Teachers Talk Radio – Commanding Confidence, Late Show with Omer Pazar

This is Teachers talk radio and you are listening live welcome I want to wish you a warm welcome to the show today we have uh Miss Janes crosss here with us today and our highlight the important of efficient exam preparation School Behavior management staff CPD and Innovative pedagogy in fostering educational Success this is Teachers talk radio and you are listening live tune in live at TTR radio.org or to join in the conversation download the podbean app and search teachers talk radio follow the # TTR radio tune in talk it out with teachers talk radio okay good morning I’m not sure

This show is brought to you in partnership with uh I’m just I’m just trying to get used to this at the moment uh can you hear me yes we can hear you can you hear me twice or is it once it’s a little bit echoey all right let me see if I could

Just uh fix that uh first thing though whilst I’m doing that um can you just introduce yourself and give us a little bit overview of your educational backgrounds yes so um my name’s Joanne I am a science teacher I’ve been teaching for six and a half years so I’ve uh been

Ahead of uh sorry I’ve done second in science for two years and I’ve got promoted to a lead practitioner recently and I oversee the role of instructional coaching at my current School uh using step lab um so all things teaching and learning I’m really passionate about um

And yeah I love going to uh research heads which I found really funny I was at the latest research head um in Birmingham um and I’ve seen how crazy Twitter’s gone over that so I don’t know if anyone’s seen um all of the memes and everything that’s came through from that this

Weekend hello can you hear me now yeah I can hear you is it Lissa Curry yeah all right we’ve got there yeah so um I was having a look at Twitter and it did get quite intense um over the last 12 hours maybe U but we

Can get on to that in a second maybe some of the ideas that you might have seen from that um obviously this discussion U mainly or at least the first part of it is going to be effective exam preparation um what motivated you to focus on decoding exam questions as an key area

Of your teaching so really I think it all stem back from uh being a trainee and I’ll be completely honest it was almost like a tick boox exercise it was something that I was told you know we need to make sure we’re doing this for students um and it was almost like going

Through the motions um and I did it to make sure that you know I could really demonstrate it when we’re doing lesson observations um and then you know it’s something that probably for the first two maybe three years of my teaching I just assume students knew like you know describe and explain especially

Secondary education these students are coming into contact with what words every day so it was almost very naive of me given that that you know that students would be able to tell us what these mean and it wasn’t until we started um doing year 11 assessments we started marking them and you realized

That regardless of if the question was asking students to describe or explain or evaluate justify all that answers were the same so they weren’t really honing in on what that exam question was asking them to do they were just giving a standard response based on the content

Of the question rather than what the question itself was asking yeah I think actually having a teach I’m a science teacher as well and I do find that sometimes like for example if someone reads that questions about photosynthesis or something like that they just start chucking in everything that they possibly know about

Without really understanding what the question’s about um I’ve read your blog it was a really well-written blog and in there you talk about um the bug bug the question technique um what exactly is bug the question technique and how did it come to be so for me um bugging the question was

Something that I have did like I say my training year and brought it over to my new school when I started there and essentially it’s an exam technique to make sure students really understand what is asking from the question so the b stands for box so they box the command

Words U stands for underly the key information in the text and G is for glance back and look over the question and the introduction of bug um was has been you know revolutionary um in my teaching at least into making sure that students know what the question is

Asking or at least that’s what I thought because Stu it dawned on me really quickly that students knew how to bug a question and they could tell me what that command word was and they could underline the key parts of the question and they could glance back over the

Question you know have a good understanding of what they need to maybe talk about but not the actual exam technique so it went back to the same they they knew the exam question might be asking them to describe or explain but they didn’t know the difference between that the thing that I really

Like about bug is that you can use it at any sort ex Key Stage so we use it at key stage three we use it at key stage four and key stage five and also it’s not science specific so it’s something that we’ve rolled out whole school now and I’m a

Big fan of wherever possible rolling stuff out whole school and I know you know some people don’t like that idea and some people really like you know having the freedom to teach how they want which I totally understand but for students who how are send or students you know who

Really struggle with cognitive overload having a universal you know method to decode exam questions and to understand how to answer exam questions like bug can be really useful um my kind of question here is uh I do I do agree that when you do something in a whole school approach it really works

Really really well because that transparency across all of the subjects works well um do but you know so obviously the Topic’s mainly going to go into command words but if you was to look at the command word for for example evaluate in maths that has a completely different meaning to what we might

Expect it to mean in science how would you tackle that scenario yeah so I think when when we look into command words that is something that regardless of the um the subject they are very different um and again I know we’re both science teachers and the one that always comes

Up for me when I think about math is lines are best fit um and I don’t know how many times I’ve told students that in science lines of best fit can be a curve because it’s hammered into them in math obviously it has to be a straight

Line so I think what the command words themselves mean has definitely got to be subject specific but the technique of bug as a whole you know we can use um across the scope and I think and I’ll be honest I haven’t done the enough Research into it and

Looked into it yet but it’d be really interesting to see how similar they are for all the different subjects like history and geography you know sociology and whether we could almost become up with a universal sheet um and it’s almost using the if this is the command word then this is

The strategy I personally don’t think that would ever work um but I do think if we could have something like that for the students who really struggle with cognitive overload it could really benefit them and let’s face it these students are they going to be the students necessarily aiming for the grade eight

And the nine so if they you know were aiming for the fours and the fives with them they could potentially get by with a universal sheet that has you know the exams commands sorry the command questions um as as a general as a whole if that

Sort of makes sense I don’t I’m not sure how different they are across all the different subjects yeah I feel like um obviously command words would depend on multiple different things as well I do agree with you I think it would be very very tough to have command words taught

Across a whole school um or a whole school strategy because obviously it depends on multiple things like the subject itself and also um the exam board as well because across different exam boards you have totally different um totally different command words that are used now in your blog you spoke

About um the emphasis that you have this have applied this year on um command words can you share the success of this activity yeah so obviously uh just with everything that’s gone on on Twitter um there’s no actual scientific research so I can only share my own experiences um but it’s really really

Encouraging that I know now straight away if I say to students this is an explain question straight away I don’t even have to ask what explain means I will have students put the hand up or even some students get really excited and almost shout out and say oh that

Means we need you to use the words because and and so in our answer and I think in terms of the common ones explain and describe and because I have really honed in on this from September and for those of you that haven’t read the blog I’ll just quickly go through

What how how I teach command words so we teach them by being really explicit in the beginning of the year in September when we first come across them so if this is a des question this is what it means means if it’s an explain question

This is what it means and these are the type of words or this is almost a sentence starter that you need to include in your answer and then as time progresses and going through the lessons we do um a six question retrieval DNA um and as much as possible we try to

Have a command word as one of those activate so what does describe mean what does evaluate mean what does justify mean and as well as that once they’ve got to know what those command word means it’s okay so what strategy do we put in place if it’s described if it’s Justified if it’s

Explained and then once we’ve done that in September and you know we’ve got it September October November I’ve noticed that by the time we come to round to December January time we don’t need to include those as the activates as much I still do from time to time especially

For Less common exam questions such as planning investigation um or evaluate but then what we also do is we have our lesson outcomes uh We’ve recently moved to booklet so we don’t have to write our lesson outcomes out which I know some schools do have to and I know some

