A fantastic extract from a blog known as MsFindlater ' s Teaching Blog, found by Leigh, and adapted slightly to fit our Academy, there are some fantastic ideas here that aren’ t onerous, and will really help to show off the progress that students make.
In a recent and extensive study looking at the impact of different elements on the learning and progress of students, Professor John Hattie found feedback to be one of the most important factors. We could not agree more. Good quality feedback that students are guided to use well is immensely powerful.
Judging Progress: There are hundreds of wild and wonderful ways to check, gauge or judge progress overtly in the lesson. We should not put on a show every time an observer is in the room, rather we are suggesting that we need to bring some small routines into our everyday lessons. These routines will not only help observers see the progress being made but also help you and the students see it too. Making the learning visible is great for getting pupils to see others in the class progressing and understanding how they got there. They are modelling learning for you. In doing this they are helping one another to progress while you sit back as a proud teacher.
We do not believe that a teacher ' just knows ' when students are progressing. It is essential that we actually dip in and check the learning is taking place. We also need to check where the students are within that learning so we can adapt what we are doing for all students. For us it is not good enough to just leave it until we mark their books to see if they ' got it '- the learning time has gone then, it ' s too late. Some feel that students won ' t know if they have progressed. If that happens in our class we feel like we have not succeeded. We immediately go back and look at how we can help them see the steps for progression in this area. Empower them, they need to take charge of their own progress and need us to show them the way.
High Aspirations: Half the battle with students making progress is their lack of self belief. They have to believe they can achieve and trust in us that we are there to guide them. We care a great deal about getting the very best out of all of our students. If our students don ' t do well, we should always look to ourselves before pointing the finger at them or their past performance. Top set to bottom set, we should ensure they all know that we believe they can achieve and will fight to get them to do the same.
We are great believers in reflection, hard graft and commitment in staff and students alike. We constantly reflect on our teaching and their learning and work hard in order to get the very best we can from them. We should aim to get them to do the same during their time with us.
Raise the bar and they will strive to reach it.