Responsive Teaching with Bron and Tom: Part 2

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In Part 2 of their conversation, Bron and Tom delve deeper into their experiences and insights on responsive teaching. They discuss the concept of codification in teaching, emphasizing its vital role in maintaining consistency and understanding across educational practices. They reflect on developing instructional methods, creating a Playbook, and how such structured approaches can benefit schools, especially in providing clear and effective teaching methods. However, they also critique intense codification and the erroneous practice of depersonalized methods like "popsicle sticks" for random student selection. Their conversation highlights the balance between structure, flexibility, and the importance of understanding in educational contexts.

Highlights

Tom and Bron stress the importance of consistency in teaching methods through codification. 📚
They explore the concept of a teaching Playbook for structured guidance in schools. 🏫
Critique of overstructured methods like using popsicle sticks for fairness in random student selection. 🎲
Discuss the role of understanding and adaptation rather than rigid codification. 🧠
Highlight the significance of shared terminologies for instructional coherence. 🔄

Key Takeaways

Codification helps create a shared understanding of educational practices. 📝
A blend of structured techniques and flexibility is crucial in teaching. 🤹‍♂️
Personalization and engagement are key to effective teaching. 👥
Avoid robotic teaching methods; embrace adaptability. 🤖
Balance is needed between consistency and creativity in education. ⚖️

Overview

In this engaging conversation, Bron and Tom explore the concept of responsive teaching. The duo dives into the depths of codification, discussing its importance in creating a coherent, consistent approach to teaching across various schools. With light-hearted banter, they reflect on their experiences in crafting educational Playbooks as a structured tool for improving teaching effectiveness.

However, they also provide a critical lens on excessive codification. Bron passionately discusses the downsides of overly rigid practices, such as using 'popsicle sticks' for random student selection, which can detract from the personalized engagement essential in teaching. These standardized methods often lead to mechanical teaching, which lacks the ability to adapt to dynamic classroom needs.

They emphasize the significance of achieving a balance between structured teaching methods and adaptability. This balance is essential to effectively engage students, ensuring that while routines are in place for consistency, the methods are flexible enough to cater to individual learning contexts. Their discussion underscores the need for teachers to blend consistency with creativity in educational approaches.

Chapters

00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Reflection The chapter opens with a conversational introduction between two individuals, Tom and Brun, who are engaging in a recorded discussion. They express mutual enjoyment of their previous conversation, which has led them to continue their discussion in this recording. Both participants express interest and find novelty in sharing work experiences with someone in the same field, highlighting the rarity and value of such exchanges.
01:30 - 06:30: Docklands Playbook Project Reflecting on the rarity and potential loneliness in their line of work. The speaker finds it beneficial to converse with someone who does similar work, highlighting the importance of having a colleague, like Olle, who helps in theorizing and understanding their observations.
06:30 - 14:30: Codification Importance and Misunderstandings The chapter 'Codification Importance and Misunderstandings' discusses experiences in educational environments where one person no longer attends lessons but relies on another to report observations. It highlights collaborative work during school visits, emphasizing the value of sharing insights. The chapter also mentions a project focused on developing a Playbook or other educational tools.
14:30 - 24:30: Techniques and the Role of Codification This chapter discusses the conception and development of a new project by the speaker, which began as an idea last year. The project's primary aim is to create an instructional Playbook, with initial field-testing taking place at Docklands Primary School where the speaker works occasionally. The text implies a combination of utilizing techniques and the importance of codification in the project's framework.
24:30 - 36:00: Problems with Codification The chapter titled 'Problems with Codification' discusses the challenges faced in creating a consistent language and understanding of instructional methods in the context of frequent lockdowns due to COVID-19. It highlights the difficulties encountered by the head of instruction, appointed in 2021, who had limited time to establish a coherent instructional framework amidst the disruptions caused by the pandemic. The chapter underscores the need for unity in educational language and core principles despite external challenges.
36:00 - 45:00: Responsive Teaching Practices The chapter discusses Jim Knight's book 'The Instructional Playbook', focusing on the author's growing interest in formalizing effective teaching practices. Initially developed at Docklands, the concept of creating a codified playbook for instructional methods gained traction as the author shared the idea at various educational research events. This approach received significant interest from schools, indicating a strong demand for structured and clear teaching practices.

