 Hello, everyone. This is Ross at Teacher Talk, at the most influential blog on education in the UK today. I am delighted to be talking to David Roger Goodwin, David. Hello, how are you? I'm very well thank you. Could I first of all get you to introduce yourself to our listeners and tell everybody what you do? So, yeah, my name's David Goodwin. I'm currently head of year 10 and 11 at secondary school in Lincolnshire. I'm a geography teacher and I'm currently... well just finished writing a book that's due to be published in September co-offered with Oliver Cavity only. Fantastic how exciting. So we got in touch because one of my past podcast guests Cat Howard in one of the questions which I'll be asking you who would you recommend I interview next and why so I'm going to show that you've got an answer but she recommended you and that's why we're here. So let's start with that awkward question why do you think she recommended you? I think if I remember rightly because of my northern accent but she did politely go on to say about my knowledge of graphic organisers and at the time we'd been doing a little bit of work together on one or two bits and trying to visually capture some of their ideas and thinking and helping to make sense of it. So let's go straight to the top for people that don't know and people that are listening what is a graphic organiser? A graphic organiser most commonly people would be familiar with things like mind maps, concept maps, possibly maps in a fishbone diagram, something like bring storm in that sort of activity before. So that essentially is what a graphic organiser is they go by lots of different terms so terms like visual tools, semantic organisers have been used and through what man of us we kind of arrived at our own title which is weird diagram and we arrived at that because really what helps users of weird diagrams graphic organisers what helps them is not the visual element and no visuals actually need to be present in order to really extract the true value out of them and we kind of argue in our book that actually it's the physio-spatial aspect of using such tools that really has the power and the potential to to help people make meaning. Now I understand all the pedagogical terms that you've used but could we break it down in further for maybe a parent listening I didn't understand anything David said could you could you say it maybe a bit simpler? Yeah so I think really I mean when we're using graphic organisers what we're looking at is really a tool a tool to help students when it comes to things like reading writing and and really help them to not become overwhelmed and and not to become overburdened with complex thinking and it's unthought into the world and making sense of ideas because they're visually or visibly in front of us and it allows us to organise them as a result of that rather than trying to do all of that internally within our mind which can be very challenging even for the most intelligent and most academic of people. Okay so let's let's ask the question why did you get interested in it? So for like for me I did an A-level in graphics so I always kind of had that background as someone that was interested in how visual thinking and visual tools might be able to help learning. I'd done quite a little bit of work myself just using things that I'd found from the learning scientists and people like Oliver and I'd been bouncing ideas backwards and forwards with Oliver for quite some time and I've put the idea together that maybe we've tried to to explore further and it's one of his earlier books IQ that was that really showed me potential for the use. I think one of the one of the things that I see a lot on place like Switzerland is people sharing examples of their fantastic work but at the time when I started suggesting to Oliver that we should look at work and fathom this there was very little conversation around actually the process and it was more about the product and there was a very few people other than Oliver really really talking about actually how these graphic organisers are really tools and this is how we can use them to serve the learning process and that's one of the kind of key messages and themes in the book. Graphic organisers at the learning they are a servant and they are a part of the learning process and we make it very explicit how how teachers can really use them in the practice manner in their classroom. So when's the book out? September the 6th I believe is the official publication date. September the 6th and without maybe stating an obvious question what's the book title? It's called Organised Ideas Thinking by Hand Extending the Mind. Organised Ideas. Right we'll come back to that so um thank you that's a great introduction now um what I do with all my listeners we do a little kind of backstory um so let's start off with what were you like at school 16 years old? I mean I felt like I probably went under the radar a little bit I did go to a rather large secondary school and I probably needed more pushing than than I got it wasn't really until I kind of got to college in university that I became truly motivated I'd say so I probably went under the radar. I wasn't bad um but I think I could have probably done better at the time. So can I assume that your homework was always late or am I being a bit unkind? Possibly a little unkind but it probably wasn't late but probably wasn't so as uh as a higher standard as as I took my students. When did the I want to be a teacher conversation start to emerge? In university I think that was really when I started to think about yeah you know this is and I had a couple of friends at the time that were were also having the same sort of ideas and thinking and it sort of kind of spiralled home there really. And uh