For some time, I have worried that we have been in danger of over-scientising, or over-systematising teaching. There is a case that neuroscience has added to our understanding and that has to be for the best, but, in many ways, teaching has not altered since I first walked into a classroom in 1971, but as each generation comes to the role, they offer new vocabulary for older constructs. Relabelling doesn’t alter the essentials of the job.

It is essentially thinking and analysing available information, planning for progression in learning, presenting appropriately challenging information and learning opportunities, thinking during and between lessons, adapting to evident needs, recording those bits and pieces that are worthy of record, as aides memoire.

Of course, around these central elements lie further lists of sub-tasks, any of which can be grown, through over-systematising, into over-demanding activities, just to double-check the system.
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The essence is analyse, plan, do review, record. Each step is a thinking step… and anything that detracts from that is to the detriment of the children’s learning.

When you walk into a classroom and wait for your class to arrive, you have compiled some thoughts ahead of time. You may have had some oral or written records from a preceding teacher, together with any other important information or data about their prior performance.

You’ll have organise the classroom to provide the most efficient arrangement of tables, that enables ease of movement, as well as good sight lines from different areas of the classroom. You will have ordered and organised resources; some at each table and more in labelled drawers for easy access and return. Reading corners, maths equipment, display boards or working walls will be evident. Much more besides will have been labelled or arranged in a display.

In addition, you will have considered the curriculum organisation for the period of time that you are responsible for the class, with a specific focus on those areas that will form the initial topics in each subject. The best planning is longer term to focus on the interaction of knowledge and skills as they develop and are reuse during the year. Being ordered and organised is the hallmark of good teaching.

The sharing of information has always been a central feature of good teaching. The quality of information sharing can be a variable, in that all information exists in a narrative that draws from the children’s prior experience, sifting and adding the new information after challenge or reflection.

If you need to collate the relevant information to be shared, that seems like an excellent idea, but the narrative sharing abilities of the teacher, the security and depth of the information, together with the articulacy of the adult will determine whether imagery is conjured in the minds of the receivers. If images are shared, that support the narrative, children can utilise recall or perhaps indulge in abstraction to further their own imagination.

Classroom vocabulary is closely connected with contextual experiences; if children’s home experiences are limited, this will have an impact on their understanding, compounded if the linguistic experience is also limited. Teaching and learning rely on words, embedding worldly concepts. The teacher is the generator of words, through the breadth and depth of experiences that they offer, inside and outside the classroom. Words, in some form, are needed to be able to interact with the world.

The interactions between teacher, other adult or children are key. Quality of questions, responses to their answers, follow-up questions for clarification, providing feedback in timely fashion, subtle adjustments or specific coaching and modelling might be needed in some cases.

Pitch of challenge, interaction and feedback are the equivalent of tailoring; a piece of clothing might be approximately the right size, but for individuals might require taking in or loosening, depending on how it is perceived to fit.

Teacher standards 6&5 describe these detailed actions, within the 24652 continuum; know your children, plan efficiently, interact and adjust to need, make decisions about subsequent learning. If planning was broader, over a longer timescale, with teachers making notes on next needs, it might decrease some anxiety about workload. Much planning is, in effect, continuous, with additional information added to need.

• Standards 6 and 5 are the key to getting closer to individual, group and class needs. The judgemental aspects of standard 6, between and within lessons, are effected through adaptations between lessons or within a lesson. That nuance can be lost in a delivery model. It is often evident in ITE trainees, who are focused on getting through the lesson more than the actual learning and getting to know the needs of individuals.
• Assessment, to my mind, has always meant knowing your children. It also means knowing the generic progression in each of the subjects that make up the Primary curriculum. Marrying the two together is the essence of good planning that embeds appropriate challenge for different needs.
• Planning is, at heart, a(n) hypothesis, a general descriptor of what will happen if all your prior judgements have been accurate.
• All plans should be subject to adjustment within the lesson, if, on the balance of evidence and the teacher judgement, individuals, groups or the whole class seem to be finding aspects harder or easier than expected. In-lesson interactions and oral and written feedback are likely to be influenced by these judgements.
• Teacher Standards 6&5 together effectively mean spot and deal with learning issues in a lesson.
• Reflection after the lesson, or period of lessons allows for future plans to be adjusted to outcomes. This could be in the form of “interleaving” or adjusting future demands to cater for known needs.

Every teacher is adrift with a boat load of children. They deserve good maps and the ability to captain their own ships with certainty. They carry a valuable cargo, who should be enjoying time to look around and take in the experiences as they pass, rather than being kept too busy to look, or only allowed to see the world through a small port hole.

The teacher, as a good captain, should also be looking out for the well-being of her team.
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It’s not simple, it never has been simple and, given the complex nature of any group of humans, will never be a simple role; but it is still a great job and you get to be captain…!

Challenge, as a central concept, has been a part of my whole teaching career.

This was linked to knowing your stuff and being aware of children’s learning needs, with match and challenge, aka pitch, being the precursor of differentiation.

​In many ways, problems started, for some, when differentiation became a thing to do, resulting in a more activities-led approach, rather than the earlier more analytical approach. It embedded, in some practice, the need for different activities for different groups, creating an appearance of catering for different needs when there might be too little or too much challenge. The ease of downloading activities from the internet and easy reprographics aided and abetted this approach.

There are different layers of challenge, starting with the curriculum, where concepts might be simply introduced in one year-group, added to in subsequent years; a progressive building of knowledge. It does require, though, from the teacher, an awareness of previous learning, to be able to make appropriate links that enable recall to underpin the new information.
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Challenge will be embedded in the introductory part of the lesson, where information is shared directly, orally, supplemented by visual or other means, aka dual coding, building a coherent narrative, developed further through careful question and answer to fine tune responses and ensure security. The extended vocabulary, exploring new concepts, must be linked to earlier understanding and linked vocabulary; it cannot be assumed that each child will make the links without them being made explicit; modelled retrieval practice, within and between lessons.
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One of the significant pleasures in my work life in being enabled to unpick how a school works, is that the schools are invariably open and honest with me and are seeking the external view that might nudge them forward in their development. As each school is subtly different, that can mean that interrogation has to look in fine detail at different elements, to determine how they link and possibly how they either support or hinder aspects of growth.

I am also very visual in the way that I think about systems. I have to have the bigger picture, so that I can explore the constituent parts. Schools, after all, are systems, of interlocking systems, with the key one being the system that operates around each learner, so that they are enabled to make the best progress at that point in time. This also allows for those individuals for whom expectations of the whole group may not be applicable, as a result of issues specific to them. As teachers, we have to accept that life does affect learning patterns. It does for adults, so it does for learners and they are young, so may not yet have built their coping mechanisms.

There are many elements which go together to make up the complex event that we call learning.

Some commentators argue that you can’t “see” learning in a lesson, and yes, perhaps that, as a phenomenon is not easily visible, but, I think it is feasible to explore the learning intentions of the lesson and to qualitatively explore the learning environment, the experiences, the challenge and effort being demanded, so that it is possible to determine the likelihood of whether learning might be taking place at that point.

Knowing where the learners are at the beginning of the discrete series of experiences they will encounter though a series of lessons is essential, so that they will then be taken on a journey alongside the teacher, rather than the teacher running ahead and learners lagging behind in a long tail. Knowing where they are headed is important too. If the “map” is only ever in the teacher’s head, then learners are not aware of the destination, nor can they have an understanding of where they are on the journey. If one was to take a climbing analogy, as I have done in another post, from the base camp, we want to journey to a specific point, or pitch, where we can take stock before moving onto the next one, so that the journey as a whole is always within the learner’s understanding.
Having an understanding of what “getting there” might look like is also an essential element of the learning process. If this is not clear, then effort can be misdirected into other areas, which might have lesser impact on a learner outcome. For some, the journey to each point may need to be broken down further and they may require guidance on the way, so the leader/teacher/TA has to “drop back” to encourage and support. Some might like to “climb/run ahead”. If that is the case then the teacher has to determine whether this can be accomplished safely. They can’t fall off an exercise book, so it is probably very safe, but some teachers do supply limitations. This is the point at which real independence can be developed through appropriately set challenges.

Task Setting (What’s the challenge?)

Limitations can be embedded in the activities that are given to children. I looked at task setting in another post, and it is to this that I’d want to return, as it is, without doubt, the determinant of progress. Real learning, at least to me, requires embedding through use and application of what is known into overcoming a challenge and solving problems. School learning can be based on activities, doing, following a set of instructions, which can be seen as modelling or scaffolding, more rarely applying knowledge and skills to challenging scenarios. This “recipe” approach to teaching can be effective in the right hands, as can all approaches, however in the wrong hands it can embed a limitation, created by the task. A level x task, given to a level x learner, will produce level x learning. Task choice and challenge is therefore an essential skill.

Unpicking the level of challenge, the need for learners to think, to plan, to organise, to select, to determine routes and ideas rather than just follow instructions, is an important aspect. Completing an activity sheet does not necessarily equate to learning. End to end activity sheets does not mean a scheme of work or a curriculum.

The process of learning has to be a dynamic interplay between the learner and the context, making active links between what is already known and what is being laid before them. To that end the interplay of the formal lessons, homework and time between lessons would also appear, to me, to be critical. How much homework is an unrelated activity, just because homework has to be given? What if the challenge was continuous, so that homework became pre-thinking, preparation for the lesson, or a reflection on the learning outcomes of the current one?

Boxing everything would appear to embed potential limitations, in inexperienced hands, but sometimes in more experienced hands, as a result of the system. From that point of view, the diagram at the header is limited as it implies boxes rather than a dynamic.

Knowledge and Skills

Learners need to know things in order to understand the world around them. Knowledge underpins all thinking, but the awakening by teaching or discovery through experience of new knowledge has to be explored in relation to what is already known. Making links is essential.

The knowledge area provides the context for the learning, sometimes in discrete subject areas, sometimes in less discrete manner; the real world of young children does not exist in subject boxes.

 Discrete area allows specific concepts, (current) knowledge and subject specific skills to be explored and developed to hone the skills over time to provide capacity to explore for oneself, at different levels, each of which, I would argue has validity.