Responsive Teaching with Bron and Tom: Part 2 Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 hello everyone listening to this uh recording of me talking to Bron and Brun talking to me hello Brun how are you doing hi good Tom how are you great and it's I I really enjoyed our last conversation I felt like we could have gone on forever so we parked and have come back for part two so I'm looking forward to this UMO don't you think it's I just think it's so interesting talking about work with someone else who does the same kind of thing it's just it's quite rare really it is and I was kind of
00:30 - 01:00 reflecting on the fact that sometimes because it's so rare it can can be a bit lonely right not in a sad way but like you know you have olle Kev and I have just me in my car so really nice for me to talk to um somebody else who does similar work yeah all of is a good colleague but he he does s of he he sort of um he's he's like a kind of mirror to I I tell him what I see and then he kind of kind of theorizes it for me but he
01:00 - 01:30 doesn't actually go into lessons anymore himself so um he kind of relies on me to say what I see and uh but we I I do work side by side whenever I go into a school to lessons I'm normally with somebody else we do we go together um yeah that's right and I quite like that you know what have you seen what have I seen and so it is quite nice but you actually have been doing this project where you've been asking people to come up with a Playbook or thing I me
01:30 - 02:00 tell me what's happening with that I saw that you announced it on Twitter and you were saying that who wants to be part of this pro project so what is that yeah so it's an interesting one I kind of um cooked up the idea last year and it um basically started there was sort of two things so the first thing is I was kind of field testing this process of building our own instructional Playbook at uh docklands Primary School which is my sort of Base school where I am one day a week and history there is
02:00 - 02:30 that docklands opened in 2021 and we were in in and out of hard lockdowns in 2021 um because of covid of course and so we had I was kind of appointed as head of instruction and I had very little time from kind of the beginning of when I was employed to think about how to get some kind of consistency of language some consistency of understanding around some core stuff that we thought constituted good instr instuction um so I had read sort of U
02:30 - 03:00 Jim Knight's book The instructional Playbook I was um already by then sort of really into the idea of codified um practices and so we just sort of started building one um at docklands and then kind of a year or so later I was presenting in a couple of research Ed events here talking about this idea of codifying and clarifying practices um and then I just basically was getting in on ated with requests from schools to
03:00 - 03:30 come and help them make sense of their own ideas about grade instruction so it's a digital program we've had 80 schools in the in the first year nearly 400 yeah nearly 400 people um and it's been great um we're only halfway through so it's going to be interesting to see where it all lands but um yeah it's been super no it sounds really really interesting and it sounds like it's funny because when I sat down with Oliver to write our walkthroughs books
03:30 - 04:00 we s of met in my in my kitchen and we just we had the idea but then we said what what should we put in it so let's have a think and we just sort of s down between us and just yeah came up with about 50 ideas in about 10 minutes it was just sort of tumbling in the out because there's so many and then yeah it it makes you realize there how many things there are that teachers do and it constantly stuns me that actually that there's there's a lot going on here and you then you have to describe each
04:00 - 04:30 of those elements to have some meaningful conversation without it being like Reinventing it every time so let's just talk about this idea of codification um because we both we both um have talked a bit about it or used the idea so what and what do we mean by codifying to me means sort of defining something in a coherent way so it's reproducible all the time from the same kind of set of descriptions but it's not it doesn't mean to me um rules you must
04:30 - 05:00 follow so much it sort of means a description of of a process as a as a framework what what that's my interpretation of what codification means what do you yeah I kind of think of it as joint agreement about some core steps in a process or core features of a thing I mean it's funny because on
05:00 - 05:30 on one hand I think it's great to have kind of agreement about you know um core sequence of things so you know let's take something simple at pair share which we talked about sort of last time um digging into that and thinking what are the core component parts of high quality pair share I think is very worth doing but then after you've done that and you would find this in your work with walkthroughs all the time there's actually a lot that when the rubber hits the road is flexible like as soon as it's out in the world I think anyone who's using codifications in education
05:30 - 06:00 at least understands that there actually has to be so much Flex built in because context determines everything um so there's a bit of a tension there which uh you know I think we have to talk through and think about carefully um yeah but that's how I kind of think of codifying it's kind of this some sort of joint agreement I think precise language you know understanding that what I think is this you also think is that
06:00 - 06:30 yeah so it's that and that and to me that's the most important thing so that we're not talking cross purposes I remember I mean qu it's easy to quote Dylan William because he says so many in sensible things but something I remember him seeing saying years ago was you can you can think you're doing the same thing as someone else but actually not be doing the same thing or the opposite you can think you're doing different things to someone else but actually you're doing the same
06:30 - 07:00 so can be wrong both ways and in the way that you use language about about teaching so I think codification to me is like well what do we exactly mean so broadly you know what let's think about the upsides why why do you think it's generally like who you would Advocate it yeah well let's start where you left off which is one of the most obvious upsides is that I just I work with a lot of schools I see a lot of classroom practice in a lot of settings and I would say that it is just
07:00 - 07:30 a profession wide problem that we talk across purposes and we don't have Clarity on what we're talking about even if a school has provided professional learning on something so you know a classic one here which is really big in Australia is like learning intentions and success criteria yeah I mean you could just go classroom to classroom and in one classroom they're sort of on the board and in another classroom the teacher reads them and the kids write them down in another classroom the kids talk talk about them in like what does
07:30 - 08:00 it really mean um people can still be really quite vague on so I mean I think broadly the the number one reason why it's helpful is just because we can all get on the same page I think another reason why it's helpful which we don't talk enough about is that whenever we talk about codifying stuff I think people imagine that it runs in One Direction where Tom sharington sits in his kitchen with Ole Cav and they write out this is what PE share is and then you must do that because walkth through
