacher in English Forest Gate Community School

Alex Hayes Headteacher University Technical College Norfolk

Nathaniel Moody English Teacher Waterside Academy

Omer Pazar ECT Maths Cumberland Community School

Lisa Smith Assistant Headteacher Forest Gate Community School

Joynal Ali Assistant Headteacher Cumberland Community School

Oliver Walsh History Teacher and MAS Lead Forest Gate Community School

HABITS // SIMON SAYS

German Inefficiency Simon Elliott

One of the many German Trucks used in WW2

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HABITS // SIMON SAYS

On the eve of their invasion of Russia in 1941, the Germans had 23 types of truck in operation. This was actually a triumph: they started with nearly 1500 different makes. Russia is rather large and, when a truck broke down, getting the right parts for it was a logistical nightmare. At one point, only a third of the vehicles were in operation. Try fighting a war like that. No matter how well your soldiers are trained, if you can’t get them to battle, you’re snookered. Of course, we’re not at war (yet), but on manoeuvres in education, should we try and standardise what we do, because it’s simpler, or should we allow innovation? Innovation may be well suited to peacetime but it creates lots of different systems. Some MATs adopt the “do it this way” approach with their schools because it’s simpler. Others do nothing at all – just let the schools get on with it. It’s a thorny problem and one I ponder often. Stepping sideways a bit, I like to think in terms of creating strategies, not straightjackets. We create the models and tools, and allow the people delivering them, a degree of freedom around which ones their schools use. Some standardisation, I think, is inevitable (try using Google and Microsoft together and you will know why!) but we must never lose sight of the need to continually refine what we do by creating new models of success. Tanks for reading.

HABITS // TB BLOGS

WARM/STRICT

WE ENFORCE RULES BECAUSE WE CARE Thahmina Begum Consider the following scenario: Sally has a high number of BIR referrals across the school. She has a difficult home life. Last lesson, she was sent to the BIR for repeated calling out. Your lesson is next. You know it’s her favourite lesson. You call for SLANT: ‘3…(Sally) pen down… 2….1….hands together, and SLANT.’ Sally continues to write. What do you do? At Community Schools Trust, our in class sanctions ladder begins with a ‘verbal reminder’ (simply recorded on the board), escalates to a ‘warning’ (which means a detention after school) and finally to the Behaviour Improvement Room – BIR (which results in removal to another room for the rest of that lesson). When a student does not fulfil our expectations in lesson, we apply this system. The correct answer to the above scenario would be to follow your sanctions policy. In our case, Sally should receive a reminder. She understands the expectations for SLANT and has ignored the instruction. Although we might know the correct answer, how many of us would actually issue the reminder?

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Reasons we might not issue a reminder could include the following: 1. Sally has a difficult home life. She deserves kindness. 2. Sally loves your lesson. You don’t want to ruin that relationship. 3. Sally has a bit of a reputation around the school with the teachers. But she behaves for you.

Let’s unpick each. 1. Sally has a difficult home life. She deserves kindness. Understanding that broken rules have consequences are a natural and important part of growing up. A difficult home life is all the more reason to have fair, transparent and consistent rules. School is a place where students should expect consistency and clarity. Difficult home life or none, we are being kind to our students by providing them with this. The moment we start to bend this, imagine it happening x10 times over, across every teacher who encounters a student like Sally. Instead of providing the consistency she deserves, we make school life chaotic and uncertain.

2. Sally loves your lesson. You don’t want to ruin that relationship. An age old myth. Instead of enforcing a rule aimed for all, we make allowances for Sally. Aside from how that appears to others around Sally, there’s the assumption that a teacher student relationship hangs on never providing a sanction. It doesn’t. Firstly, as their teacher, our most fundamental role is to be a good teacher to them. To teach well, we need to apply rules. Teaching well is relationship building. Be a good teacher first; relationships will follow. Let’s imagine for a second we don’t issue the reminder. It would go something like this. You call for SLANT and she continues to write, ignoring your subtle hand gesture to stop. Everyone else in the class sits in SLANT, hands interlocked, sitting up straight, looking expectantly at you. Abdul and Dean notice you notice Sally, who is still writing. You continue to provide the next set of instructions. Abdul recalls how he always gets a reminder for forgetting to put his pen down in time. Sir never lets him off. But Sally always gets away with it. Students have a strong sense of justice.