how geography or how did geography happen? I always had an interest in it. I was always interested in school and I seemed to and I started to I've started to think about this a lot more just recently when starting to work with graphic organisers and graphic organisers are like cartography for the mind these internal maps that we have and we try to externalise them to make sense of what we're thinking and to really look at different ways in which ideas connect and it's the same with with soft map reading. I remember like when I was really young and my mum at the time would make long journeys to my auntie's house. We used to have an old road map and I used to be sat in the passenger seat helping my mum. Oh yeah I love doing that too yeah like the AA maps navigating from Grimsby all the way to Winchester and it's it just always felt kind of as a subject. Yeah no I love doing that too it's a bit of shame it's all on a on a device now that kind of physical experience has lost somewhat isn't it now the google just tells you which way to turn. So what's your favourite part about teaching geography today then you know kind of what's the what's the state of the subject today um what are its strengths what do you like about it what's what what the frustrations. The thing I don't you know that I don't enjoy teaching I think the thing I enjoy most about it is really bringing to the forefront how different concepts and ideas are connected it's such a richly connected subject and and there's a real sense of satisfaction when you the kind of penny drops for students and they can see how the individual pieces of the puzzle sort of interconnects. Currently I think the big the sort of big topic of conversation especially since Mark Henson is the purpose of the geography curriculum and how sort of like public government policies and public ideologies might be shoehorned into the geography curriculum because there's possibly nowhere else for it to go and the idea of around decolonising the curriculum so there's a you know there's a lot of exciting work going on and I think the geography community not to be biased on twitter the geography community is is fantastic like it's really really. How did the head of here head of year stuff happen? It's it's a strange one like I've been head of faculty in my previous school and I've done that for a number of years I was in charge of geography it's in charge of history as well and an opportunity to to move to the school that I'm at now and it's a work under a previous head and it was it was such an exciting opportunity in terms of the school but then also I just felt like the time was right to try something different and and broaden my skill set and just to just to you know add another strings to the more strings of the bow if you like and it's a different sort of challenge it's one that that does excite me it's one that at times frustrates for the young people. Yeah no I was just going to ask you know being ahead of year is a tough job at the best of time so what's it been like during Covid? So I think I am I am fortunate in that we we I was it is a fantastic very well staffed so in our pastoral team we are well staffed at and have a large staff body it's been challenging in so far as the very early stages trying to to make sure that we made every single student we lengthed lessons early on and put into step they've put into place new steps new procedures which have really served as well. More time spent online has been a difficult thing for students to transition to so we've probably encountered more things that students have found challenging in terms of not just working remotely but also their social time and that that's been challenging but you know again we are you know we've learnt from that as a suspect most schools have but I think really nurturing one of the things I was really keen for when students came back especially this time around was about them reconnecting a lot of talk in the press and in the media about catch funding. From my point of view I just wanted to see young people reconnecting face to face getting opportunities to do things that they haven't done extracurricular activities for example and having the benefit of actually person and I think a lot of young people I think it was mentioned this but there was a lovely blog about how young people have made whether knowingly or unknowingly I've made a lot of sacrifices over the last year. I can only talk about my son and even my dog actually she's started to socialise with other dogs on dog walks but my son's still a bit nervous to go out and do normal things so those socialising skills you know if I think back to the start of the pandemic some of the things that I was doing or thinking at that time compared to now I guess it was that fear initially but yeah it's been a very challenging time. Now we know workload is a problem for teachers at the best of times also and I've been fascinated with teacher workload for a decade now. Let me unpick two things what's the workload issue for teachers right now during COVID so you know context June 2021 and what's your workload headache as a head of year? So workload headache at the moment I suspect for most people is probably going to be about how do you make up for loss learning in whatever I think no matter how good your remote learning provision has been in my opinion I still don't think inevitably there will be some attainment gap that is that's the attainment gap will have widened and I'm also an ELI for Cairo Research School and we've been discussing at one of our most recent it's a get the atomic will have widened and there's no evidence at the moment and obviously that sort of research is ongoing but undoubtedly the gap will have widened so I think there'll be a lot of pressure on a lot