Teaching From the Front: Strategies

 

Consultant Research Group, December 2020

Overview:

In response to the additional challenges posed by restrictions due to Covid-19, The Consultant Research Group have created a series of succinct ‘teaching from the front’ strategies.  Depending on the teacher who is using our strategies, some of these may be new ideas, whilst others may have been done before and ‘forgotten’ due to the additional challenges of teaching this year.  These strategies will be of benefit more widely, for teaching in more ‘normal’ conditions too.

You will also find a brief summary of what educational research tells us about this area, as well as why it is particularly important to focus on this area of teaching practice during the current Covid situation.  There are also suggested practical steps that teachers could use in their classroom, together with some suggested additional reading/research.

How to use this resource:

• These strategies could be used with departments or individual teachers
• The techniques could be used by a teacher as a refresher
• Departments could identify key strategies to focus on collectively
• Trouble-shooter – use individual pages with staff
• Print off and use as a tool; stick it on the wall in the department base as a reminder

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Strategy 5: Using Visualisers in the Classroom

1. Why is it needed? 

Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory suggests that extraneous loading is detrimental to students’ ability to retain and store information in their long-term memories, so how we present information to students is paramount to their success.  They can encourage teachers to ‘get back to basics’ – visualisers can help prevent “PowerPoint over-planning” (Tsabet, TES 2018).  The Covid-secure classroom has limited student teacher contact; therefore, we must find ways of reaching every student from the front of the classroom.

2. How can I approach this?

Real time Modelling (sarahlarsen.school.blog, johntomsett.com) - showing how to answer a complex question to students whilst “thinking out loud”.  This can be applied to a range of contexts.

1. Instruct students to focus on the visualised question and follow the teacher’s thoughts as they work through it.
2. Teacher highlights the command word of the question and asks students to define the meaning of the word (e.g. describe, explain, analyse, evaluate - to what extent / how far).  How does it differ to other command words they have encountered?
3. Teacher live writes an answer to the question (for longer answers this could be a model of one or two paragraphs). Emphasise the thought process out loud on selection of language to show how the point links to the question, supporting evidence and explanation / analysis / evaluation.
4. Make mistakes to encourage students to be metacognitive.
5. Show redrafting (crossing out / refining language / adding missing words).

Creative forms of peer assessment (Grosset, 2008) - making hard to teach topics easier to understand:

1. Jumbling up the sequence of a poem / historical events / grammatical structure / formulas / scales and working together to organise it into the correct order. Students check each other’s logic along the way, supported by the teacher.
2. Using student work on the visualiser to help focus in on aims of an activity (e.g. use of analytical / evaluative language, strength of supporting evidence, logic, refinement of argument).
3. Teacher live marks an answer to the question (for longer answers this could be a model of one or two paragraphs).  Emphasis on how marks are being awarded.  Students then replicate the process with their own answers.

Dynamic Drawing and Perspective Principles (Mayer, 2020) - flow of construction in the first person:

1. People learn better when the instructor draws graphics as they talk, rather than referring to already drawn graphics. It fosters a sense of social partnership and self-reference as they view the instructor’s hand as theirs.
2. People learn better when instructed from the first person rather than third person.  It encourages a sense of self-reference, thus creating a stronger memory.

 

Strengths and Pitfalls

• Great for responsive teaching – little prep needed for use
• Interactive – any diagram / image / text can be used. Over time students can be trained to look forward to having their work shared, critiqued and annotated
• Behaviour management – great for focusing the whole class. It allows the teacher to face the class whilst delivering instruction

• Size limits – A4 paper is the limit for viewing a whole text; font sizes less than 12 are hard to read
• Lighting – try and get a visualiser with a built in light. Darker conditions affect the quality of the image
• Try to keep the sheet under the visualiser still – it is hard for students to focus if it is frequently moving

 

3. Further reading/research

Grosset, P.  Using a visualiser to shine a light on poetry

Larsen, S.  Visualisers: how they can be used to live model, and give immediate verbal feedback

Mayer, R., Fiorella, L., and Stull, A. 2020. ‘Five ways to increase the effectiveness of instructional video’, Association for Educational Communications and Technology, Springer.

Tomsett, J.  This much I know about the golden thread from evidence to student outcomes

 

 

 

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This resource was compiled by members of the Consultant Research Group, led by Karen Haward

With thanks to:

Lucy Baker, Science consultant

Oliver Blagden, English consultant

Seb Greenwood, History consultant

Lin Liu, MFL consultant

Adam O’Connor, Geography consultant

Aaron Skepple, History consultant