Pearson-Exploring-Effective-Pedagogy-in-Primary-Schools

She was able to offer a little feedback to the individual children about their work but, moreimportantly, she used the plenary to address some issues arising from the level of difficulty ofthe task. Many of the children were finding the task very hard and so the teacher was able toreassure the children, encourage them to keep trying and to offer specific suggestions aboutthings they could try (e.g., using more semi-colons in their writing) (S02, Literacy IEO).A similar technique was employed by the S04 teacher at the end of her literacy lesson. Thechildren had written poems about their school environment and although most of the childrenwould be sharing their work with the rest of the class the following day, the teacher was able toprovide some immediate, general feedback by reading out some of the children’s work at theend of the lesson (S04, Literacy IEO).A particularly striking example of using the plenary as a forum for sharing work with the specificaim of providing constructive feedback came from S01, where children were working on writinghaiku poems containing a chronological sequence. The teacher spent the final 10 minutes of thelesson asking children to read their haikus out to the class, and offered very specific suggestionsfor improvement. The quality of the feedback was different in this lesson because the focuswas much more on finding ways to improve the work rather than just providing praise andencouragement. This gave all of the children in the class an opportunity to reflect critically ontheir own and each other’s work and to consider what worked well and how the haikus couldbe improved. This teacher exemplifies how a classroom “community of learners” culture engageslearning (S01, Literacy IEO).The plenary session was also used for resolving issues arising from the lesson and providinga forum for collaborative problem solving. The S03 teacher asked children to sort out animaginary desk order for their class (also cited as an example of collaborative learning). Thechildren had to consider a number of factors - especially the dimensions of the desks. Thechildren’s measuring yielded a variety of results and the teacher used the plenary session tohelp resolve this difficulty by turning to a discussion on “averages” and “middle numbers”. Thechildren shared their results with each other and then discussed the various options for findingthe most representative measurements (median, mode, mean). They were encouraged to“argue for their point of view.” (S03, Numeracy IEO).In Year 5 classrooms in poor schools, plenaries were recorded for only a quarter of lessons.When a plenary was used, it was generally short and the main purpose was often to checkanswers from work completed during the lesson. Opportunities for in-depth discussion,extension or reflection did not occur as part of the plenary session in these classrooms.Evidence from Research | 35