of people to address what are you going to do about that? I fear some of the things that are coming out now at government level are probably knee jerk reactions so the idea around summer school and extending the school day and extending or shortening lunch times they all they all appear to be knee jerk reactions and that's just meagling on the Twitter community and people I speak to. In terms of my work load it really does as a head of year it really does vary. I am a busiest spell I suspect in terms of where the just finished up so that having the tag process dealing with things like so I'm in charge of things like organising the school from. So again just what's tagged just for people that are maybe listening outside of education. The teacher assessment grades. So the difference for the traditional exam method. Yeah so and I know that's been a huge piece of work for every person in education at all levels. Teachers bringing together that evidence. Middle leaders senior quality assurance and checking that the evidence is robust in case next week students are called and expected to be provided in terms of evidence for them. So yeah you know June 2021 I would probably in the biggest biggest workload for teachers and then as I said my my my soft workload there is it can speak it can change very very quickly because yes people mind you know how how young people are and the the days that they're having can change very very quickly so they they certainly can. So yeah what what looks like a busy day on your timetable can be days or weeks of safeguarding chasing up isn't it and I hope you've got some people to support you with that. So let's switch back to graphic organisers and let's think about I guess a question to pose is do you think opinion is divided on them and if so why? I do and I'm really happy about some of this. I do think it is I don't think I don't think there's a doubt that people think the work I don't think that that's an issue I think the biggest problem that is again products versus the process so we have again lots of people sharing ideas all with all with the right intentions but very few people talking about actually how they've been used and then on the flip side of that you know a lot of good work so people like Forella and Mayo learning is a generous activity a fantastic book it identifies the boundary conditions of using them so things like the time to construct and the difficulty to construct and that can be off-putting to teachers and that can be a reason why some people don't want to engage in them. We then have to factor in icon gates as we've termed it so the use of noun projects and teachers just slapping an icon you know that's tool coding or you know this is my graphic organiser and you know that was never really you know that's not really how they're intended to be used and again it goes back to everyone I think everyone has the right intention everyone just we engage in the education community outside of our own school because we just want our students to do well and we don't always get it right as teachers and strategies that are supposed to work we might use them incorrectly but I'd like to think most you know most teachers learn from that so I do think that appears divided for a variety of reasons. Yeah it goes back to that theory in practice you've got the theory it becomes popular it looks quite elusive all these nice images and then we stick on an icon and I think it's the practice but it's not in itself and you know you being a graphic teacher kind of kind of expert or qualified in that area like myself the process of mind mapping and its place and importance and how it's used is a particular you know this is why I've always said you know every subject including design technology you know without kind of going into too much details my friends used to take the mickey saying you're doing a paper masher degree but you know the the the detail and theory of design knowledge as a kind of explicit subject domain and how these images can be used to design great products communicate through visuals etc. You'll know all that so I guess the question is I've been doing I'm doing a bit my own reading and research on memory and I'm using one of the stories I always talk about is the volcano Mount Vesuvius in Naples which destroyed Pompeii so if we use that as an example how would you being a geography teacher teach volcanoes using a graphic organiser? So I'll have a few steps so the first thing is this there are different types and the different types are determined by the nature of the content so for example if I wanted to teach the process of a volcanic eruption I would choose a graphic organiser that would best depict a sequence so step one, step three, step four etc. If for example I wanted to look at different types of volcanoes, the different characteristics, the different features, I wanted to classify information I'd use a map, use a graphic organiser that was designed for classifying so there are four different types and the four types closely well that are based around different nature of how information is delivered to us so we have information that is chunked, defined, classified, categorised it's that sort of language we can compare information we can draw comparisons and similarities so we have organisers to compare then we have sequence organisers and then we have cause and effect so my first step if I'm going to use one is to pick the right tool for the job and the reason they are the right tool for the job is because the structure and the physiological relationship between the ideas that are contained on the organiser is served by that tool it's a bit like an olive a lot on his courses it's a bit like say my favourite tool is a chisel it's such a silly thing to say because a chisel