Beyond Good

In this episode of the podcast Femi and Matt are joined by Amy Green -  an English teacher and head of English who has honed her craft in tough inner-city schools.Amy talks about using ‘silent and solo’ with knowledge recall questions to create powerful starts to English lessons, giving students more concrete structures for answering questions than the traditional PEE paragraphs, and how effective English teachers use pause points throughout lessons.  The trio discuss the importance of ‘reading the room’ and putting ‘concrete’ before ‘abstract’, touch on the use technology to help students read, the folly of trying to show progress in lessons, and the importance of having a school-wide culture for behaviour, as well as much more. 

In this episode Femi and Matt are again joined by guest Simon King as they explore the claim that the very best A-level teachers are also, in fact, the teachers achieving the best outcomes with bottom set Year 9, or middle-ability Year 7 students, for example.  Simon provides valuable insight into the differences and similarities between sixth-form teaching and the teaching of younger and less able students, and the trio try to articulate why the elements of teaching that make lessons go well lower down the school (expectations, explanations, differentiation, relationships and routines, for example) only serve to strengthen teaching as students move into Years 12 and 13.

In this episode Femi and Matt discuss lesson observations and lesson visits - the process Femi calls 'walking the shop floor'.  They touch on the bizarre phenomenon of teachers doing something other than 'business as usual' when being observed, the questionable practice of once-per-year observations or departmental reviews, feeding back after lesson visits and the importance of triangulation: looking at books and talking to students.They talk about 'the 3 Bs' and other heuristics (such as 'angle of lean' and 'speed of pen'), about 'closing the loop' (what leaders actually do with all the information they gather in order to improve outcomes for students), problems with whole-school approaches to CPD, alternatives to that model and ways to use departmental time more effectively.  They discuss why oversight for teaching and learning should lie with heads of department and the benefits of 'walking the shop floor' in other departments and other schools.

Femi and Matt are joined by special guest Simon King to discuss teaching strategies and differentiation for those very top end students that we all occasionally come across.  While the conversation is focussed on extending the top end students, the principles for teaching and differentiation that Simon describes are applicable to all classes.

The themes of Matt and Femi's discussion for this episode are 'starters' and 'the starts of lessons'.  The conversation is equal parts philosophical and pragmatic, and many aspects of starters are covered in great depth.  The conversation covers the importance of starters, their utility for orientating students towards this subject as they arrive from elsewhere around the school, as a device for recap, building confidence, to facilitate a calm and effective start to the lesson, to guide thinking towards today's topic and many more elements.

In this episode of Beyond Good, Femi and Matt return to the Blue Memo to discuss the final three points.  The central themes of these points are 'challenge', 'practise' and 'sequencing'.  If you haven't already listened to the Blue Memo parts 1 and 2, it may be worth listening to episodes 3 and 4, in which the Blue Memo is introduced and the first 7 points are discussed.

In this episode Femi and Matt discuss the characteristics of a good department, visions and values, and achieving consensus within a team about what matters and why we are here.  They discuss the impact of formal 'meetings' vs informal interactions between teachers and the value of rich discussions around teaching and learning.  The conversation then pivots to the skills and attributes they each wanted to have in place before taking on head of department roles, as well as the opportunity cost of teachers spending too much time talking about resources, and the importance of being aware of your own biases and comfort zones.

This is the second of the three-part series on ‘The Blue Memo’ in which Femi and Matt cover points 4-7.  They discuss the importance of engaging all students, ensuring that no one student takes up a disproportionate amount of time at the expense of others, explanations and feedback.  Part 3 can be heard in episode 6, and you can download your own copy of the blue memo from our twitter account, or from our website.

This is the first of a three-part series on 'The Blue Memo'.  In this episode Femi introduces the blue memo, explains what it is and where it came from and then we dive deep into the first three points.  These cover the starts of lessons, the importance of revisiting taught material and what he means by 'getting out into the classroom and experiencing the learning'.  The discussion of the blue memo continues in Episode 4 and then again in Episode 6.  Download your own copy of the blue memo from the website, or from our twitter account.

In this episode of the podcast Matt and Femi discuss mentors and some of the key things they took from their mentors that have shaped them as teachers.  They discuss the idea of 'golden rules' and 'non-essential essentials', the tremendous importance of the first lesson of the year with a new group and laying the foundations for strong relationships with students for the rest of the year.