Curriculum case study: restructuring lessons

The school is predominantly white and there is an unauthorised absence rate of 0.3%. The economy of Weymouth and Portland depends on tourism and some small businesses. The school is on the coast within sight of Portland and the sailing venue for the 2012 Olympics. Most of our students live in Weymouth and its outskirts but approximately 10% are bussed in from outlying villages. All Saints is an active member of the Chesil Educational Partnership, a collection of 28 schools — four secondary, 12 primary, four junior, five infant, two special and one further education college — in the Weymouth and Portland area of Dorset LEA. The partnership was launched in early 2004 with a vision to create a positive culture of cooperation among the schools, and to establish innovative and cost-effective ways to enhance achievement and provide the best provision for all learners in the area. KS3 performance is significantly above the national average and in 2007, 72.5% of pupils achieved five or more A*–C GCSEs.

• Good teacher preparation
• Objectives-led teaching
• Motivated classes
• Variety of activities
• Good questioning
• Good pace
• A sense of humour

Reasons for subject preference

• Like the subject matter
• Like the teacher
• Like the things they do in the lessons
• Like the people they work with

Factors spoiling lessons Pupils who:

• did not want to learn
• were noisy and shouted out
• made fun of their peers
• made the teacher angry
• made teacher lose concentration
• tried to be funny
• did not listen
• copied others people’s work
• did not come to lessons prepared to work or with the right equipment.

Teachers who:

• were late
• were angry and who shouted
• did not allow enough time for completing activities
• were absent, as this was unsettling.

• Staff — teachers and teaching assistants — tried out the new ideas in their lessons.
• Heads of departments were encouraged to observe more classes.
• Some teachers began to go into each other’s lessons to observe different strategies at work. They acted as assistants and talked with the pupils about their learning. They could report later to the teacher and engage in professional discussion.
• Department minutes reflected more talk about teaching and learning.
• Sharper teaching and learning targets were created in the SDP — examples of these include to:

–    have dedicated time in meetings to discuss successful — or not-so-successful — teaching strategies –    trial a method of recording oral and written feedback in planners

–    put picture starters on a common subject area on the school intranet.

What was it ?

The aim of the GTL project was to develop generic teaching skills in a target group of pupils with a small number of key teachers. For our school, we agreed to focus on developing independent learning in the Year 8 classes taught by nine staff (the GTL9) — comprising three teachers from each of the core subjects, English, maths and science, with different strengths between them. There would be three trios, with one member of each department in each trio, looked after by a skilled KS3 consultant. The consultants would observe the staff in their trios, looking for the key areas of development. They would deliver Inset to the staff on effective teaching, then initially jointly plan, team-teach and give feedback to the teachers. As a next step, they would plan, observe and feedback on two lessons.

How would we gauge success?
A selection of pupils from all years, many of whom were taught by the GTL9, were interviewed at the beginning of the project and at the end to see how far the project had made an impact. We hoped that the strategies would spread throughout the years. These were the least successful indicators because the GTL strategies had not percolated through the year groups. However, the results for Year 8 were very useful and showed the students as becoming more confident in their answers. Even more useful were the comments by the pupils in key groups when they were engaged in discussion with myself, their teacher or the consultants. Teacher interviews were conducted at the beginning and end of the project. Lesson observations by the consultants and the project coordinator would prove to be a valuable indicator.

What help was there to manage the project?
LEA devolved funding for taking part in the project paid for consultant time, release for the teachers involved in the project and for my time to manage it. Two of the three consultants guiding us, from science, English, and the foundation subjects, had worked with the school before on individual consultancies and they were well respected by us.

In between the first and second visits, I observed and assisted in the lessons of the nine teachers, giving feedback and sharing the ideas I had seen in the other lessons. I also arranged cross-observation across the trios for relevant parts of the lessons. I talked to pupils in the lesson to gather further feedback for the teachers. A series of newsletters for the GTL teachers, heads of English, maths and science departments, the consultants and senior management team (SMT) kept everyone in touch with each other and with the excellent ideas and developments that were being made, and the reaction of the pupils. It was the positive reactions of the pupils to the Big Question and the practice of Think Pair Share that had the greatest impact, with comments from students such as:

• ‘I wouldn’t speak in class if we didn’t do TPS’
• ‘I can think clearly now’
• ‘It gives me time to wonder’
• ‘It is cool when we can plan what we do next lesson’.

