Accessibility, Motivation, Visibility: Three things for Autumn Term 2021

This is hopefully a short post outlining three things I want to do better in the first term of 2021/22 than I did last year. In the past I’d probably think of a big long list but the reality in this job at any level is, that in order to make genuine, sustained improvements, you have to focus on a smaller number of things in order to have the capacity to do them really well.

1. Improve the accessibility of my lessons.

Last year my department and I spent time trying to make our lessons more adaptable for the scenario of being in different classrooms all the time and generally having much less capacity due to greater break supervision, reduced time after school due to the need to leave early for cleaning, and for myself the fact that moving house meant my commute was longer. In addition, I felt strongly that many of things I did in my old, Powerpoint heavy lessons, didn’t work as well as I wanted.

As a result, we converted our lessons into ‘booklet-style’ lessons, with the key information and tasks presented on what eventually would become a double sided A3. We’d go through whole class reading of the information (or there might be a source or an extract of some kind), pull it apart, use it to jump off from, tackle vocabulary and so on. We’d answer simple questions or complete Writing Revolution style activities on that information. This would build up across the unit to a more extended piece of work.

However, on reflection, there were some aspects that didn’t work as well as I’d wanted for our mixed-attaining history classes (all our groups are like this in History in my school — no sets). I think while students were more attentive to the reading that we were doing than before (when this would be done more independently), I think some students when then set a task to do still struggled to translate what they’d read into some form of written response, even if the response required was fairly short. Some found the amount of text quite intimidating. Some students had a tendency to try and race off ahead which meant they missed important discussion during the reading phase of the lesson. I also found I wasn’t incorporating visual imagery as effectively as I would like.

So, this year I’m bringing back Powerpoint to help deal with this, but rather than using it as a repository of information and as my own lesson plan and crib sheet, I’m going to be using it to provide hints and prompts for written tasks, pre-written model answers, additional task explanation, and picture sources and photographs to illustrate key points of the content in the reading. The key thing I want to make sure I focus on here is ensuring that split attention is not an issue, which means sharpening up my own explanations to students about when to focus on the information on the page, and when to focus on the board.

Ultimately, finding a way to get more students to be more successful in my lessons is a critical priority.

The rationale behind this links to my second thing…

2. Focus on increasing my students’ motivation

One of the best edu-books I’ve encountered recently is Peps Mccrea’s Motivated Teaching. This is an area I’ve become interested in as I’ve felt that motivation has been a big issue for under-performing students in my classes, and that there is a wide variation in the motivation levels of different students.

An area I feel where I can improve my teaching is the first driver of motivation that Mccrea discusses in his book, which is all about ‘Securing Success’. If, as Mccrea describes, we want to aim for about an 80% success rate for students in their work, then I regrettably feel that I am not facilitating this at all, especially for my lower attaining learners.

A big challenge is trying to secure meaningful success in dramatically mixed attaining groups. How do you ensure that the Grade 9 target, potential Oxbridge student, experiences meaningful success at a high rate in the same group as a Grade 3 target student with poor literacy, difficulties at home and a lack of wider broader knowledge of the subject beyond the classroom, as well as 31 other students in the room all with their own unique characteristics and attributes? In particular, how do we do this when the Grade 3 student can see that they are nowhere near the Grade 9 student without being patronising? I’m trying the idea at the end of my first point as a starter, hopeful that I can make a little bit of headway. If I can make some headway and give more students a sense of success, that’s hopefully going to have the resultant impact on student behaviour, enjoyment and (crucially) outcomes that I want.

There’s lots of gold in Mccrea’s book beyond this, and I’m sure it’s something I’ll blog about again in the future.

3. Increase visibility

One area that really fell by the wayside this year for all sorts of reasons was my visibility around the department. I have to hold myself to account on this, I was not as strong in this area as I would like to be, and as I know the best leaders are. Being ‘visible’ by going into lessons in my subject, or by phoning parents, to share praise as well as concerns, regularly, fell by the wayside as the other time pressures took their toll. This is something I really want to get properly on the ball with this year.

I know from a previous school what an impact the visibility of colleagues (in an actually supportive, non-judgey way that’s about me looking at what the students are doing in my colleagues lessons moreso than what the teacher is doing) can have in supporting staff, and presenting that image of the staff as a united front in the face of the students, and with us returning to our own classrooms and with our curriculum in a stronger place, I really want to make this a priority for the next academic year. Given that we’re back in our curriculum areas, I want to do as much as I can to make our corner of the school a really calm environment in those lesson changeovers to improve the smoothness of the start and end of our lessons.

So, three key things for the new term. These clearly aren’t the only things to worry about — the plate of a head of department in a secondary school fills up pretty quickly. But these are three things I want to make more of a conscious effort to be doing, that I think will have a high impact on my teaching and the department as a whole, as we move into the new academic year.