Having identified gaps in student achievement, teachers are inclined to use all
available resources to encourage the child to take an active part in their learning. Since the child’s preparation for starting school is perceived to be incomplete, this also has implications for teacher workload. Strategies are used in such a way as to reduce any possible negative impact on the child, by minimising individual pressure and avoiding any sense of failure. Being aware of their own limitations, teachers also co-opt classmates into learning activities. For younger students, teachers incorporate play activities into learning. For example, Susan says:
I tend to buddy them up with somebody who’s really capable, because I just can’t stretch myself that far, so I get a child that’s really able, and they become the teacher. It’s usually very basic hands on activities to practice basis skills, like playdough, painting, cutting, playing with Lego or Mobilo and other fine motor activities. I also tend to do lots of whole class stuff. So if I notice that a child can’t skip, I will get the class to skip from the classroom to the hall, and do it
incidentally throughout the day, the week, the months until they are showing some sort of progress.
As children settle into school routine, teachers try to make learning enjoyable by initiating social activities such as shared learning experiences and peer collaboration. Alice emphasises the importance of discussion:
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We focus a lot on talking, and questioning and social skills. I also put in a lot of discovery type learning to give children some experiences, because often children who haven’t had experiences have nothing to draw upon, in terms of maybe their writing or their oral language. So if we have a shared experience then those children can have exactly the same, they’ve had that experience so they can join in the learning. I also do flexible grouping, so children may be together for some things, then that could be changed up the next day because we are focusing on something else.
A range of learning materials serves to protect children from being overwhelmed. Laura says:
Basically you provide a differentiated learning programme that might not rely on doing homework, because then they feel bad because they haven’t done it. Just being really careful about these things; not pushing them into a hole.
Julie again points to the importance of student wellbeing as being a factor in taking active measures to minimise classroom stressors. Acknowledging that systems within the school may disadvantage students, Julie is prepared to work around the
requirement to test every student by revealing:
So one kid just packs a strop any time there’s a test. The reason he packs a big strop is that he knows that he’s well below, like he knows he finds learning hard. And every time he has to do a test it’s reinforced for him that he’s gonna come out feeling crappy. So rather than doing the proper, like it was a spelling test he packed a wobbly at the other day, so rather than giving him the spelling test, it was just, here take the words and highlight the ones that you don’t know so that he’s not in that test situation. It kind of skews the results, but he was honest, he highlighted the words that he didn’t know.
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For Laura, having a personal connection with her students, and being available before school is vital for the school day to run smoothly. She explains:
So before school between eight and nine you can’t be in the photocopier room. You’ve gotta be there when they turn up. You’ve got to be literally physically there so when they walk into the room you say hello. You can see, have they got their lunch box, have they got their shoes on, are they looking really tidy.
Because that’s when you get them, at the beginning of the day, because if you find out at the end of lunch time, that they haven’t had any lunch, or they
haven’t had any sleep, it’s too late by then and the wheels have usually fallen off. Professional development and research is accepted as a resource for pedagogical insight. Nevertheless, teacher strategies are largely informed by the requirement to find something that works, so trial and error, and on the job learning expressed as experience, are commonly cited in response to questioning about how teacher insight is gained. Again, teachers focus on wellbeing. The sense of relying on colleagues comes up again when Brenda says:
Well it depends. It’s a lot of different ones. Sometimes it’s going to courses. Generally just by looking at, by just doing it myself, thinking what does that child need differently and having to do that myself. You know, I don’t think there’s any other way. We also have our syndicate team meetings. Every time we have one of those, once a fortnight, at least, we look at different children and [explore] strategies for improving their learning as well. We have talked about different children and their welfare and how we could improve their learning. So we look at things collaboratively as a team.
Minimising conflict, involving the child in decision-making and gradually enabling student independence, establishes a sound foundation for creating trust between student and teacher, it also however, equips student with a solid baseline of
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transferrable skills. Speaking of students who change schools frequently, Laura confirms that she promotes student independence by conveying to students:
Now that you’ve got your reading underway, and you’re doing your practice and you’ve got your homework book organised that shows that you’re a really self- managing learner. So you need to teach them to be independent about that and give them the power, because if they zip off somewhere else and you provide them with all this scaffolding, it might not be there in the next school or the next class.
Teachers show that they put in considerable effort to build capacity in the child. They use prior knowledge of adverse family circumstances to reduce the potential for additional stressors in school. Teachers encourage classmates to help with learning, and through discussion with colleagues, teachers try to find ways to make a
connection, and promote learning opportunities. Teachers make learning a social activity. However, their comments also reveal that time and resources may be limited, and there may be a palpable volatility in the classroom that teachers must actively work to mitigate. In addition, teachers’ accounts expose how it becomes possible for knowledge to be developed of students in respect of their family background. This information mediates the interaction possibilities with home.