July | 2012 | Back to the Whiteboard

Use them as a record of their achievement

Your school may have a strict policy about exercise books, or it may have no policy at all. Either way, here’s one approach you can take towards them, and its associated benefits.

Philosophically, treat the book not as a jotter, or a space for working, but as a record of their progress and achievement over time. The work they do isn’t for their own benefit, or to improve their learning, it’s a presentation for an audience. Of course, it *will* have the effect of improving their learning, but we just don’t put the emphasis there. These books need to be presentable, in part so you can read them, but also for Ofsted, and for parents to look over.

Create an audience – the bigger the audience, the more care they’ll take. Make it clear that you’ll be reading these books regularly, as will the head of department, other teachers, the head teacher, Ofsted, their parents, school governors, etc. It may or may not be true… but give them the feeling they’re writing and working hard for some kind of recognition, and then make sure that you, at least, are checking their work every few lessons.

What they write in the books and what you do with them once you take them in varies now from subject to subject, but provided you regularly show them you’re looking at their books, and get them to write as though they’re doing it for an audience, you’re likely to reap the following benefits:

Increased effort during lessons, and an ability to track those who are being lazy
Improved writing and presentation skills
Less graffiti in books, potentially eradicating it completely over time
Improved learner understanding

For maths teachers I’ll add the following brief suggestion for what they can write in their books in 80-90% of lessons:

Today’s date in full (e.g. Sunday 8^th July)
A title or learning objective (not because that will help them learn anything, but because it helps to structure the book when you or others look through it)
A new mathematical fact or formula you’ve given them (if applicable)
2-3 model examples copied from the board, which they can refer to when they’re not sure how to answer the problems you set. These should demonstrate *exactly* how you would like them to set out their working
The questions you ask them to attempt, with full complete working – they should write the problem as well, if it’s short enough. If it’s long, don’t waste their time with copying it.

One caveat:

Some kids can get so fussy about their books being ‘perfect’ that they stop doing any work at all for fear of making mistakes. You need to make it clear to them that the books almost *have * to have mistakes in them, to demonstrate their progress, and that a ‘perfect’ book would be expected to have mistakes, with their corrections nearby, showing how they learnt and progressed.

Set a big goal for the class

Reluctant, disrespectful, recalcitrant, complacent, demotivated, disaffected or disillusioned: any or all of these adjectives may apply to the students you teach from September.

So how can you even begin to turn this round, and get your pupils motivated to learn and succeed?

It sounds impossible. I remember one moment, before I’d met my Year 10 class, where an English teacher sat me down to circle the troublemakers on my register. Out of 30, she went down the list, circling over 15 of them in red. Gulp. The first term was a nightmare of disruption. Each lesson felt like confronting a pack of howling wolves baying for blood.

What won them round was trust. Turning up full of energy and positivity each lesson, praising effort, getting rapport with the ringleaders and getting them each to experience success: all of these things earned their trust and turned it round.

But if I had to recommend one thing that got them to want to achieve, it would be this. Set a big goal for the class. Display it at the start of every lesson as they walk in to remind of what they’re working towards. For example, here’s the one I used with that Year 10 class:

The benefits are brilliant. It guides everything else you plan: will it help them achieve their goal? It motivates them that you believe that they should all aim high. And it brings real urgency to all your lessons, as no one wants to let the class down.

This next slide I designed to tap into their chronic cult of instant gratification with an instant snapshot of the big picture, and combat it with the reason why education matters to them in the long-term: average annual salaries! After this, they were all asking me, “what’s an MBA? How do I get one, sir?” “You start by putting the effort in, here and now…”

How can you design class big goals?

Big goals need to be ambitious but achievable, and most of all, meaningful to your students. That’s why I tapped into the 2012 Olympics with the ‘Best of Britain’ idea. You can follow these four steps to creating your own – diagnose, understand, pinpoint, then design: