Stretch and Challenge 7 strategies to help you to step back in the lesson from tomorrow morning

Strategy 1: Avoid the following teacher styles: The Knight in Shining Armour: coming to the rescue Here’s one I Prepared Earlier: pre-digested resources Negator of Challenge: over simplifying and over scaffolding Sage on the Stage Accepting the first response too readily and not grilling students Life Support Machine: creating need not independence Blue Peter Presenter: over praising and giving approval too readily Echo Chamber: Paraphrasing each student’s comments

Strategy 2: Plan lessons that encourage independence Have a starter that students can be doing from the moment that they enter the room to ensure a prompt start to the lesson Use homework to prepare students for the learning in the lesson Prepare learning resources that students can use independently without reliance on you

Strategy 3: Develop routines that give students’ ownership Co-construct the classroom rules, rewards and sanctions with students to give them ownership Let students have control over resources e.g. boxes of resources, colour coded text books to differentiate difficulty, access to the computer to research Arrange the classroom in a way that facilitates paired and group work rather than focus on the teacher’s desk

Strategy 4: Step Back Set a strict time limit for speaking to the class. 80% of the lesson should be about student action, not teacher action Delegate leading activities to students e.g. starters, plenaries, modelling and summarising previous learning or taking questions from the class Encourage continuation of talk by nodding supportively, or saying “tell me more about that” Idea: Use a timer to practice speaking less at the start

Strategy 5: Engage students in the learning process Get students to engage with the learning objective by explaining it, or underling priorities in it Get students to engage with the success criteria by introducing a ‘red herring’ success criteria which needs to be removed Use the ‘purple pen of progress’. When responding to feedback students need to write in purple to make their response explicit

Strategy 6: Develop independence Play question basketball, not tennis. Encourage questions and answers to go from student to student, not student to teacher Once students have started a task, minimise your interruptions: While going round the class, don’t speak but communicate with post- its Use your board as a twitter feed to pass new information/ feedback to the group

Strategy 7: Develop peer assessment Use a visualiser to model work and feedback Have clear success criteria that work will be assessed on Practice peer assessment on anonymous work Assess students on the quality and accuracy of their peer assessment Use feedback stems for students Give students the 3 Steps to Success for peer assessment Create levels for peer assessment To make students aware of different parts of the mark scheme get them to colour code their marking