​Schools Week, on 27th January 2016, ran a story by Freddie Whittaker, about Government plans outlined by Jonathan Slater, the DfE Permanent Secretary, to introduce a post graduate scheme, to be called an apprenticeship route into teaching. This is being designed to run in line with the apprenticeship levy, soon to be introduced into schools, top-slicing funds to then be claimed back if apprentice teachers are developed. There is some discussion whether this will replace the current School Direct route.

Post-grad routes into teaching cost money, whether PGCE or School Direct, with the latter occasionally offering a few candidates a salaried route. The majority pay the £9k university fee and fund their living. It will be interesting to discover whether the apprenticeship is a salaried route and whether university fees are paid by the school, the Government or the trainee.

Trainees currently have to pass an English and Maths test before starting training, are required to have at least ten days in-school experience before their compulsory interview.

Current routes provide periods of training, interspersed with in-school experience, with clear guidance on what should be experienced within these periods. The training has to be at graduate level, whether in a university setting or a school-based approach. Trainees, on both routes, have assignments set by universities which are marked by university staff.

Both routes have systems of Quality Control, with external staff monitoring the quality of experience being offered. This is in addition to in-school quality controls, where trainees are supported by mentors and senior school staff.
There is a current need for teachers undertaking training for teaching, that experience must be had across two key stages. This can mean, in Primary, key stage one and two separate experiences, in two different settings. One is the substantial setting, the other is a minimum of six weeks experience.

But, there is always going to be variability in a human system.

·         Selection of trainees, will depend on the quality of the people available.
·         Will potential new trainees be subject to interview and have to pass the skills tests, as now?
·         The training sessions will vary with the person leading the session.
·         Mentoring can vary widely, from limited to extensive. Mentors can vary from untrained to Masters level training.
·         Schools as a whole range in preparation. By taking a trainee, they become a de facto training school, with every member of staff taking a training role in developing the trainee.
·         The variability of school settings can be the cause of concern with the second, shorter experience, where the trainee has to demonstrate quality skills rapidly.

This then raises questions.

·         Who will select the potential apprentices as trainees?
·         If individual schools, how will quality selection be assured?
·         Will they be subject to interviews and the skills tests as now?
·         Who will provide the training sessions, at the appropriate level?
·         Is the school prepared as a whole staff to undertake training of an apprentice?
·         Will there be a nominated senior training member of staff, with status and time to oversee and coordinate the process, including regular developmental and quality control observations?
·         Who will sign off on achievement?
·         Will there then be the NQT year as now?

If an apprenticeship route into teaching is to be successful, therefore, it will need several new layers of bureaucracy, in the same way as should exist for all other routes into teaching. This would need to be at national and regional level, linked to the available universities. There would need to be a coordinated training army of teacher mentors, for subject specific and pedagogic training, together with secretarial backup to ensure that training spaces were available to need. There would need to be management training, as quality control and to have specific staff designated as coordinators. Mentors would have to have time off-timetable, to be able to undertake training and also to create quality development time to work with the trainees.

If future teachers are to be trained in-school, starting as apprentices, then the current situation of every school creating their own systems across all aspects of pedagogy would also need to be questioned. At a recent meeting with SD mentors, I asked each to describe their current approach to assessment. Within nine mentors there were seven systems, including four variations on the local County scheme. This, in itself, causes trainees difficulty in their second experience, as they have to get to grips with significant system change, as well as new children and current expectations of them. They are far less nuanced in their decisions on the second experience.

Mind you, the same could be said of many teachers changing schools in the current climate. It’s not surprising that there is so much talk of burn-out and workload issues. Ever changing systems add to the day job considerably.

As I wrote in an earlier blog, everyone has to start somewhere. It’s a truism, but, if a new generation is to take on the mantle of becoming teachers, the systems that lead to them doing so have to be clear and understandable, on order for them to be enacted successfully. It cannot be left to chance. There is too much at stake; someone’s livelihood and children’s life experiences.

