Throughout my first placement I have struggled with low-level disruption in a number of lessons. During this essay I will reflect on a series of year 7 lessons to highlight how I modified my instructions to reduce low-level disruption in my classroom. As a result of low-level disruption pupils are left disengaged and distracted, usually completely off task. This can be extremely detrimental for the pupil, and their learning is likely to suffer as a result. As a teacher this is frustrating and extremely disappointing, as you feel a complete lack of control. As a result of poor behaviour during lessons we regularly run out of time and are unable to get through all the activities I have spent time planning for the class, which is incredibly disheartening.
The first Ofsted teaching standard (S1) refers to establishing a safe and stimulating environment for pupils, with mutual respect (Department for Education, 2011). One of the ways this can be done is by introducing practical activities in an appropriate manner. It is vital the safety aspects of any practical are conveyed to the class, in order to prevent accidents. The seventh standard is to manage behaviour effectively to ensure a good and safe learning environment, which involves having clear rules and routines for behaviour in classrooms. Giving clear instructions to pupils before the commencement of any activities is of particular importance. Therefore every pupil will know what the activity involves and understands the reasons for doing it. Waters, Marzano and McNulty (2016) claimed instructional leadership is a defining characteristic of a successful school, and therefore a successful teacher. If instructions are clearly conveyed to pupils they should hopefully understand what they are supposed to be doing, meaning they are be more likely to be engaged in a particular task. In an ideal world this should hopefully reduce low-level disruption in a classroom. However in practice a clear set of rules also need to be implemented.
I will aim to incorporate Gibbs’ cycle of reflective writing throughout this essay. For each lesson I will begin by giving a basic description of what happened and discuss how I felt after the lesson. I will then start to evaluate what went well and what could be improved. I will by finish each section by concluding what I have learnt from the experience and describe any modifications I could make to improve future lessons.
Lesson One
One of the first lessons during my first placement was on the movement of substances and was delivered to a year 7 class of mixed ability. After several weeks of observing this class I had identified a few talkative pupils within the class that appeared to be completely disengaged. Otherwise the class was generally well behaved and attentive. My lesson would involve a practical to observe diffusion in tea bags placed in hot water. Rather than giving each pupil instruction sheets, pupils read instructions off the board, something I did not predict to be problematic. I then asked pupils to design a results table, which took much longer than I anticipated. There was some confusion about whether it would be best to record the time in seconds or minutes, which caused some trouble when working out the class average.
Initially I was pleased with how the lesson had gone, the pupils had behaved in a sensible manner, and worked carefully when handling boiling water, which is quite an achievement for year 7’s. However I did feel disappointed we did not have time to get through some of the other activities I had planned. I felt as though the main reason the lesson did not go as smoothly as it should have was due to the lack of individual instruction sheets. I was also concerned that during the plenary there were members of the class who failed to identify that making tea was is an example of diffusion. This definitely means my lesson had not been executed in the best way.
Sometime after the lesson I sat down and evaluated what had gone well and what could have been improved. I believe there were some good aspects to the practical, and received praise during my lesson observation. My tutor liked that the practical was relatable to everyday life. However he also stated that it needed to be introduced with more purpose, something I strongly agree with. By making a stronger link between diffusion and tea bags I could have helped to ensure pupils understood the purpose of the practical. Perhaps if I had spent a greater time linking the idea of diffusion and making tea it would have helped to consolidate pupil understanding. I therefore did not feel as though the experiment had been executed in the best way.
Prior to the lesson I had identified there may be issues with low level disruption, this was why I had tried to plan activities that might engage these pupils and utilise their chatty nature in a positive way. Pair work is a brilliant way for these pupils to still meet the learning objectives for the lesson, but it is likely there will still be some off task behaviour. During the practical I made sure I walked around the room to supervise and provide help where required. This also helped ensure pupils stayed on task, however it is impossible to be everywhere at once. Perhaps by planning short and varied activities I could keep these pupils engaged throughout the lesson.
If I had given the pupils a particular time frame to complete the practical in this could have reduced the overall time spent on the practical. This could have also helped to prevent boredom. Aside from the practical I did use several pair and group activities, including a card sort during the starter and a “think, pair and share” activity to discuss what equipment might be required. Whilst this might have been effective it is difficult for the teacher to ensure everyone is involved.
