Teaching to the top... a personal reflection

I have had the enormous privilege of teaching the most amazing group of students this year.  A top set year 7 group who I have for RE one hour per week.  It has been a while since I had year 7 having done the A level/GCSE loop for the last few years and my initial thought was that this would be my weekly respite - my one hour a week where I could just teach without worrying about outcomes and targets and all that jazz.

To some extent that is exactly what it is - it is without question, the best hour of my week.  But it has also been a form of CPD for me.  I read Ron Berger's 'Ethic of Excellence' (the source of Austin's Butterfly - if this means nothing to you, please google it!) a number of years ago and had been struck by some of the important messages that the book delivers and I had (in my humble opinion) embedded them into my GCSE and A level teaching.  If you haven't read it I cannot recommend it enough - key messages for me are the importance of not underestimating what students are capable of doing, the power of a real audience, the need for drafting and redrafting and how to do proper peer critique.  I had internalised these messages and put them into my teaching practice.  And then I found myself in front of this amazing group of year 7s and I realised that I may have become very good at doing this at A level but my KS3 teaching left a lot to be desired.  So here is a short summary of lessons learned and where to go next...

1. A challenging and rigorous curriculum is essential...
I am not sure when I realised it but sometime this year I realised that our current KS3 curriculum was beneath my year 7s.  They could do it.  There was no challenge.  They were good and lovely and engaged with me but there was no struggle.  So I decided to go crazy and teach them the same lesson I had taught my year 10s just to see what happened.  I reassured them that it was okay if it was hard and I just wanted to see what happened.  What happened is they smashed it.  They engaged and they struggled and they asked questions and I asked questions and we all got a bit stuck and somehow we ran about 10 minutes into lunch and nobody was that bothered because it was so good. And I realised in that moment that I was pitching the learning too low - I was teaching what we have always taught to 11 year olds with no awareness that this was insufficient for these 11 year olds.  After that, every lesson was harder, deeper, tougher and I just kept waiting for them to quit.  They don't.  They love the challenge and they raise their game to meet whatever I put in front of them.  In a few weeks time we are going to be looking at Plato and Descartes and it will be awesome.

2.  Assessment is not what you do after teaching...
Teachers spend way too much time teaching kids stuff they know.  Not anymore.  Testing is important, there isn't space here to explain why but practice, recall, forgetting, assessing are all important parts of the process of embedding knowledge.  So I test now.  A lot.  I test before I teach, I test after I teach, I test for homework, I test for fun.  But I never punish kids for not succeeding.  Failure is okay - actually it is important, it is incredibly important feedback for me.  What do you know?  What don't you know?  What would you know if you could recall it?  What do you not know because I failed to unpick the misconception?  Then I teach the stuff that kids need me to teach and if they already know it?  I don't waste time teaching it.  We go beyond it (hence the Plato!).

3.  Knowledge is key...
Following my curriculum focused epiphany, I rejigged a lot of what I was going to teach.  Every unit now is planned by creating a knowledge organiser, a non-negotiable list of stuff that they need to know.  And I teach it.  And I teach beyond it but I make sure they know it and have it and we refer back to it.  Skills do matter, the application of knowledge is key but you cannot apply what you don't have.  My colleague Martin Thompson (@MrThompson) has taken this a step further and is putting together a reading list linked to the knowledge organiser that students can be directed to/find out more from their own interest.

4.  It has to feel safe...
Relationships are important.  If you want students to get stuck in and be comfortable with struggle, the environment has to be right.  Students, especially high attaining students, need to remember that it is okay to struggle, to fail, to get stuff wrong and they will only do that in a safe space.  They have to be able to ask questions and volunteer incorrect answers without worrying that this means they are not 'clever'.  This is the best bit of the growth mindset stuff - the idea that we all have to work at learning and through effort, we experience success.  You have to move the focus away from target grades/levels and onto targets for progress - how do I get better, not how do I get a 9?  (Btw I have a whole soapbox rant about why setting students a target grade of a 9 is morally unacceptable - which is one step away from some controversial views on target grades - but I shall save all that for another day).

5.  Excellence as a habit...
In my year 7 class, we talk about how memory works and we practise revision strategies so that students are getting into the habit of reviewing their learning.  We practise, practise, practise and we invest time in learning how to work with the material that is important to RE.  We analyse quotes and we think about how we can remember them and reference them and talk about them.  And we do it because year 10 is too late!

So that's my learning so far.  And interestingly much of this thinking was echoed in an ASCL course led by Suzanne O'Farrell on maximising achievement in a linear world where she talked about the importance of getting key stage 3 right (among many other brilliant things).  I think I am getting there but there are one or two things I want to really focus on moving forward.

The first is inspired by Tom Sherrington (@Teacherhead) who wrote an excellent post on teaching to the top here:  https://teacherhead.com/2013/12/27/teach-to-the-top/.  Questioning.  Specific, extended, targeted questioning that echoes the high expectations that I have of their written work.  Questions designed to stretch, to challenge, to bring on struggle.  So questioning is my next big priority in terms of developing my own teaching practice.

The second is remembering the power of the redraft - I have high expectations of their written work but I have not built in opportunities for peer critique and redrafting that I would previously.  So this is also an area for focus.

The final one is about allowing my learning with this group to filter into all my teaching - not making assumptions about what students can and can't do based on their age, their set or an outdated scheme of work.  To ensure all my students have access to a rigorous and challenging learning experience in RE which gets them curious and thinking and ultimately leads to a mentality that moves beyond aspiring to pass and onto aspiring to succeed (credit to Tom Sherrington for that last soundbite!).



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