Responsive Teaching with Bron and Tom

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

Tom Sherrington and Bron, both experienced in the field of teaching, explore the concept of responsive teaching. They discuss the importance of teachers being adaptive in classrooms to ensure effective learning for every student. Bron shares insights from his extensive experience, highlighting the nuances of techniques such as cold calling and peer sharing, and discussing how they can be refined for better classroom engagement. Meanwhile, Tom emphasizes the significance of structured feedback loops to continually assess and respond to students' needs, aiming to create a more inclusive and responsive educational environment.

Highlights

Tom and Bron discuss the overlap in their teaching experiences across countries 🌍.
Bron shares his admiration for Tom's work on responsive teaching techniques 📘.
Cold calling can be transformed into an effective tool with proper implementation 🔧.
Think-pair-share has pros and cons; effective training is key 💬.
Responsive teaching involves persistent adaptation and feedback 🤔.

Key Takeaways

Responsive teaching transforms classrooms by adapting to every student's needs 🎓.
Cold calling and think-pair-share techniques require skillful implementation 👍.
Structured feedback loops help in better understanding student needs 🔄.
It's crucial to incorporate systematic checks for understanding in lessons 🧐.
Teachers should focus more on tracking and checking student understanding 💡.

Overview

In their engaging discussion, Tom Sherrington and Bron delve into the intricate world of responsive teaching. They share their experiences from various schools and cultures, finding common ground in the challenges they face and the methods they employ to overcome them. By focusing on responsive pedagogy, both educators emphasize creating an environment where every student feels seen and heard, promoting a personalized learning experience.

Tom highlights how crucial it is for teachers to systematically gather feedback from students to address learning gaps immediately. This approach involves creating feedback loops that allow for real-time adjustments in teaching strategies. Meanwhile, Bron discusses how techniques such as cold calling can be effectively employed to keep students engaged, ensuring that everyone is participating and benefiting from classroom activities.

As their conversation unfolds, Bron and Tom reflect on the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in teaching. They stress the need for teachers to develop habits that allow them to swiftly assess and respond to student needs. By doing so, they cultivate a dynamic learning atmosphere that can adapt to any classroom's unique requirements, ultimately aiming to lift the educational experience for all students.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Overview The introduction features a brief conversation between Tom and Bron, who are about to engage in a 45-minute discussion. Tom is introduced first, followed by Bron, who provides her background as an instructional leader and teacher in Melbourne. The two express enthusiasm for their conversation, which will cover a broad range of topics including teaching.
00:30 - 04:00: Shared Challenges in Teaching The chapter discusses the shared challenges in teaching faced by educators from different schools and countries, highlighting commonalities in their work and teaching methods. It emphasizes the value of exchanging perspectives and addressing common issues by discussing set questions to delve deeper into their experiences and insights.
04:00 - 09:00: Cold Calling Techniques The chapter revolves around a conversation where Tom, an expert in responsive teaching, is praised for his work in the field, particularly in relation to schools. The person asking the question expresses admiration for Tom's work and blogging style, likening it to a comforting experience, and is eager to learn more about his passion and motivations for engaging extensively in responsive teaching and instruction.
09:00 - 20:00: Culture of Error and Feedback The chapter explores the concept of a 'culture of error' in education, emphasizing the importance of responsive teaching. It discusses experiences and reflections gathered over years of working with teachers, both in personal schools and as an external consultant. The author identifies common issues and areas for improvement in educational practice.
20:00 - 28:00: Think-Pair-Share Technique The chapter discusses the 'Think-Pair-Share' technique in classroom settings, emphasizing the importance of responsiveness. It highlights how teachers often focus on marginal issues, diverting energy away from addressing core classroom needs and material. The need for improved responsiveness to effectively manage and engage with all students is emphasized, reiterating that getting the basics right on a day-to-day basis holds substantial value for educators.
28:00 - 36:00: The Loop and Teach-Track-Respond The chapter delves into the concept of teaching as a central focus, emphasizing the numerous benefits that can arise from it. It is described as the core of existing challenges in the field, making it a fascinating area for exploration. The dialogue highlights the complexity and difficulty of teaching, noting that those with a background in education recognize these challenges more acutely. The author expresses admiration for discussions with teachers about responsive teaching methods, suggesting its significance in addressing educational challenges.
36:00 - 42:00: Closing Remarks and Future Conversations The chapter discusses the challenges teachers face in their profession, particularly in dealing with students. It highlights that responding to students in the classroom is one of the hardest aspects of teaching, distinguishing it from other more procedural and administrative tasks. The narrative reflects on personal teaching experiences, emphasizing the complexity and difficulty of understanding and addressing students' needs effectively during a lesson.

