I got home from a Teachmeet last night, having spent the evening with a large hall full of enthusiastic, mostly young, teachers, prepared to give up three hours of their Thursday evening to hear colleagues share varied aspects of their practice. If they went away with something to consider, they will have easily demonstrated their professional approach to their roles.

Teachers want to keep getting better and to better themselves. If we want to keep people in teaching, then we have to facilitate them as thinkers and value the fact that they are employed to do that, on the front line.

It is all very well for “policy makers”, Government ministers and others to make pronouncements about the direction of education, but, unless teachers are brought into the discussion, they will be just like the troops in World War 1, sent over the top, unthinkingly, into a minefield. There are sufficient pits to fall into in day to day teaching, without the need to negotiate the minefield that is current policy development. The lack of coherence is often breath-taking.
   
To Whom It May Concern; reflections from my 40+ year career, to another with a 40+ year career.

You and I are similar in career terms, in that I, too have completed over 40 years in education. That it was not always an easy ride is almost synonymous with teaching, in that the reality is that the job is never quite done; there is always a little more that can be added, especially with vulnerable learners. Despite teachers’ best efforts, some children struggle to learn, which can be disheartening. That it takes over your life, putting pressure on personal lives has also been a constant.

I can remember sitting up late into the night making work cards for the children, hand-written, as there was little in the way of reproduction available then; the Banda machine was only allowed for a class set of copies, which was rare. However the act of making the material actually got us closer to the learners, as everything was tailored to the needs of those specific children. If it wasn’t, then time would be spent in the classroom addressing the issues that arose. It was not uncommon to do a 60 hour week.

Today’s teachers are also working a 60 plus hour week, but, unlike my focus on the specific learning needs of the children, they may be being diverted by “pseudo-data”, being created to satisfy the school need to show that children are making progress. This approach derives from the APP style tick sheets, which I hated, but which appear to be an accurate description; in essence they are also a diversion from the bigger picture of learning.

Whereas, when we started teaching, and for considerable time thereafter, there was much pleasure in creating schemes of work, seeing learning from beginning to end, tailored to learner need and often taking advantage of local experiences and resources, today much more is prescribed to the last detail, creating teachers as knowledge delivery machines, rather than allowing them to be fully engaged in learning.

Prescription, as we have seen in the past few years is unprecedented. Coupled with pressures, real or imaginary, from Government and Ofsted, often amplified through the media, in general or specifics, has made the role of a teacher more challenging, as local interpretations further amplify the need for evidence.

When we both started, becoming a teacher was seen as a very positive step, a career move with significant prospects. It was why I stopped being a Lab assistant with ICI and trained. A teacher had status. My family were extremely proud; I was the first to do that level of work.

With promotion came greater status and status mattered. I remember the five scale, 1-5, range for teacher status, which became A-E and is not subsumed into another series of linked scales, with responsibility posts etc. Becoming a headteacher was the pinnacle of my career, a real privilege.

Teachers today are more likely to hide the fact that they are teachers, in a social setting, as others regurgitate what they have read in the press about the “state of education” and you find yourself in an argument. There is a strange dilemma in education too, in that this argument can be framed within the idea that their local school is wonderful; it’s all the others…

Denigrating teachers, and teacher trainers, into an amorphous mass, as “The Blob”, fed the media frenzy. Elevating some practitioners above all the rest, through references in speeches and invitations to discussions, diminished the profession as a whole, apart from a select few, while the troops on the ground carry on with the day job. While it makes for headlines, and occasionally quite violent spats on social media, the supposed dichotomies in education are, in reality just the different parts of the job, available to every teacher to select the best for the role.

While you and I will have had time to think, to plan and be proactive in our approach, and while I do recognise that there were some examples of extreme practice developed and highlighted/pilloried in our early careers, today’s teachers have to be far more reactive, but often to the wrong areas. They are chasing their tails in a way that previous generation will not have done. It’s not surprising if they sometimes fail to hit the moving target that has been the pattern from Government and Ofsted for some time.

Raising standards has been the mantra for my whole career. Who would ever advocate lowering standards? That is counter-intuitive. Unpicking what constitutes quality has been an aspect of my whole experience.

The current incarnation of the curriculum, especially in Primary, is in the process of destroying the stability of the Primary ethos, removing certain subjects to the margins before they eventually disappear, in the ever more frustrating search for maths and English “excellence”. I have to say that, as the other subjects offer the opportunity to use and apply things learned in English and the wider curriculum contributes the knowledge aspects to underpin high quality reading and writing, this is disaster waiting to happen, as, although technical English skills may rise, the actual quality of writing is likely to fall, as children have less to import into their writing.

However, as someone who does visit a large number of schools, I am also aware that, despite some of the pressures, there are schools doing really well.

They take a good look at themselves and often decide to run themselves counter to the prevailing narrative. They achieve despite the pressures, because they hold onto real education, for real children, whose personal needs are carefully identified and addressed, so that they can participate fully in the richness on offer. These schools are collegiate; groups of people prepared to challenge and develop themselves, as professionals. They create the space to think clearly, to develop broad planning approaches that support the whole, while retaining a place to cater for individual needs as they arise. They are proactive and also “forensically” reactive; they have direction and purpose which acts as their guide, but also know how to get themselves back on course after a short detour caused by events. They build capacity in all staff and deploy them to advantage all the children.

I have seen this in schools from Essex to Cornwall, including many in London and also from the south coast north as far as Cheshire. These schools exist; a mixture of process and high outcomes supporting excellent evaluation.

Recently, I met a teacher mentor in a Private school, who described their curriculum, which could have been mine from 20 years ago. This is being held in high esteem. Where have we been for the past twenty years, apart from sleepwalking into someone else’s better future?

For all the rhetoric, especially the anti-Blob, locally schools were beginning to achieve well, from 1992 onwards, after the National Curriculum had been embedded. The National Strategies were a huge distraction and sought to incorporate ever tighter controls. This is being amplified within the current NC and the surrounding rhetoric, which is a shame, as, in reality, what is being sought is a few percentage points of improvement, not a massive hike. Where schools do need specific help, this can be analysed and addressed, separately and collegially, to advantage a whole community. Support does not start from use of a sledgehammer.

Can we create a space and time to think, before the whole becomes unstoppable? With grandchildren who could see in the next century, I want them to be lifelong learners with the capacity to solve their day to day problems, but also to have a clear grasp of wider issues, so that they don’t just become “camp followers”.

​Teachers should be in the vanguard of the discussion, not, in themselves, "camp followers". If they are treated as such, is it a surprise that they choose other options? They are bright people, with choice. They will go where they can use their brains to advantage.
 

Day 15
Group work; talk your thinking

​Much is talked about the perils and downfalls of group work, usually in terms of not being able to guarantee that every child is giving equal effort or learning the same as the others. I would suggest that, even in the quietest classroom, it is highly unlikely that every child will be learning equally which could be demonstrated by the range of marks should a test be administered to check what they knew.

Group working, for some is a ritualistic activity, where children are given “roles” to be enacted almost within a scenario. Where this falls down, in my experience, is that the child then has to think how a chair or reporter has to thing then essentially act out of character. It is the equivalent of playing charades, something I avoided at parties!

Having a problem to solve and talking together, making decisions about working methods, structuring a plan of action and then following through together, with permission to evaluate and adapt on the way, has always been my personal approach, across a range of Primary subjects. Given a challenge, as equations or an investigation in maths, a collaborative story/play in English, a cooperative piece of art work, a science investigation or DT working model, each has given sufficient idea of an “end point” to provide the stimulus for activity. Self-determining groups also became self-moderating groups, ensuring that everyone contributed.

I have used this approach with every age between 4 and 16, with positive outcomes. Yes, some may contribute a little less than others, but peer pressure can be a very powerful driver.

The need to articulate thinking, so that every member of the group is fully aware of what is happening, is an important element. Good communication enables clarification, the bringing together of multiple viewpoints. Planning processes support action, with the ability to harness specific skills, enhancing the status of some who may have a chance to demonstrate often hidden abilities. Permission to evaluate and to reassess working methodologies allows for an “oops” moment and a rethinking of ideas.

The independence that can be created through high quality, purposeful group activity enables a teacher to identify and focus on those who need support through different stages. It is important for the process to be evident, as reflection on the process, as well as the outcome enables children to improve stages and therefore subsequent efforts.

Ultimately, the essential components of independent group work are quality problems to get their teeth into, a manageable group size, 2/3 at 5-7, 3/4 at 7-16; although some topics may lend themselves to other sizes. They need something that requires high quality talk that offers a clear purpose and has a definite end point, preferably with a broad audience, as a presentation or display.

