The Classroom Experiment

[diddl]

Anyone else see this last night?

Thought it was quite interesting.

Did no one else go to a school where pupils were asked questions throughout a lesson without anyone putting their hand up?

Or you might get asked even if your hand wasn´t up?

Can´t believe that they are talking about it as if it´s revolutionary!

Do teachers really only engage with the same few without involving others?

Saw the last 5 mins, and no, it's not new stuff! I did my teacher training 10 years ago, and they were talking about the same 'traffic light' system to check understanding. You have to use this carefully - wasn't there a boy balancing the cups on his head? I used flags once, and discovered a couple of air traffic controllers in the making who were waving planes down from the sky! And I think most teachers wouldn't just rely on the same few to answer questions, but try to involve the quiet ones without making them feel like they're being singled out.

I especially loved the drama about the sticks - me and DH were on the edge of our seats. Completely made it look as though teachers have nothing better to worry about! (BTW - I'm on MN and off work with laryngitis; I'm not skiving, promise!)

Oh I´m guessing that will be Emily who has taken hers out-I´m afraid I couldn´t warm to her at all.

I mean great that she´s clever-but OMG, she just could not cope with not being asked all the time.
I guess for some it´s not enough to be doing well, you have to be showing it off all the time.

I´m getting old as I couldn´t believe how immature many of them seemed tbh.

I was also surprised how sorry the teachers seemed to feel for the ones who always put their hands up being made to take a back seat.

Didn´t really notice anyone say how great to be giving others a chance.

I thought it was a disaster and with experts like Dylan, apparently one of the top educationalists in the country, no wonder we are in the state we are in.

Agree with MrsColumbo, the traffic light system was a farce, with many kids deliberately using amber before the lesson had started and others using red for the hell of it. The sticks was a joke too. Emily was fantastic and spot on. It led to a huge waste of time, asking people who didn't have a clue and then they tried numerous attempts to get it right. The teachers were right in that it also forced some pupils to take part when they didn't feel comfortable doing so. Dylan seems to be believe in a one size fits all approach and that all children are exactly the same and are all equally motivated. It's almost as if he has been dropped in from Mars and hasn't got a clue. the ten minute exercise regime tires many of the pupils out and involves as much time in changing into kit as it does for the ten minutes activity. He seems to believe that this will keep them focussed in lessons. But even if it did, its effect would weear out after the first or second lesson, and it required the kids to come into school early to help the experiment along.

Even Dylan had to listen to the teachers when they said that there was a danger that the able kids were being demotivated, and said that it would be a disaster if that happened. Eveerytime a teacher told him that it wasn't working, he said that it was up to the teacher to adapt the system in some unspecified way in order to get it to work.

The most ludicrous thing that Dylan said, which shows the extent of the decline in our education system due to the interference of "experts", was that the small individual whiteboard was the most important change in education since the invention of the slate. The clever kids immediately understood the patronising aspect of the whiteboards and began taking the piss and playing games with it and writing funny messages on it.

I thought the kids were excellent and very mature. Emily was fantastic, as were Sid and Kate, the student observers, who were very constructive. Sid was excellent and kept saying that the 10 minute PE was not a great idea, but I doubt that Dylan will listen to him. Dylan is an "expert", he has read lots of "research" and he is determined to impose his "experiments" on the school.

I felt sorry for the kids being "experimented" on and for the teachers who realised that lots of it was nonsense. The poor state school kids have to put up with "experts", but I bet the top public schools in the country don't use these "experts", but use experienced teachers who use tried and tested methods that they know work.

"Emily was fantastic and spot on. It led to a huge waste of time, asking people who didn't have a clue and then they tried numerous attempts to get it right"

So what do you do-just ignore them & move the pace along at the speed of the best?

Teachers know their pupils. They don't need to randomly draw sticks to decide who to ask. They can involve children as and when they feel it will be constructive.

Drawing a stick at random, and then having to ask the most disruptive kid in the class is a recipe for disaster. Already some of the kids have removed their sticks from the box, because they obviously are not keen on being asked. If Dylan insists on carrying on using sticks, then it will obviously lead to disaster as these same kids will start deliberately subverting the system, playing up and choosing silly answers. The class will descend into a laugh and the kids will eventually run rings around the teacher, who will continue fiddling with sticks while Rome burns.

I agree that Kate & Sid came across well-and that they improved once they started taking a more active part in class.

For Emily, I think if she wasn´t so used to always being picked, then she wouldn´t find it such a trial not to be.

I can see it might be demotivating for her, but it can also be demotivating for others listening to the opinions of the same few.

But if you´re never asked, you never will be keen on it.

It just seemed so stereotypical to me-ask the same old same old & ignore the rest.

The fact that Kate and Sid were stakeholders and listened to, did mean that they were more motivated and understood the difficulties of teaching. I hope that this attitude continues, but I think it will eventually wear off. I don't agree with this approach of children monitoring teachers and commenting on their teaching capability. In the long run it will also lead to disaster as it eventually undermines teh teacher's authority and lessens the respect that the children have for the teacher. This will eventually lead to kids feeling justified in slagging teachers off and expecting the school to listen to them. It will eventually lead to discplinary problems. It all looks good in a theoretical research article, but back in the real world, there is a reason why it has never been done throughout hundreds of years of teaching. But Dylan and the progressives are "experts", they have read research which tells them that the millions of teachers across the world in the past were all wrong.

But I think that teachers can ask kids without needing sticks. It is a matter of judgement and the teacher makes the judgement call. Using a rota system were kids are asked every two minutes may not be productive and may not move the lesson along. Some kids do not always pay attention and continually asking them may soon turn out to be counterproductive. Dylan thinks that they are all sitting there equally motivated to learn. That is not always the case. One teacher had problems with maintaining discipline. If she continues with these methods then the disciplinary problems will increase because the clever kids will start subverting the system and all the traffic light systems in the world won't be able to police it.