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HABITS // TB BLOGS

That’s not fair! They will say, with all the conviction they can muster. They really believe it. Sally never gets in trouble and I do! They could be right. You see, whilst you only see Sally in your lesson, Abdul and Dean share lessons with Sally all day. And every lesson, they watch teachers pretend they haven’t seen Sally ignore the rules. And they watch teachers apply those same rules to others, consistently. 3. Sally has a bit of a reputation around the school with the teachers. But she behaves for you. Does she though? Or is it the case that she gets away with it with you?! Every time we enforce a school rule, we support our colleagues who are doing the same thing. Everytime we bend a rule, we undermine our colleagues. Above all, Sally needs all of her teachers to be firm and fair, who say, I am enforcing this rule because I care about you. So what can we do to support the Sallys in our schools?

05 Record the reminder or warning on the board so that it is visual This acts as an antecedent for Sally and everyone else in the lesson and ensures you are able to effectively track the R,W,BIR system. 06 Show that consequences are temporary I like your opening there Sally, great simile. I’ll come back soon to see how you finish. Possibly the most important in this sequence. Smile and interact with the student naturally as soon as possible following a reminder or warning. Always keep it about the learning. Students are often quick to decide ‘it’s personal’ and we must give them plenty of reasons to understand that it is not. It is about their learning. I will end with an excerpt from Lemov’s latest book, ‘Teach Like a Champion 3.0’ because it sums this piece up perfectly:

“For me the technique of learning to be able to be both warm and strict at 01 Front load your expectations exactly the same time and finding the As I explain this next part, I expect you to optimal balance of those things remain in SLANT. If you do not, you may get a based on how it affects student reminder. Listen carefully and track the learning is called Warm/Strict. It’s board…. learning to be caring, funny, warm, If we do this part well, expectations for their concerned, and nurturing—but also ‘means of participation’ becomes crystal strict, by the book, relentless, and clear. So when we do have to issue a reminder or a warning, it becomes an sometimes uncompromising with obvious consequence. students. It means establishing the 02 Apply antecedents to give students the importance of deadlines and best possible chance of success expectations and procedures and, yes, rules.“ Swivel, Proximity, Be seen looking, positive framing etc.

Lemov has a whole host of ‘subtle techniques’ that means students like Sally and others can be pre-emptively targeted to save them from a sanction.

(With thanks to Rob Clark who came up with the above sequence of strategies and Doug Lemov whose work we are constantly learning from.)

03 Issue the reminder clearly Sally, this is your reminder, I asked everyone to remain in SLANT remember. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It is a matter of fact. Explain the reason precisely and… 04 Move on quickly Continue with the phase of the lesson and avoid getting into confrontation with the student.

HABITS //HOMEWORK THE DOG WON’T BE EATING

HOMEWORK THE DOG WON’T BE EATING Louise St Pierre

Homework has always been a contentious issue in education. The great homework debate of whether homework is really needed or not has certainly been going on since I began teaching. At the CST, we recognise that homework is an integral part of supporting our learners to both self-regulate and progress to achieve the best that they can. The Differentiation, Timely and Prior Content (DTP) approach we use as a Trust aims to mitigate against some of the issues raised about homework: centring on core knowledge and memory recall, whilst maintaining the right balance of workload for both learners and teachers. Differentiation 10,000 hours of practice makes you an expert however, practising a skill incorrectly can be detrimental. By differentiating our homework, we are able to ensure that students are being provided homework which is pathway appropriate and caters for their individual learning needs. By ensuring core knowledge is the foundation of our homework, we are providing the right skills to be practised so students can make progress against the Key Objectives set out in our curriculum. Timely When implemented incorrectly, homework 07 // HABITS // JULY 2022