Group work can embed much of the social curriculum; getting on together and seeing the other side of someone.
Group work is effectively a life skill.

Day 16
A sense of place; orientation

​Today, we went to Winchester, parked by the water meadows, then walked the footpaths to the city centre, passing opposite Winchester College, into the Cathedral Yard, then onto some of the smaller streets where we find our favourite coffee house. During that mile of walking, we passed over nine hundred years of history.
It made me think that just going for a walk around your neighbourhood tells many stories, if you know how to read them.
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Orientation
In the first place, there is the organisation of the place itself, a series of interlocking paths that offer alternative routes and different scenery; we took a completely different route back to the car, to avoid the melted ice and the mud of the water meadows.

Knowing your way around is a fundamental organisational skill, which can apply to navigating your house (try moving around your house in the dark during a blackout, a different place) through to the journey to school or other important place. Within the school, orientation is an important aspect of being in the right place at the right time. So having mental maps is an important aspect of living in the world, in order to function independently.

My childhood, in Exeter, Torbay, Brisbane, Adelaide, and other cities en route to and from Australia and, living in a time where parents were less concerned about stranger-danger, the act of exploring created mental maps of localities, supporting active, confident and safe movement within the local environment. I was unconcernedly walking the mile and a half to school at five.

Today’s children may not have the same possibilities. One grandson is now being allowed to go out with friends, as long as he has a fully charged mobile and credit and makes regular contact, within a very clear time limit.
How is this change impacting on the mental imagery of children?

Are they creating useful personal maps within their heads from which to determine routes?

Do they have an exploratory (survival) mentality? Do they actively engage with their local area, with their parents?
Children drawing their routes to school vary greatly in detail. Some come by car, so may not pay close attention to the journey, while others walk and may possibly have a greater insight into their locality, although many do not, as they engage in activities other than looking around themselves. It can be a salutary experience to ask children to explain how they get from the classroom to specific areas of the school. Linking geography, oral and drawn and mental organisation akin to coding (giving directions), a child’s awareness, ordering and organisational abilities can be explored.

Orientation is an essential life skill. I have heard it referred to as psycho-geography; developing maps in your head. The world is not wallpaper. Children need to learn to look.

Ordering ideas underpins learning.

Day 17
A sense of place; building

People need somewhere to live. Some live in houses, terraced, semi-detached or detached, while others might live in a flat, or possibly an apartment. On two occasions in my life, I lived with my family in a caravan.
Working on locality based topics allowed for an orientation project, using the landscape and features to orientate the children.
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Another topic, based around settlements explored the need for temporary shelter, finding ways to cover and protect someone from the weather, then using the available materials to build slightly more permanent dwellings, within which families might be able to live all year round, which enabled them to develop small farmsteads. Within 20 miles of all the schools where I worked, were two excellent “living” museums, Butser Ancient Farm and the Weald and Downland Open air Museum, as well as Portsmouth Museum rooms from history, or the Gosport Search Museum 1930s experience. These provided excellent stimuli for exploration.

The basis of the topic was discussion of life essentials, food, water, shelter and the better places to build a house and to find out where the first settlement might have been. Exploring maps over an extended time frame gave the impression of the area growth.

Once this was established, consideration of the available materials for building gave rise to speculations, which could be checked through our local museums; for example, where locally there was evidence of Neolithic habitation, if they used trees to build, how did they cut and shape the trees with axes? Equally, with the museum showing deer antlers used for “digging” preparing for planting, finding a similar shaped piece of wood offered an opportunity to try in the school grounds.

Creating a building museum in the classroom and asking children to bring in labelled offerings, we received a wide variety of building materials that were surplus to projects, as well as a significant range of tools. Every item gave material for research and reflection.

Bricks, made from local clay, enabled the challenge to dig some from various gardens, then to make small dwellings from mini-bricks. Other (purchased) clay was also used. Various waterproof materials were explored to find the best for a damp-proof course, while sand, gravel and cement were mixed with water to make various concretes, which were then tested for strength.

Vocabulary was probably the most significant winner, providing the language through which the topic could be discussed, researched, explored and expressed.
All of the above was with Infant and lower junior classes, where an extension would be provided by exploring building details, windows, doors, brick sizes, all giving clues to the ages of houses, with local census materials giving the evidence of habitation over time.
The essence of good topic activity is opening children’s eyes to what is around them, but also giving them the knowledge language with which to interrogate what they are seeing. The alternative is to leave them “blind” to their surroundings.

Day 18
​A sense of place; people

​As a species, we tend to live in communities, starting with families, extended or otherwise, living in our street, among others with similarities and differences, within villages or towns which have different forms of collective structures.
Each of us experiences our personal narrative as a result of birth, most of us, fortunately, being brought up and kept safe by our parents, grandparents, wider family and friends. We are born in our particular time, which has implications for the articles that surround us and possibly the finances available to parents to support our upbringing.

Our story, my story, her story, his story = first steps in history.
​I used to use the idea that each of us has a story when I worked with Infants and Lower Juniors, to make a link between different ages of “lived lives”. Working with their own memories, supported by photographs, we were able to consider time before they were born, with exploration of parent and grandparent narratives, again with photographic storyboards. In this way, children could develop the idea of time having passed. The oral tradition of sharing stories was kept alive and the shared experience was often quoted as bringing children closer to older family members, as links were established.

Stories of playing, or eating and how they dressed were shared. The highlights and difficulties of significant events. Each could be recorded, physically on tape, but also as transcripts.

People around us.
The local police officer was a regular visitor to schools, especially when there was dedicated school link officer, to talk with the children about growing up issues and responsibilities. Other regular visitors would include the fire-service, ambulance, school nurse, area librarians, local sports coaches and local representatives of several different churches. In so doing, this extended the school community, by invitation.

Local organisations often asked for children to participate in local events, sometimes singing, carols or summer fair fun songs, sometimes country dance, including maypole dancing on 1st May on the village green.
Taking advantage of local expertise supported some aspects of the wider curriculum, as they became known to the school.

All of these events served to show the breadth of people locally and the specific skills that each had to offer to the community.

Life is largely lived in some form of group, home, school and work. Each of us has to find our place within this matrix. Some find it easier than others. An aware group will keep an eye on each member, to ensure that each has a place and is valued for themselves.

Children need to learn to live within and value the group for all that it offers them and others.

Day 19
​A sense of place; things
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​The first twenty years of my life were somewhat nomadic. By that point, I had been around the world twice, both times as emigrants to Australia, first as £10 Poms, then at 17 with residual family after parent’s messy divorce. It was seen as the land of milk and honey by my dad. We came back reasonably quickly, as 1) he discovered that bringing up teenagers alone was not going to be easy and 2) he was worried that I’d be called up for the Vietnam war.

As a result, I got into the habit of travelling relatively light. The things of childhood were spirited away, but not into someone’s loft to be rediscovered in a sense of lost joy. A few special pieces remain from that period; my County cricket cap, having been awarded that the year before the second Oz trip and a small wooden model of a man that “lived” in my grandmother’s display cabinet and came out when I visited. The legs moved and that was magical to a three year old, “walking” the man down the arm of the chairs or across the table. That this belonged to my grandmother means that it is now over 120 years old.

That I lived a somewhat itinerant lifestyle and had little when I got married meant that this period was the most settled period in my life to that date. Seeking out and renovating furniture became a hobby. To be able to look at a finished piece and feel that it was pleasing to look at and the product of personal effort imbued the object with special meaning. It was something of mine. It belonged to me, and, in a sense, created a sense of belonging.

A few pieces remain from that period. After my first wife died, it was a period of sorting and readjustment, with special emphasis a couple of years later, as I remarried and moved house. Some special bits remain, this time some in the loft, but, in order to rebuild a life, it required an adjustment and a selection of specific special things. You cannot live in the past, only the present and with plans for the future.

A new “nest” had to be created.

The “things” that remain, when all is said and done, are the memories that go with and surround any physical pieces. You may pick up something and remember. I remember holidays in South Wales when I smell coal dust; the smell of the slag heaps. Meeting people jogs memories of shared experience.

The things matter, but so do the ephemeral aspects of life, the stuff of memories. The pictures and the words often outlast the physical closeness of “things”.

I just need to know that I belong, which is also what I wanted for any child in my classes. I want them to have memories, too.
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Day 20
Getting on my high horse.

​The last time I sat on a horse was a bareback ride in Australia, where the kind horse decided that he’d have fun and eventually I came off. This might happen again.

