Punk Learning

Good teaching isn’t about pleasing Ofsted or the SLT, it’s about ignoring the buzzcocks and doing what’s best for the children – even if that means ditching exercise books, says Tait Coles...

Is it such an appalling idea to actually get rid of exercise books once and for all? Think about the regular scenario at the end of each academic year when you have a cupboard full of them. What do we all do? That’s right, we bin them. Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you save them to bring out at a parents’ evening; but ultimately, you will bin them! The kids don’t want them; we don’t want them. So what’s the point of having them in the first place?

It’s a question worth asking: is keeping a collection of ‘sample’ books the best way to uncover the beautiful and creative work being produced by your students? Chances are, all the great stuff being constructed is not going to find its way into an exercise book anyway. And why should it?

Are we to assume the only thing worth reading is to be found in students’ exercise books? If it is, then what a bloody waste. Who gets to see them? One teacher, one student, maybe parents, and possibly a line manager under strict instructions to carry out a book-observing regime. And let’s face it, they’re not looking at books to see the kids’ work; they’re looking at them to check on your marking.

Some teachers ask students to write stuff in their books that make them feel smug when they’re marking them. They get a kick out of screaming, “Yes! That’s exactly what I wanted them to write. God, I’m such a great teacher!” But think about it: are they using the books for the right reasons? And are books even the right medium for students to collate and showcase their learning? Great learning, or even bad learning, can be shared in many different ways. Here are some ideas:

Write on everything and anything. Big sheets of paper, small pieces of paper, sticky notes, tables and windows… yes, windows. Your students will love this and will be reluctant to write on anything else afterwards. The marks are temporary and can be rubbed off and amended as necessary, giving your learners the freedom to change and add new perspectives to their learning. The real beauty of writing on windows, however, is the fact that it becomes a focal point and a reference for the whole class.

Display everything. If you are asking students to spend time creating ideas as a group on big sheets of paper, then think how they will feel if they are simply shoved in a drawer or recycled? Get them up on the walls and use them to support the next steps in their learning; they might be messy and untidy, but this is a document of learning that can be referred to again.

Don’t be frightened of displaying students’ work that is wrong. Students can learn so much from misconceptions and so can teachers. These are our starting points. This is how learners can see what and how much they’ve learnt from that moment.

Have a feelings board and encourage your class to populate it with their thoughts during lessons. This is not an ‘airy-fairy’ approach, but a very simple way to gauge their state of mind. How often do students have a forum to tell their teacher about their emotions?

What’s the point of a display that’s not being used? Any display that’s only there to decorate the room is a waste of the students’ learning space. Many schools now have a focus on the physical class environment – which is great – but make sure your displays are for the students and for the learning. They should not be there to make the teacher look good and appease management

Whatever you pin up around your room, make sure it’s given the respect it deserves. Just because work isn’t in an exercise book doesn’t mean that it’s not important to provide feedback. Think about it this way: the effective feedback and critique you give for one piece of work will be displayed for the whole class to see.

Exercise books are often used as performance indicators and are frequently an insular and isolated affair, but there are different and creative ways to share the great stuff happening in your lessons. However you choose to display students’ learning, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons and not to please anyone else.

Tait Coles’s new book is Nevermind the Inspectors (Independent Thinking Press, 2014). It challenges the orthodoxy of teaching and shows how students can be central to a critical educational culture.

About the author

Tait Coles is a teacher, vice principal in a Bradford academy and an educational speaker. You can find his blog at taitcoles.wordpress.com