John+Hattie+By+Debbie


 * John Hattie - 27/8/09 (Written by Debbie) **

Here are some of the key points from John Hattie's seminar this afternoon for those of you who didn't make it.

Reducing class size on it's own does not have a positive impact on student achievement. However, it can make a difference if we as teachers do things differently in our classrooms as a result of reducing the number of students.

Homework does not have a significant effect size. But that if we choose to give homework it should be short, reinforcing of classroom learning and assessed, because if not we are wasting our own and students time.

Outdoor / adventure programmes have a positive impact (0.52). This is because there are often clear learning goals, a clear picture of what success looks like and other positive influences such as peer support and engaging.

Linking to the above one, having worked examples was also found to have a significant effect. John suggested this was because it makes clear to students what success looks like.

Feedback is rated very highly. But he emphasised that feedback doesn't work unless children are making errors.He suggests that errors need to be welcomed but that this of course depends on having a good classroom climate. Part of this is to ensure students are challenged too. If they are not challenged they won't make errors.

John Hattie found that the influence that has the largest effect size is students self expectations. The suggestion is that we need to get children setting themselves challenging goals to achieve if they are to achieve well.

John went on to talk about the importance of teachers considering all the time "How do we know if something we are doing is working?" and to work on what we as teachers need to do differently, not what the kids need to do differently.

I have come away from this evening thinking about taking more time to see teaching and learning in my classroom through my students eyes and to think about how I can reduce the amount of talking I do and increase the amount they do. John talks about children needing to be able to set themselves meaningful goals. I hope to explore this more with him tomorrow as I question how do children set meaningful goals for their learning, if they don't know what they still have to learn?

In our discussion on Friday we reflected on the importance of Questioning and Self questioning. The effect size (on student achievement) for questioning is 0.46 and for self questioning is 0.64. He would argue these are therefore significant and worth us considering in terms of practice in our classrooms. Today Patricia came and spent the morning in my classroom doing some formal observations of my teaching as part of my appraisal and I asked her to focus on how I and the students used questions. In our follow up session we discussed the observations and then went online to find out more about self questioning and what makes for good questioning.
 * John Hattie and Questioning - 31st August **

This is a simple Powerpoint that you could share with students to promote self questioning during maths sessions. []

This is a good site about "Teaching During Reading, Self Questioning Strategies" []

This page gives types of questions names, and suggests the types of questions required if we want to open up discussion. [] Type in the content of your page here.