Buenos dias good senor, I've never been down here before (John Hanlon)

Photo by Sebastian Dumitru
on Unsplash

Back to school for the start of Term 3 this week and we'll resume the quest to improve our results and engage students.

It's actually harder than you think to do both those things.

I was reading an interesting article about this and it seems 
there is often a tradeoff between "good teaching" where students learn stuff and "good teaching" that engages students.

Researchers found that teachers who were good at raising test scores tended to receive low student evaluations. Teachers with great student evaluations tended not to raise test scores all that much.

Basically: the teachers and the teaching practices that can increase test scores often are not the same as those that improve student-reported engagement. Doing both is rare!

That's a dilly of a pickle is it not?

The researchers did find a small number (6 out of 53) teachers who managed both to have high engagement ratings and improved test scores.

Here's what those 6 did differently:

• These teachers often had students working together collaboratively in pairs or groups, using tactile objects to solve problems or play games.  
• These doubly “good” teachers had another thing in common: they maintained orderly classrooms with thoughtful, efficient routines.
• They had a good sense of pacing and understood the limits of children’s attention spans.