Teaching Sequence
At Flanderwell, we use the ‘Teach Simply’ model to plan and teach our lessons across the curriculum. All lessons are broken down into the following parts:
- Review/ revisit
- Teach
- Practise
- Apply
- Checking for understanding and assessment is threaded through each part of the teach simply model.
Including all of the above components results in impact. Please click the link below to find out more information about the ‘Teach Simply Model’.
Curriculum Implementation – General Lesson Structure/Design
Our curriculum needs to ensure that all children know and remember more. Our curriculum is based on mastery principles where pupils acquire a deep, long term, secure and flexible understanding. Generative learning strategies are used within various parts of the lessons.
Review/Revisit
In lessons, prior knowledge needs to be deliberately activated so at the start of every session before new ideas are introduced, time is spent enabling all children to revisit the knowledge they will need. This REVIEW helps children to make connections and should be generative so all students are engaged in retrieving their existing schema. Ensure that children are aware of what is important and how it will help their learning for that day.
Teach: My Turn
Share and discuss the learning objective for the lesson. All children are working on the same objectives supported by scaffolds where necessary. Teachers model their thinking through narrating their thought processes. This will ensure that children know how to be successful. They actively teach for misconceptions and plan for small steps in learning to ensure no child is left behind. Questioning is productive: children are given time to think and discuss answers before they are shared.
Practice: Our Turn, Your Turn
Guided practice involves intelligent practice where children are encouraged to notice things and spot patterns. Guided practice (involving scaffolds) leads to independent practice. Scaffolds allow accessibility and success.
This needs to then turn into independent practice. Independent practice allows children to build their fluency. The aim of independent practice is to gain a high success rate from the children (80% or higher) as this will mean children are practicing the correct responses and not embedding misconceptions.
Apply
The goal of teaching and learning is to deepen knowledge where the children can apply their learning in different contexts. Children need to be flexible in their thinking and can choose appropriate methods and apply them efficiently and accurately. They need to apply what they have learned into their work.
Children need to refer back to the learning objective to self-assess whether they have achieved it.
Feedback
Children may self-assess throughout the session. Teachers mark for misconceptions rather than mistakes and this may involve looking at a book during a session or at the end of a session. Live feedback is valued throughout the lesson to provide children with timely feedback and enable them to act upon their feedback.
Checking for Understanding
Checking for understanding will take place throughout the lesson. Ongoing assessment throughout the lesson will ensure that learning is well scaffolded and supported within each lesson. This will support teachers to identify where additional guided practice is needed before children move onto their independent practice. Checking for understanding is an important part of the teach simply process. Please see below our checking for understanding policy, which is used across the curriculum.
Checking for understanding Policy (1)
Whole School Lessson Structure 1
Generative learning strategies
Such as the ones below, are used to help children know and remember more.
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Generative Learning Strategy |
How to use it |
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Teaching Children teaching other children about what they have learnt.
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Preparation 1st step- children to study, 2nd step- be given prompts or create questions to link prior learning. Children having time to process their own thoughts. |
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Summarising Learning using the summarization technique requires students to select the main ideas, organising it into a logical structure, and integrating new information with prior knowledge. |
As a challenge with learners – to shorten texts – precise – and ensure learners remember key points To support comprehension – by giving learners a shorter, clearer explanation of a longer, more complex piece. To encourage learners to make a summary by writing notes, which can then be supported by the other strategies – eg map, diagrams etc.
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Mapping Mapping is where the child represents text (either spoken or written) as an organisation of words with lines connecting them to show relationships. They can be known as mind maps or concept maps.
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Learners can be asked to read a text about a topic they are learning about and transform it into a concept map, using the most important and relevant key information. -They could then break down the main areas into smaller categories. – To further expand, the child could draw lines between different categories to show links.
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Drawing Draw image or series of images to represent what you are learning e.g. showing a process. Students translate text to a pictorial representation when they use drawing as a learning strategy. It is a generative process because drawing involves selection of relevant ideas from the text, organizing the ideas in pictorial form, and make use of prior knowledge to explain the meaning of the text in the drawing. |
Turn textual/verbal description of process into drawing. Generative learning only comes from looking for patterns and links. Provide outline to avoid focus on skills of drawing. Useful to finish with a WAGOLL and time for editing and improving.
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Imagining Students create mental images of the content to be learned when using imagining as a learning strategy.
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Students to follow three processes: 1. Select most relevant information. 2, organise the information into a mental image and 3, integrate learning to prior knowledge. Create mental images of sentences Children to imagine the topic eg character/ setting. Select key elements from the text and draw on previous learning. Once they have created an image, they will include within their schemata. . |
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Self-Testing This is when children recall the information from a lesson using questions or activities which require them to retrieve specific detail or broad recollections.
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Testing and quizzing has been frequently used because it can prompt the memory. It is usually connected to the idea of rote learning and repetition. A 2006 study indicated that self-testing and low stakes quizzing can have a significant impact upon memory and the learning process. Results showed a much stronger performance from the group who only studied the learning materials once and used retrieval as their learning strategy. We all want students to think about their learning in order to encode it in their long-term memory and do more with the information stored. |
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Self-Explaining The strategy of self-explaining requires students to explain the content of the lesson to themselves. It is a generative strategy because students select the most relevant information, use their own words to explain the information, organize the information by making inferences, and integrating information with prior knowledge during the explanations.
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Much of what we do in the classroom already promotes self-explaining. When children are presented with new information, the teacher may often question them to support the comprehension of this new learning e.g. why might these techniques have been used with the drawing? Self-explaining should go beyond this and ask the learner how they have arrived at the answer reached. Through this the leaner should be encouraged to consider their answer further and develop their deeper thinking about their answer. This may involve applying the following steps: · Classifying their thinking · Probe assumptions · Demand evidence · Alternative viewpoints · Explore implications
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Enacting Using gestures or manipulating objects that are linked to the thing to be learnt. It could also be using props or objects to give a visual representation of what you want the learner to learn. Eg: Using concrete objects, such as counters, to help solve a problem in maths.
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Used a lot with younger children who struggle to move from concrete to abstract learning. Kinaesthetic support for children as they can also visualise what they are doing in their mind. Builds understanding of the story they are reading because of the props you are using or when you act out the story. Builds engagement.
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Approaches to SEND
At Flanderwell, we believe it is essential to adapt teaching to engineer success for all. What is essential for some, is good for all. Please click on the link below to see our approaches to SEN across the curriculum.