Sue Jenkins, Head of Years 10 and 11, and Hannah Wilcox, Deputy Head of Years 10 and 11, share five reasons they’ve found The Day an invaluable resource for tutor time activities.

Howell’s School, Llandaff, is an independent school in Cardiff which educates girls aged 3-18 and boys aged 16-18. It is part of the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST). 

The Day publishes daily news articles and resources with the aim of help teachers inspire students to become critical thinkers and better citizens by engaging their natural curiosity in real-world problems. We first came across it as a library resource and recognised its potential for pastoral activities when the length of our tutor time sessions was extended to allow more discussion time and flexibility in their use. 

Post-Covid, it has never been more important to promote peer collaboration, discussion and debate in schools. There is an ever-increasing need for students to select, question and apply their knowledge when researching; it has never been more important for students to have well-developed thinking and analytical skills. We find The Day invaluable in helping us to prompt students to discuss and understand current affairs, and to enable those who are already aware to extend and debate their understanding. 

Here are five key pastoral reasons why we would recommend subscribing to The Day:

1. Timely, relevant topics throughout the year

You will always find a timely discussion topic on The Day website. The most recent topics feature prominently on the homepage, and a Weekly Features section allows you to narrow down the most relevant discussion topic for the session you are planning. Assembly themes, such as Ocean Day in June, are mapped across the academic year for ease of forward planning. We particularly enjoyed discussing the breakaway success of Emma Raducanu in the context of risk-taking, and have researched new developments in science, such as NASA’s James Webb telescope, in the week they have been launched.

2. Supporting resources to engage and challenge students

The need to involve and interest students, make sessions straightforward for busy form tutors, and cover tricky topics, combine to make it daunting to plan tutor time sessions – but resources linked to The Day’s articles make it manageable. Regular features such as The Daily Poster allow teachers to appeal to all abilities and learning styles with accessible and interesting infographics. These can also be printed and downloaded for displays, making life much easier for academic departments too. One of the best features we’ve found for languages is the ability to read and translate articles in target languages such as French and Spanish. Reading levels can be set on the website for literacy differentiation, and key words are defined for students to aid their understanding of each article.

3. Quick PSHE links for busy teachers

Asked to cover a class at the last minute? We’ve all been there! With The Day, you are sure to find a relevant subject story to discuss within seconds, and, best of all, be certain that the resources are appropriate for your students. With our Year 10 and 11 students, we have covered topics such as body image with the help of The Day by prompting discussion of Kate Winslet’s rejection of screen airbrushing. Using articles is particularly useful with potentially difficult or emotive issues where students may be more able to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of certain attitudes by looking at news events, detaching themselves from but also gaining insight about the personal situations they may be experiencing. The PSHE programme is vast; it is great to use The Day to plan tutor time sessions and gives us the opportunity to touch on a wide range of issues relatively easily.

4. Motivational themes brought to life through real stories

We have also found The Day’s articles useful for providing examples of motivational themes for our year groups. The Themes Calendar is particularly useful here; for example, tutor groups discussed the themes of resilience and diversity using the article on Preet Chandi’s trek to the South Pole. If you’re looking for assembly inspiration, The Day is a great starting point.

5. Develop oracy, thinking and research skills through meaningful debate

Each article has suggested tasks and discussion questions which we have found very useful for planning tutor time activities which develop students’ oracy, thinking and research skills. The Day promotes high-level debates about environmental, societal and political issues which students are keen to explore. One recent example is the discussion of privacy laws and press freedom prompted by the article about Rebel Wilson’s forced outing by an Australian newspaper. Activities can be easily adapted or combined to promote effective discussion. ‘Connections’ articles contain links to similar areas of study, helping teachers to plan and students to see the relevance of current affairs.

Find out more…

NACE is partnering with The Day on a free live webinar on Thursday 30 June, providing an opportunity to explore this resource, and its role within cognitively challenging learning, in more detail. You can sign up here, or catch up with the recording afterwards in our webinars library (member login required).

