Table Of ContentWhat Makes a Good
Primary School Teacher?
We know that successful teachers need to use a range of teaching strategies,
but what are they? What Makes a Good Primary School Teacher? provides a
fascinating account of the range of teaching, assessment and feedback strate-
gies used by individual ‘expert’ teachers.
The book describes:
• the most common lesson patterns, why and when they are used;
• how teaching strategies are varied according to subjects;
• how assessment and feedback information can encourage pupils to learn;
• the differences in teaching seven-year-olds and eleven-year-olds.
This accessible and concise book illustrates good teaching practice. Based on
extensive fieldwork by respected researchers and authors, What Makes a Good
Primary School Teacher? contains case study excerpts and quotes from teachers.
It will be an essential read for all students about to embark on primary teacher
training courses, and of great interest to experienced practitioners.
Caroline Gipps is Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Kingston University. She has
written Beyond Testing – Towards a Theory of Educational Assessment published
by Falmer Press. Bet McCallum is an educational researcher at the Institute
of Education, London. She has been involved in research with Caroline Gipps
on the introduction of National Assessment, teachers’ assessment practice and
the assessment, teaching and feedback strategies of primary teachers.
Eleanore Hargreaves is a lecturer in evaluation and assessment and a research
officer at the Institute of Education, London.
HH
What Makes a Good
Primary School Teacher?
Expert classroom strategies
Caroline Gipps, Bet McCallum
and Eleanore Hargreaves
London and New York
First published 2000 by RoutledgeFalmer
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by RoutledgeFalmer
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.
RoutledgeFalmer is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2000 Caroline Gipps, Bet McCallum and Eleanore Hargreaves
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Gipps, C. V.
What makes a good primary school teacher? : expert classroom strategies /
Caroline Gipps, Bet M cCallum, and Eleanore Hargreaves.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references index.
1. Elementary school teaching—Great Britain—Case studies. 2. Effective
teaching—Great Britain—Case studies. I. McCallum, Bet, 1943– II. Hargreaves,
Eleanore, 1961– III. Title.
LB1555.G56 2001
372.1102—dc21 00-034478
ISBN 0-415-23246-5 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-23247-3 (pbk)
ISBN 0-203-13425-7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-18311-8 (Glassbook Format)
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
1 Setting the Scene 1
2 Lesson Patterns 13
3 Teaching Strategies 33
4 Assessment 67
5 Feedback 91
6 Learning and Teaching: Teachers’ and Pupils’ Views 110
7 Synthesis 150
Bibliography 165
Appendix 168
Index 174
Acknowledgements
This book is the outcome of several years’ committed work from a
number of people. We should like to thank in particular the heads and
teachers involved in the study, and their LEA minders, for being so
generous with their time and ideas. The research project could not
have run without the support and organisation skills of Susan Stocker
who was also responsible for transcribing all the tapes and for theinitial
preparation of the manuscript. The final manuscript was produced with
skill and patience by Ann Popham and Jason McKenzie, to whom the
first author owes particular thanks. We must also acknowledge our debt
to Anna Clarkson who had the temerity to suggest that we try and turn
a research report into a good read; we hope that we have achieved just
that. Finally, we thank the Economic and Social Research Council for
funding, over a total of eight years, and for a regime which allowslonger
term creative research to flourish.
Chapter 1
Setting the Scene 1
Setting the scene
INTRODUCTION
Twenty-eight seven-year-olds were sitting at the feet of their
teacher, looking up expectantly. She had a tray of objects on her
lap and was picking them up one at a time and examining them
carefully without a word – a Victorian doll, a Brownie camera, a
greenglass bottle stopper, a locket, a watch, a fossil.
She posed a question...‘What is history?’. A voice from the
floor suggested ‘in the past’. ‘How long ago is in the past?’ asked the
teacher. Answers ranged from ‘The Romans’ to ‘when my granny
lived’ to ‘a minute ago’. All the contributions were accepted and
the teacher used them to explain that people’s memories can be
used to find out about the past and objects can be carefully ex-
amined because they contain clues about the past. Picking up the
Brownie, she point ed it at individuals, looking through the view-
finder and making them smile. She modelled how to examine an
object, giving a running commentary on her conclusions about
the characteristics of the Brownie, the materials it was made of,
whether there was a date anywhere and how it was different from
the class’s new Olympus camera.
