The 2019 Teaching Tips Advent Calendar

Incase you missed it, we shared 25 top teaching tips for advent via our Social Media accounts. For your ease we have listed all of them below in one festive blog for you to refer back to any time you like. You are more than welcome! As always, please do get in touch with any pictures, videos or comments on how you used these tips in your classroom. We love hearing from you! We hope you had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The popcorn activity is a great way to get students engaged and warned up for a lesson. Students crouch behind their chairs like corn and when they hear the correct answer to a question they pop up.
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​For example, the children can listen for multiples of four as the teachers shouts out random numbers. Children pop when they hear the multiples of fours.
This can be used in science to identify key vocabulary, in English when identifying types of words and across the curriculum.
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Give it a go with you kids this week!

A simple differentiation technique is the staggered start. Instead of sending all children off to work independently straight away. Stagger the start.

Allow the children who have grasped the learning quickly to go and keep the others with you to go through a few more examples.

Allow the pace to be set by the children's understanding.

Sometimes teachers can spend far too long doing things that don't have an impact. As a general rule, it should take you far less time to plan it than to deliver it. If the children are going to do an activity for 10 minutes, it should take you no more than 10 minutes to make the resource for the activity.

Work smarter, not harder. So always ask yourself 'what is the the easiest thing I can do that is going to have the most impact on the children and their learning?' Minimum effort, maximum impact.

Do you need your children to write for an audience? If so, stick a picture of your target audience up on the board. If your children are writing to the queen, stick her picture on the wall.
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This can be done with emotions too. If the children a required to write to build tension, place a picture up on the wall of a tense expression. The kids have someone to write for and can relate their choice of language to the picture.

Developing reasoning skills is so important when deepening children's knowledge and explaining skills. Always, Sometimes, Never is a simple strategy to do this. Simply share any statement linked to your children's learning and ask them to discuss if it is Always, Sometimes or Never true.⁠
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For example - Prime numbers are odd numbers - Always, Sometimes, Never.⁠
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⁠Kind Henry VIII was a bad King - Always, Sometimes, Never.⁠
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Questions like this encourage children to justify, explain and debate using the new knowledge and skills they have gained. They need to use evidence to back up their answers. The children won't be good at this to start off with but by making this a regular feature of lessons they will get better and better!⁠

When managing behaviour, placing the ownership into the child's hands is really important. It makes them realise that you as the teacher are not punishing the child but it is their actions that have a consequence.⁠
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A simple way to do this gives them a choice. Either they continue their poor behaviour and this is what the consequence will be...or they change their behaviour and this is what the positive consequence will be. You place the decision with them.⁠
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For example - 'Either you continue to talk in the lesson and you complete your work at break time, or you begin to focus, work hard for the next 10 minutes and enjoy your break time with your friends.'⁠

Why not flip your lesson on its head in Science this week? Instead of starting with a prediction, give the children the results of an investigation and get them to interpret the results.⁠
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The children can draw conclusions from the results and then develop questions to investigate further. Alternatively, give them a set of results that make no sense based upon what they have previously learned and get the children to reconstruct the test to develop more accurate true results.⁠

Inference is a big focus in Reading and something that can be developed not just through books. Why not play Through the Key Hole with your students?⁠
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Share with children a description of a house linked to a famous celebrity or book character. Describe the contents that give clues to the owner of the house. The children can justify their answers based upon the evidence presented.⁠
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They may also describe what type of personality the owner of the house has based upon what is presented to them.⁠
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For more exciting inference activities click here.

A great way to deepen a child's knowledge of something is to get them to mark someone else's work. Provide children with some pretend work to mark that is full of misconceptions and mistakes. The children have to mark the work, identify the errors, provide feedback to the fictional child and make corrections.⁠
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The children will develop their knowledge of the skill further by identifying and correcting the common errors of others. Not to mention, if you tell them it is your work, they find it hilarious that the teacher has made so many mistakes!⁠
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Watch this video for more Mastery style activities.

Instead of providing direct feedback to children, try underlining and highlighting the best parts of a student's work and next steps but do not leave comments.⁠
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Ask the children to look at the marking and identify what it means and provide their own feedback. This scaffolds children's own self-reflection. Their errors or next steps have been identified but what is it that they actually need to do to improve?⁠

Instead of simply just introducing a new topic why not play What's the topic? Provide children with a group of images, items or clues all around the topic.⁠
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Children can be encouraged to ask questions and make predictions about what they are going to be learning about. It gets them far more intrigued about the subject and the questions they ask can be turned into lesson focuses for your planning.⁠

​Go one step further and ask the children how they think they are going to find out the answers to the questions. They are accidentally planning your lessons for you. Job done!⁠

Instead of children reading a story the normal way. Split the text into pieces around the school. Ask the children to move from station to station completing tasks that link to the story and bring it to life.

