An ‘excellent’ lesson???? “And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good.. Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?” Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – R. Pirsig, 1974

OfSTED introduces …. The excellent lesson a.k.a. the Holy Grail! Quality teaching is now quantifiable! Our performance is measurable! Our delivery can be surgically sliced, diced and appraised! What was once an indefinable ‘art’ is now subject to scrutiny and judgment – by a dude in a dark suit! And annoyingly…there is no single, easy path of righteousness…there are loads of different ones!!!!

But, hey…..that’s all water under the bridge… And, after all… “Teaching is an art which only a minority practise with flair; the rest of us common mortals have to work at it!” (Addelman, 2000) So..whatever our motives for improvement are.. at least there are criteria to go by!! And quality teaching is no longer guesswork!

Question: When asked, what do our kids look for in quality teaching? You have 2 minutes!

After trawling through many OfSTED reports, ‘excellence’ tends to manifest itself in seven distinct areas: Area 1 - An original starter! Geography lesson on coastal erosion – pupils entered to music of Debussy’s ‘The Sport of the Waves’ to engender discussion/questioning. MFL lesson on ‘Jobs people do’ – photo of house husband pushing pram on powerpoint covered by blue panes and slowly revealed pane-by-pane. Pupils invited to simply ‘comment’ in the target language how ever they could.

Area 2. Solid subject knowledge ‘Knowing your stuff’ as a subject expert - vital!

Area 3. A climate for learning forged by relationships based on mutual respect a. An agreed, understood ‘bottom line’, clearly defined boundaries. b. The language of respect – used principally by us!! c. Assertive not aggressive management of unwanted behaviour. d. Staged interventions rather than angry outbursts. e. Showing our ‘humanity’ – don’t leave your sense of humour in the staff room! f. Clever use of ‘unspoken messages’/non-verbal cues to elicit desired behaviours.

Area 4 Clarity, direction and sense of pace through effective lesson structuring and sequencing of tasks Something old Something new Something for fun Something to do ‘Stirring and Settling’ tasks – variety Effective time management – tight time limits Clearly identifiable ‘beginnings, middles and ends’

Area 5 Active Engagement Involvement of all pupils Learning by doing Visual/Sensory resources Varying levels of teacher control and pupil independence Varying types of interactions - teacher/pupil - cross class - paired -grouped

Area 6 Quality Feedback Are we casting down a judgement And giving kids’ egos a bit of a hammering? or Are we using feedback on pupils’ work inventively as a springboard for ‘doing better next time’? “Feedback which focuses on what needs to be done can encourage all to believe they can improve”. ( Assessment for Learning - Putting it into practice Black et al, 2003)

Area 7 Time for reflection “..the mean time that teachers wait between asking a question and, if no answer was forthcoming, intervening again was only 0.9 seconds” Assessment for LearningPutting ideas into practice Black et al 2003 Do we plan ‘thinking time’ into our lessons.. -during teacher/class delivery? -looking back over a piece of work for mistakes made or lessons learned? -as an investigative strategy to encourage inductive learning?

And finally... If you were to choose one thing from our discussions today which could be taken into your next lesson...what would it be?