is not going to be useful if you're going to try and drill and put a shelf up for example so the tool that the selection of the tool is the most important thing to begin with that's my first step yeah so I mean it's really interesting fascinating I guess the you know switching back to the workload issue and the importance and the research behind sketch noting if we bring it back to yourself practically speaking how do you reshape your resources and is it a workload issue how do you avoid icon gates how do you translate your power points into nice mind mapping sequences to teach the volcano and you know I'm throwing a lot of questions at you here what does that resource look like for the kid on the on the table so workloads the more like anything the more you use these things the easier it gets there is nothing stopping and here we go a lot yeah very good so for people listening we can see a little graphic organiser on our screen so describe that to listeners David so this this essentially is my this was me preparing for my podcast with Ross and what I decided to do was simply just had all these ideas going from head and I wanted to chunk them together so there's a play hierarchy of knowledge we start off generic in the middle and ideas get more specific as we kind of branch out from the centre of the mind map so I suppose my point and show in this is that can be done by hand that that's the first if you've got a visualiser and and I always I prefer square paper myself just because you've got almost like well you've got a grid so in terms of actually sketching out becomes very it becomes easier and now in terms of like if we go back to the workload argument I think one of the issues if a teacher's aren't sure about workload and and how to create these and they're one of the sort of objections or concerns is the time to construct them you can very quickly create these in in power point just by simply in setting a few text boxes and using arrow connectors between yeah no I guess you if you had a sorry to interrupt you maybe have a a simple template that you'd reuse again and again yeah absolutely once you've created a couple you do have templates that you can use and and replicate and and simply copy and paste things and I have done a couple of of short videos just showing demonstrate and and how I do it and so I do I do fully understand what people you know people's objections but you know I think you I wouldn't expect any teacher to go all right I've seen you know I've seen this strategy and by tomorrow I'm going to be using them in every lesson because they don't need to be you you know they don't need to be used every single lesson and you build up that bank of resources over a period of time and once you as I said once you have created one two you've got a template for future endeavours in the years now in terms of what my students get in upon their experiences with them previously it also depends on if I know for example a student is going to struggle to draw by hand and organize it I'll put together a template for them and how I do that is once I've created my own I simply duplicate the slide and then I go through and I just delete all the text and then I've got myself a perfect template for any student that needs that and then the focus actually because I think another concern is it detracts because of how difficult they can be all the time it can take to construct them some teachers might feel apprehensive and think well actually just spent trying to figure out how to draw an arrow in a line in a box well you know you can mitigate that immediately just by simply creating a template and it's very simple to do so what it looks like for the student depends on their learning propensities and where they are and of course their experience of using them context is key um so as a pedagogical approach I will assume that you can use this strategy in any secondary subject as a teacher yeah I think there's something because one of one of the things we've done with the book is we have over 50 teacher examples which it's just we put out on Twitter you know different subjects different phases please share your examples because you know a concrete example that is better than just me and Oliver saying this is what you should so lots of different examples in the book I think the areas where we've probably struggled the most to to get examples was MFL maths we have had some really really good examples in particular around how how a process is mapped out and how that can be used as a scaffold to help students and then gradually fade that scaffold in and take that scaffold in a way that really do lend themselves well to geography we've got some fantastic English examples as well in the book so yeah I've seen good examples for every subject and then how is your kind of knowledge or expertise as it's growing being used in your own school with staff training and that kind of technique being used as a strategy more widely yeah so we last let me think last January was the it was kind of like I did a cpd session just prior to the first lockdown almost as a as an introduction to the idea of graphic organising we've had a big push in our school on metacognition and at the time I didn't really fully appreciate how well connected graphic organisers and metacognition really are so as the as the year went on unfortunately obviously we had code we came back in the September I did another staff cpd session and then the set up a a working party a working group where one representative from each faculty came to a meeting once every half term and would look at different strategies of graphic organisers and then more recently around how graphic organisers and some of the sort of other paired techniques and strategies that we propose can be used to help