TP-14.4

Forget flashy lessons – simple can be beautiful, and can give you your life back A I DAN SEVERS I magine a way of working that was not onlymore responsive to children’s needs, but was also better for teacher wellbeing. If there was such a way, surely we’d all want to be doing it? I’d like to suggest it is possible; that by planning learning sequences and designing lessons flexibly we can provide for individual needs without it being a huge burden on our time and energy. In order to ensure that our planning and teaching doesn’t impact negatively on our wellbeing, we have to find an efficient way to work. And in order for something to be efficient, it usually needs to be simple. However, teaching can often be overcomplicated bymyriad solutions for how to engage children, manage behaviour, include technology, make links to other subjects, and so on. Oftenwe begin lessonswith an activity idea that we’ve seen on socialmedia or used elsewhere in the past. Sometimeswe come with preconceived ideas about whatmakes an outstanding lesson andwe pull out all the stops and try to plan all-singing, all-dancing session. Other times, often due to time pressures, we just don’t think carefully enough about what childrenneed. All of these approaches can lead to a lesson being insufficiently structured to support learning. The true way to simplify teaching begins at the planning stage. There are several things to think about when you’re sitting in your PPA session. Begin by asking yourself a simple set of questions. Here’s the first: 50 | www.teachwire.net What do the children need to learn? You’ll probably come upwith several answers, because different childrenwill need to learn different things. This is whereworkload can begin to triple or quadruple: as soon as you identify the fact that one handful of childrenneed to go over previousworkwhereas others are ready tomove on, it can be easy to start thinking that youneed to plan several different tasks. This iswhere planning teaching sequences comes into play. Rather than planning five lessons, plan a sequence of activities that will help children towork through fromnot knowing how to do something to being fluent in it to being able to use and apply that knowledge or skill. The next question to ask yourself will help you think about learning as steps towards a final goal: How can I break this down and teach it in the simplest way possible? If you produce a sequence of activities that build to an end point, youmost probably have something relevant for each child in the class to attempt, therefore negating the need for differentiation and removing that potentially damagingway of providing for children that perpetuates the learning gap. As you plan each step, take into account the answers to the following questions: How can pupils practise this in the simplest way possible? Is this aspect of the lesson really necessary for children to achieve the intended outcome? Try tomake each step and task as simple as possible, ensuring that the sole focus of the sequence is on exactlywhat the childrenneed to learn. Your learning steps don’t need to be full of flashy activity ideas. Enjoyment and engagement of learning can, and should be, Sounds like A PLAN