The advantages of the double page spread teacher

We all know who these teachers are? Are you one? These are teachers that teach by the text book – one double page spread after another. What shall we do next if we have finished Sir? – just turn over and do the next one.

This type of teacher and approach tends to be widely criticised in schools up and down the country.

Here are just a few words we hear thrown at them in a typical school year.

Boring!
Lazy!
Unimaginative!
Dinosaur!
Not changed with the times!

Teachers that criticise this approach I feel often clutter the students with too many resources. I have seen far too often teachers give students just too many resources per tiny topic.

Here are just a few examples.

Cut out, re order and stick in.
Fill out the blanks with a few red herrings thrown in for fun!
Copy from the board.
Let’s play a patronising game.
Let’s check the persons work next to you to see what they don’t understand.
A home work activity that doesn’t extend but gets then to re stylise what has been done in class.
Make a poster on it
Look at this great website.
And finally – look it up in your revision guide!

Students sometimes don’t know whether they are coming are going with so many resources. Some students end up having cravings for the ‘double page’ teacher. They certainly crave a ‘summary sheet’.

Here are just some advantages this type of teacher has over the others.

1. Students know where they are at any given time.
2. The structure of the course is obvious.
3. The can revise easily when it comes to a test.
4. They can get ahead by simply reading more.
5. There are often ways to extend and go deeper into a topic.
6. They textbook they have been given is actually used!
7. They get used to reading and digesting.

I do agree that the copy this, draw that, answer questions at the bottom is now dated but let’s please use these expensive resources to give structure. The specification for exam classes is of course the other essential bit of scaffolding.

The very creative and funny teacher is always popular – sometimes control is poor however. When it comes to exams I often hear “I don’t have a clue what is going on”!

Please agree or disagree with this by commenting.

Thanks for reading.

The Essential Teacher

The dry cleaners approach to marking

This is a short post

When you go to the dry cleaners to take some shirts to be washed and ironed they give you a little ticket. This ticket tells you when the items will be ready to collect. You know exactly where you stand.

I see teachers drowning in marking. This is nearly always because

Too much work has been set and not really thought out.

They are trying to get the work back to students for the very next lesson.

They feel they have to mark every single word and every single line.

My advice would be to give yourself some space. Plan better and tell your students when the work will be ready to collect/handed back to them – just like the dry cleaners.

I will give some advice in a later post do what pupils can do if they don’t have there exercise books.

With the right systems in place you won’t be drowning every night in marking.

To be honest struggling to cope like this results in poor quality marking and can be next to useless anyway. Give yourself space!

The Essential Teacher