Yes I´m not sure on the pupils monitoring teachers.

I meant that Sid & Kate seemed to improve once they started participating in lessons more.

And I do think that sometimes children have to be for want of a better word forced to join in or answer when they´re not sure.

By immaturity I meant the pupils putting cups on their heads.

I mean 2ndry school-really?

But to an extent they did seem to help that Miss Obi-especially when she then got together all those with red cups to go through it again.

She was a bit "shouty" but does seem to want to do what´s best for the pupils as opposed to what´s best for her.

But diddl, I was disruptive at school and kicked out of many classes. I know how disruptive kids think and how they play a game to take control and get the upper hand over the teacher. I would have subverted the system immediately and used a red cup at every stage, even if I understood it all. I would have encouraged all of my friends to do teh same. I would have written jokes on the individual whiteboards. If teachers had chosen me to answer, I would have come out with mnonsense answers to get a laugh. It won't be long before many of the kids in the class start doing all of that.

Teachers have a knowledge of their individual pupils and know how to control the class, and know who to ask. I think these methods are a joke and the kids will start joking around with them, and they will backfire on the teacher.

It was an interesting show. I agree with a lot of what has already been said. I would add however, for all her good intentions, Miss Obi did seem a little clueless that some of the kids were not keeping speed with her and she blamed it on naughtiness rather than the fact that it was going over their heads. I thought the red cup thing worked well to show her that she does need the buy in of the kids and they can only progress if they know what bthey are doing. If the experiment hadnt happened she would have ploughed on regardless and left behind more and more students. Stopping and checking understanding is key and she didnt seem to do this before. Whether it was the cups or another method I do think it did highlight that issue to her and that can only be a good thing.

I watched it but was distracted by ds staring open-mouthed at the shouty teacher whose lesson none of the children appeared to understand.

We used to get asked questions without putting our hands up when I was at secondary school 30 years ago!

i agree she was just steaming ahead without checking whether the class was following. But you don't need trafiic light cups to find this out. What are they teaching teachers at teacher trianing college? Don't they cover ways of assessing how successful a lesson is? Do they come out qualified, steam ahead regardless and then thank their lucky stars that Dylan tells them about the traffic cup system?

Completely fascinating programme, I'm glad there is a thread about it.

I could see the point of the lolly sticks in theory as it forces them to deal with the fact that many children were being left behind, rather than ignore it; participating in a lesson shouldn't be optional.
But then the teacher will have to deal with the fact that it will slow things down; effectively it will bring down the average level of what is said in class. I could see it working brilliantly for a small group of a similar ability, but it is going to make things even duller for the most academic kids, and surely things are boring enough for them already?
It also looked like the kind of technique which is going to have more value for certain kinds of activity; if you are teaching them something without which they will struggle to progress to the next level (say, basic grammar in a foreign language) it will have more utility than if they are doing something less vital (say, a particular set of specific vocabulary).

It made me feel even more freaked about the prospect of sending my kids to our local not-that-great comprehensive.

I was quite shocked (speaking as someone with no knowledge of what lessons are like in comprehensives, or indeed in secondary schools at all these days) by certain things though; the way some of the kids sat with their feet on the chairs, the way one of the teachers attempted to use emotional blackmail on the kids ('I was really upset that some of you were late for the exercises when I made the effort to get here early myself'). Are these things normal?

I think these things are normal. kids are very clever and play the system. They are not robots sitting there eagerly waiting to learn. I think that many of these experts have no real understanding of human nature. They are theoretical and not realistic. They don't undertsand how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They don't understand how their well-intentioned systems could possibly lead to a breakdown in respect and the consequent disciplinary problems. But the good news is that they will soon find out and learn a few lessons themselves. The kids will teach them.

Fortunately, I think Michael Gove is a realist. he won't be employing these "experts". It was the last lot who believed in their techniques. Gove believes in free schools but I don't think he will give free rein to the expert educationalists.

DH commented that the Hawthorn Effect would be much in evidence in this programme (where a group singled out for a special project does better regardless of the actual efficacy of the techniques).

oh, I have another 'what is normal in schools?' question.
I thought if I had been a teacher having to introduce the white boards & coloured cups, I would want to start off by saying 'Anyone who plays up with their cup/board and has it confiscated will be given extra homework; since you're not going to give me feedback on whether you've understood through these means you will have to give it to me through extra work.'
Would they be allowed to do this/are there obvious reasons why it wouldn't work?

Dylan was typical of the nanny knows best mentality. Teachers were telling him it wasn't working, but he ploughed on regardless. He said they would have to use these methods, they would have to find ways to adapt them (the implication being that if they weren't able to make them work, then it wasn't the methods that were at fault, but the teachers themselves). He was totally inflexible, adamant that he knew best and that the techniques that he had read about would lead to salvation. He was the expert, he had read the evidenced-based research, he would show the teachers how it should be done. The militant tendency had nothing on him. God help the education system.

I was a bit when the teachers thought Dylan's ideas were new techniques - they have been being used in many Primary schools for at least 10 years! I got the impression that while the school was great for being up for change, it didn't seem to be doing the best WRT "Teaching and Learning"

I agree, a good teacher should direct appropriate questions at all the children, so that none of them feel they can just sit back and not participate. They shouldn't need lolly sticks at all.

Am I the only one thinking that the maths would be better taught in a slightly more ability grouped way? That way the maore able could move on (as Emily was obvously keen to do) and the ones who are struggling can get a bit more practice before moving on.

Just googled the school - clearly Ofsted thought the same as me!

link - scroll down a bit to see key findings