No teacher has ever had time to waste in the classroom and now, more than ever, it is vital that our teaching has direct positive impact on student learning, wellbeing, and progress. So, what really works in the classroom?
Here are 20 teaching and learning strategies that I know can work effectively. Before you get started, readers may also like to check-out SecEd’s recent podcast on quality first teaching, which offers a range of advice echoing many of the themes you will find below (SecEd, 2021).
Strategies 1-4: General principles
1, Effective lesson-planning: This need not be complex. All an effective lesson plan needs to do is to focus on three things: What you want your students to learn (the learning objectives). How they will learn (the learning activities and content). How you will know they have learned (the learning outcomes).
2, Learning objectives: Focus on what your students should be able to know or do at the end of the lesson that they could not do at the beginning. In order for learning objectives to be meaningful, it is important to specify the new skills that they students will gain as a result of the lesson, that our focus is on student attainment and not that of the teacher, and that we are clear about what our students will learn before we clarify what we will teach.
3, How students learn: Aim to keep learning active and independent. Students learn best when they are thinking actively, are encouraged to think critically, work in a variety of collaborative situations (individually, pairs, small groups, whole-class discussions etc), and have opportunities to be creative in both their approaches to how they learn and how they show you what they have learned.
4, Learning outcomes: Judging student learning is not necessarily about testing, it is about gathering evidence of learning. Engage with observation, discussion, questioning and other formative assessment strategies to gather evidence of student learning while it is going on and use this evidence to adapt your teaching and planning as you go.
Strategies 5-14: Inspired by Rosenshine
These strategies are based on the ideas of the educational psychologist Barak Rosenshine (2012). His Ten Principles of Instruction still hold weight today as part of every effective teacher’s toolkit.
5, Daily review: Take time each lesson to reflect on prior learning. A “KWL” chart can be useful for this where students reflect individually, in small groups or as a whole class, on what they already Know, what they Will find out and, later in the lesson, what they have Learned.
6, Present new material using small steps: Sometimes called “chunking down” or “Lego brick learning”, always try to make sure that new learning is broken down into small bite-sized pieces where you check for understanding before you move on to the next stage and where each stage clearly builds on the foundations of the stage before.
7, Ask questions: Good questioning can be one of the most effective classroom strategies of all if you keep questions open, keep questions inclusive (you decide who answers rather than leaving it to a “hands-up free-for-all”) and graduate the questions against Bloom’s taxonomy (see later).
8, Provide models: The statement “tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I’ll remember, involve me and I’ll understand” summarises why it is so important to model “what good looks like”. Our students need to know not only what to learn and how to learn, but also what they are aiming for. Modelling using teacher demonstrations, examples from other students, or models of best practice all help us to provide clear examples for our students to aim towards.
9, Guide student practice: Effective learning is not just about breaking new learning down into chunks, it is also ensuring that we gradually remove the scaffolding of support rather than suddenly taking it away. Guided student practice looks like this:
10, Check for student understanding: So often, we leave checks on understanding until the end of the lesson. Effective teachers often use hinge questions (questions prepared for key points in the learning throughout the lesson – see Matt Bromley’s teaching and learning SecEd series from 2017) to check learning and understanding as the lesson progresses.
11, Obtain a high success rate: Mastery learning is often associated with learning in mathematics but should actually be at the heart of all learning. Mastery learning focuses on moving forward when students can demonstrate confident understanding and application of learning consistently and that learning has moved from surface memory into working memory.
12, Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks: If our students continually fail because learning tasks are too difficult or are not explained well, they will give up trying. Learning needs to be scaffolded through stepped, differentiated teaching, a wide variety of resources and inclusive support strategies if students are to learn effectively.
13, Independent practice: For our students to learn well, learning has to move from being consciously competent (students can do it when they think hard and are nudged in the right direction) to unconsciously competent (students can do it without thinking). Too often we move on to the next topic without giving students that chance for independent practice to enable their learning to become unconsciously competent.
14, Weekly and monthly review: I would, with respect, develop Rosenshine’s ideas a little here. Effective learning and teaching is not simply about weekly or monthly review, it is about students regularly demonstrating what they have learned and how they can apply that learning to a variety of new situations.
Strategies 15-17: Bloom and Maslow
Educational psychologists Bloom and Maslow provide two frameworks for learning. Maslow focuses on what we need as human beings to flourish and Bloom focuses on categorising learning and teaching by levels of thinking that grow in complexity.
