It goes without saying that time in the field is a tremendous asset, an invaluable gift in any profession, teaching is no different. I am an evolved version of my past self; it was the experience that allowed me to make the necessary connections to appreciate this. I look at my colleagues with awe and wonder, I take an insightful approach into their longevity, the skills they possess, some over decades, a craftsmanship of efficiency and expert precision, after trials and errors they find a working formula, a mind field of knowledge if we choose to listen. With experience you learn to put away the ego, to develop yourself you become curious and take the good from people around you. A collective force with one goal, to educate the minds of the future, a service to others, how wholesome! I look back at some of my teaching with some rolling eyes, moments of cringe, laughable and some awful but I managed to get through it all! I was later to understand that it was all necessary feedback.
I pay much closer attention to this internal feedback. I truly experienced the word reflection for what it is. That is metacognition in practice, thinking about what you do and why you do it. It sounds simple but it only clicked for me in the past 2 years. I would go into lessons with a structure drilled during PGCE (teacher training). Do a starter, main task, some assessment for learning (quiz/whiteboard/thumbs up etc) throughout and finish with a plenary, and back on repeat. What I didn’t grasp was the depth of research behind this model, but more importantly why we did this. If we reflect, most of us do something similar. We might give it different names or have some derivative, but it is a working formula that stood the test of time.
Going Deeper
Successful educators are more than just tutors, the multiple thoughts that play in the mind during the beginning of a lesson are astounding. Just one scenario of many: A new English as second Language student comes in knowing little English, SEND pupil needs to have the paper enlarged or sent via email, a safeguarding concern you notice with a pupil, non-uniform worn by student breaking school policy, pupils sitting in the wrong seats and you’re already doing a countdown. Breathe…
In comes the starter, settle the kids down, get them focused ready for learning, a beautiful invention. it has-multiple effects. This is not any starter, this is a reminder of their seating plan, behaviour for learning, retrieval practice and assimilation. Memorisation and spaced practice to aid long-term memory, feedback for the teacher, and real-time off-the-cuff questions all in one. Depending on our energy levels, the good thinking teachers in us will evaluate these hypothetical situations and execute dialogic questions and conversations with students and the task prior and during the lesson. The lazy in us just take one from the stash of resources, both purposeful and effective and equally necessary at times. And that’s just the starter.
The Main Course
Now for the mains, well it’s a story, a connected story, one of what students already know to one in which we need to build from. Teachers need to know the narrative for the lesson to flow, otherwise they go off on tangents, I would know!
Learning never takes place through a blank canvas, it is a collection of thoughts strung together into schemas we build through our lifetime. We use our faculties of hearing and sight; our sensory perceptions and then move deeper into the semantics of the languages we possess. All information is learnt and conceptualised through this “residue of thought” we can thank Daniel Willingham for that one. Questioning students on the daily, we might ask more than a 100 Q’s in a day, to each pupil, to the same pupil and to the learning assistant, it is a back and forth that has no bounds yet so critical in the learning process. As a science educator, we bridge the gap between English and Maths daily, yet we seldom ask English or maths teachers or the students what they do. Well, I changed that, I ask them now, I ask them what they learn in English, maths, history, geography you name it. I read material in those subjects to understand the curriculum, just recognising it allows you to connect more ideas together, because the more pathways you bring together the stronger the learning memory becomes. More background knowledge leads to a greater developed schema. It provides depth in higher order thinking skills, for both students and teachers. That is why well-wishers will tell you to read and why such people have so much more to say.
The Plenary
In the end you want students to leave the lesson learning something tangible to take home. This is where you remind them to think deeply about what they studied by asking elaborative questions, why, what, who, when and how? For example, “how is ionic bonding different to covalent bonding which we did last lesson?, what happens to the electrons in ionic bonding? What is different in covalent bonding?” Tell them to predict the outcome for themselves, and find the answers through this journey of exploration, you could be right, which cements the idea, or you could be wrong which is a brilliant evaluative experience to learn from. Correcting a wrong response have far-reaching effects when an emotional response is attached to your incorrect answer. A win-win situation.
Ahh moments are so satisfying!
I am going to finish off with some not so obvious connections I made with information learnt., that became far more enlightening later in life. Disclaimer, you might have an ’Ahh moment’ or a ‘how the hell didn’t you know that’, but either way you have insight into the complex variation of the human mind. Here are some of my favourites….
Breakfast = is the first meal of the day after sleep, so you have been fasting all that time and you break your fast hence breakfast!
Chromatography = the word chrome means colour duh! Chromatogram a colour diagram, chromium because it is a transition metal with many coloured compounds, chromosome – different eye colours and the array of different other colour stuff found in our genes. All from the word chrome…….
IUM = means “metal”, and have a guess what chromIUM, potassIUM, rubidIUM are all metals, though I couldn’t quite figure out why helium was there, until google chacha (uncle) told us that it’s meaning has been extended since the 19th century as a Latin suffix; an abstract noun in naming substances including elements.
To that fact while writing this I just realised helios from the sun became helium. Dig a bit deeper, and you know why helios was given its name, because the sun makes tonnes of HYDROGEN which fuse together and make helium! It is always connected!
Producer = I was teaching food chains as you do, to KS3 pupils. All my young life I have just connected plants with producer or any vegetable, then came the thinking me. Why do we call it a producer, just a little thought and you will realise like I did after so many years, that plants “PRODUCE” their own food due to photosynthesis, so they are called PRODUCERS. What a find. Did you know -vore means “to eat”? So why do you think herbi, carni and omni had the suffix -vore at the end of their names, I will let you think about that one!
I have many more in the bank but will leave it there. It is imperative to ensure as Vygotsky stated, to allow our students to facilitate this learning within this “zone of proximal development”. We as the experts and our purposeful interactions will help guide and facilitate them to these answers, and more importantly to think deeply and make these connections themselves. We uncover what is unseen and it is this developed psyche that starts to understand and appreciate the gift of intelligence.