One of the main issues seemed to be the fact the practical had no clear end point, as pupils had varying ideas about what a cup of tea should look like. Some people completed the practical after 30 seconds, whilst the pupils continued for over 10 minutes. I feel as though I could have overcome this by allocating a certain amount of time, e.g. we have 15 minutes to do this practical, as a quick practical ended up taking over half the lesson.
In conclusion I do not feel entirely confident pupils understood the concept of diffusion, perhaps I could have planned a better additional activity to compliment the practical to link it to the topic better. I feel as though pupils did not make great progress and even if they had, I was unable to assess this properly. During the plenary, a true or false activity, many pupils were unable to identify tea as an example of diffusion. By introducing the practical with more purpose I could have helped the pupils identify the variables for that practical, for example if they should stir the tea. However considering this was my first ever lesson and first practical I do not feel too disheartened. I felt as though this was an enjoyable practical for the pupils and everyone got involved.
Ka (2005) stated it is always better to give instructions in writing, which would have helped the pupils who were not listening properly or paying attention whilst I was giving my instructions. In the future I need to ensure each pupil receives a copy of the instruction sheet for the practical. If I ever forgot to print them out I could even politely ask TA to go and photocopy some during the lesson. Although at my first placement school there were no TA’s so this was not an option. In the future I am going to ensure I give a full safety briefing to the class prior to the commencement of any practical work, in order to ensure I am complying with the first Ofsted teaching standard.
Lesson 2
During the same week I had the chance to teach a second lesson on the movement of substances to another mixed ability year 7 class
. This meant I had time to reflect on how I could have improved and listened to feedback from my mentor, which proved invaluable. I decided each pupil should be given an instruction sheet, which they could annotate and highlight as we discussed what they’d be doing during the practical. This idea of delivering instructions by more than one medium is presented by Marzano et al. (2003). The literature states that just giving verbal instructions is not sufficient. In the classroom you need to accommodate all types of learners and not everyone is an auditory learner. After weighing up how much time it had taken my previous class to design their tables for the experiment, and how much they would actually benefit from this (not a lot), I decided to printout a table for each pupil. I included the units on the table, to avoid the unnecessary confusion we encountered last time. This lesson I decided to get all the pupils to gather around the front whilst I did a teacher demonstration of what they were doing in the practical.
Initially I felt very pleased with how the lesson had gone, it was a big improvement from lesson 1. I felt as though the instructions I gave were much clearer and the pupils seemed to have a much better idea of what they were doing than the previous group had. By performing a demonstration I could model what was expected of the pupils, whilst questioning the whole class. This helped me pinpoint who was likely to require extra support during the activity. But unfortunately again I struggled with low-level disruption throughout the lesson. I felt like I lost control of the lesson and left it for so long I struggled to regain this control. I was also worried about timings throughout the lesson, after running out of time with the previous group.
Upon reflection I realised I should have spent more time reinforcing my behavioural expectations, by waiting for silence before giving instructions. This would have helped to focus the entire class. I realised majority of the disruption stemmed from the initial demonstration, which involved spraying perfume at the front of the room to demonstrate diffusion. Instead of waiting for pupils to calm down before I continued with the lesson I went straight on with it, as I was worried about time after my lesson earlier in the week. I feel this was a major setback for the lesson and meant poor behaviour spoiled the learning.
In conclusion despite the fact I received positive feedback for the idea to use tea bags to represent diffusion I think in future I would stick to a practical on the scheme of work. Although tea bags are a relatable example from the students every day lives I think it caused some unnecessary confusion. Although I modelled the experiment for the class pupils were still unsure of when they should stop the practical. Perhaps the class could have benefitted from having an example of what I wanted the tea bag to look like after it had diffused into the water. In the future I think placing potassium permanganate into a beaker of water would be more effective and could even be done as a teacher demonstration. I believe this would have saved a lot of time and we could spend more time going over exactly what diffusion is, a concept I believe members of the class are still unsure of. Whilst there were some issues with practical itself, for instance the fact it had no clear end point, as pupils had different ideas about what a cup of tea should look like, the main problem throughout the lesson was low level disruption. Several pupils were constantly chatting and whispering to each other throughout my lesson. Rather than pausing the lesson and addressing this issue in front of the entire class during a pair activity I spoke to them to give a verbal warning (following the school’s behaviour policy). However minutes later the girls were back to talking and whispering, thus the warning did not have the desired effect.
In their dynamic model of educational effectiveness Creemers and Kyriakides (2006) highlight the importance of dealing with behaviour in an appropriate manner. One way this can be done is by establishing a clear set of rules and implementing them in a fair and consistent manner. During my next lesson I will focus on implementing the school’s behaviour policy to prevent low-level disruption from impacting on my lesson.