Schools don’t um but we have them printed in our booklets so whenever we have our lesson outcome and we explicitly go through the lesson outcome I do think it’s important to make sure students know what’s coming up in that lesson we bug the lesson outcome so we’re practice in that bug technique all

The time and then when we are boxing that command word we are saying what that command word means and we are also then saying what are the strategies to overcome that so if it’s evaluate we’re going to say the pros we’re going to say the cons and then we’re going to justify

Our answer at the end we’re going to say which one we believe and why um and we’re at that point now towards you know coming up towards the final um term where that would just be me stood at the front cold calling a student just to make sure that we know

But towards the beginning of the year it was a mini whiteboard task to make sure that all of the students knew this and I am fairly confident that my students know these now um and I have put such an emphasis on this and I haven’t waited

Until live at GCSE in year 10 and year 11 I’ve done it all the way from year seven um but I I’m still getting them to active VI Rec call it I’m still emphasize in that we bug the lesson outcome every time because I do think it’s really important and I think it’s

Good for us to model that to the students and I also do it through the guided practice so we have an I do we do you do stage of guided practice so as soon as the ID comes up I will model my thought process when I bug the question

And I say it’s a command question that says this so I know I have to do this and then it gets to the weo stage where I might call on a student to ask um and when it comes to the I do and they are having to go the exam questions

Themselves when I’m doing my assertive monitoring and I’m going around and I’m circulating I’m making sure that the students are first bugging the question but also writing next to the command word what that means and I think that’s a really important thing to get over here it’s

Not just one day I thought you know what I’ll start giving them some command words um and then the next week they knew it this is something that has been building up every lesson from the beginning of the year and I think what we all know is how time poor we are as

Teachers especially when it comes to teaching the GCSE content so my school we start gcss in year 10 I know quite a lot of schools do it in year nine especially for science to get through the content if we are then also have to add exam technique into that it gets

Even more um pushed for time so that’s why I think it’s really important to do it from the beginning of the year and um sorry beginning of the school um year groups and to start with year seven so by time they get to us in year 10 and 11

Doing their GCS they’ve already confident and they know what they’re supposed to be doing have you seen sorry just to quickly jump in there have you seen an improvement in the students like grades and um their performance in answering the questions using like by having such a heavy focus on the

Comm yeah so definitely when it comes to the six markers so traditionally um in the past I’ve had EUR 11 groups that don’t even attempt the six markers where we students are all attempting all the questions now um and they are using the right technique

To do them um I find this really useful because because this because they know how to answer the questions now when we’ve just had our second lot of or our last lot of ppes before they go into the real exams when we’re looking at the qlas from that now we

Know whether it’s because the students didn’t understand the content or because they struggled with that exam skill now that is something that I really struggled with previously and it’s if I’m being honest it’s probably one of the key things that prompted me to focus on this as well being reflective is I I

We’d look at the qlas um and it’s always you know questions six seven eight that they haven’t answered and it was always like well do is it because they don’t know that content or is it because they can’t answer that exam question um and students are a lot more

Confident now in answering those six markers and we can then work out from that what exam content subject content sorry is missing and I think that’s been really really valuable because otherwise you know you could have the best qaa in the world but it’s never going to tell

You whether it’s because the student didn’t know the content or the student didn’t know that skill and ultimately that is what we need to know to be able to help our students I do think that that falls into the fundamental flaw of qas because essentially you look at a

Qaa and you might think well students have perform really badly on know radioactivity but in actuality it’s not because they don’t understand the concept of radioactivity it might be that the way those questions were posed were quite tough um so yeah that’s a really good point that um no matter how

Kind of in-depth your QA is there might be an underlying issue that you might not be aware of um and I certainly think that like I’ve I’ve had a really heavy Focus maybe not so much as you but I’ve had a really heavy focus on command words um this year in particular but

Even last year as well um and I did find and I have found sorry that students that know how to access that particular command word um they definitely answer the question much much more effectively um just very quickly I’m just going to um play our ad for one second this show

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Explore their full range of titles and Advance your own professional development today happy reading uh I did get the opportunity to read um you had like a Word document and I read inside that word document and I was looking at how you kind of broke up the

Different command words as well the tips that you gave students for their different command words and that was that was really useful to do one thing I wanted to say it’s a bit it’s something that I feel like I’ve noticed I’m not sure if other people picked up on this I

Was just wondering what your opinion was on this one thing that I found with explain questions in particular I mean we know that students have to say why but I think one thing that teach might not be pushing their students to is um you know in an explained question in

Science at least they always have to add some type of T free vocabulary into that answer so when they’re saying why something’s happened if they add in some type of scientific word or definition into the answer obviously depending on what the question actually is um they’re

They’re far more likely to kind of Hit the points on what that question wants and I feel like actually like I didn’t notice that in in in that particular sheet but I feel like that’s something that’s really important to note down but I want to see if you maybe have noticed

Something similar to that um in in like when you’ve been looking at the command word for example of explain if you’ve kind of noticed the same thing yeah so I’m really privileged um sort of in my teaching Journey so far that I um taught predominantly um Foundation classes

Especially in year 11 um and I think one of the ways that you approach a foundation class compared to higher class has got to bit actually understanding of how they’re going to be assessed and actually looking at the type of command words that they come across um so I did some AQA training

Recently um just for full disclosure obviously I do the AQA course at my school hence doing the AQA training um but something although I sort of knew it from looking at the papers the difference between AIO and Foundation paper I didn’t know um EX exactly how it was broken down but

60% of the questions on a lower paper sorry on a foundation paper are classes low demand questions and 40% are higher where higher demand questions whereas on the higher paper it’s 40% lower demand questions and 60% higher demand questions and obviously with that 40% you’ve got the crossover questions

Which are the last couple on the foundation are the same as the first couple on higher um and with that the lower questions in terms of lower demand are stuff like your describe your explain um and compare and it’s then your fill in the gaps it’s your draw the

Lines um complete the sentence whereas on the higher you have got these these justifiers and the evaluates and the plans um and I think as a result of that and I am a lot more sort of biased towards making this more Foundation friendly with the explain um but you

Definitely have a point here with adding that tier three vocabulary and I think something that my current year 10s are getting really frustrated with and I totally get where they’re coming from as a biology specialist is the specificness of the words that you have to use so we’re currently going through beefy

Which is infection and control um and they get really frustrated that they don’t get marks when they say that chlorine gets rid of bacteria it’s like no it doesn’t get rid of it it kills it if you haven’t got that keyword killing you’re not going to

Get the answer um and when we talk about fagos cytosis fyes engulf bacteria they don’t eat the bacteria they engulf it um and I think actually that is a really key point and it might be something that I definitely address that when I I do a version to something that I’m really

Keen to do and something that I’m spending a lot of my uh time looking at at the minute obviously I’ve done these common command words but it’s actually a similar one but for the maths questions that we do so there’s a lot of graph skills in there um in science gcsc um

And when we you know balancing equations and calculating relative formula mass and you know the techniques that come up that we should be doing then um so it was definitely something that I’ll look at um and I definitely think there’ll be a version to and hopefully like a maths

Version coming soon um a mass version would be very very interesting read um but yeah no I I I I personally have noticed that I think if if we take a look at that that will be really interesting because I think if students kind of notice this pattern you know for

Example I tell my students if a questions about plant and it’s an explain question especially in paper one there’s a very high likelihood that you’re going to have to mention something to do with photosynthesis and um and that’s just because photosynthesis is the key word and it’s the it’s it’s the command word

