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What’s your morning routine and how does this reflect your teaching?

What’s your morning routine?

Calvin and Hobbs on routine

I know this is a bit of a strange question to start this piece, but, seriously what is your morning routine? Look at the pictures below and decide in what order you would place them. What order would you carry them out, once you’ve got out of bed? (I admit not everyone will shave, or do all/ any of them, but please bear with me and have a go!)

OJ, cornflakes and tea.

Now I hope that you have, at least, considered your order – maybe for the first time. However, I am aware that some of you will have dismissed the ordering task altogether, not (I hope) because it’s pointless or too hard, but because you don’t have a morning routine.

You see, building on my last post about reordering the way I teach my Maths lessons (here) where I now carry out mental maths tests at the end of the lesson, rather than the traditional start of the lesson placement. This borrows from my PE teaching background, but even as I wrote it, light dawned on me that perhaps I was actually limiting me outlook. In fact, was there a danger of becoming more glam than punk, to borrow from Tait Coles’ wonderful book? In fact, my slow realisation, as I approached Easter, in the post Inspection bubble, was that I could easily slip into a rut – and we know how dangerous that can be…

Now, don’t get me wrong, for the inspection I changed nothing – in fact the children I teach actually commented on this, and (along with several colleagues) that I was remarkably relaxed. I always responded with the fact that I changed nothing, I used the #5MinLessonPlan for the inspectors, otherwise … But writing the last post, I realised the danger of this – and weirdly I realised this in relation to my morning routine. Yes, surprise, surprise, I have one (or I had!)

I was worried this was fast becoming me!

Mine consisted of; wake daughter up, shave (as she got/ woke up), shower, clean teeth (this allows time for deodorant to dry so no marks on clothes!), dress, eat breakfast, mouthwash, leave. See, it’s worse than having a routine; I actually had reasons for it – meaning I had considered it! And this realisation made me think about my teaching and how/ if this was approaching a similar pattern.

Now I’m a keen advocate of the works of; Jim Smith, Dave Keeling, Tait Coles (see above), Hywel Roberts, and others, plus wrote about working differently in my book Unhomework: How to get the most out of homework without really setting it. But a worrying thought struck me, what if my desire to be different and creative has actually become routine? The consideration has come as I thought about the serious impact that simply changing the structure of my maths lessons around and made me wonder, where next…? But in thinking that, it dawned on me, what if I was the blocker to the progress for the class? Has my spontaneity and doing things differently become too ‘off pat’? Have I actually developed a ‘routine’ rather than being ready to engage – especially if I have done so in my everyday life, in as far as getting ready for work?

Now this doesn’t mean that I criticise the above, in fact I have revisited for inspiration as this shows how I can do this, but ensure I can do so in different ways. So, what has happened? A few things actually!

1. There is now no clearly identified pattern to lessons – save for the mental maths test ending a lesson.

2. I’m using a wider variety of music in lessons (thanks Nina Jackson!)

3. We’ve loved using Marianne North’s paintings for inspiration (that’s the next blog – just decided) from the Take One Picture

4. We’re having more laughs – joke telling and friendly banter, often at my expense, showing my fallibility. (Thanks to Dave Keeling and Stephanie Davies). These are useful to introduce topics too; e.g., “What does a female frog wear under her blouse?” An algaebra (Ba dum tish!)

5. Thanks to Make it stick: The science of successful learning I am using far more.

6. I am reading far more, I have always tried, but have been finding too many excuses not to (from recent reading thanks to; Rachel Jones, Oliver Quinlan and Simon Pridham for your impact on my classes!)

7. As promised I am blogging far more – I may not be setting the world on fire as yet, but I am enjoying it and it’s allowing me to rethink my work and refine my teaching further.

So, as expressed in my blog about what teachers can learn from musicals after watching Made in Dagenham I am ensuring I re-establish my righteous indignation and challenging myself to remember the sage words of Steve Jobs

One of the best speeches ever (in my opinion)

It’s certainly keeping my family on their toes of a morning!

What can class teachers learn from PE teachers? (What I’ve learnt from myself!)

Do you ever have one of those moments of revelation that makes you feel really, really – I mean seriously, stupid? In fact, astounded about your own inadequacy of thinking?

If not, you’re lucky! However, if you have you can empathise with the one I had one the other day. It may not be revolutionary to many of you, but it has made a huge difference to my learners, so I want to share it for your learners’ benefit too – in case you haven’t had this moment of revelation too.

For those of you who do not know me, I am secondary trained PE teacher – though I now teach Year 5 and 6 in a primary school, but it was with reference to my former career in PE that I have drawn for inspiration. After I realised the positive impact the simple change has made, after a moment in the smug zone – I felt truly incredulous at my own stupidity for not realising it before!

It all came when I was looking at my classes’ mental maths scores and thinking about how I could improve them further. Previously I had looked at a variety of ways of doing this, trying to apply Sir Dave Brailsford’s idea of marginal gains and considered applying my PE training to best effect. For example, using the idea of practising as you expect to perform we now always use actual SATs questions – in Year 5 and 6 lessons, so they’re not so scary in the actual test. In fact, every so often I play the actual audios so the practice is even more real for the learners (obtained here):

I’ve also used the repetitive practice model, which I’ve read more and more about recently, so that the children will rehearse the same questions every few days to eliminate errors and ensure they understand the theory and workings behind them – as well as where they went wrong in the first place.

Ironically I now realise that I first ‘thought’ about this as a swimmer, with the endless repetitions of specific skills to hone them, especially things such as starts and turns. I returned to these ideals when I started teaching, getting learners to develop and cement skills – for example a lay-up, by repetitive practice – admittedly back then I hadn’t read the theory behind it! Over time I have also had this model reinforced by being married to my wife who is a physiotherapist for spinal cord rehabilitation (at Stoke Mandeville), where the patients have to repeat processes to re-establish the neural pathways to make the movements instinctive again.

All of this, along with encouragement and guidance, led the children to achieve a regular class average of 7.5, up from 6.2 and also created a much closer range of scores than previously. However, I hoped for more for them, how could I add another mark on average, at least? Then I had my moment of realisation – the one that has made me feel stupid for not realising it before!

I thought to myself about what I could try next and thought about successful teams and lessons in PE that I have taught and then it struck me:

Don’t start the lessons with the mental maths test, do these at the end! This means that the plenary is now a warm-up, the activities continue and then, once the children are fully immersed in the Maths we do the mental test at the end of the lesson. Hardly revolutionary for some of you out there I am sure, but what an impact! The class average has leapt from 7.5, through 8.5 to 9.2! The children understand why we have done this; I have explained the PE/ sport maxim to them and they have seen the evidence in the scores.

By ‘flipping’ the learning it has had a dramatic impact, and thanks to the children being Year 5 and 6 I appear to be a genius! The best thing is, nothing has really changed, except their scores have increased and they feel much better. We take the same journey in each lesson as we used to; we just ‘visit the sights’ in a different way.

The fact that is so simple makes it all the better – or worse as I kick myself for not realising it before. Having worked in secondary schools where GCSE breakfasts were held for the children, having seen colleagues run 8am preparation sessions before a 9am exam and thinking about the sport example it is all so obvious, NOW!

So I ask you to look at your lessons. What could you do to change them around? What impact could this have? And for those thinking, but what about… (fill in your own blanks), use the Dr Pepper maxim, what’s the worst that could happen? Wouldn’t it be great if one small change could make such a huge change as it has for me, which has allowed me (thanks in part to this cathartic post) to put my sheepishness and self irritation aside and celebrate what the children have achieved and start thinking, what next…?