Tutoring Tips

In praise of podcasts: five things I learnt about education from podcasts

Rewind to the late 2000s. I’d received a really cool mp3 player for Christmas, shaped like a jelly bean but made out of glimmering pearl-like plastic. It provided perfect entertainment for commuting. Until one day it squirmed its way out of my hand, executing a perfect somersault, and plummeted directly through the gap between the train and the platform edge. Panicked, I listened to it clunk against the rails, followed swiftly by warning tones that the doors were about to close and so jumped off the train impulsively, a little lost without the entertainment I’d been relying upon!

Thankfully I’ve not repeated this escapade with my current entertainment device – old habits die hard though, and I’ve still picked a similar glimmering white colour scheme from the many options available. Anyway, what was the reason for me sharing this whistle-stop tour of recent audio technology? For many of us, all sorts of tasks (commuting included), are now accompanied by our own choice of entertainment, plugged straight into our ears. Instead of noughties pop my companion is often a podcast and there are plenty on education that are both interesting and informative. Here are five things I learnt about education from podcasts:

• Homework and class sizes appear to influence pupils’ outcomes less than we think.

from BBC The Educators – John Hattie

This podcast interviews a number of big thinkers in education, and is well worth a listen. This particular episode with John Hattie includes some information about his meta-analysis of education research and how it can help us understand what might, and might not, make a difference to pupil outcomes. As I learnt at a recent event, there is a tension in meta-analytical work between the quantity and quality of studies to include – although more studies might initially seem better, this isn’t necessarily the case if they are not equally high-quality and ‘translatable’ to new and differing contexts. All the same, the work of the Education Endowment Foundation also shows that homework and class sizes might not be as significant as we might think.

• It usually takes examiners 18 months to craft an exam paper! 

From Inside exams – 1. Talking my language

It would be easy to ignore what routes test papers go through before they arrive on exam desks in the summer term. This podcast walks us through some of the processes involved in creating, reviewing and checking exam papers. A great way to learn more about exams, direct from the examinations boards themselves.

1. How wide the gap is between pupils’ everyday talk and the academic vocabulary they need to succeed in school, as well as how to bridge this gap. From Mr Barton podcast – Alex Quigley: Closing the vocabulary gap

Everyone is a teacher of language and this is a really interesting topic for both maths and English tutors – as well as any prospective teachers of other subjects. Alex Quigley is a former English teacher and now works at the Education Endowment Foundation.

• Why number lines make more sense vertically than horizontally, and how the language of ‘opposites’ can be useful in teaching negative numbers

From Mr Barton podcast – Bernie Westacott

Mr Barton is basically education podcast royalty. He’s interviewed many influential figures for the podcast, which is regularly listened to and discussed by the most maths-phobic teachers. You know when Mr Barton likes something because he says, “that’s flippin’ brilliant” and he says that a lot in this podcast, which is available to listen to as well as to watch. It gives some great context to what pupils will have experienced early on in primary school as well as great tips for teaching negative numbers. I’m a big fan of vertical number lines since watching this. Why? They link to real-life examples (think thermometers and lifts) and the higher up a number is, the bigger it is. With a horizontal line, you lose these clear links and in their place it all becomes more ambiguous for pupils.

• Why it’s desirable that pupils find things difficult, and the importance of ‘wait time’ after we ask questions. 

From Evidence based education – Robert & Elizabeth Bjork 

The Bjorks are incredibly knowledgeable and influential researchers on learning and memory. This is the sort of podcast that really makes you think about how complex learning is, and helps question the assumptions we’ve picked up along the way. It’s worth a listen to understand that when pupils find tasks hard, it might not actually be having a negative impact on their learning. For a quick written summary, I’d recommend this article. ‘Wait time’ is all about how much silence we leave, after asking a pupil a question. Often, it’s tempting to break the silence and either answer the question ourselves or rephrase it. Both approaches might result in pupils not having the time they need to think deeply about the question and formulate a response. Plus, we are tacitly telling them they don’t always need to think about the questions we pose – as we might answer them ourselves! If you want to know more about their research you can also listen to their interview on Mr Barton’s podcast and their YouTube channel.

More education podcasts I’ve enjoyed:

BBC more or less – delves deep into statistics (often sent in by the audience) and provides great examples of mathematical ‘answers’ that aren’t always simple and can be controversial or used as a starting point for debate.

TES – the education podcast – TES news is great for what’s going on in schools, and TES ‘pod-agogy’ (yes, I love that pun!) for teaching tips.

The Dysadvantage podcast – experiences of people with dyslexia: exploring how they cope with the challenges it poses and the advantages they feel it brings.

TED Talks education – more global and wide-ranging in topics, great if you want a broader view of education beyond tutoring and the UK system.

The NCETM Maths podcast – aimed at maths teachers, but there are some great episodes on the maths mastery approach and interviews with maths teachers.

Trialled and tested – a collaboration between the Education Endowment Foundation and Evidence Based Education, discussing key pieces of education research.

What I’m listening to next: Researcher Daniel Willingham’s keynote at a recent ResearchED. Willingham’s book ‘Why don’t students like school’ has been a big influence on me. The quote ‘memory is the residue of thought’ is a really pertinent one for anyone in education, so I’m looking forward to hearing what Willingham has to say.