08:00 - 08:30 says that but actually codification to me is brilliant when it's working the other way around where you're saying well you know so teacher at my school for instance Jack brilliant early years teacher gets all of these kids most of whom most of whom don't have English as their first language she gets them all speaking in beautiful sentences to each other yeah I what's that about let's sit in Jack's room for 10 minutes
08:30 - 09:00 and like let's just look and watch like what is that about how is she doing that so the thing about codifying is that it feels closed off but to me it actually opens the door of curiosity because you then are more interested in how things function why what causes what what is somebody doing so I also think about the power of it from that perspective and that's why I'm quite interested in getting schools to do the work because I really um I think
09:00 - 09:30 that's so great for culture if you're if you're thinking about it like that yeah and there's there's always a risk of you know that unweaving the rainbow kind of idea that it's sort of you know you when if you try to break something down into component parts you lose the kind of the bits hold it together but yeah but I but actually and we can talk about their downsides in a minute but I actually think that's in in in reality there there's that's never really a problem but because because when you codify
09:30 - 10:00 something which is always fluid you're you're only describing it at a kind of crude level with within which there's multiple multiple degrees of freedom it's it's you don't even get close to rigid I that's what my feeling is so even when you codify something it's kind of pretty a it's a pretty loose description of of it anyway because you can't be more precise than to a certain degree of granularity it's just there's a limit so I feel like people AR worry
10:00 - 10:30 about sort of things becoming too rigid I always think well show me show me a teacher that's being rigid and I don't think I've ever seen one it's almost like the opposite I'm thinking to be more fry Rich no I think um it is possible to imagine though the school leader right who like it's just immediately uh you know possible to imagine the school leader who um thinks that moving through
10:30 - 11:00 the component steps of pair share as it's said in the book is what constitutes quality so I agree with you I don't think the dangers are um at the classroom level so much as they are at the leadership level yeah what what do you think about that yeah possibly yeah so for some people here codification as absolutes and people start talking about non-negotiables and that that sends shivers down my spine yeah me too yeah I feel like though the for one another
11:00 - 11:30 upside of codification so for me there's a communication thing a kind of fidelity or a kind of coherence of an idea without it being distorted and it kind of survives multiple kind of iterations if it's codified so you always go back to the source it's a bit like between digital and analog you know you kind of even if a digital signal gets a bit corrupted you know the bits are there because you can just boost them back up again and and that's that's true with with with a code of technique in a few steps you can go remember what
11:30 - 12:00 they are though and they can keep repeating that and especially when you're talking about trying to improve at a big I don't think it matters so much when you're coaching say an individual teacher but when you're trying to get a whole school moving forward if you've got say 50 different conversations happening across the school and they're all trying to talk about similar things if they're all talking about different things in their own different way it's very inefficient and then the training so it's codifying at the level of training then down to the con coaching but then for me the main benefit I think is actually in
12:00 - 12:30 terms of formulating a mental model for what to do for a teacher so if I'm going to do um using success criteria that's a kind of an abstract concept but if someone's codified that for me when I'm in trying to Ana I'm thinking okay then first I'll do that then I'll do this then I'll do this and then I'll do that and it helps me organize my thinking in and acting it and that could be really useful now if I've shaped that codification myself and then great but it could just be I've taken it from
12:30 - 13:00 somewhere and I'm just making it work for myself and that's that's more and more where I feel it has real power is the te is helping the teach to form a kind of routine around a process um yeah and also you know yeah two two things sort of come to mind there one is also like what you've just described then of the teacher going I can do this and I can do this and I can do that like how important is that for graduate teachers
13:00 - 13:30 like I just think we so often throw graduate teachers in and you're like oh just demonstrate it just model it and it's like well might be the first time they've ever done a fully worked example of of that mathematical concept or like that's actually really complex so I think another thing that people I think worry about is that it's dumbing teaching down whereas I think of it as almost the opposite it's like trying to craft some um Clarity out of absolute
13:30 - 14:00 complexity that experts have no problem with right like the expert doesn't need the stepped out thing because they've already got expertise but like um you know and my school as an example we're really deliberate and careful and structured in how we would run say a mini whiteboard routine and we have our graduate teachers working in Triads on a Monday afternoon practicing how they're going to get the kids to use the whiteboards because it's really hot like it's really hot and of course in a group
14:00 - 14:30 of seveny year olds the whiteboards could become a complete distraction and then The Graduate feel stressed and yeah so that's the first things like I I think that process of like then I can do this then this is particularly helpful you know in your first sort of five years of your career um and I've completely lost my second point but I did have one thought of yeah completely lost it it what what I find sort of fascinating really with teachers is how
14:30 - 15:00 you know personality comes into the play all the time and the p ification is a kind of it's a framework and I feel like you have to get teachers to kind of see the you sort of have to go through a process I one I I always tell a story about this and I got two stories about this I'll tell you both of them one one of them was I saw a teacher last year who was a dapy teacher and he was he was doing cold calling and he I think I don't I don't think I said
15:00 - 15:30 this in our last talk I hope I have not repeating myself no no no you didn't you didn't he he um I I I was watching the lesson and he's you know he's about 30 or something to teacher and he and he had obviously already formed a habit where he just says okay guys who can tell me and they and they were and even though I was in the room he he kind of his habit was so strong he wasn't trying to think I need to perform because I'm being observed he's just said okay guys so what were the three main factors that we talked about you know three types of fact that um we discuss after the earthquake is
