Bitesize Research: Building Student Criticality

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week! With our forthcoming INSET day in July, we’ve got an external facilitator session planned to continue the work we’ve been doing on anti-racism and to honour our commitment to a keynote in this area annually.  As such, this week, I was interested in seeing an article published in Edutopia, about criticality, particularly when considering multiple and diverse perspectives.

Objectives: To consider how teachers can supporting building students’ criticality 

Summary: 

• The author delineates a difference between critical thinking and criticality. Critical thinking refers to deep, analytical thinking, whereas criticality is about power, equity and anti-oppression. 

• The author suggests engaging students with particular questions to support building criticality:

• 1) The author suggests starting by using ‘what’ questions to activate critical thinking. E.g. What is your summary? What is your key takeaway? What information supports your explanation?

• 2) The author then suggests introducing criticality questions, best summarised as ‘so what?’ and ‘what next?’ questions. For example: What voices are missing here? What assumptions does this make? Can or should we take action about this to promote social change? 

  
  

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How am I currently supporting critical thinking and criticality in my students?

• What elements of critical thinking and criticality would work well with my subject, and the topics I am planning?

• What elements of critical thinking and criticality would work well in parts of the RSHE curriculum I am teaching?

• What further support do I need on this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Bitesize Research: A Sense Of Wonder To Enhance Learning

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week. For this first bitesize post I was really interested to read about ongoing research being done by the University of Lancaster into notions of ‘wonder’ and its role in learning and in schools as reported in the TES.

Objectives: To understand the impact of a sense of wonder in students’ learning

Summary: 

• The writer defines wonder as a ‘sense of puzzlement about something that seems important or interesting’

• Existing research has suggested that ideas of ‘wonder’ can be very powerful in terms of increasing students’ intrinsic motivation and willingness to ask questions. It also shows that a sense of curiosity or a ‘hungry mind’ is just as important as effort and intelligence in terms of determining academic achievement

• As such, the University of Lancaster are currently trying to determine the place that ‘wonder’ has in classrooms at KS2 (with the view to extending this eventually into secondary).

• They are using a theoretical framework which identifies the following strategies for promoting ‘wonder’ in classrooms:

• 1) Be mindful of student’s personal wonder experiences and guide them individually

• 2) Be a role model by sharing teacher experiences of wonder

• 3) Create conditions for exploration and creativity 

• 4) Facilitate ‘meaning-making’ within lesson content

• 5) Stimulate the imagination and creativity within lessons

• 6) Make the familiar unfamiliar - emphasise the wonder in everyday life

• 7) Encourage reflection and awareness

• 8) Enrich experiences through art, technology and nature.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How am I promoting ideas about ‘wonder’ currently? When have I seen this in a student’s learning? How did I recognise it?

• How does this link to our ideas about student-centred learning?

• How well does this theoretical framework apply to a secondary context? And to my subject?

• What would I like to do more to promote wonder? What support do I need to do this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thoughts From A Visitor: Centre For Tutorial Teaching

By Tessa Palfreyman, Director of Teaching and Learning at CTT https://www.centrefortutorialteaching.org/ 

We are a global centre for tutorial teaching based in Oxford, UK. We are a community of professors, researchers, experienced teachers, executive leaders and instructional designers, each of whom have experienced the Tutorial Method at some point in our careers. Some of us have been delivering tutorials at the University of Oxford for decades, while some of us have implemented tutorial learning in our local primary school classrooms. We have staff who were taught by the Tutorial Method at the University of Oxford, and others who are veteran instructional designers who have long wanted to embed the method in their work. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to visit Westminster Academy in January 2023 and gained some valuable insights into the International Baccalaureate (IB), how it can work in a non-fee-paying school sixth form and the impact it has on students. There are a number of parallels between the IB and the Tutorial Method and this was evident when visiting the school. 

What did we do during our visit?

During our visit we met with Holly Youlden, Assistant Vice Principal for Teaching and Learning, and Dr Paul Wood, Principal and CEO of Westminster Academy. Holly and Paul talked us through the Diploma and Career-related IB programmes that are on offer to their sixth form students. We discussed the importance of students leaving school being fully prepared and equipped for further education and employment and what schools can do to ensure this. Dialogue-based learning and metacognition were two key pieces that we agreed were fundamental for students and the Tutorial Method and IB offer students. During our morning at the school, we were also able to observe some Year 12 and Year 13 students in their IB lessons in both Maths and Anthropology, this gave us the chance to see the two programmes in practice and the way in which teachers facilitate learning. In the Maths class, we were able to speak with three students and ask questions about their experiences of the IB and the way in which they are taught at the school. This was certainly the highlight of our visit and gave us insights and learnings we could take back to our work at CTT. 