things like reading vocabulary practice so that you know that's kind of where we're up to at the moment and yeah it's been great as you walk around the school you see some really great examples the key question is do you think it's making a difference to standards I mean was it too early to tell I'm going to be biased but I do and I think without people really seeing a great example one of the one of the kind of early ideas I had was with me here 11 September I had this idea that I wanted my students explicit to my students how what we were currently learning about was linked to what we've learned previously so we're looking at development and stages of development and where countries are and I wanted to show to students how some of the concepts we're learning were linked to previous topics so we started off with just a simple table and the first column was just about retrieving basic knowledge of what we've covered in the past two to three weeks and the next column was study tectonic hazards how is what we're learning tectonic hazards how is that linked to this and I modeled and demonstrated that and then we looked at another topic and then another topic we ended up with with four topics worth of retrieved information but what I felt wasn't going to really materialise here was yes students could make the link between what they've learned previously to what they're learning now but what they would have failed to have seen is all of the other interconnected relationships across the topics so we produced a concept map and at the end of it and I've demonstrated to students how the concept map that created could be used as a piece of writing so you know your concept backing up in nature each branch of your concept map is a paragraph and almost if you follow your concept map class what you'll notice is each noun and connecting verb helps to create a series of mini sentences yeah so I'm starting to imagine your classrooms a bit like those classic teacher photographs where you're in front of the board and it's covered in illustrations is that right I mean there's a little going on because I don't want any distractions but there's a white board and one of the things I stopped doing a lot of was making electronic organisers and right the more complex ones I do but a lot of kind of byhanding and showing students how to do it because under a visualiser or on the board yeah yeah under a visualiser and it isn't in fact and you know I won't tonight it's an investment in time but I failed to see and and once students have finished this concept map activity I failed to see any other way I could have got the level and of interconnected relationships between these ideas I failed to see how any other strategy could do that and and I stand by that and I was I was watching Ben Ranson at the weekend present at researcher would be and he's a geography teacher and he uses them as well similar sort of thing just really showing how big ideas and concepts are linked across the curriculum and I can't see retrieval practice low stakes cuisine multiple choice question all fantastic strategies but fail to really help students connect and link ideas together and I think that's the crux of it isn't it that those connections so David I'm going to have to interrupt us because we've gone well over my 20 minute barrier here because we've got really absorbed by the topic and that's probably my fault and I hope list is appreciated but what I'm if you're familiar with my podcast you may know that I then have a little bit of a a quick quiz at the end and we do I don't know if you're old enough to remember Timmy Mallet and that type of approach but I haven't got the hammer to hit you on the head and we're doing this virtually but um let me just start off with something easy if I came to Grimsby you know post pandemic where would we go what would we do what would be the highlights of the town well we'd have to go for fish and chips because it'd be wrong not to so we'd have to go for fish and chips and probably to what they claim to be the world's smallest pub by the old steam railway all right sounds fantastic what a great day out um hopefully I'll get a job there in Grimsby soon I'll be your way um what project you're working on at the moment what's on your desk so I'm currently illustrating some pieces well some ideas and concepts in Michael Chow's new book which is the it's called the sweet spot sweet spot you have seen that yeah so I'm currently just bringing to life some of his ideas and concepts in his book okay and as your book ready to go itself it sure is yeah it's it's finished it's it's with the publisher at the moment John Cat and yeah on course for a September the suit and people listening can buy that now on Amazon can't they they can yes it is available off fingers cross for you um what's on your teacher desk today on my teacher desk today is my visualiser and I have a call rightly is my visualiser exercise book where we've just been finishing explaining the how tropical storms are formed okay fantastic um what book are you reading for fun everywhere I get to read well I think I'll take now I'm gonna take that back all of the books I read are for fun um but I've got I'm starting to get a pile of books mountain up and um and this this just arrived today so I'm working for it yeah yeah curriculum by Ruth Ashby you have spotted that yeah I've got a copy of myself looking forward to getting sir stuck into that um what would be your piece of advice your number one piece of advice for a teacher that said you know we we we hear all the time I'm not good at maths and we'll also hear I'm not good at drawing um so what's your piece of advice for that teacher that wants to try a bit of hand drawing knowledge organiser type stuff so graphic organisers um I would