can be too much for students to cope with and can put a strain on parents who are trying to support their child. By ensuring our homework is ‘timely’, as a Trust we are helping our students to maintain a healthy balance between working hard and resting- ready for the next day of learning. Reducing the volume to exactly what is necessary also allows teachers to manage their own workload; by using the starter to assess a shorter piece of memory based recall, rather than something which needs to be specifically teacher assessed. Prior Content Memory is a core tenant of our curriculum approach at the CST. Therefore, it is only natural that it should be core to our homework approach. Whether it is a Multiple Choice Quiz or exam questions, using homework to recall key knowledge over time will help our students combat Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve. As time passes since knowledge is learnt, if regular spaced recall does not happen it is proven that students will forget. Homework is an area, like the rest of our practice, which we should always be looking to reflect on and improve. The better the quality of work set for homework, the bigger the impact for our students and the less likely it is that ‘the dog ate it’. @CST_LONDON

HABITS // SAILING THROUGH THE STORM…

Sailing through the storm… Joynal Ali ‘We are NOT all in the same boat, we are in the SAME storm. Some have yachts, some have canoes, and some are drowning. Just be kind and HELP whoever you can’ For those wondering, the above was from a twitter post, which I happened to be scrolling through whilst discussing with a colleague the CST approach to curriculum and for some reason the words just seemed to resonate with me and what I have seen in my short time thus far at the CST. Collaboration Here at the CST, multiple schools collaborate to provide resources to reduce our workload, and in turn, our cognitive load. I of course refer to our curriculum booklets. We have reduced the workload, meeting up on a weekly basis via the cross-trust meetings to discuss the progression of our shared tasks. We collaborate regularly, further deepening the relationships fostered between our schools as teams of specialists work together to produce some outstanding curriculum booklets – as the age old saying goes ‘many hands make light work’. Challenges and benefits For each batch of booklets, there comes the process of understanding our medium-term plan (MTP), articulating these into individualised lessons, quality assurance followed by mass printing. And the benefits? Teachers are given time back to focus on what is truly the most important aspect of the job, their in-class practice! The learning curve It has not always been smooth sailing with regards to the development and execution of these booklets.

Whilst I have always been a believer of systematicshared-practice, the idea of sharing our wealth of knowledge to allow rapid progress to take place within the classroom, it has taken some time to bring everyone ‘on board’ so to speak. To be specific, there have been 2 fundamental concerns to navigate: 1. How teachers were expected to deliver their lessons using the curriculum booklets 2. Why it was going to improve their practice The answers to the above can be summarised very simply: Intellectual Preparation (IP) and our Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) framework. Staff are given time to intellectually prepare using the booklet. Spending time annotating the booklet, knowing which students will be asked what questions, highlighting possible misconceptions and different approaches to answering practice exam questions rather than spending time putting together resources, has led to a more efficient use of a teacher's very valuable time. By using curriculum booklets and following the EDI framework, lesson delivery becomes standardised, teaching becomes smoother, students are more focussed, and it allows for a greater amount of learning to take place. Moving forward Whilst there are some improvements to be made before arriving at our flagship product, the results are clear. We have begun to provide a resource which is the perfect pitch for our student’s pathway; it allows for scaffolding in lessons via IP and provides the opportunity for live feedback. So, whilst we are not all in the same boat, we are in the same storm. Curriculum booklets are our way of HELPING our teachers navigate through this storm!

HABITS // USING MINI WHITEBOARDS TO CFU

Using Mini Whiteboards to CFU Omer Pazare

What 'means of participation' (MOP) do you use when checking for understanding (CFU)? How well do you really know the extent of student understanding? Is there an optimum MOP when CFU? Whilst we all know that CFU is important, are there ways that we can improve on our current practice? Most teachers are content with simply asking a couple of questions to keep students engaged and then moving on. “There are only two good reasons to ask questions, either to collect evidence that you need to inform your teaching, or to cause students to think” Dylan Wiliam. At CST, phase two looks at small steps, instructions, chunking information and CFU. We aim to use CFU to inform our teaching and implement strategies like Call and Response, Cold Call, Pepper Q&A, Think-PairShare, and Probe. I believe that mini-whiteboards (MWBs) hold the apex position in the MOP for CFU. First of all, we should never simply ask students if they get the material taught. As explained in technique 6 of Lemov’s Teach Like A Champion 3.0, students are awful at diagnosing their understanding. An underlying motif in Teach Like A Champion is the concept of the “ratio,” which is a way to analyse the number of students actively thinking in lessons and how diligently they are thinking.

