Mr A’s class are doing some independent practice about cells. One of the questions asks them to draw and label an animal cell. While Mr A is circulating, he notices that a couple of students have drawn their diagrams in pen, so he reminds the class that they need to draw it in pencil.

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Ms B’s class are reading the first Chapter of Jekyll and Hyde and are annotating their texts. Ms B has the same text the students have under a visualiser, and is calling on different students to read from the text. The students get to the phrase “a strong feeling of deformity”, and Ms B annotates her text with the definition of deformity and explains to students that Utterson is struggling to understand Hyde, which lends to the overall feeling of mystery and threat he presents.

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Mr C’s class have just finished completing their Do Now in the back of the their books and Mr C has gone over the answers one at a time and put each one on the board so students can make corrections. He is ready to start the lesson, so asks students to stop what they are doing and turn to the front of their books and write the title and lesson objective, then find the second text on page 8 of their booklet. He holds up his booklet and points to the paragraph that he wants students to read. Mr C waits a bit, then starts reading the first sentence, and then asks another student to continue, but they aren’t sure where he is up to. He moves to another student, who starts reading from the first (not the second) text on page 8.

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Each of these lessons features some strong practice:

Mr A

  • Is giving students independent practice. This allows them to consolidate and develop their understanding. This is opposed to what happens in many lessons whereby students are not given independent practice either by choice or by simply running out of time.
  • Is circulating, as opposed to being stuck behind his desk emailing. This allows students to see him passing, and raises the chances of them working.
  • Is circulating actively and is looking intently at students’ work as opposed to just walking past.
  • Notices a common error and attempts to rectify it at a class level as opposed to either not noticing, or noticing but inefficiently correcting each student individually.

Ms B

  • Is using a visualiser to annotate the text as opposed to describing it verbally. This makes it a lot easier for students to follow the flow of the lesson and to get the same annotations that Ms B has.
  • Is using the same text that the students have as opposed to the text in a different format (e.g. a different published version). This makes it easier for students to locate the areas that she is talking about.
  • Is clearly defining unfamiliar terms as opposed to assuming students know them.
  • Is deploying strong subject knowledge to explain how the language used contributes to the overall effect of the text as opposed to solely communicating a surface-level understanding of the text that focuses on events and plot.

Mr C

  • Has delivered a Do Now, giving students the chance for retrieval practice over time as opposed to not having this as a regular routine and students rarely revisiting and retrieving prior knowledge.
  • Had the DN completed in the back of their books, which allows him to leaf through and quickly and easily see if student knowledge is growing over time as opposed to them being all over the place in the books, preventing him from getting a quick overview.
  • Reviewed the DN question by question (we will elaborate on this one later in the blog).
  • Did the DN before the title and lesson objective as opposed to having the title and LO and the DN under it, which often results in students Busy Tricking and spending ages writing the title, LO and date and never actually getting up to the DN.
  • Given clear instructions and modelled where he wants them to go to as opposed to just telling them where to go or being vague e.g. “halfway down page 8.”

As ever, we start with all of these things because we do not take them for granted. The “as opposed to”s above are not hypotheticals or caricatures, they are things that happen in many lessons I have seen and delivered myself. Experienced teachers, inexperienced teachers – the full range: there are all sorts of things we might nod our heads about and say “of course” but have actually messed up in our own practice. So, we take nothing for granted and acknowledge all the good things that A, B and C have done.

Despite this, in each lesson there is a shared shortcoming – a common error. This might seem surprising, given that each segment involves a different kind of class activity: in Mr A’s class we are doing independent practice, in Ms B’s class we are reading a text and in Mr C’s class we are transitioning from a Do Now to a lesson start. And yet, the shortcoming is generalisable.

In order to illustrate the shortcoming, I’m going to extend the first scenario:

Mr A’s class are doing some independent practice about cells. One of the questions asks them to draw and label an animal cell. While Mr A is circulating, he notices that a couple of students have drawn their diagrams in pen, so he reminds the class that they need to draw it in pencil.

Adam is observing the lesson. He also saw that a number of students had been drawing in pen, and noted that Mr A told the class to not do that. Immediately after Mr A said this, Adam went to a student who was still drawing in pen, and said “hi, what did Mr A just say?” and the student said he wasn’t sure. He then went to a second student and asked the same question, and the student said “that we need to finish these questions.”

The issue here wasn’t with the instruction that Mr A gave, it was with the way he gave it. Here we have a class full of students working industriously, and Mr A just projects out “use a pencil, not a pen” – important information to be sure, but it’s useless if the students aren’t listening. And if they’re working and focused on their work…they aren’t listening. Not because they are misbehaving, or daydreaming or being belligerent, but because they are doing something else.

