WHEN the late Michael Marland wrote The Craft of The Classroom, nearly half a century ago, it was widely seen as one of the first attempts to analyse why some teachers appeared to be more successful than others. The title itself implied that there were strategies that teachers could learn and put into practice to enhance the students’ learning.
Getting Your Class To Behave has driven Marland’s original ideas on to a whole new level. Sue Cowley’s focus is unequivocally on classroom behaviour.
Ask any new entrant to the teaching profession about their number-one anxiety, and it will almost certainly be about classroom management. Since this is the sixth edition of the author’s original volume, “updated and better than ever”, according to the publicity, it is safe to conclude that Cowley has found a ready audience for her advice.
It is written with the express aim of minimising teachers’ stress. Workload, paperwork, and increasingly demanding accountability are bad enough. If teachers also feel that they are failing to meet the challenge of classroom control, the pressure can become unsustainable.
The old truisms are still here, since some techniques are timeless. Teachers learn early that it is essential to describe the behaviour rather than the individual. Johnny is not an idiot, but his behaviour may well be idiotic.
On the other hand, the chapter on teaching styles is refreshingly new. How is it that students quickly attach labels to their teachers? “Strict and scary” as opposed to “comic and quirky”.
“Firm but fair” is the traditional aim; but then Cowley describes her own preferred style — intriguingly — as “close to the edge”. Students should be kept guessing, at first, where you are coming from, and fascinated by the outcome — a bit like the whole book, in fact, for some time now a bestseller.
Complementing the above volume, with excellent timing, comes 100 Ideas: Supporting students with ADHD. While Cowley’s book refers to ADHD students, and much of her advice is applicable across the board, this small handbook of ideas from Janine Perryman is specifically focused on neuro-inclusive strategies, “which enable, rather than disable”.
Of the vast number of school days missed through exclusion in an academic year, many are as a result of the school system’s failure. First, to understand neurodiversity, then, to deal with students with the appropriate empathy.
Meanwhile, this increased understanding of ADHD is taking place in school scenarios, where rigid behaviour systems have become the norm. Exclusions are the easy way out.
This guide, packed with constructive suggestions, may make an invaluable contribution towards reducing exclusions. The 100 ideas are helpfully set out in ten sections. Each part is headed by a “says-it-all” quotation from a student or educator.
Take the familiar problem of students shouting out the answer, frustrating the rest of the class and the teacher. “Sometimes I think of something cool and want to share it,” according to Jake, aged 14. Is this a genuine distraction, or a deliberate deflection? Either way, understanding and empathy are the starting points, followed by practical suggestions for proceeding with the lesson for the benefit of all. Invaluable.
At the same time, across the nation, the Special Educational Needs Department (SEND) is the umbrella for all students with all kinds of SEN diagnosis, including ADHD and Autism. In SEND: Strategies for the primary years, the author, Georgina Durrant, takes it as a given that the system for an external assessment and diagnosis of SEN is currently woefully long and deeply frustrating. Private assessment can be an option, but it is horribly expensive.
Durrant writes that whingeing about the process is “the easy bit”. Getting on with making things better, accepting that rapid diagnosis is not an option, is the challenge.
New technology, in the form of QR codes, is a key tool, which I have not seen used to this extent before. The QR codes in the book take the reader to the author’s face-to-face explanation of several educational games on YouTube.
Constructive play is at the heart of her approach to improving both literacy and numeracy. After my daily Wordle task, I now found myself playing along with Ms Durrant’s suggested games: Opposite Word Tennis, the Alliteration Game, and Odd One Out — Why? Refreshingly, some of the best of the old methodologies can be found here as well: mnemonics, rhymes and songs, raps, and mind maps. When it comes to numeracy, up pop dominoes! So simple: it’s a genius idea.
As for motor skills to help the dyspraxic, Durrant suggests, of all things, water pistols. It is messy, she concedes, but at least the children are aiming at targets and not at each other — a teacher will hope.
With Durrant as guide and mentor, positivity and outside-the-box thinking are guaranteed. This resource could easily work in the early years of secondary school as well. Great fun all round.
Succeeding as a History Teacher is another new idea hitting the bookshelves. Succeeding as an English Teacher is already published, as is the maths equivalent. Geography will follow in 2025.
Now for history. Helpfully divided into three sections, the discussion begins with a focus on curriculum. In the transition from Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3, it is essential to bear in mind that Year 7 may be the first time that a student has studied history as a discrete subject.
Key principles emerge: first, for the non-specialist, i.e. a KS3 teacher with space on a personal timetable who has to fill in with a few history lessons. Note that the National Curriculum for KS3 History is vague. In fact, the only compulsory element is the Holocaust. It is, therefore, not the history teacher’s enemy.
Throughout the book, there is now the sine qua non that the curriculum represents 21st-century Britain. Trade, travel, technology, and time will be helpful connecting themes. In diverse communities, local history can be a particularly apposite theme. I have never forgotten Ambalavaner Sivanandan’s brilliant aphorism “We’re here, because you were there.”
The second section is full of ideas for effective lessons; and the book concludes with full guidance for continuing professional development.
And let’s finish with the good news: history held on to its fifth place in the A-level entry table this year. History teachers must be getting some things right.
Dennis Richards is a former head of St Aidan’s C of E High School, Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
Getting Your Class To Behave
Sue Cowley
Bloomsbury £20
(978-180199-432-3)
Church Times Bookshop £18
100 Ideas: Supporting students with ADHD
Janine Perryman
Bloomsbury £15
(978-180199-346-3)
Church Times Bookshop £13.50
SEND: Strategies for the primary years
Georgina Durrant
Bloomsbury £18.99
(978-1-80199-366-1)
Church Times Bookshop £17.09
Succeeding as a History Teacher
E. Folorunsho and L. Gladwin
Bloomsbury £18.99
(978-1-80199-221-3)
Church Times Bookshop £17.09