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TEACHING
45 Minutes
Multi-track
The Psychology
The Group
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The Group
The usual group has 3-6 pupils of mixed abilities. Pupils don't interact with each other, but they have immediate interaction with the teacher as they need it. The teacher is essentially running simultaneous one to one sessions. The group is rarely, if ever, addressed as a whole.
Pupils know the format of the sessions. They come to them with the expectation of
obvious progress. They know that the only thing that will change during the
session will be the material as they move through it. They know that it's 'ok' to make mistakes
- because that's how they find out what they need to learn.
Pupils become so focused on their own work that they are largely unaware of what others are doing. They are very aware that the only limit to their progress is the time available.
Learning
The group provides powerful model of how to learn. The detail of the organisation of the group exists to allow pupils to focus solely on learning. All distractions are removed. Each pupil has clear working space and direct eye contact with the teacher. The only materials on the table are those that are needed for the immediate task.
The teacher starts working with the first pupil who is ready, without commenting on the fact that another pupil might be slower. Throughout each session, pupils are using record and interactive teaching booklets to monitor their progress and make minute by minute informed decisions about next steps. Pupils who need time to process material are not pressurised because a teacher is waiting for them to respond. Almost every pupil who is used to the Tracks group will display 100% on-task behaviour and rarely want to stop any activity.
A powerful effect of the group is that pupils learn a lot from the teacher's interactions with other pupils. Most of the cues we give are standard, so over time pupils often pick them up incidentally, and start using them automatically.
Behaviour
No pupil is allowed to interrupt the work of any other pupil. The sessions have a real buzz. Praise and challenges are constant and a group ethos of excited urgency emerges.
The Tracks group is often the first place in school where a pupil with behaviour difficulties starts to conform. Teacher 'talk' is almost non-existent: there are no explanations. We simply give a minimal cue to enable the pupil to take the next step towards independent learning. It is learning by 'just doing it'. As one teacher on the course said, ' I wondered how JD would cope, but he just didn't have time to misbehave'.
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