Back To Basics

Here is a guest post from Penny Nash a Science Lead at a school in South Wales.

Guest Post

Why back to basics matters? 

This is a post about my use of Rosenshine’s Principles to improve teaching and learning within my faculty.

(Credit and thanks to Tom Sherrington)

Rosenshine's Principles in Action 

Following a difficult period of time due to unavoidable staff absence, as a faculty we were left a little unconfident. There were also new curriculum changes to GCSE and a change of focus on top of all this. The staff absence meant that certain Key Stage 3 classes were left without a specialist teacher as we tried to cover as many Key Stage 4 classes as possible. It left us unsettled, underperforming and unsure. It came to a head when I was reading the exam feedback and our walled garden data. Our firefighting had been successful for our most able students, but the rest of the cohort should have been more successful. I have good teachers within my faculty, but we had lost our way. We needed to regroup, evaluate and plan for improvement.

We started by looking at the data together. Despite being three subjects, they all had similar issues. Our students had gaps in subject knowledge and were unwilling to make mistakes and during their GCSE examination they were unable to complete any questions if they had not seen a similar question before. We were not alone as reading the WJEC feedback for the whole of Wales stated students did not have a secure understanding of the fundamental scientific concepts and terminology.

It was clear, we needed to go back to basics! We needed to look at genuine good teaching and learning rather than proxies of  good good teaching and learning. Following some research, we decided to develop these basics by using Rosenshine’s Principle of Instruction as a vehicle for improving standards. If delivered effectively we believed it would lead to sustained improvements in resilience and achievement. It would also give us a consistent approach to discuss the quality of teaching and learning which we needed within the faculty. 

As with any new approach, we had to be realistic. Change had to be managed and controlled. One change at a time. This allows for time to embed and ensure the quality assurance focussed on this change before tackling other areas. We wanted our faculty to improve but some staff were still feeling pressure to complete the specified content of the course.

1. Daily Review, Weekly Review and Monthly Review

Start each lesson with a 5 question retrieval task. 

It sounds easy but we soon realised that embedding new routines takes time. The issues that arose were typical. I had students who had not completed the homework and so did not do well on their daily review. Reading the questions out for one student helped him improve his vocabulary. Another student needed physical flashcards and needed additional support to learn the key language on several occasions. My SEN class needed the questions to be True/False at the start because they lacked confidence and were afraid of trying for fear of being incorrect. I was also too ambitious at the start with my KS 4 classes by not specifying the topic in the questions. As a department we had to reduce the range of key language to ensure students were successful and growing in knowledge and confidence. 

Modelling was key to supporting the students' understanding of the different techniques to be able to achieve that 80% success rate - our mastery target. Slowly and surely, as these techniques were embedded, students slowly gained a better grasp of the key language they needed to explain their thinking. It changed the beginning of lessons. Students now have and accept these clear expectations of them for the start of lessons and why they’re important to their success. They like to feel successful and it sets a positive and purposeful atmosphere within the class. 

It was time to raise the bar and look at further changes. We split slightly to try two different techniques. The science faculty had been attending the #15MF within our school, a weekly professional development forum. We decided to look at modelling and guiding student practice. The chemistry department decided to change their approach to a mastery approach at KS 4 and physics looked at student practice. 

2. Presenting new material, Modelling and scaffolds

The chemistry faculty spent the whole of the autumn term teaching particles, equations and the periodic table, ensuring that the students fully understood the concepts before moving on. This has meant they understand the key concepts and are more willing to try more challenging tasks because they have a sound grasp of the theory and vocabulary. These small incremental steps we employed helped raise the confidence and resilience in our students. Their mock results were much better despite sitting a full past paper they were willing to attempt questions on unusual topics. We saw this as progress.

3. Guiding Student Practice 

Often in physics, we now revert to the I do, we do and you do approach. We initially struggled to find enough examples for the students. We have had to ensure that the students can do the tasks without the scaffold. This has been useful in foundation classes as we realised we needed to change our schemes of work to ensure that we are not constantly moving on to the next section without ensuring that the new knowledge is embedded and time planned for retrieval practice. These questions are now being added to the starter questions to ensure they continue to practice.

4. Questioning

• Although we left this until last,  we felt that our questioning was good but we knew we could improve further. However, we decided to use 3 types of questioning that was aimed at improving our ability to gauge whole class understanding. We have invested in mini white boards to support this approach. The three strategies, based on Teach Like A Champion techniques we selected were: -

• Pose, pause pounce and bounce
• No opt out
• Hinge questions

At this point I wish I could tell you we have been successful in introducing these, but I can’t. We are now in lock down and these strategies take time. I can tell you that as a result of using these principles we are putting pupil learning at the heart of what we do. Our practice is changing, and we are having discussions about pedagogy. Will we have to continue our journey after lockdown? Yes, but I am glad they will be based upon research informed principles. 

Penny Nash