Deputy Principal (Andrew Healey)

Lemov’s – No Opt Out

In earlier Heard on the Hill’s, I have shared snippets on the No Opt Out strategy as a means to increase student accountability within the classroom. There will be many hurdles to get this strategy running smoothly, and you could join the Coffee Club to have a peer observe you trying to establish this strategy. I have included this strategy again as I observed Lewis, during our SDD, give an excellent presentation titled Checking for Understanding. As part of his repertoire, he utilised Lemov’s strategy of No Opt Out. Lewis uses this strategy in all of his classes, which means a variety of academic applications.

One approach to get this going, if you do not wish to start cold, is a “rollout speech” telling your students in advance that you’re going to use this technique and explain why and how they should respond. By rolling out the technique, you may head off any potential hiccups.

• What will happen when you use No Opt Out?
• How students should respond
• What will be tricky about it?
• What it will be like over time as they get used to it?
• Why you are doing this?

Coffee Club

Coffee Club is on tomorrow in Rm30 starting at 8.00am. If you have not been before please turn up to explore peer observations in a safe, supportive environment. Contact Cathy for further information.

Some teachers may still think they are being judged and spend time stressing over the perfect lesson for it to be observed, so it is perfect. That is why the Coffee Club is here; non-judgemental, peer-driven and highly supportive. The observations are about improvement, never perfection. Peer or classroom observations are never about the whole lesson and never about perfection.

After the wonderful presentations on SDD there may be an element that you wish to explore and try in your class. Having a peer provide feedback data will allow you to explore that element further.