Doug Lemov's field notes

Scott and his students…

Earlier this week I posted a clip of Scott Wells of Goldsmith Primary Academy as he Checked for Understanding with his students. Justifiably, the clip got rave reviews in a recent workshop and online as well.  No surprise that- you can see how sharp it is (and some of the highlights from my perspective at least) here.

Given the response, I thought I’d take the time to post a few more clips of Scott in action.

One of Scott’s strengths is his “Smart Start”: his classes swing into action right away, often with a quick writing exercise. You can see him doing that here.

Again you can see how crisp and familiar the routines for participation are in his class. This is Scott’s Smart Start from the same lesson- it’s the first task he asks students to do. At “go” they are off and running with their working memory focused on the task rather than the process. 

There are a lot of consistencies between this clip and the one I previously shared. Perhaps most notably how carefully Scott circulates, reading and assessing his students’ work as he goes. Each student feels seen and knows their work is important to Scott. And Scott ends the observation with a clear sense for who understands what.

One difference between this clip and the previous one is that, here, Scott “Show Calls” one student’s work for the class to study. It’s a pretty high level task he’s asked of them to evaluate what their classmate has done well and Scott lets Toby feel his classmates’ admiration in their praise … but he also finds an example of something both Toby and other class members could do to take their writing up a notch. 

By projecting a student’s writing and ensuring that it remains in view to the class as they discuss it, Scott is again leveraging a critical corollary of Cognitive Load Theory- the idea that if something we want learners to analyze disappears from view, the learners will have to use a significant portion of their working memory simply to remember it. This is called the Transient Information Effect. But when student’s analyze Toby’s work it remains in their view. They can refresh their memory of it with ease and this ensures that their analysis will be more robust and their memory of it better.

But of course Scott also ensures that their memory of the exercise will be strong by asking each student to go back and revise their original sentence based on what they’ve learned from reading Toby’s work.

Top level stuff.

But let’s move from the sublime to the (equally important) mundane. 

In this next video from the same lesson, you can see that Scott’s students are always crystal clear on the task they are being asked to complete.

They follow through readily and easily so their attention is carefully focused. Building such an orderly attentive environment accelerates learning and helps students to feel more successful. And one of the ways Scott causes that to happen is by planning and preparing his directions.

His directions always describe clear and concrete specific actions for students to take. There are always a small number of steps so working memory is not overwhelmed. After he gives those directions, he is reliably attentive to telling students whether and when he sees them following through (“I can see every single pencil moving”) and when necessary gets students back on track and non-invasively and quickly as possible.  So much of the positive and productive culture in Scott’s classroom, this is to say, starts with his consistent attention to the mundane and oft-overlooked art of giving super-clear directions and letting students know he sees and cares whether they follow-through on them- a concept we call the What To Do Cycle.

With a little luck there’s be more of Scott to come… one of the best things about his lesson was how much time his students spent reading aloud- building fluency and bringing the text to life.  Stay tuned but for now thanks and kudos to Scott.