The subject teachers met together at least once between the visits and fed back what was happening in the project to their departments. I also used full staff meetings and meetings of the curriculum board to keep the whole staff in the picture.

Visit 2: Easter term  This second visit involved joint lesson preparation for two lessons. This time, the consultants observed the teachers’ solo teaching and then fed back. Action plans were set for the next visit. These included trialling variations of the techniques, such as using physical movements to indicate think (fingers to head), pair (hands swept to sides), share (hands making broad sweep), and picture starters using a slideshow on a timer so that attention had to be sharper. Members of the project also asked for a timetable of organised observations with feedback sessions — we were on our way to our professional partnership programme ! At a working lunch, the teachers were invited to say what had been achieved for them so far and any problems that had arisen. During this term, at a CPD day on teaching and learning, the consultants were able to spread the ideas to another eight staff. Again, between the second and third visit, I observed and assisted in lessons, asking questions of the pupils and feeding back to the teachers both what had gone on in their lessons and sharing practice seen in others. Cross-observation between trios continued. Members of the trios shared their practice in department meetings. This was apparent in the minutes of the departments of the core subjects.

Visit 3: Summer term

This third two-day visit involved one lesson observation with two consultants, feedback to the teacher and a teacher interview discussing what had been the benefits of the project, what had been the key factors in its success and what they saw would be the best way forward. I then organised paired observations with myself being the constant observer. There was a full discussion between the two observers but it was myself alone who fed back on the lesson to the teacher concerned. The purpose was to assess the skills of the teacher in observing another’s practice and the feedback that they might give to the teacher. The next step would be how to spread this good practice and use the skills of the GTL team to improve teaching and learning across the whole school.

Use of picture starters
For example, use of picture starters could involve a problem posed by one picture. What would be the next step? What is the problem here? What does this picture tell us about …? What would you add to this picture to show that …? Or it could involve ‘the odd-one out and why’ pictures, or the blank square and three pictures, with students having to think about what could be in the blank square.

Pupil-led plenaries
Pupil-led plenaries often led on from the Big Question lesson aim, ‘so what was the answer’, with the teacher acting as the one gathering the information. The teacher could then ask the pupils in pairs to compose their next Big Question and take those questions to plan the next lesson.

‘Thinking walk’

Thinking walks involve posing a moral dilemma for the class, for example a headteacher deciding whether a student should be suspended from school. A pupil volunteers to be a key figure in solving the dilemma. The rest of the class call out the thoughts that they should have in order to solve this dilemma. The walk stops. The teacher adds another element to the dilemma — and the walk continues. I observed normally very reticent students adding to the spoken thoughts when this strategy was in use. Talking to them later, they said that articulating their thoughts was vital in thinking through their decisions and they found the thinking walk very useful in helping them ‘argue with themselves’.

Use of thought/speech bubbles

The teacher would write their comment on a pupil’s work in a thought bubble. This bubble then encouraged the pupil to write a reply bubble with a return comment or another problem that they had found that they felt they could not always say in class. This enabled a silent conversation to go on with the teacher written in bubbles in the exercise book.

• Openness of the teachers and their willingness to be a part of the project
• Communication — everyone knew what was going on in the project and the encouraging progress that was being made
• The quality of the consultants and their teamwork
• The recognition of the skills of the teachers by themselves and by each other
• Building on skills the teachers already had and sharing good practice
• Concentrating on a small number of teaching strategies across a number of subjects — to begin with these were the core subjects, but as staff became more aware of the Think Pair Share and Big Question strategy through staff and department meetings, the practice spread, which was noted by Ofsted
• I worked as a facilitator in terms of organising observation and keeping the whole team together through personal intervention and through newsletters, as a link person and provider of positive energy to ensure that the project maintained momentum
• The students themselves made obvious progress — lessons, teaching and learning became more exciting; the Ofsted inspection report, from objective observers, added to our sense of progress and desire to move on to the next step