Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION How Craig’n’Dave apply principles of instruction CAS London 2020 This presentation considers Barak Rosenshine’s, “principles of instruction” and looks at how Craig and Dave have applied these principles in their classrooms. We do this by exemplifying our own resources, but everything we discuss can be done with other resources too, not just ours. We also explore beyond resources to our classroom practice, “filling in the gaps” with the thing we call teaching. 1
Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION About Craig’n’Dave WHAT HOW We want to be the best teachers. So that our students can be the best students. WHY You are all great teachers. If you weren’t you wouldn’t be here on a Saturday! We also believe we can all be better. Most teachers think about what they have got to teach, but for Craig and Dave we start with why, and then think about how before we consider what. So why do we teach? Sure it is about inspiring young people in our subject, but it is also sadly about getting through exams! You don’t download knowledge into a student’s mind like a file from a file server, instead, learning is a generative, cognitive process of developing long ‐ term memory. The “how” is extremely important and that’s what we are focussing on today through Rosenshine’s principles. 2
Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION Who was Barak Rosenshine? History teacher. Professor of Education, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois. Researched teacher performance and student achievement. ⁻ Teaching Behaviours and Student Achievement, 1971 ⁻ Teaching functions, 1982 ⁻ Principles of Instruction: research ‐ based strategies that all teachers should know, 2012 Rosenshine’s principles have been around for a long time. Much of what we present is based on these influential publications. Tom Sherrington provided a useful summary of the work in his 2019 book, “Rosenshine’s principles in action” which is why it has recently gained traction again amongst senior leaders in school today. The value in the principles is not that they are new, on the contrary, it is because they have stood the test of time that makes them very useful. 3
Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION Rosenshine’s conclusions What the research says is this... In the classroom it looks like this… Studies of Cognitive interventions Science More effective teachers typically do more of these things… Observing teachers Less effective teachers typically do less of these things… Rosenshine gives us a simple and useful framework: 1. What the research says is this… 2. In the classroom it looks like this… So more effective teachers typically do things, and less effective teachers do less of those things. His research was based on three aspects of study. The findings in these three aspects complimented each other which we might expect, but it is important that research resonates with a teacher’s experience if they are going to have confidence and believe in it. How many times have you sat in an inset session and wondered if it was a complete waste of your time? Or let me rephrase, you knew it was a waste of your time! That’s because you don’t have time and space to think, question, evaluate, reflect, adapt and try. Or the luxury to fail. You can’t do what it takes to be a good learner yourself! 4
Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION What successful teachers will be doing Daily review Check student understanding New material in small steps Obtaining a high success rate Ask questions Scaffolds for difficult tasks Provide models Independent practice Guide student practice Weekly & monthly review So here is the essence of what Rosenshine says successful teachers will be doing more of: 10 key principles. These will look very familiar to you. It’s the foundation on which you probably learned to teach, and it’s what you do every day. 5
Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION Using the principles as a reflection tool Ask questions Less effective More effective questioning questioning There are few teachers that couldn’t do this: ‐ More intensively ‐ More consistently ‐ To better effect There are probably no teachers that couldn’t do these things even better, more intensively or more consistently, and that’s the key to understanding and unlocking the secret of Rosenshine’s principles. 6
Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION The misconception about principles in action It’s not about a ground ‐ breaking new initiative, instead it’s about asking yourself, how well you do what effective teachers do. When do you teach great, well prepared, well thought ‐ out lessons? When you are observed, or when nobody is looking? It’s about our daily teaching habits. At last, no new initiative from a member of SLT just advancing their career, here today and gone tomorrow! We need to get away from this idea that leaders have the monopoly on “how to teach”. Teaching a lesson one way to impress my HoD or SLT and then another way when nobody is looking. It’s about looking at our habits and trying to make those as effective as they can be day in, day out. Not changing what you do because someone is observing, but instead having confidence that what you are doing is best for your students. Crucially, it’s not about whether you are doing things or not doing things, because you are doing these things! Instead it’s about asking yourself how well are you doing what you are doing? For example, we all ask students questions, but how well do we do it, and how do we create opportunities to do it more? 7
Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION What does it mean to be an effective teacher? “Clank” always got the best results in the team. His lessons were amazing… It’s worth taking a little segue here to ask what we mean by “effective teaching” and “success”. The assumption here is that we are talking about student achievement or results. The simple memory of facts and understandings. Indeed, Rosenshine assumed this too. He was interested in teacher performance and student achievement. I once worked with a teacher who did exam questions from day 1. Not at the end of the lesson, that WAS the lesson, every lesson. Just exam question after exam question, nothing else. Surprisingly, he achieved the best results, consistently. He was clearly doing something right – if that’s how you measure success. The students performed exceptionally well, but they were bored and hated the lessons. They didn’t want to pursue the subject at a higher level beyond school. 8
Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION 1. Sequencing concepts Daily review Check student understanding New material in small steps Obtaining a high success rate Ask questions Scaffolds for difficult tasks Provide models Independent practice Guide student practice Weekly & monthly review We’re going to simplify ten principles to four related discussions. The first is sequencing concepts: new material in small steps, providing models and scaffolds. 9
Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION 1. Sequencing concepts: small steps #Program to output the lowest of two numbers #Function to return the lowest of two parameters num1 = int(input("Enter the first number: ")) def lower_num(num1,num2): num2 = int(input("Enter the second number: ")) if num1 <= num2: return num1 if num1 <= num2: else: lowest = num1 return num2 else: lowest = num2 first_num = int(input("Enter the first number: ")) print("The lowest number is:") second_num = int(input("Enter the second number: ")) print(lowest) lowest = lower_num(first_num,second_num) print("The lowest number is " + str(lowest)) In what order should we teach programming concepts? In what order should we teach programming concepts? Functions first? The program on the right creates reusable components and can be thought of as a better solution. Is it right to teach about creating robust programs or do you leave exception handling until much later? Should we teach iterations before conditions or vice versa? Model your thinking with students – how do you go about bug fixing a program? Talking about what thought processes are you going through as you do it with a student. Is continual programming from day 1 until the exam useful given that students struggle most with algorithms? 10
Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION 1. Sequencing concepts: small steps Defold is great, but its tutorials are not written by teachers! We recently created some tutorials for developing games using Defold and Lua because the built ‐ in tutorials started students from the middle of a development rather than the start. It was simply too confusing or left too many unanswered questions. Small steps are critical to successful understanding of new and difficult concepts. Don’t make too many assumptions about prior knowledge. 11
Craig’n’Dave ROSENSHINE’S PRINCIPLES IN ACTION 1. Sequencing concepts: scaffolding For programming we like: • PRIMM We have adapted this to TIME: programming takes TIME to learn: Try, Investigate, Make, Evaluate • Parsons problems • Partial solutions • Paired programming • Write the code to produce this output The problem with programming is that students pick it up at very different speeds. It is hard not to be holding some back if you are leading this from the front. These are all great strategies for scaffolding, providing models and learning new material in small steps. 12
Recommend
More recommend