Lesson 3
My third lesson in this series was again with a mixed ability year 7 class and the topic was unicellular organisms. This time we did a fact-finding scavenger hunt activity to learn about amoeba and euglena. Following this activity the pupils used microscopes to observe amoeba and euglena. I started the practical by asking the pupils questions about microscopes (they had used them previously in lessons), therefore encouraging the class to utilise their prior knowledge. In Rosenshine’s principles of instruction (2012) he states it is important to begin each lesson with a brief outline of previous learning. By doing this you are linking the lesson to prior knowledge, which will give your lesson more impact. This is consistent with the second Ofsted teaching standard (S2), which is to promote good progress and outcomes by pupils. It states be aware of pupils’ capabilities and their prior knowledge, and plan teaching to build on these (Department for Education, 2011). We discussed as a class what we were doing and I the pupils a timescale to complete the activity in.
Immediately after the lesson I was pleased with how the lesson had gone, especially considering that this is quite a complex topic for year 7’s. However we did struggle with timings. A major issue was the fact some pupils had completed the first activity in just 5 minutes, whereas other were still struggling to complete it 15 minutes later. I had prepared extension work for the early finishers but should have differentiated the actual task. That way everyone could have completed it in the 15 minutes I had allocated.
Whilst the euglena worked quite well, the amoeba was very hard to find. As both euglena and amoeba and unicellular organisms they are extremely small so can be hard to observe. To improve this in the future I would have the microscopes already set up for the pupils. The main focus of this lesson was not to remember how to use a microscope and this caused unnecessary confusion within the class. It is also possible that the samples had been left on the microscope for too long, as the heat from the lamp can kill them. To overcome this I did have some videos of amoeba and euglena to show the class.
Again whilst I was giving instructions there were a couple of pupils whispering at the back, this time instead of just starting to talk I waited for complete silence. This was much more effective and the class seemed to have a better understanding of the task. Marzano, Marzano and Pickering (2003) stated it is important to set expectations for behaviour. By having clear rules in the classroom you are helping to create a safe and stimulating learning environment.
In the future I feel as though I need to start to praise more and use positive reinforcements for well-behaved students to motivate and inspire the rest of the class. This could be done through the use of both verbal praise but also rewards like house points and book of excellences.
Conclusions
In conclusion the best thing to do in a classroom is to follow the school’s behaviour policy, applying sanctions where necessary. However it is important to remember that rewarding good behaviour is just as important, and will help to reiterate expectations for behaviour. I believe that when students do not understand the initial instructions, this fundamentally imp
acts practical work. A reason for this could be that any instructions given often rely on assumptions of previous knowledge from prior experiments. However this is often not as good as a teacher may hope. For example, in my unicellular organisms lesson where pupils had to use microscopes to observe the specimens, the majority could not remember what objective lens they should start with or how to focus the lens, despite having used microscopes several times already that year. Many pupils do not have the confidence to speak out and say they are unsure of what they have to do. One way to overcome this would be by performing a demonstration for the class prior to any practical activity. By modelling the protocol you are giving visual learners a clearer idea of what they will be doing. However even after a demonstration there may be potential problems. It is impossible to ensure that all pupils are listening and paying attention, even if they appear to be. With larger classes there may be issues with the whole class being able to see the demonstration. Even after a demonstration pupils may still misunderstand what they are doing, which could lead to even more confusion. To ensure you give instructions in the most effective way it is important to get the whole classes attention before you start to speak. One of the issues I have had with this is how knowing how much time I should wait before I do. After reviewing various pieces of literature I have identified several techniques. By giving simple directions such as “close your note books” you can ensure pupils are ready to listen to your instructions. If you need to stop the lesson during a practical it is best to give an auditory signal, for example by counting down from 5 to 1.
One of the main issues with low-level disruption is that it impairs other students learning. Pupils who misbehave or do not listen to instructions are spoiling it for other children who are trying hard and actually do benefit from the consolidation of knowledge a practical can provide. In their article Kaplan, Gheen and Midgley (2002) talk about the idea of making classrooms more mastery orientated, this means the ultimate goal will be that the students develop new skills and acquire additional knowledge. They claim that if more teachers implemented this technique pupils would be less likely to disrupt lessons. Personally I believe that effective classroom management is an essential aspect of teaching. Pupils need to have a clear set of rules, and there should be consequences for poor behaviour.