Stretch and Challenge7 strategies to help you to step back in the lesson from tomorrow morning

Strategy 1: Avoid the following teacher styles:The Knight in

Shining Armour:

coming to the rescue

Here’s one I Prepared

Earlier: pre-digested

resources

Negator of Challenge: over simplifying and over scaffolding

Sage on the Stage

Accepting the first response

too readily and not grilling

students

Life Support Machine:

creating need not

independence

Blue Peter Presenter: over

praising and giving approval

too readily

Echo Chamber:Paraphrasing each student’s

comments

Strategy 2: Plan lessons that encourage independence• Have a starter that students

can be doing from the moment that they enter the room to ensure a prompt start to the lesson

• Use homework to prepare students for the learning in the lesson

• Prepare learning resources that students can use independently without reliance on you

Strategy 3: Develop routines that give students’ ownership• Co-construct the classroom

rules, rewards and sanctions with students to give them ownership

• Let students have control over resources e.g. boxes of resources, colour coded text books to differentiate difficulty, access to the computer to research

• Arrange the classroom in a way that facilitates paired and group work rather than focus on the teacher’s desk

Strategy 4: Step Back• Set a strict time limit for

speaking to the class. 80% of the lesson should be about student action, not teacher action

• Delegate leading activities to students e.g. starters, plenaries, modelling and summarising previous learning or taking questions from the class

• Encourage continuation of talk by nodding supportively, or saying “tell me more about that”

Idea: Use a timer to practice speaking less at the start

Strategy 5: Engage students in the learning process• Get students to engage with

the learning objective by explaining it, or underling priorities in it

• Get students to engage with the success criteria by introducing a ‘red herring’ success criteria which needs to be removed

• Use the ‘purple pen of progress’. When responding to feedback students need to write in purple to make their response explicit

Strategy 6: Develop independence• Play question basketball, not

tennis. Encourage questions and answers to go from student to student, not student to teacher

Once students have started a task, minimise your interruptions:

• While going round the class, don’t speak but communicate with post-its

• Use your board as a twitter feed to pass new information/ feedback to the group

Strategy 7: Develop peer assessment

• Use a visualiser to model work and feedback

• Have clear success criteria that work will be assessed on

• Practice peer assessment on anonymous work

• Assess students on the quality and accuracy of their peer assessment

• Use feedback stems for students• Give students the 3 Steps to

Success for peer assessment• Create levels for peer assessment• To make students aware of

different parts of the mark scheme get them to colour code their marking