Comic strip templates (which I make in Google Drawings) are my go to initial solution for pre teaching.
Not for everyone but it's always my first attempt. I might do one on the sequencing of the skills needed for the next lesson. Nothing new in content just pointing out skills we have previously covered that need to be fresh ready for the next lesson. I might do one on what we are going to do next lesson from start to finish and ask the learner to fill in a blank one on what skills they would need for this lesson. I might to a visual timetable one with days/times on as to when I would look at key points in the week ready for the lesson. In this example I talk through the episodes of the lesson. For my adults my template has moved from a comic strip to a flow chart. I have found this approach help my learners with EAL, ADHD and autism. With my adults I have also found it useful to help them practise retrieval in a busy house whilst juggling parenting and working. It has become the norm for me to share with all my learners a flow chart (in Google Drawings, downloaded as a pdf) of the pre teaching for the next lesson. No one has to use it but no one is singled out. It is a purposeful and timely support to help my learners.
I know teachers who have done this for years. One teacher ends a lesson with an exit ticket and on the back is a list of topics to look over ready for next week. But this is the very minimum of pre teaching. I have a shopping list when I go shopping. It doesn't mean I use it. A list is a starting point. Pre teaching is about what you need to access the lesson. My flow charts are hyperlinked to tasks, resources, videos. I provide the list and the material so that when the lesson happens it feels like retrieval followed my a deeper learning experience. This normal way for me could become the new normal for many in a blended learning approach.
Here is an example for the one I sent prior to the comic book one above, this is the pre teaching for the angles in polygons lesson. Each section has a hyperlink to a task or resource.
Yet I am not an expert in SEND. Nor do I get it right. I very much get it wrong. Last year I set a mock exam and my top learner in class achieved the lowest result. I asked him why. He had no answers. I was devastated that something was holding him back but I couldn't get to why. In class the next week we did probability. I asked "what is the probability of getting a jack when you pick from a deck of cards?" This is a standard opener for me in probability. Learners can visualise there are 4 suits and therefore 4 Jack's and form a fraction out of 52. We then move on to simplifying fractions. Standard. Normal lesson. My top achiever with the poor mock result looked bewildered. I went over once we moved on and the tasks begun. He explained that he didn't know what a deck of cards was. Right there in that moment I questioned my ability as a teacher. I had failed him.
The reason my learner struggled in his mock exam is because English isn't his first, second or even third language. He couldn't read the exam. I knew he was an EAL student and had given him a dictionary but we don't have any in his first language, I had to give him one of his second language. It is no surprise he didn't use it. We have all experienced the strain on our brain trying to understand written text in another language, be it a warning sign on a foreign beach or an airport notification. Imagine that strain 4 times over. Even if he had been able to read the exam I doubt he would have achieved his full potential due to fatigue through translation.
I sat with the learner and set up Read and Write into his first language. Texthelp had achieved more than we had already! I am lucky in that where I work pays for premium Texthelp products, where you work some features may not be available if you don't have premium. I configured the English to a familiar accent to him. He could now listen to English being read to him and understand it easier than in my dulcet Yorkshire tones. I showed him the dictionary feature, the picture dictionary and the prediction feature. He enjoyed the screen masking too so we kept that when I went through data desk and personalised it for him. As he left he thanked me. I was embarrassed, I had let him down and he was still thanking me? It was a sobering thought about how much content he hadn't been able to read. We had been in class for 2 months. I was slow out of the blocks on this one.
That week I reflected. I went through the next lesson and picked out words that I thought may pose a problem. I highlighted them in one click and ran them through the vocabulary list in Read and Write. It instantly gave me the definition and a picture to go with these key words. This was my pre teaching. In my class the majority of learners were EAL, many were studying GCSE English. This picture dictionary allowed me to give them pre teaching that was purposeful and relevant. Regardless of their home language they could see a picture of what we were going to be talking about next lesson. Students had a definition that they could translate in Read and Write so that they understood the key vocabulary before the lesson. Imagine a 60 year old grandma in a GCSE maths class who has never left the UK. What good would a vocabulary list be to her you may wonder? It was a revelation. She pulled my observer to one side in a lesson and said, "these words are great, means I can read t'questions dead quick now" My pre teaching is now a hyperlinked flow chart and a vocabulary list for all learners. Support that is relevant, timely and useful for many. If you do something well once it will save you time in the long run. Building pre teaching into my practise has and continues to do this, in reflecting and making this change I have almost forgiven myself for not spotting my EAL learners issues sooner, almost.
