The classroom experiment.

Sid is an absolute sweetheart who somehow cuts to the chase of things. I bet his mum and dad are so proud of how he's come across in this, he's like the lone sane voice in the wilderness at times! Did anyone else think the staff came across as totally peed off with it all towards the end when the Prof was trying to get them to use the whiteboards? They looked like disaffected pupils themselves at times.
 
But then the people who are very weak at a subject but who are willing and want to learn are stuck in a class with not just a couple of naughty ones, but 15 naughty ones. Bottom sets are a nightmare - you've got 75% uncooperative/disruptive as well as struggling - it's horrid for the students who just need help because they struggle with the subject.
 
Possibly, but then you create unteachable classes at the bottom end...and those classes have a negative impact on the rest. Sadly, it is better to spread them all around. No system is perfect.
 
Look, us teachers don't like change...and don't like 'non-teachers' waltzing in with their latest fads and whims every other week. Nothing is given time to settle and bed down before something else comes along.

Sid is brilliant. Very capable. For a boy of 12, he has the ability to say what he wants to say in a very sensitive and positive way. Good on 'im!
 
Yep it's when you get the double-sided ones so when the people in front of you hold them up you can see what they've written on the back - usually some rude drawings of a certain area of the body :D And the teachers are none the wiser (or so we thought at the time!)
 
Very interesting programme on so many levels. Loved the ideas of the cups and sticks, although I wonder whether the cups would be more of a hindrance than a help. In my school, we have used 'traffic lights', 'no hands up' and 'white boards' for quite sometime. The 'no-hands' is a good technique and the 'white boards' are good, but they take a lot of managing which takes a while to adjust to. 'Secret Student'...again...excellent idea. Forging a whole class, pupil led responsibility towards behaviour. I guess it could be extended to learning to. 'Comments, no grades'...again very good. The bright didn't like it because it took away one of their tools used to show off to the others and boost their own egos. Excellent way of actually getting the pupils to focus more on how to improve. Fascinating how the bright weren't so impressed with Dylan's ideas. He took away the control of the bright ones who simply used the old, established systems to boost their own egos to the detriment of the others. I wonder how many of the ideas the teachers at the school are still using? Be interesting to know. And finally...I vote that Sid should be fast tracked to senior management. He is far better than the muppets I have had to work with in the past. What an incite-full lad. Very perceptive. Well done to Sid.

As a teacher, I checked the TES (Times Ed) website today to see what had been said...and Sid had made a comment on the show...I made a comment in the comments bit to (obviously not to him personally because that wouldn't be right) so he could see how impressed I was.

Would you like me to copy and paste his comments into here?
 
Completely right. It comes to funding. There should be smaller classes and more staff, that way, being in the bottom set wouldn't necessarily mean being in a class full of naughties to.

In an ideal world, there should be zero tolerance on behaviour. The disruptive element should be removed from all classes, regardless of what classes they happen to be in.

The sad thing is, for decades, government, local authorities, school governing bodies and heads have buried their heads in the sand regarding behaviour. They refuse to accept that behaviour in our schools is far from good. Until they accept that there is a problem, the real issues won't be tackled.

While we wait for that time, while not ideal, mixed ability is really the best solution for the majority.
 
"When the BBC approached us to see if we were prepared to take part in The Classroom Experiment, we jumped at the chance. We know that school improvement depends absolutely on what goes on inside the classroom; students need to be engaged with the learning process and teachers need to know that every child is making progress in every lesson. The prospect of working with a leading educationalist for a 10-week period was an exciting one and it was a rare opportunity for our young staff, many of them in their first year of teaching, to be coached by Dylan Wiliam. The results were astonishing; students not only made twice the progress as others in the same year group, but were more firmly focussed on their learning and, actually, life in general. Students are still talking animatedly about their experience and have so many insightful comments to make. Many simply affirm those things that we already know, for example the enormous impact of all subject teachers applying the same simple strategies in every lesson, but it is still sobering to hear just how much difference this sort of collective response on our part can make to each student‟s experience.
 
I'm really enjoying it, it's very interesting. I don't think the "shouty" maths teacher is a nightmare - I think she's stressed and also I think her accent makes her sound more stressed than she is sometimes. And the techniques seem to be helping her a lot too, which is good. I can identify with her - I was a stressed teacher too. I left the profession, sometimes I wonder whether that was the right thing to do.
 
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