Related blogs on mentoring…

http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/the-importance-of-being-a-mentor
http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/on-mentoring-schools
http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/mentoring-can-be-excellent-cpd
http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/personal-development
http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/teaching-is-a-team-game

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There’s always a need to fill in a few minutes here and there, even within a well-oiled organisation. You’ve finished and cleared up from a lesson, in readiness for assembly, when a note is circulated to hold on for five minutes while something in the hall is sorted.

You have 30plus children in a snake, ready to walk to assembly and time on your hands.

Poetry can be a great filler. I always had a set of poetry books on the shelf, to share regularly, and could then choose as few or as many as needed to fill in the available time. It’s especially useful if the children know many of the poems my heart, so can join in with the telling, as a rehearsal activity. Children like silly poetry.
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They also like silly songs, so a collection of these would be developed through the year, so that, with a few minutes and a child chosen, the line could become an impromptu choir, enjoying the feeling of performing together.

Blank playing cards offered a wide range of potential uses.

The numbers 1-100 written on separate cards allowed two or three to be selected at random, with the chosen numbers discussed by the children. This allowed discussion of larger/smaller, or greater/lesser, place values, ordering a set of numbers according to attributes. It could also become random mental maths challenges with addition, subtraction potential.

Dice come in different number combinations. These can be thrown to create random maths problems.
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I’ve even used the Dienes base 10 material, challenging children to find specific values; 36= 3 tens and 6 ones.

Blank cards can become flash cards, with particular words to be shared regularly, especially after their phonic components have been covered.

This could be extended to broadening vocabulary needs, where a word selected at random is created into a sentence, and improved around the class. This could be subject specific vocabulary, with the need to incorporate other knowledge into the sentence.

I also had three piles of cards, divided into people, places and things. Children would take one card from each pile, then create a story to link the three elements within the time available. This style of activity was occasionally developed as a writing stimulus, for longer consideration.

Images. A classroom collection of images, as paper copies, or through the IWB becomes a talking point, starting from description of what is seen, through speculation about what happened before and after the image was taken, or what was happening outside the frame of the image.

Five minute slots can be very important for rehearsal activities. It is far better to have ideas as a back-up plan, as five minutes can sometimes extend and a line of children standing around can get very restless, developing into a behaviour management issue.

My advice is always to be prepared. Have something up your sleeve, especially if you can do magic tricks!

You might like to look at one minute data ideas or five senses starter activities

Why don't you get back into bed?
Why don't you get back into bed?
Why don't you get back into bed?
Why don't you get back into bed?
Reasons to be cheerful, part 3
1, 2, 3

Ian Dury’s tune has been gathering some impetus in my brain recently, not because the song is particularly meaningful, but because the overarching sentiment has been in need of rehearsal. I needed cheering up. It’s been a week of flu; not man flu, the real thing, with excessive hot and cold flushes and feeling washed out for whole days. Perhaps I was really thinking reasons to feel sorry for myself…

I didn’t feel up to getting involved in several developing Twitter spats, polarised and unproductive as they have appeared to become. I’ve read a few blogs from people who have articulated the impact of current and imminent budgetary changes, which threaten to destabilise further an already fragile system. In many ways, it has felt as if education has had to become extremely inward looking, to a point where navels are all that it is safe to be aware of. I reached this metaphor after leaving the bedside of a 91 year old relation whose world has become her bed and those items that can be reached with minimal effort. It’s very easy to become so preoccupied with such minutiae that the rest of the world can happily pass by, even visitors.

Education, at it’s best is outward looking, humane, treating everyone concerned with at least professional respect. All three of these things have been the subject of social media attack this week. The search for the holy, or unholy grail of “the best way” underpins many of the more persistent disputes. An attack on one way of doing things is met with resistance, from groups that are gathered through “tagging and sub-tweeting”; both words having to be explained to many of us not in the know. If education loses it’s humanity, descending into the unprofessional, then everyone might as well go home…

That I can write this, at least for the moment, is a reason to be cheerful. That I am able to publish my thoughts independently of censure is another.

