One moment, four questions
If you are worried about a learner's safety or wellbeing, follow the college's safeguarding procedure straight away. This tool is not the place for that.
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One moment, four questions
Some moments stay with you on the way home. This is a ten-minute way to look at one properly, on your own, with a pen, once the heat has gone out of it. It is for a small moment, not a bad day. Ten seconds is plenty.
For exampleA tutor says, “Nice of you to join us.” That is the ten seconds we will look at.
Pick an activity. Each takes two or three minutes.
For a moment that stayed with you. Ten minutes, on your own, when the heat has gone out of it.
Why this works in your room
A second reading of a moment gives you a second way to respond.
For your learners: The learner in that moment is met the next day by a tutor who is curious, not one who has decided.
For you: You put down a moment that has been following you around, with something to do about it.
What happened?
Left of the line: what a camera saw.
Who said what?
In what order?
What did I assume?
Right of the line: what I added.
What did I decide it meant?
What was I protecting?
What else could be true?
From where they were standing.
How did it look to them?
And to the people watching?
What will I do?
Find out, then act.
What do I need to ask?
What are the first words, word for word?
Watch out for
Swapping one verdict for another.
The second reading is a guess too. Ask, then act.
Pick a small moment, not the worst one.
If it worries you
Safety or wellbeing is not for reflecting on alone.
Follow the college's safeguarding procedure.
Elsewhere in Bradford ThreadWorks
WalkThrusCalm, purposeful classrooms: positive framing, and routines that take the heat out of a moment.Open WalkThrus (opens in a new tab)
The Inclusion HubCommon classroom challenges: other ways to read what you saw.Open The Inclusion Hub (opens in a new tab)
Prompts to paste into Copilot
Copilot can offer readings you had not thought of. Describe the moment with no names and nothing that could identify anyone.
Three other readings
Here is a moment from one of my lessons, with no names: [what happened, as a camera would have seen it]. My reading at the time was: [what I assumed]. Give me three other ways it could be read, including from the learner's side and from someone watching. Do not tell me which is right.
Words for a quiet word
I want to speak privately to a learner after [the moment]. I want to own my part, which was [my part], and ask one open question. Write three versions of the first two sentences, each under 30 words. Warm, plain, no sarcasm.
Where it comes from
David Tripp showed how teachers can take an everyday moment and ask what it shows about their assumptions. His point was that incidents are not critical in themselves: they become so by how we look at them.
Tripp, 1993 (opens in a new tab)How it began
The idea started in the 1940s as a way of studying what pilots did at the moments that mattered most, by collecting careful accounts of single events in place of general opinions.
Flanagan, 1954 (opens in a new tab)How sure is this?
Thinly. Tripp describes a way of looking, not a tested method, and this page has not been tested with tutors. It slows a guess down, which is all it claims. It is for your own practice, not for deciding what a learner is like.
No source claimed