What did we learn from our visit? 

We took a huge amount of learning away from our visit to Westminster Academy and are incredibly grateful to have met Holly and Paul and their articulate and interesting sixth form students. Hearing the positive impact that the IB has on students from both senior leaders and the students themselves consolidated what the data shows, but more importantly the crucial life-long skills that are developed through this way of teaching. As dialogue-based learning, independent work, study skills, relevance and intent are some of the key aspects of the IB programmes we, as experts in the Tutorial Method, were able to see how aligned the IB and the Tutorial Method are and how the method can be utilized by teachers on IB programmes to further enhance their teaching and offerings to students. We were encouraged to see how a programme typically only available in fee-paying schools is working so well in a state school, demonstrating the potential that other programmes and schools can have without being confined to traditions that may no longer work for students in the 21st century. We are excited to learn even more about the IB and the ways in which the Tutorial Method can be used within and alongside IB programmes.

Putting It Into Practice: Student-Centred Learning

By Holly Youlden

At the start of term, we spoke at length about the importance of learning being student-centred. In this blog post, we are going to explore some of the ways you can put pedagogy into practice by looking at staff reflections, reading, and top tips! 

Staff reflections: 

Having spent a year exploring the topic of “student-centred learning” with their Professional Learning Community (PLC), Charlotte Dunn and Maya Amara summarised what this meant in their CPD session during INSET. They summarised what student centred learning means and does not mean in our context in this table: 

What ‘student centred’ does mean in our context

What ‘student centred’ doesn’t mean in our context

Students are given lots of opportunities to talk to each other through pair or group discussion When group work does take place it is well scaffolded and structured Students are given opportunities to reflect on how they might approach a task before doing it Students work on tasks that are appropriate for their ability levels and needs Students have some sense of autonomy over their learning. They feel empowered.

It doesn’t mean there is no teacher talk - direct instruction is extremely valuable when teaching new concepts or modelling It doesn’t mean there is no scaffolding or structure to lessons  It doesn’t mean group work every lesson It doesn’t mean that different groups of students should always be doing something different from each other. It doesn’t mean that students are completely in control of the classroom It doesn’t mean students need to ‘discover’ new learning for themselves. We still need to teach them things.

(From C. Dunn’s “Student-Centred Learning” CPD, 1st September 2022) 

Reflecting on the training, Jenny Scott said her biggest takeaway was “the idea of using choice (which makes a task more student-centred) as a form of differentiation. For example, in the past I have commonly included a gap fill task followed by a stretch question, but what if the more able students could choose to do the more advanced question instead of the gap fill, rather than as an additional task? A consideration that was discussed around this was students choosing an option that wasn't actually the best task for their level, so this is something that I am excited to trial in my lessons in future and see how I can best overcome this hurdle.”. 

Similarly, Jojo Laber from Maths said that this session helped her realise that, “facilitating a student-centred learning environment is more natural than you'd think! Although at first impression it may seem like there's more work involved, it actually becomes a much less energy-demanding lesson when you're sure that the students know what direction to take their learning in for that lesson. It provides the opportunity for students to take ownership of what they're learning and therefore feel more encouraged to engage well throughout the lesson.”

How can I learn more?

Try reading…

• Blog post from Andrew Moore about student-centred scaffolding

• Blog post from Flo Rayner about group work

• CPD slides from Charlotte Dunn and Maya Amara about using choice to make lessons more student-centred

• Never Work Harder Than Your Students by Robyn R. Jackson (Professional Learning Library)

• Teaching Walkthrus by Efrat Furst, Clare Sealy, Dylan Wiliam, and Kate Jones (Professional Learning Library)

• Student-centred page on the Professional Learning Platform

Try speaking to…

• Charlotte Dunn- English

• Maya Amara- Maths

• Georgina Abbott- Expressive Arts

• Dipesh Patel- Science

Please share any great examples of student-centred learning with me at h.youlden@westminsteracademy.org.uk!