The past couple of days have seen much comment across the education press and within Twitter about the recent pronouncements on testing due in a few months’ time. There’s been talk of action by unions and there are certainly many unhappy teachers, especially those with years 2 and 6. It may, or may not, over the next few months, descend into a tick list evidence creating festival, the like of which has never been seen before, with a national moderation scheme to be implemented before scaled scores are announced.

Delay has been built on delay, with more to come. At the end of this process, some children will be seen as somewhat high achieving, some achieving within a range to be determined that says they are within a national expectation and some will be “below national expectation”. Which is largely what any scheme would have created, including the past system of levels, which could have read as 5,4,3,2, with 5 high ability (equivalent to a 14 year old), particularly in maths and English.

So high will still be high and producing outcomes of a similar quality to the level 5s of last year. Additional testing, beyond the reading and writing, with a focus on SPaG and tables add a new dimension, with teachers having to ensure a body of grammar knowledge to “pass” or to be “at national standard”. The lack of clarity on the words of the assessment will be added to by use of scaled scores and there, even those colleagues who find data endlessly interesting are struggling to make sense of the information to date.

It could have been so very different. Levels, and aspects of the previous curriculum may have been in need of an overhaul, but, in order to judge one piece of work against another, in any subject, some kind of hierarchical system is likely to be in place, to provide the evidence of achievement and when measured between two points in time, of progress, at an individual and cohort level. Noting the achievement also enables guidance on what is needed next, at an individual level. Because, when all is said and done, every child is an individual, responsive in different ways to varied contexts for their learning.

The Primary curriculum, as a broad and balanced learning opportunity, is in danger of fragmenting, with parts disappearing, to the detriment of the whole. The world is huge, with new learning appearing daily. Not to be introduced to the wonders of world through a broad curriculum will create a cultural disability that will impact throughout their school careers.
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Children’s lives are not an experiment. They get one chance. It is important that this opportunity is as rich as possible, not limited to the tests.

Day 10. Ordered and organised; plan early for September

From about this point in a school year, as a DH and HT, I’d be looking at the detail of the plans for the coming academic year, particularly staffing. I was lucky to work with open colleagues, so that any known need or desire to move was flagged up early, so that plans could be put in place. Occasionally this fell down, but usually worked.
As a teacher, then as a full time teaching deputy, when it came time to suggest classes, or year groups that were preferred in the following year, I usually offered to take what was left; it didn’t worry me which class I took. It did once mean that I went from year 1 to year 4, and another from year 5 to year 2.

As I prefer to be ordered and organised, as soon as I got my class for the coming year, I began to rough out the plans for the year, so that I would know the order of themes and topics across the curriculum and, where possible, ensured that a rich topic diet supported, or was supported by, the maths and English curriculum. By the end of the summer term, the outline was in place.

I know that, at that stage, I was somewhat unusual in being so organised. Most colleagues left their planning until the summer holiday, whereas I had time to talk with them about the learning needs of the children who I would inherit and could begin to incorporate that in my plans. I could also begin to put my mind to resource needs, and, as the School Library Service book exchange was always in June, I could kit out the classroom with necessary books for the term.
One element which I put in place and took into headship was a two week, “getting back into school” topic, a time to really focus on getting to know the children well, while instilling the specific working practices that I would expect, and also seeking the quality they they had achieved the previous July. Working in their previous book for the two weeks enabled that to be a reality. It gave me, and the children a clear baseline of expectation from which to progress, which, when changing year group, was an invaluable resource.

As a HT, I brought with me the annual plan idea, created in July, together with the two week personal topic. The first fortnight ended with a closure, part for training and part to plan, in detail, the topics for the next few weeks until half term.

This approach supported staff well-being, allowing a little extra holiday free of school thinking. It also valued overview planning, so direction was clear and allowed deviation to need.
Longer planning blogs can be seen here and here.

Day 11 Making links and learning visible
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​I was never a fan of the 1997 changes to the National Curriculum, which brought in the National Strategies for English, then for Maths. The idea of both was to ensure that all teaching reached a good standard. The impact, across a number of my local colleague schools, as well as in my own, was that good or better teaching began to regress to the models that were proposed, as teachers lost confidence in their abilities. This was in part due to an almost daily diet of political rhetoric that banged on about the “Literacy and Numeracy hours”.

I disliked the materials from the strategies as they were piecemeal and designed to be delivered to children. We had developed a very rich curriculum, with rich experiences contribution to the maths and English curricula, bringing them to life. Learning was a joined up experience, as the steps and the links were made and were clear to the learners.
My dislike was compounded three years into the system, after much Local Authority inspired “change”, when the architect of the English Strategy, John Stannard, came to speak to South-east Hampshire heads. In this speech he gave his view of literacy teaching, and in so doing described what had been the case before the strategy. I felt sufficiently brave to tell him so, quite robustly. It was a surprise to find that he lived at the other end of the village where my school was situated. He didn’t visit!

So, on my return to school, it was an imperative that we should be brave, pursue the approaches that had been proven over ten years to work and we set to work to make learning links that were clear, concise and personalised to the needs of all the children.

Interpreting teacher voice and child voice was an important step.

TEACHER SPEAK, descriptors might say this

Lively and thoughtful ideas are often sustained and developed in interesting ways, with organisation generally appropriate for purpose.
Vocabulary choices are often adventurous and words are used for effect.
Pupils are beginning to use grammatically complex sentences, extending meaning.
Spelling, including that of polysyllabic words that conform to regular patterns, is generally accurate.
Full stops, capital letters and question marks are used correctly and pupils are beginning to use punctuation within sentences. Handwriting style is fluent, joined and legible.

But a child needs to hear the message in the header picture, organised to support their thinking. In this way, a child may make progress, supported by regular engaged conversation and developmental and supportive feedback, ensuring that the child WANTS to do more for herself.

The energy of the learner is fundamental to success.

Learning is a function of the context designed by the teacher and the engagement of learners of all abilities.
It is, yet again, a case of know-how with show-how.

Day 12 Testing, testing
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It seems as if not a day passes without some element of news about testing arrangements in schools, with Primaries, this can appear to be daily, as “refinements” or interpretations are circulated from HM Government.
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Today has been no exception, with much discussion of the utility, or otherwise of the current Baseline Testing, (possibly Assessment) of four year olds within a short period of their starting school. This is not necessarily new, in that Baseline Assessment as part of the Early Years Profile has been around for some time. In fact, my Local Authority used this evidence to explore progress within KS1 with an annual data printout to show where you were in relation to other schools.

Testing at age 4 or 5, (6 phonics check), 7 and 11 (12 in yr7) can appear to be something of overkill, in that at each stage the reporting is summative, with some kind of numeric score attached to the child. Where, formerly, this was through levels, not it will be some kind of scaled score, with a number something like an IQ score being attached to a child.

Where a child is deemed to be “above average” as can be inferred from the numeric data, it is quite likely that they will be largely ok and on track to achieve in the school system. However, where they are “below average” or in the new parlance “below national standard”, one can infer that there are potential gaps in their learning. Where this occurs, without the detail of the gaps and the time and organisation available to seek to fill the gaps, the gaps are likely to remain unaddressed, thereby condemning a child to a life of potential failure.

Where the curriculum challenge can be personalised to an individual need, there is potential for the gap to be addressed, and endeavour to avoid a significant gap between the child and their peers.

Teachers are likely to be easily able to identify the children in their classes who are achieving with ease, or with limited support and those whose needs require regular adult intervention. If the system was altered, so that, instead of whole cohort testing that confirms the large number of achievers (currently probably around 75%+) and instead concentrated on the lower achieving 30%, with diagnostic approaches, rather than summative numbers, the information would be more valuable to teachers on the next stage of the learning journey.

Test, on the whole, offer the ability to rank order achievement. When an arbitrary “pass” mark is given, some will pass and some fail. This system has failed children in the past (11 plus?) and will do so in the near future.
Children (who “fail”) deserve better from seven years of education. Build capacity, not failure, as the new system will embed.
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Day 13 Look out for...(s)he's very...
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​This could be a sentence where it is a case of insert a name and a characteristic.
It is the sort of conversation that was a regular part of my earlier career, where a “kind” colleague sought to help by sharing their personal thoughts on a particular child. After my first couple of years in the classroom, the regular question of “Which class would you like next year”, was always met with a non-committal response. I really did not mind which class, or age I was given; they were all just children and would be, with me, as they would, regardless of what had gone before.
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When I took up headship, it was noticeable that the “kind” habit was still very much in existence. Forewarned did not always, in this case, mean a restart with a new teacher. Teachers would articulate that “They’d be keeping an eye on…” when meeting their new class. Having heard this, I did seek to put a cap on the practice. Perhaps it went underground, but it needed to be addressed. Children can be very different with different teachers.
“Keeping an eye”, in one case, led to a very funny incident, from which a great deal was learned.

