Aiming to Teach Responsively
I’ve not long finished reading Harry Fletcher-Wood’s book ‘Responsive Teaching’ and it has contributed hugely to my thinking around my classroom practice. Over the past few years I’ve been part of a programme that investigated Dylan Wiliam’s five areas of formative assessment and I felt I had a decent grasp on them but reading Harry’s take on responsive teaching, which Wiliam has suggested would have been a better term for Assessment for Learning, has built on my knowledge of what good classroom practice could look like and how I could focus in on getting better.
A few key areas that I want to focus my improvement on are; having a more detailed unit plan which translates into focussed lesson plans that have a clear academic goal, showing students what success looks like and adapting teaching based on what students are thinking during a lesson. I'm sure with knowledge and practise, deliberate practice, I can work towards making each of these areas excellent features of my classroom practice. Fletcher-Wood gives me some food for thought on each of them.
Detailed Unit Plans Lead to Focussed Lesson Plans
Previously my unit plans have been basic and covered general themes, I relied on my subject knowledge to flesh out the plans. In essence, they were in my head. Couple that with a somewhat lazy approach to learning objectives and success criteria I could reflect that much like Fletcher-Wood I have ‘taught poorly for a long time’.
So how do I get better and continue to get better still. Fletcher-Wood suggests that ‘responsive teachers specify what students will know and be able to do’ and that is a great place to start.
Instead of planning lessons I will focus on planning units and consider what the basic ideas I want students to learn so that they can understand underlying concepts. Meaning that I must ensure that my plans are really specific, what exactly do the students need to know and work from there. The reason why we should plan for units and not lessons is that learning does not fit neatly into 50 minute lessons. Sometimes the students may pick up something in five minutes but with other ideas it takes a number of lessons, we just can’t predict this in advance.
A key idea is to consider repetition throughout the unit. This is because student performance during a lesson doesn't mean that they are learning and the research behind revisiting content regularly is strong. Fletcher-Wood suggests that a practical idea for supporting unit planning is the creation of Knowledge Organisers that include knowledge of content including representations and explanations, knowledge of content such as possible misconceptions which will help us run towards the high frequency errors in our subject and horizon knowledge which will allow students to make connections to other aspects of the curriculum.
Fletcher-Wood also notes that planning by units can help novice teachers grasp what they are to teach quicker by helping them develop their mental models which expert teachers have already built up and I like the idea of planning units being a team effort. Can you, with your department, create unit plans including booklets, worksheets and knowledge organisers? Perhaps something to take to your Head of Department or team. Fletcher-Wood explains:
Teachers and departments can use this approach to codify and collate their experience and wisdom. Lesson plans and slides tend not to transfer between contexts…… Rather than relying on word of mouth to elicit teachers’ experience… constructing unit plans collaboratively can help teachers share knowledge more effectively.
Once unit plans are in place it can allow teachers to then pick a single, academic purpose for each lesson based on where their students are in their learning, mindful that during a lesson we can only observe performance and not learning. We can only infer learning at a later date through formative and/or summative assessment amongst other means.
When preparing for a lesson it is vital that I have a laser like focus on a single, academic objective so that I am considering my students cognitive load, enhancing intrinsic load and removing extraneous load. Furthermore, it is important that I plan for what my students will be thinking about throughout our lesson during my instruction, questioning, guided practice and independent practice. Are the students likely to think about what I want them to think about. As Daniel Willingham writes ‘ the best barometer for every lesson plan is ‘Of what will it make the students think?’.
Show Students What Success Looks Like
How can I be more deliberate in showing students what success looks like? Recently, I have acquired a visualiser and this has been a complete game changer for me. If you don't have one, get one. Prior to this I would show completed examples often but I wonder if I could have done this even better.
Sharing what success looks like with students can provide challenge for them and this goes beyond checklists of success criteria. Students need to see the finished article, they need to know what they are working towards and what you teaching will scaffold them up to. We need to share model work on the board, under the visualiser and reap the benefits of the worked example effect.