15:30 - 16:00 they're talking about cman do earthquake um who who can remember the things we talked about last lesson pause and then he looked at me and he went oh no wait guys wait wait wait everyone have a think what were the three main factors uh and I'm going to give you some thinking time and that's like the next step and then he was saying yeah right now let me select somebody because that's the next step he was narrating and then he heard he said okay Joanna okay so that's interesting now I better
16:00 - 16:30 respond to that because that's the next step um what might give me an example of one of the economic factors then impacts and then let me ask somebody else what and so his mentally going through our cold call and it was like I was thinking this is great because I'm watching this in real time a teacher making themsel follow through a better procedure and it was like afterwards he saying I kind of know this it's just it's just making me do it it's just it's just the habit I
16:30 - 17:00 haven't got the Habit yet but I know it helps me and I thought wellow that's interesting the second one is the counter sort of countering s but how you still need to be really clear so I I remember years ago before I'd even thought about writing about the stuff but we had this technique called signal pause inist oh yeah we have that yeah yeah pause and then and then you assist by by POS of looking and pausing I went to a math lesson in my own own school
17:00 - 17:30 about 3 weeks after the training and his math teacher was going around the class going I insist I insist for the pointing at kids and I was saying what thought what is she doing and then there was a moment in the lesson I could pull her aside and said what was that what's the she said you said we have to say a signal pause insist and I say you don't say insist just I don't mind it though she said to me I'll thank God for
17:30 - 18:00 that I thought it was really stupid but I thought that's what he wanted us to do I think my most of my teaching could be improved by just aggressively pointing at people and saying I insist probably works but it was the fact that she was doing it out of Duty like yeah yeah yeah rather than because she thought it was a good idea and you think okay we really need to we really need to explore the rationale and so a codification has to have an organic
18:00 - 18:30 sense to it otherwise you end up with this sort of weird performance which could be totally wacky and that that is I really learned a lot from that think wow we really have to check even basic things yeah but it all it also highlights the point that ideally the people who are engaging with these codifications are doing so in a culture where they would go Brun what the hell is step two like you know you want someone to go I would never do that you go great why right you know and that
18:30 - 19:00 like you want that [Music] um yeah you want it's a conversation like it's not a one way like do this then do this so like for instance at my school part of the Playbook development we do is like constant iterative feedback with staff but it's also a live document where we're having conversations in the margins all the time and it's a you know it's just a Google Docs right so we're always um you know developing different parts of it I had that thought I had before
19:00 - 19:30 has come back to me which is that I think another upside of codifying things is that sometimes we forget that there are kids in the room who could really benefit from having predictable T routine about what the hell we're doing like how are we run pear share if we don't have like how how Ace is it for a grade two it doesn't matter what class I go to that all my teachers at school have these expectations around PE
19:30 - 20:00 it doesn't matter if it's in music class or and I work with a lot of secondary schools and I think um they find this work particularly hard just because of the different nature of faculties and it's like well of course it needs to be made sense of at The Faculty level but also sometimes there are some things that are going to run pretty much similarly no matter the domain not everything but some stuff like why wouldn't teachers share a method for putting up some multiple
20:00 - 20:30 choice questions and getting a response and just have it the same so that the kids are in the routine and we're just kind of lowering the cognitive output for how the kids are going to respond I think that's also not talked enough about and I think then what what the Vantage is once youve sort of agreed what what what it is then talking about how to do it and how well you're doing it you can just get more quickly to that but if you spend a lot of energy describing what to do uh it you don't even get to the while doing well bit so I think so we one of the questions we
20:30 - 21:00 discussed before was like why do why are people hesitant and worried or and you do have some people you know sometimes some fairly high-profile people they sort of experienced teachers normally who who feel pretty confident in their own teaching and they kind of see this stuff as sort of just like you say depr professionalizing um and or or they worry that it's sort of Des skining teachers or something and then so I I sort of feel like it's a bit like an artist though who's
21:00 - 21:30 who's who's has a horror of so painting by numbers you think well you're not you're not doing that though are you if you watch someone who's an expert artist or performer doing a fluid thing you can still try to just break it down into what they're actually doing to describe it to someone else to see if they could also do it so I feel like I hear those critiques but I never really I never agree with them and I wish those people would sort of I don't know why they feel so strongly about
21:30 - 22:00 it yeah I've thought about yeah I have thought about that a lot I mean I in the work that I do with schools I don't get the sense that anyone ever feels like they're being taught how to suck eggs right but then part of me goes yeah you know maybe if I'd taught for 45 years and there's this consultant coming in going we're going to look at PE share and I'm like oh please you like yeah I can immediately appreciate that I can also immediately
22:00 - 22:30 appreciate the fact that people have um uh you know teaching is very wrapped up in identity and there are lots of out of the-box teachers who do really unorthodox things that couldn't be repeated by someone else because it's just caught of who they are and you wouldn't want to change it for the world right yeah there's always that like we've got to have room for just those out of thee boox people who you'd go and watch and go well nothing there is
22:30 - 23:00 replicable yeah and you are an incredible teacher and you incredible at your craft I think that's true we've got to have room for that and I sort of do agree with I agree with you that i' never I'm never convinced by those critiques but I do take them quite seriously because I think um there's yeah there's there's truths I think in there in people's hesitations like I kind of discount them but I I still