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When considering the MOP, we must account for the ratio to ensure more effective teaching. The three main options for MOP include questioning, book work, and MWBs. Questioning is effective at achieving a high ratio when paired with previously listed strategies used in CST with the addition of Wait Time and No OptOut (cold call). Whilst they do provide students with the opportunity to verbalise tier 3 vocab words out loud, the class must be sampled correctly; taking one answer does not give a clear indication of how well the class has learned. The best times to use questioning are when asking SAF students winnable questions to motivate them, for class discussions of new concepts to push pupils to think, questioning during an explanation and for reviewing work done during independent tasks. Separately, book work gives excellent assurance of participation ratio since it is easy to spot when pupils are working. Additionally, the book work provides a record of work done over an extended period. Ownership of the book acts as a motivator for pupils to maintain high-quality work. However. we must take care not to allow students to become fixated on the aesthetics of their work and obtaining the perfect answer which restrains

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HABITS // USING MINI WHITEBOARDS TO CFU

them from writing down answers they are not confident with! We must actively observe for this as we walk around monitoring their work. Importantly, it is difficult to collect data on how well students have understood the material taught. The best times to ascertain this is during the independent practice phase of the lesson, in conjunction with SLOP and during silent retrieval practice activities. Updating DPR as we go not only ensures our judgements are timely and accurate, it is highly motivating for our students (plus it saves us time from having to update later on!) Finally MWBs allow you to gather data on what students are understanding and how much of the class is understanding. MWBs produce a high participation ratio since all students must produce an answer and must be thinking. However, routines are important; the better the routines, the better the ratio. Although traditionally MWBs have been used for short answered questions, MWBs can be used for more extended responses which compel students to participate.

MWBs are especially useful for prerequisite knowledge testing, and silent individual retrieval work. When comparing MWBs to oral response, even when using the discussed techniques, some students may still be unfocused, however, with MWBs they are forced to concentrate. The thinking and participation ratio is greater in MWBs than when using questioning. Unconfident students are more willing to attempt questions when using MWBs since it is a temporary medium, in situations where they would have been more reluctant to write down these answers in their books. Colleagues are increasingly using MWBs because it increases their ratio and is the perfect medium for students to give questions a go. So, if you're still not using MWBs, what are you waiting for? If you want great student outcomes, try it for a week and thank me later!

HABITS // ROUTINES HABITS // OH WHAT A FEELING!

OH WHAT A FEELING! Spacing and Interleaving Nobody Forgets the Spanish Cognition Mary Anne Davies

We have all probably heard the following buzzwords over the last few years - cognitive science, spacing, interleaving, dual coding, retrieval practice, cognitive load theory… but what does this all really mean in practice? Do we have to completely overhaul our pedagogy, our SoWs and our delivery to incorporate these? The great news is that the MFL departments at the CST do all of these things already. We just forgot we did. So what is Cognitive Science? Cognitive Science, attempts to quantify and explain how students think and learn; providing a way of scientifically ensuring content and ideas are effectively stored in long-term memory for easy retrieval later on. Why do we need it? As a Secondary Teacher (of any subject) , anything that provides an insight into how teenagers best remember and retain information is surely useful. If strategies derived from cognitive science will allow students to remember more, recall faster and therefore perform better, I would perceive them as invaluable for everyday classroom practice. How do we exploit it in MFL in the CST? The good news is that this is just objectively good MFL teaching. The study of any foreign language lends itself to integrated retrieval practices. A good French or Spanish scheme of work will always be based on recalling previous knowledge, and require students to memorise words and structures in every lesson, to be used again and again and built upon in