Responsive Teaching with Bron and Tom Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 hello everyone we are going to be having a great conversation in over the next uh 45 minutes or so I'm Tom sharington and Bron do you want to introduce yourself yeah hi I'm Brun uh I'm an instructional leader and teacher by background in Melbourne um super Keen to talk to you Tom and shoot the breeze about all things teaching and everything else yeah so we've we've worked out that
00:30 - 01:00 we we do almost exactly the same work um albeit in different uh with different schools different countries but we have so much uh overlap in what we're trying to do and the way we think about teaching so we thought it would be great to just exchange our perspectives on our on what we find um so do you want to kick off you've got you've got you you've set some questions up so do you want to just kick off asking them and and then we'll get into it yeah um yeah
01:00 - 01:30 Tom I've followed your work for a long time big fan of all your walkthrough stuff and when I read your blog you know when you read a Blog and it feels like putting on a nice tracksuit with someone saying all the things that you think um absolutely love your work and so I'd love to ask Kik off asking you a question about responsive teaching um that makes up the bulk of the work that I do with schools uh looking at responsive instruction I'm Keen to know what do you love about it like why what has led you to do so much work in that area area you
01:30 - 02:00 mean I think the walkthrough series is really just codifying a heap of stuff around responsive teaching but what do you what do you love about it I think it's because over you know the years I've been well working with teachers in my own schools but then visiting schools as a as a external trainer consultant I i' I've just felt that the things that come up as issues for you know where there where there are gaps where there's mileage in improving which I think makes a difference it's it's just in the
02:00 - 02:30 classroom and it's in the territory of of responsiveness so and particularly when you're thinking about it being responding to all the students in the class and so what I feel is that teachers expend a lot of energy and schools do on sort of what I would say marginal issues when there's so much material just getting the stuff right dayt to dat so that that's what I feel I feel like if if we can improve responsive
02:30 - 03:00 teaching as a total focus so many other things would benefit and it it's just it's just where it's just the the heart it feels like it's the core of where the challenges light so I find that's where it's interesting to explore yeah um it's also like if you've been a teacher by background you you just know that it's the hardest thing like I think the other thing that I love why I love talking to teachers about responsive teaching is because there's
03:00 - 03:30 just not a teacher on the planet who thinks that's an easy part of the job you know some parts of the job are kind of quite procedural and administrative um and responding to the kids in the room is always just by far I think the hardest thing in your day yeah completely tracking how it's going for them it's a question you you think it's it's just a really hard question so you're you're sort of I'm thinking of the last time I taught uh some you know some stuff which was a kind of a day
03:30 - 04:00 of with a class I didn't know but it was a kind of catchup day on physics you know so quite a lot of content and I didn't know the students I'm walking into the room thinking straight away I'm thinking this isn't just about me like blasting stuff out because straight away you're thinking oh okay okay you kind of know this but you're really struggling and um you don't seem to talk very much and you talk way too much yeah yeah right okay so I need to
04:00 - 04:30 get some Dynamics going here that allows me to interact with you and it that's the I've been doing this for years but this isn't easy I have to work it I have to yeah I feel tired just listening to you describe that scene like I need a glass of wine just listening to that scene um like who the hell are these people what are they thinking what's in your head what do you know what's your personality like How likely are you to answer this question if I ask you directly
04:30 - 05:00 do you know like exactly and it's sort of and then it's you know there are lots of people have explored this before like um you know Legends of the world like of our world like Dylan William who's been describing this yeah decades yeah you know it all sorts of things like the the the impact of feedback on a student and the fact that you can kind of make them kind of Coast through with complacency by being sort of too gentle
05:00 - 05:30 but another student if you're too harsh you sort of crush crush them demotivate so that subtle into playay of like how do you even respond to the kind of message I'm giving but mainly I feel it's even just like Gathering the information so how do I know how you're doing and I what I'm so interested in at the moment is the kind of you do have to make that complexity into something reasonably procedural because otherwise you just can't do it at all so I the way
05:30 - 06:00 of craft techniques to deal with that yeah you mean for teachers you have to make the the procedural steps of the technique you mean for teachers quite clear yeah so you know and weird this is another reason I'm interested in it is weirdly it's just not embedded in teachers habits very often that to do this so a lot I don't yeah I'm less surprised by that though because I've worked in teacher education um like first rmit
06:00 - 06:30 University and then university University of Melbourne yeah and this is not a criticism of like either of those institutions but it is a staggeringly small amount of time that we spend in pre-service teacher preparation talking at that level and so it's kind of hardly surprising to me that we then get out into the field and you just have a crack at stuff and of course it's not well thought through and coherent and
06:30 - 07:00 effective you know I mean back to my graduate years and I'm like what was I doing and then there's not till you've been taught for four or five years that you've got frustrated Enough by something that's not working that through trial and error or like happening upon a great resource that you go oh yeah that's what I'm trying to do and you try and kind of unstitching habits from that point right absolutely and well it I'm trying to think the first time I ever was roduced to um say you know mini
07:00 - 07:30 whiteboards and it felt like quite a new thing um even though even when we had them we were laughing at how oldfashioned they seem to be but it wasn't part of my training to sort of get responses from the students all at the same time or even to make sure you circulate really actively around the room and check how kids are doing it was it was sort of yeah and I meet a lot of teachers who's like deep deep deep deep default
07:30 - 08:00 habit is to stand at the front and just sort of stuff Wing stuff out and hope that people are kind of making sense of it Without Really checking and they're just sort of going oh and it's and that's all like wrapped up in like um well for me like and I'm interested in like I want to ask you about which which which kinds of responsive teaching techniques do you think you find um
08:00 - 08:30 you know that teachers find most challenging because sometimes I think we do we can get good at breaking the technique down and we can present it to teachers um and it makes total sense but we don't realize that there's an existing habit that is a barrier to implementing that well so like an example for me a a massive habit that I had that was completely ingrained was that I asked every single question by saying who can tell me and then I would try and shoehorn call call into that so I would ran a quiet and there were 90
