A really quick idea here. Even though I'm not a big TV fan, I do love Christmas adverts! One that has always stuck with me is a Boots ad from 2013, in which a teenage boy appears to be up to no good, but in actual fact is leaving gifts for people anonymously. You might remember it: 

 So, inspired by this, my class are going to make some anonymous Christmas cards. I'll show them the video first and pause it at 20s to ask what they think the boy is up to. At the end, we'll chat about why he might have left the presents anonymously. 

We're going to think about who helps us at school and why we are grateful to them. We'll write this inside a card and leave it somewhere for them. It could be their foreign language teacher, the office lady, one of the cleaning team, our handyman, the headmistress... but they must think about why they want to leave them a card. Thoughtful is the key. Each child will make 3 cards and the challenge is to leave them without anyone knowing. When they have, they let me know and get a high five in return. That's it. Simple. The reward is knowing you made someone's day. 

I'm going to leave them to be free and creative with their cards for this particular project. I want them to be able to design cards that they know the recipient will love! 

I love a good Christmas lesson, so when I heard that I could use the FX Guru app to create a video clip of reindeer dancing through my classroom, I just had to use it! It's so easy: you just film your room for 30 seconds, it shows you an outline of where the reindeer will appear and then, voila! 
Take a look at mine: 

I decided to use the video as a stimulus for the children to write a witness statement for the police. This is something I've done before and I particularly like it to show Greater Depth with Year 6. (I used another here, with the Greater Depth elements explained)

​All resources used can be found in the free PDF download at the bottom of the post. 

•  Plan as a class using flowchart plan. For each section, discuss and form notes orally, then all record. I like them to do this in their books, but I’ve created a sheet in case you want to use one.
  • Emphasise notes, not sentences
  • Key events in order
  • Could note down some openers at the end of the lesson if time allows

 
Support: careful peer partnering, teacher checking understanding, scaffolded sheet for planning
Stretch: questioning – why is this what we find in a statement? Look at the tense shifts. ​

You can structure this however you like. You could use paired writing, guided or independent. Below is a plan for independent writing.

•  Watch the video clip again 
•  Look at the plan we made yesterday. No content should need adding. Today, we are adding detail and building great sentences.
•  Give out a tick-list, based on what we spotted yesterday and what you want the children to focus on. Mine is below and in the PDF. Read it together.

Give children time to read their work from yesterday. They should have a pencil in their hand as they do this, so they can make changes if needed.

•  Editing: You could structure this as just a series of guided tasks, but I like to use stations. Set up 4 tables. Put a station on each. The children have ten minutes on each station. (Once you’ve done this a few times, they could move freely from station to station). They edit their work using a variety of techniques, different colours etc. These are very flexible and you may want to make your own to match your class targets. I like to have 2 stations to check for errors and 2 stations to up-level. Mine are below and in the PDF.

            

• We use ‘polishing pens’ for all of these activities – a coloured pen used for editing, so we can see the changes.

• After using the editing stations, end the lesson with children reading their partner’s work aloud to them. This will help children to spot if their work is missing punctuation, making it difficult to read. Note: children only write on their own work.

 
NOTE: after this lesson, it’s nice for the children to ‘publish’ their work. You could ask them to write it neatly, set it as a homework task, let them use pen if they don’t usually, ask them to type it... I don’t do this for every piece of work, s it becomes tedious for some, but it’s a good way to apply and embed the changes. 

So, there you have it! Please like and share this post and please share your experiences of it on my  Facebook page so I can see how it went!  

We've all been there: you share the WALT. You do the input where you carefully demonstrate and explain the learning. Of course, you don't just talk at the children anymore: you use mini-whiteboards to check understanding and you've asked them to talk to their partner at least twice. You then explain the activity (or activities, with 3-way differentiation) in enough detail that they don't ask you 48 questions before they start. Then you set them off on their task. Then they ask you 48 questions. By the time they actually start, the lesson is almost over so the activity is really rushed and there's no time for reflection or sharing. The result: they've done a bit of learning, but had no chance to secure their knowledge or explore the concept further. Plus, they're probably bored. All that planning was a waste.  

But how can we avoid this?  
As you'll guess from my page title, I like to talk. A lot. So I've spent a significant amount of time battling this problem and I've come up with 5 go-to ways to avoid it! 

This one is easy really. Don't 'teach' them anything. Let them learn it. 
For example, next week we are learning about speech marks. They're a pain in the bum to teach and there are so many rules! So, I'm just going to begin the lesson with the question How do we use speech marks?  Then, I'm going to give the children some books and let them come up with a set of rules (presented however they like - see point 2). Then at the end, we'll come back and discuss. 

There are some real benefits to this: 

• Firstly, you are tied to time by this point because the lesson is ending, so you're less inclined to waffle.
• Secondly, the children already have something to say, so they are leading the discussion. You can just guide it.
• Thirdly, the class are more engaged in the discussion because they want to share their learning and see if they agree. 

Tip: after the feedback and discussion, allow the children time to return to their work and edit it 

Teachers hate this: giving the children free-reign?? How will I mark it? They might be messy! 
IT DOESN'T MATTER!  Just teach them the concept, then give them a quick overview of the activity and off they go.
​
Example: sorting regular and irregular verbs.
They don't need a sheet for this, that you have to make, print, trim and they have to glue in. They also don't need you to tell them to draw a table or Venn diagram. Neither do they need you to show them 5 different ways they could present this. Just tell them to organise the words into regular and irregular. I give only 2 criteria: it must be neat and clear. That's it. You want to see if they know the difference between regular and irregular verbs. Some will do a table, others will fold their page in half, some will write regular verbs in blue and irregular verbs in orange. So you can spend the time teaching them what regular and irregular verbs are but not waste time on the activity instructions. 
​
This works for lots of different activities. Most, in fact.

In addition to reducing your input time, this strategy also has 3 other key benefits: 

• you'll hook in those children who love stationery as much as I do. They can play with their gel pens and put clouds around everything! 
• the children learn to clearly present their work. I don't mean neatly. Clearly. So they are communicating well through their writing or diagrams. 
• autonomy. I hate to be told exactly what to do and how to do it. A lot of children push against the control of school and this could help. Only control what needs to be controlled.

I have to admit, this one takes a bit of practice. Stick with it. It only takes a couple of weeks to get them used to the idea. You can do annotated displays of good examples to let them see different ways of presenting their work and you can draw attention to how clearly someone has shown their learning when you review at the end of the lesson.

I VERY rarely set different activities or different sheets (I don't like sheets much) for different children. I don't like capping their learning, I don't like singling children out. I don't like spending my evenings thinking of 3 different ways to do an activity. 
 It takes forever to explain all  the different activities and answer questions about each. 

I tend to differentiate by support, expectation, outcome, questioning, peer support. Saves a ton of explanation time and your 'talking time' can be focussed on actually teaching the concept. 

Another very simple one. Don't talk at all. Display the instructions for a task and let them go. You can answer questions and troubleshoot as they go, but encourage them to have a go first. This relies on them being secure in the knowledge that they won't 'get in trouble' for doing it wrong - an atmosphere you need to foster over time. This one works best if they either have prior knowledge or if they are doing an investigation (see point 1). 

Another option here is to display the task and instructions but don't ask them to start. Ask them to discuss it with their team and decide what to do. Then they could ask a couple of questions before getting going. 

So, there you have it: my top tips to being a slightly less talkative teacher! I'd love to hear your suggestions in the comments below!