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proceeding lessons, weeks, and years. Think back to your weekly vocab tests. Dual coding and retrieval practices have been long standing techniques in the language classroom. Flashcards with words and images, even using moving images (gifs) and mime, have been integral in explaining new words and concepts in the target language. It is common practice to use retrieval techniques such as sentence builders, quizzing, cloze activities, and mind maps, amongst other retrieval techniques. At the CST we have standard ‘Memory Starters’ with low stakes questioning and plenty of thinking time, paired with low stakes testing to reduce student anxiety. We often retrieve language to use it again in different contexts and across different topics. For example, we learn how to use simple opinion phrases in year 7. Students are then repeatedly required to repeat and manipulate these structures for the next five years, building up to creating complex opinions on the environment, the world of work or the importance of learning a language. Communicative Language Teaching encompasses Role Play, Group Work, Information gap activities, Opinion sharing and Scavenger hunts, all designed to get students retrieving previously learnt language to complete real work communicative tasks. Prior learning is revisited often in a range of different ways to deepen understanding and its relevance to the world outside the classroom. This is not an exhaustive list of techniques or ideas and I am confident MFL are not the only ones championing these techniques… maybe you just forgot you did this.

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HABITS // YOU CAN TEACH AN ‘OLD’ DOG NEW TRICKS

YOU CAN TEACH AN ‘OLD’ DOG NEW TRICKS Lisa Smith I’m sure you have all heard of the proverb: ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’. It was one of my father’s favourite sayings growing up and always represented such a defeatist attitude to me. As many of us do, we swear blind that that we will never turn into our parents. And I think I can proudly say that I have kept to my end of the bargain. I have been teaching for 20 years now and I have witnessed a number of trends that have come and gone and come back again. The teaching profession is constantly evolving. I’ve witnessed: use of blackboards, use of white boards and the interactive whiteboard which surely is on its way out soon with the metaverse on the horizon! Admittedly, change can be disorientating but change is also good for you! If it wasn’t it, I would have never taken the leap across the pond and ended up here in London, England. As a North American, I embrace ‘self-help’ and that includes helping to improve my teaching practice. Sometimes I romanticise teaching in Canada as many put it – ‘you are left alone’ but if I was ‘left alone’ for 20 years? Surely, your practice would become stagnant. Wouldn’t it? When the EDI framework, learning visits, and live coaching was introduced to the Community Schools Trust, it was daunting for some and understandably so. However, I love how the small, incremental regular feedback has led to transformative changes to my practice. Of course, one’s opening to such change is hugely dependent on the skill set of the coach. Isn’t it ironic that we teach children who are voracious learners, who are willing to lap up new knowledge, new systems and new initiatives yet us adults are slow to welcome change? We may be slow but we aren’t obstinate. Simply put, the old adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks is not true. We can always learn and we should seek to do so.

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HABITS // BEING EXPLICIT

As a UTC, as well as supporting students to achieve excellent examination results, a key part of our role is equipping young people with the employability skills that they need to be successful in the workplace.

BEING

EXPLICIT Alex Hayes

When we started, we assumed that we were doing this rather well. Employers regularly came into school, our students did lots of work experience and went on to some excellent destinations. But, after a challenge from the CEO, we realised that this acquisition of employability skills was largely accidental and not explicit. ie. students picked up these skills to varying degrees because of the experiences that we gave them, rather than our explicit delineation of the skills required to be successful in the workplace.. A new approach Picking up this challenge, we went back to our Industry Liaison Group. This is a group of employers that we work with regularly. It has national names in it, like Lotus, KLM and Anglian Water but it also comprises many smaller, local businesses. We asked them to outline the key employability skills that they want to see in future employees. For a 16-year -old student, this is what they said: Personal presentation Punctuality & reliability Teamwork

