Teach-Secondary-14.1

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Colin Foster (@colinfoster77) is a Reader in Mathematics Education in the Department of Mathematics Education at Loughborough University, and has written many books and articles for teachers; find out more at foster77.co.uk say a whole lot of things, but to the non-expert, it’s perhaps somewhat unclear which they see as being most central to grasping the point. The most important ideas will be effectively buried amid the details. The experienced teacher is more likely to say something like, ‘ The thing you really have to remember here is… ’ or ‘ Listen carefully to this next bit – this is the big idea, ’ or ‘ There’s really just one main thing you have to understand about this ’. This isn’t just a strategy for combating inattention – they’ll still say this kind of thing even if the class are sat in silence looking directly at them and nodding. The experienced teacher knows that smiling, nodding students aren’t necessarily actively listening to what they’re saying. Capable teachers will, of course, be careful not to overuse these strategies, lest they become ineffective. But I do hear that kind of repetition a fair bit when watching experienced teachers at work. Highlighting In written text, we can identify important elements by using bold subheadings – like the one just above these lines – to ‘highlight’ the main ideas I’m talking about. But how do you do this in speech? Surely not by just speaking more loudly…? The main equivalent of the highlighting pen when speaking aloud is, simply, use of repetition . Experienced teachers can often be quite explicit about this – “ What I’ve just said there is really important. I’m going to say it again. ” We need to help students see the wood for the trees. If we simply say ‘ Everything is important ’, that’s analogous to the student who indiscriminately runs their highlighter pen over every line of their revision guide. It may look pretty, but if everything stands out then nothing stands out. Similarly, we have to be selective with what to highlight by repetition, so that we can draw students’ attention to those key ideas. This requires thinking deeply about the curriculum and the content, so that we can better discern what those key ideas actually are. Avoiding tedium But how do we prevent our delivery from becoming merely boring, and prompting students to tune out? If they know that we’re going to be saying everything twice, will they only bother listening for half the time? I think there has to be a natural degree of unpredictability to our delivery, so that students can’t predict when and what will be repeated. This means they need to stay on their toes if they’re going to follow – but I also think there are other things we can do to avoid becoming tedious. If something is worth saying once, it’s often worth saying more than once. Repetition can be extremely valuable when focused on the most important points. Do you see what I did there, in those two preceding sentences? The second one essentially repeats the same point made in the first, but not in exactly the same words. The meaning is similar, so I’ve succeeded in repeating my main point – but I haven’t simply reproduced the sentence by copying and pasting it. Experienced teachers will do this often. They’re extremely good at saying the same thing in two, three or even four different ways. I would surmise that teachers typically perfect this skill by having to adapt their explanations to different student groups and classes. They can always explain the same thing again in a slightly different way, for a student who didn’t follow the first time, but I’ll see this skill deployed most often in classrooms when the teacher is speaking to the whole class. The teacher will emphasise their point repeatedly, but using slightly different language each time, thus avoiding monotony while still underlining the point they want to highlight. Careful use of repetition like this can help students grasp things more efficiently, and ultimately feel more successful. 67 teachwire.net/secondary P E D A G O G Y