Powerful Action Steps

Members may be interested in this free online resource developed by Powerful Action Steps which offers an instructional coaching approach for colleagues working with teachers who are developing their approach to online teaching.

Remote teaching is still teaching.  But, it’s teaching where some of the key elements of effective practice are hugely amplified while others are quietened, some completely muted.  To teach effectively online, we need to focus all our attention on lesson design and pedagogy that targets the amplified principles.

We believe that there are two crucial barriers to effective online learning.  The first is over-complex, confusing lesson and task design.  As far as possible, if we can get every lesson to look and sound the same, with a shared, common language around what students will be doing, we are more likely to be successful.  This is because if students have to devote limited working memory resources to decoding a novel or confusing task design, they are less likely to have space for essential processing of key lesson content.  By keeping our lesson structures predictable, students can devote more resources to thinking hard about content.

The second crucial barrier is motivation, engagement and effort.  Put simply, students have none of the usual social motivations, supports and structures that push them to make an effort in a normal classroom situation.  Unless we design our lessons around this motivation vacuum, ensuring that we make it easy for students to get started in their learning, and to see the reasons why making an effort is important, it is likely this will cause problems. 

These action steps will help your teachers target these two crucial levers, and more.  Each action step comes with a practice task to help teachers rehearse before going live, and a success criteria to aid deliberate practice.  Most also include a model video.  

We hope that these help you to navigate your way through this unprecedented time, and have your teachers come out stronger on the other side.”

Josh Goodrich, Powerful Action Steps


On Thursday, 17th September 2020 we are holding a free Powerful Action Steps (PAS) Introduction Webinar. Members can book their place here

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