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NOMADIC

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HABITS // BEING EXPLICIT

Communication Problem-solving Perseverance & hard work Adaptability Now, some of these skills are easier to measure and some are much more challenging to quantify. From discussion at SLT, we have decided to monitor and track the following: 1. Punctuality & Reliability: this is students’ attendance as a percentage 2. Personal presentation: this is linked to our Uniform Tracker and shows the percentage of days that a student is fully compliant with the Uniform & Appearance Policy 3. Perseverance & hard work: this is determined through the average effort grade averaged across all subjects, as a percentage 4. Teamwork: this is assessed by teachers against level descriptors during employer activity, expressed as a percentage Over time, we want to incorporate more employability skills into our Employability Quotient, but this provides a useful starting point for students to see that they are developing their employability through the experiences we offer them. These skills will be promoted across the school visually using large graphics and referenced in assemblies and SCE. Significantly, from September, all Year 10 students will receive an annual report which, as well as summarising their academic achievement, will list these metrics. Where students are not performing well, the pastoral team have an excellent ‘in’ to link behaviour improvement to success in the workplace. We hope this approach will help our students achieve ever more prestigious destinations. I hope that you would agree that someone who is displaying: 100% attendance, 100% effort, 100% compliance with uniform and 100% contribution in team work is likely to be a good employee to recruit – and an excellent student to teach!

HABITS // DELIBERATE PRACTICE

Deliberate Practice Nathaniel Moody

I’ll admit: when I first heard the term deliberate practice, I was sceptical. Since when was practice not deliberate? Is it even possible, I wondered, to practise something unintentionally…to accidentally practise? The answer, as I’ve found, is yes. I did it a lot without realising. Bad habits form precisely when we fail to recognise they are forming. They develop subconsciously or appear just trivial enough to ignore. Conversely, when we make our goals explicit, our practice becomes deliberate. This idea was coined back in 1993 by the psychology professor Karl Ericsson (so despite my initial hesitation, it's been around longer than I have). Fast forward 30 years, and deliberate practice has become a headline in education, and for good reason. Outstanding schools are made by expert teachers; and expertise is something that we have to learn. What’s more, much of what we now know to be good practice in teaching is wildly unnatural. Frontloading precise instructions in our speech, providing long pauses to allow thinking time, pulling pantomime facial expressions to act as non-verbal cues: these are not

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things we tend to do in the day to day. They are, instead, a unique set of skills which must be learned and developed through practice; and, as luck would have it, have been neatly compiled in our EDI playbook and carefully mapped across the different phases of the lesson. Clearly, though, a playbook on its own isn’t enough. You could memorise its contents word for word and still not be an expert in the classroom. As research reveals, ‘procedural knowledge’ is best learned through doing. Hence the importance of high-quality CPD. Consider, by contrast, the inset days of old. You arrive, sit, listen and leave, with maybe a bit of moaning in between. You are told, rather than shown, how to do something (better), while the opportunity to try it out yourself is either lost or neglected. Worse, the whole thing is packed into a four-hour session right at the beginning of term, so - assuming, that is, you’re still awake at this point - you’ve forgotten most of what’s been said by hour three, nevermind your next lesson. For me, the real gamechanger was when I began team-teaching with subject experts in my department. Feedback

@CST_LONDON

HABITS // DELIBERATE PRACTICE was specific to my practice. I saw what worked and why and tried to emulate it there and then. The same principles govern deliberate practice at our school. It is regular, specific and, above all, practical. Coaching pods are designed to maximise professional learning, while wholeschool training sessions regularly resemble more a drama lesson than a lecture.

So, for thirty minutes on a Tuesday afternoon, we do nothing more than rehearse. We practise what we already know. Master particular skills. The challenge, then, is in suspending disbelief, so that when we are back inside the classroom, professional fluency means we can focus on the learning.