Bitesize Research: Student Perceptions Of School

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone had a good week so far! This week, I was interested in the reporting of a recent piece of Australian research that looked at students’ likes and dislikes about school. Objectives:

To understand student perceptions of school, including their specific likes and dislikes about it. Summary:

• Previous research shows that feeling positive about school is associated with better attendance and also better outcomes for students. Conversely, strong feelings of dislike about school lead to greater amounts of exclusions and risk of NEET (not in education, employment or training).
• This study surveyed over 1,000 Australian students to look at their feelings and perceptions about school in further depth.
• In a general sense, roughly two-thirds of the students surveyed said they liked school, and one-third said they did not.
• Many of the disliker students suggested that their dislike started when they transitioned into secondary, and this appeared worsened over time, with older students disliking school more.
• School likers and dislikers tended to both prize ‘friends’ in particular. However, school likers tended to like ‘learning’ whereas dislikers tended not to.
• One of the largest disparities between the likers and dislikers was in their rating of ‘my teacher listens to me’ - likers rated this highly, and dislikers rated this at a low level.
• The study suggests that teacher-pupil relationships are a really important part of school experience for both the liker and disliker groups and that this should be an area of focus for future action research.

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• What do I know about my students’ and tutees’ likes and dislikes about school? What might be important to know about them?
• How do I ensure that students feel that I listen to them?
• How can I ensure ongoing positive relationships with all students?

If you would like to discuss this further with me please get in touch! I’d be delighted to hear from you!

Bitesize Research: Increasing Student Agency

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s had a great week so far! In our quest to increase opportunities for inquiry-based and student-centred learning, in the final bitesize of this term, I was interested to see this article offering some suggestions around how teachers can promote student agency. Objectives: To consider what strategies teachers can use to improve student agency Summary:

• The author defines student agency as something that empowers students to drive their own learning.
• The strategies suggested by the author to support this include:
• Embracing quiet moments: Strategies for student-centred learning and to increase student agency can be ‘messy’. The author suggests that rather than acting on any sense of urgency in the classroom, giving students opportunities to pause can be very helpful.
• Praising the process and the journey: Using ideas for a growth mindset, the author suggests praising learning habits and efforts
• Self-assessment: The author argues self-assessment is very powerful to increase agency, and that we need to equip students with the language they’ll need to be able to evaluate their work.
• Consider the ratio of feedback to asking questions: The author argues that asking thoughtful questions can enable the students to give feedback to themselves. The author argues that good questions will have multiple answers and won’t be leading.
• Tell students you trust them: The author argues that both verbally and through modelling, showing students you trust them and that making mistakes is fine is important to cultivating student agency.

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• What strategies do I use already to cultivate student agency?
• Which ones of these strategies could I trial? How can I incorporate them into my practice?
• What further support or knowledge would I like to gain on approaches to foster student agency?

If you would like to discuss this further with me please get in touch! I’d be delighted to hear from you!

Student-Centred Scaffolding

By Andrew Moore

“Bop bop bop, bop to the top.” - Sharpay and Ryan Evans

When the term scaffolding is used in regards to education I can’t help but think of the characters Sharpay and Ryan Evans from High School Musical singing about ‘bopping’ to the top, both singing about and physically climbing ladders in their euphoric musical rendition. Although not an accurate representation of the act of scaffolding itself, the idea of climbing a ladder and moving one rung (eh-hem ‘bop’) at a time within a structured task is crucial in the student-centred learning experience. 

Becton Loveless offers the following definition. ‘Scaffolding refers to breaking up new concepts so that they can be learned more easily.’ With the implementation of scaffolds, pupils will have a greater ability to understand new concepts and more efficiently retain information.

The role of scaffolds within my own practice is crucial for building pupil understanding and returning to concepts. An issue that often arises in the music classroom is cognitive overload from the number of variables to a task. For example, a Year 7 piano task will typically require a student to combine previously taught information regarding note values with new information in the form of reading pitch AND learning how to both translate this to specific keys and have accurate motor control over their fingers. To exacerbate this, students may also only encounter the subject and instrument once a week often resulting in an element of ‘relearning’ taking place in each lesson. I imagine there will be doppelganger-esque scenarios in most subjects, further highlighting the importance of teacher tools to help students navigate or return to a concept. Below are some general tips I find helpful within my own practice:

1. Be aware of your students’ Zones of Proximal Development.

Coined by the researcher Vygotsky, the zones of proximal development (ZPD) refer to what a student can do independently, what they can do with assistance, and what they can’t do just yet, even with help. It is important to be aware of the students in your class and the ability they already have, the ability they will have with assistance from a student with slightly more ability (for example in music this could be a student who has learned the piano privately), the ability they will have with assistance from you, and then tasks that despite regular assistance are still too challenging (in music this could be providing a student who can competently read the various notes with a piece of music at concert level and ask them to perform). With understanding of the various zones you can effectively plan your lesson using scaffolds informed by the students within the room, what they know, how this may be used to help others and also how you may help the students by working with them. 