08:30 - 09:00 kids in it and I would say okay four to six choir who can tell me what breath control means we talked about that last week and I can tell you out of the 90 kids that were in that choir the five kids who would put their hand up I can still name them I can still see them um and then I would say well waiting for more people to think and then I would try and shoehorn in a coold call and then the kid would say well you didn't ask me and it was all like not working because I had this existing habit that I was trying to kind of you know know so I'm interested in
09:00 - 09:30 that as well like even if I think that's so I think that's a really common one I mean I would say that is one of the most just that simple thing is that it's like sort of Baseline who can tell me and getting an answer so I I think that that psychology of a teacher which is an answer has been said that's kind of it like I ask a question and an answer has and even even sort of ones where you may ask more than on so if I asked you you know what are the
09:30 - 10:00 the three primary colors or something and there are only three you might give me red and then I'll go to someone else for for blue and someone else for yellow and between us we've come up with the three but I didn't even on my own question I didn't even say come on BR what are the other two you know sort of that type of between us we know and away we go and it's that type of thing and I feel like that type of loop now to unpick that and to think now what what's the problem with that why is that not a good way to do it yeah I think the other
10:00 - 10:30 thing that I'm interested in is like when I talk to teachers about that habit because I often have to frontload and say you know don't go home crying if you realize that this is how you ask questions because in a room full of 100 teachers you can have often 85 or put their hand up and go yeah that's me that's how I ask questions and then we dig into that and I think what I've found in conversation with teachers is that we think that when we say who can tell me that we're switching kids onto thinking
10:30 - 11:00 and I actually think we're switching 95% of them off I think they're waiting to hear us say who can tell me and then the kids are like that's when Tom and Vanessa and Jason speak now and I sit here and I wait for this to be over so it's like seeing it Through The Eyes of the student who opts out all of a sudden it becomes totally obvious that when I ask the question is when the exact moment when they turn off to
11:00 - 11:30 thinking I think this is one of the thing I've I've I've leared you know from observing lessons so you know I observe lots of lessons and I one of the things I always have to say is you know it's it's a piece of cake to watch a lesson compared to teach a lesson so when I'm when I'm describing all this stuff it's a bit like in know watching sport when you as a as a punter you can be sort of yelling at the screen saying pass it now or why didn't you do that and yeah doesn't mean I could go in
11:30 - 12:00 down there and do it so L of teaching I think it's easier to say than to do so you you're sort of not try judgmental about it but what I what I've observed a lot in lessons is is to sort of I've learned to sit back and just sort of imagine what it's like to be in this seat in this lesson all the time and how teachers interact with the with it with that space or those children and you notice that you know
12:00 - 12:30 teachers have all sorts of habits around who they ask um how often they come around that space and the the fact that you know a few children can dominate a lesson quite easily and create the feeling that stuff is being exchanged and shared but but then quite a lot of the children that you're looking at are just not saying anything and have like you say Switched Off and so that to me is why the responsive teaching agenda I just think is so important because you're thinking this this is a try to use a lot at the
12:30 - 13:00 moment is that child matters as much as any of the others so if you're trying to teach them imagine if they were the only kid in the room you wouldn't just ignore them or or wave at them and say is everything fine you you would want to know how they were getting on and just because there's loads of other kids in the room their learning is still the same for them so you've got to thinking if you if you're in sickness to engage on onetoone with somebody well why aren't you trying to engage with all of them and it's it's a kind of well okay
13:00 - 13:30 so that's not easy but that is what we should be trying to do yeah yeah it isn't easy it isn't easy though so I guess I'm wondering what um what are some of the techniques that you think are kind of hardest to get going on the ground I mean I've got I'm sure we see like lots of similar things in our travels but what do you find kind of the things that schools are really sort of committed to and are trying but
13:30 - 14:00 that that are really difficult to implement well I I think just the simple cold calling is is is one I'd say and think per share so those these are two techniques which I feel like are kind of a good counter part to each other one of them is everyone is thinking and ready to answer and the other one is everyone's talking and both of them you can do really well or kind of not very well at all so with cold calling it depends where your sources so if you read teach Like A Champion we
14:00 - 14:30 know kind of has kind of popularized that that that term it's not exactly the way we describe it in walkthroughs so I feel like you do have to say well which vers which version are you talking about yeah so in in my version it includes following up questions with each student and always asking at least one other student the same question not not a new one so sort of
14:30 - 15:00 and so if I'm looking at it I'm thinking even the very first part of it is to say to ask the question so that everyone feels asked and pulls a bit to check and even that I find it's really hard to shift to Habit on okay so um what are the three primary colors everyone have a thing can you see if you can remember them like pause and waiting and then and then creating a feeling that yeah I could could ask anyone and that that to me
15:00 - 15:30 even getting to that stage for some teachers is a big habit shift I mean do you find the same I do in that example you just gave actually I think if teachers haven't established cold calling as a a practice and the kids aren't used to it and if a teacher's shifting off kind of having said who can tell me one of the primary colors and waiting for you know five kids to put their hand up if they're in that position and they're trying to move to C call I often
15:30 - 16:00 find ditching the question Al together very helpful because the question is is IM meshed in their habit like they have the habit of asking the question so I have found that what they need to do is stop asking the question and say okay you seven you all know this I'm going to give you a moment to think about the three primary colors everybody thinking hands down right because the hands come up
16:00 - 16:30 so the thing is I I like there are I'm kind of obsessed with thinking about intro like getting something going that's new and better but doing it in light of what my existing practice is and I think Cole Call's a good example where actually the question is the bit that the teacher used to doing so I often find rescripting for statements and just telling the kids to think and maybe saying in a moment I'm going to ask a few of you to share might want to jot some down if you need to you know I still haven't asked a question so you
16:30 - 17:00 sort of you sort of like tell direct their thinking and then tell them to think to come that's quite clever yeah I like that I'm G to write that down so like I often say with Co call like there needn't be a question yeah interesting because the posing of the qu I I'm convinced that the posing of the question is this kind of like it is the moment when kids have learned to switch off to thinking yeah that's interesting and then so
