5 Tips E-Book

TOP
TEACHING

TIPS

A QUALITY GUIDE



CONTENTS 1
4
Embedding Equality and Diversity 5
Differentiating Your Lesson 6
Positive Student Relationships 7
Being an Effective Personal Tutor 10
Using eTracker to Improve Success 11
Developing ICT 12
Personalising Your Workshop 13
Promoting Active Learning 14
Improving Lesson Planning 16
Embedding Maths 18
Embedding English 19
Behaviour Management 20
Moodle
Target Setting

EMBEDDING EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY

Is diversity included within your teaching methods? Do you make
reference and use examples from a variety of cultures, religions

and traditions? Do you challenge stereotypes?

Here are a few classroom activities and ideas that you can use
and adapt to help promote multiculturalism in your lessons:

Themed weeks
Host ‘African week’, ‘Islam week’ or ‘Disability week’ and teach
your students all about the chosen topic. You could try different
foods, listen to music, play games, learn facts and watch videos.
Try and incorporate the theme into your tutorial lessons to rein-
force the topic and maintain interest.

Use diverse images in resources
When you pick books, posters and activities for your students,
make sure that they include people from different backgrounds
or with disabilities to show that these differences are ‘normal’.
Avoid resources where stereotypes are used.

Make use of current news events
Promote debate and discussion by raising current issues and
seeing what your students understand about the situation. For
example, find a story where someone was fired for being too old
– what do your students think about this? How would they
challenge it?

Quizzes
Host weekly quizzes on a set theme and learn how much your
students know about different cultures, religions, disabilities etc.
You could even assign the task of writing the quiz to 2 students
each week so that they are involved in doing the research.

List things that come from abroad
A quick activity you can do at the start of a lesson to introduce
the theme of multiculturalism. Ask your students to create a list
of everything in their life that comes from a country outside of the
UK. Go through their responses as a class – are they surprised by
the results?

Male or female?
Explore the idea of stereotypes – provide each student with a
list of 10 professions and ask them to decide whether each is
a ‘man’s job’ or a ‘woman’s job’. Go through their answers as a
class and see what stereotypes people have. Is it fair that these
stereotypes exist? How would they suggest these stereotypes
are challenged?

True or false?
Present the class with some facts about people with disabilities,
another culture or based on the protected characteristics and
ask them to decide whether the facts are true or false. Are they
surprised by the correct answers?

Hold debates and discussions
Divide your class into 2 teams. Provide one team with a state-
ment, e.g. ‘I’m a woman working in an office and have been told
I can no longer work there because I recently became pregnant’.
This team must defend this statement. Ask the other team to give
advice and challenge the statement. How do both teams feel
afterwards? Which team would they prefer to have been on and
why?

Hearing/sight/physical impairment games
Play games to raise awareness of different physical disabili-
ties. Can your students put on a jumper with just one hand? Can
they guide a friend around the classroom with a blindfold on?
Can they lip-read what the characters on TV are saying with the
sound off? Use these activities to show the difficulties that people
face and explain how these people learn to overcome them.

Jigsaws
Make your own jigsaws whereby facts need to match up with
their country etc. You could also do this with different flags,
national dresses or languages.
Play music
Listen to music from around the world or create your own using
percussion instruments. Introduce your class to instruments from
other cultures that they may not have seen before and to
different styles of music. If you have students with diverse
cultural backgrounds in your class, perhaps they could do a
show-and-tell?

There is a new font installed on the college system
called ‘Open Dyslexic’. This is a free font which is
available for staff and students to use and has been
developed for people with Dyslexia to help them read

more easily.
To use this font, simply open a program such as
Microsoft Word, navigate to the font selection box

and scroll down to ‘Open Dyslexic’.

5 TIPS TO DIFFERENTIATING YOUR LESSON

1. Differentiate expectations- set a range of different learning
objectives for the topic aimed and learner needs and ability.

2. Incorporate problem-solving activities on the same topic but
aimed at different levels of learner ability to challenge all
learners.

3. Consider the product of the task, what are you asking the
learners to produce? You can differentiate the product to suit or
meet the learner’s needs and personality. This will help them to
engage in the task and enjoy it!

4. Prepare questions that challenge each learner. You can write a
bank of questions on the session topic to check for learning and
attach a few learners to each bank of questions based on their
ability.

5. If you know your learners well, set an individual learning
objective for each learner based upon: thinking skill, content,
resource used and product, e.g.