D was a bit of a “scamp”. He was the one who took a screwdriver to the classroom timer to “see how it worked”. After he had finished, it didn’t. His screwdriver abilities were also seen in the disappearance of screws holding the toilet doors. This was “an experiment” to see how few screws were needed to hold the door securely. It kept the caretaker busy.

One day, an incident occurred where a mid-day supervisor brought the news of yet another incident, and in so doing, immediately laid the blame on D. While this might have been a reasonable assumption, on this day it proved unfounded, as, unusually, D was not actually in school that day. The red-faced dinner lady was, fortunately sufficiently embarrassed to apologise for the accusation.

It did lead to discussion of the need for vigilance, rather than intuitive guesswork and led to higher awareness of all the children, not just those for whom there was a “warning”.

Of course, keeping an eye can have very positive forms; playground buddy systems, friendship benches, young interpreters, all looking out for peers, supported by aware staff. This approach ensures that children are not enabled to become isolated from the group, but also allows appropriate space for those whose needs require some awareness.
Keeping an eye, in SEN terms, can mean the teacher becoming an investigator of anomalies, checking things out before having a supportive conversation with the school SENCo. This is at the heart of professional teaching.
Children need to learn to become responsible, and sometimes, adults need to allow them a little space to become so.

Day 14 Interleaving and home activity

​The word “interleaving” was unknown in my vocabulary up until a couple of years ago, which is interesting, as, when I read blogs and articles about it, it seemed to be what I had been doing for many years, just as a matter of practice.
It would appear, from what I have read, to mean bringing something that has been covered, and hopefully learned, back into play in a new context, or as a means of checking that the essentials have been remembered. This, to me, was a significant part of what was articulated as the spiral curriculum. Not necessarily revisiting exactly the same topic, but embedding what was learned and extending it through use and application. I may well be wrong and not have picked up some of the nuanced approaches that some will use, but that it an inevitability, as every lesson is not monitored, recorded and shared.

In the approach to planning that was established a key aspect of school life, from 1990, an overview annual plan built in opportunities for reprise and reintegration of knowledge and skills that had been part of earlier learning. This could be reprised as a home activity, with children challenged to bring in their remembering of the previous learning to support in–lesson discussion, rather than start a lesson “cold” with a “What do you remember about…” question.
I would suggest that, to have real impact on learning, longer term planning is needed to view the places where interleaving can be achieved, otherwise, with some schools seemingly moving to a shorter term approach, the chance to reflect is limited by the need to react to decisions from in-lesson assessment.

Homework can, if it becomes a routine part of classroom practice, begin to be repetitive activity, which in itself becomes slightly demotivating to a child. Setting a “spider diagram” challenge to remember 6-10 things, dependent on age, about a topic, from any curriculum area, then to reprise this as a starter activity, puts the emphasis on the child to think and actively record their memories. It shows them that to remember is considered important, as they begin to expect a reprise point. If the remembering is then utilised in a subsequent activity in class, they have reinforcement. It also means less marking from homework.

To me, interleaving, to be successful, relies on planning to embed learning over time. It is not a case of random or regular tests, as the use and application of knowledge, in a novel setting, to me adds extra value to what is known, developing the learner’s awareness that (some) knowledge has a range of applications. They need to learn to become thinkers themselves.
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Plan- reprise- apply- embed… keep using, as non-negotiables.

By the time this was written, humans had been civilized for thousands of years and had performed significant feats of building, such as the pyramids. Babylonian, Minoan and Greek cultures among many others contributed to the sum of knowledge through exchange and barter.

Before that, into the time of pre-history, we have archaeological evidence of manufacture, sometime very sophisticated and personal, showing dexterity, an appreciation of the world and spirituality, with painting and markings as well as 3D objects, seeking to answer challenging questions and possibly control events. These skills will have been the product of original thought, refined and passed to another, further refined throughout time. The originator became, by default, a teacher and the other a learner.

Interaction with the world has been a feature of human growth over many thousands of years. We can surmise that the sensory experiences ensuring survival would have been sharply honed, especially as our early ancestors were not always the hunters, but would have been prey to other predators. Looking, listening, manipulating, sensing, drawing/recording, making noises and sounds akin to music might have been part of daily lives. The control of fire would have been a significant forward step and would have given rise to discovery, of glass and metals.

Roll forward many thousands of years and we encounter the formalisation of learning into specific spaces, overseen by a significant older person, enshrining the teacher-pupil relationship ever since.

In 1897 John Dewey, American education thinker, wrote
“I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race. This process begins unconsciously almost at birth, and is continually shaping the individual's powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions. Through this unconscious education the individual gradually comes to share in the intellectual and moral resources which humanity has succeeded in getting together. He becomes an inheritor of the funded capital of civilization. The most formal and technical education in the world cannot safely depart from this general process. It can only organize it; or differentiate it in some particular direction.

       I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. Through the responses which others make to his own activities he comes to know what these mean in social terms. The value which they have is reflected back into them. For instance, through the response which is made to the child's instinctive babblings the child comes to know what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language and thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas and emotions which are now summed up in language”.

My Pedagogic Creed- John Dewey-School Journal vol. 54 (January 1897), pp. 77-80

Although this article was written 119 years ago, it still has resonance, as it seeks to strip away everything to be left with a central theme, children and their place in the world, seeking to make sense of what’s happening around them.
Dewey goes on to say

“With the advent of democracy and modern industrial conditions, it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities; that his eye and ear and hand may be tools ready to command, that his judgment may be capable of grasping the conditions under which it has to work, and the executive forces be trained to act economically and efficiently.”

Many of Dewey’s ideas have found resonance throughout the past 116 years, influencing many of the thinkers of their day, setting the ground for purposeful engagement with significant themes. Piaget explored child development, Bruner, language development, Skinner, behaviour, and now we have Hirsch working with social capital, while Hargreaves and Fullan have explored Professional Capital.

Dewey coined the term visualisation, as a precursor to developing thinking, retaining an image which can be manipulated. Without the image in one’s head, it is more difficult to abstract, link and refine ideas.
Howard Gardner explored aspects of this with his theory of multiple intelligences. It is worth reflecting on Gardner and the background to his thinking, based on his own words.

 “I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. An important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what we can do. Ultimately, we must synthesize our understandings for ourselves. The performance of understanding that try matters are the ones we carry out as human beings in an imperfect world which we can affect for good or for ill”. (Howard Gardner 1999)

As Gardner was working in the era of psychometric testing, with intelligence being seen in very narrow, testable forms, his work would have been seen as somewhat subversive.

Today, some commentaries seek to vilify his work as extreme, but perhaps that is because of the varied interpretations of it, commoditising it, which have resulted in VAK learning styles being advocated as essential components of classroom learning. It is not clear that Gardner was suggesting the adoption of specific learning approaches for individuals, but maybe highlighting a model, in which we all “see” the world in different ways. I have recently seen this stated as Individual Preference in learning approach, as an alternative model, but it can all begin to seem to be slightly semantic. To my mind, he was stating how each of us seeks to make sense of the world and the multiple sources of information that assail us daily.

Presenting information as images, auditory experience or through artefact or concrete experiences would seem to describe most classroom approaches. Perhaps it is in the means by which children are asked to respond to these stimuli that causes perceived or real difficulty, as peer pressure inhibits a less articulate child into muteness, putting pencil to paper can restrict a child whose self-view is that they cannot write or draw.

The speed with which we take concrete apparatus away from learners will determine their ability to retain and use the clarity of visualisation of concepts. This can be especially keenly felt in mathematics, where a rapid move to arithmetic as pure number can leave many confused, but also unable to add to this knowledge as the abstraction to numeric form has already forms=ed a barrier to their learning.

Dewey:-
·         I believe that ideas (intellectual and rational processes) also result from action and devolve for the sake of the better control of action. What we term reason is primarily the law of orderly or effective action. To attempt to develop the reasoning powers, the powers of judgment, without reference to the selection and arrangement of means in action, is the fundamental fallacy in our present methods of dealing with this matter. As a result we present the child with arbitrary symbols. Symbols are a necessity in mental development, but they have their place as tools for economizing effort; presented by themselves they are a mass of meaningless and arbitrary ideas imposed from without.

·         I believe that the image is the great instrument of instruction. What a child gets out of any subject presented to him is simply the images which he himself forms with regard to it.

