Things I wish I had known as an NQT - Parent's Evenings.

Things I wish I had known as an NQT

Parents’ Evenings.

Now, before I start I had an admission to make.  Over the years I must have done several dozen of these evenings but have never known whether I have attended Parent’s Evenings or Parents’ Evenings.  Any answers in the comment’s box below would be very grateful.

Some staff are naturally good when meeting parents.  Having watched these staff over years I have honed a list of strategies that I keep religiously to now to ensure I work as successfully as I can with parents to ensure we both do our best for the students.

 Thank them for coming

This might seem a stupid thing to say but always show your appreciation that they have chosen to come and see you.  The parents may have had to take time off work or arrange childcare for a younger child so bear that in mind.  Of course, parents should take an interest in their child’s education but a simple thank you goes a long way to getting the conversation off to a good start.

Additionally, you are likely to be running late so apologise for this!

Introduce yourself.

Don’t assume the child will have told the parents your name.  If you are lucky they will know you are their child’s maths teacher.  I always let the parents know my first name and surname as I would find it strange an adult calling me “Sir”. 

Make sure you know who the child is.

I am terrible at names so have to make a concerted effort to learn each student’s name and then test myself on their names regularly.  A level of difficulty is added to this when you meet parents in the evening as students often don’t wear school uniform and you will not believe how different students look in their normal clothes!

I always ensure I have the parent’s name written down on my appointment sheet (I normally have to track them down from the school computer system) to ensure I get their name correct.

Start off with positive news

You must ensure you are able to share some positive news with the parent about each child you teach.  With some students it will be harder than others but you must ensure you can share good news with each parent.

Look at your data - refer to homework.

It is important to be organised.  I always ensure I have my planner up to date and I always refer to the student’s attendance at this point.  Also, I refer to the student’s success with homework.  Homework can lead to quite heated discussions so it is important to control the conversation.

If the student has done little or no homework since the start of September some parents will ask you, “Why am I just finding out now?”  This is a good question so if you see patterns of homework not being completed either follow the department policy, which is hopefully a centrally coordinated letter sent home, or if not simply phone home to pass on your concerns.

If homework is an issue, make sure you have a solution up your sleeve.  The most effectives ones I have found are for you to say

a.       I am happy to email a copy of the homework to you each week.

b.       I am more than happy to be available every week on a Tuesday after school to help with  homework.

These solutions will give this part of the conversation a positive outcome.

Raise any issues

Now, and only now, I will raise any concerns I may have.   If you raise the concerns any earlier you may not have the parent on your side but if you have followed my checklist you should find that the parent is happy to work with you.

Don’t personalise any behaviour concerns.  E.g. Don’t share, “His behaviour is poor and he often shouts out / talks over me” etc. 

 Link it into learning and say,

“He has a habit of shouting out / talking over me which prevents the rest of the class, and him, from hearing what I have to save.  I know you are not a selfish person but this can look like quite selfish behaviour.  All you have to do is put your hand up and I will be more than happy to call on your at the appropriate time.  If we can’t nip this in the bud I am worried about the effect it will have of everyone’s progress”.

You will normally then get a positive conversation with the parent.

The other phrase I tend to use is…

“I don’t know if you see this at home but…”

I tend to use this for more serious incidents of behaviour.  For example,

“I don’t know if you see this at home but I find he tends to answer me back sarcastically quite a lot and this hinders his learning”.   I have never had a parent contradict me at this point.  If a student is being rude at school, their parents will have seen the behaviour at home.

Try not to dwell on the negative though.  Raise it, and move on.

 Academic steps

For students who misbehave regularly their academic progress will be enhanced by behaving.  However, you will see many parents whose students behave appropriately.  Make sure you have an academic suggestion as to how they can move forward.  It may be something very simple as learning their multiplication tables thoroughly or mastering a particular topic they found difficult on a recent test.  Highlight any online support the student can access and say they are welcome to come and see you after school to go through it.

Target grades

      It is very important that you know what grade the student is currently working at and what their forecast grade is. Whether this is for the end of the year or the end of the GCSE course will probably be determined by school policy.  More importantly, you should be able to point to work the student can complete to raise their attainment.  This is probably the most important part of your conversation so make sure you know what each student needs to do next to move forward.  Ideally, you should also give them a structure in which they can achieve it e.g. using online resources etc.

Thank the parents.