BONUS TIP: Explaining point five

We can differentiate learning objectives by the required:

CONTENT: we can ask students to look at more than one thing or
even link in other features/related topics.
THINKING SKILL: Level of depth and thinking skill can be
manipulated by the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
RESOURCE: What resource(s) the learner should use.
PRODUCT: What the learner will produce.

FIVE TIPS ON DEVELOPING POSITIVE STUDENT
RELATIONSHIPS

1. Be consistent

Often you may be the only consistent adult in your learner’s life,
so if you say you are going to do something – ensure it is done.
Be consistent with praise, sanctions (if required) and promises.
In order to gain trust you must first be reliable!

2. Have regular one to ones with your learners

Set targets, allow learners to see what they have achieved and
get to know them! Place causes for celebration on Etracker/ Pro
Monitor.

3. Take an interest in them as an individual

This will provide you both with a better understanding of your
learner – they are not only your student but they are also a
‘person’ with lives, difficulties and their own challenges.
Show them empathy and understanding.

4. Set high expectations

Set your expectations and – remain consistent! Allow learners
to have an input into the curriculum – they could set themselves
rules and produce a class charter. They could also outline their
expectations of you as a teacher – it is a two way process.

5. Celebrate their success

This can be done in a number of ways – reward visits, parties or
an awards ceremony – often learners may have had a chaotic
educational life so restore their faith in Education. Example –
Golden Globes Award Ceremony – Travel and Tourism – Black
Tie Event. Or star of the Week – box of chocolates.
Let them know you care.

5 TIPS ON BEING AN EFFECTIVE PERSONAL TUTOR

1. Ensure your tutees know what their target minimum grades are
for their programme of study. This should be done in the first two
weeks of induction and ideally in your first tutorial session. This will
enable you to monitor the progress of your tutees and ensure they
are on track to achieve.

2. Have at least one 1-1 meeting with each of your tutees every term.
Not only does it give your learners an opportunity to speak to you
about any concerns and issues, it also provides you with time to set
and review targets and look at goals that will allow your tutees to
be successful.

3. Access your dashboard on a weekly basis; this will keep you up
to date with attendance and punctuality issues (particularly if your
learners are studying English and Maths qualifications). If you see
a decline then speak to your group/tutees quickly and get in touch
with parents/guardians/carers if tutees are under 18. If your group
have a strong and consistent attendance and punctuality pattern
then celebrate it and encourage the group to maintain.

4. Dedicate one tutorial slot every term to focus on employability,
work experience, and work-readiness. Employers want skilled peo-
ple who can work with others, use their time effectively and have
strong communication skills. You could invite an employer in to talk
to your tutees about what is expected of them in the workplace. You
could work on CVs and completing applications. You could also use
this slot to work on study skills such as public speaking/presenta-
tions, or have mock interviews. Your tutees can then update Pro-
Monitor/E-Tracker to record what they have done.

5. Have a good and open dialogue with other staff teaching your
tutees. If there are issues with students in English and Maths, it is
vital that you are aware of this so that you can deal appropriately
with the situation. Ask for regular updates to be added to Pro-
Monitor/E-Tracker so that you are made aware of issues that could
potentially affect the success of your tutees.

FIVE TIPS ON EFFECTIVE USE OF ETRACKER TO
IMPROVE SUCCESS

1. Every learner needs Aspirational Action plans

2. Learners should write their own targets

3. CFCS: Causes for Celebration
4. Raise ambition with the CV Generator

5. Stay on target with a Review
https://etracker.sccb.ac.uk/

5 TIPS TO DEVELOP ICT WITHIN YOUR SESSION

1. Encourage learners to create resources that can support their
learning later. Try out Padlet - learners can add notes, links, images
and videos straight from their phones to a shared board and then
use them again later to inform their assignment writing. Works
brilliantly as a plenary activity.

2. Assess smarter and use online applications that provide evidence
of a student's learning journey:
Try Plickers - an easy to use set of cards that learners use to
answer questions. The teacher scans the cards with their own
phone, meaning that unlike Kahoot, learners don't need their own
phones, computer or data/Wi-Fi to participate. A full breakdown of
learner answers are provided in Excel format, which can be used to
inform differentiation and planning.

3. Turn your PowerPoint presentation into a video that learners can
access from any device:
Try Office Mix - you can add voice-overs, screen clippings, quizzes
and polls to a presentation you already use and publish it as a web
video that learners access via a link. Look out for the Mix tab in your
PowerPoint ribbon to give it a go.