We live, for the time being in a part of the free world, although politics is also at a strange point. Post-truth politics can be seen invading reality and we will need to remain vigilant and hope that those who can exercise some control on the hotter heads can continue to do so. Political leadership is fragile. A few loud voices appear to dominate the discourse and, they believe, whatever they utter should be taken as the gospel truth, as if politics, in itself, is a new religion. The danger is of this becoming cultish is not worth pursuing, unless you grew up on Orwell and Huxley, when 1984, Animal Farm and Brave New World can appear to be playing out on our TV screens. Clear the swamp? Nature abhors a vacuum.

That I am able to read and engage with the writings of a significantly thoughtful group of educationalists has been a significant pleasure over the past few years. The quality and quantity of their writing is an amazing contribution to collective thinking. It’s strange, sometimes, to see themes that were rehearsed when I started training to teach recurring as if they are novelties.

I don’t want to think of getting older as a major reason to be cheerful. Perhaps, in the nearer future, my productive work life will slow or cease, but, as I have several grandchildren, I have an active interest in their development and futures, which will maintain long after I am gone.

They were all born, just like their parents, and, strangely, for 21st century children, don’t come out fully formed, with university graduate brains ready filled with the collective knowledge of previous generations; or coal dust and the sea in the case of my ancestors. They learn according to the experiences provide by their parents in the first years, learning to walk, talk, play and argue with siblings, to play games, more or less fairly, to experience the world to which they are introduced by their parents. This varies from locally available experiences in a Southern city, to easy access to international quality culture in London. Two families, same country, very different experiences. All are articulate, but some have more to frame discussion than others. Playstation is ubiquitous. External environment exposure is significantly more limited than when I, or their parents, were their age.

Schools offer very different opportunities and challenges, based on local availability and costs. It’s a long way from Portsmouth to London for a day trip, costs for coaches are high and the available study time, on arrival can be as little as a few hours, for a trip that leaves at 8.00am and gets back at 6.00pm. No wonder that sleeping on the coach and lunch can be seen as highlights. Spending just a few minutes in front of a pieces of art or a Grecian urn, as there’s a need to fit in as much as possible, leads to much frustration from teachers and children.
 
Inequality is a sad fact of life. We’re each born into the world with a variety of spoons in our mouths.

Education is an opportunity to counteract some of the difference, but, within ever tightening budgets, the ability of schools to offer opportunities will be curtailed. The teachers may well be able to offer similar in-lesson learning, but, if the school budget doesn’t run to texts and materials this will be curtailed. Some school environments can counter some of this with community fund-raising. The richer the better. A few thousand pounds will always be well received, but £50 from a cake sale will only buy half a dozen books.

Recently we’ve seen the impact of inequality on the developing political scene. Have-nots suddenly being aware that some have much more. We are told that the newly proposed funding arrangements will bring greater equity. At a time when multiple pressures are already impacting on school budgets, this is another unknown scenario to be enacted.

Maybe I am old enough to have lived from post war rationing coming to an end, through free education to teacher qualification to modest comfort, I am now seeing opportunity for new generations closing down more rapidly than I can ever remember. A small house that I was able to buy at 4 times a starter teacher income and a small deposit, would now require 10 times the starter salary and a large deposit. With recently graduated children and step-children, all with hefty student loans, how can they plan for/dream of security and their own future family lives?

In a supposedly relatively rich developed country, how can we be getting so much wrong? Maybe it’s career politicians not having a clue how to make things work, supported by a posse of the brightest and best young civil servants, who haven’t made anything either. Is politics a collective group think project that feeds on the next bright idea on which to splash cash, in the name of “improvement”? They don’t run businesses, but they are supposed to make everything operate so that everyone else can get on with their jobs, or at least distribute properly the money collected in taxes in order to pay for everything to run. They are too often distracted by vanity projects first. Perhaps all politics is vanity?

My first wife died nearly twelve years ago. If ever the words “Life’s too short” reverberated, that was the time. I had to take stock and stop being a head, after 16 years, to be able to reorganise my time to be at home for a teenage son.
Life can be too short, and as I get older, I am grateful for each day. But it is also too short to waste on useless spats. Being human is what we each do. We make errors from time to time, and given some time to think, often can rectify these. That’s called learning. Life’s lessons can sometimes be hard, individually or collectively, there’s no need to make things even harder.