23:00 - 23:30 think there's a um net benefit there I mean I don't know how you run professional learning without any codification that's the thing I keep coming back to is like what would it even look like if you didn't have any but I don't know like when I think about trying to work with teachers at my school to get better at anything I just can't really think of what it would look like if we only ever existed at that principle or big idea
23:30 - 24:00 level like you just have you have to get into techniques there's no way of I I can't see how you sidest step that well and I've when I've sat in training in the past where people talk about sort of it's Stu in such lacking so much detail you end up thinking I still don't know how to do it you know is that's interesting but not useful and so making things practical is so important but I still feel like there's so much autonomy I think people wor about autonomy it's a big big issue it's a big issue in teacher retention so
24:00 - 24:30 one of the key factors that help what the teachers it's one of the top things um as well sort of paying conditions about keeping teachers and teaching is a sense of autonomy and I feel like that's important but I I I I feel like that running an hour of teaching with a group of children there's so many decisions you have to make if you've codified techniques that you can just choose whenever you need them the choices are then around when to use a techniques and which questions to ask and so on you
24:30 - 25:00 have massive Freedom there but the technique that you then use if you if you've got it down to a kind of nicely sort of fixed routine that you kind of can run through I just feel that's liberating it's not on it's not holding you back so you know just for example you know I want to find out if everyone can do this or knows this do I get them to do a pair share should I use whiteboards should I just do a Cod call um who do I ask how many do I ask is these are all huge permutations so I
25:00 - 25:30 always feel like but at least when they say oh I'll do white boards we can just go okay whiteboards do the routine if I also have to think about like how should I do the white boards it's like there's so many things already to think about give people a brain that's that's how I see it it helped people to be creative rather than holds them back yeah one thing I do see which I do worry about a little bit um and this is like an ongo conversation in lots of schools I work
25:30 - 26:00 with is that when those techniques make their planning which I think that they can and should right like I think it would be reasonable to go oh okay um we're going to plan this readle out of this text and we're going to plan ahead to stop here and ask these questions like the person or the people who are doing the planning are thinking ahead about their checks or understanding yeah I do think sometimes at that level and this is this is really probably nothing to do is codifying them in the first place but
26:00 - 26:30 there is sometimes people don't then pay really close attention and read the room and ask the next two or three or four checks for understanding that you need because you've read the room and this has happened so I think at that level of responding to what's actually happening in the room that's where the techniques are a bit less useful or not less useful but it's harder to kind of codify codify at that level because there's just so many going
26:30 - 27:00 on at that point I think you know when I look at core Che for understanding I'm like why wouldn't you just C codify all of them yeah because it's eliciting evidence it's a pretty mechanical process like of eliciting evidence from everybody as an example is going to have to have whole class taught structures but then there are other things that I think much harder to sort of wrangle that and so I wonder whether yeah I don't even really know what I'm saying but I think I'm I think I'm saying that some parts of you know
27:00 - 27:30 some elements of teaching the idea of codifying just sort of clicks into place for me and then there are other parts where I'm like is that Wrangle it's interesting as sort of discreet set techniques you know I think and also I feel like there are different categories of codification so one of one of the things like in walkthroughs there's a kind of Summer procedural you know literally one do this then 1 2 3 four five some of them quite a lot of them are
27:30 - 28:00 five ideas for they're options they're not sequences they're they're possibles they possibilities so maybe try this maybe try that maybe try this maybe so they're sort of decision making trees in a sense rather than linear and I feel like sometimes that's useful so there sorts of for example alternative um phras you know scaffolds for for dialogue or um alternative ways of a pair supporting each other to
28:00 - 28:30 to practice whatever let's talk a little bit about um like lethal things in a way things that go wrong you know or where you think some of the codifications go wrong or kind of excessive or whatever you have you got any thing think like I wish I didn't see that you know that out out in the wild as you've you've described it
28:30 - 29:00 yeah I think um I just think one of one of the things that can happen it's sort of in that example you go the signal pause exist uh exist insist is uh just that people are moving through a set step of things and really not thinking is this you know they're really not using their judgment and thinking I'm doing this because I think this is going to be best at this point in time um I think also just a huge danger with
29:00 - 29:30 early career teachers is that they think ticks down that page equal the expertise like if I did those five things that's the same as running cold Co really well because I did because I did all the things yeah so yeah that there's that would be a a few things that I would sort of see and and wonder about I suppose well there a few for me one of them is um well the two type
29:30 - 30:00 again two category errors one of those not two two types of go wrong one of them is using the technique in the wrong place so oh yeah they're using the technique but it's like well why why then it's like why are you cold calling on that they don't know it like you're it's you can't cold call on stuff they they don't know because that's the whole point they you're you're putting them on the spot the whole that whole thing people talk about anxiety and so on like that's why because you're asking them
30:00 - 30:30 something they clearly don't know a supposed to be a check like an much more affirmative for it to be successful um or it has to be rooted in their experience so they're just sharing experiences they have and and so on so that to me is a is a big one or it could be um you know whiteboards which then become so elaborate what they're writing on the show me boards that it would be to check everyone's when they sh a whole paragraph of writing yeah you might you sort of think well you're not using them
30:30 - 31:00 as show me boards now you're they're just a sketch pad so that's a different thing so if you think I'm doing show me boards well you're not really you're just saying write on the whiteboards because you can wipe it off and and whatever that's cool but that's a different purpose it's just a writing surface you write write on in your book s of so I feel like it's that type of thing I feel like sometimes it's a problem sometimes it's not but that and that's different from the ones where you think I I suppose my my least favorite Distortion of an idea is