4. Get your phone out:
Use the camera on your own phone to capture evidence of
learning. Take pictures of group work, posters and anything else
your learners create and use them as assessment evidence. You
can also use pictures in lessons, during recaps, starter activities and
to build on prior learning.

5. Aim for collaboration:
Learners learn better when they work with and support each other.
OneNote Class Notebooks provide learners with space for them to
work collaboratively on projects, as well as a personal space for
each learners work and it can marked online by the teacher. Work-
sheets and class activities can be typed in or uploaded directly and
shared with each individual or group. Download the OneNote Class
Notebook add-in and access the support videos to get started.

FIVE TIPS TO ENSURE YOUR WORKSHOP IS
MORE PERSONALISED

Learner work & Achievements:
It is essential to recognise and display learners work and
achievements. There are a number of ways to do this.
Competition pieces, photographs / statement letters and
examples of completed work”WAGOLL”
(What A Good One Looks Like)

Rapport:
The first six weeks are the most important, as it develops the
“normin & stormin” within the group’s development. Once you
have identified key characters in the group, a limit can be
agreed, banter and humour can be used positively and
effectively to make learning more enjoyable in a workshop
environment. Always smile and welcome learners.
Happy staffroom, happy classroom.

Teamwork:
It is important that learners are familiar with all members of the
department and vice versa. Try to involve other tutors, support
staff and work based assessors where possible. This can be
possibly be done through tutorials. This is vital for learner
progression, work placements and apprenticeships.

Targets:
Start each session with a clear aim and achievable objectives.
From this, more personalised learning targets can be self-set and
maybe used for peer assessment. This can also reinforce
progression and be linked to e tracker.

Resource Materials:
Most trade suppliers are keen to support tomorrows trade
people. Huge discounts are often offered with regards to
teaching & learning. Suppliers usually provide posters, literature
and displays to promote their products, as well as student prizes
and guest speakers relating to industry.

5 TIPS TO PROMOTE ACTIVE LEARNING IN THE
CLASSROOM.

1. Blog construction: Have students make blogs about what
they’re learning.

2. Peer to peer teaching: Having students teach each other can
help them learn. Besides making students more confident in their
ability to present information and work collaboratively.

3. Active learning outside the classroom: KWL
An effective pre-learning strategy that will help the participant
focus on the application of the material is to have them informally
and briefly list their personal KWL.

K = what the participant already KNOWS about the subject

W = what they WANT to know

L = How they want to use what they LEARN

4. Smartphones: Technology can be a useful tool for promoting
active learning. Examples Socrative and Kahoot.

5. Design a space for active learning:
Reconfigure the classroom environment and move away from
the traditional settings. These classrooms engage and inspire by
putting control of the learning space in the hands of students and
instructors. Here you will find learning spaces that can
easily morph from lecture mode to teamwork to group
presentation, discussion and back again.

5 TIPS TO HELP IMPROVE LESSON PLANNING

1. Task - Use a single worksheet comprised of tasks, which get
progressively harder. The more advanced students will quickly
progress to the later questions whilst the less able can
concentrate on grasping the essentials. Graduate tasks, e.g. from
easy to hard on a worksheet. Use Andersons Taxonomy

2. Log books - At the very beginning of the year introduce “log
books” students spend 5 minutes at the end of each session and
write down what they have achieved. They then write an
ndividual goal for the next session.
What Went Well /Even Better If.

3. Grouping - Collaborative learning has many well-documented
benefits such as enabling shy students to participate more
confidently in class, but it’s also a useful personalisation method.
Small, mixed-ability groups allow lower achievers to take
advantage of peer support whilst higher achievers gain the
opportunity to organise and voice their thoughts for the benefit of
the whole group (known as peer modelling). Grouping also allows
roles to be allocated within the team, which cater for each
member’s skill set and learning needs.

4. Outcome - personalisation by outcome is a technique whereby
all students undertake the same task but a variety of results is
expected and acceptable. For example, the teacher sets a task but
instead of working towards a single ‘right’ answer, the
students arrive at a personalised outcome depending on their level
of ability.

5. Resources- In this method, it’s important to recognise that some
students can work with more advanced resources than others, and
that it is possible to use multiple materials in order to approach a
topic from different angles. Personalisation of this kind allows a
wide spectrum of materials to be used to attain a single
learning outcome. It’s a method that is greatly assisted by
advances in technology. Students can also produce their own
resources.