·         I believe that if nine-tenths of the energy at present directed towards making the child learn certain things, were spent in seeing to it that the child was forming proper images, the work of instruction would be indefinitely facilitated.

·         I believe that much of the time and attention now given to the preparation and presentation of lessons might be more wisely and profitably expended in training the child's power of imagery and in seeing to it that he was continually forming definite, vivid, and growing images of the various subjects with which he comes in contact in his experience.
Visualisation allows some access to imagination and mental manipulation, taking a step from the known towards the unknown. A broad base of experience supports this process and this cannot be guaranteed, either outside or inside school experiences, but needs to be considered to provide a baseline. It is perhaps worth considering whether it is possible to carry out a task to a fulsome conclusion if there is no clear picture of a plan of action.

Dewey suggested that school, “Fails because it …….conceives the school as a place where certain information is to be given, where certain lessons are to be learned, or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of these is conceived as lying largely in the remote future; the child must do these things for the sake of something else he is to do; they are mere preparation. As a result they do not become a part of the life experience of the child and so are not truly educative”.
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Throughout human existence, humans have been seeking to make sense of the world around them. For children, experiencing life and learning for the first time, this introduction has to be purposeful, engaging, challenging and supported as necessary by an interested expert.

Learning has not changed significantly, perhaps, whether making a flint tool or operating a tablet.
​
Daniel T Willlingham in his blog post http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/2013/06/what-type-of-learning-is-most-natural.html offers the following insight, “when a more knowledgeable person not only provides information but tunes the communication to the knowledge of the learner, that is, in an important sense, teaching.”
​

If you undertake interviewing for ITE places, as I have done for a few universities, it is clear from those processes the calibre and personal traits of those who are selected to undertake the training, whether undergraduate or post-graduate or School Direct.

For a start, they have all got the minimum qualifications required and, in the case of in-school candidates, soon to take their A levels, they are forecast to achieve a string of good results, usually B+ in all subjects. These are young, enthusiastic, intelligent young people with a desire to spend up to three or four years, and, as a consequence up to £36000 in fees, learning how to become teachers.

Selection can sometimes be a whole day process, with invitees visiting the campus, undertaking a written task, a group and an individual interview. During the interview, a number of qualities are tested, with an eye towards the teaching standards. The interviewers will have their application forms, with their personal statements as reference points.
·         Do the candidates present as professional in their manner?
·         Do they inspire some confidence in the listeners and speak in a way that is ordered, organised and reflective?
·         Can they pursue an argument and engage with challenge or the need to extend and develop an idea more fully?

The training, in a one year or three/four years is as rigorous as time available allows. University level assignments are usually set, to take advantage of the experience reflections. There are periods of time on school experience where training continues while the trainees cut their teaching teeth, working towards a 70% (3.5 days) teaching commitment timetable. At this point, they really get to understand what the role of a teacher entails. Have yet to find one who sees it as a doddle!

So, it takes time, effort and, for a large number, a significant financial outlay that may never be recouped during their working lifetime.

Having made it to the point of getting their first job, which is not always easy either, as application forms can take a couple of hours and you then need to be on the shortlist of four or five, then be selected as the one that the school wants, why do many people give up after a relatively short time?

A large number of factors can have a positive impact. Internal organisation; support and development opportunities with an interested professional guide and mentor, as well as within the whole school, ensures a team ethos. Integrated, inducted effectively, embedded within discussion and made to feel a part of the team, the newbie has a chance to grow and the team benefits from the energy and insights that they can bring. Even a seemingly “silly” question can lead to internal reflection.

The opposite is also true. If teaching becomes a solitary activity, it can become oppressive. There is a considerable weight of responsibility that goes with a class of thirty children. Any of them can bring to school issues from home that weigh heavily on their young lives. If shared with the classteacher, this can set in train a series of events that can lead to the Child Protection system. Equally, the death of a grandparent, parent or hamster can all cause trauma that disturbs the equilibrium.

If systems become stifling, requiring teachers to think and act in specific ways that are counter to their natural inclinations, the tension will build. System change can be generated from Government, but then be interpreted within the school in more detail, with systems to check the validity of the original systems, just to make sure that “everything is covered”. Back-covering can be the bane of school life, as each subject manager seeks to ensure that their responsibility is fully embedded and obvious to any outside need, such as LA or Ofsted inspection.

The external system, as in the Government, with an agenda to “improve standards”, has to take some share of responsibility for ratcheting up the pressure on schools to perform. In order to achieve this, I would suggest for political reasons as much as for the learners, there has been a diminishing of the Primary curriculum to a narrow core or maths and English, with other subjects becoming a bit of a side show. The richness of many schools, which led to achievement around 75% in English and Maths has been replaced by exam factory approaches, in the hope of achieving 85%.

Where schools have retained a rich curriculum that contributes to language acquisition, the teachers are enthused, enjoy the richness and have the opportunity to talk with children across a wide range of topics. Excitement and enjoyment of learning is a key reason why teachers remain in the profession.

Like many roles in life, where intelligent people find that their personal lives are diminished, and teaching often requires long hours outside as well as inside school, they start to look at how they can take control and make changes. Being intelligent, many with degrees and significant organisation and personality, they have the skills required by many employers and they can be trained into a new position.

Teaching requires a significant body of dedicated professionals to remain in post, to hold the “tribal knowledge” of the school and the system. The actual knowledge being shared from one generation to another, in the form of the curriculum, has not changed a significant amount over the past 45 years since I went to training college, nor the preceding years where I was at school. While the world of knowledge outside the school might alter at the extreme margins, history, geography, art, music, PE, DT, French have not changed a great deal in practice, as children enter school and start at the beginning of each subject. The order and organisation might change slightly, but the substance doesn’t really alter much, even if the classroom technology has changed beyond recognition.

The vast majority of trainee teachers whom I have met, over the past ten years of being involved in ITE in different forms, have been keen to learn, to develop their personal knowledge and just to get better at doing the job.

One only has to attend a Teachmeet or a Saturday conference, where, locally we have had a Teaching and Learning Takeover and a Pedagoo event, to see a generation of keen, young teachers wanting to develop. The potential is there, to develop and retain a generation of excellent teachers. Those I see in the classroom are invariably good or better prospects, as a result of quality assurance throughout the system.

They need good management systems around them that provide them with the best conditions within which to operate, with all necessary resources, including colleague support, to minimise distraction. These systems include reflection on planning information needing to be shared and the assessment and tracking systems that, in themselves, can become onerous through double checking.  

They need and deserve good professional, developmental leadership, at all levels, if they are to be effective in their classrooms, which is where the real work happens.

Anyone starting training this year will, in the course of their training, accrue between £9000 (£20000 with living needs?) and £36000 (£60000) of personal debt. They have made a significant commitment.

It is incumbent on the system to ensure that they have the best opportunity to develop from this beginning.

The system, and future generations of children require it.

#29daysofwriting is a project being run on the @staffrm site, where teachers are asked to contribute a blog a day for the whole of February. This is both intriguing and sometimes exhausting! "Just" finding an extra half hour a day to work an idea and then to draft the ideas as coherently as possible, from day to day, can be difficult. Life is busy.

​In case you are not an aficionado of the  @staffrm project, have a look, but be prepared to spend a ling time. There's a lot of us contributing.

​This collection is my attempt to collate my ideas in one place.

​Day 1. We're going on a writing hunt.

We’re going on a writing hunt, going to write a story starter; it’s a lovely day.
We’re not scared, we’ve got ideas and lots of words too.
We’ve got to make a storyboard, images first, joining up ideas.
First we’ve got to talk it, saying it out loud, to a listening partner.
Now we’ve got to write it, trying to write about five sentences.
How shall I start?
Nervously… Timidly… Excitedly… Obviously…
Next I need an adjective,
Big, small, huge, minute, enormous, microscopic?
Then an interesting verb,
Creeping, sneaking, crawling, slithering?
I started with an adverb, so maybe don’t need another?
How to complete the sentence, because I have to have a complete sentence?
Silently, a little egg lay on a leaf. There, that’s the first.
What will happen next?
The egg lay quietly, undisturbed for a week, soaking up the warm sun.
Within the egg, unseen, massive changes were happening;
Cells were altering, shifting, taking on specific shapes and moving so that a clear outline was developing.
One fine day, the egg case started to break and out came a small, but beautifully formed caterpillar.
It’s playtime, so it is time to stop for today.
Hope I’ve done enough and that it is good enough for Miss.
She’ll take it and mark it and then tell me what to make better, which I’ll do tomorrow.
Then I’ll do the next chapter.
I like writing; it is something that I can do and Miss helps us.
We have pictures or storyboards or story maps to help us to plan and organise our ideas.
We have time to find interesting words to make our writing more interesting.
We talk with a partner to make sure that our story makes sense,
Then we write it,
But although we might make mistakes, we get help to make them right.
We have time to think, and
Miss encourages us to use the more difficult ideas we learn in other lessons.
I do my best in writing and always try to make the next one better,
Perhaps by using more interesting words or more creative sentences.
I may not be a writer one day, but I do enjoy writing.
I’m glad we went on writing hunts.
ps. I’m even more glad that Miss reads and tells us lots of stories
and makes sure that we read a lot too.
That’s where a lot of my ideas come from.
pps Miss uses this two page approach to our writing, which helps too.