‘The other day I was digging in my garden and I found something
interesting...’ reported the teacher. She paused just long enough
to sustain attention...and then from her pocket produced ashard
of patterned blue and white pottery.
2 What Makes a Good Primary School Teacher?
‘So I thought to myself – What had it come from? Who had it
belonged to? I was very interested in this. So what did I do? I looked
in a book and I found some examples with very similar designs. They
were made by a man called Josiah Wedgewood...’
Before long the children set to work. In pairs they chose an
object, described it in writing, drawing or diagram, looked forclues
as to whether it was just ‘old’ or ‘very old’, and guessed at its use.
There were plenty of objects to go round and many of them were
of great interest to the children – some of whom collected magni-
fiers from a resource cupboard to help them in theirinvestigations.
During this part of the lesson, the teacher circulated, listening
in to the conversation of pairs and joining in, often repeating
some of her earlier questions – ‘Well what is that made of do you
think?’ – ‘Who do you think may have owned it?’
The teacher paced the lesson so that there was time at the
end for the class to come together. She invited some children to
make a presentation on their theories: everyone listened andcom-
mented, and the teacher gave praise to all concerned.
This is a real example of an experienced primary teacher giving a
‘lesson’. In this, although it may not seem so to an outsider, she starts
off with ‘teaching’, while during the middle of the lesson she is making
assessments, giving feedback to individuals or groups. In the plenary
at the end she is recapping, making connections, encouraging the
children to explain and present, again making assessments and feeding
back to the class as a whole.
Take another example.
At the other end of the school, 30 Y6 children came filing back
into the classroom after break. They quickly settled into their
groups of four. They were not arranged by ability but the teacher
often moved particular children to work in certain groups – especi-
ally children who were good at explaining things to others. This
did not happen today as it was to be a whole class lesson with
everyone facing the board. Their science books were already
Setting the Scene 3
stacked in the middle of the table and they quickly found their
own and looked towards the teacher.
From the start the teacher explained that this would be a
short, 30-minute lesson. She wanted to teach them something
they would all need to know and use: that science often involves
recording information on a chart and that she would show them
one type of chart they could use over and over again.
The teacher instructed the children to look in their booksand
find reports they had done previously on ‘properties of materials’;
they were to refer to this as the lesson proceeded. The teacher
invited contributions to help recap the work on materials – ‘What
kinds of things were we considering in that lesson?’ – and the chil-
dren explained that they had taken an object and had been
considering how well the materials it was made of fitted its
purpose. The teacher received all answers as valid and praised
them. As part of the recap, the teacher sometimes used ‘non-
sense’ scenarios todraw out children’s understanding of appropri-
ateness of materials – ‘Why is a skipping rope not made of wood?’.
Children were encouraged to theorise and talk freely and there
was a lot of humour in the lesson.
Ten minutes into the lesson, the teacher repeated thepurpose
of the session: ‘to draw up a clear chart in order to use it to make
comparisons of different materials’.
The teacher demonstrated the idea of a chart or grid by draw-
ing an empty grid on the board. She asked one individual to
imagine a saucepan and asked what it might mostly be made of.
Taking the child’s answer (‘metal’) she invited contributions from
the class – ‘What can we say about metal?’. All answers were then
accepted: ‘hard’; ‘inflammable’; ‘opaque’. The teacher explained
that not all the objects they had studied were hard, inflammable
or opaque and to compare and contrast them they would need a
format. She quizzed them for the opposites of ‘hard’; ‘inflammable’;
‘opaque’. Hands shot up and children were keen to answer.
The teacher illustrated the idea of column heading bywriting
up as headings: ‘hard’, ‘soft’, ‘inflammable’, ‘does not catch fire’,‘opaque’,
‘transparent’. Down the side of the chart, she wrote the names of
