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Curriculum, subject knowledge, Curriculum

23/5/2019

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A great deal is currently being written about curriculum, books, blogs, whole or part magazines; there’s a huge amount to read. I hope I can be forgiven for adding to that. Bold type links to associated blogs.

It’s interesting to me that, nearly fifty years after I entered training college, we are having to return to an essentially structural aspect of school life. The curriculum is, in reality, little different from when I started. There are a few extra subjects. Subject knowledge informs curriculum construction, in organisational and detailed terms, which I will seek to explore through this blog.

In the 1970s, the curriculum was in one of two forms, atomised into subjects, or themed cross-curricular approaches. In my locality, experience suggested that, where they were implemented effectively, both worked.

The broader curriculum embeds the concepts and vocabulary that children will encounter in their reading and may use in their writing. If nothing else, that should be sufficient reason for ensuring the broadest and deepest learning opportunities are available. The interplay of talk, reading and writing, based on experience often leads to enhanced outcomes. The availability of technology to rehearse before presentation, orally or in writing, often supported by digital images as prompts, is something that, when I started, I could not even conceive. When you had to wait for films to be developed, delays had to be planned in.

Curriculum exists within a number of parameters beyond the “knowledge”; space, time and resources. These have been constants throughout my career. It is easy to conceive the constraints on certain aspects of learning is any of these three are compromised. Good planning, including some flexibility in timetabling, available and accessible working resources for the class or group and an appropriate amount of space within which to work are key. All three are in school and teacher organisational control. Limited time, space and resources seriously limit learning opportunities.

 It’s also possible to overplan a topic, filling six weeks, when three might have led to tighter planning and learning.
Curricula have not essentially changed since I started. At core, it’s a means of divvying up the content areas across each subject in a way that is appropriate for the continuity and progression of each subject, selected for its appropriateness for a specific age group. Learning, in any environment is episodic, so the order and organisation of what is being offered to children is the central feature. A curriculum is not an ad-hoc collection of seemingly relate activities. What is to be covered and what is to be learned needs to be clearly stated. Activities that arise from this should enhance and embed what is being learned.
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From the mid-1970s ( blog… curriculum; once upon a time)

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What influenced decisions in this period were background teacher guides such as Nuffield Science 5-13, which explained the purpose, resourcing and running of science investigations, and, as such, I would hope that a future spate of publications will look at each subject and put learning in order, from the beginning. Resources today are lightyears ahead of anything that we had then. “Jam jar” science was a thing.
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In the 1990s, Hampshire inspectorate published “Guidelines to Art Education”, KS1-5, which shared the developmental processes.
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Learning, whether formal or informal, school or home, is always episodic, because it is time-ordered. In a formal setting, there is at least one formal adult lead, with a prepared diet of learning that constitutes a year, term, week or lesson. Where each lesson builds on previous learning, the whole becomes the sum of the parts. There was a mantra early in my career, whole-part-whole, which was linked particularly to PE teaching. This meant try and show current ability, focus teaching on the “next step” and have a chance to practice. This does have applications across all learning, as it enables some fine tuning to evident needs.


Having been a deputy when the 1987 National Curriculum was introduced, after a detailed audit of what the school was offering compared to the NC, the 95% correspondence led to a few tweaks. For interest, I have appended a cut and paste piece that I created to support a staff discussion. The discussion was more detailed and better informed as a result of having a common document to consider, having each read the subject documentation. There are statements in this document from 32 years ago that can be heard today. Some principles are central.
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You have to remember, in reading these extracts, that in 1987 there was no such thing as a teaching assistant. All preparation, resourcing, organising and oversight was done by the teacher. As a full time teaching deputy, I had the same class commitments as every other member of staff.
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Order and organisation are key aspects of quality teaching. Putting the learning narrative together is akin to the teacher being a storyteller, over a known timescale and with aspirational end points in mind. The planning is key.