Shall I go back to bed, or keep supporting an education profession that’s been good to me, inspires others to follow in my footsteps and should be as good as possible for my grandchildren? The reason to be cheerful is that the vast majority of professional colleagues are positive, in the face of difficulty, creating a vast army of collegiate professionals wishing to do the best for each and every child, each and every day.
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Be well.

Teaching is a multi-dimensional puzzle. It takes a certain amount of lateral thinking to coordinate all the aspects which go to make up a good or very good lesson. Being very good at one aspect may not ensure excellence in another. It is the holistic visualisation of the dynamics of the lesson which allows the teacher to extemporise, to go off-piste and follow an idea, knowing how to get back to the main path. Inevitably, there will be some element of personal interpretation, which some commentators describe as bias, but that can be addressed through moderation activity.

Outstanding practitioners can do this with relative ease and may be at a point in their career where informed instinct/intuition governs reactions, based on thought processes that have already been rehearsed and honed many times in many classrooms.

Essentially, good teachers think through every aspect of every lesson;

·         within their planning;
·         as they share essential information at the beginning of the lesson, interpreting difficult ideas and vocabulary through modelling and synonymous, appropriate word use;
·         within their in-lesson interactions, tailoring responses to individual children, whose neds are well known, or become evident;
·         then in post-lesson evaluation, to determine where they can next take the class learning.
·         And every aspect of this is based on their judgement, which refines over time. In other words, teachers spend their time making judgements or assessing situations.

For NQTs, teachers new to a school or for developing teachers, all of whom are picking up a great deal of information very quickly, practice may still seem like a series of structures or activities to be accomplished, each part being seen as separate, so having reduced impact on subsequent decisions. This could be seen as a structural phase.

Working alongside ITE students, it is very clear that they are trying to put together the pieces so that they make sense. In this situation, it’s also possible for inexperienced teachers to seek to shortcut the thinking need, as time is pressured and to adopt bright ideas from more experienced colleagues without fully understanding the processes behind them. This can lead to poor delivery, poor experience for learners and poor outcomes, which are then demotivating for everyone concerned.

Preparing for a group of School Direct trainees recently, I had to present ideas on assessment. The previous week, as part of the SD programme, I held a meeting with the trainee mentors and explored background issues facing the trainees on their second experience in a new school. High on the agenda was assessment, with nine mentors articulating seven different approaches to that issue, including four variations on the local County scheme. All had “tweaked” the system in some way. So it became clear that assessment (essentially tracking systems) was very much school specific. None was confident that they had finished developing their system.

In many ways, over the past few years, the certainties that had held sway for nigh on thirty years had been overturned by the arrival of the new National Curriculum in 2014, with associated SEND changes. The fact that there was no integral assessment element within the NC was to enable schools to develop their own models, as if they wouldn’t be hard pressed to embed the curriculum and the SEND changes at the same time, while still teaching from the older curriculum…

While, to some, there was a need for change, for a large number, losing the securities of the past was a cause for concern. It is interesting that a visit to a local special school today, recently achieving an outstanding Ofsted grade, had decided to keep levels as a better descriptor of their children’s progress.

There have always been a number of strands to any curriculum, the essential knowledge within a subject and the skill set needed to be able to use and apply that knowledge in appropriate contexts.

The knowledge base starts from early stages through to post-doctoral levels. Young children, coming to some knowledge for the first time, will need time to familiarise themselves with the novelty, then seek to compare this with other things that they know, hanging ideas together, as similarities and differences. They learn the vocabulary to go with the knowledge. In fact the vocabulary begins to embed the knowledge. Words like dog, cat, rabbit and bird become generic descriptors for sub-categories of the broader group of animals. Later, ideas such as terrier, bulldog, Chihuahua might build additional detail into that classification.

So, to some extent, there is structural knowledge, which might be something like a timeline in history; knowing that the Tudors came after the Normans, with associated date parameters. Knowing about William the Conqueror and Henry VIII is likely to embed specific details. How much detail is appropriate can be a matter of decision for the teacher and this can even vary within any class. Sharing knowledge is not the same as acquiring that knowledge.

Teachers need knowledge, in general and specific terms, particularly for those subject areas that they teach. Some will organise this  as knowledge organisers, aides memoire for teaching. The approach and challenges that arise will be determined by the teacher in broader plans.