2. Link the steps, highlight the journey, empower students in future use.

It is important pupils can see the steps and scaffolds that are used in the delivering of a concept so their ‘toolkit’ of knowledge is nurtured and developed. If the steps for a particular task are linked to build upon one another then the student can use the scaffolds in real time. By immediately highlighting the steps and how they are linked, the students will gain an satisfaction and greater command over the task itself, perhaps being able to independently utilise the scaffold when in need and also appreciate the scaffolds provided within a new task or concept. This also helps as the steps should and naturally will become more complex as pupil knowledge grows. 

3. Embed scaffolds in pupil routines for consistent tasks.

Earlier in the blog post I discussed the scenario of a Year 7 music class learning to play the piano. The scaffold I used to support pupils in this scenario was laminated cut outs of part of a piano with the particular note names (translations) written for each key. Pupils could then slot the cut out behind relevant keys of the piano, therefore allowing pupils to more easily access the piano keys and link them to the notes. The keyboard cut outs sit at the front of the music room in a pile visible and readily accessible to students. For every subsequent lesson the scaffold was readily available to use and gradually I stopped instructing pupils to retrieve the cut-out, and rather allowed them to pick it up when they felt in need. This also allowed pupils to gradually manage the task without the scaffold, or use it when they may have had a lapse in knowledge or need just a little bit more support approaching the piano task itself. 

4. Make use of a physical scaffold.

This is not to say set up scaffolding as you would with a building, rather make use of physical. tangible objects that scaffold a task or a concept. For example, when leading pupils in their writing technique for an essay question, providing generic but typical sentence starters in printed form can be a useful scaffold students can use on a regular basis before they gradually no longer need it. This could be a typical starting sentence for an introduction section of an essay, and similarly a conclusion. If the sentence starters were printed they offer another vehicle for student understanding and reasoning, perhaps the student could place the physical object on the relevant paper to help with the process of planning and envisioning their future sentence etc. 

5. Scaffold conversations.

A fairly self-explanatory title, when you scaffold conversation you offer prompts in some shape or form that assist your pupils in verbal reasoning and understanding a concept. I find the key to scaffolding conversation is to ensure your contributions are brief and clearly highlight how the topic builds upon prior knowledge. Another important factor in scaffolding conversation is understanding and in part predicting student responses, then using this knowledge to inform your response and scaffolded sentences… (bear with me). There was a particular lesson where my Year 9 students were analysing a piece of music called ‘4:33’ in which the performer sits at a piano but does not play it. The concept briefly summarised is that the music is what happens within the silence- therefore unique for each performance. However, does this mean the piece is actually music? This was the question I posed to my Year 9’s with the overall goal that students would be able to articulate what they thought music was and why. By predicting likely student responses I would play devil’s advocate and ask leading questions requiring students to examine their views and deepen their inquiry of the debate itself. By doing so you can set the parameters to help support pupils as they formulate their understanding and answers whilst also inspiring them in their answers. The scaffold requires a good understanding of your pupils, however can be incredibly useful and helpful in supporting students within important conversations. 

6. Ensure understanding of scaffolding and differentiation, the similarities and differences.

Differentiation and scaffolding often overlap and both share the same desired end goal of increasing student success. Generally, differentiation is seen as more individualistic in approach, for example, modifying or creating a different task in order to cater more efficiently to a particular student or students’ learning style; whereas scaffolding is generally aimed at a class as a whole. Understanding the distinction is important for the lesson planning process helping to ensure teachers are firmly aware and have command over the resources they are creating and delivering within the lesson. A pitfall I occasionally fall into is I create a resource with the intention of using it as a differentiated resource for a student, however, it is actually part of the general scaffolding of the lesson, therefore missing the student in need of a modified task or resource. Similarly, understanding the two processes will allow you to reuse and repurpose previous materials, such as a scaffold becoming a more targeted resource of differentiation.

Thank you for reading and always remember, you gotta bop bop bop, bop to the top!