In 1990, when I became a head, there was a very rapid need to organise the curriculum. While the nice school in a nice area was doing quite nicely, it was evident that there was considerable room for improvement. In many ways, this was accomplished through detailed planning, of overview curriculum expectation, but also looking at the available time and seeking to allocate appropriate topics and time periods to enable quality outcomes.

·         We allocated topics to year groups, ensuring progression of content challenge and contextual availability of resources.
·         We developed topic specifications, which some would now see as knowledge organisers.
·         We looked at the idea of learning through episodic experience, premised on “Making Sense of Experience”, seeking to deepen challenge through the learning process.
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We created the notion of an annual plan, to ensure that learning was allocated a space in the year; it was evident that the previous approach allowed some parts to be missed off.
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An annual plan example.
 
·         The first two weeks of the school year were “given” to the teachers to plan their own starter topic to get to know their new classes. On the second Friday, we held a closure dedicated to planning the detail of the coming term, tailored to the known needs of the class.  
·         We created further time during closure days to enable staff discussions and planning, across the one form entry school, to make the best use of the expertise and experience available.
·         Subject managers were responsible for ensuring that each topic was effectively resourced; initially with a pump-priming fund, but then, following LMS, with an annual audit that had to specify replacement needs and consideration of resources to enhance learning.
·         Time was bought from the inspectorate to enable one half day every two years for subject managers to review and update the topic specifications.
·         Books transferred with children to their receiving classes, to ensure continuity of expectation.
·         We developed the “flip sheet” of feedback and expectation that articulated to the child and the teacher what they should be concentrating on to improve their work. (Exercise books as personal organisers)
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It is clear from this that curriculum development, to be successful, is something that can take (quality) time, for reflection, for research, for discussion, for dissemination, for oversight and evaluation. Time is a precious commodity on schools and, sadly, there is a cost element, too.

There is also the notion of progress, that some seek to diminish, as it relates to making judgements about children and their learning. Continuity and progression are important and need to be planned. Overlaying what is essentially content access is an often qualitative judgement about “how well” a child is doing. This has, at heart, an understanding of expectation for the year-group being taught, but also some appreciation of what went before and what comes next; articulated on page 3 of the NC Principles images.

The original NC had a “new” section on level descriptors. The Task Group on Assessment and Testing (TGAT) effectively created the idea of assessment of learning and, certainly in the first few years, the descriptors allowed detailed conversations about how well children were performing. Their use as data points distorted these conversations and, later, with APP (Assessing Pupil Progress) became so atomised that they added even more limiting, especially for children who could access learning quickly.

Any visit to a classroom today still shows that teachers will group and regroup children according to evident needs, so that they can focus teaching and support, remodelling or coaching to embed what seems to be less secure.
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This is largely because schools still run on curricula organised by adults to benefit children.

Can we not enter a phase of evolution rather than regular tinkering at the edges, which only leads to distortion, or, being charitable, unintended consequences and a disproportionate amount of time in revising previous incarnations, largely to end up at the same place...?
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Singing in Primary Schools

1/5/2019

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It’s Mayday, 1st of May, the day for joy, merriment, dancing and singing. Our local Morris teams have been out since dawn and will spend the day travelling around to celebrate the day.

“As I walked out, one bright may morning”; the beginning of many well-known tunes collected by people like Cecil Sharpe for posterity, sadly largely forgotten.

Music “education” in the 1950s Primary school was a bit hit and miss. We sang hymns in assembly and we certainly had Christmas shows, but, for the youngest, this was often only an excuse for Cecil B Demille costumed productions, where I was, one year, a bee and another a “Chinese” person with lampshade style hat. There wasn’t much else that leaves any mark.

From 7-11, we lived in Australia, where song was popular, particularly the folk songs of Australia, like “Waltzing Matilda” and “The wild colonial boy”, so we had the printed song books and were encouraged to sing lustily, if not always in tune. Memories were being created and memorisation was being practised. Of course, our understanding of the songs was helped by “interpretation” of the words; swagman, billy, jumbuck, tuckerbag, troopers and billabong. And that is some of the great value of songs. They hold the language of their time and place.

