A thread on experiments with pupil voice. How structured conversations and activities with students have informed our CPD and helped improve my teaching...

Key idea 1. A well framed question can generate helpful insights which no teacher or leader has complete access to. In this example, we explained that lesson starts normally are intended to 'set the tone' and 'support learning' ...

We then asked students to map a week’s worth of lesson starts against ‘sets the tone’ and ‘helps me to learn’. One student came up with this 'graph'!

She actually grouped all her lesson starts into categories. Visible here.

And kept a tally of each! Interestingly:
i. She thinks that quizzes of previous information are helpful.
ii.The majority of her lessons week had no discernible start phase‘just straight-in’
iii.Of course, this *proves* nothing, bt sparked interesting discussion at the school.

Key idea 2. It’s important to include questions with the capacity for surprising answers!

When I question students about how lessons should start to ‘support learning’ and ‘set the tone’ then answers have largely aligned with the above. BUT...

More open questions like ‘imagine there were a class of students just like you, can you give us some clear advice on how teachers should start your lessons’ produce very different answers...

In two *very different* schools, the majority of student advice focussed not on what teachers should do but how to do it – their mood, tone of voice, politeness. Being calm and kind basically....

Which made me think a little. Does this go without saying? Why did so many student advise teachers not to start by shouting/in a stress inducing manner? Is efficiency for learning the only valid metric by which to measure these interactions?

Lastly -I think finding things out, about our own pupils, even if fairly mundane, can change our practice -I'm sticking (mainly) w/ low stakes retrieval practice but also making a conscious effort to be calm, kind and welcoming this term.I think because of what I learned here.