Changes I have made using mini white boards, to my starters and to my questioning.

3 changes this year. I have been teaching since 2008 and in that time I have made some small and some large changes to my teaching. However, I have been consistent in my methods for the past three years, until this year. Throughout this year I have made three changes to my teaching that are detailed in this blog.

The major one is the way I use mini whiteboards (MWB). Previously these were used in my classroom for instant feedback (and still are). I read one of Craig Barton’s three top tips which detailed how to use these as an aid for starter questions. Before this change I would leave four questions on the board, take the register, ask the students to do the questions, walk around the room and then stand at the front and try to gauge understanding. Now the books are left in their boxes until later and I just have MWB and pens on the students’ desk. I have two questions on the board (it would be better to just have one question on the board, but I have two as I still need some time to take the register). I have always found it difficult to get every student to work through the starter, but I am finding that displaying their work on a MWB for me to check over is encouraging everyone to at least make some effort. This might start with writing down the question, then, for example, substituting in a number for a variable or writing down the relevant formula. Once we have been through the first two questions, I display question three and I can now walk around the room knowing what each student should be doing. I will then put a fourth question on the board. I check for student understanding and write the workings and answers on the board. The benefits of not having their books out are that all efforts made in the starter are from the students trying to remember the steps as opposed to flicking back and looking at previous work (i.e., not remembering the steps). Also, they are not copying down the questions and answers into their books, so there are fully focussed on the question they are supposed to be working on. After we have finished the starter, the books are handed out* and the students spend two minutes writing down the date, title, questions, workings and answers, thus providing them with a tidy copy of worked examples to refer to. * To make handing out the books quicker, at the end of the lesson the students leave their books on their desks, and I collect them in row by row. Handing out the books is then a simple, quick exercise. The benefits to using MWBs this way is that everyone shares their thoughts, and the teacher can see the progress (or lack of) that is being made, and students can ask and answer questions and discuss ideas. I still also use MWBs throughout the lesson to check for understanding.

The second change is the questions that I ask in the starter. This change came about after reading a tweet questioning the benefits of starters as they currently stand. For me, the main point was whether students were gaining anything from these starters, or were they just (for some students at least) a few moments at the start of the lesson during which little learning was being done and they ended up just copying down the answers? Now the starter questions are on the same topics for a week, and, if I remember, the students are told what the topics are going to be the following week. Doing this, coupled with the MWB ideas mentioned above, mean that they become comfortable with recalling a previous topic and can make good progress with it through the week. A recent example of this (Year 9, set 2) would be starting with a recall question on finding the gradient of a line, to remembering that parallel lines have the same gradient, through to finding the gradient of a line perpendicular to this line. For most students an improvement is seen throughout the week, and I can identify those that do not make progress and spend some time intervening with them specifically on the precise area they do not understand.

My final area of improvement is questioning. Using MWB allows me to see what students are thinking and is a great starting point. As a sport analogy I would compare my questioning technique to basketball, where the ball (the question) is bounced around the room, as opposed to tennis where I serve the question and one student returns with an answer. I will ask students to try and explain another answer, or to justify an answer that has been given. This is largely done using cold calling. This allows for the teacher to check for understanding. I recently listened to craig Barton’s Podcast with Pritesh Raichura, during which Pritesh discusses asking questions to check for listening. As this was close to the end of term, I have not had chance to implement it as a regular feature yet, but I will be when we return in September. I have tried it in the past week with each class and I feel the lower set classes will benefit from this the most. A number of the students in these classes do tend to switch off, but by checking for listening they are beginning to realise that this is not acceptable. When it is obvious that a student has not been listening we return to the point under discussion, go through it again and I ask the question again. As mentioned, the students are beginning to realise that they cannot switch off, and, hopefully, with prolonged exposure to this technique they will always be listening.