For that particular case um and it’s those little hints that could really take our students like to to the next level um my and and you spoke about the engulfing eating and and something that I like to do when I’m modeling obviously I I also use the I do we do you do

Um model as well but one thing that I really like to do on the ID do for example is I might like have two different comparisons and you kind of queued my memory there because I actually taught that exact lesson um on on uh the human defense system and I

Remember I think there’s a six mark question on this um I also use AA as well and I literally did one example because I used the examiners report and the examiners report stated that students like wrote eats exactly the same thing that you said like they write

Eats instead of engulfs and I use the examiners report to kind of make up a bad example and then I got students discussing a we do maybe you know what what are what did that student let’s say do do wrong and and how could they have pushed that answer to actually get marks

Um so yeah certainly those type of I could see why students get frustrated with that because it’s hard for them to realize that that science can be quite specific and especially answering those explained questions you have to be specific um I wanted to kind of ask you if we look

Beyond exams how do you feel command words and or or or for example a student’s ability to break down exam questions how do you think that Ben benefits them in their academic Journeys but also their professional futures um to be honest I think it’s got like as

As much as we want all our students to be GCSE ready I feel really privileged to teach science because although um you know a lot of students I don’t know don’t know if it’s just my students but um they they’ll say oh I don’t really like science or I

Don’t I don’t really need science but it science is genuinely like it’s all around us you can’t you can’t escape science and I think especially and I know we just talking about like the health topic but when we when we’re teaching students about health and about vaccines and about you know um being

Able to analyze data that comes in you know and we’re teaching them also about life cycle assessments and about you know the consequences of global warming and you know air pollutant I I do feel like we’ve got a really important job not just to get them GC

Ready but to get them ready for the real world and I think where you know good real good teaching lies is making sure that our students are motivated to you know want to do well and I think we you know we need to be able to motivate them by giving them the

Tools to be able to decode these questions um and like I say describe and explain it comes up in all walks of life um not just when they’re being asked to you know answer exam questions um and they they are going to have to really evaluate stuff because you know when

They get past their gs’s and past their a levels and they’re join the real world you know they are going to come across information they are going to come across news articles or Tik toks and you know and see things and hear things and it’s you know it’s important that they

Can actually hold on what truth is behind this like what how is this going to work does this work and actually about to come and justify their own answer to things rather than just oh I saw this one so it must it must be happening it must be

Realistic I always go there was always um a couple of years ago a student telling me that they saw on Tik Tok that they um they bred um I think it was a snake with an octopus and there was like I was like no that that hasn’t happened

It was you know just like of course that hasn’t happened it’s like no no there’s a video on it and it’s like that doesn’t mean that that’s actually happening like that that you know it could be a fake video you know you don’t know what

That’s a video of and it’s like no of course it is like why would someone lie about that and I think actually making them inquisitive making them you know question the world around them and you know wanting better for the world I think’s really important 100% I mean working scientifically thinking

Scientifically we want want our students to become scientists and in doing so we want them to question the world around them and we want them to think okay is this really going to work or is it not going to work and how can I prove and

What can I do to make sure that you know I’m I’m thinking and I’m I’m not just watching around a video on Tik Tok or YouTube and just believe in what it says and so we do have a very vital job some aspects of our job kind of comes into

Psh as well because we do touch some sensitive topics and it’s important that we teach them the right things so they’re set up in life in the right possible way um and so yeah we do play a very important role I just wanted to quickly kind of draw take take a step

Back here um because you mentioned before about the mathematical skills and the graph skills that students need in in science and I think one thing I mean there’s so many tips that we can give our students one thing that I’ve again I’ve I’ve noticed and is is just simple

Maths you know when the exam question it gives you uh a table and you can clearly see you know what the x axis of that table is and what the y- axis of that table is because usually the X if it’s a horizont so it’s a

Vertical table the x- axis tends to be on the left and the y- axis tends to be on the right and if it’s a vertical sorry if it’s a horizontal table the x-axis tend to be on the top and the y axis tend to be on the bottom but then

The same question will ask students to plot and label their graph and they don’t realize that all they have to do is literally copy the label from the table and copy into their graph and I think there’s so many little tips that we could give our students and I

Think if you do end up coming up with like a unified kind of approach for mathematic questions graph questions I think that would be very very beneficial um for our students um I want you to ask though what do you feel uh having taught the mathematical

Side of science or the math skills in science what do you feel students tend to struggle on the most um so we introduced a new strategy this year um new tour definitely not not new to everyone else but the FIFA method I’m not sure if you’ve heard of the FIFA

Method before is that similar to The discus method where it’s a similar approach students write down like I don’t know in The discus method they write down their data points write down the equations substitute values calculate and then sub um significant figures is it similar to that yeah

Exactly I just think whoever invented FIFA was trying I don’t know trying to be one of the cool dads and down with the kids cuz it’s FIFA and it’s football I don’t know um but essentially it stands for formula so you write the formula out I insert um the numbers F

Stands for fine tune so that is if you have to rearrange anything or you have to do any conversions and then a you give your answer um and it’s something that we’ve introduced um this year um and we started with our physicist introduc in it so um

We traditionally always T um all all subjects um all science disciplines um not because we’re quite um fortunate actually to have um an equal waiting of chemist phys physicist and biologists um but more for time taing um whereas this year um our head of Department done some um incredible

Work can managed to actually get us to be able to teach in specialisms in your 10 to tr it um and something that we’ve said right with our current year 11s we haven’t really introduced the FIFA method so you know we’re just going to leave it to the teachers discretion

Who’s currently teaching them but the year TS let’s start with this FIFA method and go strong um and it’s something that’s worked genuinely wonders whenever we do um an assessment point we um as teachers ourselves for workload I don’t know whether this is common across all schools but we don’t Mark our own

Classes so we Mark the equivalent numbers but all of the same papers um so for instance I’ve got three year 10 classes but I don’t mark my year 10 classes um data but I’ve marked the equivalent to three physics papers um and when we do that we all then write

Almost like a mini examiner report just so because we’re not marking them um individually ourselves we’re marking one person’s marking them you know to help with standard standardization um but then we sort of lose that you know that really important sort of aspect which I think of actually

Knowing what did the kids do well on what did the kids not do well on and doing FIFA and not necessarily the FIFA itself but it’s that writing down the equation in certain the numbers and showing you’re working out um came up really high and a lot of students

Actually got marks from errors carried forward because they were doing this technique where they weren’t doing it before a lot of students also even if they didn’t complete the question they still got one or two marks and I think that’s really important because traditionally when I first started

Teaching you know I used to end up marking your 11 papers and there was loads of blank questions um they weren’t attempting all the questions where we’ve now got corts that answer every question you know and they are doing really well and they’re getting the marks for it so

I think the introduction of FIFA has been really um useful um in terms of what I think students really struggle with maths wise um I think the introduction of um calculating means and them having anomalies in there um students really struggle with I you know Hammer this

Whole thing what they they tend to put anomalies in the questions now so look out for anomalies um I then have kids almost second guessing there’s always got to be an anomaly and they you know there’s they just look for the data point that’s the furthest out even if

It’s you know furthest out from another one by like one um and I know that’s quite you know a standard one um also standard form students I don’t know how how you find this but students really struggle with standard form and significant figures so if they’ve got a

