Creating the Environment for Progress - Part 1

This blog is Part 1 of 4.

You can access the other parts here:

Across the four blogs, I’m going to look at a range of things you can do, as a trainee teacher, to help create a positive environment for progress in your classroom.

First, we’ll explore some key strategies related to behaviour management. Then, in Part 2, we’ll think about the norms and values you want to establish with your learners. Finally, across Parts 3 and 4, we’ll look at marking, feedback and assessment.

Introduction

When we teach, we want to help learners to learn.

The learning they do is the progress they make.

The better placed we are to help them learn, the more progress they will make.

Of course, it is not necessarily the case that progress will be immediately apparent within every single lesson.

Rather, we are likely to see evidence of learning within a lesson, alongside evidence of progress across a series of lessons.

This reflects the fact that progress is uneven and rarely, if ever, uniform in nature.

At the same time, it indicates that progress can be measured, though the measurement will not always be a summative assessment of what learners can do in an exam or test.

More often, it will be a qualitative judgement made by you, the teacher.

One that takes into account what learners could do, what they can now do, and what they need to do to improve.

However we conceive of it, progress remains our aim.

We know our lessons have had a positive impact if learners know more, understand more and can do more than was previously the case.

To create the environment for progress, we must start with behaviour management.

Behaviour Management Revisited

In a classroom where behaviour is poor, two things follow.

First, learners are not directing their focus onto the learning.

Second, the scope of what the teacher feels is achievable is diminished.

Both these points inhibit learning, leading to lower achievement as well as a less enjoyable and productive experience for both teacher and learners.

In the first case, time is not used effectively, and learners fail to apply the effort of which they are capable in the direction the teacher desires.

In the second case, the teacher lowers their expectations and starts to plan lessons that are predicated on the assumption (based on prior experience) that only certain things are possible with the class in question.

Ideally, we want to be in a situation where learners are focussed on learning from the start of the lesson until the end.

Where they are actively engaged with the content and applying their effort in pursuit of mastery.

We also want to feel that the relationship between us and them is sufficiently good that we can attempt a range of activities, and other teaching and learning interventions, confident in the knowledge that learners will respond positively.

The following strategies can help with this.

Training learners in activities

This means selecting a range of activities that you then use repeatedly over a term or longer.

Doing this allows you to train learners in how to engage with the activities in question.

As a result, they can engage with the learning the activities facilitate increasingly effectively.

We can also note that, when you first introduce learners to a new activity, the results are unlikely to be as good as when they are familiar with how that activity works.

During your training, when you are trying out a range of different activities, be aware that this very act can itself make behaviour management a little trickier.

This should not discourage you from trying things out.

You must do this to learn and to build your repertoire.

However, being aware in advance of the potential consequences is always helpful.

Focussing on the small things

If you do this, the big things are far less likely to enter the picture.

So, for example, if you pull up learners for not producing a piece of written work that is as good as it can be, or on their failure to concentrate for the full course of an activity, the discussion will centre on this.

If you ignore the small things, that ground shifts to bigger things, such as refusing to start the written work or actively seeking to disrupt an activity.

This point reinforces the importance of setting, communicating and maintaining high expectations.

One way we can communicate high standards, and thus make these a norm in our classroom, is by focussing on the small things.

A caveat is that when doing this you should try to avoid coming over as petty.

This can be detrimental to rapport, getting in the way of positive relationships.

Minimising transitions

Transitions are the points at which you move from one activity to another.

For example, if we have a starter activity followed by feedback followed by an explanation of the lesson followed by an introduction to the main activity followed by learners starting that activity, then we have four transitions.

Each transition is an opportunity for the pace to slow and for off-task behaviour to develop.

Two points suggest themselves.

First, avoid planning lessons that contain a high number of transitions.

Second, when you do have a transition, aim to finesse it so learners don’t see that a transition is taking place.

For example, you might display the instructions for the first activity on the board at the same time as you talk through the content of the lesson.

This avoids having to stop talking, change slides and then resume.

Building up slowly

When training there is a great temptation to want to do everything at once.

Becoming a teacher is exciting and we are keen to try out all our ideas as soon as possible.

Try to resist this temptation, if you can.

Instead, aim to build up slowly.

Begin by focussing on one idea you want to try, then introduce a second, a third, a fourth and so on.

Working in this way lets you build firm foundations.

It also stops your attention being overwhelmed while you are teaching.

If you try to do everything at once, it is almost inevitable that behaviour will suffer.

Learners will have too much on which to concentrate, and you will be juggling so much that you might not have enough time and energy free to build a positive classroom atmosphere.

Starting out strict

The old phrase goes: Don’t smile until Christmas.

I wouldn’t go this far myself!

But the truth embodied in the sentence is worth remembering.

It is easier to start out strict and then ease off than it is to start out soft and attempt the reverse.

Being strict doesn’t mean being rude, abrupt or seeking to instil a sense of fear in your learners.

Far from it.

It simply means being firm and assertive from the word go, focussing on the small things and ensuring you do not let anything slide.

As you do this, you can communicate to learners why such an approach is important (to keep learning as the centre of attention and to establish an environment in which everyone can succeed).

This will give meaning to your actions and ensure learners understand that what you are doing is firmly based on helping and supporting them.