Education Endowment Foundation

Verbal methods of feedback can improve pupil attainment and may be more time-efficient when compared to some forms of written feedback.

However, as with written feedback, the effects of verbal feedback can vary and the method of delivery is likely to be less important than ensuring the principles of effective teacher feedback (Recommendations 1–3) are followed.

To a great extent, good teaching for pupils with SEND is good teaching for all.

Searching for a ‘magic bullet’ can distract teachers from the powerful strategies they often already possess.

The research suggests a group of teaching strategies that teachers should consider emphasising for pupils with SEND. Teachers should develop a repertoire of these strategies they can use flexibly in response to the needs of all pupils.

• flexible grouping;
• cognitive and metacognitive strategies;
• explicit instruction;
• using technology to support pupils with SEND; and
• scaffolding.

Manipulatives and representations can be powerful tools for supporting young children to engage with mathematical ideas. 

Ensure that children understand the links between the manipulatives and the mathematical ideas they represent.

Ensure that there is a clear rationale for using a particular manipulative or representation to teach a specific mathematical concept.

Encourage children to represent problems in their own way, for example, with drawings and marks.

Use manipulatives and representations to encourage discussion about mathematics.

Encourage children to use their fingers - an important manipulative for children.

Training focused on teaching reading is likely to help secondary school teachers teach their subject more effectively.

To comprehend complex texts, students need to actively engage with what they are reading and use their existing subject knowledge.

Reading strategies, such as activating prior knowledge, prediction and questioning can improve students’ comprehension.

Strategies can be introduced through modelling and group work, before support is gradually removed to promote independence.

Universal behaviour systems are unlikely to meet the needs of all your students.

For pupils with more challenging behaviour, the approach should be tailored to individual needs.

Teachers should be trained in specific strategies if supporting pupils with high behaviour needs.

Technology has the potential to help teachers explain and model new concepts and ideas.

However, how explanations and models are conveyed is less important than their clarity and accessibility to pupils.

Introducing a new form of technology will not automatically change the way teachers teach.

Interactive whiteboards are a good example highlighting the need to consider the pedagogical rationale for adopting a form of technology, and for carefully planning the training required to enable teachers to use it effectively.

Technology can help teachers model in new ways and provide opportunities to highlight how experts think as well as what they do, but may be most effective when used as a supplement rather than a substitute for other forms of modelling.

Develop teachers’ knowledge and understanding through high quality professional development and resources.

Senior leaders should provide teachers with time and support to make sure approaches are implemented consistently.

Teachers can use tools such as ‘traces’ and observation to assess pupils’ use of self-regulated learning skills.

Metacognition shouldn’t be an ‘extra’ task for teachers to do but should be built into their teaching activities.

Self-regulated learners are aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and can motivate themselves to engage in, and improve, their learning.

Developing pupils’ metacognitive knowledge of how they learn—their knowledge of themselves as a learner, of strategies, and of tasks—is an effective way of improving pupil outcomes.

Teachers should support pupils to plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning.

Manipulatives (physical objects used to teach maths) and representations (such as number lines and graphs) can help pupils engage with mathematical ideas.

However, manipulatives and representations are just tools: how they are used is essential.

They need to be used purposefully and appropriately to have an impact.

There must be a clear rationale for using a particular manipulative or representation to teach a specific mathematical concept.

Manipulatives should be temporary; they should act as a ‘scaffold’ that can be removed once independence is achieved.

High-quality assessment and diagnosis should be used to target and adapt teaching to pupils’ needs. 

Rapid provision of support is important, but it is critical to ensure it is the right support. Diagnostic assessment can be used to inform professional judgement about the best next steps. Diagnostic assessment makes teaching more efficient by ensuring that effort is not wasted on rehearsing skills or content that a pupil already knows well. 

A range of diagnostic assessments are available and staff should be trained to use and interpret these effectively. 