17:00 - 17:30 you're I mean what you're trying to do is activate thinking and get them ready and make them feel and and one of the things I feel though is that this is where in in implementation in a school you often get a bit bogged down in transition from what I'm doing now to what I'm going to be doing later and so that has special challenges compared to what it's like when you're just it's become a routine so once you've and this this is I mean Brad someone like Bradley bush is brilant sharing the research on this but
17:30 - 18:00 know when and it's studied people you sort of have to trust this is true if you keep going for three or four weeks you know theyve become normal that initial oh it's a bit awkward and yeah but I feel like like at my school we had in our I don't know like we've been open for three years and I would have run seven to eight whole staff P's on coold coal like we just we just continually peeling in it and in about our at the six Monon Mark our teachers
18:00 - 18:30 developed uh sentence frames for themselves and they magnetized them and they laminated them and they had them on their board and it said in a moment I'm going to ask dot dot dot everybody thinking dot dot dot hands down dot dot dot just to help them transition across um because they just couldn't you know but like when I was learning to do it I used to ask the question and then say so sorry that's not what I wanted to
18:30 - 19:00 say like I used to just say to the kids no that's not what I wanted to say sorry take that back and the kids are looking at me like oh she's having a you know she's having a moment I do think so one of the things that I think this Common Ground here is is this need to sort of articulate and explore explicitly with teachers this sort of how am I going to make the shift in my habit so what am I going to say to myself or to the students which is going to push me back and it could be every aspect of it like how how much time you're going to give them to weit the stem and and I think
19:00 - 19:30 one of the other St one of the other challenges and often the reason why teachers don't like this technique is when it lands is how you ask a child so that they don't feel under too much pressure so another stem a common challenges this is probably the number one issue that when I talk to people about why are you finding cold calling hard they'll say because I'm so anxious about the children who don't who aren't confident to respond and I didn't used to like it when I was at school and they it's all about anxiety comes up all the time so scripting things like so Braun
19:30 - 20:00 what what how did you get on what were you thinking rather than saying come on then Braun give give me your answer now it sort of yeah things like how how did you get on did did you have an answer what were you thinking and and sort of soft questioning which invites people in I think that's quite a subtle thing yeah like very recently uh We've also realized at my school that there are two complet completely different kinds of call
20:00 - 20:30 calling that teachers are doing and that one builds culture towards the other so we realized so our description of C is probably not unlike yours in uh walkthroughs where we kind of say at my school that we want to pose a question or a statement give time for rehearsal or thinking usually PE share or jop something down in front of you you know at least some good time to think about it um sometimes we would give a sentence frame or sentence scaffold to get people
20:30 - 21:00 going in their thinking just particularly kids who have English as an additional language and then we would usually use language like you know to make sure everyone's still listening we maybe use language like we'll get started with Tom Tom kick us off tell us a little bit what you were thinking and then we might you know so we Cee to a student but we kind of indicate that it's the beginning of a conversation yeah you I'm not going to you for the answer but then we realized that that really is the form of cold call that checks for understanding but that
21:00 - 21:30 there's this other check for understanding that our teachers are doing which is amazing which is using Co call as a an just an it's not a check for understanding but it's an opportunity to respond with a certain success rate so let's say you've got an early years teacher and she's building the word Matt on the board and she says okay I'm going to say the sounds and read the word m at Matt your turn everybody M at Matt Tom your turn at
21:30 - 22:00 Matt good job Tom so that's a fast cold call there's no time for thinking no time for rehearsal but she can we counted Grace her name is she's a bloody gun teacher second year teacher she we counted 18 different kids got an individual repetition 100% success rate heaps of behavior specific praise so that then when they get cold cold an hour later on something that's quite tricky they have
22:00 - 22:30 this kind of relationship that when my teacher calls on me she will almost guarantee My Success either she'll scaffold me or help me or so then we're kind of thinking we actually need two separate codifications right like one is like word or phone level for really what I call like high octane opportunity to respond where the kids hearing their name and being successful and the teacher ands going nice job Tom and it's like now I'm kind
22:30 - 23:00 of itching for the teacher to call on me because that I love participating and like her kids are like literally on their haunches like I think that sounds quite I mean that's a great example of you know how you have to think hard about this stuff and you know if I think if you confuse those two and in some people's minds they do they're they're they're associating that kind of slightly deeper thought thinking question with the moment where you get right The Punchy and the punchier one is
23:00 - 23:30 absolutely has to be you're going to know I'm just checking and it's affirmative and it's positive and if if you if you get those two the wrong way around um and I sort of like it's a it's and you have had time to think so that that's so interesting and so this is where this is why I think it's so interesting about the word responsive is that in in this in this this one example the point of the of this is and I find this is so interesting talking to people about is you're gathering information so that you then decide what to do
23:30 - 24:00 next and often I find that's another issue which is sort of just not not attended to enough so let's say we're doing the C call and even though we've done M at M like oh we're struggling you're not sure you're not sure okay quickly like three two out of the five kids I asked weren't sure it's or whatever you're thinking okay let me just maybe we'll do it again or do it more corally so you're you're
24:00 - 24:30 you're you're you're you're responding to the information and then going right okay what that's telling me is this and I feel that's something which I don't know in our in our training or whatever it is our understanding of teaching teachers are sometimes caught out you're thinking Well w why weren't you expecting some of them to be wrong you know so what's your response let's assume some of the kids didn't get it what are you going to do next where are the other questions where are the other examples and that that to me seems to be
24:30 - 25:00 such an obvious thing to do and yet it's often I find teachers are caught out by it it's just assuming that we'll just go through the process and then it will land and away we go but yikes guys you're struggling with this okay so like that's just that's like a panic but like the cognitive load but the cognitive load on the teacher at that point is massive yeah yeah it like you can you can like smell the burn in their