One does not have to reach a specific level of expertise before using what is known to explore. As a teenager, I was interested in entomology, not as an expert, but as a way to explore the natural world. It was a specific interest, but linked with GCE and A level studies, allowed deeper insights in a very specific area.

The skills of the subject often provide the thought and practical processes, and it is this area that needs careful consideration, as it is within the process skills, use and application, that reflective practice enables the involved teacher to determine where any gaps occur.

Active Processing- Making Sense of Things

While a teacher might present knowledge in contexts in ways that they think are suitable for the children in their classes, there is never a guarantee that the message gets across to the learner.

The teacher language style, and the vocabulary being used might preclude a learner from picking up the essential information that they need to make progress. Not all learners are active listeners and even those who are can miss parts of information as they reflect on an earlier snippet of knowledge.

Even if the message does get across there is no guarantee that the learner will have the capacity to process the knowledge, in some cases because they do not have prior experiences which allow them to link the new information to an expected position. They already have a deficit, which, if undetected, embeds and deepens the deficit, by adding a further layer of deficit.

And, even if they have the capacity to take the information in and to process it, there are some learners who have difficulty in expressing what they know in ways that are acceptable as outcomes.

The teacher role is to place learning opportunities in front of children, it is also to walk along beside the learners, especially identified vulnerable groups. Engaging and investigating their progressive understanding supports fine tuning of interactions, the feedback, the guidance in a lesson, the alteration of learning expectations and the written feedback.

It is a cyclic event, with each successive outcome creating a new baseline of expectation, based on learning outcomes.

So to simplify the diagram at the header of this post.

• Teaching and Learning is a series of interlocking expectations over time; long, medium and short term.
• Analysis underpins the detail of planning, which in turn describes what will happen in the lesson, during and after which the reflective teacher adjusts expectations to evident outcomes, with appropriate records kept as aides memoire.
• Tasks set embed the expectations of the learning, which should be challenging to thinking rather than activity based.
• The product, the outcome and the process are important, with the latter capable of investigation to discover the aspects which a child finds difficult, receptive, processing or expressive difficulty. The former can be compared to aspirational outcomes and investigated for future learning steps.
• You don’t really know what they know unless they can communicate it to you and there are many routes to communication. It’s not just spoken or written.

Is it good enough?

That is for the teacher and the learner to determine. If exemplars are shared, they can be discussed against the learner outcome, with a descriptor of next steps shared. Once shared, they become a common expectation, for the learner focus. Showing progress can be good enough for an individual. If there is a “bottom line” expectation, this can be explored with learners to establish the personalised route necessary to achieve this. Specific support and guidance may be needed.

Target setting.

This might suffer from being an adult concept, especially for younger learners. Perhaps it would be more useful to talk in terms of what learners are trying to get better at.

Current target setting is also often a hidden agenda, with targets stuck inside book covers, in another booklet, or in a teacher’s planner. It also suffers in some places from lacking a dynamic; three targets set for a half term review. If not achieved, then reset. It sucks the life out of learners putting effort into their learning.

An alternative approach is to

• Put personalised targets on a fold out slip, at the edge of the exercise book, so that during the lesson, the child and the teacher can be aware of the specific targets.
• This can prompt conversations specific to that child, support the learner’s self-evaluations and also support teacher oral and written feedback, as the slips can be folded out during marking.
• Targets can be achieved , then become non-negotiable in future work, with new ones added.
• This approach also supports record keeping, as the slip forms an on-going record of achievement.

And so the cycle starts again, new tailored challenges, regular, purposeful engagement, reflection, adjustment, feedback, reflection and improvement, ad infinitum.

We are all, or should be, life-long learners, more often without a teacher. Life offers challenges. We need to create solution finders.
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A rule of thumb when considering teaching plans…
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Know your children well (baseline). Challenge them appropriately. Engage in the journey; support and guide as necessary. Explore and Improve outcomes. Outcomes become new baseline. Repeat.
 
It is always interesting talking with student teachers, because, by definition, they are still learning; they are students in Initial Teacher Education. Trying to unpick different elements that go to make up good teaching can give rise to interesting side issues, not least seeking synonyms for different aspects of the role. The two most common to seek alternatives are differentiation and assessment.

I quite like to start with simpler models then build onto that framework of understanding. When I was training, I had a friend whose first port of call for any topic was the Ladybird series, where there was easily available a rapid introduction to a subject, so these books provided the sub-headings to be filled in with detail later.

It is very important for trainee (and qualified) teachers to develop a holistic awareness and knowledge of the needs of the full range of children with whom they will work, so that, when faced with a particular year-group, their attainment can be seen in context and provide the basis for planning.
Knowing the children in their classes holistically, as described in the diagram above, supports decision making. Visualising education in the round and being aware of the children’s backgrounds can enable the teacher to underpin areas where the prior, background experience may become a limiting factor.

My own model of what teaching is can be described as a cycle; analyse, plan, do, review, record, or, even more simply, as in the nutshell below.
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Knowing your children well, as a start point can be the greatest confusion for a teacher, as the records passing with the child may be incomplete or confusing, or simply based on data. In an era without a common assessment language between schools, this could become a significant issue at transfer, if not within transition, as teacher judgement is embedded in assessment information.

The range of children within a class can vary significantly, but, even within selected classes, such as streams and sets, there is a range to be accommodated, with both subject knowledge and skill needs to be addressed. Knowing the different needs of the children ensures that challenge within tasking can be tailored to their needs, with the need to articulate challenge being greater than the need to show different activities, which can be the fall-back position.

It is, in reality, the need to see children challenged within a lesson that an observer wishes to see. What have the children got to get their teeth into, to think about, to talk about and then to write about? That this will be different for different children seems to me to be self-evident, but then, I taught before the initial National Curriculum, quite often in an Integrated Day, group-based approach, which was then a feature of Primary practice. Group-based tasking was normal.

So, the first word that needs to be evident in the classroom is challenge and how this is manifest and visible across the range of abilities. It can be embedded in personal challenge or learning targets, which can be the main focus within a broader tasking.
Improvement is the second word that needs to be in common use in the class. If the challenge is correct, then there will be an outcome. Whatever the outcome, it should be capable of improvement, so sharing this with the group or class through the available technology should enable the children to talk through how they would seek to add even greater value to the shared outcomes.

The use of display, as in WAGOLL (What A Good One Looks Like) walls can be a valuable asset to discussing improvement. It is a case of constantly putting quality in front of children, so that they can build a visual image of expectation and take some charge of their own efforts.

Every outcome should become a new baseline if the process of challenge and improving outcomes is embedded in classroom practice. Each successive outcome becomes a descriptor of progression.

Of course the issue then is how to describe progress across a subject, so that there is a framework against which to make the judgement. The question is; how far have they travelled and where next? And so we go round the houses, especially without clear frames of reference. It might be better to consider security of learning, with successive descriptors of capacity supporting this thinking.
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​Tasks (should) embed a wide range of challenges for learners, including: - 

• Some will be investigative, some problem-solving, some using and applying what is known into new areas. All should be challenging to thinking and have an impact on learner progress. The context for a practice task needs to be considered carefully.
• There will be the intellectual challenge; do they understand the task and the nature of the challenge? Can they perceive the strategies that they will need to fulfil the task?  Some of this will be determined by the teacher explanation of the task criteria, and what needs to be done to be successful, ie the success criteria, or what the teacher will be looking for.
• For some there will be the social challenge, such as the ability to cooperate with others in sharing available resources, organising, or being organised by, others.
• Some tasks will challenge independence. This, for the adults, is sometimes a difficult judgement call. Some tasks will need direct adult support, supervision and guidance to be successful. The amount and the detail of the adult support needs to be considered when reflecting on outcomes. What could the learners do for themselves?

​Some tasks will challenge learners to take what they know, to address the challenge with that baseline understanding, then to tackle new issues, identifying what they now need to know in order to make progress in the task.

For interest these are tasks, extracted from work planning diaries that I have used with young children.

Set up a fair test to find the best colour to wear when walking along the road.

Design and make a device that will project a ping pong ball 4 metres into a container.  

Using newspaper, build a framework strong enough to… hold a 100g mass 50cm above a table.. hold a cup of water… hold a cream egg… span a 50cm gap between tables and hold 100/200/500g

Consider how to find out of a full balloon weighs more than an empty one.

How much stretch does an elastic band have?

Using squared paper, always the same size, fold a series of rafts with different area bases and different height sides. Which design holds the greater mass?

Other ideas are embedded in subject related blogs.

In addition, there was a two week “getting to know” topic planned for September, totally in the teacher control, to re-establish working habits; see planning blog. There was also a school-wide expectation on the use of the workbooks; example (click for blog)
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For many years, there have been studies that showed between year expectations may be different, sometimes significantly so, with inter-school transition having the greatest drop. I spoke about this at Beyond Levels #LearningFirst Bath.

​Teacher standard 2 is progress and outcomes. In September, in any year, a blank book does not provide a baseline, so a child can seek to depress a teacher expectation, should they be so minded. There is a “truism” that there is a drop off in achievement during the summer holiday. This approach tests that assumption.

To have previous examples provides a simple baseline expectation that may not be provided by written or oral reports. At it’s simplest, it can be as easy as having one piece of work stuck into the workbook as an aide memoire, but, to have extended examples could provide a greater reference point, for both teacher and child, enabling early interventions (TS6&5) to seek to regain earlier achievement levels.
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It supports teacher decision-making, but also saves money on books… what's not to like?

Picture; the seventh wave, by Bobbie Bale.

Assessment is a part of the process…

In the first part of an exploration of the visual world, I looked at the potential for the external world to become the stimulus for a great deal of learning, including developing the broadest possible vocabulary to support dialogue.

If children are not developing a broad vocabulary, then we may have to look at the adult models interacting with them and the experiences that they encounter in their school and home lives. This is not a new issue. When I started my teacher training in 1971, studies from Bristol were being used as baselines for our discussions. Harold Rosen had written about Language Across the Curriculum and Jerome Bruner was talking about the link between experience, language and thought, among many others.

The world is full of things to look at, to describe, to explore, to measure, to speculate about, to evaluate, or to just name, with closer examination showing ever greater detail that fleshes out the general experience. There is no shortage of possibilities; a series of blogs on a sense of place is linked below.

