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?

"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."

I agree with that.
And I think there will be some who will take more notice because they might get asked something.

And tbh if a teacher has to ask the same question so many times that it slows the lesson down because nobody knows the answer, then surely that is an indication of something being wrong?

I´m sure when I was at primary school the hands up thing was to stop children all shouting out & at 2ndry school it was rarely used as a method of choosing someone to answer a question.

The teachers have to give them a chance because they are on TV. If you spoke to the teachers down the pub, I bet you would get their real view of them. Just because a child puts their hand up, doesn't mean that they are dominating the class, because it is up to the teacher to decide whether to ask that child to answer or not. Teachers can involve pupils without patronising primary school type coloured traffic light cups. These things are OK for 5 and 6 year olds, but to give them to secondary school children is the height of patronisation and of course any self-respecting teenager will take the piss and treat them with the contempt they deserve.

Dylan has moved on from teaching to being one of the top educational experts in the country. He has read the trendy ideas and has a trendy earring to go with them. I just hope that the sensible coalition with practical realists like Michael Gove, who want to improve standards in education and give poor children in state schools an education that rivals that of Eton, reject trendy theories and experiments and ask experts from some of the top schools in the country to advise them.

agree w/Proles re giving the techniques a chance.
It's a huge change for the kids to get used to, never mind the teachers; showing what happened in the first lessons in which they were used was pretty meaningless really.

and all that big deal that was made out of some of the kids removing lolly sticks with their names on; I mean, of course they would try that, of course most of them wouldn't like that method at first because it takes power away from them; and it could be dealt with fairly easily by the teachers keeping hold of the lollysticks!

Haven't seen the show but re 'no hands up', well, I can't say I never use it but not often. I think most teachers now use lots of different strategies depending on the situation, eg

One of the things I do is 'put two hands up if you DEFINITELY know the answer, one hand if you think you might know and hands on your hand if you're like, miss, what are you on about?!'

then sometimes ask a maybe and ask a definite to confirm (if only a couple of hands on heads), praise, or if someone if v confident who isn't usually, I might ask them - or send kids over to help others...

Or, another strategy, is I might say I am going to ask ANY ONE of you to talk (so a bit of warning!) and give them one/two minutes to ask the person next to them and be ready. Then I usually watch and pick someone who I can see has learnt from someone else (and praise both).

It's about knowing your class and the children in your class IMVHO. That's why the best experiment would be smaller class sizes IMVHO...

did anyone else think: ok, that is the cup for telling the teacher they're going too fast; what colour cup should you use for telling the teacher they're going too slowly?!

(God, I would have been a stroppy cow if I had been in that class.... would probably have been truanting and shagging the thick-but-attractive boys behind the bikesheds if they'd expected me to sit through lessons like those....)

I would have thought any reasonable teacher would randomly ask pupils questions and not just the ones with their hands up. It's not about ploughing through your lesson plan and getting to the next break. It's about finding out what the pupils understand and if they don't doing something about it. I thought the maths teacher was appalling, she either didn't realise her pupils didn't have a clue about what she was talking about or didn't want to face up to this and do something about it. I though the attitude of the other teacher was brilliant and the class were so much better, instead of being shouted and screamed at and threatend with detention all the time.

Loved the mini whiteboards fiasco and the fact the kid couldn't spell 'arsed' correctly ...she should have pointed that out

'Or, another strategy, is I might say I am going to ask ANY ONE of you to talk (so a bit of warning!) and give them one/two minutes to ask the person next to them and be ready. Then I usually watch and pick someone who I can see has learnt from someone else (and praise both).'

that sounds good.... much subtler and less mechanical than lolly sticks.... and kind of squeezes more benefit out of the process of asking a question.

Ooh, I very often say 'I know YOU know, xxx, I'm going to ask someone else' or get them to say whether the answer is right (to child in class who ALWAYS has hands up -think it's nice to acknowledge it tbh)

how many secondary schools use traffic lights?
Hopefully not many. Do the top schools in the county, those that get the best GCSE results, use traffic lights? I doubt it, but I could be wrong. I think Dylan needs a few traffic lights, and I hope that Michael Gove uses a few traffic lights to put a stop to the trendies and restores what was once a top class education system.

Also, Miss Obi (following my other comments) didnt use the red light cups effectivey at first. THe kids said they LIKED the techniques, but then Miss Obi IGNORED Katies red cup. At one stage she said 'Miss!!' and shook it at her. All very well having techniques, and I do think they are good in theory, but they have to be used correctly as well! I know I am giving Miss Obi a bit of a bashing, she can be sweet as we saw, and the conference with the kids and how she took their ideas on board was good, so credit there, but I do agree with the posters saying she needs to KNOW her class better. Then the techniques might not be needed! I think it shows the teachers need to be continually learning their jobs (as do we all) as much as the children need to learn the subject :) (And bless her, she was ony a new teacher wasnt she? Shows something about how SHE was taught!)

'and restores what was once a top class education system.'

wellllll, I don't think it was quite that simple was it? A lot of children were short-changed, especially in secondary moderns.

Absolutely a good idea. Children learn massively from each other and have skills in different areas. I still think if you cut class sizes and did nothing else, you would see massive improvement (and then we can work on the rest ).

didn't they say Miss Obi had only been teaching for 2 years? And assuming she had been educated in Africa (I think they said she used to be a banker in Nigeria?), her own school experience must have been completely different from this one.

All our classes at school were streamed. English, maths, science and apart from compulsory sport, all the rest of the classes were electives, and I think it was a good way to do it. You got the abilities right, stretching those that needed it, more help to those that needed it and the rest were subjects the students WANTED to do so had an interest and had their 'buy in' to do well.

I wonder if they were short-changed because of the theories of experts like Dylan? I think Gove will turn things around, restore common sense, and remove patronising coloured traffic light cups from being used on nearly adult teenagers. That will be one step to improving education, but clearly, Gove has a lot of work to do in removing the influence of some of the trendy theories that were given free rein in the past.

"her own school experience must have been completely different from this one."

Yes, possibly, like me she was astounded at the level of not listening & messing about.

I found mixed ability (gcse level) a flippin nightmare...and so did most of the kids.IME they performed better when in sets/bands. There is still a range of ability but not so great, More able don't get kept back and weaker ones get help more at their level and don't feel so useless. There is differentiation required for all pupils but not so extreme.

'With a subject like English it is possible to cater to a mix of abilities more easily than with a subject like maths.'

mmm, I thought that. The English teacher had a much easier time with the lolly sticks because she was basically asking for a creative response to something at one point rather than a right answer.

Who is watching tonight??

Didn´t know it was on tonight-was thinking it would be next week.

yes watching now