25:00 - 25:30 brain as they go do I stop do I keep going get the others to independent practice and then I go group for instruction do I retach and get everybody to redo it even though I can see 90% of the kids can do it do I go my turn your turn and just get a coral repetition but I'm not sure if you actually understand that like there so many directions you can go and that you know I like particularly to the novice like when I work with recently graduated
25:30 - 26:00 teachers yeah like you can look at the room and you scan the mini whiteboards and half the kids are wrong and they're like okay wipe it next one because you don't know what to do no I agree and and and I feel like sharing this experience with people and showing how people respond and the choices that they make and I do think this comes down to resourcing of the curriculum and yeah having a go-to place okay so which is where when people are sort of Trapped in
26:00 - 26:30 their yeah like if you're talking about maths for example there quite a lot of math schemes of which people have bought which include slide decks and the questions are all like Slide by slide but if you're finding that those students are struggling with that I need to go offline and start saying okay well let's do a couple more and some teachers haven't yet learned how to just generate some questions which are similar or yeah I think the other thing that makes are interested to see what you think about this but like I think the other thing
26:30 - 27:00 that makes error correction really hard is that um we often uh sort of foot around eror right like I feel like we often don't have really respectful clear practiced ways of saying that's wrong so like um like practiced with teachers before saying things like you know you scan the
27:00 - 27:30 Whiteboard now I've got to have in my mind if I've got variation I want to tell the kids that I don't want it to be a secret no but I have to sort of practice what I'm going to say so I'm going to scan the boards and then I might say something like hey this is interesting we've got a few different responses here so we're all going to learn something boards down don't wipe it let's have a look at what we've got and then you know anonymously I'm going to put up you know my different answers and we're going to unpack them and then I might you know hope the kids are kind of updating their thinking right so
27:30 - 28:00 check it change yours if you need to hands up if you changed your answer beautiful that's what a good learner does good job like I'm going to praise kids who are spotting their errors and like yeah but we're not practiced it at that and I like I watched a teacher at my school last year they were writing they were looking at an analog time and they had to write it in digital time on their whiteboards and there was one girl who got it wrong and the girl who got it wrong looked at the board next to her and she looked at the board that side and she went oh stuffer
28:00 - 28:30 I just she knew she was wrong right and what she had done is she'd seen she'd seen the you know the minute hand pointing the long hand pointing to the five and she'd written like 50 instead of five P or something I can't even remember but the teacher had such a good culture of error that when the kids chinned their board she picked that girl and she said quick come out the front let's have a look and she it's such a good culture of era yeah that's great I love that that the girl came at the
28:30 - 29:00 front with a wrong answer and then she said look at what you've got look at the time and then the girl this look came over the girl's face she goes oh I see what I've done and so she said tell the class what you did first now model how to do it and then she said so the answer is and the girl said 205 she said nice job that's the best learner that's what a good learner does so she had made the culture that I will always praise you if you go out on your own you know but so often the kids who get it wrong we go who I think this
29:00 - 29:30 is a big thing in terms of the the whole issue is around I mean around say um like doing a doing a quiz or any kind of checking is is is this exact thing of the error so sometimes a teacher will do this of um it feels logical but it doesn't work so let's say let's say there are four let's just for for for Speed let's there there so are three questions I ask you question one question two question three there's often way more and then what I do is I I
29:30 - 30:00 go over the questions one I say okay so the answer to question one is question two question three and the teacher will say okay so who got them all right well done and the other guys you know just make sure you've got your Corrections down or something and and the teachers are expecting to just the CH children to hear the answer self-correct and the only people they asked about are the ones who got them all right and you're thinking this little kid next to me here got those two wrong and just told them the right answer but she doesn't know why and she
30:00 - 30:30 still doesn't understand it so the whole process has not dealt with the children who didn't get it and they the teacher will think well I set the quiz I went through the answers I was really upbeat about it and they'll think in their head I did a thing but actually it didn't reveal to you the information you needed which was who out there doesn't know and that mechanics of that so how would you do that differently you'd have to say something like um Okay so hear the answers right let's have a look who got
30:30 - 31:00 my my favorite one I share this quite often but something like who got two out of three cuz that's great um Jessica brilliant well done so which one did you get wrong and uh number four number two okay well so let's talk about what did you put and we get into it because she's already you know and it works better if it's like know six questions so you got like five out of six is a great score one wrong let's talk about the ones we got wrong and which one did you get wrong okay and creating a space for wrongness to be totally normal and it's
31:00 - 31:30 amazing how often teachers just don't do that they're so they're sort of just assuming the wrong people will deal with it and I find that even the mechanics of that um yeah is it that yeah it could yeah it could be that I also think it could be like teachers are really protective of their kids yeah they don't I think it's they're really empathetic I think they think some kids will go to pieces if they know that they're wrong and I think that's
31:30 - 32:00 probably true if we treat them like that and by the time they get to grade four then they they read that off us right like from the start of school if we're like God we're all gonna make mistakes what the hell would we be doing here if we're not making mistakes good Learners make mistakes let's dig into them you know um then I think they don't even notice but I think we make a big deal of it so they make a big deal of it and so they care but I don't think I think kids are like way more robust than adults
32:00 - 32:30 actually and like if we normalize it they're they're fine well that's the thing the key I mean I I us see this a lot in terms of this whole issue is sometimes teachers are saying well like this is my problem because I'm worried about their anxiety and I think well that's your projecting something there and it's a bit of a challenging thing to say to a teacher which is like you know can you if those children could could actually feel totally relaxed about it so the reason they don't is it's kind of