Through learning experiences, the adults act in a variety of roles, more often sharing essential information/knowledge, at other times acting as coach, engaging in developmental dialogue with learners, as individuals, small groups or whole classes. Currently, some commentators are promoting this as the work of Rosenshine, principles of direct instruction, but I see this structure as a common theme throughout my teaching career. It’s a thinking process. The organisation of a teaching space and the tasking of children can vary, but the structured information sharing, challenge and interactions with learners is the same.
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Having imparted knowledge, the teacher role is to seek to firmly embed this into the learner repertoire and to check the security of understanding; modern promotion of this idea, propounded as Cognitive Load Theory. This is likely to happen during challenges or tasks that follow the instruction. Interactions are based on a teacher awareness of the learners, spotting behaviours, listening to discussion or answers to questions that suggest insecurity or perhaps significant security, either response requiring intervention and potential adjustment to the task parameters.

I’d like to summarise the two elements as 1) knowing your subject(s), with Primary teachers teaching several, and 2) being able to make a judgement where children are, at any point, to support subsequent teaching decisions. I have also to accept that there may be elements of bias in every judgement. This is a potentially significant point, but, with discussion and moderation, elements of bias can be ameliorated, if not eliminated. Interactions are the life-blood of teaching. Tests may occasionally be needed to triangulate reflection.

Subject development can be evidenced through engaging with children of different ages, either directly or through outcome sharing, perhaps through internal moderation, to determine what constitutes quality outcomes at any particular point in learning. Over- and under-expectation will result in distorted challenge, learning opportunities and potentially subsequent decision making. Collecting and collating a portfolio of outcomes is a useful discussion resource. Discussion is a form of collegiate CPD; talking process and outcomes.

We talk of formative and summative assessment; the former being responsive adult behaviour, interacting in real time with learners, the latter is any point where a teacher “takes stock”, informally between lessons and more formally in reporting, orally or in writing to any audience, becoming formative in determining courses of action over a timescale, especially where learning is an issue.

Building evaluation into lessons, through determined intervention supported by available models and enlarged through technology such as a visualiser, enables a teacher to establish clear expectations throughout a lesson and show what achievement can look like. If children are also allowed to talk about their approaches to the tasks in hand, they provide a second level modelling for their peers, and may well use linguistic styles that are understandable to children who may still be struggling.

There has always been a problem of how to remember the learning needs of a class, or classes of children. Regular readers of this blog will know that I advocate fold-out aides-memoire cards that flip out from the edge of an exercise book, enabling the teacher or learner to record items that need to be considered in any piece of work. How to use an exercise book as a personal organiser can be seen here.

https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/a-sense-of-place-locality
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/a-sense-of-place-1
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/creating-nature-detectives
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/a-sense-of-place-naming-things
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/maths-making-sense-of-the-real-world
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As a scientist, my interest in art began through that, with early drawings of the beetles that I would find and keep, a la Gerald Durrell. A greater interest in the world of art was squashed in my first year at a boy’s Grammar School, where my naïve drawing was judged very harshly, by a teacher whose assessment method was to line everyone up with their work and move individuals up or down the line, followed by a percentage being given. We weren’t given advice or feedback in any form that would move any of us forward. I suppose it was the assessment of you either “had it or you didn’t”.

Fortunately, a move of school and evening classes accompanying my dad, to be taught by the art teacher at the new school, demonstrated that, with some naïve talent and good coaching, I was able to take art GCE as an additional exam and passed.

An interest in the world is, for me, a prerequisite of teaching, as each teacher is, to some degree, helping children to make some sense of the world in which they live, a large part of the stimulus being visual. As children (hopefully) walk to school with their parents, they are (hopefully) noticing features of the locality that become their landmarks and, internalised, supporting their awareness of their place in the world; to become geography. The houses that they pass hold insights into their past through their architecture; history. The natural world and seasonal change can highlight biological aspects.

Each area has it’s own vocabulary that encompasses the essential concepts underpinning the subject. Every area of life can contribute to the child’s developing vocabulary, especially if they are aided by an interested adult. My own interest in the natural world was established through walks in the Welsh valleys with my miner uncle, who would point out plants, birds and animals as we walked.

Awareness starts by registering what is around. Things are just there and can become little more than wallpaper, but they might move, revealing an insect, a bird or a small mammal. Delving into water might reveal frogs, toads newts or fish. The child can start the journey of classification, with subdivisions, as names of birds are learned. Very early scientists would have linked their observations with drawings; some were exceptionally talented at both.

Learning to mark-make is a process, of hand control and an awareness of and careful use of a variety of media. The marks start off as ill-defined, but gradually, for most children, become more controlled, as their hands gain strength, but also allow for light movement and well as heavy marking. Any new medium requires a period of assimilation through what could be called “play”, early accommodation to the flexibility or drying speed of paint, or the difference in elasticity and malleability of plasticine compared with clay.

In 1986, a book arrived on my desk, written by the Hampshire Art Adviser, Lorna Delaney; Guidelines for Art Education. This book provided evidence of the developmental process in children’s art from early years to A level, with examples taken from different stages. A follow-up book arrived in 1992; Further Guidelines for Art Education, this time edited by Mary Schley, the County Inspector for Art. The second book added to the first by looking at assessment as the means by which the process of development could be enhanced. The two books together were useful for both expert artists and also those less confident with the subject.

The whole was premised on an underlying process, with three elements;
·         The conceptual element concerned with ideas, perceptions, feelings, impulses and responses
·         The operational element concerned with the control and use of techniques, materials and media
·         The synthetic element concerned with the perception of the dynamics of visual language, line, tone, colour, texture, movement, structure and form.

Each of the elements has a classificatory language that requires unpicking, sharing, demonstration, discussing, evaluation as well as hands-on opportunity.
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Art enables everyday visuals to be captured, interpreted, enhanced or even distorted, depending on the age and maturity of the child.

In many ways, for the whole of my career in education, there have been two main elements; the information giving curriculum and what I have always seen as the challenge curriculum. Some will see this as knowledge and skills, but, in the reality of the world, unless what you know can be used and applied in contexts where it is applicable or can be adapted to need, the acquisition of knowledge for it’s own sake, while laudable, could also become slightly debilitating.
It can be summed up as something to think about, to talk about and to show in an appropriate form.

Sharing knowledge is the bread and butter of every subject area. It requires planning over different timescale, allocated to different year groups and clearly identifying, so that it is progressive building, rather than an ad-hoc hiccupping.

With different age children, there will be some accommodation to the needs of the children, in terms of vocabulary and phrasing, but the essence of the sharing is to impart information that is essential and desirable in order that the children can then tackle pre-planned tasks. The sharing might have required a variety of modelling techniques, beyond the teacher voice; manipulable materials, visuals, as video or drawn elements or sound, music or other relevant material. This is often called dual coding.

Hopefully, this input is the stimulus for many of the learners to start to think independently for themselves, to generate their own questions and, given time to discuss with their peers, to assimilate the information more firmly. Learner feedback after the sharing of information is the key to teacher decision making; move on or revisit?

Task Setting (What’s the challenge?)

Limitations can be embedded in the activities that are given to children. In earlier posts, I’ve looked at task setting and it is to this that I’d want to return, as it is, without doubt, the determinant of progress. Real learning, at least to me, requires embedding what is known into overcoming a challenge and solving problems.

Much school learning can be seen as activities; doing, following a set of instructions, rather than applying knowledge and skills to challenging scenarios. This “recipe” approach to teaching can be effective in the right hands, as can all approaches, particularly where learners may be insecure and it is effectively remodelling in practice, however in the wrong hands it embeds a limitation, created by the task. A level x task, given to a level x learner, will produce level x learning. Task choice and challenge is therefore an essential skill.

Unpicking the level of challenge, the need for learners to think, to plan, to organise, to select, to determine routes and ideas rather than just follow instructions, is an important aspect.

Completing an activity sheet does not necessarily equate to learning. End to end activity sheets do not mean a scheme of work.

The process of learning has to be a dynamic interplay between the learner and the context, making active links between what is already known and what is being laid before them. To that end the interplay of the formal lessons, homework and (rehearsal) time between lessons would also appear, to me, to be critical. How much homework is an unrelated activity, just because homework has to be given? What if the challenge was continuous, so that homework became pre-thinking, preparation for the lesson, or a reflection on the learning outcomes of the current one?

Boxing everything would appear to embed potential limitations, in inexperienced hands, but sometimes in more experienced hands, as a result of the system. From that point of view, the diagram at the header is limited as it implies boxes rather than a dynamic.
 
Tasks (should) embed a wide range of challenges for learners, including:-

Some will be investigative, some problem-solving, some using and applying what is known into new areas. All should be challenging to thinking and have an impact on learner progress. The context for a practice task needs to be considered carefully.

• There will be the intellectual challenge; do they understand the task and the nature of the challenge? Can they perceive the strategies that they will need to fulfil the task?  Some of this will be determined by the teacher explanation of the task criteria, and what needs to be done to be successful, ie the success criteria, or what the teacher will be looking for.
• For some there will be the social challenge, such as the ability to cooperate with others in sharing available resources, organising, or being organised by, others.
• Some tasks will challenge independence. This, for the adults, is sometimes a difficult judgement call. Some tasks will need direct adult support, supervision and guidance to be successful. The amount and the detail of the adult support needs to be considered when reflecting on outcomes. What could the learners do for themselves?
• Some tasks will challenge learners to take what they know, to address the challenge with that baseline understanding, then to tackle new issues, identifying what they now need to know in order to make progress in the task.
• Some tasks will enable learners to identify areas where their learning is less secure and they may well ask for clarification or revisiting of earlier learning; in other words, the task is a “test”.

Tasks are often of the kind that I would call “Blue Peter” or “recipe” tasks.

Based on the idea of “Here’s one I made earlier”, they require a copyist approach; follow the instructions to the letter and it will turn out just like the model. This approach does occasionally have a place, but, with overuse, it can embed dependence. The approach is, by default, the teacher guide in the worksheet, with limited room for the child to really show their capabilities.

The best tasks make learners think, retrieve what they already know to bring to bear on the task in hand, to consider the framework and strategy for their investigation, the information and resources that they need, their personal and group organisation (as appropriate), how they will record their progress, the timescales available, so how they will use their time effectively. This approach fits equally well in formal lessons as well as in more open situations. Learner awareness of task needs is a central element of success.