Thank the parents for coming and ask if they have anything they want to raise.  It is important to try and keep on time as you will have more appointments waiting so try to avoid too much pointless chit chat.  I have found, occasionally hat I have had to stand up and say “Thanks for coming”.  Most parents get the hint at this point….

The aggressive parents

Very, very occasionally, you get parents who just want an argument.  For whatever reason their child has managed to convince the parent that you are useless and the child has been very hard done by and it is all your fault.

As you gain experience you will be able to solve most of these issues on your own by sticking to the checklist above.  However, as soon as you see this coming explain to the parents that you would like to get the HoD or someone senior to sit in on the discussion to be able to deal with their complaints directly.

Obviously, the senior person is being invited to the meeting for your support and they should be able to lead the meeting to a satisfactory conclusion.

Best of luck and let me know how it goes!

Things I wish I had known as an NQT - marking!

Marking

Whether you are a primary or secondary school teacher, marking is going to become a key part of your job.  It will take up a lot of your time and it is important that this time is used for the maximum benefit of the students.

Most schools now have a marking policy which you must follow.  Consistency in feedback for students across subjects is hugely under rated in my opinion.  However, many marking policies are on purposefully vague to allow teachers to use their professional judgement.  Indeed in some schools you will still not find a marking policy.

So, what should you mark?

Firstly, you will never be able to mark every piece of work a student completes.  You might be able to keep it up for a few weeks but you will be working to midnight every night and will eventually go off sick for a few weeks with exhaustion.  You are no use to your students when you are off sick so I hope we all agree you can’t mark everything.

Secondly, the marking needs to be purposeful.  The days of “tick and flick” are long behind us, thankfully so!  Students need to understand the marking which must inform them how they can move forward with this piece of work.

Finally, it must be done by the teacher.  I am all for peer marking and self-marking but there comes a time when a teacher needs to give formal feedback.  When you have work to mark I advise you to hide away at school and get it done.  I speak from experience that if I take home 45 mins of marking I am able to make it last 2 or 3 hours.  Additionally, I can easily socialise away an hour at school with other teachers when I could have got my marking done.  When you have marking to do, hide yourself away and get your head down and get it done!

Here is what I do.

My school has a vague marking policy.  So, at the start of September I explain to my students how and when their work will be marked.  I do this and encourage them to hold me to account to this as I hold them to account with their homework etc.

Our students have maths for 4 hours a week and I typically teach 4 groups, although I used the same idea when I was an NQT teaching 22 hours a week.

I mark on a 2 week cycle.  For us this is 8 lessons. 

I explain to the students that in lessons 1, 2 and 3 they will learn about a new objective or two.  For simplicity sake let’s say this is working out how to do long division and long multiplication.  The three lessons will have a range of tasks, peer marking, self assessment etc.  At the end of lesson 3 they will get a homework that is due in on lesson 5.  (The hope being the can ask for a bit of help in lesson 4 if they got stuck).

I always offer additional homework online (e.g. www.mymaths.co.uk) but always provide a worksheet for homework.  This worksheet is also emailed to the student's school email account so they can print a spare out if they have lost the original.

In lesson 5 I collect the homework in and give each question a simple tick or cross.  I normally give a score e.g. 8 / 10.  

In lesson 6 the students are challenged to figure out where they went wrong whilst working with a partner.  If they scored 10 / 10 I have extension work available.  In some of these lessons I have to re-teach some aspects of the objective again.  Often, in lesson 6, I spend a lot of time extending the topic.

In lesson 7 they have a formal 30 minute assessment that I have written.  It is a bit of work in the first year but once you have the tests they will always be useful!  Ideally, the whole department would join in and help you write them.  We have 60 min lessons and I would spend the first 30 mins revising.  This gives the students some experience at how to revise which becomes so important for their A Levels.

After lesson 7 this piece of work is formally marked.  I have found that the more able students prefer to do this assessment in a separate book and the lower ability students prefer doing it on the sheet.

My formal marking gives them a score or percentage.  I am not comfortable giving them a GCSE grade or KS3 Band at this point but will let them know what grade the objective examines.

When the student gets their assessment back I have done the following.

1.       They get a mark / percentage.

      2.    They get an effort number for the past 7 lessons (1 is rubbish, 5 is excellent.  You can't get a 5 without          good, on time, homework).