When I was a head, every subject had age appropriate topic specifications, developed with the County inspectorate, that showed the essential knowledge, the potential questions or challenges that could be developed and the available school resources, including teacher guides.

Within the specs, we also included key skills associated with the knowledge, to combine the two elements within practical tasking.

What we developed, essentially, was a curriculum map, covering reception to year 6, with every subject mapped from early stages, with year group specific, knowledge based themes, appropriate to the age group, but with the addition of extension challenges to ensure that every child could be engaged appropriately.

In addition, we had organised exercise books and personalised writing and maths targets and records that also doubled as aides memoire to the child and the adults in the classroom. Where these were based on the level descriptors, they could just as easily be developed from the new curriculum KPIs. These allowed real-time tracking of children’s achievements.
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The holistic system also supported assessments at different points, of a developmental nature, but also, where needed, as a summary.

Teachers are the lead thinkers and decision makers in a classroom:-

•             They need to know the subject at hand, which may be different for a graduate specialist in a Secondary school compared to a Primary generalist, responsible for a range of subjects, where some personal subject knowledge will be stronger than others.
•             They will have ordered the curriculum into discrete themes, topics or programmes of study.
•             They order and organise the coherence of their plans over a known timescale, ensure that classroom and the resources for learning support the learning proposed.
•             They know their children, to varying degrees, depending on their contact time through the week, but they are trained to understand learner development through the age range.
•             Their plans seek to match the needs of the subject with the needs of the children, providing appropriate challenge to all abilities.
•             They plan learning over a timescale to ensure a dynamic is established which fully engages learners, in and out of school, and assures the imparting of a particular body of knowledge.
•             They create tasks appropriate to the challenge, with an understanding of the subsequent developmental stages of the learning, so that by engaging with the learners while on task, they are able to guide and support their developing understanding.
•             They ensure that teacher input gets across the essential information on which the lesson is to be founded, through a variety of means, which are enhanced by the availability of in-class ICT facilities.
•             They ensure that behaviour allows learning to take place.
•             They interact with outcomes, orally in class and in writing after the lesson, while marking books. They are constantly making judgements, on an individual, group or class level.
•             They use the outcomes as new reference points against which to plan the next steps.
•             And they add broader value to schools in many other ways………………….
•             They undertake personal CPD that enhances their practice.

If teacher-think is the essential component of enhanced learning opportunities, there needs to be consideration of the barriers to this thinking. There will be more for each list.

Personal barriers:-
•             Subject or pedagogic knowledge.
•             Extended experience with a specific age group or ability range. (New school, new year group)
•             Personal order, organisation, record keeping, reflective practice.
•             Self-confidence, possible status with learners.

External:-
•             Demands for planning (thinking) in a particular format.
•             School specific, preferred approaches to teaching and learning.
•             School specific schemes, with limited opportunity to adapt to class need.
•             School organisation demanding whole year approaches.
•             School resources, including the availability of support.
•             Work space limiting some approaches.
•             Regular changes to practice to accord with external influences.
•             Local context issues, such as parent demands, children arriving at school with social or personal issues, behavioural distractions.
•             Changes at National level, particularly where there is an extended period of uncertainty about policy interpretation.

Fear:-
The greatest impact on teacher-think is the fear of being judged as ineffective and found wanting. There is a need to quality-assure teaching and learning is a school. It is naïve to think otherwise, but the systems in place can add to the stress of being observed, both at school and inspection level.

The value of feedback from an observation is to retell the lesson narrative, highlighting significant points, as a basis for discussion and development. Internal observations should always happen on this basis, not as a numeric judgement, in the same way that feedback to learners to support future learning is better as description than an arbitrary grade.

Teachers work within human systems, which can appear sometimes to be less than humane. The best systems look out for the individuals who make up the team, providing support and guidance to colleagues in the same way they do to children. Even the best practitioners can suffer a dip in performance when life offers personal challenges. Thoughtful, reflective management breeds thoughtful, reflective, autonomous teachers and independence in learners. 
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Teaching is a great job, but free the teachers to think, that’s what they are paid to do.
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Meaning
Decide a course of action as you go along, using your own judgement, initiative and perceptions rather than a pre-determined plan or mechanical aids.