Day 2. Revive a National Writing Project?

​I was surprised to discover that the National Writing Project, 1985-88, which played a very large part in my classroom career, took place nearly thirty years ago. The project coincided with Deputy Headship and taking a Postgraduate diploma in language and reading development, so allowed a level of immersion and reflection which then had an impact on the English curriculum approaches when I took up my headship. An articulation of the writing approach adopted is the subject of an earlier post on a two page, process based approach to writing.
It is amazing to think that, after thirty years, we are still looking for an approach that “works” to ensure that children become writers. There are only so many ideas within writing; we should be capable of putting them together in a coherent whole.The CfBT education Trust wrote a pamphlet in 2008 to describe the need for a revamped UK National Writing Project along the lines of the USA, where the government had continued to pursue the process, whereas in the UK, the NWP stopped in 1988, at a point where it was argued that the National Curriculum embedded many of the aspects of the project.
The NWP in the USA started in California (Bay Area Writing Project) in 1974 in response to concerns over the level of children’s writing. After a few years this went national and has remained so since.
Basic tenets of the National Writing Project (USA) approach
The basic tenets of the National Writing Project were that:
1. to teach writing, you need to be able to write
2. students should respond to each other’s writing
3. the teacher should act as writer alongside the students, and be prepared to undertake the same assignments as the students
4. there is research about the teaching of writing that needs to be considered and applied, where appropriate, in the classroom
5. teachers can be their own researchers in the classroom
6. the best teacher of writing teachers is another writing teacher
7. various stages of the writing process need to be mapped and practised: these include pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, conferencing (see no 2 above) and publishing.
A fuller account of the way in which the National Writing Project (USA) works to support teachers is contained in Wood and Lieberman (2000), cited below.
The remainder of this article can be viewed on this extended blog
The basic question is whether we need a national conversation about how best to ensure children grow up able to write as well as possible.

Day 3. How to make progress

​Progress and Outcomes are phrases on most lips of people involved in education in any form, teachers, SLT, Governors, teacher trainers, each of who is seeking to make sense of them in a “post levels world”.
Where there are now multiple systems for supposedly assessing children’s outcomes, with ladders or phases being two local examples, every school then puts their own spin on these, so no two schools are alike. This can make for interesting misunderstandings when visiting a range of schools. The change was supposed to make sharing progress information within schools and with parents more easily understood. I am yet to meet anyone during my school visits who really believes this.
The richness of the Primary curriculum available in Hampshire in 1987 was made clear, when the first NC came about, as most schools didn’t have a lot of rejigging to do to accommodate the change. Equally, when adjustments were made, these only required some topics moving up or down a year. Teaching remained largely the same. The biggest difference was in the level of discussion within the schools about outcomes, with clarity in assessment language enabling high quality moderation between teachers and between schools. As a result, outcomes rose significantly over a relatively short time.
Sub-levels and APP recording had the opposite effect, in that the curriculum began to become less rich, as people started to plan for supposedly minute levels of progress. The activities often were “stand alone”, as “assessment tasks”, with little impact beyond ticking a box.
It is right that we should seek to ensure the richest possible curriculum is available to children, but the loss of a common language between schools may well stifle learning conversations, or make them more difficult. Transitions in school may well include moderation meetings between teachers, but this is less likely at transfer, with Secondaries preferring to test all the new entrants on one scale, rather than seek to equate the different records from a wide number of schools.
As for discussions with parents and individual children, it is becoming clear that curriculum delivery is uppermost in minds, as non-completion of the SoW for the yeargroup will mean that those children cannot be at Age Related Expectation. What this then means for higher or lower achieving children is still to be seen. I am still waiting to hear what really constitutes a “deeper” curriculum in a year group.
All this, significant, change has been occasioned because the argument was made that more children should enter Secondary education at a “secure level 4”, in order to achieve 5 A*-C grades at 16. If 4b was the target at KS2 (and 2b at KS1), it didn’t need an earthquake and a tsunami curriculum change. It needed a few tweaks, a richer curriculum and a lot of moderation discussion between schools.
That way, everyone would have moved on, and developed, together, through high quality internal CPD.
Linked (extended) blog

Day 4. Solving education problems in 100 words?

​If you were allowed to suggest a possible solution to education issues, what would you choose? Here's mine.
Allow teachers to think (creatively), it is their job. Creating quality learning challenge demands drive and commitment. One size does not fit all and children have different learning needs.
Teacher mantra: - analyse, plan, do, review, record.Know your children well, analyse their needs.
Plan engaging challenges for all abilities, in class and at home.
Do, teach them well, choosing the best ways to get ideas across.
Review and adapt within the lesson, then reflect and evaluate after to decide the best way forward.
Record what you need to keep as an aide memoire. Clear reports to parents.

Day 5. 14 Tips for Assessment

​The whole of this idea is based on getting to know the learners in your class as well as possible.
#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 In September, write a classlist; who gets forgotten?
#assessmenttip 11 Write down essential information, to collate over time, to determine patterns. You can't remember everything.
#assessmenttip 12 Recognise limits of your own skill. Use skill, knowledge and experience of others to extend/enhance, to benefit learners.
#assessmenttip 13 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.
For a fuller exploration of each of these topics, see the full blog.

Day 6. Inclusion 10 tips.

​Policy; make sure that the school policy for Inclusion is written in such a way that it is easily understood by the wider audience, has the potential to impact on the overall school ethos and can be tracked and evaluated regularly. Reference is likely to be made to associated policies, such as behaviour, safeguarding, parents and teaching and learning (all abilities).
Policy; Interpret the broader policy into a shortened series of memorable statements. Translate as needed for any significant heritage groups. Display expectations clearly around the school and refer to them regularly, in class or in assemblies.
Clear lines of responsibility are essential. Good record keeping at all stages is a hallmark of effective, supportive practice. Record keeping should be streamlined, but be easy for staff, parents and external expertise to effect and be seen to have impact in supporting the school's ability to support the children.
Communication in all its forms is the bedrock of successful inclusion, between all parties. Ease of access for parents to key teaching staff can limit the impact of potential issues. Reduce the time for parents to brood on a possible problem. Parents can be the key to successful Inclusion; it is essential that children see the school and parents working together with a common purpose.
Know your children really well, the identified vulnerable ones, but also knowing what to look out for, so that none slip through the net. Know their personal situations as well as their academic achievements. Ensure that this information is known by those with a need to know, classroom teachers as well as mentor staff.
Plan for individual personal support. Allocate a specific member of staff to be the front line mentor and support. Where there are a number of vulnerable children, ensure that each mentor has a manageable number to monitor.
Teachers differentiate appropriately in academic situations. This can take a variety of forms, but should provide challenge, as well as opportunities to succeed, to all abilities. Descriptions of different differentiation approaches are described in this article. chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/...
Personalise teacher response to children's needs in learning situations.This can be seen in:-Inputs which allow for the breadth of ability, through careful vocabulary selection, use of appropriate resources, use of metaphor or reference to prior learning.
Questioning quality, initial and scaffolded subsidiary questions.
Oral feedback, within the lesson should provide support and guidance to the next learning steps.
Marking which adds value to subsequent learning and which is enacted quickly to have impact.
Evaluating and reflecting on the system regularly, from individual examples to corporate level, to quality assure the whole system, seeking and utilising feedback from everyone concerned.
Inclusion is embedded in all the Teaching Standards 2012.
Inclusion is, in reality, doing your job, really well, for each and every child for whom you are responsible. Know the standards.

Day 7. Growth mindset; another term for making children think?

