Teaching Strategy

Excerpt from the Notley guide to Effective Teaching

Seating organisation

The school policy places pupils in boy/girl and mixed gender groups from Years 8 to 11 except where there is a heavily disproportionate weighting in option groups. Experience has shown us that boy/girl seating has a beneficial effect on pupil behaviour.

Girls benefit from the confident risk-taking speculative thinking of boys.
Boys benefit from the more sophisticated communication skills of girls and their ability to reflect on and elaborate ideas.

It is unhelpful to learning if the same pairings operate for too long. A change at half-term ensures six different partners as a minimum during an academic year.

The rationale for pairings has to be thought through and should vary according to the learning objective, for example:

Practical work

A pupil with confident leadership skills with a less confident pupil who learns from him/her
Two pupils with weaker confidence work together to avoid over reliance on each other
Two able pupils collaborate to accelerate their skills

Essay writing

A pupil with ability to write in detail works with one who skims the surface of ideas
A pupil with high level paragraphing/organisational skills works with one who finds this more difficult.

To make best use of the ‘desk partner’ policy it is not enough simply to sit a boy and a girl together, Activities instigated by the teacher must demand collaborative working. Where slightly larger group organisation is to be used, the teacher needs to plan for the mix of pupils according to the activity. Mixed groups have the added benefit of reducing off-task behaviour.