Atomic Teaching!

Introduction

Atomic Teaching is a teaching methodology that centres around creating clear, shareable teaching resources.

Central to the Atomic Teaching methodology is the idea that when you work in small, complete 'atoms' of teaching, it's easier to share, plan and refine your work.

LessonStack is a website built with the single goal of helping teachers plan great lessons using Atomic Teaching. Everything you need to begin Atomic Teaching today can be found on this website, and best of all: it's free!

How Does it Work?

In Atomic Teaching we start with the premise; that an act of teaching comprises parts:

1. A purposeful objective

2. An activity that will be undertaken by the student

3. A check for learning by the teacher

When these three actions come together you have a single, indivisible, act of teaching. In the Atomic Teaching method, if any of these three actions are removed, then what is left can no longer be considered an act of teaching. This is how one 'atom' of teaching is defined.

If you are already a teacher, these concepts will be very familiar. The goal of Atomic Teaching is not to change the fundamentals of teaching, it is to use current technology to leverage and supercharge what you already know.

Let's take a look at the parts of an Atomic Teaching interaction in a bit more detail...

An Objective

The first job a teacher has is to decide what is worth teaching. They can make this decision in any number of ways, but ultimately, the responsibility of deciding what should be learned is theirs. In Atomic Teaching, an objective is the simplest statement that describes what the student will learn. Here are some examples:

• Students will learn how to spell a collection of Year 4& level words
• Players will learn how to perform a tennis serve
• Chefs will learn how to bake a victoria sponge
• Students will learn how to solve long division problems

A good objective is succinct and to the point. A bystander should be able to read the objective and understand exactly what it means. In Atomic Teaching it is expected that you may scan through objectives when looking through activities to go on a lesson plan, so keeping them simple and readable is essential.

An Activity

After the teacher has decided what the students will learn, they will devise an activity that the student will undertake to learn it.

Broadly speaking, Activities fall into two categories: skill learning and knowledge learning. Skill learning is concerned with physical tasks, like perfecting a tennis serve, driving a car or drawing a beautiful picture. When teaching skill based learning, the proficiency check must include students actively demonstrating the skill in hand.

Knowledge learning consists of imparting intellectual understanding, for example how to solve long division or understanding the historical context of Picasso 's Guernica. Checking a students knowledge will often include written or spoken activities.

There are no restrictions on creating activities; they can be long or short, minutes or hours, creative or repetitive - as long as performing the activity will teach the students what they need to know.

But how will the teacher know if the activity has been taught?

A Learning Assessment

John Wooden famously said: "You haven't taught until they've learned". But, how will you know your students have learned?

In Atomic Teaching, the Learning Assessment is where the teacher will check that learning has taken place. There are many ways to assess learning, but they fall into two broad categories: fast and thorough.

An example of a fast Learning Assessment is when the teacher takes a temperature check of the room. Imagine you have taught something and you need to know if students have taken it on board, you might ask three students a probing question. This is not a thorough check, but it is fast and it will give you a heads up as to whether or not some learning has happened.

A thorough Learning Assessment will provide an in-depth check of every student. Examples include a test, written piece or case study. These checks are very thorough, however they are also time consuming, and often take up an entire block of learning time, so there can be limitations on how often they can be used.

Often, fast checks are necessary before a thorough check. As a teacher it is preferable to feel confident that learning has taken place before issuing a thorough check. There are exceptions to this though, for example there may be times when a thorough check is used as an initial assessment of student ability.

Every Activity you create will require some kind of Learning Assessment - however it does not always need to be thorough. Consider an art tutor who wants students to complete a series of warm up drawings before making a full study. In this instance the teacher must feel confident that students are warm and ready to begin, however it is likely not necessary to complete an in-depth Learning Assessment of this activity. In this case the teacher might simply check that the students have completed five drawings by simply walking around the room.

When students begin the main Activity of a detailed study, the teacher may wish to make a more thorough Learning Assessment, which might include 1 to 1 feedback during the session, group critiques and finally, adding the finished studies to the students portfolio as part of their graded course work.

There is no hard fast rule for how to write a check for learning, but there is a North Star question teachers should ask themselves when writing and refining them: How can I make my checks more thorough?

This question does not have a fixed answer, rather it gives a direction to the thought process of refining your checks over time. For example, say you have a check that will be a set of questions you ask the class directly after a short presentation, how will you ensure those questions are thorough enough?