32:30 - 33:00 down to you and it could be down to their previous teachers as well but now you're responsible you've got to be thinking so you have to own it and make it so that it's okay to be wrong and not just say well that's inherently a thing of learning that it's it's stressful but I I do get pushed back on that you know and it is a because in the space of teacher development you're talking to teachers who have quite strong views and experiences sometimes it's a deeply held view that it's just almost almost sort of unethical to put a kid on the spot
33:00 - 33:30 and ask them a question in case they're vulnerable and you think okay well that's that's a kind of strong line but that's literally what you think so I've got to get I've got to find out how we can move forward with that because if you're too scared to ask kids questions that means you're going to avoid it and then wow that's not going to make them think and da da so I come across fa often yeah and I think that's where like cycling off the technique and coming back to the big idea is really important
33:30 - 34:00 like the big idea is that you're checking that student's thinking now what that looks like yeah I get it there are heaps of kids who might have accommodations and adjustments and for whatever reason you're not going to coold call them in the way that you would coold call everybody else but that goes the same for everything we do in teaching like we're modifying everything we do but we can't not check understanding you know that I I think we can let go I'm H more than happy to let go of techniques you know because there are just more the one ways to skin a cat but I don't think
34:00 - 34:30 we can let go of the the big idea the principes well that's such an important point I mean just more broadly that I mean I I find out to articulate this constantly which is the techniques aren't the law like they're just a framework for an idea and it helps you push against your habits and and I've I've come across those of teachers who find it really helpful to have these prompts and reminders oh yeah I should do that I should do that but the the should is only because it will make me think harder about what I'm doing it if
34:30 - 35:00 people are kind of flexing and all of that which they always do uh I think that's useful one other one of the things techniques I want to talk about a bit was think per share because I'm to currently obsessed with this because when you when you watch a lesson it's the gap between the intention the teacher's intention and what actually happens sometimes it's kind of almost laughable a teacher like sets up this great question and then just says something like okay
35:00 - 35:30 guys so turn to your partner have a chat about this or come up trying to come up this ideas and then they'll just go off you go and quick quite quickly so kneel down and get involved with one of the conversations and then brings everyone together and then they get some answers so they'll feel like that went well but what You observe in the corner is those four kids said nothing or they just said one thing or they said absolute nonsense
35:30 - 36:00 to each other and the teacher was over there didn't notice that and in their head thinking I did a pair share actually what he did was that's like it it wasn't everyone wasn't yeah that was me at high school my best friends and I had a lot to catch up on exactly I mean of course like just makes total sense I me when the tter is like all right talk about that at tables you're like so anyway when hour like I mean it's just a it's an adult thing it would happen in
36:00 - 36:30 our professional learning as well it would I get people in my professional learning to turn and talk and I walk past them and they like is where the accountability comes in and being ready to answer afterwards and being ready to share but also like teally training children to take it in turns and I mean I so I'm a big fan of when you see teachers need realizing they need this they'll say okay I saw a teacher do it last week sort of okay before we get going A's who are my A's B's who my B's and
36:30 - 37:00 they said okay so remember let's say this time B's go first share your thoughts listen to your partner and be ready to represent your partner's answer when I call you at the end and it was like they were so explicit about it and they kind of like watched it happening before they went into support but also the question had some substance to it where they had to just come up with they had a resource to refer to as well it wasn't just like winging it the top of their head so I feel like making it so that it's
37:00 - 37:30 possible for the children to practice speaking and saying things whereas in another lesson I saw recently I suppose a classic example for me was just i' I've used this example a few times but it was a lesson where they were talking about graffiti and whether it was art or vandalism and not potentially a great discussion and I was well into it it's like wow is that do I think that's art or vandalism and so many interesting things to think about but these two bought in front of me they just were going art no no it's
37:30 - 38:00 vandalism no it's art they just were just asserting their their view like with increasing force with no no reasoning or anything and you know it was like just give them a framework for this they don't know how to do this conversation so it makes you realize when you're listening in sometimes it's it's quite sweet the kids saying another lovely one for me was a primary lesson where there's teer said okay I want you to come up with some adjectives to
38:00 - 38:30 describe the character no no no she said I want you to come up with all the words you're going to use to describe the character so share with your partner what words are you going to use and there's two kids in front of me they've said let's use adjectives let's use adjectives and that was their answer the teacher was like they're all really pleased with themselves but the teacher was obviously expecting them to just list tons of adjectives anyway is that type of thing and I think how so what's the answer is must
38:30 - 39:00 anticipate that what you've asked might not happen and structure it and be conscious of it and check it's happening all that kind of thing feels so boring but it just has to be done yeah it's still so hard to do well though I mean yeah I just I think think pure is super super hard and probably of all of the techniques that I see probably um the one that is most likely to drift into a total waste of
39:00 - 39:30 instructional time you think so really well yeah of all the things because I mean many whiteboards right you can have kids who don't have an answer or they don't want to Chin their boards or whatever but I mean when you see kids sitting not knowing what to say drifting into off discussion yeah so I mean off path discussion is such a big one would that would that mean that you
39:30 - 40:00 wouldn't because this is I think this a interesting thing so I've come I've met people who think because I think it's so hard they almost wouldn't do it or recommend it to people because it might because of that risk whereas my view would be it's really important but and we we just need to keep working on it but I have had this exact discussions yeah um I think I'm a really really big fan of kind of working the clock I I I
40:00 - 40:30 think that the time frame you know I love sort of dougl mov stuff around working the clock and setting kind of irregular times like I often say to teachers okay with the task you wanted them to talk about put your two most competent kids who are going to get onto the task really fast and stay on task how long would they need and often the teachers say oh 40 seconds but you've given the class three and a half minutes so okay yeah if you your top kids need 45 seconds give them 67
40:30 - 41:00 seconds like because then if they faffed around you've lost 60 seconds yeah you know like I just think like working the clock with peare when you're getting it going you know and if you then get evidence that you've got a sentence frame you've got a nice and also like I know you write about this in walkthroughs which I love like constrain the task you know the text on the board with the person next to you find you know three language
