Slow Teaching

Slow Teaching by Jamie Thom is an excellent book to give you a brief overview of lots of different areas of teaching and learning. The premise of the book is Thom trying to convince us that we should slow down in all the things we do, both in and out of school. And he has me convinced!​

Tackling topics such as classrooms, relationships, questioning, wellbeing and teacher improvements, each chapter is succinct and to the point. They also all end with a series of Slow Questions, to help the reader reflect on their own practice in light of the slow ideals (given below as an overview of the ideas shared).

Thom's main point is that the fast lifestyle of many (mainly new) teachers is unsustainable, and there are many ways to slow down, and actually become a better and more efficient teacher. Taking the slow, thoughtful approach can help us better balance our lives, be better teachers, have better relationships with students, and improve our wellbeing.

I have summarised the 21 chapters briefly in this sketchnote.

Minimalistic Classroom

1. Is your classroom in need of a minimalist review?
2. What immediate changes could you make to ensure the clarity and organisation of your environment?
3. What would the impact of ten minutes of decluttering a day have on your psychological state?
4. What new organisational structures could you implement?
5. Does you classroom model student excellence?
6. Is the passion you have for your subject clear in your classroom?

Streamlined Planning and Teaching

1. Are you falling into the Mr Hare planning trap?
2. Do you have a clear vision of where each class you teach needs to be by the end of the term and by the end of the year?
3. Have you broken down the learning into manageable chunks of planning?
4. Do you have a clear idea of what each assessment will be for schemes of work?
5. Have you slowly mastered the content you will be teaching?
6. Have you considered student misconceptions in your planning?
7. Have you planned for slow and deliberate practice in individual lessons?
8. Are you regularly checking students' understanding?

An Actor's Paradise: The Non-Verbal in the Classroom

1. Do you spend time reflecting on your non-verbal communications in the classroom?
2. Are you conscious of your posture and the impact it has?
3. Could you embrace a straighter, more upright posture?
4. Do you use had gestures purposefully to support your words?
5. Do you have teacher blind spots in the classroom; are you engaging with the whole room through eye contact?
6. How could you use eye contact more effectively to build positive relationships
7. Could you move more strategically in your classroom?

Efficient Teacher Talk

1. Could your teacher talk be deliberately slowed down?
2. Are you aware of you breathing in the classroom and how this is impacting your ability to explain?
3. Could you embrace elements of Churchillian preparation of your teacher talk?
4. Are you aware of how students are responding to the pace of your speech?
5. What could you do to employ the pause more effectively in the classroom?
6. Are you harnessing the power of slow storytelling and anecdotes in the classroom?

Questioning: Rediscover the Potential

1. Are you falling into the 'rapid-rifle approach' to questioning?
2. What other questioning traps do you need to be conscious of in your teaching?
3. What 'wait time' strategies could you easily implement into your own teaching?
4. Are you getting the balance right between closed and open questions?
5. Could you make more use of questioning as a form of differentiation in your lessons?
6. How could you script your questions for impact?
7. What strategies can you use to tackle the "don't know' or quiet classes?

To Praise or not to Praise

1. Are you falling into over-praising with any of your students or groups?
2. What phrases could you adapt to make your praise more specific?
3. Is their scope in your classroom to make praise more related to effort?
4. Are you striving to encourage a growth mindset in your classroom?
5. Are you looking for classroom 'bright spots' and praising students who demonstrate behaviour expectations?
6. How often are you positively engaging with parents?
7. Do you celebrate the commitment and support of teachers who work alongside you?

Refining Relationships

1. Are you making enough time outside of your busy teaching day to prioritise building positive relationships?
2. Is the empathetic mindset present in your interactions with young people?
3. Are you communicating genuine enthusiasm in the presence of all your students?
4. How well are you listening to students both inside and outside of the classroom?
5. Are you conscious of the introvert/extrovert divide and using strategies to positively engage with both?
6. Could you involve yourself in  more activities outside of the classroom to generate positive relationships with students?

Serene and Stoical Behaviour Management

1. Do you focus on what you can proactively control when reflecting on behaviour?
2. Are you self-aware and able to moderate emotion when working with challenging classes?
3. Is there consistency and calm at the heart of your classroom persona?
4. Are you applying whole-school behaviour policies rigorously in your work at school?
5. Are the behaviour essentials imbedded in your work with each of your classes?
6. What other aspects of stoical philosophy could you apply to your teaching?

The Power of Modelling

1. Is you marking revealing significant misconceptions students have about how to structure and approach tasks?
2. Are you investing lesson time in sharing assessment criteria that is difficult for students to grasp?
3. What role does modelling play in your classroom now and could it be employed more?
4. Are you making your thinking explicit to students and deconstructing how to approach a task?
5. Could the be more scope for you to prepare a teacher model answer?
6. Are you confident about not marking work and instead providing students with a model to ensure clarity about how they should complete a task?
7. What opportunities are there to use student model answers in your lessons?