Plus: NACE members can benefit from a 20% discount on annual subscriptions to The Day. For details of this and all current member offers, take a look at our member offers page (login required). 

The context

What worked?

Addressing the language gap

Motivations and barriers

Parental support

Final reflections

Would you be interested in sharing your experiences of teaching remotely and/or across cultures? Is this an area you’d like to explore or develop? Contact communications@nace.co.uk to share your experience or cpd@nace.co.uk to express your interest in being part of future projects like this.

Gavin Illsley, Head of Programmes, English-Speaking Union

Spelling or poetry, complicated maths, explosive chemistry, or predicting the Bank of England’s interest rates. In so many aspects of school life, competitions can be part of a vibrant culture of learning. The English-Speaking Union (ESU) believes that oracy should be at the heart of every classroom, and oracy competitions can help bring it to the heart of every school. Read on to find out more about the ESU’s approach to competitions, and how to register your school for participation in future contests. 

1. Competitions provide focus for year-wide activities

While the end result may be a team of three or five students going to a competition, the process is an opportunity to bring oracy to much larger groups. Many of our participating schools use competition season as a time to get everyone involved in oracy activities – the entire school could enter the first round of our Performing Shakespeare competition, while teachers often use our ESU-Churchill Public Speaking Competition as a chance to get everyone giving speeches in class. You can even run your own internal qualifier events.

The successful teams and individuals can be role models and exemplars – there’s no better assembly highlight than a winning team showing off their newly polished oracy skills!

2. Competitions give different ways of engaging with skills

Oracy activities can be intimidating for some students, but very often taking a slightly different approach can make a student feel more comfortable and confident. Wrapping presentation and speech within part of a dramatic performance is helpful for some, while others find their feet in the controlled role of a public speaking chairperson. Finding the right way for an individual to express themselves can unlock achievement in other areas. 

3. Competitions provide challenge 

All students deserve access to oracy education but, for those who are particularly keen or engaged, classroom opportunities might not be enough. Public speaking competitions give students a place to stretch themselves and take on bigger challenges. Tackling peers at local, regional and even national levels means there’s always more to reach for.

This can also provide a useful outlet for the students, who may otherwise behave in a disruptive way as they try to maximise speaking time in class at others’ expense.

4. Competition can be a motivator

Some people hate running laps of a track, but give them a ball and an opposition and they’ll run all day. Similarly, with oracy, competition can be a great source of motivation. 

All steps – preparations, practice, performance – can be given a boost by the chance to compete, progress and win acclaim. As Simon Porter, headteacher at De Aston School in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, says: “The students really enjoy the competitions. They get to have their voice heard on important topics and it’s been transformative for their confidence and their self-esteem.” 

5. Competitions are social and interactive

Public speaking competitions are all about interacting with other students both within a class or year group and from a broad range of other schools, right across the country. Debaters will go head-to-head with opponents, and public speaking teams will host and welcome speakers from other schools as part of the contest. 

This benefits students as learners, as they can observe how others approach similar tasks, share ideas, and use their words and actions to motivate and inspire. It also benefits students from a social and emotional development perspective. Engaging outside of the competition itself is a chance (for teachers too!) to meet others with similar passions, share and chat. This is something that teachers often comment on, pointing out that students typically have very little opportunity to talk to other children their age whom they don’t already know. “It’s nice that they are experiencing, very clearly, schools that are from a very different background, seeing the differences, and also knowing that there isn’t as much of a difference as they previously thought,” says Grace Aldridge, teacher, Kensington Aldridge Academy.

Sign up!

Sign up now for the English-Speaking Union’s national competitions: Performing Shakespeare (Y7-9), the ESU-Churchill Public Speaking Competition (Y9-11) and the Schools’ Mace debating competition (Y7-13). All have trained judges and offer extensive feedback opportunities. More details and the registration form can be found here and supporting resources to help train and develop your students can be accessed here.  