HABITS // THE CLASSROOM IS YOUR STAGE

The classroom is your stage Habeeba Hussain

Just like the theatre, you come in, take your seat, ushers at swivel to ensure there is undivided attention and high anticipation for the show to get started sound familiar? Our classroom is the theatre and we, as practitioners are: ushers, playwrights and actors all together. The EDI framework is fundamentally our prologue, stage directions and script for excellent teaching for the best performance of our lifetime, and our audience, our students. Using the EDI as our prologue, across all subjects, allows our students to know what they’re watching and essentially gaining, and it is this familiarity that allows students to attain knowledge and work towards having better life opportunities. Lynne Reder, a leading expert on memory, cognition and behaviour argues that “if all components in a lesson are unfamiliar, the task becomes very difficult or impossible.” Therefore, it is important to consider how the working memory is not a fixed quantity but interacts with the familiarity of the elements that need to be processed thus maximising job outcomes. However, the execution of EDI is what makes this framework extremely effective - it is how we, at FG, engage with it and deliver the performance of a lifetime that shapes a student’s academic career and future. 17 // HABITS // JULY 2022

Let the show commence! “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts” From the very beginning, being deliberately upbeat through our body language and intonation of voice invites our students into our classrooms, raising their excitement and vigour to learn, just as we would when we step into that theatre, excited for the curtains to rise. This all starts from our corridor to classroom presence where we need to stand tall at swivel position, proudly and loudly, greeting our students so that they feel welcomed and seen. Our voice acts as a powerful tool in setting the tone and environment of our lesson thus enforcing high engagement, behaviour, and rapport with students as we are naturally responsive to a higher pitch than a dull,flat one. Yet, the power of our voice needs to coincide with our body language. Strut the stage by classroom mapping: swivel to ensure there is 100% attention on you; circulate to manage behaviour and keep students on their toes; go to corners of the room and be seen looking! @CST_LONDON

HABITS // THE CLASSROOM IS YOUR STAGE

Breaking the fourth wall

Curtain call

During phases 2 and 3, we immerse our audience into the performance using CFU at key intervals. Consistently implementing I say You say, Turn and Talk, Heads down Fists Up, DPR judgement calls and Track the Speaker allows students to actively be a part of their learning journey thus leading to the best possible outcomes. Students start to take ownership of their learning by utilising their peers and environment in which their contribution informs their understanding of the performance, thus leaving them to mimic the high standards of the performance during the SLOP to achieve the KOs needed to attain the best outcomes of their academic career.

The final act is important to ensure we have met the key objectives of the lesson that’s needed for the sequel. A curtain call occurs at the end of a performance where recognition and thanks are due. Stand at swivel and proudly celebrate student’s achievements using Golden tickets, DPR and thank them for their contributions as gratitude enhances learning and instils a strong sense of self in our students. Having the best possible ending to your lesson by standing at threshold, dismissing your class row by row and with a thank you, you are allowing them to leave inspired and preparing them for the next life-changing performance. After all, we all know, the show must go on!

HABITS // THE IMPORTANCE OF FINGERTIP KNOWLEDGE

The Importance of Fingertip Knowledge Oliver Walsh

I have been teaching History for 5 years now and I remember all those hours sat in dilapidated classrooms at the IOE, learning almost exclusively about the importance of teaching the discipline of history in our classrooms. Little time was placed on the importance of the knowledge required at the students’ fingertips to demonstrate the historical disciplines of change, evidence, interpretation and so on. This is, of course, not a debate exclusive to history, as the balance between teaching the ‘facts’ and the ‘skills’ is one that is hotly debated across all departments all over the country. A problem I recently had with a year 11 class when trying to teach them why the US failed in Vietnam was the ‘hearts and minds’ argument. In brief, this argument centres around the miscalculation the US made in treating the Vietnam war as an extension of the Cold War (which we had taught them in Y10), as a battle of ideology (capitalism v communism) and as a way of freeing the Vietnamese people from the dangers of communism. This was a miscalculation from the US as the Vietnamese people didn’t really care about ideology; they wanted independence and saw the US as another colonial force trying to tell them what to do.

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The problem with trying to teach this to Y11 is that you need a huge amount of knowledge to understand where this historical viewpoint comes from, you need to understand the notion of colonialism, independence, capitalism, communism, the Cold War, contextual knowledge of the Indo-China conflict and huge amounts of topic specific knowledge! Without this knowledge, any notion of the students understanding the argument is tricky and any possibilities of them applying this level of thinking to other topics and units, is impossible. These problems will crop up in most classrooms and is what Steven Pinker calls ‘The Curse of Knowledge’: assuming our students have the background knowledge required to form complex arguments in our subjects. How can we solve this problem? 1. Explicit teaching of tiered vocabulary Tier one vocabulary are simple everyday words that rarely need explicit teaching; however, tier two words such as ‘peculiar’, ‘context’, ‘emerge’ have a more complex meaning that can often have slightly different applications in different subjects.

