In your classroom

Elements of outstanding practice in teaching.

Below you will find a collection of elements that could/should be included in your long term plan to help improve your practice towards outstanding.

This is not a tick-list, as to be quite frank such a list does not exist, they are simply things that as an observer I would expect to see and as a teacher I have included in my observed lessons (all of which under the recent criteria have been graded outstanding.)

These are not magic tricks that you can pull out of a hat at the 11th hour after "the call" but they can be done, they take time and effort to do, but are well worth the results!

Apologies - this is not going to be the prettiest of pages - but the information is going to be well worth the read!

So - in no particular order - here are some of the Elements of outstanding teaching.

Know your students

Relationships in the classroom are key, the students need to respect you and be confident of your knowledge. It is all about the interactions that are seen, and remember your students will be asked about the "Typicality" of the lesson, the marking and feedback.

Know your data

Do you know your SEN / PP / EVER6 / G&T?
Is it on your seating plan?
Who is on target, who isnt?
What are you doing to support those needing intervention?

Stretch, support and extend

Level your learning outcomes, set high expectations of all students... The minimum target level is not where you stop you keep pushing so you can "punch above your target grade!"

Differentiation

This should not just be task or outcome based, but linked very clearly throughout the lesson. Even at KS5 with similar ability it is possible to have support for those needing intervention and challenge for those needing stretch.
See Stretch, support and extend.
See Planned questions

Routine

Routine, routine, routine.

This lesson needs to be normal, it needs to be nothing out of the ordinary - yes it is you on a shiny day, BUT the students will be asked about "typicality", "marking", "feedback"... is this what sir/miss usually do? If the answer is no... then the observer may well go looking to see what you are hiding.

So what is it all about....

Past paper questions, markschemes, examiners reports

Past paper questions are not just to be done for revision, they should be an integral part of the lesson.
Teach the theory then allow students to assess themselves with exam questions and the markscheme, they can see what are common questions, how are they marked and with the examiners report - how common any mistake they made was.

Planned questions

A good way to show additional differentiation is to have some questions planned. The question matrix comes in many guises (This one from John Sayers) I write some planned questions in it with names you want to target as well for larger classes...
Model the questions likely to be asked in the exam.
See Past paper questions, markschemes, examiners reports

What type of question is asked on...?

So what type of question is asked in the exam on what you are teaching today?
If the answer is calculation - why are you teaching QWC?
If it is QWC - why are you not teaching definitions and extended writing?
Teach the skills needed for the questions that will be asked.See Past paper questions, markschemes, examiners reports
See Know your exam specification

Know your exam specification

This links in with all the points above - you need to know your exam spec to be able to effectively guide the students through the skills they will need in the exam.
Which assessment objective is key in this area? What is it's weighting?
What extension material might you be expected to know?

Learning Dialogue

Typicality... marking... feedback.
All can be tackled simply with a learning dialogue to show students know what they are doing well and not so well plus what they need to do to improve their grades.

This is when the students have to decide what the error is that has lost them the marks.

Initially is is a high or low mark error? - use the markscheme for this.
Then is it grade A/B/C/D/E error - generic grade criteria are very useful here.
Is it something lots of people did? - this is when you use the examiners report.
Finally which AO does it fit in? - the spec is what is needed now.

Then this information is transferred to a DISH the DIRT sheet for major assessments and large pieces of work, this along with the 4 main tests are held in an assessment folder for each student to be returned to be used for revision purposes in the February 1/2 term.

More can be found on my website here and here