Four mark question you know they get the three marks fantastic but you know that last Mark give your answer to three significant figures or give your answer in standard form um they don’t do as well on I don’t know how you find yeah no uh you said so many different things there

And I kind of got so much to talk about now oh sorry I I I do have a problem shutting up no it’s okay it’s okay perfect um so just to respond directly to the last thing that you asked um standard form yeah students really struggle with standard form and even

Even if it’s a question where they have to input into the equation I tell them look just just treat this like a normal number and pull it at the top of your fraction and they still struggle with it and yes that’s definitely something that I think is is is very common um for

Science classrooms uh the idea of anomalies as well you you hit that nail on the head so well because they either don’t like notice the anomaly or they’re like trying to false an anomaly I’m going to call I’m going to make that term up it’s going to be called false

Anomalies they’re kind of Falen anomalies where there’s no anomalies um but yeah just wanted to quickly take a step back to the fever method because I personally use discus method and I find that when you when students use the method they do get the carry through marks and because obviously the example

What do they want they want to see the student substituting in values that’s your first Mark your second Mark’s for arranging in a calculation problem and your third Mark will be for getting the right answer so even if you substitute in the wrong values or even if you maybe

Rearranged it wrong you’ve still got that first Mark so it definitely is is a I mean I’ve not seen the fever method before but it seems much shter than discus method maybe I might have a look at that myself but um most certainly when students have for calculation

Problems when they have a method to follow they have a higher success rate because they’re actually hitting what the examiner wants to see um so yeah that I I I definitely think you hit the nail on the head there as well um in in in terms of significant figures it’s

Funny that you say that because my students have just my year 11s have just set their final interim before their mock they kind of sorry before their actual exams they set final kind of preliminary exams that we call them um and I there’s one question where they

Had to give the answer they used a 2023 paper and they had to give the answer to standard form and they got every single part right and it was a really tricky problem I think it was a suat problem it was a really really tricky problem and

They just rounded up to the they rounded down it was 11.5 and they rounded it down to 11 and it’s such a shame quite a few of them because they lost that last Mar Mark and it’s it’s an easy Mark that they could have got um but yeah I wanted to

Quickly push on to uh the idea of teaching specialisms CU When I hear that I think wow that’s so fantastic cuz I’m fortunate I’ve just moved to a new school and I’m getting to teach a lot of physics and I’m really enjoying it like because obviously physics is what I’m

Passionate about that’s what my degree was in but I do think there’s pros and content I want to see what you think about it because I found that yeah teaching subject specialism is really good because you can teach the students to depth that they need to be taught in

And you really know the subject really well um and for me as a teacher it’s a win because I’m passionate about the subject but I do actually find sometimes I want to see what you thought about this um sometimes I find that there’s like little tricks or something that a

Teacher that’s not a subject specialist they kind of might notice something that you might not or taking it from an angle that you might have never thought of it from because I think as a subject specialism you’re so kind of you’re so masterful at the content that you know

That you never think about the kind of easy ways of or easy comparisons that you can make or analogies that you might be able to draw and I personally find that and I think you might have the chance to lose that and what’s your opinion on on

That so I think this one is like a massive like can of worms is it there is no there’s no right answer of teaching it should we teaching specialisms or not I think it’s almost like going down the rabbit hole of should we set classes or

Not um for science or for for any um subject um and my personal opinion I don’t like teaching in specialisms um and there’s there’s a number of reasons for that I feel and I’m really open about this my weakest every as a teacher is my subject knowledge um you know teaching and

Learning curriculum I’ve got such like a national uh national natural sort of you know interest and love of that and you know I’m a really inquisitive person I love learning more about it like how assessment happens what we do with the data after assessment behavior all of

That you know my cup of tea the subject knowledge itself doesn’t come natural to me um and I know you know every every teacher would have their own weak spot when it comes to their own um you know professional development and like I say hands down for me it’s my subject

Knowledge and I actually think when I reflect back one of the things that made me not want to teach at my current school I was picking between two schools was actually the school that I was originally going to go to you taught in specialisms and and you even

Was fortunate enough to teach in specialisms at keystage three um and for numerous reasons I never ended up at that school I ended up at my current school and actually I’m so grateful that I did especially for the fact that I’ve got to teach all three because the

Improvement that that has made teaching gcsc physics and GCSE chemistry you know that has upskilled me massively and it’s also meant that my key St tree teaching is also a lot better so there you know if I didn’t have to teach it at GCSE it would be so

Hard for me to make the connections at keystage three are what’s important why they need to know this where is it going you know what is the fundamental skills that they need to and also I think it’s really important to make those links between the different um subjects

Themselves so I had a student student and you know I remember him asking me something the other day um and it was it it was something to do with um like the positive and negative um terminal of a battery and then we ended up talking about um extracting metals

And electrolysis and I teaching physics he was like but isn’t this it’s like this isn’t physics this is chemistry when you talk about ions um and we’re going on to P3 at the minute the particle model and he’s like hold on that’s chemistry and I’m like all inter

Links like and I think it’s a real privilege to be able to teach all of those different subjects but with that in mind I am not naive in the fact that like I say I’m really fortunate that I only teach F I say only that I get to

Teach Foundation groups I feel such you know a sense of achievement being able to get those five fives out of these kids um that the subject knowledge that I have at the minute probably isn’t as high as those who need it to get the grade nines so and the hint land that comes

With being able to teach your specialist subject um and again knowing where that one of the reasons why I like it teaching it at GCSE so I can help the keystage fre students You could argue that GCSE that you know I don’t know where this is going for them at a level

For the chemistry and the physics whereas an a level um and a physics specialist would so actually being taught in specialisms at GCS is really beneficial um and again it’s that subject knowledge if we when we want to get these grade nines out of the students you know we need to make sure

That our subject knowledge is spot on and that students can do um and are confident with asking the teacher so that’s sort of my take on it like I say I I personally don’t like it but I understand the privilege of the position that I’m in and why I don’t

Like it and why some people would want to teach in specialisms again I spoke a bit too long no no that’s that’s fine that’s fine um I actually I I I was when you first said oh I don’t fully agree with um the idea of just teaching specialisms I was

Thinking in my head yeah actually I I was thinking the same thing um because actually I think that just like you where you feel like it upskilled you for physics and chem I feel like I’ve really been upskilled in bio and chem um and if

I hadn’t talk like if I if I didn’t kind of if I just stuck to my specialism I wouldn’t have gained the skills and it is important and it is really good that that and that you can learn to break things down for all of the subjects um I

Actually found I did in my previous school I taught a lot of foundation classes and I agree with you there’s something really rewarding about teaching Foundation classes because when they start to get it like I’ve always found that when I’ve had Foundation classes I don’t know if it’s a situation

Of maybe their prior teachers or they just feel like they don’t get science and just by Drilling and getting memory and like active memory recall starters and you’re getting them to constantly remember things they did before but by the end of the year they really begin to

Love science and it’s it’s like a really really nice journey to see and I’ve found that like two three times when I’ve taught at the same kind of year group year n Foundation classes I’ve really found that they by the end of the year they really really enjoy science

And you don’t necessarily get that same win with let’s say um higher classes or triple science classes because they tend to always just kind of get by with science that’s my general kind of like observations um from that kind of thing but on the idea of gcsc I do certainly