Maslow’s hierarchy (1943) is a theory of motivation contending that people are driven by a hierarchy of increasingly complex needs. It is often shown as a pyramid, with the basic needs making up the base and the peak being the more complex needs. The five levels are:
- Physiological needs (e.g. water, food air).
- Safety needs (e.g. physical safety, health, financial safety)
- Social needs (e.g. belongingness, social connections, relationships)
- Esteem needs (e.g. recognition, respect, appreciation)
- Self-actualisation needs (e.g. fulfilling your potential, being your best).
Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom et al, 1956), meanwhile, categorises learning in three broad levels:
- Lower level learning (remembering and understanding).
- Application of learning.
- Higher level learning (creating, evaluating and analysing).
15, Put learners’ wellbeing at the heart of learning and teaching: Maslow’s hierarchy is about applying our understanding of our students’ needs in the classroom to help them learn more effectively. Post-pandemic we are all aware of how important learner wellbeing is. By ensuring we adopt consistent and fair classroom rules and routines, we can help children feel safe; by involving them in decisions about their learning and using collaborative learning strategies, we can help them feel that they belong in our classes; using positive feed-forward strategies (this is what has been learned well... this is why… these are the next steps…) can help boost students’ self-esteem; and encouraging students to share their learning and support each other can develop a sense of self-worth or, as Maslow calls it, “self-actualisation”.
16, Provide opportunities for learners to learn at multiple levels: Include learning at multiple levels of Bloom’s taxonomy so that students can approach learning as an activity where they are required to engage with ideas, demonstrate they have understood these ideas, and can apply that learning to a variety of relevant real-life situations. Ensure there is opportunity to explore relationships between bits of learning, judge and critically evaluate learning, and use that learning in innovative ways.
17, Encourage students to learn at an appropriate level for them: Don’t waste valuable learning time expecting all your students to engage with low-level learning before they move upwards through Bloom’s hierarchy. Use open questioning, differentiated learning activities and flexible assessment tasks to empower students to learn at a level of Bloom appropriate to each individual.
Strategies 18-20: Other research evidence
Three strategies that draw together ideas expressed by Maslow and Bloom in the thinking and research of other educationalists.
18, Support your students in developing growth mindset: Based on the research and writing of Professor Carol Dweck, we need to create a climate in our classrooms where students move from “I can’t” to “I can”. We can do this using many of the strategies already outlined – modelling, chunking, checking for understanding, questioning and collaborative learning to name a few.
19, Get your students thinking about their own thinking: Metacognition is about empowering our students to have control of their own thinking and how they think about learning (for more see the SecEd Podcast episode on metacognition). It is about understanding thinking strategies in general, becoming aware of our own thinking strategies, evaluating our own thinking strategies; and planning and thinking in more skilful ways. We can do this using thinking questions in the classroom:
20, Teach using metacognition: Just as we want our students to think about their thinking, if we teach using metacognitive strategies, we will support students’ progress. Use effective questions to check understanding, don't assume that pupils will think reflectively without prompting, and take time to explicitly teach how to plan, how to evaluate and how to manage time on a task.
Conclusion
The last of my 20 strategies for effective learning and teaching has come full circle – moving from effective teacher planning to effective student planning. However, for any of these strategies to be effective, they need to be seen as part of a comprehensive toolkit that any effective teacher will use appropriately whenever the need arises.
- Steve Burnage has experience leading challenging inner city and urban secondary schools. He now works as a freelance trainer, consultant and author for staff development, strategic development, performance management and coaching and mentoring. Visit www.simplyinset.co.uk and read his previous articles for SecEd via https://bit.ly/seced-burnage
Further information & resources
- Bromley: A series of SecEd articles in 2017 focused on key elements of teaching practice including hinge questions, explanations, and modelling: https://bit.ly/3kCGlFm
- Maslow: A Theory of Human Motivation, Psychological Review, 50 (4), pp370-396, 1943: https://bit.ly/37JjS3V
- Rosenshine: Principles of Instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know, American Educator, Spring 2012: http://bit.ly/2ZpbIqW
- SecEd: Four ideas for applying Rosenshine’s Principles, McHugh, September 2019: http://bit.ly/2TWs3nO
- SecEd Podcast: The Secrets to Quality First Teaching, April 2021: https://bit.ly/2R5PIT8
- SecEd Podcast: Teaching metacognition, January 2021: https://bit.ly/3lEruwh