Here’s Ms B again:

Ms B’s class are reading the first Chapter of Jekyll and Hyde and are annotating their texts. Ms B has the same text the students have under a visualiser, and is calling on different students to read from the text. The students get to the phrase “a strong feeling of deformity”, and Ms B annotates her text with the definition of deformity and explains to students that Utterson is struggling to understand Hyde, which lends to the overall feeling of mystery and threat he presents.

Adam is observing the lesson. He watches a student annotate her text with a definition of deformity, and then goes to the student and says “hi, can you just tell me what the effect of this bit of the text is?” the student has no answer. He tries asking it in different ways, and asks a couple of other students, but none of them can give him a good answer. A couple of them just define the term ‘deformity.’

Again: as soon as Ms B starts writing, the students start writing. They look at the board, see what’s written, find the bit in their text that matches up and copy it down. True, Ms B is talking at this point about the effect and the mystery etc, but the students aren’t listening. Not because they are misbehaving, but because they are doing something else.

All too often, I hear teachers giving students golden information: important stuff relating to the content or instructions or whatever. And students need to hear it, but they don’t. Again, not because the teacher isn’t clear or because the students don’t care – but because they are focused on something other task and therefore they aren’t listening. I always use the hypothesis model to test this and simply ask students “what did she just say?” and see how they respond. 9 times out of 10 they either give me no answer, an answer that talks in general terms about the lesson or something else from the lesson.

You’re going to try apply this to Mr C yourself now. First, read the passage again:

Mr C’s class have just finished completing their Do Now in the back of the their books and Mr C has gone over the answers one at a time and put each one on the board so students can make corrections. He is ready to start the lesson, so asks students to stop what they are doing and turn to the front of their books and write the title and lesson objective, then find the second text on page 8 of their booklet. He holds up his booklet and points to the paragraph that he wants students to read. Mr C waits a bit, then starts reading the first sentence, and then asks another student to continue, but they aren’t sure where he is up to. He moves to another student, who starts reading from the first text on page 8.

Why do you think it is that students get it wrong? Why is it that students are in the wrong place?

Hopefully, you’ve figured it out: as soon as Mr C says go to the front of your book and write your title and LO, that’s what students start doing. The papers rustle, students fetch different types of pen, look at the board, look at their page and so and so forth. Crucially, they aren’t listening to Mr C when he shows them where to turn next (this is a bit like Front Loading).

In terms of fixing it, let’s try the below:

Mr A notices that students are using their pens not their pencils. He moves to the front of the class and says “ok guys, please stop what you are doing and eyes up here…[wait]…[check]…lovely, thanks. I saw a few people using their pens for their cell diagrams. I don’t want you to do that because…”

Ms B:

Ms B is annotating the text and first defines the term deformed. She then waits for students to write it down and then asks students to put their pens down and listen up and then explains the effect of the quotation in question.

Mr C:

Mr C tells students to go to the front of their books and write down the title and lesson objective. He then waits, and once students are done asks them to fetch their booklets and turn to page 8. He waits for the rustling to stop. He then shows them the paragraph he wants them to find, and then starts reading.

All that’s needed here is a bit of time and attention. Let them finish. Stop them. One thing at a time. Make sure they are listening.

Let’s try one last scenario:

Ms D’s class have just completed a Do Now, and the question below was one of the questions in it:

Ms D uses Cold Call to ask students for their answer, and notes that a number get it wrong or don’t know. She explains in full that Mendeleev made predictions, which then were proved correct, so his findings were accepted. She puts up the answer as below:

Simon is a student, and asks Ms D if it is acceptable to talk about electron shells and how Mendeleev’s table ended up matching with later findings around electrons in the outer shell, which Ms D praises and says was a good answer. Ms D realised that whilst she was going over Simon’s answer, all the other students were writing down the one from the board. Ms D kicked herself, and made sure to wait a bit, then call back attention and go over Simon’s answer again, but with the whole class.

This is why we said earlier that it was a good thing that Mr C went over the answers to the Do Now one at a time. Often, teachers put a load of answers on the board and start talking and elaborating on them one by one, but the students aren’t listening: instead, they are looking at the board and trying to correct their work. So everything the teacher said is missed by the student.

The reason why I included this last example is because it happened to me today – the big reveal is that I am Ms D. I see stuff like this happen in pretty much every lesson I observe: teachers giving instructions or information and students not taking it in because they aren’t listening, but it also happens to me. It happens to all of us – new teachers, experienced teachers, teachers aware of it, teachers unaware of it – but it slows down learning and makes lessons inefficient. Everything that comes out of your mouth is golden, and the students need to hear it. But if they are doing something else – they aren’t listening.