say best piece of advice is to engage with what's out have a look at what's out there engage with the engage with the education community so many people out there are willing to help and and support and share ideas with each other um in terms of if you're not very good hand drawing I have a few strategies square paper because you get a grid which allows you to kind of help planet sticky notes or if you if you're going to produce something quite complex sticky notes because you end up I did one concept on each sticky note that comes easy to manipulate and organise and I will still do this now use lots of sticky notes configure and arrange them how I want them take a photograph and then I'll sit there power point it's so much quicker than lots of text boxes on the screen now I'll add a technical question here we're both graphics experts what's your tool of choice when you put in pen to paper or pencil to paper so I like a mechanical pencil and I cannot remember the name of the one I've got at the moment I think it's a pencil one but I like a pencil and then I've got a range of pens on your table yeah yeah great you're doing it properly that's good to hear um now if you weren't a teacher what what would be that dream job probably would be something to do with graphic design I suspect yeah and that would be okay biggest career achievement today um I suppose I mean I suppose writing the book you know having the opportunity to write the book is is definitely up there and and our opportunity to just to learn and and work with the past year it's been yeah something that very proud and and something that I would say for granted what what's your um biggest hope for the future of the geography kind of curriculum and this is just I suppose again my opinion so I think to have more just more quality geography spread and and I'm speaking about my region but in my region there is just a lack of just high quality geography teachers and you know that that would have been my my one wish more high quality geography teachers in in all schools so that all students have got you know an opportunity to to learn the subject if you could graphic organise your school culture give us a a little visual what it would look like so I actually did do this right okay fantastic yeah I did this just recently and I can't I can't reveal all of the the the ethos because we're kind of going for a transition at the moment but it was it was very simple uh in the in sort of like the centre there was a circle and then coming around the outside was each of the individual statements each of our individual kind of ethos and vision statements very explicitly communicated very terse sharp nice I'm glad I asked that question um so here's the question you've have so to see the couple of times who would you recommend I interview next and why so I had to think about this and the one that sprung to mind was Jennifer Webb who I believe is fungi pedagogy on switcher yes she is I know Jennifer yeah so I'm getting touched Jennifer if you're listening and why well I'll be honest I haven't read a book yet a new book on metacognition it's just been released so I'm really interested to read it because as I said as we kind of ventured further into creating our book we do begin to look at metacognition and how graphical organisers can be a servant to that that metacognitive process so I'm I'm going to kind of read the book and and see what's you know you know from from here and great so Jennifer if you're listening I'm coming your way thank you um so David where can people find out about your connect online so things like that yeah so I'm on switcher at at Mr Goodwin 23 which is a capital M and a capital G and then my website which probably will be changing very shortly um is at the moment it's a word pass account so it's Mr Goodwin 23 dot word press I believe okay and if it changes by the time we put this out we'll update that so um and then and finally David what do you hope to be your legacy I always have I just I have a very simple kind of ethos for myself which is if there's a better way of doing something show me now I've never I've never been one that's been precious about how I do things in if I I'm not stubborn in terms of if someone introduces something to me and it and it makes sense and it's clearly going to it I'm not going to go no because it wasn't my idea I'm just eager to learn and continue to grow and continue to learn from people so I and and why I don't want to do that because I want to be the you know the best version of myself for the young people that walk into my classroom every single day and the young people that I that you know the influence um so David it's been it's been fantastic to get absorbed into you know the world of graphics that's right up my street as you'll know um and I wish you every success for the book and I can't wait to get a copy and and be inspired and and get back to my own sketch note in a I hasten to add because um it's a skill that I don't use enough and uh it's been nice to talk about the knowledge and depth of of that world and I wish you every success with it I suspect you'll be a very busy man once that's published and your services uh you know that particularly for school leadership your sketch note in a school vision and culture is a very useful tool to translate you know those complex visions and theories into a nice uh nugget of information so all the best for that and thanks for your time no thank you thank you for inviting me yeah and and keep up all the amazing hard work you do during the pandemic and uh I know the life of ahead of year is very very challenging so um you know I can wish you all the best for that and hope people around you are to support you and uh all all the best wishes for the summer thank you thanks david