Every teacher, whether consciously or not, has a good idea of the kind of teacher they don’t want to be, their anti-role-model, the behaviours they don’t want to be known for. I don’t want to be the one forever complaining about lack of attention, insisting on more concentration, droning on about behaviour – and then droning on with the subject matter too.
But the price I pay is that I’m known instead for my noisy classes. Allow me to explain.
Every student knows that they are in school to learn, and a school week is simply too long to spend entirely on messing about. Even the least enthusiastic scholars would rather learn something than nothing. While quiet has its place, so too does noise. Current promotion of silence, calm, meditation, mindfulness, etc, is essential if we are to achieve any kind of balance or harmony in a busy world, but many youngsters won’t thrive if we adopt an excess of these in schools.
The near-impossible task of any teacher attempting to safeguard everyone’s learning is to set things up so that all learner-types are catered for. The lowest common denominator approach I use is providing ample space for them to interact with each other. That space permits them to adopt the individual approaches required in order to retain the material.
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Some, the more visual learners, may need to take notes in the form of illustrations. Others may depend on movement – many find gestures very adequate – to accompany the repetition of material. It’s significantly easier to bring your own style to life in a small group of peers than in an over-orderly class setting, especially if the teacher seems to be the only one allowed to speak, or with the power to decide who else gets to have a turn.
This gifts everybody an opportunity to congratulate a classmate on being able to explain it better than the teacher. (An ability to be self-deprecating in front of a class is a huge asset!)
The goal when introducing any new material is for as many students as possible to understand it as well as possible as soon as is reasonable for their age and stage with that specific material. Getting the material out rapidly is important to students, and teachers who fail to recognise that orchestrate their own downfall and end up just droning on. This simply invites students to seek out something more interesting, and almost invariably what they find first is someone equally bored, and things spiral rapidly out of control once their eyes meet.
Core to all of my seating plans is reducing the likelihood of the wrong pairs of eyes ever meeting. While I hope that what I’m doing will be enough to keep their attention, if it isn’t it is crucial that the first ones I lose do not find each other before I can get them back again.
I vary the voices in the room by getting those who have grasped it first to help those still struggling. This gives me a breather and allows time and space for the students to gain the energy that comes with interacting. An invitation to Johnny to present it to the whole class, if he only finally understood it when Mary explained it, allows him to go from struggling with it to shining in public. This also gifts everybody an opportunity to congratulate a classmate on being able to explain it better than the teacher. (An ability to be self-deprecating in front of a class is a huge asset!) Usually the student who explains it here still requires help from their peers, and so others also contribute. Through that, I get a very clear sense of how well the group as a whole has grasped the new material.
Rapid fire
Once someone has managed to feed it all forward to the class, I know that the group is ready for a table quiz – a short burst of key questions which permits highly structured group work and clear targets when it comes to learning outcomes. From there we move towards the end of the lesson and a head-to-head, where each team nominates one member to participate in a rapid-fire round. Each team designs four to five questions, which means they co-create the task. The four individuals who have opted for the hot seat are asked questions by the other three teams, thus ensuring they aren’t asked questions they themselves helped design.
Yes, these are very noisy lessons, but it is not the noise of the playground at breaktime. Learning communities are busy and noisy places
With clear guidance around what constitutes good and fair questions, and regular opportunities to practise writing them, students become efficient at seeing their learning from an assessment angle at a very early stage. Winners and losers alike in the rapid-fire round are greeted with nothing but support and gratitude by their fellow team members. Everyone is so caught up in the process that learning happens seamlessly, almost accidentally.
Yes, these are very noisy lessons, but it is not the noise of the playground at breaktime. Learning communities are busy and noisy places, and most youngsters in the room need to hear the material multiple times. This approach facilitates that in a way that makes sense to them. A teacher droning on doesn’t appeal. Explaining once and then expecting them to stay quiet and engage in practice exercises doesn’t either, because too few have grasped it and the wandering eyes of those who haven’t are the start of inattention, of a move away from learning.
For me, noise of the right kind is a sign that my class is going well, and on the days we achieve it, my pupils reassure me that I’m not slipping towards my anti-role-model. With age, I can sometimes find the noise more challenging, but when I feel this I hastily remind myself that my pupils are ageing differently, and being there for them means doing things in the ways that work best for them.
