Monitor progress: Secondary

[On-screen text] Monitor progress: What it is 

• Checking students’ understanding regularly, using varied methods 
• Being responsive to the difficulties or misconceptions students demonstrate during checks. 
• Reteaching or providing additional instruction to students in temporary and flexible groupings or to the whole class as needed. 
• Providing prompt verbal feedback, correcting misconceptions and explaining correct answers and processes.  

[On-screen text] This video demonstrates examples of the following techniques to monitor progress:  

• Check for understanding frequently 
• Use varied methods to reinforce active participation by all students 
• Respond to struggles or mistakes promptly 
• Guide attempts to respond 
• Frame feedback constructively 
• Monitor errors to provide feedback, additional instruction or guidance 
• Move between guided and independent practice with flexible groupings 
• Draw on student responses to check your practice 

Daniel Flood, Year 7 Industrial Technology and Design teacher, Wilsonton State High School: I would describe monitoring progress as constantly checking the learners visually, verbally and continually throughout the lesson. Making sure that they are working safely in the workshop, they're calm, they're on task, and checking their independence as well. So seeing that they can go on to the next step by themselves. 

Nice work. If you’re going that way, remember we went across this way a bit more? So turn your piece up.  

Student: Sorry. 

Daniel Flood: You’re right. 

Hi-en, you sanding all your ——? Good work. Yep. Okay, one minute to go.  

Chloe Rees, Year 11 Visual Communication Design teacher, Ballarat Clarendon College: During guided practice, especially when I'm modelling to the students on the board, I'm looking through the work that they're capturing down in their folios in terms of the process and their written work. As well as the discussions when I'm cold calling to see if the students are ready, if we've got that 80% across the class to know that we are ready to move into the next phase. And that's really important. 

[On-screen text] Move between guided and independent practice with flexible groupings 

Chloe Rees: They’re particular students that I will go to first to make sure that they know exactly what they're doing and I can support them while I know the others may be really close to moving, just so I can make sure all learners in the space are ready to continue with that learning. 

[On-screen text] Check for understanding frequently  

Chloe Rees: Interesting. I'm going to get you to have a go, this time on your own, of doing interesting. Using evidence from the visual communications on the slide. I would like 2 different points of what you think is interesting about the design.  

Connor, what do you think is interesting about the design? 

[On-screen text] Frame feedback constructively 

Student: How the branches make the jersey [inaudible], I think. 

Chloe Rees: Great pick up. And then thinking about why that is, then. Rory, what are you thinking so far? 

Student: I said I found it interesting that the designer did not take the opportunity to put the kangaroo on the line, so that it’s hopping across. 

Chloe Rees: So you're thinking about more movement in the design? Another really good point. You've probably got 2 points out of that one.  

Isaac, what are we thinking in terms of being interesting? 

Student: I said that the symbol, like the kangaroo and the wattle, are like uniquely Australian and that would fit the design brief of being Australian. 

Chloe Rees: Great. So you’re thinking back to the design brief. That's excellent to hear. What else could be the next point of it also being interesting. Thinking about the elements and thinking about the colours. 

[On-screen text] Guide attempts to respond 

Student: The Australian national colours. 

Chloe Rees: Perfect, let's add that down. 

Greg Ashman, Deputy Principal, Year 8 Teacher, Ballarat Clarendon College: By asking all of them to respond on the mini whiteboard, you can check whether everyone in the room understands. I think it's a step up from cold calling, which is when you just pick an individual student. That's one way of – it sort of ensures attention – all the students have got to be thinking all the time because they might be called on. But in the end, you only get the evidence from that one student. Using mini whiteboards, you get the evidence from all the students. But of course, there are things that mini whiteboards don't do particularly well. You don't want kids writing essays or even paragraphs on mini whiteboards. So, there times when they don't suit the thing that you're trying to teach. Fortunately, in maths, a lot of the time they are absolutely right for what we're trying to do. 

Okay, 3, 2, 1 and chin, please, under our chins. Thank you. 

[On-screen text] Monitor errors to provide feedback, additional instruction or guidance 

Okay, again, some sort of debate here. We've got, yeah. I'm going to work this one through because most of us have got there. So that’s my x1, that's my x2. Sorry, my y1. That's my x2, that’s my y2. So, my gradient, m, is going to be y2, which is minus5. Minus y1, which is 4. Divided by x2, which is minus 2. Minus, and then in brackets, minus 1. Now I’ve put it in brackets because it’s negative.  

[On-screen text] Frame feedback constructively 

Greg Ashman: Now, this confused a few people. When we do that, the top, minus 5, minus 4 is minus 9. What's going on here? Minus 2, minus minus 1. Minus 2, minus minus 1 is minus 2 plus 1, which is minus 1.  

Toni Beckett, Year 8 Mathematics teacher, Wilsonton State High School: So I like to use different methods of checking for understanding or showing understanding. Depending on what the task is, sometimes I just need a quick response, so a small gesture or a thumbs up to say students agree. That’s a really quick way to get that initial response from them. Other times, they might need to do a longer task or show more information. In that case, it's probably more of a written response, so I can check that working along the way. 