Agree with you there are just certain things that subject Specialists can do and say that can set students up for a levels and I remember um when a student left my school and he went on because my prior school they didn’t have a levels

So he left the school and he moved on to a levels and he sent me an email to my school account and he said sir you know it’s it’s crazy because the way you taught this this this this kind of set me up and now I really understand etc

Etc etc so it is definitely the case that as a subject specialist when it comes to GCC when you’re coming to push those students it is important that we set them up for a level because if they choose to go down the option they need

To have the right setup for them and and by the little tricks that maybe a a non-sub specialist would teach them they don’t really understand it to the depth that they need to understand it um I wanted to ask you though we’ve spoken a lot about you know breaking down exam

Questions and breaking down the techniques and um so so it’s accessible for the students it’s a unified approach what are your top tips for teachers looking to implement these strategies that we’ve spoken about in CL in their classrooms um I think if you if you were

Starting out um in terms of doing it holistically and you’re doing it from every your group it would be you know start with start with the basic start with the describe and explain and the compare those low demand questions and like I say work it up make sure that you

Are asking them about what that command word means and if you see that command word what is the strategy and it’s it really is a two-way approach what the command word means what the strategy to go with that is and like I say we need to make sure that we are asking these

Daily and that they can recall it so I include in the activate that we are bugging the lesson outcome so just as a quick reminder that’s we’re boxing the command word underlining the key information in that question and glancing back over the question so if it’s a bug question um sorry if it’s

Three marks or more we teach them to BU the exam question in GCSE Science so the first thing they do when they come to the exam question they look at for how many marks it is if it’s three Mark more marks they bug it and again we’re making

Sure that they bug the lesson outcome every lesson so they’re really engaging in a in what they’re doing that lesson but also practicing um and making sure that we come across that command word all of the time and it’s actually making sure it’s relevant so if my lesson is on

Looking at you know the different stages of mitosis I’m not going to ask them and you know a plan a practical command word question at the start it’s making sure that it all links and we’ve got those hinge questions and when we go through the guided practice

Of the I do we do you do and I think it’s been really you know particular with this so it’s just as if you’re going to teach them you know some new subject knowledge you teach them the skill in the exact same way you model it

To them you know you have that Coral repetition you have that retrieval practice when you’re asking the questions and I don’t know about you and I feel like we’re going to go off on a tangent if you start talking like this but I’m a massive fan of manyi

Whiteboards opposed to cold calling I definitely think cold calling has its space and its time um in the classroom but whenever I could possibly is use the mini whiteboards and you know why ask one student what explain means and what the strategy is if you could be getting

All the students to and when you doing your walking talking marks and you’re going through exam papers with students especially in year 11 at the minute it’s making sure you are teaching them those command words and what they mean if I if I hadn’t come across this sort of

Strategy before you know what there’s four weeks left four School weeks left before the exams um I wouldn’t want to overload students with all the different command words for science I’ll definitely You Know download the sheet make them aware from the blog but what I

Would do is I would look at their tier whether the higher tier or Foundation tier um and you know if there were higher tier I would focus on those higher demand questions such as your plan your investigation your justify you evaluate and if the foundation it would be to describe explain and compare

Questions um one second I’m just going to play the news for this week this is Teachers talk radio and this is Teachers talk radio News the BBC News Channel and News website features an interview with a secondary head teacher one year on from an incident in his school which resulted in a lockdown head teacher Kieran Stapleton confronted a male who had entered the school building telling office staff he had a gun the man has

Since been detained indefinitely in a secure Psychiatric Hospital Mr Stapleton talks of confronting the man on the corridors while staff followed lock down procedures locking classrooms pulling down blinds and asking pupils to hide under desks and remain calm and Silent Mr Stapleton used the interview to highlight the issue of mental health and

The importance of support for young people in order to avoid instances of violence he also pointed to The Bravery of staff and pupils and the way they responded to the lockdown that was not a drill the business section of the BBC news site focuses on the impact the post

Office Scandal has had on the children of sub postmasters a group set up to support those affected was organized by Katie Downey whose father was made bankrupt trying to repay money after the Horizon system failed Miss Downey was 11 when the family moved to France and she stopped talking for two years

She set up the group lost chances for the children of sub postmasters as a way to support those affected but is also trying to gain compensation for the changed lives the group has 40 members so far and many talk of difficult home lives bullying at school and feeling

Some shame after parents were accused some also shared experiences of poor mental health eating disorders and panic attacks the group wants members of the public and and other groups and agencies to understand how such trauma can affect children and young people this is so that they are no longer considered as to

Remote from the harms caused simply because the harm was not directly inflicted upon them the holy month of Ramadan began earlier this month and many schools have made arrangements to support pupils and staff who are fasting this is something that many schools have been done for years but this year staff

Shortages have meant that some schools have had to modify their usual procedures schools report difficulties in supervising pupils who are fasting in spaces away from food and drink as they struggle to find additional staff or enough cover for absent staff one primary school in the east of England

Resorted to asking parents to take fasting pupils home for the lunch period due to significant staff shortages parents Express frustration at the request with some quoted by East England views as saying it was insensitive and ridiculous some did point out that the school has often been

Supportive in the past and that it is proud of its Multicultural awareness the school said it was working hard to find a solution to the issue but could not compromise pupil safeguarding difficulties in recruitment retention and accessing Supply staff are an ongoing challenge for many schools the University of Cambridge is scrapping

Its state school targets for undergraduate admissions according to the Telegraph newspaper the university said it would take candidate schools into account When selecting students but would no longer have a target for the share of state and private schools pupils and gaining places Cambridge has been accused of discriminating against

Pupils from private schools amid a decline in offer rates at top Independent Schools Vice Chancellor Deborah Apprentice said there is no discrimination but competition is fiercer as State School pupils have been increasing encouraged to apply the targets were originally introduced to increase the portion of State educated undergraduates from 63.4% to 69.1% by

20242 the university has beaten its Target with 72.9% of new students in 2022 to 23 coming from State schools finally a head teacher’s letter to parents on the subject of poor quality School males has gone viral the letter was sent after issues with the school’s catering provider Chartwells led to complaints from pupils

Over quality and Portion sizes in the letter the head teacher says he would be exceptionally unhappy if his own children were served the food and asks how difficult is it to bake a potato whilst the letter focuses on issues with food service it has highlighted the problems school face around private

Finance initiative contract management funding issues and the impact inflation has had on the food prices which have left some companies struggling some commentators have also rais the issue of the impact po quality meals can have on pupils who receive free School meals it’s not the first

Time chart Wells has been in the news as the issue of food quality was raised during the pandemic when the company was accused of providing poor quality food Parcels to families during school closures Chartwell said it was working with the school to rectify ISS and acknowledg that the service had

Fallen well below the high standards we demand this has been your teachers talk radio news with Joel Fox this show is brought to you in partnership with John cat educational publishing professional development books and resources to support great teaching and learning in schools around the world have you checked out their

Latest releases use the code JC TTR 2324 for 20% off your order don’t miss out visit johnkat bookshop.com to explore their full range of titles and Advance your own professional development today happy reading and we’re back I just wanted to I wanted to ask you a quick question you’ve mentioned um in the

Activate what does that mean yeah sorry so activate is just all word for a a do Now activity so a starter it’s just um it’s just what we use at our school um and I think we’re all quite unique with that I don’t know um do you use do you