Lessons?

Activities laid end to end are not a curriculum.

• Activity/busy-ness is not necessarily challenge.
• If task outcomes are general, one set for thirty, they will only impact positively on a narrow range of abilities.
• Task setting should enable learners to go beyond the activity. Not just, “You’ve finished early so here’s another activity”.
• Consider “the loneliness of the long-distance worksheet”.
• More open tasks enable learners to show their thinking ability and, possibly, a wider range of skills and knowledge.
• In open tasks, what you see can be greater than what you were looking for.
• Children often surprise teachers in learning situations.

If you want a thinking classroom, it’s essential that everyone is thinking, not just you, otherwise you may well be working twice as hard as the children, just to keep up the momentum.

In my experience in schools, the curriculum has always held centre stage; it’s the basis if what every teacher does. There seems to be an alternative narrative at the moment, where some seem to want to claim that somehow, and for some time, teachers have been doing otherwise.

When the National Curriculum emerged as a reality, in 1987, I was the deputy head of a First School. The first thing we did was to apportion each subject file to those with responsibility and for them to match what was being asked with what we provided and to identify the areas where adaptation, or gap filling, might be needed. This exercise identified 95% correspondence, with science being an area where topics were tweaked more than others. Subsequent incarnations of the NC required similar, relatively small, levels of adjustment.

So curriculum has been a central feature of school life throughout my career.

In the beginning, school level planning was largely topic allocation to each year group, to avoid some “nice” topics from appearing each year. Progression and objectives were a key part of deciding what to do and how it should be done.

The science programme in my first days, 1974, was based on Nuffield Science 5-13, history had Unsworth textbooks as a possible base. Every school appeared to have an Encyclopaedia Britannica, as a central feature of the library and atlases were the key resource for Geography. Our library was supplemented by the County library van visits, so pre-planning was needed to ensure that appropriate book resources were available. Topic work included “research skills”; how to use the textbooks, contents and index, to find information. Collecting knowledge was highlighted, sometimes used to create an “alphabet/glossary” of the topic, as a list or as a topic wall.

​When I became a Head, we developed the concept of the annual plan, which created two layers of information; curriculum coverage and what is now called interleaving, recalling earlier information and skills to use in the new context. An example might be letter writing, taught as a stand-alone in English, to be used later to write persuasively on a topic or perhaps review letters to an author, after a half-term of studying books by one author.  The annual plan also ensured that a broad curriculum was offered and that everything that had to be covered was covered.

This played also into a further development, of the two-page approach to writing, with one area providing the main writing task during the week; this could be reports or instruction-writing in science or other foundation subject. This approach developed out of the earlier National Writing Project, but within an exercise book format.

From this, the use of “flip sheets” supported the next layer of need, to identify specific areas where some individuals needed additional focus or support. This might be particular to a child’s special educational needs, which need to be kept continually in front of the child and supporting adults. It might also be specific areas which become apparent during work approaches, but which, if ignored, might create “holes” in knowledge or skill.

I keep coming back to this, as much of what we have done in schools ends up as a piece of writing, which is then the means by which security of achievement is judged by the teacher. To create a focus for each week enables cross-fertilisation of the knowledge curriculum within the context of the English curriculum demands.

Teacher judgement has always been a part of school life. It is, after all, that which underpins formative assessment and every subsequent decision regarding children. This now falls into the teacher standards 2,6 and 5, progress and outcomes, assessment and adaptation. These are the real sharp end of the teacher standards, where interaction, intervention and feedback support the developing learners, but outcomes also inform the teacher about the levels of security of each child, impacting on dynamics within and between lessons.

Progress, as a statement, has, to some extent, become slightly devalued in education parlance, and in terms of data judgements. It has always been the underpinning of conversations between teachers and parents, in particular, with, in days before National Curriculum levels, was as simple as comparing current performance with earlier outcomes, which is not quantified. Equally, judgements about appropriateness of the outcomes for a particular year group will depend on experience within the key stage.

In 2013/4, I wrote a piece about levelness becoming de facto yearness, with the proposed, now current, curriculum detailing what should be taught in each year group.

If we assume that the whole is shared by the teacher within the year, teacher decisions will be based on security; how well children demonstrate that they can use and apply, preferably independently, that which they have been taught. If one yearness of teaching is the norm and a child achieves 100% of this independently, have they made one year of progress; more or less?

If they don’t achieve 100%, have they made less than one year’s progress and what is done about those areas that are less secure? This question has been part of my whole career; what to do with children as they transition into a new year group with identifiable continuing needs.

This returns us to the flip sheets, where continuing needs can be recorded to be actioned in future activity. Not to record this, in my opinion, is creating a situation where the receiving teacher has to find the gaps for themselves, which helps no-one, least of all the learner.

We need simple systems that support learners throughout their school careers.
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A high-quality, broad curriculum is an entitlement of all learners. Continual interaction, intervention and developmental feedback is right and proper.
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Recording continual needs creates an aide memoire for both learner and adults. That way might support continual development, or progress, however small. 
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teachers work within human systems, which can appear sometimes to be less than humane. The best systems look out for the individuals who make up the team, providing support and guidance to colleagues in the same way they do to children. Even the best practitioners can suffer a dip in performance when life offers personal challenges. Thoughtful, reflective management breeds thoughtful, reflective, autonomous teachers and independence in learners. 
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Teaching is a great job, but free the teachers to think, that’s what they are paid to do.
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Further blogs on thinking teachers:-
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/teacher-think-more-metacognition
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/teachers-think
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/permission-to-think
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/teach-teacher-teachest

Interaction and
Interpersonal skills are the stuff of life, whether two, or many,
Interlocutors; after all, life is essentially group activity. The
Interplay between people can lead to
Interesting developments. The
Interconnectedness of life can be exaggerated in some social situations like a school, where
Interlopers can find difficulty in integrating, adults as well as children.

Internalised rejection can lead to
Intermittent disagreement and the need for
Intercession to restore equilibrium. Learning to
Interact with each other starts from birth, parents and others trying to
Interpret sounds and developing speech,
Interspersed with an ongoing personal monologue
Interpreting their surrounding world. This
Intergenerational
Interaction leads to
Internalisation through reflection.

Interleaving of experience, known as life, ensures that new contexts require
Internalised knowledge to be brought to the fore in a more mature way, leading to an
Interchange of information.
Interactive conversations allow for query and clarification.

International diplomacy sometimes requires
Intermediaries to
Interpret the thoughts of one party to another. The simplicity of all these situations is learning to communicate, to
Interpret, because, at heart, humanity is
Interdependent. The group can support the individual through mutual
Interest.
​
Interventions are essentially discussions, questions refining understanding between people, in order to fine tune responses. Good
Interventions require active listening and reflection before responding.
​
We are all in this (world) together. Life is groupwork...

School life’s a bit more complicated than singular elements and we won’t solve workload with mantras.

Paul Daniels was a magician whose career was a regular sight on the television. As with many in his position, the phrase, “Take a card, any card”, was a standard line. It could be considered as the means by which education policy is currently being determined, but, in this case, it is likely to be take a single topic and work on that; this weekend, it seems to have been workload.

While I was enjoying the West Sussex hospitality of the #LearningFirst conference, elsewhere, Damien Hinds, Amanda Spielman and Nick Gibb were highlighting the need to address workload, as if it is a single entity that can actually be controlled. Political parties always wish to be seen to be improving education and each will claim to have the magic solution. Spoiler; there isn’t one…if there was, we'd have found it by now. Human systems are complex.

Efficiency, or, in political terms, looking for ways of continually saving money and at the same time demanding improvement across the school system, is perhaps desirable, but saving money can become the greater imperative squeezing out the potential for improvement. In any “business”, efficiency requires a period of analysis, quality planning and implementation, with ongoing monitoring and excellent communication throughout, so that all participants are aware of progress within the development journey.

No aspect of the system be “ring-fenced” and become untouchable and that includes the top down impact of Ofsted and DfE.

Having entered Teacher Training College over 45years ago, taught and been a head teacher within a 32-year career in schools, it is almost flippant to say that I have heard it all before. However, that is true, but it is also true that the impact of successive change has been tinkering, superficially revolutionary, as one system replaced another, often with piecemeal impact.

Evolutionary development was a part of system change until 1997, at which point National Strategies were introduced, with some good elements, but with significant downward pressure that had greater control over practice than previously.

Significant developments were hidden behind the political mantra of the literacy hour and the rise of the subject consultants with their ready-made solutions; the rise of the end to end bright idea, exacerbated by the introduction of Assessing Pupil Progress. This led to endless mini-lessons being taught, with specific points in mind, losing overall dynamics in the process.

It sometimes felt like the plumber’s visit, with the inevitable “Who put this in? I’ll do a better job than those cowboys.”

Each school is in a unique situation, based on location, staffing and resources. The former, ranging from leafy suburbs to inner-city can be a determinant of motivation and aspiration, both important to success. The resources, from building to moveable items, can encourage or discourage potential teachers and motivate students. The best teachers inspire students, encourage them to aspire and show them ways to achieve, with support, space and time to think given by management.

A school’s ability to attract teachers is likely to be, in some, way, determined by locality, perhaps house prices or rents, quality of the building and resources and the general feeling when visiting the school. Proximity to a university ITE department might be a factor in attracting trainees into their first jobs.

The system within which teachers work is often the limiting factor, if they are required to think and work to defined approaches. Teaching should be efficient and effective, but real learning can be messy. Internal supports, such as mentoring and seeing the whole institution as a training organisation might be key.

Consider; if, in every school, every teacher could be internally trained to the capacity of the highest quality teacher in any subject, through 30 meetings a year of quality internal CPD, supported by external expertise and challenge as identified, could the whole system benefit?

Internal controls can sometimes run counter to efficiency, especially with regard to the planning cycles. Schools should determine and communicate a coherent, holistic curricular approach, together with resources to make this a reality. These overviews will inform decisions by a classteacher over the year where they will have the class. By creating an annual plan, they are essentially demonstrating curricular coverage; one source of concern. If these are broadened over a term or half term with greater detail, the medium-term plans are likely to be the only document tat any SLT needs to know that their teachers are well planned.