About the English-Speaking Union

The English-Speaking Union is an educational charity working to ensure young people have the speaking and listening skills and cultural understanding they need to thrive. Our debate, public speaking and cultural exchange programmes help young people to engage with the world, to speak more confidently and to listen to and understand different points of view. These skills improve young people’s attainment, emotional intelligence and social skills, helping them to live their lives to the fullest. To find out more, visit esu.org

Upcoming opportunities:

• Webinar: Building your secondary school oracy culture with the ESU - Wednesday 15 September at 4pm
• Webinar: Boosting student oracy skills with the ESU’s secondary school competitions - Thursday 23 September at 4pm
• ESU secondary school competitions for 2021-22 - register by 1 October 
  

More from the English-Speaking Union:

• Blog post: 5 reasons to teach oracy skills in your classroom
• Blog post: 5 oracy activities to stretch all learners, in every lesson
• Webinar (member login required): Oracy-based challenges to stretch and support more able learners
  

Emma Sanderson, Head of English at NACE member and Challenge Award-accredited Hartland International School (Dubai), shares advice for successful use of “Genius Hour” project-based learning to challenge and motivate learners, inspired by Google’s “20% time”.

As teachers, our awareness of the importance of challenging questions is always at the forefront of our minds, particularly with our more able learners. However, the onus of asking challenging questions shouldn’t always be placed on the teacher. Cue Genius Hour, an idea inspired by Google’s “20% time”, in which employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their time working on any project of their choosing, on the condition that it ultimately benefits the company in some way, and which is famously credited with giving rise to many of Google’s most successful innovations.

Google’s “20% time” is similar to the use of Genius Hour in our school: encouraging students to take ownership of their learning by using a proportion of curriculum time to focus on topics they are passionate about. By coming up with their own driving question to focus their research, students manage their own learning journey and subsequently become even more engaged with the learning process.

Here are three key steps to use Genius Hour project-based learning effectively:

1) Support students to develop their driving question.

The driving question of the project will become the focus of the students’ research. Whilst students may be tempted to simply find out more information about a topic close to their heart, the key is to construct a question that allows for in-depth research and is also broad enough for students to include their personal opinions. Even our most able learners will need support with this task, and for this, question stems can be incredibly useful:

• What does _______ reveal about _________?
• To what extent does…?
• What motivates_________?
• How would you develop…?
• What alternatives are there for…?
• How can technology be used to…?
• What assumptions are there about…?
• What are the [ethical] implications of…?
• How can we challenge…?
• What would happen if…?
• How can we improve…?
• What might happen if…?

Students might be encouraged to come up with solutions to real-life problems or delve into ideas linked to current affairs that they are intrigued by. Either way, these broad question stems allow for thorough exploration of a topic.

2) Help students develop their research skills.

Left to their own devices, students may be tempted to simply Google their question and see what answers come up. Instead, offer guidance on the best and most reliable sources of information for their project.

It may be that students are directed towards relevant reference books in the library. Additionally, online resources can prove invaluable; the Encyclopaedia Britannica offers a wealth of knowledge for students, whilst news websites aimed at teenagers (for example Newsela and The Day) encourage students to form their own opinions on current affairs and offer suggestions for further reading.

Our more able learners may be more adept at focusing their internet searches and filtering through the vast array of results. If this is the case, students would be expected to determine whether a source is reliable or biased and should be confident at citing their sources.

3) Encourage creativity in how students present their findings.

Ideally, students will be excited and motivated to complete their Genius Hour project, and originality in how they present their results should be encouraged. Students may want to create a video, make a presentation, write a passionate and persuasive speech, design an informative leaflet… The more freedom the students have, the more their creativity will flourish. 

One of our students gave a rousing speech on the question, “What alternatives are there to living on planet Earth?” (ultimately concluding there were none and that we need to change our lifestyles in order to save the planet). Another offered a passionate presentation on the theme “How can we improve Earth’s biodiversity while allowing people to still eat meat and plants?” And after witnessing the impact of Covid-19 first hand, one student wrote an insightful article to answer the question, “What has Covid-19 revealed about our society in 2020?”

This approach to project-based learning can also be effectively applied during distance learning – students can be given the success criteria for the project and set the challenge of managing their own time. There is ample opportunity to use technology to give presentations remotely, either live through Zoom or Teams, or recorded individually using a platform such as Flipgrid. 