This approach can be used for high- and low-attaining pupils and for whole-class and targeted interventions.

eading comprehension can be improved by teaching pupils specific strategies to check how well they comprehend, and to improve comprehension in sections of text that present difficulties.

These include:

• prediction;
• questioning;
• clarifying;
• summarising;
• activating prior knowledge.

Teachers could introduce these strategies using modelling and structured support, which should be strategically reduced as a child progresses until they are capable of completing the activity independently. 

Systematic phonics approaches explicitly teach pupils a comprehensive set of letter-sound relationships for reading and sound-letter relationships for spelling.

Consider the following when teaching a phonics programme:

• Training—ensure all staff have the necessary pedagogical skills and content knowledge
• Responsive—check if learning can be accelerated or extra support is needed and identify specific capabilities and difficulties to focus teaching.
• Engaging—lessons engage pupils and are enjoyable to teach.
• Adaptations—carefully consider any adaptations to the programme, as they may influence its impact.
• Focus—a responsive approach to grouping pupils is likely to help focus effort and improve teaching efficiency.

Both decoding (the ability to translate written words into the sounds of spoken language) and comprehension (the ability to understand the meaning of the language being read) skills are necessary for confident and competent reading, but neither is sufficient on its own. 

It is also important to remember that progress in literacy requires motivation and engagement, which will help children to develop persistence and enjoyment in their reading.

Children will need a range of wider language and literacy experiences to develop their understanding of written texts in all their forms. This should include active engagement with different media and genres of texts and a wide range of content topics.

Develop a clear, logical, and well-specified implementation plan:

1. Specify the active ingredients of the intervention clearly: know where to be ‘tight’ andwhere to be ‘loose’.
2. Develop a targeted, yet multi-stranded, package of implementation strategies.
3. Define clear implementation outcomes and monitor them using robust and pragmatic measures.

Thoroughly assess the degree to which the school is ready to implement the innovation.

Once ready to implement an intervention, practically prepare for its use:

1. Create a shared understanding of the implementation process and provide appropriate support and incentives.
2. Introduce new skills, knowledge, and strategies with explicit up-front training.
3. Prepare the implementation infrastructure.

Writing is physically and intellectually demanding. 

Expressive language underpins writing and should be prioritised.

Provide a wide range of opportunities to communicate through writing and develop children’s motivation to write.

Support children to develop the foundations of a fast, accurate, and efficient handwriting style.

Monitor the product and process of children’s handwriting and provide additional support as necessary.

Be aware of the vocabulary demands of a topic and make a conscious choice about the words that you are going to teach and when to introduce them. Focus on the words that pupils really need to understand and make sure they understand them well. Less is more: a deep understanding of fewer words is better than understanding lots of words at a surface level.

Teach new scientific vocabulary explicitly. Direct instruction has benefits, but this is not just about rote learning; you need to show pupils how words are linked and how to use them in a range of contexts.

It is important that the texts pupils are reading are at an appropriate level, but challenging and interesting; pupils should have the opportunity to engage with authentic scientific books and texts.

The use of authentic texts does not mean that all pupils need to be reading journal articles but they should have access to quality texts from a range of sources, including news articles and parts of popular science books.

Writing about science is more than communication alone; it supports pupils in their learning because when they write about science they reflect on their understanding, formulate their own ideas, and combine ideas in new ways.

Scientific knowledge is difficult to learn because we are constantly moving between observations we can make with our senses, the explanations for observations, and the symbolic representation of these explanations. You can use models to link observations to explanations and representations.

As a science teacher you have many models in your repertoire. Models should only be used if they aid understanding—and there are plenty of concepts that can be taught without the use of models.

Think about the models that you are going to use before, during, and following lessons. A useful way of doing this is the Focus, Action and Reflection (FAR) approach.

For pupils to get the most out of models they need to understand how models relate to reality and why they are used. This is an important step in developing their ability to ‘reason like a scientist’.