Never Work Harder Than
Your Students & Other Principles
of Great Teaching
Jackson, Robyn R. (2009). Never Work Harder Than Your Students &
Other Principles of Great Teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Principle 4: Support Your Students
(Chapter 4 – pp. 102-124)
- We need to be proactive about developing interventions for students before they fail.
- Teaching is a matter of specifying what students must know, subtracting what it is they already know, and teaching them the rest.
- The most successful intervention plans have four components:
- The plan is developed before the students begin to fail.
- The plan has a red flag mechanism that triggers action. The red flag must be concrete and objective (e.g. a student is unable to plan an essay that shows understanding of the topic).
- Once the red flag has been triggered there is a concrete procedure for what happens next which is designed to get students back on track as quickly as possible.
- Shared accountability.
- Intervention plans do not necessarily mean that you need to meet one-on-one with the students. The intervention may be a computer programme, online tutorial, workbook, extra handout or even tutoring by another student. There is a tool on page 238 of the book to help you develop an intervention plan.
- Anticipate where students might be confused about what we are teaching and make sure that we clarify points before the students make their mistakes – this makes for much more productive teaching.
- Make the learning process as transparent as possible by explaining all the steps in the process clearly.
- Explain the purpose of the task.
- Show how the new task fits with what they have done in the past.
- Explain to the students how the skills that they are learning can be used in other contexts.
- Provide all the steps in written directions so that students know exactly how you want the task completed.
- Gradually remove supports as students improve otherwise we never help them learn things on their own.
Try these
ideas:
- When students make mistakes in an assessment, ask the following error analysis questions to figure out exactly why they went wrong:
o
What is
the key error?
o
What is
the probable reason that the student made the error?
o
How can I
help the student avoid this error in the future?
2. Stop every so often in your lesson and ask the
students to summarise what they have learnt so far. Listen to their summaries
and identify where the students are still confused.
3. Don’t just ask students for their answers;
have them explain their thinking, show their working …
4. Share with the students the learning processes
that you use yourself. What steps do you follow to solve a problem, or study,
or learn a new concept? What strategies and tools do you use?
Support
the Learning of Students Who Have Already Mastered the Learning Goals
These students also need an
intervention plan for when they have exceeded mastery.
Try this
idea:
1. Give students opportunities to represent
complex concepts or problems visually without using words. This will help them
think about material in a different way.
Applying the Principle
The writer (Robyn Jackson) used this
process on an assessment to support students before they failed.
Professional Reading
