heart of heartlands lessons

Teaching and learning is the heart of what we do at Heartlands. This year we launched The Heart of the Heartlands lesson which is what you will see in great lessons in our school – our principles of learning in practice.

Photo credit: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

TALKING FOR WRITING

20TH MAY 2020

This week Ben Steinert shares his learning on the importance of talk in lessons from a visit to Michaela School. A chance to reflect on its value in the classroom.

Shortly before schools were closed, our Head of Humanities and I were lucky enough to visit Michaela School in Brent, and we saw some really great things that they were doing in terms of the way they were using classroom talk to both embed students’ knowledge and to scaffold for future writing tasks.

One way I thought that this could be used at Heartlands was through teachers giving students the opportunity to discuss their learning in short bursts, many times during a lesson - when we have that chance again.

An example sequence is shown below. As you can see, the teacher gives students 5 opportunities to discuss the topic of the lesson, and of the subsequent writing task, before they work independently. This gives pupils confidence in using their knowledge and allows them to practice with it before they write. It also allows you as the teacher to identify and address any misconceptions before students complete their final task.

Extract from: Training from the marathon by Michael Taylor

I thought about how I could transfer this to the science classroom and designed a lesson sequence outlined below. The most important things that I was trying to do were:

Really carefully plan the knowledge required for the answering of the question
Specify keywords, phrases and knowledge students should use when answering a question
Give pupils lots of opportunities to practice with this knowledge before they work independently
Ensure I was checking at each stage that students have understood.

This question asks students to explain how two methods could be used to separate a mixture containing three different substances.

Below I outline the sequence of questioning that I would use to get students to talk about the question before they attempt it themselves.

What methods can we use to separate different materials? Tell your talking partner about all 3.
How does filtration work? What equipment are we going to need?
What type of substance can be separated using this method? Can you give an example?
How does distillation work? What equipment are we going to need?
What type of substance can be separated using this method? Can you give an example?
If I had water and sugar, how could I separate them? Tell your partner why your method would work. Try to use the words ‘insoluble’ and ‘soluble’ in your answer.
If I had water and ethanol, how could I separate them? Tell your partner why your method would work. Try to use the words ‘boiling point’ in your answer.

After each question students would discuss with their partner before the teacher takes feedback. Students would then attempt to answer the exam question independently. The verbal scaffolding should give them more confidence in the key ideas and vocabulary they need to use in their answer.

Talk will be even more important when we do finally return to the classroom. Talk will have even more power than it did before lockdown when we perhaps took it for granted.

Hopefully you will try it in your classroom when we go back to school please do let me know, I would love to see it in action!