Call it a DNA at your school uh we just we actually just call it a starter which is quite weird because we follow all the same things like we use modeling we do I do we do you do um we have different phases of our lesson

But we literally just call it phase one of the start we don’t call it even a do now but it is a do now but that’s that’s literally what you should like I feel like it sometimes we over complicate it but I remember like first seeing like DN

On like Twitter and I was like but that that’s a j we teacher why are they doing about dnas um and obviously it’s just the do now activities in it and I took me a bit too long to work that out I think um but yeah so an activate it’s

Just you know they come in activate their minds to get started um but we just do it it’s six questions um and they are quick recall questions um and the key point that um I really harb especially as a lead practitioner for the Department something that we’re really focusing on

Is to make sure that they are you know one or two Word answers and we do have maths questions in there um and I think just because we touched on maths earlier something that I’ve definitely started to do especially for my 10 um and my 11s is I qu math

Skills that they struggle with they have as part of their activate so balancing equations and calculating um relative U Mass was on there um and they can do that now that is you know because it’s routine and they’ve been doing them once a day since September they you know it’s

Almost like they don’t even need to be on there anymore um something that I’ve started to introduced and I’ve seen a massive increase since is asking them standard form questions and it’s just like write this number in standard form or write this number um like transfers this number

From standard form you know out um and I think that’s really grown their confidence as well uh yeah we personally I I do the same thing so I have uh four I only have four five starter questions um but they’re they’re like short answer questions and we are I think we’re going

To have to go on the slight tangent here because I also really like mini whiteboards and I’m a really big advocate for it um and starters activity is actually a good time to test like to see how well your students are doing to be honest anytime’s a good time to use

Mini whiteboards in the lesson um I I do use cold calling as well a little bit of cold calling and any straight mini White board and white board um because it’s whole class engagement whole class responses is such a good effective way to make sure that the class is following

They can understand what you’re telling them and um definitely definitely I I would recommend it to anyone really um good whiteboard routines but also it’s not just about having good white whiteboard routines it’s actually about making sure you use the information you gather correctly um and I think if you’re trying to

Push kind of to the higher level of using the mini whiteboards I’ll would say that’s where a lot of people go wrong so some people have really really good routines of mini whiteboards but they don’t use that data they don’t use that information effectively it’s just

Like they’re kind of doing it just for the sake of doing it and then I think those are the teachers that might not be big Advocates of it because because of that reason um I don’t know if you’ve found or seen the same thing yeah so I’m um really fortunate

Again I’ve got um a trainee um at the moment um and we were talking about you know he’s less than the day we were reflecting on that and you know um we noticed that actually you know all the kids had a mini whiteboard they had the pens obviously the routine was embedded

That when they come in the lesson they pick up the mini whiteboard they pick up the pen he was asking questions but he noticed that only about 50% of the students were actually given an answer back um and we spoke about this at the end of the lesson and we

Spoke spoke about well what is the what is that issue with only 50% of the students answering is it that because that’s 50% of students not answering the question is that because they don’t know the answer and in that case we as teachers we need to know that they don’t

Know that because that’s the whole point we’ve introduced them in whiteboards we want to know whether they’re ready to move on with they learning or not or is it that they’re just not listening to you and they don’t know that you’ve asked the question um which again we

Need to know us as teachers we need to ensure that they are engaging in our lesson or you know putting behavior consequences in place for that or is it you know that it’s not that they’re not engaging or that that they’re not listening but they’re just uh sorry they

Don’t know the work or they’re not engaging with the work it’s actually just that they they can’t be bothered and again we need to know which each of those steps are um and it’s about getting that right first and getting the foundations right before we can move on

To that next level stuff which you’re talking about because ultimately if only those 50 students are answering but all of or sorry 50% of students are answering and they’ve got them all right that might be like oh perfect right they’ve all got that right now we can

Move on to the next bit or or we can go that level harder but actually if then the whole class was answering it but the 50% that wasn’t originally answering it the reason they weren’t answering is because they didn’t know the answer you know if you didn’t get that

Information you might have moved on and you’ve left that 50% behind and I think mini whiteboards are great for whether we know have we you know addressed any misconceptions do students truly understand this now and it’s great for using the FIFA method as well um I tell

You now the year 10 did not like this when I first um introduced it um but when they do FIFA especially when we first started FIFA they had to do the whole of FIFA on their mini whiteboards and they had to do it a step at a time

So I knew they knew what to do um so they had to write the formula out and they just had you know a minute to write the formula out and then it was 3 two one show me what they’ve got the formula the next time it was insert the numbers

From the question um and so on and so on and I think I I’ve been teaching for six years and I think the last two years is when I can hand on heart say that my own teaching has developed the most and I genuinely think using mini whiteboards and using them

Effectively was the main contributor to that because like you say what is the point in using them if you know you sign 32 one show me you’ve planned three questions they’ve got as a class 60% I’ve got all three wrong but you’re just going to move on to the next bit of your

Lesson anyway it’s about adapt in to what those answers are on those mini whiteboards um because equally you know you could have 90% of them get it right and you’re moving on to that next bit that independent practice but you know which of those students didn’t get it

Right and now you can go and help them while all the other students are doing the independent because it might just be you know that you know they weren’t concentrating at that particular point and they missed something they might misheard the question you don’t know what what’s got it wrong but you haven’t

Got time to decipher that for half the class but if you know it’s only a couple you can go up and ask them um so yeah I’m a massive fan of Min whiteboards I think the issue comes and where people are reluctant to use them is the admin that comes around them

Um it’s been a lot of training the students um because we introduced booklets at the beginning of this Academic Year so students know now when they come in straight away they get a mini whiteboard a mini whiteboard pen and they get the booklet sheet um and

The rways I’m really I know I keep saying how fortunate I am like I’m never never going to leave my current school um but I teach predominantly in one classroom so the students know the setup of that classroom where the booklets are going to be where the mini whiteboards

And where the pens are going to be as well and it’s about embedding those routines staff that have to move around a lot especially in terms of many whiteb pens are them running out um I can understand the potential barriers that come across that I think the best

Solution that I could think of is to ensure that students themselves have a mini whiteboard and a mini whiteboard pen um but again it I suppose it depends on your own score and their current context to whether you think students would or bring a mini whiteboard in a

Pen if you gave them one in September would they still have it you know in March the same year I don’t know um yeah to be honest I’ve I’ve kind of been on both sides of the coin here because last year in my previous school I had my

Own classroom and the mini whiteboard routine that I had was so easy to manage um I mean the kids came in straight away as they walked in they’ll grab one whiteboard one pin and one wiper um and when they packed up they they packed it

Up in exactly the way I wanted it packed up now the reason for this and I would recommend if someone’s doing mini whiteb routine first thing Tom Bennett get the routine right the next thing um and I’m I’m mentioning him because obviously he’s he a lot of what he talks about is

About habits and routines but the next thing is um when I find that if I’m very fussy when I first embed whiteboards if I’m just fussy about the way I want it laid out when they pack it back up what this means to me is I can instantly see

If all the equipment is there because if I have it laid out in a very particular way where I can count the equipment just by looking at it then straight away I know that I have my equipment there but also the students know exactly how to

Pack it up every single time without a fail um the next thing I found though now I’ve moved to a school where I don’t have my own classrooms probably because I’ve moved halfway through the year and it has been a lot more difficult but one