Origin
This is early aviation parlance. Aircraft initially had few navigation aids and flying was accomplished by means of the pilot's judgment. The term emerged in the 1930s and was first widely used in reports of Douglas Corrigan's flight from the USA to Ireland in 1938.
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That flight was reported in many US newspapers of the day, including this piece, titled 'Corrigan Flies By The Seat Of His Pants', in The Edwardsville Intelligencer, 19th July 1938:
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"Douglas Corrigan was described as an aviator 'who flies by the seat of his pants' today by a mechanic who helped him rejuvenate the plane which airport men have now nicknamed the 'Spirit of $69.90'. The old flying expression of 'flies by the seat of his trousers' was explained by Larry Conner, means going aloft without instruments, radio or other such luxuries."

Of course, no teacher would ever enter a classroom without a pre-determined plan, or without appropriate “mechanical aids” would they? But, from time to time a reality check might reveal that the lesson is not going to plan or the mechanical aids, including worksheets, in the classroom are malfunctioning.

In both cases, the teacher awareness should determine the need for a different course of action, perhaps including a complete rethink to cope with the evident need.

Awareness and adaptation, brought about by teacher judgement, can be the encapsulation of teacher standards 6&5, within a lesson. This can be for the whole class, a group or individuals, any of whom can show that they are not accommodating the needs of the lesson. A rapid intervention to ascertain the issue could result in a small amount of in-lesson teaching or adjustment of the challenge. Equally, children who appear to be getting through work easily and finish well ahead of the others need to be accommodated with additional challenge.

Building awareness is something that takes a while, derived from reflective practice within and between lessons. Reflection that leads to alteration of actions within the lesson is akin to “seat of the pants” assessment. It is potentially also key evidence that may need to be noted, especially for vulnerable children, but also for high achievers.

The whole is premised on how well the teacher knows the children whom they teach. In the early days this is likely to be global, with a few highlights standing out for different reasons. Over time, this will become more refined, as the teacher works more and more closely to the class needs. When change occurs, as sometimes happens for the new academic year, or when a trainee starts a second school experience, this can mean a regression to more global demands again. Getting to know the children as quickly as possible enables a rapid recalibration of the teacher instrumentation, so that the main instrument available to the teacher, their power of thought, is operating effectively.

Some time ago, I developed a series of assessment tips, which I shared.

#assessmenttip 1 Watch what children are doing. Spot the difference between today and yesterday/last week/month. Identify and celebrate.
#assessmenttip 2 Get children to talk about what they are doing. Ask Qs to clarify and explore their thinking. Ask Qs to challenge.
#assessmenttip 3 Engage in what they are producing, both in terms of appropriate skill and also the detail of the outcome. Check, advise...
#assessmenttip 4 Keep records, be aware of outcomes that can show developing patterns that might require deeper engagement.
#assessmenttip 5 Ask questions that need answers to show clearly what a child "knows" (at the point of testing)
#assessmenttip 6 If in doubt, work closely with individuals, observe, talk, question, clarify, reflect, repeat as necessary.
#assessmenttip 7 Broaden your understanding of children's outcomes to balance your judgement, especially at the upper/lower margins.
#assessmenttip 8 Create learning challenge that enables children to demonstrate looked for skills and knowledge.
#assessmenttip 9 Know chn, plan challenge, engage learners, advise, adjust to need, check outcomes, know chn better. Refine next challenges.
#assessmenttip 10 Sit down, think of a child, sum up what you know about him/her and what you need to know next. Repeat for class.
#assessmenttip 10a Write a classlist. Who gets remembered early? Who gets forgotten?
#assessmenttip 11 Write down essential information, to collate over time, to determine patterns. You can't remember everything.
#assessmenttip 12 If you can’t remember all the targets and the details of what you want from each and every child, tweak your work books, so that they become personal learning organisers.
#assessmenttip 13 Recognise limits of your own skill. Use the skills, knowledge and experience of others to extend/enhance, to benefit learners.
 