If annual plans are written in July (part of a closure day) before the year, holidays can be enjoyed more. If the first two weeks of any year are given to the teacher as personal topics, to settle, get to know the children and instil some habits that will be a part of the whole year, part of a September closure after two weeks can be devoted to plans for the rest of the term, based on more detailed understanding of the children.

If, however, teachers are regularly required to hand in detailed plans for every lesson ahead of teaching them, their focus may be on the plan, rather than the needs of their learners. Planning for lessons, by each teacher, has always been a fundamental part of the role, but, on a lesson by lesson basis, what a teacher needs to write down, as an aide memoire to remember for that lesson will vary considerably. This links with experience; an early career teacher, making sense of the whole, might need to record more, which reduces as their career and confidence develops.

Ofsted and the DfE are significant parts of the system and both can appear, at times, to see themselves as founts of all knowledge, although other countries often appear to be seen as having better systems, forgetting that those countries may have been and visited ours in the past and learned what (not to) do.

There are aspects of Ofsted which I would seek to keep and tweak. There are potentially limitations to the system, which can have a detrimental impact on school development.

It is always encouraging to be told that your school is good, even better maybe to be outstanding. At the other end of the scale, a school potentially struggling with a very wide range of issues, causing distractions, will not be helped by simply being told that what they are doing is not good enough, by a team which then leaves the recovery to others. It is a very expensive audit tool and as such should add value to school development, if the country is to make full use of visiting expertise, which we are told is outstanding.

From the point of an Ofsted visit where need is identified, interventions by Local Authorities or others, such as Academy chains can sometimes then exacerbate the situation, as multiple (often simplistic) agendas are pursued, within very tight timescales. There have been examples of heads being dismissed, or resigning, as a starting point. People losing their jobs might be “Pour encourager les autres”, but it has a system-wide impact and questions over who would want to be a head; at its best, it is the best job in education.

Listening to Sean Harford on Saturday, it is clear that Ofsted has data available that indicates whether there are question marks over a school performance. Where this is the case, it is right and proper that a visit should be made and a report made available that describes, from an external viewpoint, what issues might be affecting the school; the qualitative to balance the quantitative.

As an enhancement, I would institute a validation system, like an MOT test, based on agreed teaching standards and CPD opportunities created from PM journeys.

Every head teacher and other observers would be formally trained in lesson observation.  
​
This judgement would be sampled and validated through joint observations during inspection visits. Perhaps it would be better to have a coherent form of quality control, supporting their continuing professional development needs, rather than capability processes that can sometimes be haphazard as they are irregular needs.  The evidence would enable teachers to make valid claims for promotion and ensure national consistency.

I’d want every school to be visited every two years, by an experienced assessor, to explore the effectiveness of the school, looking at the local context, local issues and the internal organisation, working to validate school self-evaluation, with one of two outcomes, acceptance of judgements (possibly with advice notes) or a decision that an action plan would be needed and a second inspection visit necessary, within a specific timescale. The knowledge that the process itself was part of school development journeys would take the cliff-edge nature of Ofsted away and make better use of national expertise in local contexts.

Why two years? Schools can experience very rapid change, especially through staffing and this can have an immediate impact, especially if change is at a senior level. I would expect every school inspected to have a detailed description of development since the last inspection and an action plan for the subsequent two-year period, which would form part of the validation exercise. What has been the two-year development, how is it to be sustained and developed?

Would this system be cheaper? Possibly. To some extent, it would depend on the decision on the first proposal (external or internal) and the contact time needed for the second.

However, it would allow latitude for evolutionary development, especially if the system was allowed to run for a number of years.
​

.Do teachers really have “thinking time”?

When we consider a choice between two options or rewards, we tend to prefer the readily available one. In other words: the current and near future are incredibly powerful.

Busyness is the stuff of school life leading to rapid decisions, but good decisions may need a period of reflection.
With so many interactions taking place within every minute of every lesson, it is hardly surprising if those involved will, occasionally make what to others will seem an error of judgement that is instinctive. These instinctive responses are likely to demonstrate personal bias. We may not be aware of bias until an unguarded utterance demonstrates to another something of our internal monologue and they have the confidence to address this back to us.

Under normal classroom circumstances, in any classroom, it is less likely that the others, the children, will have the temerity to point out inconsistency in a teacher demeanour.
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It is, however, possible outside the busyness of the classroom, to seek to create periods of calm that allow for some reflection. From the very beginning of my teaching career, we were encouraged to be reflective, especially after a day’s work, thinking about what had gone well and what needed further thought. Some of this thinking was aided by opportunities to discuss areas with colleagues, often over a cup of tea. It might have been a matter of pedagogy or simply curriculum knowledge, the what, why and how-to of teaching. This can appear to be a luxury, but such reflective time does allow consideration of more strategic aspects which can sometimes be put to one side in a busy classroom, reducing interactions to “call and response”.

Reflection, articulation, consideration, refinement, action, evaluation leading to a further round of reflection, eventually leads to refinement, in any learning situation, at any age.

It is always interesting to interact with a school as a headteacher, external assessor and now as a Governor, talking with staff who spend their days being busy, seeking to explore the strategic aspects. It can be quite enlightening to engage in what becomes a somewhat scaffolded conversation, allowing the staff members to think before responding, moving the everyday into dynamic structures and eventually towards impact evaluation. It can also be very frustrating if the staff member cannot move beyond the descriptive into reflective evaluation.

The majority of school staff will say that their thinking time is often well outside school and often during the holidays, when the distractions are less, especially if they go home from school into the busyness of family life. We always have to be aware that periods of life can feel as if they are little more than reactive. Again, a majority are likely to find that work and home life combine to eat up their time. It is often when an external or unexpected event happens, such as personal or family illness, that a real awareness of time limitations is highlighted.

Schools that are able to create or offer quality time to reflect, to organise themselves strategically, putting in place systems that are easily articulated, well communicated and easily understandable to everyone, are likely to be calmer environments that allow for reflective reactions.

Time-poor schools, always in a phase of reactive behaviour, are likely to encounter a greater proportion of needs for immediate response, some of which will be less than secure and may well create a secondary level of problem. An example might be a behaviour issue, dealt with too rapidly, that then causes the parent(s) to become involved. The secondary layer can, in some cases, become a new level of distraction.

Making time to think can come at a cost, but it eventually has a cost-benefit.

Having a clear strategic agenda for developmental discussions, providing ongoing target dates can be a focus, making better use of time. Awareness of a direction of travel can mean all moving towards a known goal. The alternative is everyone making things up as they go along, reacting in their own way, rather than operating within known boundaries.

As in any organisation, it is a case of pulling together, or possibly pulling apart.
​

As long as you have Dienes base 10 materials and dice, this can be developed to cater for a variety of needs.
The rules of each game are simply described.
·         Decide whether it’s a race to or from the flat (100 square). Decide whether, when the dice are thrown, the numbers are added together (any number of dice) or multiplied (two or three dice?).
·         Dienes materials available to each group, plus dice appropriate to the needs of the group.
·         Each child takes turns to throw the dice and calculate the sum or product.
·         This amount is then taken from the general pile and placed in front of the child. The calculation can be recorded eg 3+4=7. This can provide a second layer of checking.
·         If playing race from the flat, the child starts with ten ten rods, then takes an appropriate amount from these.
·         Subsequent rounds see pieces added to the child’s collection; recorded as needed, eg round 2, 5+2=7 (7+7=14; the teacher should see one ten and four ones)
·         The first child to or from the flat is the winner.
Altering the number of dice alters the challenge.

An extension could be a race to the block (1000 cube), or from the block, each child starts with ten 100 squares. If multi-sided dice are available, the challenge alters yet again.

​Unpicking the analyse-plan-do-review-record cycle.

Seeking adaptability in lessons as a result of more dynamic planning approaches.

Planning for learning will always be an issue for teachers, in that there are multiple layers of responsibility to be contained within the plan. However, planning is the bedrock of the order and organisation that enables a teacher to run a successful class and a head to run a successful school. The ultimate in planning allows a teacher to move towards personalised approaches, allowing individual children to have their needs accommodated. There are significant links with project management, and it is no surprise that earlier incarnations of thematic work were called projects. The sadness was that these projects sometimes came to an abrupt end due to time pressures, lack of resources or some other shortfall.

Teachers and schools have a number of variables to consider in planning, learning contexts, use of space, resources of all types, time, as well as the individual learning and emotional needs of the children. A good knowledge of the curriculum is essential, as well as a clear understanding of the potential of ICT to support learning. If any of these variables are not considered, learning can be unsuccessful, i.e. poorly structured topic, lack of appropriate space, table or floor, limited resources or poor accessibility, inadequate time available for development and completion. If the children’s needs are not respected, many may not make progress.

There are current debates about whether the curriculum should be built from the needs of the children or whether it is better to define the contexts within which children will learn. The Rose and Cambridge reviews suggested learning within domains, rather than subjects. It seems to be the case that current Government thinking errs towards retention of subjects and knowledge. Either way, the learning context for the children and whether they cover a sufficiently broad curriculum will ultimately be determined by their teacher.

Most schools plan at different timescales, whole school, annual plans, medium term (1-6 weeks) and then teacher short term plans. A great deal of planning will have gone into the stage of the teacher planning a lesson. Teachers worry most about short-term planning and some schools demand significant detail at that point, which creates a very heavy bureaucratic workload to create something that is ultimately a teacher aide memoire.

There is a strong argument for allowing the short term plans to be determined by the teacher, if the medium term plans are strong guides, but with the fall-back position that plans would be required if the teaching required improvement. For many teachers, a reflective log book would be sufficient; in fact I have met teachers whose schools require specific short term plans, which the teacher then reinterprets to be easily accessible. Are short term plans any use if they do not help short term cover teachers to be able to pick up exactly what is needed?

If planning overviews include plans for heavy marking demand periods, then workload issues could be examined more clearly. This could include  alsoreport writing when other workload issues, such as meetings, can be adapted.

Planning is never easy, but in this case it is the means by which children with different needs are supported to make progress in learning. Try unpicking and describing your own classroom practice. That’s not always easy either!