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HABITS // THE IMPORTANCE OF FINGERTIP KNOWLEDGE

For example, I can emerge from a gloomy building in a piece of English language or there can be an emergence of political reformers in the 19th century in a history class. These words need to be taught explicitly and students are given ample opportunity to practise using these words in given contexts. Tier three words are subject specific words which are often essential to teach a given topic in that subject: ‘denominator’ in maths, ‘osmosis’ in Science or ‘democracy’ in history. Allowing students the time and attention to solidify their knowledge of these tier two and three words should allow them to apply a deeper background and contextual knowledge to their writing and have a greater understanding of the things they read and encounter in our classrooms.

Fingertip Knowledge The problem I encountered with Y11 is not an easy one to solve and demands a meticulously planned curriculum, centred around rich quantities of knowledge and constant revisiting of content over time - something we are constantly striving to achieve in our school. The curse of knowledge is something all specialists will suffer from but the strategies above should bring us one step closer to bridging the gap between our knowledge and our students.

2. Low stakes quizzing Every week I use retrieval practice across all my year groups with questions on something we did ‘last lesson’, ‘last week’ & ‘last term’ with more points awarded for the answers to questions we studied longer ago. We also use quick quizzes and regular MCQs to embed knowledge in the students’ long term memory. This keeps knowledge fresh and at the students’ fingertips in order to apply it more readily week by week.

HABITS // CAN YOU TRULY GET BETTER FASTER?

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HABITS // CAN YOU TRULY GET BETTER FASTER?

CAN YOU TRULY GET BETTER FASTER? Deborah Iyere

My reflection at Forest Gate Community School Having come into FGCS as my PGCE second placement, I honestly did not know what to expect as you would in any new environment. In a short space of time, I was able to see how dedicated the school was to better not only the students but also the teachers. I have been exposed to expert teachers, dedicated students and ways that I can constantly better my pedagogical practice. It has been truly inspiring to witness teachers' dedication to bettering themselves regardless of their experience. They were always willing to learn and explore ways to grow. I enjoyed how open the school was towards promoting learning walks and having teachers support and connect with one another.

the classroom and encourage students to think positively about the school. Despite knowing I thanked students from time to time, it was not something I had done consistently. I was excited to enforce this in my classroom. Upon further research, I found that gratitude is strongly associated with greater happiness within positive psychology. Appreciation can allow students to feel more positive emotions, deal with adversity and build strong relationships. I can confidently say that after only one week of implementing this into my lessons, my students genuinely feel more satisfied when they leave the classroom. Students are much more eager to contribute and feel comfortable connecting with me as a teacher, both in the classroom and outside the classroom. So can you get better faster?

EDI bootcamp The EDI bootcamp was not something I had ever experienced, and I was inquisitive about joining my first session. From the first session, I saw the bootcamp's unique benefits. I immediately started implementing what I had learned into my classroom, seeing results immediately. It was refreshing to see experienced staff members' involvement, and how willing every person was towards learning. Recently we spoke about the importance of saying thank you to our students and encouraging students to do the same. Some important takeaways from the session were how it could benefit student involvement within

In conclusion, the short and long answer is yes! If you had asked me this question before joining Forest Gate, I would have been sceptical about that statement. The positive feedback I have received from staff members has aided in my belief that I genuinely see myself getting better faster. From the EDI Bootcamp to the PDP sessions and the learning walks, I see myself enhancing every day, whether this is one per cent or fifty per cent. The important thing is that Forest Gate acknowledges simple misconceptions that we can all make as teachers in these bootcamp sessions and dedicates time and energy to finding ways to overcome this. Together. 22

habits. everyday excellence