Reality strikes.

A parent approaches you in the playground and asks after their child.

Do you:-
Say that you’ll talk to them after you’ve run a series of tests?
Give them an overview of their child’s current approach to school and some insights into their strengths and areas for improvement?

The chances are that the second is the norm, even if it is delayed until after school, by invitation; pop in after school and have a chat.

The conversation between parent and teacher will be informed by the teacher judgement, summing up the child’s efforts over the recent past. Both these conversations and the writing of reports, whether short and succinct or slightly longer, are examples of summative assessments. They are a point in time, a sort of child MOT, only good on the day, as the next day, hopefully continued progress will have moved the child on.

Security in knowing the child, in a rounded form and in relation to others, is key to all sound judgements. Knowing what is good, or good enough and how it could be even better provides the basis for decisions. Learning is a journey and a process, capable of being tweaked and altered to cater for need.

So why are we seemingly so afraid of assessment? Shouldn’t it be the hallmark of good teaching that the teacher knows the children sufficiently well to be able to sum them up in an instant? Just knowing the child enables in-lesson decisions from the teacher, even on the level of “they’ve got/not got it”, with instant next steps decisions made.
Life is full of snap decisions; teaching is no different.

Assessment is essentially how well a teacher knows a child at any particular point in time and the decisions that arise from that knowledge.
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​Working with an infant class, I had visited our local materials bank and come back with a large roll of card. Incorporated within another art activity, every child did hand print handspans along the card. This became our non-standard tape measure, which we used to measure (approximately) the circumference of trees in the school grounds and width of the canopy, with an extension of measuring the playground. It became clear that additional organisation was needed, so the roll was divided into sections of ten handspans. The children were able then to use the available resource and some tallying to measure the width and length of the playground using the strips of ten handspans.

The strips also doubled as the border for a display, so had multiple purpose.

We did an experiment with each child using their feet to measure the length and width of the classroom. The results were counted and tallied and, surprise, there was a range of result, which lent themselves to a variety of recording methods; arrow charts, lists, bar charts…

I made up a story about a king who asked a carpenter to make a boat that was one hundred feet long. The carpenter worked diligently, and created the most magnificent boat ever seen. When the king came back he took one look at the boat, admired it’s elegance and then put the carpenter in jail for creating a boat that was too short…

The children had to discuss why the king might be angry. The need for agreed measures was brought up and they all agreed that the king should have left a pattern of his own foot as the unit of measurement. A wider discussion explored the basis for standard measures across everyone and the activities were repeated using metre sticks or tape measures.

Measures were always a significant part of much planning; most Primary topics effectively lend themselves, at some point to being able to measure something, in some form, using standard or non-standard measures. It allows working mathematically out of doors, with the results able to be collated and recorded in a variety of forms appropriate to the needs of the age group, introducing young children to data forms early.
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So, as a rule of thumb, I’d sometimes fill in odd moments with a bit of measuring. It’s surprising how much pleasure young children get by finding that their bodies are natural measures.

It ain’t what you know, but the way that you use it…

It’s been a bit of a week, probably a good one to go out and buy a hard hat, if you spend any time on Twitter. It wasn’t just raining, it was, on occasion, literally pouring. Bile ducts were seemingly emptied on the heads of a few writers willing to proffer views with were opposite to others; as if people can’t see things in a different light. If it wasn’t knowledge, which it largely was, it’s overtaken by some element of English teaching, but that invariably comes back to children’s lack of knowledge that can be utilised within their oral or written efforts or in their ability to decode the written word.

The two “camps” could be described as those who think they can impart knowledge by sharing a specific body of knowledge, within their classroom teaching and those who seek to develop this knowledge through a variety of linking experiences, including the spoken word.
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This can sometimes appear to be the divide between (some) Primary and Secondary practitioners, with the extended argument that Primary learning is all discovery and play. That the approach is sometimes different, I wouldn’t want to argue, it can become a moot point, but, in reality, it’s likely that there is more convergence than divergence. Whereas young children “play with ideas” through active engagement and sometimes concrete examples, older children, hopefully, are more able to “play with ideas”, so have greater insights from their developed vocabularies.
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