41:00 - 41:30 devices that the author is using to persuade the audience at the end we'll share back as many as we can find go so you got the accountability task really short time frame and a constrained task but I think the my big problem with peir share is it kind of loses its Cadence it it becomes like this lull kind of dead time and we're all drifting and then it's really hard to pull back so you you you've got the minute that you spent in the peir share but then you've got the next minute
41:30 - 42:00 transitioning back out and once the kids's working memories on something else like that's why I think it sometimes I feel like it's it's it has it's again like you said like you have to keep going back to the purpose so for me the the main purpose is so let's say using vocabulary you know if I want someone and it depends on the age group a bit but if I want kids to explain something like I don't know why why does it rain or something and you've explained it um you know just getting them to sort of download that a bit and
42:00 - 42:30 soort of like you do in adult trading you say okay so just I just going to pause for them minut for you to kind of like process that and talk it through so you say okay so why does so we've explained it so see if you can explain to your partner and they they've got some stuff to refer to it shouldn't be just cold like blank page it's using the stuff so that you're hearing them say you know the water condenses in the clouds or something and they go practicing and I think if without that I can't think of a in terms of responsive teaching is that rehearsal phase of now you can do some stuff corally but even
42:30 - 43:00 then like there's an accountability issue so it's like it's just a it's all about the blend isn't it so a lot of the time I'm toing and throwing with my instructional teaching controlling it but then you need to create the space for them to just go okay what do what do I think but you I think you're right it can drift so being conscious of it being so all it's so interesting like if when it works well I think it's brilliant but it has to be done with real real
43:00 - 43:30 sharpness something I wanted to ask ask you about whether you talk about loops because in the world of responsive teaching I feel like I found it helpful to talk about loops which is Yep this idea that we're inherently like tearing it up seeing how it's gone and then deciding what to do and responding and maybe going again and then again and then moving on and it's that the the length of a loop can be like you were saying with a CO call like punch punch punch it can be a little bit longer and
43:30 - 44:00 the longer the loop the more material there is the the harder it is to actually check because there's so much more variation in the room and so on say short loops and that I feel like that's a kind of concept I feel we perhaps need to beef up a bit yeah yeah yeah I agree so I kind of you know it's not perfect but I kind of talk about um cycles of responsive teaching and that they're invisible right they're like under under the surface and they're running throughout
44:00 - 44:30 the lesson um and I kind of think like teach track respond track respond track respond so you know you're going teach track respond teach track respond but sometimes you're going teach track thinking how's it going responding track more responding track more responding so the track and respond like how's it going respond how's it going respond um is kind of bubbling way there but I also think it's really interesting to like something that I
44:30 - 45:00 think I've undercooked in my work with schools or like underappreciated um is the importance of having at least your core kind of checks for understanding planned in advance it's not revolutionary but really rare I think to look at lesson level planning and for teachers to be sharing a COR set of you know checking for understanding so I think it's Al interesting on that idea of Loops of like something I did um
45:00 - 45:30 about a month ago which ended up I think being great and I need to do more of is I had a health I worked with a team of Health teachers at year7 so um in Australia that's sort of you know 13y old and they had a lesson on the five dimensions of health so a physical health emotional health spiritual um can't even remember the other ones social health and wellbeing and I said let's look across the plan the lesson that you've got how many this teach track respond have you built in like how many
45:30 - 46:00 moments can you see where you're teaching then you're checking and you're allowing room for the teacher to respond and they counted two in a 60 Minute period And so said I said all we're going to do together is we're just going to embed lots more of those that's all we're going to do we're going to keep the learning objectives going to stay exactly the same we're going to keep the the core content exactly the same all we're going to do is just have more chunks where we're doing some
46:00 - 46:30 intentional checking anyway so then the health teacher ended up sort of presenting it to the whole whole staff a bit of a before and after and afterwards they counted 14 oh I've just given a thumbs up after they counted 14 planned checks and the main thing that the teachers were saying was but how how would you have time for that right so it's was like but as soon as I stop and check that often like I'm going to run out of
46:30 - 47:00 time yeah but but there was one health teacher in the room who had taught with the new revamped lesson and she said yeah we just had less time for the independent work at the end but there was way more time for learning so like it wasn't she said it wasn't it didn't take longer it was just that there was more time with the kids thinking and the kids talking and it was really simple stuff like you know we'd stop and there'd be a slide and there'd be four true false questions and it was you know
47:00 - 47:30 true false so underutilized right like super fast to write lightning fast to Mark what you lose in a guessing pattern you know 50% guessing pattern isn't great but what you lose on that side you gain in being able to do seven of them or eight of them or nine of them at a time and it was just really simple really clear checks for understanding and every now and then there was a really nuanced tricky one thrown in you know as a stretch kind of one and the yeah it was interesting yeah it was
47:30 - 48:00 interesting to me that um that's that the that the the teachers takeaway would be that it's it's encroaching too much on time even though the content was the same I want to use that as an example in my training now because I feel like you know you hear some like in Rosen Shin's principles of instruction he says you know effective teachers invest more time in questioning and checking for understanding and people often think really but he's saying well they led to better outcomes because of that and that's exactly your example that's
48:00 - 48:30 amazing so it's sort of it's it isn't costly of time in the end because they you're they're more on it and I think that's well the other thing is that the independent task they had at the end the te teachers kind of reflected the task that the kids had to do at the end was imminently doable to a high standard with more checks for understanding in place yeah but in the first example you would need 25 minutes of independent work because the kids would be stuck so like the teachers are
48:30 - 49:00 building in time to Rove and help because the kids can't do the task and it's like nah just spend more time checking yeah having the kids learn it and then a little bit of time at the end with an independent learning task to check that they got it but that's I think um a big shift but the really interesting thing was Chloe her name was she's bloody gun she said when she had to present the before and after she said I don't want to show them the before and I said why not I said great great