Just for information, here’s an overview of standards development for a trainee, who will need mentoring into ways of thinking, strategically as well as in detail. ​

​Teaching is such a simple word, yet it means so many different things and as a result can end up being devalued.  But what if the simplicity was the quality of thinking done by children during a lesson, in assimilating new information, ordering and reordering ideas within a well-prepared challenging task, using and applying the known to a new situation?

We may never be able to judge absolutely the quality of learning of every child during a lesson, but we could judge the quality of tasking, the range and depth of challenge, the quality of questioning, discussion, feedback, involvement, independence, review and evaluation, before a check of the outcomes, so it would seem possible to make an inference that learning might or might not take place as a result of the lesson, based on the quality and depth of interactions.

A teacher is likely to be able to talk, expressively and eloquently about their subject, for an extended period and many can do so and make the subject very interesting, yet, if the learners are not tuned in to the substance and the direction of thought and therefore do not learn, is it the fault of the teacher or the learners? Are children consumers or producers of learning; passive or active?

At the other extreme, pure discovery methodology can also lead to reduced overall learning, as the children may not have a range of skills with which to enhance their discovery. There are significant benefits of experiential learning however, especially in a highly communicative environment with actively engaged adults.

Much teacher time and energy is expended in trying to distil the “best methodology”, as if teaching is a team sport and you have to be in one team or another. To my mind, the best methodology is that which the teacher judges will enable an individual child to learn something which they didn’t before, to internalise it and use it when needed to perform another task. Having a very broad range of approaches available allows a choice. A reflective practitioner will know when a lesson is not going well, should identify the reasons and alter course accordingly.

To use an overused cliché, it is not rocket science.

A school policy for teaching and learning is likely to show evidence of: -

1) analysis of evidence leading to quality information being made available to support
2) detailed planning, including the provision of appropriate resources and staffing.
3) Students in the best practice, actively sharing in their learning journey, which is
4) tracked and reviewed at regular intervals with
5) records being collated and disseminated, allowing the process to be cyclic and developmental.
It all starts with knowing the children, so that challenge and response can be refined, supporting their learning journeys.


How does any teacher see inside a child’s head?

Unless there’s some kind of externalisation, oral, written or facial expression, it can be next to impossible to understand.

A friend worked in a special school for severely disabled children 4-19, until his recent retirement; an incredibly challenging role. In discussion we were exploring ideas within teaching and learning. It soon became apparent that, in order to support his learners to make progress, he had to effectively “get inside the heads” of each individual, to try to understand as well as possible what made each of them “tick”, especially those with severe communication difficulties. Inevitably there was a small element of trial and error, but with 1:1 ratios, any “misconceptions” could be addressed immediately. The evidence upon which he worked was often miniscule, but, over time, he refined his responses to each child’s needs.

Where student teachers were working in a school for moderate learning difficulties, each child unique in their presentation of need and their home environment, they had to get to know the children really well to be able to create appropriate plans for learning.

The notion of what makes children tick is an important one. Misunderstand this and even the most well-meaning adult can cause a situation to escalate.

Anyone watching either Educating Essex, or follow-up series, cannot fail to see adults seeking to understand the individual children. Even then, nothing can prevent a flare-up.

After a period of working with a variety of schools, I reflected on their personalised, rich curriculum. Their reasoning was based on their analysis of their children’s needs. This led me to speculate about the point at which personalisation is embedded in practice.

The last two statements embed a clear expectation, of learning, use of time and potential outcomes. If based on capability, “I want to see if you can…..” the expectations embedded also drive the in-lesson conversations, questions and on-going feedback. Coupled with exploratory discussions in-lesson and the use of exemplars, they are the checks and balances to evaluation, by children and the teacher after the lesson.

Successful teaching and learning is not just the product of a sequence of activities to be done at specific times. That way lies stereotype teaching and limited learning. The strategic thinking of the teacher in defining the learning journey of children embeds the points at which the children will take over and become producers of learning, deepening the experience of both learner and teacher as skills are demonstrated which can be further refined at  a later date.

Thinking is an essential component of learning; without it a learner would not exist, except in the most passive form, the stereotypical “empty vessel”.

How can we ever know what is going on in a learner’s head, unless there are opportunities for them to express their ideas cogently, with the view that all expression is a “draft thought”, capable of challenge and alteration? This can occur in writing, but writing is likely to have already gone through a thought process before being produced. However, seen as a draft, writing can be supportive of developmental conversation, orally or through effective feedback responses.

Therefore talk would appear to be a major component of learning experience. To make real progress in learning, learners need to make sense of both what they know and how they know it. They need to have a partner relationship to ensure they become independent producers, not just passive consumers of learning.

We talk of learning journeys for children. It is possible to use the idea of a journey to support a child’s articulation of what they are thinking and reflecting on how their ideas have changed. Essentially the learner becomes the storyteller of an episode of learning, using recount in as detailed a form as possible to put across an idea. Personalised storyboarding, or developmental notes, can support the expressive process. Their audience, members of the class, including the teacher, can ask for clarification and provide feedback. Learning thereby becomes a collegiate project.

Thinking is supported by language and language is further developed by articulating thinking. Talking things through is the means by which children’s understanding of their own learning is deepened. Talk to Jerome Bruner, or Vygotsky…
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The fundamentals of education; thinking and talking, before recording?
 

​Considering Post Graduate and School Direct short placements, planning for a successful experience.

Being such a short experience, the six/seven weeks will fly past very quickly, so, to maximise the potential for a successful practice I offer the following organisational insights from supervising previous experiences.

The first thing is to secure the personal professional standards as per this diagram.

This means being professional from the first contact with the new school to give the school confidence that the trainee is an appropriate person to be trusted with their children. There is an immediate need to find out about key policies, including safeguarding and behaviour management.

 From the beginning, getting to know the children from talking to them, generally and about the work in their books helps to establish appropriate expectations. This will be added to with discussion of tracking documents and knowing where the teacher would like the children to be by the end of the period. Find out the themes and topics being covered and those specific areas where you will take a lead role. A good mentor ensures that the trainee has received as much detailed information as possible that will help them in their early decision making.

Two key messages to any trainee; know the children as well as possible and know your stuff…
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The trainee, guided by their mentor, needs to create a personal development plan for the weeks of the experience. They need to put into the plan any specific areas that they need to observe, or experience, within this key stage, whether structural like planning or behaviour management, discussions with specific staff, to address any gaps in, or to broaden your understanding of different areas. Plan in any assignments that have to be completed within this timescale, particularly if they depend on interactions with children or staff. Professional time should be used effectively and trainees need to remember that colleagues fit conversations around their other jobs.
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The practical teacher standards will need to be developed within the experience. 

2; Progress and Outcomes or knowing the children, in class terms. The range of abilities, how they are organised for learning and tasking. Finding out about the school approach to assessment and feedback.

4; Planning. This will have school specific elements. Hopefully, trainees will be able to get the plans for the half term, from which weekly plans will be developed, by the trainee, so that daily and single lesson plans can fit into a weekly dynamic, allowing reflection, during the week, of the need to adapt and also to evaluate the progress made during the week.

​In the second experience, standards 8 professionalism, 7 behaviour management, 1 expectations, 4 planning (order and organisation) and 3 subject knowledge, are generally secure, across all the trainees, as they are personal attributes that are enhanced with experience and application of personal capabilities.

There is some variation in standard 7, within classes where specific behaviour issues required individualised responses, which the class teachers acknowledged were significant.

Although teaching standards 2, 5 and 6 can therefore be argued as less secure, it is perhaps important to reflect why this is the case, as they appear across all types of trainee going in a second experience. It was interesting to discuss this issue with mentors during a training session and to ask them to consider where they would feel less secure if they were parachuted into a different school and key stage.

With standard 2 being progress and outcomes, the trainees are at a disadvantage in going into their second school, as they just don’t know the children in that class. Neither will they have a detailed understanding of children of that age group, so may not have mental “baselines” from which to extract appropriate learning expectations.

Standards 6&5; Learning to develop tasks for a new age range is challenging in itself, to match and challenge appropriately over time. In the absence of good subject knowledge that embeds an understanding of how the subject develops, lessons can become activities that may or may not lead to secure learning and, in addition, appropriate interventions may be missed. The ability to think on their feet and adjust a task demand to evident needs of the learners might be compromised. Assessment can be further undermined, as each school is seeking to develop their own internal systems in the absence of national descriptors. The meeting with mentors showed that there were seven systems within nine mentors, including four variations of the local County system.

The early meeting with the teacher mentors leading the second experience enabled discussion of issues that arose in earlier cohorts, seeking to pre-empt some of the issues that might simply be a constituent part of the second experience.

As a result, these areas were a focus for mentor-trainee discussion.

Trainees are charged with monitoring progress and interventions over their experience. They have to unpick the detail of learning from interactions and outcomes to understand ideas behind progress. Some of this is captured in personal case studies.

Trainee reflection time. With the inevitable pressures of routes such as School Direct, built in (collaborative peer) reflection/ weekly review time would seem a necessary element to consider, when reviewing the holistic experience. Time to sit, to think and to have professional development discussions needs to be built into all school experiences. The mentor role is key to this.

In Primary terms, the breadth of teaching standard 2, as progress and outcomes, covering year 1 to year 6, is one that would repay some developmental thought, to create exemplar material that demonstrates the development from EYFS (year 1) to year 6, within the current curriculum, especially in English and Maths. This reference material would support developing judgement. If it was extended with examples from other curriculum areas, this could raise appropriate expectations.

To exemplify TS2 further, regular moderation activities between the trainee and the class teacher could result in a personal reflective portfolio unpicking progress in different subjects, but also introduce the trainees to the need for regular evaluation to inform teaching practice.

In the main, trainees will be on track to achieve at a good or better level at the end of their training year. If they’re not, they will be subject to detailed concerns having been raised.
All trainees would benefit from focused reflection time looking at the 24652 dynamic, working to fine tune their approaches, developing personalisation to evident needs, including SEND. This is a clear action on the mentors during weekly review meetings.

When considering needs in returning to their substantive experience: -
Get to know the progress made by the children in their absence, then…
·         to develop (with support) their own medium term plans,
·         to unpick the detail of  learning from outline intention through their own actions,
·         understanding subject development over time,
·         creating challenging tasks appropriate to the children’s needs,
·         interacting with learning giving appropriate supportive feedback and guidance,
·         making rational decisions based on outcome,
·         interacting with anomalies
·         and evaluating outcomes.