The Power of Yet: How discovering Growth Mindset had an impact not only on my teaching but on my path to self-care

When I first started teacher training, Carol Dweck’s research on Growth Mindset formed a central part of the training I received. I was so inspired by everything she said, especially by this quote:

“Instead of luxuriating in the power of yet, they were gripped in the tyranny of now.” (Carol Dweck, 2014)

I realised I definitely had a growth mindset professionally. I knew I was on a learning curve to becoming a teacher and I wanted to embed Growth Mindset strategies into my teaching practice. I can confidently say that I was able to do that. There was nothing more rewarding than, after a few months, hearing my pupils use these phrases with each other:

“I’ve tried really hard today.”

“I can see you’ve put in a lot of effort.”

“Wow, you didn’t give up with this tricky sound, well done!”

In my classroom and in my teaching practice, I had embedded a culture of continuous learning, growth and positivity, and I could see this in the way my pupils were starting to use my growth mindset language in their everyday life. However, in my personal life, everything was spiralling out of control.

Whilst struggling with missing my family, having no work-life balance and challenges with my mental health, I realised I was gripped in the tyranny of now, barely coping with the anxiety that was swallowing me up. I could see no way out. It was around that time that I started watching the Netflix series, Queer Eye, and was really struck by what one of the main stars of the show, Jonathan Van Ness, said:

“To me, self-care isn’t really shallow. Showing up for yourself, putting on a little moisturizer, can inspire so many different parts of your life.” (Jonathan Van Ness)

I realised I was not showing up for myself. I was not eating well, not exercising, not sleeping well, not taking time to myself, not taking care of my skin…So, after watching the episode, I bought myself a face moisturiser and a face wash. I knew that my wellbeing was not going to improve magically, and I needed to put in the effort and I could take self-care one step at a time. It might seem silly to some that a little bit of moisturiser would have such an impact on my wellbeing, but it wasn’t the moisturiser itself, it was what it represented: my first step in buying something to take care of myself. As people say, the journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.

One year on, recent steps I’ve taken to improve my wellbeing are: I joined an exercise class, I included more vegetables in my diet, I socialised more with friends…

The road to loving and taking care of yourself is long and I am not there yet, but I am luxuriating in this ‘power of yet’ and am miles further than I was this time last year, and I feel great.

Now, as Programme Coordinator at Action Tutoring, I aim to always include Growth Mindset training within the first few weeks of my programmes, hopefully inspiring tutors to use Growth Mindset techniques in their tutoring, just as Carol Dweck inspired me. This will not only have a profound impact on the pupils, but perhaps on the tutors as well.

Olivia’s top tutoring tips to make lessons more engaging

Lesson Ideas For Primary English Tutors

Based on my experience of volunteering with Action Tutoring in two Bristol-based primary schools, here are my top tips for making sessions as useful for the pupils as possible.

Rules

Each week we establish a list of three rules for the pupils to stick by during the session. This acts as a great incentive to keep them focused and working hard. If a rule is broken, the pupil receives a strike next to the rule.

If the pupils succeeded in not getting more than three strikes next to each rule, then they would be rewarded with a sticker at the end of the session. From my experience, incentives such as stickers worked extremely well for keeping the pupils on track and motivated, as they really enjoyed having a realistic and tangible goal to work towards.

The Lesson Plan

While it is widely recognised that the importance of planning ahead is paramount to the success of tutoring sessions, I find that openly discussing this plan with my pupils before beginning the session is just as important. So, although I was always sure to plan ahead, my pupils and I would always make a rough plan of the session all together at the start of the session, which would often just consist of four or five bullet points with a tick box next to each activity.

Having the plan written down was key as it would allow pupils to stay on track, but more importantly, it allowed them to take turns ticking things off the list when an activity was completed, which motivated them to keep pushing on and achieve lots with each session.

For example:

• Play a warm-up game
• Read two paragraphs from the text
• Highlight words we don’t understanding as we go along
• Add 3 new words and synonyms/antonyms to our word journals
• Attempt five questions from the workbook

Games

One of the most engaging tutoring tips for pupils is definitely word games. Starting each session with a game meant that the pupils looked forward to the sessions and, therefore, put them in a positive and eager mindset to learn.

One that always went down well in my sessions the pupils liked to call “the category game”. This involves the tutor choosing one letter in the alphabet, writing a list of 10 different categories (e.g. four letter words, modes of transport, verbs), and setting a timer of three minutes in which the pupils try and come up with an answer for each category. For example, if the letter were ‘B’ and we used the former examples as the first four categories on the list, the first four answers could be: busy (four letter words), bus (modes of transport), and borrow (verbs).

Content

As the pupils would often get bored or easily distracted, I found the sessions to be most effective when we would stick to one section of the text rather than attempting to tackle the whole thing. This would often overwhelm pupils, further knocking their confidence and consequently their productivity.

Sticking to smaller sections would help to keep the tasks manageable, increasing the chance that the pupils would remain engaged.

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Written by: Olivia Poust

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