5 TIPS FOR EMBEDDING MATHS

1. Know your learners and adapt your planning to suit their
individual needs. This does not mean creating a lesson plan for
each individual learner, but understanding who will need support
with the maths topic you are covering, and who would be good
mentors for those who are struggling. You will need their BKSB
results for their maths and English to see where their strengths
and areas for improvements are. Contact the maths and English
tutors, as they should be able to provide you with a group
breakdown of the learners’ results, rather than printing each
learner’s results off individually.

2. Link with Maths and English tutors to:

• Identify any issues

• Ensure you have an understanding of when and how they are
teaching topics. They will have specific resources that you can
also use in your sessions, keeping that link between
vocational and maths/English
sessions

• Also let them know what you are doing within your sessions
and the topics most relevant to that level. For example ratios,
percentages, areas etc

• Time to do this on a regular basis is very important.

3. Keep the maths language alive and relevant. Let learners
know they are doing maths within your sessions. This may need
to be at the end of the session -"This is the maths we have done
today", or at the beginning, "This is the maths you will be doing
today". You will know the learners you have and their confidence
or resilience to maths now. If they are resistant tell them what
they have done afterwards. Continue to explain the link with
employers’ wants and expectations, as we do around the
college.

4. For learners, the method they use for their maths is as
important as getting the correct answer. When revisiting
calculations on the board, or when learners complete
calculations, encourage them to show their working out as much
as possible. Showing their steps allows for peer and tutor
assessment and feedback, and highlights where mistakes are
happening.

5. Key skills around maths, apart from showing and
understanding methods and processes, are being able to
problem solve and reason out their answers. Give learners the
opportunity to explain why they have found the answer they
have, and what that means.

EMBEDDING ENGLISH: 5 TOP TIPS

• Word wall

Routinely create a space on your board for recording words
during the lesson which students need but can’t either spell, say,
read, remember, understand or use. Review the SUM (Spelling,
Use Meaning) at any time in the lesson. Example activities are:
crossword puzzles, making glossaries, gap fills, correction starter
activities, matching exercises, quizzes, Triptico/ Kahoot/Socrative
activities, wordsearches. Further activities are:
a) covering the list, instructing students to say it from memory,
write it down in pairs, then checking the spelling;
b) dictating the list slowly, so a student from each of 2 teams can
run and write in turn a sentence on the board using each word;
c) students describing or giving examples of one of the words for
others to guess the word.

• Prior knowledge

When introducing a new topic or text, encourage students to
predict (from titles, headings, visuals) the key words they expect
to find. This pooled knowledge, recorded on the board or
flipchart paper, can be added to during the lesson. This ‘priming’
process gives students more confidence and more strategies for
tackling new reading material and new topic areas.

• SPAG

Develop a workable feedback routine. For example, ask the
writer to read their work carefully – with a short list of priorities or
prompt questions and the SPAG key in front of them. Then they
swap with a peer and do the same again with post-its to make
comments, so they aren’t writing on their partner’s work. Finally,
use SPAG selectively: don’t SPAG to death if the student is
unlikely to notice or act on it. Make a very brief summary of
positives and action points at the end.

• Moodle

Include links in Moodle to simple, straightforward video tutorials,
on-line dictionaries and exercises for punctuation, spelling rules,
writing tips and grammar. Refer to these links in e-tracker targets
and feedback if students are struggling with written assignments.

• Talk

Include speaking & listening in your embedding. Give ‘how to’
advice and feedback for discussions, debates and presentations.
Give all students opportunities in pairs or small groups to explain,
summarise, ask and answer questions. This is a good plenary
activity before self-evaluations.

BEHAVIOUR MANAGEMENT TIPS:

1. Meet and greet at the door - smile and shake hands with the
learners.

2. Set late arrival routines in the lesson - the 3 Step approach
when they enter late
1) they write their name on a prepared piece of paper
2) they sit down and join the lesson
3) at the end of lesson you talk to them and ask why they were
late.

3. Proximity, use this to subtly prompt learners, they may be
talking or on phones, usually by just being near them they will
stop and refocus. This also removes the need to say their name,
which only serves to give them status. Use a remote presenter as
this frees you from the computer and allows you to move freely
around the classroom.

4. Focus on the good learners and those doing what is expected,
give them the first attention. 95% vs 5% - always give recognition
to those who deserve it.

5. Hot Spot - choose a place in your classroom which is not at the
front of the room, when any behaviour issues arise, move to your
hotspot and highlight the behaviours you want in the lesson. Also
thank others for following what is expected in the lesson.