So are we going to have to do one line of working or two?  

[On-screen text] Use varied methods to reinforce active participation by all students  

Toni Beckett: I want you to show me one or two. Two, that's correct. You guys are amazing. 

Philippa Roso, Year 7 English teacher, Ballarat Clarendon College: The routines we use are founded on one of the professional learnings we've done, which is Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion, which is the no opt-out method. Hence, the cold calling and no hands up unless it's for a question to ask something. So, all students have to be ready to respond, and we try and aim for right is right. So if they don't get it fully right with the right vocabulary, or they get it partially right, we ask them to elaborate or go to another student and return back to the original student and have them repeat what their peer has said. 

What do we call, what word, class, is ‘the’, Rudraksh, in the netball game? What’s the? 

[On-screen text] Guide attempts to respond 

Philipa Roso: What always comes before a noun? 

Student: A prepositional phrase. 

Philipa Roso: Not a prepositional phrase. Niamh, what comes before a noun? It always comes, without fail. Seth?  

Student: Determiner. 

Philipa Roso: A determiner. So Rudraksh, what comes before a noun? 

Student: A determiner. 

Philipa Roso: Determiner. So anything associated with the noun – the modifiers, the determiner – is part of the noun phrase. So it's a noun phrase. See.  

Gaelle Pajot, Year 7 French teacher, Merici College: When I see a student that's, that has a little bit of an issue and a misconception with a particular grammatical concept in French, and if I notice it in their independent practise, obviously I circulate. And this, this gives me the opportunity to address any areas that needs to be corrected. And I always think that if there is a mistake that students will make, I always give them the confidence that by making mistakes, we learn. But I always try and give them a positive encouragement. 

[On-screen text] Frame feedback constructively 

Gaelle Pajot: Be careful with this. That's être. Okay? So if you want to put a negative, I love that, but you've got to sandwich your verb. So the ne is here and the pas is here. Good initiative, Evelyn. I like that. 

Sue Hartshorne, Learning Specialist, Lake Colac School: So I ask the students to elaborate on what they're doing, even if I know that they're doing it correctly, so that I can see that they're doing the same thinking that I had modelled earlier. Particularly today, we were modelling something. It was going to, ultimately, as they were working independently, it was going to be a task where they were doing a mental calculation. I just wanted to check that they were partitioning and were using the same strategies that I, you know, scaffolded earlier in the lesson. 

[On-screen text] Draw on student responses to check your practice 

Sue Hartshorne: Can you tell me out loud what you're doing while you're doing it? Just explain to me what you're doing while you're doing it. So tell me your thinking when you do this.  

Student: Okay, so … 

[On-screen text] Guide attempts to respond 

Sue Hartshorne: What number are you starting with? Are you starting with the tens or the ones when you're adding it together?  

Student: Starting with the 10.  

Sue Hartshorne: Great. Alright, so tell me, then, what, what are, what sum are you doing in your head? What are you doing?  

Student: 81 plus 12.  

Sue Hartshorne: Yeah, so it's 8 plus 1 you’re starting with, though? 

Student: Yeah. 

Sue Hartshorne: Great. And then you're swapping to the ones?  

Student: Yeah.  

Sue Hartshorne: Yeah. 

Greg Ashman: So, the structure of the lesson, you might have noticed, is essentially there's more available to me than I can use. And that enables me to make choices during the course of the lesson. So, the main way I was collecting formative information during that lesson was through mini whiteboards. And so, I could see what the students could do from the mini whiteboards. And then I could decide what the next step was: whether to bounce, I would say, over some questions that have been pre-prepared, or whether to spend a little bit more time on some of them. There's always more than you need, but it enables you to modulate your pace through the lesson. 

[On-screen text] Check for understanding frequently 

Greg Ashman: Beautiful. Oh, this is, this is wonderful.  

[On-screen text] Respond to struggles or mistakes promptly 

Greg Ashman: You right?  

Student: So I’ve done it first.  

Greg Ashman: So you’ve got 4, you’ve got the gradient is 4. Yes. 

Student: Yeah.  

Greg Ashman: Then you just, in the y minus y1, you put the 4 in for the m. And you put the x1 and y1 in for the other bits.  

Okay, beautiful. That's really good. Thank you. If you haven't quite finished that, continue working on it, see if you can get through to the answer. The rest of you, so this is the answer, which I was very pleased to see. The rest of you, can you do, which one of these shall we do? Let's just amp it up a bit with some of these negative numbers. So can you, oh, I've got to get rid of this. Can you now please do this one: the one on the left-hand side? 

Toni Beckett: In order to build that culture in the classroom, we've worked really explicitly at making sure that when a student has answered a question, there's no put-downs, there's no negative comments. Also, building that culture of error, where students are not afraid to speak up if they believe something is wrong. And just showing respect to each other through respectful language and the way that they interact with each other in the classroom.