Developing Motivated and Reflective Learners

1. Are you reflecting on ways to improve your students' ability to consider their own thinking?
2. Are there more opportunities in lessons to model your thinking about how to approach tasks with students?
3. Is time designated in lessons to give students opportunities to plan out how they will approach a task? Are they aware of the strategies that can use to do this?
4. What steps are you taking to ensure that students are pausing and considering how well they are completing tasks?
5. Is there time at the end of each task for students to evaluate how well it has been completed and make changes?
6. Are you exploring both resilience and motivation with your students and making it a real focus in your interactions with them?

Debunking Manic Marking

1. Are you becoming another victim of mindless marking fervour?
2. Is there a more strategic approach you could take in deciding what to mark and when?
3. Are you emphasising the sacred nature of marking and giving students time to construct a detailed self-assessment?
4. Is your written feedback to students sparse and instructional?
5. How much effort is going into training your students on how to respond to feedback?
6. Could you look at building in more structured examples of peer assessment?

Memory Mysteries

1. Are you considering memory in your planning and teaching on a daily basis?
2. Are there more opportunities to employ the power of testing in your lessons?
3. Are you falling into the 'speedy content' trap, racing through without returning to check understanding and interleave content?
4. Are you allowing time for deliberate repetition of skills and giving students plenty of opportunities to practice?
5. What potential is there for streamlining your lessons to provide complete clarity for your students?
6. Are you being reflective about cognitive overload in your lessons?
7. What potential could mnemonics have to aid students' memories in you subject?

Literacy: Beyond the Quick Fix Solutions

1. Do you know the literacy demands of your individual subject(s)?
2. How much and how often do you ask students to read in your subjects?
3. Do you coach students on how to approach the style of reading required?
4. How often do you model and discuss your own reading habits with students?
5. Are you driving forward reading with your students, encouraging and providing them with guidance on reading for pleasure?
6. Do you make spelling a focus in your lessons?
7. Do you deconstruct spelling and use a range of strategies?
8. Are you literacy aware in your marking? Do you mark for grammar and spelling alongside content? Do you encourage students to proofread with a literacy lens?

Teaching the Secrets of Effective Revision

1. Are your students suffering from a lack of clarity about how to revise?
2. Are you tackling the symptoms of over-confident students?
3. Are your students clear on the dangers of cramming?
4. What are the procrastination avoidance tips you can arm your students with?
5. Can you help students to construct a revision timetable?
6. What self-testing techniques do you want students to employ in their revision?

Reflect and Refine: Developing Passionate Teachers

1. What aspect of your teaching would you value more feedback on?
2. Who have your observed recently that has influenced an aspect of your teaching?
3. Who has observed you teach and what was the impact of their observation?
4. Could you designate more time to reflecting on your impact in the classroom? How would you complete this reflection?
5. What dialogue are you regularly sharing about teaching?
6. Could you act in a coaching capacity for a colleague? Would you benefit from some coaching?
7. Could you engage more in research about teaching?

Understanding and Managing Stress

1. Are you at risk of burnout?
2. What is your relationship like with stress?
3. What strategies are you using to manage feelings of stress?
4. Are you using the support network of colleagues in school?
5. Are you conscious of the perfectionism trap?
6. Could you build in more optimism into both your internal and external presence in school?

Arming Ourselves against Anxiety

1. Do you have a clear grasp of the potential anxiety trigger points in the year?
2. Have you got an action plan for the first two weeks of the new academic year?
3. Are you using a checklist approach to planning your day and week?
4. Are you planning for parental meetings to help feel calm and be prepared?
5. Is collaboration high up on your agenda?
6. How can you ensure calm clarity during the exam season?
7. Are you confidently informed and ready for an Ofsted inspection?

Tacking Teacher Insomnia: Sleep Easy

1. What is your relationship with sleep like? Are you getting enough?
2. Do you have a sleeping routine that you are sticking to?
3. Could you reduce your caffeine intake?
4. Is you bedroom a haven for sleep?
5. Do you need to curb your use of electronic devices?
6. Could you make time for more exercise to improve your wellbeing and sleep?
7. Are you addressing worries proactively before going to sleep?

Embracing Mindfulness: The Meditating and Mindful Teacher

1. How much of your day is spent on autopilot; present in body but not mind?
2. Could you put ten minutes aside for yourself a day?
3. What meditating routine would work best for you?
4. How else could you use mindfulness throughout the day?
5. Could you make time for some mindful eating or walking?

Value-Driven Leadership

1. Are you clear about your motivation for teaching and learning?
2. Are you a visible leader in school? How do you measure your impact?
3. What values are important to you?
4. How are you demonstrating those values?
5. What policy processes could be streamlined to help staff?
6. Is wellbeing a conversation your school is having?
7. What are you doing to continue learning an developing?