In summary…

Overall, Genius Hour is a fantastic tool to promote deeper thinking in the classroom, whilst also having huge benefits across the wider curriculum. We have found this approach has worked particularly well with Key Stage 3 students and is the perfect opportunity to refine the research and presentation skills required at GCSE, whilst also impacting positively across the curriculum in all lessons. Furthermore, it sends the message to students that their passions outside of school are valued, which in itself can prove to be hugely motivational. Presenting their findings at the end of the project instils confidence in our learners, giving them the vital communication, leadership and time management skills necessary for life beyond education. 

Further reading: “Cognitive challenge: principles into practice”

NACE’s report “Cognitive challenge: principles into practice” explores approaches to curriculum and pedagogy which optimise the engagement, learning and achievement of very able young people, combining relevant research and theory with examples of current practice in NACE Challenge Award-accredited schools. Preview and order here.

Not yet a NACE member? Find out more, and join our mailing list for free updates and free sample resources.

In this article, originally published on the Psychology Today website, NACE patron Richard Bailey explores the problem(s) with praise…

There have been a number of reports and research articles trying to help teachers distinguish between effective and ineffective practices. One useful example comes from the University of Durham, when a team led by Professor Robert Coe reviewed a wide range of literature to find out what works, and what probably does not, in the Sutton Trust report What makes great teaching? Review of the underpinning research (2014).

Among the report’s examples of teaching techniques whose efficacy is not supported by research evidence was the widely discredited idea of "learning styles," as well as commonly used practices like "ability grouping" and "discovery learning." Even more surprising for many readers, perhaps, was the inclusion of "Use praise lavishly" in the list of questionable strategies. This is likely to be surprising because praise for students is seen as inherently affirming and beneficial by many people and is a core element of a positive philosophy of teaching, coaching, and parenting. In a similar way, criticism is now frequently condemned for being negative and harmful.

There are school programs and sports organisations based explicitly on the dual premises of plenty of praise and minimal criticism. And the rationale for this is usually that praise bolsters self-esteem and criticism harms it. In effect, this is the "gas gauge" theory of self-esteem, in which praise fills up the tank with good feelings and social approval, and criticism drains it.

Creating positive learning experiences

How can one not applaud the movement towards more positive approaches to education and sports? Especially for young people, these settings should be joyous, exciting experiences, and we know from vast amounts of research evidence from the United States and elsewhere that this is not always the case (link) (link).

We know, for example, that bullying, harassment and abuse still hide in dark corners, and that far too many parents, coaches, and teachers confuse infant needs with adult wants and infant games with professional competitions. We also know that such behaviours drive children away from engagement in and enjoyment of these pursuits because young people, if not all adults, know that learning, playing sports, and taking part in other activities are supposed to be fun.

Consider sports specifically for a moment. Research from the United States suggests that sports participation drops by 30% each year after age 10. According to a report from the National Alliance for Youth Sports, over 70% of children drop out of organised sports by age 13.

Numerous studies report that many children are put off participating in sports by an over-emphasis on winning and that this effect is especially strong among girls. Children are too often presented with a narrow and uninspiring range of opportunities, and while many love team games and athletic events, others find these traditional forms of physical activity irrelevant, boring, or upsetting.

Remember: this pattern of children dropping out from sports is happening as the health and happiness of young people are being compromised by unprecedented levels of physical inactivity. With activity levels low, and predicted to go even lower, we cannot afford to turn children off sports, and the movement toward more positive athletic experiences is undoubtedly a movement in the right direction.

There is a danger, though, in embracing praise as wholeheartedly and unconditionally as some parents, coaches, and teachers seem to have done.