Further reading:

• https://www.educationcorner.com/scaffolding-education-guide.html
• https://blog.prepscholar.com/vygotsky-scaffolding-zone-of-proximal-development
• https://dataworks-ed.com/blog/2017/05/differentiation-and-scaffolding-before-teaching/
• https://www.gcu.edu/blog/teaching-school-administration/what-scaffolding-education#:~:text=Scaffolding%20refers%20to%20a%20method,how%20to%20solve%20a%20problem.&text=Students%20might%20work%20together%20in%20small%20groups%20to%20help%20each%20other.
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261619027_Tools_for_Scaffolding_Students_in_a_Complex_Learning_Environment_What_Have_We_Gained_and_What_Have_We_Missed

Bitesize Research: Fostering Better Metacognition In Lessons

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s having a great week so far! This week, continuing with our theme on student-centred learning for T3, I was really interested in this editorial article about metacognition by Muijs in the Impact publication given by the Chartered College of Teaching. 

Objectives: To outline some of the recent educational research on metacognition and outline some of the strategies to foster better metacognition. 

Summary: 

• Muijs argues In the emerging research literature on metacognition, better clarity on the differences between metacognition and self-regulation are required. 
• This article argues that self-regulation is broader than metacognition, and that in fact, metacognition is a part of self-regulation. Muijs then defines self-regulation as being in three main parts;  cognition, metacognition and motivation. 
• Metacognition is about ways that learners appraise their learning processes in an ongoing way, and therein purposefully redirect their learning where necessary.
• Metacognition is not innate and can be deliberately taught and improved using certain teaching strategies that involve planning, monitoring and evaluation.
• Metacognitive knowledge can also be honed by:
• Making generalisations or rules in terms of a thinking strategy
• Deliberating naming the thinking strategy
• Explaining when and when not to use particular thinking strategies
• Generic ideas about ‘learning skills’ may be less helpful than subject-specific strategies for metacognition, although there will be some crossover. 

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How do I define self-regulation and metacognition?
• What strategies have I deployed that involve the processes of planning, monitoring and evaluation?
• What ‘thinking strategies’ do I use with students? How do I get them to explore these and how appropriate they are for certain tasks?

 

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

Bitesize Research: Classroom Talk & Oracy

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s having a great week so far! This week, following our student-centered blog theme for T3, I was really interested in a piece on Edutopia about classroom talk that showcases some of the School 21 oracy strategies. Objectives: To outline some of the strategies from School 21’s acclaimed work on classroom talk and oracy. Summary:

Some of the strategies highlighted include -

• Create discussion guidelines. These include: always respect each other’s ideas, and be prepared to change your mind.
• Use ‘talk detectives’. These are students that circulate whilst group or pair discussions are taking place with a copy of the discussion guidelines. Then they write down the names of students who evidenced the guidelines you’ve set, and what it is that they said. This supports developing metacognition around oracy.
• Consider carefully the groupings of your students. This is both in terms of the students themselves but also the different types of positions they are in.
• Model and clarify what good listening looks like. Be explicit about asking students to demonstrate good listening behaviours which could include looking your partner in the eye, considering their talking volume and giving their partner personal space.
• Create discussion roles. These include: instigator, builder and summariser. One strategy used by School 21 is that they film staff having conversations in these roles and students use these videos to identify the roles being taken.
• Create structured talk tasks including controversial ‘talk point’ statements, ‘ghost reading’ and ‘collective writing’.
• Build up confidence in shy students by giving them talking sentence starters.

How does this impact me and my practice?:
Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• What is important to me about oracy and student talk in my lessons and in my subject?
• How does oracy and student talk benefit student learning in my subject?
• How am I already integrating student talk into my lessons? How successful has it been? How do I know?
• Which of these strategies could be helpful in a lesson I’m planning to teach in the near future?

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

Bitesize Research: Strategies To Support Independent Learning And Metacognition

 By Jaya Carrier

Welcome back - hope everyone had a great half term! This week, I was interested to see a Harvard study that took place in 2019 which looked at strategies to encourage independent learning and metacognition. This study focused on how these strategies were used in a problem-based learning STEM curriculum in the US for high school students. Objectives:

To examine the effectiveness of strategies to support independent learning and metacognition Summary:

The research concluded that the strategies included in this project supported better and more effective independent learning. They also made problem-based learning more accessible. The scaffolds used were:

