Teaching Backwards

Outstanding Teaching

by Andy Griffith, Mark Burns

In an era when schools and teachers often seem to operate at one hundred miles an hour, 'Teaching Backwards' offers a more reflective and measured approach to teaching and learning. It ensures that learners consistently make great progress over time, and offers a practical, hands-on manual for teachers to further develop their attitudes, skills and habits of excellence both for themselves and for their learners.

Genres: Teaching, Education, Nonfiction

308 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2014

Reviews

[Colin Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many excellent, practical ideas to use in the classroom. I’ll be dipping in and out of this for some time to come and sharing ideas with my colleagues. Great read!

[Andre Mouton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teaching Backwards is a great one to add to your teacher toolkit. Griffith & Burns has produced an exceptional book centred around feedback, autonomy, challenge and engagement. All four of these areas are further developed with examples of why setting high expectations is vital towards achieving great results for our students.

I have noted some key points that resonated and stood out whilst reading. These include teacher persistence, determination, openness and supporting students. I particularly enjoyed some of the carefully chosen phrases such as teachers "transforming their classroom from a desert of low expectations to an oasis of high expectations" (Griffith & Burns, 2014 pg.54)

Teaching backwards is filled with essential goodies, including the holistic approach toward teaching and considering emotional intelligence. The visual illustrations are great, reading over 'The Pit' I instantly thought about the Dunning Kruger Effect.

There are similarities within Teaching Backwards such as the importance of consistency and teacher work ethic to continuously develop knowledge, attitudes, habits, and skills of students throughout the academic year.

I loved the example of how pre-assessment can lead to gained lesson time. The knowledge grid came up during a teacher CPD session in 2022 and I modified 'the grid' for business studies lessons. The modified grid included knowledge by putting the 'definition' in the centre. The application was top left by 'giving examples' of how this would work in business. The analysis was an 'effect or cause' and the evaluation was 'it depends'. By using this I found that more time was needed during lessons on analysis and evaluation.

In conclusion, Teaching backwards is a good one to incorporate into your pedagogical toolkit. The book includes links that will provide additional information and the references will provide an excellent selection of further reading.

[Jane Scholey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always beleived that the best way to support pupils is to look at your outcome then focus on the process of getting the pupils to it - so working from the end and teaching backwards. Think about all the enjoyable, real life learning you can do with the chn, to get them to see the big picture of the learning - why are they learning about the thing you are teaching? Andy talks about the pedagogy behind this and how this supports planning, teaching and learning.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of excellent ideas. I'm sure I'll be quoting this book for a long time.