Alternatively, scale it down and create your own simple boardgame that requires them to read the next part of the story when they reach certain intervals.

Much more fun!

We have all heard of What A Good One Looks Like. Now it is time to show a Bad One! By showing children What A Bad One Looks Like, you develop children's self and peer assessment skills in identifying errors, mistakes and areas for improvements.

In English show a text full of dull language and errors and in Maths show children a mathematical method full of mistakes. Show bad techniques in PE and misconceptions in Science. The children will love correcting them!

Instead of drawing graphs on square paper, bring bar charts and pictographs to life by making human graphs.⁠
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Place the categories on the floor and ask children to sit down behind the category they would vote for making a human bar chart.⁠
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You can take it one step further and create a human scattergraph too. The children will develop their understanding of data handling for more effectively and will enjoy it far more!⁠

One of the biggest time savers for teachers is stripping back planning to what matters. Ask yourself, 'who am I planning for?' The answer should be for you and the children.⁠
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Plan so that you can refer to key parts of the lesson as a prompt for your teaching. And, plan so that you know you are catering for every child in your classroom. Keep it simple!⁠

Instead of starting a lesson with how to do something, begin with a mistake. Ask the children if they agree or disagree with the error.
Spend the lesson unpicking the misconception and developing the correct strategy. It will really engage the children and will allow you quickly to realise which children share the same misconception.

If you spot a child in your class who is upset on the playground or sat on their own, instead of heading over and intervening yourself, send another child over from your class.

Perhaps pick a child who is not always socially aware of other people. Ask the child to check if they are ok and see what they can do to support them.

You are promoting a supportive classroom environment, developing children's social skills and telling children that their classmates are looking out for them.

If you ask children to choose who to work with, they pick their friends. If you pick, they lose their independence.

Pick n mix grouping is your answer! Children first pick a friend they want to work with. Then they mix by picking someone they have never worked with before but believe would support their learning.

Can't stop your children talking about Fortnight or Minecraft? Get them writing about it instead. Ask a child to play a round in class on the big screen or find a gamer video on YouTube.

Children can write a descriptive adventure piece all about what happens. Great for engaging reluctant writers! Alternatively, write about what it might be like being trapped in the Pac Man maze or commentate on a Super Mario Cart race!

Learning Objectives identify what learning will take place in a lesson but they can be closed, uninspiring and a little bland. What happens when learning goes beyond the objective? Instead try starting lessons with a Big Question to engage children more.

Instead of 'We are learning the column method', try 'What are the misconceptions that occur when completing the column method?' Instead of 'We are learning about the properties of microbes' try 'If you were a microbe, which one would you be?'

Rewarding outcomes tells children that they can only be celebrated by achieving high grades. They can end up fearing failure and making mistakes.

By celebrating effort regardless of outcome you tell children that mistakes and imperfections are fundamental to learning. It develops a growth mindset - a life long attitude to learning.

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A post shared by Ben Cooper | WAGOLL Teaching (@wagollteaching) on Dec 22, 2019 at 2:01am PST

Sometimes when you select the differentiation groups some children end up in the wrong group with work that is too hard or too easy.

Instead, set a ladder of differentiated challenges and let the children move through the ladder at the begging of the lesson as a warm up. After 5/10 minutes you will have children spread across the ladder of challenges. The children have automatically differentiated themselves into groups.

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A post shared by Ben Cooper | WAGOLL Teaching (@wagollteaching) on Dec 23, 2019 at 4:45am PST

Fine motor skills are really important for children but a lot of activities are focused on young children. Try playing finger twister. Give every child a small hand sized version of the twister mat.

Ask children to place their index finger on red followed by thumb on blue. Use images of hands to support children with finding the correct finger. The more they are asked to coordinate their fingers the better their fine motor skills will be.

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A post shared by Ben Cooper | WAGOLL Teaching (@wagollteaching) on Dec 24, 2019 at 12:30am PST

Do you want to positively encourage children to bring a health lunch box? Introduce the healthy lunch box award. Designate some older students to be on a healthy lunch watch. They can move around the canteen giving out stickers or small rewards for anyone with a healthy lunch box.

Try taking pictures of the healthy boxes and displaying them on a board as ideas for other children and parents on what to pack for lunch.

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A post shared by Ben Cooper | WAGOLL Teaching (@wagollteaching) on Dec 25, 2019 at 8:01am PST

Make a game out of your maths questions. Place questions in a 6 x 7 grid and give one to each pair of children. Each child takes turns to answer a maths question. If they get it right they put a tick in the box. The aim is to get four in a row just like Connect 4.