Teaching smarter – increasing efficiency with the help column

There are moments as a teacher when a student says something that makes you think “Yes, I did teach that well”.

For example when student gives a correct answer and gives an excellent explanation using correct subject specific terminology of how they came to their answer with confidence in front of their peers. I had one of those moments this week in my classroom and was able to respond with genuine task specific positive feedback. The audible “Yes” and fist pump that came from across the room as the student took pride in their achievement makes me remember why I love this job.

But there are also times when students say things that make you reflect on how you can make things better, more efficient and fairer in the classroom.

One of my mathematics classes is full of very eager learners and I love teaching them, but it can be very demanding when we get into independent practice phases of our lessons. Many students often need assistance at the same time and can become frustrated when you have to help several others before them.

One of my students at the end of last term said “Miss it’s not fair you don’t always go to the person who had their hand up first”. I agreed with this student. I knew my husband (also a teacher) uses a help column as a procedure to deal with this issue. I explained to this student how a help column worked and said we would give it a go and see if it helped make things fairer.

It can be hard to keep track of lots of hands and its often easier to help a student on your way across the room rather than walking straight past them and coming back again. The way I use the help column addresses both these issues.

A help column works by writing help column on the board then instructing students to write their name on the board as they need help. The teacher then assists the students in the order the names are written and students or the teacher remove names when help has been received. I added an additional step that really made my teaching efficient. I asked the students to write the question number they were stuck on next to their name. E.g.

Help Column

(3) Melissa
(2) David
(5) Barb
(3) John
(4) Tiarna
(2) Simon

Using this addition of the question number next to the name I was able to increase my efficiency because I can help several students at once. In the example above Melissa is first and stuck on question 3 John is also stuck on this question and is fourth in the queue. I call John to Melissa’s desk and we all work on this question together. John gets help sooner, both students see that they aren’t the only one who is having trouble boosting their confidence, and I can help more students faster and use my time more efficiently. In the above example Simon could also be helped at the same time as David. The other advantage is if many students are stuck on the same question I can instantly see something needs to be retaught or explained to the whole class and address it right away.

I used this method for the first time yesterday and I will definitely use it again and in my other subject areas as well. It was so much calmer, I was happier, the students were happier. The students got help in more timely and most importantly to teenagers fairer manner and I didn’t have to work as hard to achieve this. I was able to work smart rather than harder to achieve better outcomes for my students.

I would encourage other teachers to give this strategy a go.

Praise’s magic reinforcement ratio: five to one gets the job done.

In anticipation of the end of school holidays and beginning of the new school term I’ve been busy preparing. As a beginning teacher I’m continually developing my ability to support positive behaviour in the classroom. Whenever the positive reinforcement debate is raised in a large forum there are usually strong opinions on both sides of the topic. I personally have experienced a marked difference in positive behaviour in my classroom when I have intentionally increased behaviour specific praise (naming the positive behaviour) in my classroom. I am looking at how I can further improve and capitalise on this success for next term. I attended a professional development seminar last term and finally found some down time to catch up on reading some of the resources. I found this article “Praise’s magic reinforcement ratio: five to one gets the job done” by Flora (2000) enlightening. 

I have heard the opinion or question several times that if you increase extrinsic rewards such as praise that students’ intrinsic motivation will decrease or they will become reliant on praise. I found Flora’s (2000) summary of Rawson’s (1992) study particularly interesting:

“Significant gains in intrinsic interest were found for reading, math, social studies, science and for general interest in academics. …The following school year 69% of the participants were reported by their teachers to be “doing markedly better in class” (p. 283). These results conclusively refute the myth that extrinsic rewards undermine intrinsic motivation. Reinforcement, including contingent praise, increase intrinsic interest.”

It was interesting to see how many different sphere’s of human relationships had been found to benefit from the 5:1 ratio of five approvals to one disapproval. I found Flora’s article thought-provoking as I came to realise the importance of the five approvals in moderating the negative effect of a disapproval. But also the importance of one disapproval to five approvals to keep the approvals meaningful and valuable. This article reinforced something that many of us already know and that is that non-specific praise e.g “good job” is not nearly as valuable as specific praise e.g. “You used an appropriate scale, great work”.

Flora also mentions the importance of varying words of praise. Here is a link to 101 phrases of praise (The Incredible Art Department, 2010) there are some fantastic suggestions here such as “Keep working on it, you’re improving” and “It’s such a pleasure to teach when you work like that.” But also a few doosies like this one that I think sounds more like an insult “You’ve got your brain in gear today”.

I’ve created a visual cue poster to help remind me everyday to try to aim for five approvals to one disapproval. I plan to put it up the back of my room where I will see it constantly but where it is out of line of sight of my students. You can access my poster here Five approvals to one disapproval visual cue poster.