​Where an argument has grown up that you can’t “see” learning in a lesson while in the hands of an experienced, effective teacher this can still mean a “bells and whistles” lesson, in novice hands, it can mean that “activity” becomes the main element.
Where there is a difference, I would suggest, is the quality of thinking that the lesson requires and this is a methodology that refines with experience. So what contributes to this development?
There is a likelihood that the lesson is premised on a (challenging) question, with learners seeking to explore an idea, with the teacher; it is a collaborative, thinking journey.
The teacher will ensure that the essential information is shared in ways that all learners have a solid base which provides the basis for thinking within the challenge. This may well through high quality Direct Instruction, but, equally may be supported by an exploration of an image, or a video clip, to provide both the imagery and the emotionally engaging “hook” that sustains learner interest. It will depend on the teacher ability to “conjure” the images through words.
The quality of teacher questions and the learner answers. The follow up questions to elicit further information, to understand how a learner has thought through an idea are key to progress, to ensure that misconceptions are identified and addressed.
Learner activities should embed appropriate challenge through questions that extract essential information, but also enable the learners to use the information to seek solutions.
Teacher awareness and responses to classroom nuances, such as “off task” behaviours keep the whole “ticking over”. This is embedded in teaching standards 6&5; thinking on your feed, making instant assessment of situations and adjusting to need.
Spotting the child who is easily fulfilling the task, is as important as seeing the child who may be struggling. Each will need some kind of interaction/intervention, to adjust or add to the task difficulty.
Unpicking solutions, within or at the end of the lesson, is important, to enable peers to explain their thinking to others, in so doing providing insights into effective thinking. The peer model can be powerful.
Celebrating thinking, through discussion, or display, provides oral and visual WAGOLLs, evidence of achievement by some that may encourage others.
We talk of thought processes. Children need to learn how to think, which they will only do by being offered problems to think through.
This, to me is the essence of a Growth Mindset classroom.
Children “doing an activity”, which could be a “recipe” to follow, does not automatically mean that they are challenged, thinking or learning.

Day 8Thinking for yourself

Two pieces that I was able to read this morning caused polarised reactions.
The first, by J.L.Dutaut, was an insightful and honest account of practice in his classroom, which, during an Ofsted inspection was judged as outstanding, because, in addition to the essential lesson structure and information sharing, it was the quality of rapport that was highlighted as the significant factor in the success of the lesson.
The second was the reported speech by Nick Gibb, which appeared to extol the virtues of “facts, facts and nothing but the facts”. This may be doing Mr Gibb a disservice, but it echoes previous speeches in similar vein.
The simple fact in classroom teaching and learning is that, in the final analysis, the class teacher, standing alone with a class, is the arbiter of the lesson dynamics and this will depend on several factors, which can be distilled in part from the teaching standards (2012) and specific expectations on classroom teachers derived from SEND legislation.
8, 7, 1. The vast majority of teachers show professionalism, status and good class control, and have high expectations of themselves and their classes, both in terms of behaviour and learning, although the latter could be seen as becoming more refined within practice and experience.
4, 3. A well-ordered classroom, supported by well-ordered thinking, record keeping and availability of resources to effect good or better teaching, coupled with good subject knowledge are also pre-requisites of successful practice.
2. Having an understanding of what learners can achieve in ideal circumstances can provide a benchmark against which to judge outcomes, but the teacher also needs to be able to articulate progress that has been made between two points in time, by reference to prior and current performance.
6&5. Anyone reading my main blog, will realise that I see these two standards as the essence of teaching, in that, having planned and ordered and organised thoughts and resources, assessment and adaptation to evident needs are key to the success of all children. While a Direct Instruction approach might achieve with a majority of learners, to support the lower achievers and raise the bar for higher achievers requires greater insight into their thinking, which may well create the need for investigation or intervention. These two standards, to me, embed the teacher role within the SEND legislation 2014.
With the best will in the world, it is a rare teacher who can “hit every target” first time around. There is always a need to take stock, to re-interpret or to re-present ideas, I ways that all can access. It is within the talking with children that the teacher discovers the anomalies that need unpicking, usually by more detailed questioning.
This is why JLDutaut’s thoughtful blog resonated. It showed a reflective, reactive teacher, thinking with the learners, moulding ideas to their need and enabling them to make use of “the facts”, which to me is real teaching.
Ps. I love learning facts and finding out things.

Number is, and always has been, an essential aspect of mathematical education. Almost everything can be reduced to numbers in some form, if only counting. "How many ...?" is a question that is regularly asked by children or their parents, with the inevitable counting that ensues. The (cardinal) counting system, based as it is on the simple concept of +1, is a part of the "poetry" of growing up. Parents count to and with their children, as simple counting, or within nursery rhymes or songs; one, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive.

Sometimes, it is extended to the ordinal form, as in first, second, third.

​However, counting, although a baseline element of number, is not the be all and end all of maths, but it is one aspect to which children regress, if they are less secure in developmental stages.

​On entering my first Primary classroom, the maths resources were based on matching and grouping cards, similar to the cotton reel picture below, with many different variations on real objects and clip art pictures, which then had to be matched, as 1:1 correspondence with some kind of counting material, as in picture 2, with the reels removed.

​This exploration and "replacement" of one element with another, is an essential step on the road to more abstract interpretation and manipulation of ideas that have their base in the real world.

​Before moving on, try to estimate how many reels there were, either from the picture or the counters. I wonder how many readers will have automatically counted them?

Grouping the counters into groups of two, three, four, etc allows insights into the broader properties of the number being explored. In this case, 7 groups of 2, 4 groups of 3 and 2 extra, 3 groups of 4 and 2 extra. The properties demonstrate an equality which is fundamental to conservation of number.

Eventually, grouping into tens was reached, beginning then to demonstrate the relative values of a collection of ten and the unitary elements. Once you can "read" the image, the group of ten equates to the number 1 in 10, as long as the learner understands the need for the 0 to signify an "empty set". So far, we have explored 1:1 correspondence through matching, grouping and set theories.

Having established a baseline understanding, the learner has to accommodate the idea that numbers can be manipulated, through what we call the "four rules (or functions in the language of Zoltan Dienes) of number", addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

​Essentially the learner has to understand that they are effecting a change of state, where the number that you started with is acted upon by an "instruction".

​Addition, already encountered in the counting system, essentially entails the understanding that the original number is being enlarged by a specific amount. this can entail counting on from the "conserved" number, not from 1. If a child regresses to counting from 1 they have not secured conservation of number. 

​Linking the counting element to some kind of number based visual system, like Dienes or Numicon, adds another visual, but this can lead to visual representation, diagrammatic modelling, which can then be transposed to the number system.

​"Greater than, less than, difference between", are all underlying concepts that are explored early in a child's maths experience. Difference between does not need to imply subtraction, but often is presented as such, which can introduce unnecessary complications and potentially remove effective methodologies.   
 

I have not mentioned number lines or 100 squares, or any other systematised supports. These need to be introduced with care, if they are not to add any layers of confusion, that can then cause misconceptions that have to be unpicked. In the attempt to "simplify", especially for struggling learners, it is all too easy to add complexities that confuse, rather than support. 

​In my early classrooms, where "maths resources" may have been picked up during a walk at the beach or the woods, a trip to a charity shop, or some other means of sourcing artefacts or counting supports, improvisation was needed.

​Any form of counting material enabled exploration of arrays, underpinning the commutative law , that 3*4=4*3

​Equally, we sometimes explored square numbers as in the picture below.

​The principle that maths is everywhere is an important one. It should not exist in the purity of the maths lesson, but needs to demonstrate that what is learned in maths has application across many areas of life.

Linked blogs
​Talking maths
Maths everywhere
Show maths, talk maths, draw maths, image maths.
Investigating mathematically
More maths Activities
Quick (one minute) data
The answer is twelve?
Story maths?

It is strange how events can make you revisit ideas, in order to refine what you think you know. There's a great deal of talk about knowledge today, as if it, in itself is a new currency, denied to earlier generations of learners. Looking back on my own experience, I can see where there are many areas where gaps, or even gaping holes might exist in my make-up. This is especially the case with what can be called "high culture", where my exposure to "the arts" was minimal, so did not become part of my experience until about twenty years ago. Since then, and especially over the past ten years, I have made an effort to address some of the gaps, but inevitably at a relatively superficial level. I visit galleries and the theatre, have memberships to a couple, so easing the accessibility and reducing the costs, which can be significant and off-putting, as it was for many years; it was for other people.

​Last night, 4.6.16, a visit to the Chichester Festival Theatre for the second night of Ross, a Terence Rattigan play about TE Lawrence, did a bit of gap filling, in knowledge, as a result of the programme notes filling in some previously unknown details, and in understanding a little more, that 100 years ago, political meddling in the Middle East and a plan to divide the region between Britain and France had been agreed two years previously, meant that the 1916-18 Arab uprising was, at best a diversion, at worst a betrayal.

