Week 3: Everyone can do something

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2. Everyone can do something: what does inclusive teaching look like?

Everyone can do something to support excluded children, even without specialised training. You may be thinking about your own classroom support or supporting others to become inclusive teachers. One way to do this is with active teaching, which engages all learners and gives them the opportunity to talk about their learning. Active teaching is part of learner-centered education (LCE), which you considered in Week 2 as you developed your own list of minimum criteria.

Perhaps you have experience of supporting colleagues to make their teaching more active, or you may have only begun to think about how you would make a change? The first activity this week will deepen your understanding of active teaching strategies before you go on to consider the reasons why change is challenging.

Activity 3.1 What does active teaching look like?

Allow approximately 1 hour in total for the 3 parts of this activity.

What does an active classroom look like?

Part 1 

Imagine you step into a classroom in a new school and you walk around looking and listening. 

For each of the following statements write ‘yes’ (active, learner-centred teaching) or ‘no’ in your notebook. If you are unsure, write ‘maybe’.

Reveal response

1. Learners always work in silence

2. Teacher moves around the room helping different learners with different tasks

3. Learners talk in pairs or in groups and sometimes work in silence

4. Learners copy from board for most of the lesson

5. Teacher always stands at the front

6. Learners have time to think  and process information before answering

7. Teacher dictates from the text book

8. Learners feel afraid to give a wrong answer or make a mistake

9. Learners go outside collecting things for an investigation

10. Teachers always ask closed questions with a yes no right or wrong answer

11. The teacher knows about learners lives and finds examples they can relate to

12. The learners feel safe to ask questions to show they are curious and to learn from mistakes

These examples of active teaching and learning are just a sample, and you will experience many more. There is no one right way because everyone is different and it depends on your learners.


Part 2

Now think about this list. Make notes in your study notebook on:

  • What active learning you have used and what worked well and why.
  • What behaviours or activities are easy to notice?
  • Which attitudes are more difficult to detect and why?

Part 3

Choose two of the ‘wrong’ behaviours (i.e. 1,4,5,7,8,10). What advice would you give to a teacher who persistently uses those approaches for long periods of time?

For example – instead of dictating from a textbook or having students copy from the chalkboard, a teacher could write a passage with missing words that students have to fill in; draw a diagram that students have to label; write a set of questions about the topic for students to answer (if they have a textbook available). If students work in pairs they can talk about the answers and learn from each other.

Write your suggestion in the Week 3 forum. If you are a secondary school teacher try and give a subject-specific answer which will help others.
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