31:00 - 31:30 do now activities start starter activities at the beginning of lessons which have to have a very specific format and and my least favorite one is say five or six questions some schools have this like every lesson starts with five say better that a common thing yeah it's like so what what people have picked up on and they're trying to make it into a neat formula so they've picked up on this idea that spacing practice is
31:30 - 32:00 important so we should we should retrieve stuff we learned before misunderstood inter leaving so of thinking if we mix up the topics that's better but actually that's not how inter leaving works so you end up with this formula three questions from yesterday one from last week and one from last month and I I know a school I'm thinking of now that is exactly their formula every starter three questions from yesterday one from last week one from last month and that's the formula and it's five topics often or three
32:00 - 32:30 certainly and they do the questions and the students didn't know which questions they're going to be asked so it's just literally can you remember the question from a month ago half the class the answer is no and so the teacher face with this horrible choice of oh no half the class can't do that question so I forgot to teach it all again now and it just it just feels like the whole thing sets the lesson off in this terrible muddy way where you're just revealing that kids don't know
32:30 - 33:00 stuff that you and yeah what do I do with it it's just and that's not but all of that comes down doesn't all of that come down and like your example before of Co call as well comes back to the fact that it's like we can't I can't think of a way to do professional learning to improve practice without the techniques but actually the vast majority of our professional learning time should be on the underlying principle of principles of the thing yeah like do you do you is that how you
33:00 - 33:30 kind of think about it so I think about let's say like the idea of checking for understanding as an example is like the big thing that we're going to do to death in our reading and our understanding and then I know oh to check understanding I have these lots of different ways that I can do that Co call is one show me boards is one yeah you know what I mean like it's like the difference between thinking oh the kids have the whiteboards and the the K you know in in one room it's uh I'm going to do show me boards
33:30 - 34:00 and in the other room it's I need to check X piece of content at this point in the lesson what's the best way to do that and then I select a technique yeah I exactly but I feel like what happens with this particular one I'm talking about is there's a there's a fundamental problem which is the the the you could do a whole training on memory for example and retrieval and like theoretical ideas about memory and and how to how it works and then you think okay so how do we matize that we're going to do regular checks for retrieval
34:00 - 34:30 okay sounds so far so good and then you get to the S of the topic range and this is where it goes wrong because the question from last week or last month assumes that the children knew the answers before and now we're just trying to see if we can still remember them and that's the where it goes horribly wrong because a lot of the children you realize never knew the answers before like it never made sense to them in the first place and they're sitting there going well I'm but that's also
34:30 - 35:00 understanding the underlying principle of what the word review means yeah exactly it's true it does it's like when people talk about retrieval practice and it's like it's only a retrieval practice if they're retrieving it yeah yeah that bit is often left it's like it's retrieval practice it's like not if it's not in long-term nothing to retrieve yeah and linked to that linked to that is the purpose of it like so why am doing the test it's
35:00 - 35:30 like yeah check it tests the students so there there's a testing effect effect by them seeing if they know it but as a teacher if it's responsive and you're you're you're in a kind of also a responsive teaching mindset you're thinking surely you need to at least interact with their success rate and often and for me this is probably the weakest practice I see well now I've got a list of those but it's in the in the cat in the group of bad practices they run the test and they don't even find who got any wrong to then deal with
35:30 - 36:00 it so they literally they just give the test give the right answers and then tell the children to write down the right answers and you think that yeah it's it just doesn't work for the weakest child they they they sit there they they a question they can't do they leave it blind right on nonsense and then the teacher tells them the correct answer which they don't really understand and they write it down and they've got kids writing stuff down that they don't understand and you think this
36:00 - 36:30 isn't going this isn't working and yet it's sort of in the codification protocol that the school has done so that's my worst example of where codification actually has sort of cut across just rational thinking and it sometimes at a whole school level it's quite hard to unpick yeah and in that um you know some of those examples um The Practice is worse for having that codified right like I'm
36:30 - 37:00 imagining there's a whole group of kids who then feel low motivation because there's low success in the environment there's also like it's not even activating related PR knowledge maybe so maybe there's also a bit of time lost in having the kids get back on track like what what what is the focus so um yeah that's tricky but again that to me comes back to the fact that you've got to do a lot of work on the underline principles and theory and then really
37:00 - 37:30 the techniques should be much faster to deal with like they are [Music] um yeah they they're not the guts of the learning that needs to be done in in my view yeah I think that's right and then and then it's the subject specific specificity of it so I I've been to a couple of schools where you think you know let's remember what's what's the value of Art and PE in the curriculum um what massive in their own terms if you were going to design an art curriculum
37:30 - 38:00 in its own terms and a p curriculum on its own merits and so on would you interject would you put in Daily quizzes quizzing at the start of every lesson in the changing and I'm thinking no like you just say like an art process does not rely on memory retrieval of facts about artists and stuff it's like you sort of but because it's a whole school thing they feel they do it and end up with so to me that is Bonkers like don't and yeah yeah we R out of time if
38:00 - 38:30 you're not careful I want to ask you about the thing that you've mentioned to me before that you've you you see that you're not sure about which is popsicle sticks or in England we call them lollipop sticks yeah yeah either will do yeah let's go with popsicle sticks because that's what you what what what's your issue with that well I feel really awkward saying this out loud because I um I really resist I don't like saying