​T E "Lawrence" was, in fact T E Champion, one of the illegitimate sons of Sir Thomas Champion, who ran away with the children's governess to Oxford and  set up home there, having four boys. Cruelty from a domineering mother had a profound effect on T E, creating a confused child, who ran away to join the army at 17, but was brought back, became a university undergraduate and developed a significant interest in Middle East archaeology. In 1914, he was employed as a map maker, then drafted into the Arab Bureau, based in Cairo. His exploits are the stuff of legend, with a fair sprinkling of myth.
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The play, with an excellent cast, led by Joseph Feinnes, showed the person inside the character, from his outward inner confidence, the deep understanding of the locality and the people, well beyond other peers, the maverick behaviour that isolated him from others, then his disintegration, following torture and probable rape at the hands of Turkish captors, designed to break his will.

​The play also shows the need for inner peace after the Middle Eastern exploits, resulting in his enlisting in the RAF, seeking to be just a recruit and a "number", rather than a famous celebrity. If this play doesn't get five star reviews, I'd be very surprised.

​It reminded me that there is a range of needs in each of us, and that family is the starting point for our security, with, for many children, school being a close second in providing stability.

My gran liked to knit, as did many in her generation. She was a professional seamstress, working in a local department store doing any necessary alterations of dresses. Living through two world wars, she was very much a make do and mender. Being the daughter of fishing boat owners, she could knit socks on round needles and also effect almost invisible darns to pull together holes that might appear. Clothes were literally made to last, with careful husbandry. Pride in her ability was sometimes tempered in my self-aware mid-1960s teenage self.

My arms were sometimes put to good use while she indulged in the unravelling of an old jumper that would, in time be recycled into another pattern, to enjoy several more years of wear.​
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Holes, gaps and cavities was the title of one of the Nuffield Primary Science 5-13 scheme, which was a sort of bible for Primary science for the first half of my teaching career. Practical, but with clear structure, supporting both experienced and inexperienced teachers, they were also easy to read, and, as such, they were accessible and could be translated into very effective classroom practice. The scheme covered multiple subjects, so that, over the course of a Primary career, there were opportunities to cover a range of topics, but also to revisit some at a different level, as there were additional challenging books for more able or older learners. It provided structure, in a readable way, so that teachers could develop scientific knowledge and skill.  

Creating an understandable structure underpins any organisation, especially a school, where communication is a key aspect of the whole. Organising a school to ensure that there are no holes, gaps or cavities takes a great deal of strategic thinking and, even when you think you have succeeded, holes appear where teachers get sick, resources are not where they should be when required, or a roof develops a leak. These are distractions, and can often be easily remedied, but, should they become persistent, with distraction becoming a norm, then it is easy to fall into a reactive way of working.

Strategic thinking requires quality, dedicated thinking time, across the whole organisation, if it is to function effectively. This might be more easily available to senior leaders, where the budget allows non-teaching time, but, quite often, it needs to be bought in specially to provide cover. As it embeds a cost, as it does all time in school, it needs to be used efficiently, with clearly articulated outcomes to justify the money spent.

Some may see this time as a luxury, but, without strategic thinking providing a coherent direction of travel, it is possible for the organisation to rapidly become dysfunctional, as individuals do their own thing. This was articulated as a characteristic of the curriculum before 1987, when the first National Curriculum was introduced. When the school where I was deputy head at the time audited the existing provision against the new expectation, we had a 95%+ correspondence, so were enabled to carry on with a few tweaks. Time was not wasted in reinventing what we already had.

Strategic thinking, well ordered, organised and communicated, provides the essential foundation from which to build the edifice that eventually becomes the working model of the school. If this is founded on clear evidence, from internal and external auditing, there is likely to be greater acceptance of development and action plans. Keeping colleagues in the thinking loop is a very useful, if sometimes time-consuming activity.

In contrast, the past few years have seen what can only be described as an earthquake in education, with a tsunami of initiatives from the Government that has required detailed scrutiny, reordering and subsequent readjustment of systems and structures. In the welter of change, it is quite possible that there will be a few holes, gaps or even, in some case, cavities that become evident in working practice.

The curriculum, in Primary, can appear to have regressed to a largely Maths and English based core, with lip service paid to science as a practical subject, possibly MFL, PE and music. History, Geography, Art, Design Technology could all be argued to have been somewhat sidelined. This, to me, runs somewhat counter to the accompanying “knowledge agenda”, with maths and English lessons having to invent knowledge contexts for activity. And yet, a rich curriculum, offering opportunity across all areas would provide a stronger base from which to develop. In this case, less is not more.

The “do less but better” idea is seductive, especially to an experienced teacher, who will already have an established repertoire of skills from which to draw to add value to the slim core. In the hands of the less experienced, the slim core can become the whole, so further diminishing the value offered. However, if “do less but better” meant embedding drafting and redrafting ideas, creating higher quality outcomes and more secure expectation baselines, then it could be of benefit. This was the case in 1987, as a result of the National Writing Project and judicious use of level descriptors.

Assessment conversations, across schools, have been made a little more difficult with the removal of a national (if flawed by time) language of description. Levels died. Interestingly, although the number system changed, GCSE grading didn’t, so there remains a commonality of language among those colleagues within their subjects.

Progress? To understand where children currently are in their learning has become more complex, with some systems articulating them as “emerging, expected or exceeding”. It is sometimes hard to understand the nuanced difference between each category, as different interpretations are put on each, as in “They can’t be at “expected” until they have completed the year programme of study”. If a teacher doesn’t cover the curriculum, children can’t be operating at or above expected… Equally, a teacher who is more focused on their delivery may well exclude thinking about learners and their progress. Yet both, to be effective, must go together.

​This has come to the fore this week, with the publication of conversion tables for the KS1 SATs, which appear to demonstrate that "pass marks" have been determined for "expected" achievement. In Maths, 37+ marks out of 60 gives a standardised score of 100+. In reading, 22+ out of 40 is the "standard". SPaG is 25 out of 40. Forgive me for being a little cynical, but, to me, this means that children, even those achieving the "pass mark" or better, apart from those with 100%, will have some kind of "gap". If this gap is not noted, to be addressed afterwards, it may remain a gap. This was one of the reasons why people argued against the previous "levels" system, that children could be awarded a "grade", but still have gaps. Even where schools have developed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), children will transition with areas either uncovered (teacher issue), or as an insecure aspect of their understanding. This, to me, is where quality tracking takes place, rather than the usual descriptor of tracking as pure data.

SEND can appear to be in "freefall", with significant aspects of the system regularly reported as at best over-stretched, leaving vulnerable learners even more vulnerable.​

Phonics is less an argument between pro and anti phonics, with accusations of being "phonics deniers​"; rather it is often more between systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) as opposed to analytic phonics. It sometimes feels as if it gets in the way of discussions about a decline in reading for enjoyment.

School and pre-school places? Can appear at times to be “Promises, promises; what crisis?” I wonder how many settings are really geared up to offer thirty hours per child?

ITE and “teacher shortage”/crisis? Classrooms need a teacher to lead them. In the absence of a teacher, classes may well grow in size. The seeming lack of coordination in teacher supply is a dereliction of strategic management. One local TSA, asked to provide 18 trainees across the alliance, plus a few more since, has been allowed to take ten, a shortfall that could have impact in a year's time locally.

Schools need leadership and, it would appear that here is a shortage of applicants. If a school has no head and no teachers, it can’t really be a school in 2016. How many schools can an executive head really seek to have overview as headTEACHER and, once the role is established, across a number of schools, who will have the skills to take over the whole?

CPD is likely always to be something of a poor relation in the system, as it relies, to a large extent on internal funding, which, as it is 80%+ spent on staffing, often leaves little for training. However, it is a significant element in retention.
Talking at teachers, talking down at teachers, adopting a telling approach to people who have intelligence and who are employed to think is demeaning and belittling. Instead of working with the system and the professionals, a “we know best” approach is leaving the whole vulnerable.

I’d argue that, in it’s current state, education could be creating significant cavities, that will become evident over the next few years. Government may also have created the conditions for the “perfect storm”, by disabling aspects of the system.  

I wonder whose “fault” it will be. It won’t be enough to say “darn it”, but I hope they are good at unravelling and reworking the wool, before the fabric frays and is unusable.

​Perhaps it needs a TE Lawrence (Champion), to take better control of the troops on the ground and blow authority. Current national leadership can often appear like first world war generals, directing troops from a distance, with very limited local knowledge. It's interesting though, that if difficulty happens, the worst that can happen to a politician is to be voted out, or to step down.

Meanwhile, the troops have to get on with the daily battles. Thankfully, some significant leaders are emerging.
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