Strategy I found is if I have my own set of whiteboards pens and rubbers and I I my my table’s laid out in row so I have three different rows so I have three different sets of whiteboards pens and rubbers and the students will pass them

Down the rows and I found that to be quite effective I know some science classes have like big lab tables as well but if you just have enough for those different tables to distribute their white balls pens and rubbers um and you have different sets for those different

Tables I find that that’s quite an effective strategy because um every table then has to distribute themselves and bring it back themselves because as you said the most difficult thing about walles is the admin if I’m number one changing classrooms all the time then I mean obviously carrying around isn’t the

The the the the best thing to do but if I if I’m changing classrooms all the time I’m going to potentially walk into a classroom where other teachers just haven’t got the right routines they’re going to be missing pens they’re going to be missing rubbers they’re going to

Be missing white boards so I’m not going to be able to do it effectively Distributing the white balls is going to be another issue if all the white balls and pens and rubbers are all in the same box then Distributing them is going to be so difficult and I don’t have the

Time before or lesson to try and distribute the whiteboards and try and put them all back in after the listen so I definitely have to build up that routine and I I do find that three different boxes for my for my classroom layout is the best strategy to use um I

Don’t know if if you have similar tips um but the one thing I wanted to say uh also I I feel like I’ve kind of got on the tangent now as well the one thing I want to say also was with the fever method obviously as I said I used the

Discus method and one technique or strategy that I used was I I sometimes give them the question I’ll give them the answer and I’ll say yeah now I want you to show me the answer show me you working out the answer using the discus method um and that’s another like

Powerful way that it ensures that the student does the whole discus method I found anyway um I don’t know first thing what your kind of if you have any like strategies for mini white boards um uh in terms of embedding it like with good routines um and also um you have

Mentioned a FIFA one actually uh your strategy that use FIFA but yeah what what’s what strategies do you use to kind of ease the administration tasks to do whiteboards yeah so um this one isn’t popular with the students um although I only realized this um the other week so

One thing that I do to remove the admin is I don’t actually give and I wonder if this is is going to be really controversial and I’m going to get like cancelled on like Twitter for this but um I don’t give uh mini whiteboard rubers

Out um it’s just I feel like it’s an extra faf half the kids don’t use it they just use their hands anyway you know they use the sleeves um I say that I don’t think they use their sleeves I think they just predominantly use their hands some students they do again

Science teach they go in they get some blue roll um but you know I’m I’m thinking like what student out of you know every year group I teach that I can think that does that um so that definitely removes it and like I say it’s the fact that they know that we use

Them every lesson and we do use them every lesson we’ve just had British Science week which was amazing um we obviously the the focus was time we had loads of fun they’ve made timelines they made uh paper roller coasters to keep the marble going for the longest amount of time they used

Water and sand and um a marble and a ramp to like all different ways to measure time but even with those they they use the mini whiteboards in those lessons so we had that clear activate start at the beginning we had questions like what this is what we’re going to do how are

We going to do it what are the variables using those manyi whiteboards and it’s about truly making them part of our routine um and using them all the time um and I think it’s about being consistent uh one of my biggest bug Bears is when they’re like all the you

Know the mini whiteb pens went out okay that happens you know and they’ll come back to the front and they’ll put the mini white bu pen that has ran out back into the tub and collect a new one and I’m like no what don’t put that back in

There because all you’re going to do is someone’s going to come to that and it won’t be working you know next lesson I was like so you throw it away and again it’s something that I’ve had to hammer in September October November de December and it’s you know only really

February March that you know I’ve started to notice actually they are putting them in the bin before they come and get their uh pen um so I think for me that would be the key parts of routines there are some students that I know um have got their

Own mini whiteboards peners now so they’ve actually asked their parents to get some um and you know they’ve started to come up with all the different fancy colors so there’s one girl who’s got purple one um and I know that there’s one boy who’s got um like a sh shizel

Tip one um rather than the bullet point um and I think again it’s because they know they’re going to use them every time so when they go in and you know they’re looking at the stationary in the shop they’re oh can we have a mini

Whiteboard paint so I can have my own as well um and I think that and I wouldn’t for one minute suggest that we have to ask all students to supply their own uh mini whiteboard depends um but I think it shows just how much we are using them

Um that they feel like actually you know what I do want my own and again as much as possible do it across school but obviously I’m very conscious that some people and rightly so they don’t like it when something is made whes school for the sake of it um I don’t think making

Mini whiteboard use is for the sake of it I think it’s really informative but depending on your current school and the culture that surrounds it you know rolling out mini whiteboard use every lesson might not be the biggest priority at the moment this show is brought to you in

Partnership with John cat educational publishing professional development books and resources to support great teaching and learning in schools around the world have you checked out their latest releases use the code JC TTR 23 24 for 20% off your order don’t miss out visit John cat bookshop.com to explore

Their full range of titles and Advance your own professional development today happy reading yeah I just wanted to say that I do think you’re going to be canel on Twitter because you don’t give out um whiteb rubbers um actually I’ll tell you a little secret um my white bu rubbers I

Feel like a lot of them just don’t work they’ve gone kind of flat now but they just when the students uh put them back into the to like my tray they they allow for the pens to kind of be laid out in a perfect way for me to count them so

That’s the main reason why I hand them out I do find the same thing I think students do tend to just use their hands or just wipe it with their sleeves or something or just use a bit of tissue so um I don’t really need to hand out as

Well I do agree with you there and I have found that students do buy their own whiteboard pens as well which is really nice to see um I want need to kind of obviously to have manyi white balls you need good routines but you need good behavior management as well

And just to kind of close up uh I think it would be good to kind of um have a little chat about behavior management strategies and how how do you um sorry how do effective behavior management strategies contribute to creating an environment um where students can learn

And and we’re getting close to exams now and how it can create an environment that can be cond Ive uh to exam preparation yeah definitely I think um in terms of behavior I think it’s really subjective obviously to um your your school and your schools Focus but again I work in

Incredible school where um they they don’t tolerate disruption to learning so we have I’m a really clear policy where the first time time something a student does that is deemed to purposely try and destruct the learning of others they get a warning and the second time they get

Removed from the lesson um and I think that’s the fact that’s really you know powerful actually you know the fact that they have got such a strict stance on that but it’s also about following the behavior policy and I think a lot of teachers especially new into the profession and potentially

Younger teachers and not not all younger teachers and not only younger teachers but it tends to be um they don’t follow the behavior policy maybe as strict as other teachers in the sort of bid to become students friends and you know they don’t want the student to dislike them because they’re doing

Really well in their lesson and you know they want them to want to come to their lesson and I think actually you’re not doing any favors for the next person that has to go and teach that person so you know if you know pupil a has been allowed to

Talk to their friend you know periods one two and three and they come to period four and you know they’re getting you know their names written on boards and they’re being you know asked to stop talking you know it makes it so much difficult when they’ve been allowed to

Do that previously and I think again in terms of good behavior management especially for your s students as well as like students who struggle with cognitive overload it’s about the routines and being consistent you know if they know that at the start of every lesson they have got

Six questions that they have to answer in silence and that’s how the start of every lesson goes that’s really helping them to know what they should and what they shouldn’t be doing um if they know that when we have the guided practice stage there’s an I do