49:00 - 49:30 content you know like you you've planned the lesson it's really clear learning objective great content and she said I hate it and I said why why do you hate it and she goes because now that I've now that I'm checking understanding it's I just hate it I I hate looking at it you know she just like viscerally hated that she had planned um and I said said the other thing I said to her was which I don't know I also think is true is like I said to her yeah but even
49:30 - 50:00 though you hadn't plannned those checks for understanding you're probably you're try you you would be thinking on the Fly of stuff to do all you've done is been more intentional about it and I think you've planned a much better lesson and then a lot of the other teachers went oh my God I get it you know I get what it looks like oh you just teach a bit and then you check you teach a bit and then you check you teach bit and then you check but I think we we I don't know like a yeah it's a criticism of my own work with is that I haven't really shown them many models of what it looks like to take the exact same learning
50:00 - 50:30 objective exact same core content and and plan for more responsive teaching that's a really good point I mean people are often wanting it to be put in their own context and you're sort of invite inviting them to interpret themselves well that that that example you gave is is gold I was thinking so much there about some of the things that we were talk we've been talking about is so that to me is classic responsive teaching and it's planned and thought about in in my codification I'd call that that would be the short feedback
50:30 - 51:00 loops and and and I'm already thinking I wish I'd called it teach track respond because that's way better and it's it's kind of I love the fact that it's kind of the same idea like Loops but I I think the way that you describe it is more explicit that it's really quite short and it's got Loops within it and and and embedded in that for me is the is the challenge of checking all of the children cuz it's like you know systematically and like some checks are
51:00 - 51:30 not systematically involving everyone they're just a couple of answers which can be okay but it's sort of kids fall through the net but isn't this interesting so you you've got that now one of the questions we're going to ask you is like when you go in and you're doing your training are you sort of saying okay guys here's this technique it's called Teach track respond and this is how you do it or are you sort of letting teachers think through it and then seeing what they come up with and then sort of like keeping your codified version ready if
51:30 - 52:00 they need it or do you feel like you're saying that do it like this because this works how how do you leave use the C So currently and I'm sure this will change I kind of present teach track respond as kind of Big Ideas like teaching is really important tracking their thinking and checking understanding is really important and responding is really important I think it's EAS the I think it's most important to start with teaching and tracking
52:00 - 52:30 because we can plan for those I think responding is much harder to plan for um so I think responding I'm doing less and less with schools um just because I think there's not much Point focusing on that until you're checking all students thinking right like I wouldn't you know that example I gave before of like scanning manyi whiteboards and saying oh this is great we've got variation here like I call that share variation so the technique is share variation and it's
52:30 - 53:00 when I see helpful variation across a range of responses and I'm going to anonymously share that variation with my kids and go through the variation and have them then correct yeah you could focus on share variation but what if you're not even using many whiteboards yet right like so I think that um techniques for tracking and checking thinking are so undercooked and under planned for that I don't it's cherry on the CATE stuff to me like even error correction like it's
53:00 - 53:30 so important but like is it more important than checking all kids thinking in the first place no yeah so you know chicken and egg and this is what one of the things I find so interesting with this whole work is that it's a bit like um I don't know it's bit like one of those um out outdoor it's like one those sort of Team game things where everyone has to sit on everyone else's knees you know as you sort of gradually down on a circle and
53:30 - 54:00 you have this circle of people all sitting on the lap of the person behind them and it's a circle it kind of only works if everyone does it and I sometimes think that that's a bit like teaching like if you get that that that and that all all four of those elements are mutually reinforcing and then it all works better but to get each one you kind of need to break it down a bit and then it feels a bit clumpy so some school leaders will say like um you know I just want our teachers to differentiate more and to you know um
54:00 - 54:30 give more feedback and it's like but but there aren't any systems for checking all kids thinking so like you know I I think of like tracking and checking understanding as like where you start and where you invest a ton of energy and just h i yeah I just just invest a ton of energy in that like like same with the health teachers like once they had a few simple techniques multiple choice true false you know some closed ended questioning some stop and jot you know take 20 seconds jot this down right let
54:30 - 55:00 me check some mini whiteboards whatever it is um then you're kind of in the flow and you're ready to think about Stu so basically yeah I talk about teach track respond as being this kind of uh loop that's that we're aiming to get going and I spend the vast majority of my training on tracking thinking checking understanding just because I think it's good bang for buck and also I think it's easier to get granular with so there are
55:00 - 55:30 so many things that are so important like here's an example like explanation right like crafting a good explanation chunking is really important live modeling is really important thought narration think aloud but those things are so parasitic upon the domain specifics you know like you can't really describe what a good explanation is generally whereas there are some topographical features of a mini whiteboard routine that I think truly are domain
55:30 - 56:00 agnostic important point is that you've got to you gotta you got to know when when it's good to do whole school training and when it's better to just say that you need to this a subject specific and I think like scaffolds scaffolding is a broad concept but until you're talking about specific scaffolds for a specific task it gets a bit you know generic and it doesn't mean I feel like feel like we could do a whole ser series of these conversations you know because like this is yeah we need we
56:00 - 56:30 need to sequence out yeah I feel like this is this is this first conversation and I'm and I'm I'm thinking we've been going for nearly an hour and surface it's amazing so I think what we should do is pause now and then for people who've listened in so far I hope you found it interesting because I've did I've learned so much for the last hour talking to you that's just amazing yeah it's been great I think we need another sequence of conversations and
56:30 - 57:00 I'd love to chat to you about which we wanted to talk about we didn't even get to this kind of idea of codification and what we can codify and what we can't and the value of that I'm GNA stop recording but then what we're going to do is we're going to do another one okay good thanks you heard it here now folks okay thanks a lot Bron I'll stop recording now