The Paragon - NWET&D - Improving Performance

But, by formalising all the necessary skills, there is a need to be aware of what kind of teaching will actually work. To build a successful system every teacher has to recognise that to achieve excellence every single child, whatever their talent and background and whatever their problems, has to have the best chance possible. Some of the approaches that you might think are ready for improvement might include:
- preventing children falling behind by providing earlier interventions and using teaching assistants
or support groups to improve progress
- using teaching assistants or classroom organisation to provide small group or individual teaching
- creating more and better opportunities for less able children as well as those who are gifted and
talented
- providing homework clubs and other kinds of support for children who may be vulnerable.

Confronting problems
Obviously, teaching some children can be extremely difficult for all kinds of reasons, but, I can only repeat, each lesson needs to cater for the learning needs of all pupils. This means differentiating to include the gifted and talented as well as the less able. One of the main problems we will all face when we seriously commit ourselves to making improvements is how to remove the barriers that some children bring into the classroom. One of the simplest improvements is to be able to demonstrate that you actually like teaching them and then to both challenge and support them by:

- inspiring trust and confidence
- building learning commitment
- engaging and motivating them with well-paced differentiation
- thinking analytically about what they need
- being able to take positive action to improve the quality of their learning
- using data and the evaluation of results to plan learning.