Thursday 18 February 2021

Back to School (Again): Priorities for Returning to the Classroom



Between reading Peps Mccrea’s brilliant book on motivation and last night’s #EdChat on the pandemic's impact on curriculum, I’ve started to consider what I might need to prioritise when students start to return to the classroom.  Now seems a good a time as any to bring those thoughts together (especially given that next week is likely to be taken up with planning in the wake of the announcements due to come out on Monday).


This blog is mostly to help me crystallise my own thoughts about the return, but I’m hoping that some of my reflections might be useful for others as we plan for this.


Welcome Back!

My first priority is going to be making students feel welcome when they return.  For my own classes, the ‘meet and greet’ that’s part of our daily routines will be key.  I’m also hoping that referring back to some of our shared learning experiences - like me reenacting ‘Macbeth’ with my wig collection and desk figurines - will help with a sense of camaraderie when they are likely to be feeling worried about both being back in school and also the upcoming GCSE/A level assessment processes.


I feel that re-establishing positive relationships will be especially important for those who didn’t engage with all of the learning over lockdown in order to make them feel at ease and motivated to engage with learning going forwards.  I worry about some of these students, as the potential for teachers to berate them for not completing tasks risks losing their engagement going forwards: having a go at them for not completing some essays is not going to encourage them to engage in learning when we return (especially if they had good reason, such as limited internet or helping with the care of younger siblings).


I’m also conscious of how I will help other students to feel welcome.  It’s going to be important for us to be visible around school to greet students and remind them that they are part of a wider community.  This will be especially true for some English classes whose teacher left at February half term.  As well as giving their new teacher an introduction in their live lessons next week, I’m planning on popping by their initial physical lessons too so that they recognise their new teacher as part of the school community too.


Work Over Lockdown: What Have They Retained?

As I mentioned, I still want those who haven’t accessed all of the lockdown work to feel motivated to engage with lessons going forward.  However, it’s going to be just as important that I retrieve and build on the knowledge that we covered in this period for those who did.  What we did was valuable and students need to be aware of that.


For this reason, there’s going to need to be a delicate balance between referring back to that ‘lockdown knowledge’ and subtly scaffolding for those who missed the knowledge (or haven’t retained it, due to the limitations of remote learning and students' specific contexts).


Formative assessment (and the subsequent responsive teaching) will play a big part in this.  I’m really glad that I managed to gather different strategies for assessment whilst keeping 2 metres away from students earlier in the year (the use of mini-whiteboards, as mentioned in this earlier blog, will be vital to help me see what students do and don’t know).  As with the return to schools in September, frequent low-stakes checks of what students do and don’t know will mean that my teaching can be more targeted towards any gaps in knowledge or misconceptions.


Back To Norms

Mccrea’s discussion of social norms in 'Motivated Teaching' really made me evaluate some of my own practice (especially when I consider how I used to react if a large portion of a class hadn’t completed homework).  Re-establishing these social norms will be the lynchpin of a successful return to teaching in the physical classroom.


In terms of behaviour for learning, I’m lucky that I’ll be supported by a school-wide briefing on the first morning back.  We’ve already decided that a significant portion of the first day will be used for all teachers to deliver the same messages to their classes to recap what we do in terms of social distancing/keeping safe and also in terms of what great learning behaviours look like at out school.  Returning to these in my lessons will be important to embed them (both for myself and to support staff across the school), especially in terms of modelling and explicitly teaching these behaviours.

Though behaviour for learning is incredibly important, I’m also very conscious of how I’ll be embedding resilience into my students as part of the process of re-establishing norms.  Many of the students in my Y11 class have struggled with extended writing tasks over lockdown and I’m concerned that this might be due to a lack of resilience and confidence.  For this reason, I want to ensure that I’m doing everything I can to support them so that they feel confident enough to write an extended piece without a detailed structure to follow.

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