​In other words, refining, or recalibrating themselves as whole class teachers, taking ever greater responsibility for progress, preparing to consider the needs of different classes in September.

“How do your know?”

I’ve been rustling (digitally) through some photographs from the summer holidays, in many ways searching for some inspiration for some painting, but, to me, by far the most common focus is that every photograph brings back a flood of memories; not just the immediacy of the photograph, but the surrounding, or linked experiences and sensations.

I am very conscious that my 1950/60s childhood is much less well documented, in large part because photography was relatively more expensive and much less secure; there was always a chance that the photo wouldn’t come out and required the trek to the chemist to develop the film, with a wait time of at lest a few days. Those black and white photos that exist, however, do draw back memories, distorted through the remainder of my life.

Dual coding seems to be a current buzz word. I have a feeling that it is one of those things that has always been a part of human existence, but, having been identified, has become a thing in itself.

Life is a series of experiences, both formal learning and informal experience.
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·         Being part of an experience and engaging in dialogue about the experience is likely to fit with the dual coding remit.
·         To develop some kind of record of the experience, to photograph it, to draw or paint or simply to write down some significant words as aides memoire. An ancient shepherd who kept a knot in a string, or a notch in a piece of wood for every sheep could use one-to-one correspondence to check the flock, even if they couldn’t count.
·         Reference back to these contemporaneous documents, as prompts, coupled with dialogic exploration enables an engaged adult lead to offer further areas for reflection, research or evaluation; creating appropriate links to the original experience.
·         Speaking about the learned experience, using relevant aides memoire, opens the speaker to and audience, which, if allowed to comment or critique, allows the speaker to consider areas that might not have been part of the earlier experience.
·         The read and spoken experiences can be interpreted into appropriate materials that exemplify the experience. an example might be the mathematical material created by Zoltan Dienes, exploring place value and mathematical functions in considerable depth.
·         The combination of the manipulation, the dialogue, the drawing, diagramming, and the interpretation into a number system, all contribute to a multiplicity of links within understanding.
·         In many ways, the notion of “show your working” is very important as it extends the “dialogue” between the learner and the teacher, allowing insights into procedural thinking. This can extend to “talk your thinking”; a child articulating their rationale when undertaking a task.

It is the child version of “know how with show how”, which, to me, is the essence of my understanding of dual coding when working with learners; getting them to externalise what they are thinking, which is the underpinning of assessment/teacher judgements.

​Nature, nurture, opportunities and money

In 2033, I’ll be 81, the latest member of our extended family may well see in the next century, if he gets to 83.

Yesterday, 13.12.17, we had Amada Spielman’s HMCI report, where, realistically, she identified groups which may be being less than well served by their educational opportunities. Notable groups were those children with additional educational needs, at either end of need, but particularly those whose needs don’t allow them to easily access offered curriculum.

Today 14.12.17, we have the Secretary of State, Justine Greening, talking of social mobility, in terms of opportunity.

In a previous blog, I reflected on social mobility as a feature of reduced discretionary spending. In all walks of life, opportunities cost in some form, either travel, entry or fees associated with activities. This may be compounded by uniform, kit, or other additional costs associated with the club or group that offers the opportunity. Unless the leaders are volunteers, there is a staffing cost involved. In that blog, I considered the families of two of my children, one living in Lambeth, South London, the other in Cosham, near Portsmouth. One has world class opportunity available free to her children within free short bus or tube rides, the other has travel costs, and a two hour each way trip to access the same opportunity. Local museums offer some cultural experiences, but not on the same scale as London. I also reflected on experiences in visiting a school on the tip of Cornwall, less than five miles from the sea, but whose children had not visited the coastline, largely due to travel restrictions. I had the same conversation last week on the Isle of Wight.

When I decided to become a teacher, some of my family saw this as a means of raising myself above what they had achieved, and, having been “in harness” for a very long career, I did achieve a level of comfort that proved that. However, becoming a teacher was a question of “happenstance”; playing with a mature cricket colleague who had just completed his teacher training at St Luke’s College. He encouraged me to go and have a chat to find out how to do the same. It was the end of June, I walked into the virtually empty college and met a secretary, who phoned through to the science department, where the head of science happened to be. While Tony Staden sat with his sandalled feet on his desk, we chatted about many different things. An hour later, I was back in the office filling in entry forms, to start in the September. The rest, as they say, is another story; if you’re interested, I’ve written it here.

Having someone capable of spotting a talent or interest, with the ability to nurture or signpost and, above all, support, can be the difference between “having a go” and “making a go of things”. This could be a parent, coach or a class teacher; each has a part to play in a child’s holistic development.

Talent may not be sufficient. It may need to be mentored, guided and encouraged. It may need elements of coaching, to focus and refine raw talent to be able to see the necessary progress that encourages self-belief and the willingness to persevere. To support the development of a child to their highest possible level of achievement can involve family sacrifice, of money or time, which can then impact on wider family life.

While some children will have opportunities outside school that enable them to progress in a chosen field, with coaches capable of spotting and coaching appropriately, a potentially larger number will be reliant on opportunities that are offered through their school. Beyond the need to retain a broad curriculum to enhance what has been described as “cultural capital”, the broader curriculum also offers opportunities for experiences that may only be available in that area. If this breadth is not available, then talents may not be spotted by default. If a child cannot experience art, drama or music, for example, how can their natural abilities be seen?

Social mobility is a worthy concept, but it has the potential to become just another mantra; anyone recall “Every Child Matters”, jettisoned by a certain Michael Gove? Social mobility and every child mattering, in my mind, go hand in hand. Social mobility and EBAC may not allow those with aptitudes outside the narrower remit to show their potential. Social mobility might just be supported by personalised opportunities.

So, in social mobility terms, who you know, or who you happen to bump into, might just be the determinant of a brighter or less bright future.

Back to “happenstance”; being in the right place at the right time, with the right people.

Every parent wants the best for their children and, in my case, my grandchildren. The world has changed significantly since I started work, in 1974.

My first house, bought on starting teaching, was a three bed mid-terrace on the Gosport Road, based on four times a teacher income and a small deposit, a wedding present. That same house, today, would probably require ten times a starter income and a significant deposit. This is not the stuff of happenstance. There’s an inevitable impact on an ability to dream, to plan and to see longer term. Life decisions can, effectively, be based on dreams or reflective plans. Some are able to plan their life journeys with some certainty, others may well be more tentative.

The chances are that this may be determined by the “safety nets” that exist, financial or emotional, where “having a go with the possibility of not achieving” doesn’t mean losing everything.

Some talk of entrepreneurialism.

In many ways, for many young people, life has become stuck in this model. To those that have, the opportunity to gamble or take a chance on succeeding in a field is easier than for those who have not. However, there may well be examples of entrepreneurs who started with nothing, and had a go, simply because they had nothing to lose.

Most will get onto the job treadmill, effectively operating as a great uncle did, as journeymen and women, paid by the day; or, in today’s climate “debt slaves”.

The idea of nothing ventured, nothing gained can be inspiring to some, self-defeating to others.

I am beginning to find the political mantras of social mobility to be nothing more than platitudes.

If politicians wanted to really offer hope to future generations, they could revive Sure Start opportunities, encourage community sport and cultural opportunities outside schools, address the issues of specific schools with identifiable support needs.

Of course, this requires money, from different pots. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for some proper strategic thinking that spans rather more than the new year or two to get re-elected. A child starting pre-school now, will leave school in 16 years’ time, 2033, with a working lifetime beyond. Let’s give them all the best possible start and a realistic chance to dream of positive futures.

Developing a Primary curriculum

Start with a plan…

Tim Oates, director of assessment R&D at Cambridge Assessment, was interviewed this week in Schools Week. 

He talked of a “solid” Primary curriculum being needed for future GCSE success, that the National Curriculum, published in 2014, was “a list of desirable outcomes of schooling”, to be turned into a “compelling and engaging school curriculum”.

The piece went on to say that “Developing a school curriculum can and should be supported by a variety of processes – spontaneous innovation by teachers, digging out forgotten things that worked brilliantly in the past, sharing practice within and between schools, polishing existing learning activities through lesson study and observation, using paper and digital resources of the highest quality, and working in a context supported by inspection and targets.”

The example that he offered, of a “pen pal” letter scheme between Kidderminster Primary children and elderly residents of local care homes, was, apparently, not offered as something special.

What Tim’s piece did do, for me, was to make me reflect on those things that have been essentially thrown away on the bonfires of successive curricular changes, but more particularly, with the 2014 incarnation and the way in which it was introduced, at the same time as putting schools into a panic over assessment systems and also introducing major SEND changes and examination change.

Curriculum development needs time, quality time, lots of quality thinking time, to get above the minutiae of the written words, to begin to imagine directions of travel. Having been a classroom teacher when the 1987 NC became a reality, subsequent changes through to 2005 were relatively small adjustments to what had gone before. A little minor tinkering with a few topics, either tweaking them up or down a year group, was all that was required. Teachers could use much of what went before and spend some quality time thinking about the alterations needed.

Some schools will have been in a position to address each area of change early, some I visited in the run up to September 2014 had made great strides in development. Others, given their start points, their generic outcomes and locality issues affecting turbulence in staffing and pupil movements, may still be working on plans to fully embed these changes, seen as improvements.

In talking with parents and children from my time as headteacher, it is always made clear that the children enjoyed their learning, through a broad curricular approach, made good progress across the board, succeeded in the (level-based) SATs in each subject and went to Secondary School still hungry to learn, where they continued their progress into successful futures.
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Overall strategies supported shorter term thinking, in that while staff, in the July before the academic year, had time given to create an annual plan of learning intentions, this then translated into between ten and fifteen “topics”, which became the vehicles for cross curricular fertilisation, allowing many opportunities for real-life letter writing, instructions, lists, fiction or non-fiction narrative reports, based on their developing “cultural literacy”; they learned their vocabulary in context.

​Topics lasted as long as they were purposeful, so might be between one and six weeks. Sometimes they spanned half terms or longer breaks. It meant that a lot was fitted in, opportunities for revisiting earlier skills in a new knowledge context existed, so that rehearsal was also embedded.

