How My Teaching Has Changed

I believe that my whole approach to teaching has changed significantly enough for me to reflect on what I do now and how I got here.

I will start with some of the bigger and most important changes first, but they are all important in their own way:

Learning, not doing

This may seem painfully obvious, but I fell into the trap of worrying about students 'doing stuff' in the early years of teaching. I think this was linked to the idea that if students were 'occupied with stuff', they wouldn't be tempted to misbehave.

I now know this is not the case. When planning a lesson, series of lessons, or a Scheme of Work, I ask myself:

• What do I want students to know?
• What do I want students to understand?
• What can I say and do to transmit the knowledge and my ideas effectively?
• How can I bring about intellectual curiosity?
• What can the students do that will help them process and absorb the knowledge and ideas?

I apologise if I have used words clumsily, but I am trying to convey that 'learning, not doing' is vital.

Slow down

I used to try and pack way too many activities and way too many ideas, knowledge, content in a lesson; I wouldn't step back and ask myself the questions above.

Every lesson should be simple in design and with a focused but significant aim. Reading about lesson design and teaching has really helped me with this, which brings me to my next change.

Reading & CPD

Unfortunately, I have found that whole school CPD, INSET training, has not always helped me improve as a teacher.

Over the past few years, #Twitter and @Team_English1  have been my main source of CPD. Members of @Team_English1 write blogs, recommend blogs, write books, recommend books, organise conferences and recommend conferences.

There are a lot of books out there and I have yet to read all of them. My strongest recommendation from what I have read is Making Every English Lesson Count by @atharby  and the @every_lesson team.

Visualiser

Using a Visualiser has transformed my teaching and it has become even more useful in the 'COVID classroom.'

• Put a text under the camera & and annotate with the class.
• Select a model piece of work & put under the camera for the class to discuss.
• Select a piece of work & mark it under the camera with the class.
• Show the same piece of work in different stages of editing/drafting throughout a lesson or lessons
• Place two pieces of student work or comparison texts under the camera and compare with the class.

And finally - Revision Raps!

My class watched the 'Mac's not hot' quotations rap by @MrBruffEnglish & asked if there was one for DNA by Dennis Kelly, but, as not many schools teach this as their GCSE Modern Play, there wasn't one. They asked if I could make one. So I did.

@MrBruffEnglish was very helpful in giving advice and he also retweeted the result. I enjoyed it so much I have since made several more.

My rap on London by William Blake was my second effort and my personal favourite, although I don't think the style of it impressed the students so much!

I hope that this post has had some useful ideas for both new and experienced teachers.