Bit which the teacher models through so we are there and we are actively watching and we are listening to what they say and then in the we do bit we can contribute to that but the U do bit they have to do independently and again that’s routine

We do this all of the time I think that really helps with behavior management yeah I agree that’s it I think pausing sorry um I was going to say that uh I actually agree with you um with the the following the policy I think is so important and sometimes I do get a

Little bit frustrated like I remember when I was the first I was I was a PGC there was a ECC teacher back then it was called nqt it was the one-year program and um he yeah his classrooms the students were always missing around there was always really loud but if if

You took a class from him I took a class from him and it was just so difficult to to kind of build rapport with the students because for them like anything short of letting them do what they wanted to do just wasn’t good teaching and they they wouldn’t enjoy the lesson

Although actually it was actually the other way around um but I do find that yeah I think it is an issue with younger teachers I think it might be because number one like I volunteered in schools for a really long time before I became a

Teacher um so I feel like the kind of idea where you’re going to be the students friends like it was just it was drilled out of me I also worked on programs of young people for a while so I think that was just drilled out of me

But I do think that there is that issue where obviously new teachers they are young themselves and um sometimes they lack the emotional intelligence needed to kind of realize that okay you know I have to stay strong to what I I need to do here I need to have that tough tough

Love kind of attitude where I am going to follow the rules because if I don’t follow the rules then you know the students not going to understand the boundaries and um they might try and overstep the boundaries number one and number two it’s not fair on everyone

Else in that classroom that this student is now intervening in their education and getting the way um and disrupting it um so yeah I certainly I also find that younger teachers do find a little bit difficult they maybe it’s because of the emotional intelligence they or maybe

They just don’t want to be disliked um by the students because because that isn’t something that they’re used to in normal life you know we go through school ourselves wanting to be liked majority of the time so becoming an adult and being in the same environment

And having finding that actually if I am like a little bit strict with the rules then students might not like me some teachers might find hard um but actually you’ll find I think a lot of the time that if you just stick from the beginning you’re consistent you’re

Fair even if you do have a strict kind of tough love approach not super strict obviously but tough love approach where you know well you have disrupted learning we use reminder warning and then they’re out so uh we call it bi but um yeah you’ve got a reminder for that

That’s not what you need to be doing the work you shouldn’t be doing that you know warning and then B and if you follow it through eventually they’re just going to accept that that’s just how it is and if it’s consistent across the whole school then eventually they’re

Going to accept that you know this is how it is across the whole school so I do agree with you um completely there that and it is really important do you find though how do you find your year 11s now because I have moved to a school

That I would say has more challenging behavior um and I am finding that after doing the preliminary exams they are becoming a bit restless and this isn’t just in my class but it’s it’s across the board so I was wondering if you saw something similar maybe in your school

Or maybe because you’ve had your class since September that might not be an issue um how how are you finding that um so I’ve I had my year 10 my current year 11 class I had since year 10 um so I built up loads of um routines embedded everything that I sort

Of wanted out of um a class into them um and we had um set changes following our um first lot of ppes in your 11 um and the class changed quite significantly actually um and and I remember the first one or two weeks like all the students

Were silent and I I I hate a silent classroom um when it’s when it’s you know completely silent the whole time and you know I do a lot of think pair share I give them a lot of opportunity to talk to each other um and it was

Something that I was like oh like really hated to begin with um and then you know they’ve been with me for quite a while now um and they are not quite anymore they you know they have well and truly climatized to being in my class um and I

Think sometimes it’s that change that can really affect them um so it’s that if you are like new to a school or even you’re new to these students so a lot of these students although I’ve been at my co School six years I’ve never taught before so they’ve heard of their friends

All you know Miss cross is strict she’s this she’s that but they’ve never sort of experienced it themselves um so I feel like I almost had a bit of a honeymoon period with them although it didn’t feel like a honeymoon period for me at the time I can say because I hate

A completely silent classroom but we got through so much work um but already they are embedded in those routines I think at the minute now a lot of the year year 11s are nervous um you know they have sat there um seconding a lot of ppes they’re starting to get the results from

That you know it’s just under or just over four weeks of school time left and you know they are getting pulled in all directions like maths want them to come to their intervention English photography Hospitality sport you name it everyone’s asking them to go um and I

Think it’s probably starting to Dawn on them um and I think that is probably what we are starting to see I wouldn’t say it’s any different to previous year I always find it sort of funny how it’s almost always the same behavior just different groups if that makes sense so

Like we always have the same thing that happens when they get to your 11 and I wonder whether it’s because when they were in year 10 they saw the year 11s do it so they almost feel like a need to S do certain things and behave certain

Ways I don’t know maybe but by the way set changes in year 11 is just something that causes me pure stress like I understand why it has to happen um obviously like you want to make sure that the final classes are um have the same maybe ability maybe that’s part of

The reason uh obviously if you’re teaching a foundation class then maybe some students need to do Foundation that supports them more and it’s better for them to be in a class when majority students are doing Foundation but it for me as a teacher I do find that it is

Very stressful you know I I I have to now like the students have to adjust to me uh which could take a little bit of time um I have to adjust to them um and you know find their needs and what they and and have I have to now collect so

Much information about them to make sure that I could do it effectively and teach them effectively I do find that that can be quite stressful um set changes any time of the year to be honest other in September I just find is a little bit of

A bumpy ride but I I certainly don’t enjoy it um when it’s in year 11 at any point um my question to you though uh because we are on the conversation of behavior is what advice would you give to a new teacher uh dealing with and this probably might be my last question

By the way I’m not sure it looks like we’re coming kind of close to time here um what advice would you give to a new teacher dealing with challenging behaviors while focusing on exam Readiness so it would be to follow the behavior policy with the year 11s just

Like like you would any other year group and I feel and I I’ll hold my hands up I myself sometimes struggle with this internally you might not want to follow the behavior polic policy especially if it means that they will be removed from your lesson because you’re like no I

Need them in my lesson because we’re going through x y and Zed But ultimately if keeping that one student in your room so they can experience x y and Zed is going to hinder everyone else in the class because they will not stop being disruptive then you’ve got you know a

Moral duty to do what’s right for the majority of the class not just that one student um and I think it’s re it is really difficult especially you know coming up to the end of it um it would be to do that but at the same time you

Know these students are getting nervous they are getting stressed and it’s actually about making sure we know what their triggers are in ter terms of you know is something going to get them more stressed if you know we’re talking about how close the exams are and you know

They need to be doing X Y and Z and then at that point they start to you know be destructive you’ve got to make sure that you know it wasn’t as a direct response to what you were just saying and you know if it was you know be be Humane

About it make sure that they’re okay and make sure you know that they they know that they can’t disrupt the learning and if they’re feeling a certain way to ask to speak to you outside and you know deal with it that way rather than in a way that can become disrupted to the

Rest of the class spot on I wanted to say thank you very much for joining us today um is there any last little uh things that you wanted to say to kind of close up no I just wanted to thank you for having me um and hopefully uh people

Have gathered gain some insight to our conversations yeah this has been a really really great conversation I think I need to get on scientists more often that was actually really really fun to um have a chat with you we spoke about a lot of things exam techniques um whole

School uh the bug method command words explain questions qlas fever method we we spoke about quite a lot so it has been fantastic to have you on thank you very much for that no worries thank you good night good night you’ve been listening to teachers talk

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