References:

Flora, S. R. (2000). Praise’s magic reinforcement ratio: five to one gets the job done. The Behavior Analyst Today. Retrieved April 18, 2014, from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Praise’s+magic+reinforcement+ratio%3A+five+to+one+gets+the+job+done.-a0170112823 

The Incredible Art Department (2010). How to Praise Your Students. Retrieved April 18, 2014, from http://www.incredibleart.org/files/praise.htm

Spelling Practice

Spelling is an important literacy skill for all subjects at every year in school. PowerPoint presentation animations can be a useful tool for getting students to practice saying and spelling new words when they are starting a new topic. Here is an example of an automated spelling PowerPoint presentation I’m using with my Year 9 Science class.     List 1_Spelling_Practice_Sound
We have just started a unit on sound and light. This presentation contains our first ten spelling words and I like using this style of automated spelling presentation at the beginning of a lesson to help familiarise students with new terms and how to spell them.

If you like this presentation and would like to use your own word list you could download it and change the words the animation will still work. If you’re interested in how to create the animation this page is helpful.

Getting teaching presence right! Skills and strategies for supporting positive student behaviour.

I attended an excellent refresher session on skills and strategies for supporting positive student behaviour especially during those first crucial weeks of school. The introduction video was a favourite of mine a TED talk by Rita Pierson: Every kid needs a champion.

The second video was an interview with behaviour management guru Dr Bill Rogers. In this video Bill demonstrates how to settle a class in a positive calm and supportive manner.

Dr Bill Rogers – Getting a class settled

Sometimes as a beginning teacher whilst you know the theory and strategies of supporting positive behaviour choices it isn’t always easy to implement them correctly every time. I know I will be watching this again in the lead up to the first days of school to remind myself of some more verbal and non verbal cues I can use to settle my class quickly.

Here is the full series of Dr Bill Rogers Behaviour Management Videos.

This series includes the following topics listed below with time length:

• Managing the Difficult Class (4:46)
• Establishing trust (3:14)
• Tactical ignoring (2:20)
• Arrogant Lateness (2:40)
• Colleague Support (5:37)
• Getting a class settled (4:30)
• Students who fiddle with objects (5:35)
• School sanctuaries (2:31)
• Students who just say “NO” (5:33)

I got alot out of Bill’s continual theme throughout the videos of how to briefly build relationship first before addressing an issue as well as his explanations and examples of tactical ignoring.

In addition to the Bill Rogers videos the Osiris Educational – You Tube Channel also contains videos on teaching practice by John Hattie and others it looks like a channel I will be revisiting again.

Great learning and teaching doesn’t just happen – resources for the first days of school.

Photograph: Alamy, 2010.

In one week students across Australia will be beginning the new school year. Right now teachers across the country are preparing lessons and classrooms for these students. As I meet people in my everyday life they ask me what I do for a living. When I say I’m a secondary teacher most cringe “I couldn’t do it, the way kids ….” they then proceed to tell me about some negative perception they have about student behaviour. The fact is that we rarely see good news stories in the media about students or teachers. It is true teaching isn’t easy, but it’s also not as bad as it gets portrayed. The majority of students are generally well behaved the majority of the time.

With good pedagogy in both the form of curriculum and behaviour support many instances of poor or inappropriate behaviour can be avoided. This takes planning, patience, and consistency. The beginning of the year is a crucial time for planning how the classroom is going to operate and creating a learning environment that supports positive behaviours.

At this time of year I am focused on two main types of planning:

1. Content lessons – the curriculum, and
2. Establishing, teaching and reteaching expectations and routines for positive classroom behaviour.

Teaching, reteaching and re-enforcing with students how to behave is crucially important. It isn’t enough to tell them my expectations and expect compliance. I believe explicitly teaching behavioural expectations and routines is just as important as explicitly teaching the content. It can seem like extra work but I end up losing more time that could be used on the curriculum if I don’t spend time helping students learn how I want them to behave even in high school.

I have many resources I use to help me prepare for teaching my students how I want them to behave and to establish our classroom culture and routines. Here are a few of my favourites.

1. The First Days of School is a book that is an amazingly comprehensive resource for creating and sustaining the classroom culture you want packed full of reusable and downloadable resources.

Image: Better World Books, 2014.

2. Solution-Tree has some great visual posters to assist students learn desired behaviours with reproducibles for Classroom Management and Behaviour.

Image: Solution Tree, 2014.

My favourite category is Classroom Management for Academic Success it includes posters on :

• Paying Attention,
• Working With a Partner,
• At the Attention-Getting Signal, and
• In-Seat Transitions (When Given Directions to Begin a New Activity).

The Solution-Tree also has some surveys to help with getting to know students (follow this link and scroll to the bottom to access surveys relevant to your year level).

 

3. I like to review teaching videos of how exceptional teachers set the culture of their classes. These are my two favourites from the Teaching with Bailey series.

Teaching with Bailey – Positive Teaching

Bayley on Behaviour – Tough Love