Returning from Australia, and starting at Grammar School, during one of the first music lessons, the teacher used the lesson as an audition for the school choir, lined us all up and each was asked to sing “Early One Morning, just as the sun was rising… etc”. This seemed to be known to the early singers, but not to me. With panic rising, I could feel, with each rendition, my listening becoming more acute, for both the words and the tune. My turn came and I managed to “perform” adequately and was surprised to be asked to join the choir. None of us knew the importance to the school at the time, but, when we went to the South West Choir Festival and won, it became apparent. “Hoppy” Hopwood was delighted, for himself as well as us. Then my voice broke… and I had to leave the choir…

My next singing memory comes from Churston Grammar, where the librarian was in charge of the school production. I was asked out of the blue if I would like to play the part of the policeman in that year’s production, “Salad Days”. I must have been taken by surprise and said yes. From time to time, the lines come back, “We’re looking for a piano, a piano, yes a piano…” These particular memories are from fifty years ago. The words are part of my past but can be drawn into memory.

 I didn’t do a lot of singing between that experience and starting as a teacher, apart from singing on the coach before or after sporting matches.

Singing Together and other radio programmes were the bread and butter of singing and music education in the early 1970s. Based on folk and other traditional songs and tunes, a booklet of words accompanying the broadcast. Listened to live, you had to be in the hall at the right time, ready with books in hand for the start of the programme. If the school secretary remembered to set the reel to reel tape recorder, there might be a copy for a repeat.

At the age of 28, I learned to strum enough chords on the guitar, having joined the beginner group for a term, to take the next term’s beginners and also to accompany quite a surprising range of songs. From that point, building a collection of songs for children, I was able to add songs to any topic theme.

Being the time of the Overhead Projector, photocopying the words onto acetate meant that song lyrics could be interrogated as a part of an English lesson, as a reading exercise, dictionary work and oral exploration. This, probably, was the position until 2005, when the Interactive White Board was available, if only to do projection in a different way.

Songs often have a historical and geographical context. There are protest songs, songs that use comedy to make a serious point. These songs, of their time, can help children to understand the feelings of people living through, sometimes, very serious changes. Communal song helped people get through two world wars.

For a few years before headship, I was a part of the band for Woodfidley, a social dance group, and, in between dances, different members of the band filled the interludes with folk song. Part of the band moped into Pogles Wood, a barn dance group, with similar intermissions. This extended the repertoire of learned songs.

As a HT, I instituted a regular half hour (plus) singing slot with both the Infants and junior halves of the school, singing folk (UK and international), fun and hymns, depending on the needs of that part of the school year. The staff had a form of PPA before that became a reality. Our school “choirs” for village events were simply invitations for whoever was available. All were welcome.

A few weeks ago, a message came through my blog from someone who had been in my 1988 class, reminiscing about songs that we had sung, having found a blog on the Triantiwontigongolope. That’s not unique. Still living in a town where my 32-year school teaching career was within 14 miles of home (SE Hants has around 240 primary schools), I can meet ex-class members or their parents who will similarly recall songs that were sung and are being shared with their children or grandchildren.

Being able to join in with song turns you from an onlooker to a participant. Knowing the words is important. We talk of “Cultural Capital”. Songs often embed this in spades. And it you think you “can’t sing”, interpret and learn the words as poetry, “borrow” someone else’s voice for the tune and go back to how I started, with a disembodied voice leading singing through audio media.
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Just don’t lose the music… Every topic can have a tune…
 
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    Chris Chivers

    Long career in education, classroom and leadership; always a learner.
    University tutor and education consultant; Teaching and Learning, Inclusion and parent partnership.
    Francophile, gardener, sometime bodhran player.

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