38:30 - 39:00 that I don't like practices because I'm well aware there's someone listening to this thinking but I use popsicle sticks and they're great and I'm sure that that's true I'm sure that there's a ton of things in education um that you know um can be done well by someone somewhere I guess I'd just raise it because I'm interested in what you think about practices that you see that you're unsure about and that would be number one on my list by some margin my colleagues laugh at me and say Bron you are going to die on this hill um and
39:00 - 39:30 they often call me stick lady because they know I'm so bothered by them so I mean I think first of all I would just say that the lot of schools that I work with call that cold call is that the same in the UK so they would call it cold call to have a tin with the kids names in it and you would pull one out and then you're going to so I pull Tom out and I say Tom what do you think is that what schools would call cold call no most don't but I have but I have met
39:30 - 40:00 many teachers would say oh yeah I do cold calling I'm always using my lollipop sticks and yeah okay conflate the two but it was not it's not generally okay most teachers doing cold calling are not using lollipop sticks so it's right okay yeah okay so anyway it's quite a common practice here I think it can be done well but I have a few problems with it I am so worried about the idea that we're communicating to kids
40:00 - 40:30 that our conception of fairness as adults I think should not be that fairness is everybody having an equal chance at something yeah like fairness is not everybody having the same that's a juvenile view of fairness yeah it is so I really worry about the idea that well I have to pull them out so the kids don't think I'm picking on them and it's like but um but equality is not the same as Equity like everyone having an equal chance is not Equitable because you know
40:30 - 41:00 there's a kid in that class who needs four times the number of repetitions and checks for understanding than the kid next to him yeah so that I really worry about the second thing I really I really worry about the practice of asking a question then you kind of like rattle the tin and like some well-trained rap all the kids start salivating and then they start thinking where they hear the tin going and they're like the tin what did she say you know like they wait
41:00 - 41:30 to hear this rattling tin before they think or you know a kid's like looking down like this and they hear the tin and they look up and it's like you know so they're kind of being trained to like you better be thinking when I'm rattling the tin so like worry about that but I also worry about the idea that you ask a question then you're going to pull a student's name out because that's not what questioning is like I would never just think this is the
41:30 - 42:00 question I'm going to ask now who's I might occasionally but much more likely I would know that I've got this real variance you know that student speaks barely any English I'm not going to throw to them for this really complex comprehension question in this text that we're reading so why would I pretend and then teachers say oh but if I pulled but if I pulled his name out I would just pretend it was someone else and you're like well now you've now you've added an extra step while that kid's thinking
42:00 - 42:30 please don't pick me like it's just I don't know there's so much that I dislike about it but I don't know if I'm mad and I just have this visceral response to something that I don't know I feel like I'm going mad but there's so much I dislike about it that said I've been in classrooms where teachers use it and it's fine and it's great and they're doing a lot of things to make it work but I really worry about it um I discussed this with dog Lov and and
42:30 - 43:00 when I did interview with him and it's something which I he he makes a Distinction on in teach Like A Champion and we do in walk so there's a difference between cold calling and in walkthroughs we call it randomized questioning yeah we put it in there because de facto it's something which people do so we thought we would explain it and for me the value the positive reason for losing lollipop sticks is as a randomizer but there are other ways of doing that and that can be used if you are aware or or concerned about your own
43:00 - 43:30 bias and so you know there are there is a bias issue like you teachers can be very strongly uh attracted towards children who are going to give them a good answer or have a positive demeanor and children who are children can be brilliantly skillful like do not ask me you know because of their might the way they the visually present or whatever and so and I I've seen so a couple of examples I've had of and they're not they weren't physically lollipop sticks but they were the equivalent so one was
43:30 - 44:00 a teacher who had kids' names on on bits of card on her desk and like on little counters and she I thought this was clever because I noticed she was doing it but she wasn't the children didn't know so she had their names on the count on the table like a like she could like shuffle through with her fingers and she was saying okay let's see she was looking under them um so Daisy what do you think then and she just picked Daisy's name off the table and da doesn't know that she's been randomized but she had been and then the
44:00 - 44:30 teacher puts her back in there and she goes okay so let's what about um Muhammad how about you and I and and I think that was useful because I could see that she was using it to make her kind of go around and that's if she done it she could have done that with lollipop sticks and that would have had the same effect but it's not the kind of the children aren't thinking I've been randomly selected it's just helping the teacher B bust their bias about who to pick and I that's quite can be quite useful and I've seen another example
44:30 - 45:00 which is a technology version which was in a math lesson where it's kind of cool on on the on the interactive whiteboard there's a little bit of software with a with a names in the corner just very small and the teacher just said okay he asked him a cold cool question math question okay so let's see how did you get on um and he just knocked the board with his finger and it randomized the names in the room and he went okay it's Stephanie so what Stephanie let's hear from you and I thought that was kind of neat it was low low
45:00 - 45:30 drama the ball picked and it had that randomizing effect but he did it where everyone had to think then he picked yeah those two up I could see that works but my is the drama I just can't bear [Music] it it's Bron it's like oh Bron's you know other this is the other thing though and this is I am going to die on this
45:30 - 46:00 hill but yes I get I get the bias thing and I can immediately appreciate I was working with a teacher recently who lays out her sticks on her table and when she asks a kid a question she just pushes it up a little bit so she can see this pattern of questioning right so she's just physically pushing it up a bit so that some uh taller than the others and she goes oh I've asked a few questions to that kid that makes total sense to me but like the other thing about that randomizing thing is that if I'm a
46:00 - 46:30 student I want to think that Mr sherington asked Brun yeah yeah like let's look at it through the students perspective like I want to think that Mr sharington wanted to know what I thought yeah exactly that so like I also really worry about I just worry about it from a lot of different perspectives because said he said to him that was the important investment I'm I'm selecting you I care