• Encouraging students to consider context: Students should actively question what they do and don’t know in an ongoing way
• Use open-ended questions: Teachers should look to question this way, rather than correcting students outright. For example ‘Can you tell me more about that?’ or ‘Can you explain that?’
• Activate prior knowledge: Students should be encouraged to consider regularly what they already know about problems both with respect to their academic knowledge, as well as their wider general understanding of the world around them and lived-experience.
• Student choice: Students should be encouraged to make their own choices, and should be questioned in an open-ended way about these choices. For example ‘What’s next?’
• Cultivate and celebrate risk-taking: This is a culture created by praising risks and learning from taking them. It can also be created by way of not immediately correcting mistakes for students and instead allowing them to come back to the right path by way of exploration. For example, using phrases such as ‘That’s interesting, let’s explore it.’
• Time for reflection: Students should be encouraged to see themselves as active learners, rather than just participants. This should be done by way of regular check-ins, asking questions such as ‘How do you think your group is doing?’ or ‘How are you managing your learning’

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• How independent are my students? How do I know?
• How am I using these strategies already? How could I employ these strategies further in my lessons?
• What do I know about problem-based learning? What do I want to find out about problem-based learning?

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations. Thanks, Jaya

The Power Of Objects: How Might We Teach Our Children Through The Lens Of Stuff?

 By Charlotte Nicholas

Consider the object in the image and ponder your answers to the following questions: What is it? Why might it have been created? What is it for? Where is it from? What might it be able to tell us about society? It may just look like a skull with numbers on but in fact it is so much more. This is a phrenological skull created by James Deville in the 1820s. Phrenology is a ‘science’ where the size of the head was measured and this was used to make revelations about individuals’ intelligence and character. The skull's deep lines show the 27 areas of the head responsible for certain characteristics and personality traits. This pseudoscience helped support attitudes towards criminals, racist ideology and stereotypes towards genders and can tell us a multitude of things about Victorian attitudes and beliefs. It helps us to understand the journey that psychology has undertaken to reach where it is today. You might be wondering about the relevance of a fake Victorian head….

What got me thinking?

When most people think of history as a subject they often think of endless and boring source activities. In fact, history teachers seek to avoid this ‘death by sources’ (G. Howells). Since my PGCE year, I was always motivated to find ways to make learning history as captivating as possible and completed my first assignment on learning about WWI not by studying the boring battles but by learning through objects and what they could tell us about the war. Ever since then I have been itching to bring objects into the history classroom. In the 1970s and 1980s historians and social scientists alike were grappling with the ‘linguistic turn’, a phrase that represents the shift to cultural and written sources instead of touchable and tangible sources. Now historians are faced with the ‘ material turn’ where they focus on historical objects and consider what they can tell us about people and their lives in the past. What did the reading say? `Touching, feeling, smelling, and sensing history through objects: new opportunities from the ‘material turn’ by Bird, Wilson, Egan-Simon, Jackson and Kirkup, 2020 influence me to think about objects in the classroom again. This Teaching History article discusses a project completed by history teachers where they were inspired by the ‘material turn’ to focus on teaching history to students through everyday objects. The objects chosen represented economic transformations from 1000 to 1700 and broadly demonstrated the rise in manufactured products, and illustrating significant changes in society. Whilst this project was generally focused towards primary school students, the group found that students used their imagination to create their own impressions of the past. They were able to have a deeper conceptual understanding without knowing too much about the specific time period. Students were able to have freedom in their thoughts and could offer multiple ideas towards open-ended questions. Learning through objects helped students to consider the world as dynamic and changing, through the eyes of ordinary people not the elite and it added a little mystery to their lessons, mysteries they were inspired to solve. Students started to consider ‘What do things do to people?’ rather than ‘What do people do with them?’ (Labanyi et al). How might we consider this in our own teaching?: I am under no illusion that the most obvious place to teach about historical objects is in history lessons, however, there is a place for learning about objects across the curriculum, since the object itself is only half the story, it is really about the questions that are asked. In addition to this, an aspect of the Theory of Knowledge (TOK) internal assessment in the IBDP forces students to think about objects when they consider a question about knowledge and have to choose three objects which help illuminate this. If students were introduced to thinking about objects in a meaningful way across the curriculum and lower down the school, they might be better equipped to talk about objects when they reach the sixth form. Getting students to think about objects will help inspire ‘awe and wonder’ in our lessons, it is an inclusive method of teaching, all students can engage with an object in some way. It encourages our students to think with fewer limitations and encourages them to think for themselves, giving more meaning to the content they are learning about. Finally, it gives our students an opportunity to increase their cultural capital, giving them a chance to engage with items they may never have the chance to otherwise. I encourage you to take a risk and think about how you might make some room for objects in your classroom. I have included two examples of how we have included objects in the history and TOK classroom. I’d love to hear ideas from the WA community about how we might ingrain objects into our lessons and hear how you have made a place for them in your lessons.