When praise goes wrong…

Praise for students may be seen as affirming and positive, but a number of studies suggest that the wrong kinds of praise can be very harmful to learning. Psychologist Carol Dweck has carried out some of the most valuable research in this regard. In one study from 1998, fifth-graders were asked to solve a set of moderately difficult mathematical problems and were given praise that focused either on their ability ("You did really well; you're so clever") or on their hard work ("You did really well; you must have tried really hard”). The children were then asked to complete a set of more difficult challenges and were led to believe they had been unsuccessful. The researchers found that the children who had been given effort-based praise were more likely to show willingness to work out new approaches. They also showed more resilience and tended to attribute failure to lack of effort, not lack of ability. The children who had been praised for their intelligence tended to choose tasks that confirmed what they already knew, displayed less resilience when problems got harder, and worried more about failure.

What many might consider a common-sense approach – praising the child for being smart, clever, or "a natural" – turned out to be an ineffective strategy. The initial thrill of a compliment soon gave way to a drop in self-esteem, motivation, and overall performance. And this was the result of just one sentence of praise.

Some researchers have argued that praise that is intended to be encouraging and affirming of low-attaining students actually conveys a message of low expectations. In fact, children whose failure was responded to with sympathy were more likely to attribute their failure to lack of ability than those who were presented with anger. They claim:

“Praise for successful performance on an easy task can be interpreted by a student as evidence that the teacher has a low perception of his or her ability. As a consequence, it can actually lower rather than enhance self-confidence. Criticism following poor performance can, under some circumstances, be interpreted as an indication of the teacher's high perception of the student's ability.”

So, at the least, the perception that praise is good for children and criticism is bad needs a serious rethink: praise can hinder rather than help development and learning if given inappropriately. Criticism offered cautiously and wisely can be empowering.

Well-chosen criticism over poorly judged praise

These findings would seem to call for a reconsideration of a very widely held belief among teachers and coaches that they should avoid making negative or critical comments, and that if they must do so, then they should counter-balance a single criticism with three, four, or even five pieces of praise. This assumption is clearly based on the "gas gauge" model of self-esteem described earlier, viewing any negative comment as necessarily damaging, and requiring positive comments to be heaped around it in order to offset the harm.

I am unaware of any convincing evidence that criticism or negative feedback necessarily causes any harm to children's self-esteem. Of course, abusive comments and personal insults may well do so, but these are obviously inappropriate and unacceptable behaviours. Well-chosen criticism, delivered in an environment of high expectations and unconditional support, can inspire learning and development, whilst poorly judged praise can do more harm than good. Even relatively young children can tell the difference between constructive and destructive criticism, and it is a serious and unhelpful error to conflate the two.

We actually know quite a lot about effective feedback, and that knowledge is summarised nicely by the educational researcher John Hattie: "To be effective, feedback needs to be clear, purposeful, meaningful, and compatible with students’ prior knowledge, and to provide logical connections.”

I suggest that it would be extremely difficult to deliver feedback that is clear, purposeful, etc. in the context of voluminous praise. Eventually, the parent, teacher, or coach simply ends up making vague, meaningless or tenuous platitudes. And this can cause more damage to the learner-teacher relationship than criticism.

Build confidence by being present

The psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz describes a conversation he had with a school teacher named Charlotte Stiglitz – the mother of the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz:

"I don't praise a small child for doing what they ought to be able to do," she said. "I praise them when they do something really difficult – like sharing a toy or showing patience. I also think it is important to say ‘thank you’, … but I wouldn't praise a child who is playing or reading.”

Grosz watched as a four-year-old Stiglitz showed her a picture he had been drawing. She did not do what many would have done (including me when I taught this age group) and immediately praise such a lovely drawing. Instead, she had an unhurried conversation with the child about his picture. “She observed, she listened. She was present,” Grosz noted.

I think Stephen Grosz’s conclusion from this seemingly everyday event is correct and important: being present for children builds their confidence by demonstrating that they are listened to. Being present avoids an inherent risk associated with excessive praise, as with any type of reward, that the praise becomes an end in itself and the activity is merely a means to that end. When that happens, learning, achievement, and the love of learning are compromised. 

Praise is like sugar. Used too liberally or in an inappropriate way, it spoils. But used carefully and sparingly, it can be a wonderful thing!

This article previously appeared in Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smart-moves). 
Copyright Richard Bailey