46:30 - 47:00 about you I want to know and I think that's important and that's why secret like you've got the kid who's come in and who was a bit teary and has taken 10 minutes to compose themselves and has had a day and they're finally back into the lesson and bang of course I'm going to you to ask you something simple to say good job nice you know like it just is like uh yeah I worry about it from that perspective but the main thing is like you know I would like I would like classrooms to be places where you
47:00 - 47:30 could call on someone four times and the kid next to them doesn't say oh he's already had a turn because kids understand that maybe ishan needs four goes yeah at saying the syllables in this word and you don't and that's not to say you're never going to get your turn but that depending you know that everybody having the same isn't Equitable and and that's face it I mean most of the time unless you have techniques that you're really thinking about the default in a lot of
47:30 - 48:00 lessons is that the the the most confident children yeah don't get me wrong I would pick pop pickles I would pick lollipop sticks over the room where four kids carry the whole thing because I just think that at that point the risks are outweighed by the potential benefit but if I yeah we've had these kind of debates at my school um I just think if you can get really good thinking and all Student Response
48:00 - 48:30 systems happening without them I kind of feel like we should because I can't see yeah yeah I hear what you're I'm I have seen them done well but the other thing is do we have time for one more reason why I hate them or are we over time go one more reason why I hate okay so another reason I was watching this brilliant teacher once and he taught the pants off something and the kids were on their mini whiteboards and he'd done such a good job that the kids came out with was absolutely beautiful sort of sentence level writing I can't even
48:30 - 49:00 really remember what it was but there were these two girls in the middle and when they chined their boards you know he said chin it and they held their boards up and I read it they grade three you know nyear olds and I thought wow that's stunning what they've written anyway so he then pulls out the kids who are going to share and neither of the two girls get picked and I said oh that those girls in the middle did you see what they had written and he said yeah that was unbelievable particularly from one of them he never does much at all and I was like oh what why why didn't
49:00 - 49:30 they get to share and he said well I didn't pull them out and then I said they're not the boss of you the sticks are not the boss of you but he had he was a thirdy out team and he'd only ever done that and he'd been told that it must be random and so you know you got to anyway it was very funny I said the sticks are not the boss of you and he looked at me like oh yeah I I could have just I could have just asked her to share her writing um I like when you when you really get the purpose
49:30 - 50:00 in so I think um one of one of my um favorite walkthroughs that we have is called class discussion and it's like a kind of synoptic walkthr and and it's about running the room and it includes that start with pair instead I won't the whole steps but one of the you start with pairs because then everyone talks literally everyone has taught and then it says mix cold call and hands up so cold call is I'm going to select a few and the hands up is who had some interesting ideas we haven't heard yet
50:00 - 50:30 and then you might select so you you combine like the C call is but then let's and then you might open it up yeah pick a person that you so you you have this mixture of like model answers that people can learn from but also everyone's involved if if you get the best answers first sometimes it inhibits the others don't want to say anything but you you then sort of you know you weave that together and so a class discussion is a weave leaving together of multiple components and that that
50:30 - 51:00 instinct to hear a really good answer I think is is really really important isn't it and that that's funny how teachers sticking to the ru yeah sort of that organic sense that it's the right thing to do is is really really essential because otherwise you know one of the most obvious things I remember seeing you know David di talk about this you know is a is a kind of a standard sort of clipboard type thing with a class seating plan on it and there track engagement and you know a seating plan
51:00 - 51:30 to me is when you when you have a new class you know always if I go you know get someone to make it or it's just on the system or whatever um you it's I find that visual thing and the names there I find that really useful to apart from it helps you learn their names is start saying okay let's have a look at John yeah John right John so let's hear from you because I don't know you yet but I want to find out about you yeah I love that yeah I love that plan and in doing that you're visually kind of tracking your own
51:30 - 52:00 spread yeah and that can be I love that I think that yeah I think that kind of practice so much more valuable than the stick thing I mean the other problem with the stick thing is that I'm G to die on this hill once you've pulled the kids's name out the only way to make it more likely that you'll go to someone else is to take their name out I know that's just terrible got to put the sticks back in man oh my God but then it's like everyone's back in again it's like but that's the whole point is to
52:00 - 52:30 reduce your bias but you've just made it now just as likely that you're call on that kid again you know the thing I I find I I lollipop sticks Us in the way you're describing is is is a is a big problem I think but a worst version of that for me I don't see this very often is but I do see it is the wheel the name oh yeah
52:30 - 53:00 absolutely and I just think the anticipation of it I just all of that it's like why create drama around this the selecting of who is asked it should just key really no no big deal and okay I'm sound very judgmental and if you listen to this and you love hopsicle sticks just I'm so sorry I it's cool I mean I I've had this discussion with people and I feel like it's it is worth having yeah and you sort of say well you end up saying look it's because I'm just going to sh you what I think um and you
53:00 - 53:30 got what you think and that's fine but I you've made me think and I'm hoping you think and that's kind of doing and it the but the purpose it comes down to the reason so remember why are you doing the the lollipop sticks and if you're thinking about randomizing okay but then the whole thing of investing in children so mixing them up and I I take a line about saying don't call it cold calling because that's something else like we have to separate those two and if you're not separating them we're really getting
53:30 - 54:00 confused there well BR I think we're going have to stop now because this is amazing we could just geek out about this stuff for hours absolutely love it it's great and so thanks so much time Tom say again sorry thanks so much for your time and enjoy the summer and uh all the things that you have on at the moment yeah and you too and I'll see you in Melbourne in October yeah Fab can't wait yeah all right see you soon bye bye bye