Alongside showing worked examples, research also tells us that by sharing completion problems, which are partially completed models which ask students to complete the missing step, we can decrease extraneous load and help students create mental models of what success looks like.
Not only should we share examples of great work, we should show examples of work completed to different standards and support students to identify what is good or what needs improved with each example. Through effective questioning and feedback students can develop a strong sense of what excellence looks like.
To add to my unit planning I must then consider what success looks like and prepare a number of worked examples of different standards and completion problems to share with the students. Perhaps this is something that can be worked on as a department team, harnessing everyone’s expertise during the planning of a unit.
One approach I will make more use of is live modelling where I will model live under the visualiser while sharing my thinking, in addition I will utilise Show Call (a TLAC technique) much more and use students work alongside interactive questioning to identify what is good or what needs improved.
Adapt Teaching in Response to Student Thinking
Often in the past, I would rigidly follow a lesson plan to the letter which often left little wiggle room for me to be a more responsive teacher. Instead of responding to what I am hearing and/or seeing I would have checked for understanding using a show of hands and when satisfied I would carry on. There are a number of problems with this as I was only taking hands from the confident students, I was only sampling a small number and I was accepting the voices of the few at the expense of the many. But, as I endeavour to develop unit plans and have a laser like singular academic focus in each lesson it is also worth considering how I will track student thinking as Fletcher-Wood states that ‘responsive teachers track student thinking to adapt teaching during lessons.
Fletcher-Wood suggests that using hinge questions are a practical tool which pinpoints misconceptions rapidly. They are useful because they: allow us to discover what students are thinking rapidly, allow us to hear from the whole class and not just the confident ones with their hands up and focus on content, not confidence. On content not confidence Fletcher-Wood gives the example of using thumbs up or thumbs down to assess the whole class:
This solves one problem: it provides evidence for the whole class’s thinking. It only tells ‘the teacher’ how well students believe they are doing, however — or how they want ‘the teacher’ and their peers to think they are doing — not how well they are actually doing.
Instead we shope design hinge questions which focus on content aligned to the single, academic objective of the lesson. Hinge questions are ‘multiple choice questions where each answer option reflects an error or a ling of reasoning, encouraging students to demonstrate their (mis)understanding’. This makes hinge questions difficult to design but worth the effort. When offering 3/4 multiple choice options it is vital that the distractors are plausible and that getting the answer correct shows to the teacher that the students have an understanding of the lesson content (note that this is a sign of performance and not learning meaning that repetition and retrieval are vital) and are ready for the next activity.
As well as deciding on possible distractors in the hinge question I will also consider carefully when the hinge point in the lesson will be. It is advised to use them sparingly and focus on the most important idea of the lesson, that single academic objective, and place them a hinge points such as when students move from one activity to the other.
How teachers respond to responses to hinge questions must also be planned for as the responses can divert the lesson because a ‘misconception which will obstruct student understanding or is foundational to the subject is worth addressing immediately’. Being prepared with responses to each misconception will allow a teacher to lead classroom discussion, target questioning and offer fresh representations through examples and non-examples. Which adds to the intellectual preparation of lessons and hinge questions but what they can tell us about students learning is powerful.
In summary, as I head back to the classroom I aim to teach responsively by planning for units not lessons which will allow each lesson to have a laser like focus on a single, academic objective. Secondly, I will prepare multiple examples, non-examples and completion problems to show under the visualiser so that my students have a clear idea of what success looks like. Finally, I will spend time designing hinge questions that will sit at key hinge points in lessons so that I can get a picture of students understanding from the whole class and not just the confident few and iron out misconceptions which can derail student learning as quick as I possibly can. I’ve never been more excited to be a teacher and although I am often daunted by just how much I still have to learn I love reading books like Responsive Teaching that remind me of how to keep getting better.