      3.    I pick out something they have done well either on the test or in the previous 2 weeks.  (E.g. you have          asked some very probing questions recently)

      4.      I highlight what they need to do next to get better at this topic (E.g. your long multiplication is great but         you need to now practise multiplying with decimals).

Lesson 8 is my key lesson as each student will have a different target (number 4 above).  However, I have found that because I fortnightly assess, the class will only have 2 or 3 different targets between them.  Lesson 8 is spent giving the students the opportunity to reflect on their test and give them the opportunity to go back over some learning and demonstrate they can do the objectives they got wrong.

Lesson 8 can be quite difficult to plan but www.mymaths.co.uk can be very useful here as you can set different students different work which allows you to give attention to smaller groups as and when they need it.  

For the last 20 minutes of the lesson students are to re-do the test questions they got wrong (in silence).  I project the answers at the end for them to self-mark or copy down.  By the end of lesson 8 every student has a copy of the correct answers for the test.  

Those who still find it a complete mystery are encouraged to come and see me after school to sort out the issues.   I will also phone a couple of parents whose youngsters have impressed me during the past 2 weeks at this time.

Obviously, I stagger it at the start of term so that my classes don’t all get to lesson 7 on the same day as this would be a lot of marking and planning in one evening!

My marking system isn’t perfect but I think it works quite well for the students and I feel it is a good use of my marking time. 

Let me know what you intend to do and whether it works!

Things I wish I had known as an NQT - Seating plans!

This series of blogs is going to concern things I wish I had known when I started out as an NQT in an under-performing inner city school 15 odd years ago.

Let me be clear, there is no magic wand that will make the youngsters into model students (well, if there is I haven’t found it yet!) but there are lots of small things I could have done that would have had a cumulative effect on their learning and progress.

If you are lucky you will be working in a school which has a policy that the teacher sets a seating plan for every lesson.  The teacher is welcome to change the seating plan when they see fit but it will be easier for you if every classroom has this consistency.

If your school doesn’t insist upon this then hopefully your department will.  If your department doesn’t then I still encourage you to go for it on your own.  The students will reap the benefit.

Why have a seating plan.

A seating plan should not be used to just control behaviour.  If you try to use it to simply control behaviour you are missing out on some of the extra benefits this simple classroom strategy can bring.  Seating plans allow you to group students in a way designed to help them learn and make progress.

How do I set a seating plan up?

I have experimented over the years and have found the most effective seating plan is to sit students by current or recent attainment.  I know there are other theories behind seating plans but this is the one that works best for me. 

To one side of the room, always my right as I look at the room, I sit the most able students and the least able are on the left.  I initially thought students might complain about this but have never had any problems with students over this.

What are the benefits to doing this?

1   

     1. I instantly know where to aim my questioning.  Easier questions are aimed to my left so that I can build student’s self-esteem by giving them questions they find accessible and harder questions go to my right.  I rarely ask for hands up as I normally target all my questioning at a specific student.  This has the added bonus of keeping all the students focused as they are never sure when they will be asked to answer.

     2.  I try and differentiate my tasks in most lessons and it is far easier to do this if I can talk to a small group of students at the same time in one area of the classroom rather than having these students dotted around the room.

     3.   It makes group work so much easier because if I want similar ability levels to work on a problem, which I find works best, then everyone is already physically near each other.  If your group has a wide range of ability I have found that the most able tend to dominate and the least able get little out of the activity.  Also, I tend to find that the activity in a group with a wide range of ability fails to test the most able.

What about parents who complain?

Very occasionally parents do complain about seating plans having been encouraged to by their children.  In this case I give them a phone call to explain my thinking.  After the phone call I have had only a few parents, in 15 years, continue to complain that their child is sat away from their friends.  When I point out that the student is in my classroom to achieve the best they can academically and that there is plenty of time at lunch and after school for socialising they normally stop complaining.

What else?

Celebrate success.  Students are more accepting of your methods if you celebrate their progress.

The students in the type of school I work in (inner-city) respond so well to praise.  I suspect all students do but have most of my experience in this type of school.  When students are successful in my classroom I make sure the parent knows.  Minor successes get a phone call home (e.g. a good piece of work that is academically of a good standard for that student and not a piece of work that has just had lots of effort put into it.) , major successes get a letter home.  (e.g. a good performance in the end of term assessment.)

I am always surprised by the number of students who bring the letter in to show me as they and their parents are so proud of it.

Try a seating plan and let me know how it goes.