​As a Governor of a Primary School in a deprived area that has struggled for a settled staff and has now achieved that, a secure development phase can begin in earnest, with potential for clarity in curriculum articulation being maintained over a longer term, across a broader curricular offer. It takes some time. 

1997 and all that

As a teenager, my best friend was the son of a zoo superintendent, so we had the run of the zoo out of hours. This often meant that we could visit the monkey house, where the grooming behaviours were often on display. This nit-picking served a very useful purpose in monkey hygiene. The care and attention being shown by the adults towards each other and the young also supported the colony cohesion.

The first years of my teaching career saw regular visits from the lady who was nicknamed the nit-nurse. At the first sign of a possible infestation, lines of children could be seen snaking through the school waiting for their inspection. It didn’t seem to have any great impact on regular hygiene, nor did it embed any group awareness, as anyone found with nits or lice might find themselves distanced by others.

A year ago, I was invited to speak at the #LearningFirst conference in Bath.
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In reflecting on that event, I have been considering what might be seen as dynamics in education over the time of my teaching career, to begin to understand why we are where we are today.

Being trained in the period just after the Plowden report, and at a time where there was a great need for new teachers, to replace the generation who were pre- or post-war trained and reaching retirement in large numbers, the freedoms to think about learning and teaching were immense. There was still a strong tradition of Direct Instruction, but mixed with less formal approaches, in part because class sizes were large (mine were 38/9 during 1974-79), but also because resources were few and often home-made. If you are making worksheets by hand, these take considerable time. The Banda machine was rationed, so 30+ copies were rare. There was a reliance on teacher voice, or perhaps something on the tape-recorder, a radio broadcast, or again, home-made activities.

In informal sessions, we were working with smaller groups, challenged a la Vygotsky, to embed some new challenge, to be approached collaboratively, with decision making and resourcefulness, so reducing, a little, the demand on immediate teacher response. As the teacher was the only adult in the class, this was an important consideration. Yes, there may be a variety of different activities going on at the same time. It did require some movement between groups to keep everything moving, but it also allowed time for individualised support and hearing readers. There was often significant personalisation of challenge, to accommodate the class range of needs, with those children with specific needs having tasks tailored to their needs. Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD) was the general term for SEN children. Describing their needs and seeking an appropriate approach was the working methodology. We did not seek to diagnose; that was for other professionals.

This approach persisted, with minor variation, within every school I worked in up to 1997, even through earlier manifestations of the National Curriculum, where there was often a 95% correspondence with prior practice, so, with a minor tweak, it was business as usual. The original NC, introduced in 1987, was at a point in time where the National Writing Project was also being secured, so that, from the earliest days, the English opportunities were created through the lens of the NWP, a process based approach that encouraged children to think like writers. This eventually developed into the two page approach to writing, then the personal organiser, with all writing in one book to bring together many different elements, resulting in nearly 90% of our year six regularly operating at L4+ in reading and writing. Level descriptors were used as the means through which to encourage progress and challenging targets, rather than any focus on the associated numbers.

SATs, introduced from 1991, were not seen as overwhelming, so they did not alter in-school approaches, as outcomes were discussion documents for improvement, rather than sticks with which to beat schools.
Schools were able to retain a broad, balanced and relevant curriculum, challenging to all pupils, with the wider curriculum able to offer opportunities for extending activities in English and Maths, or using maths and English to support the wider curriculum. It offered many broadening experiences all of which, when embedded in developmental structures, created fertile ground for children to make progress.

The prelude to the 1997 election offered teachers a voice, should Labour be elected. This may well have been an important element in them being elected. Teachers wanted to be listened to. Within a very short time, it was clear that this was not to be, as the National Strategies began to be rolled out, English first, with daily exhortations to embed the Literacy and numeracy hours into school practice. This began, to some extent, media challenge to teacher practice, with local advisers adding to the national agenda with their own interpretations, thus creating further layers of complexity.

This point coincided with a more nit-picking approach, although the attempted imposition was more of political steamrollering.

Levels were divided into sub levels, which seemed to morph into Assessing Pupil Progress (APP) sheets, with ticklists or checklists of very detailed expectations of what should be seen in a particular sub level. Thus an intellectual step by step approach was articulated, which, if followed, meant teachers seeking to devise tasks that taught or tested a very narrow expectation. Widespread adoption, across all abilities, created an educational straitjacket for many children. Some ten years after the introduction of the original National Curriculum, sub-levels became the currency of progress and more created for data than as statements of progress.

Some advisers, consultants and inspectors added to the general fray by “sharing good practice”, which often meant short hand approaches which another school had devised, which had got them higher achievement levels. They often forgot to share the process development behind the shortcuts, which allowed them to exist within a bigger picture.
The adoption of a “best fit” approach meant that children could be moved “up” a level, while having some gaps in their understanding. In my own school, these gaps were noted as continuing personal needs, in order not to lose some significant elements. As a result, children were enabled to be partners in their progress, as they understood what was being sought on a personal level.

The National Curriculum has been reordered a number of times, the latest being in September 2014.

It was interesting recently, in my capacity as a Link Tutor for a local university, to have the County senior inspector share the County view of assessment. It was evident that some thought had been put to some top level decisions that, superficially reduce the decision workload, to a number of statements, such as emerging, secure and mastery, at three points in the year, with percentages achieving different points being a key indicator. However, this then opened up into what could only be described as APP+, with an array of statements derived from the NC, that had to be covered and achieved by every child, to be counted in their “secure + or-“ statements.

That we are at this situation was exemplified during the summer term, with reports of moderator visits, where there was significant evident that security could be compromised if evidence of a very small element was missing, or not clearly evidenced.

Is the system refining to a point where everyone loses sight of the big picture? Teachers need to be able to show children how the bits fit together, to make sense of the jigsaw. If they are not able to do that, then children, as learners, don’t have the abstract maturity at a young age to do that for themselves. The curriculum is not end to end activities. A high quality curriculum has a very clear developmental narrative that is clear to all participants. What was evident at the Learning First event was the number of schools seeking to create holistic models for the curriculum, within which assessment can become a narrative of individual achievement.

In many ways, judgements about children often centre on their articulacy, facility with concepts and an appropriate vocabulary or their ability to record their thoughts with some fluency and skill.

Holding onto the big picture of children as writers is a key element to getting through this effectively, if teachers are not to disappear in a puff of assessment fog. Setting writing tasks in the broader perspective of need can ensure progress.

I’d suggest the following, which could apply from KS1 into 3, allowing open structures that support personal challenge and development.

Writing workbooks need to be capable of supporting the whole process of writing; see 2 page approach. This can embed any of the current approaches to writing planning, (eg Talk for Writing or Big Writing) or enable other scaffolds.
Making books into personal organisers, with specific needs identified for each child, through forward thinking and targets or recording ongoing needs from marking. They are prompts for interaction between child and adult, supporting “interleaving” or “intervention” at a personal level. This approach can apply to topic areas or maths as well, to avoid individual loss of challenge.

In Primary, consider all writing in one book, especially to first draft, to enable clarity of focus on the writing process across a range of writing needs and from a range of prompts. This can create higher quality of writing, but also limit the quantity to allow this to happen. Progressive baselines of expectation can be more easily created. Spread into different books, children can write less well in other subjects.

In KS3, English teachers could support writing skills in other subjects with foci such as report writing, note taking, instructions, which could then be honed in the subject lesson. This could become a form of “interleaving”; practice basic skill, then embed within a real task.

Support spelling with children always making a least one attempt at a word before checking. This attempt enables the teacher to interrogate the child’s phonic and whole word understanding, focusing the teaching need.

​To be honest though, had I been the SoS for Education in 2010, I'd have stuck with the curriculum that was in play, tweaked the levelness statements and charged schools with achieving good level 4, for 80%+ of the children, which is a pretty good starting point for Secondary education. I'd then have introduced a new National Writing Project and some kind of maths and reading project alongside to improve the capability of all teachers across these subjects. A coherent, holistic approach, rather than the nit-picking soundbites that have characterised the past seven years.
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​Last week has saw a report published, one by LKMco, “Testing the Waters”, with the headline that “most classroom teachers lack confidence assessing their pupils”. It’s been a very interesting few years as far as assessment is concerned, with significant curricular changes impacting in 2014.

Curriculum change was accompanied by withdrawal of the previous system of levels, that covered KS1-3, providing at least a common language for dialogue. In place of levels as a judgement base, ARE, Age Related Expectations, were introduced as end of Key Stage 1 and 2 statements, with several layers of decision that sought to describe achievement against test outcomes. These outcomes have yet to fully embed in transition practice to impact on subsequent learning.

The structure of the curriculum in terms of yearness gave rise to systems of tracking “progress” on the basis of teacher confidence against a number of key indicators. In discussion with a group of nine mentors of trainees on a School Direct route into teaching showed that there were seven different assessment/tracking systems on use, including four variations on the County scheme. This did impact on dialogue between colleagues and trainees. So, on one level, there is a potentially significant difference between school systems, requiring trainees to come to terms very quickly with them, especially within their short alternative experience.

The second layer of concern, in terms of judgements is exposure to different year groups. A Primary ITE trainee will have a substantive practice in one Key Stage, with a shorter, six-week experience in an alternate Key Stage. Our trainees also get a week with EYFS and a few days in Secondary, as an extension experience. However, in the September after their training year, they could be working with a novel year group, where their quality assurance will be less assured, simply from lack of experience.

For this reason, during their training year, during my training sessions on assessment, we use exemplars to explore qualities and to make statements about children’s evident achievements. We also encourage regular moderation discussions between trainees and mentors, to provide further insights.

All trainees will be insecure on appointment to their first post. Given that the current curriculum and assessment systems are relatively recent, even very experienced teachers are likely to be reticent to say that they are fully happy with every judgement. With the curriculum not being issued with assessment guidance, this enabled further insecurity to be present for a considerable period of time, especially as teachers change year group or school.

We need, preferably, a national system of exemplar sharing and moderation discussions across schools to embed understandings of judgements and the potential for children’s achievements. This would allow for quality CPD opportunities, exploring developmental processes as well as analysing outcomes. In many ways this would take us back to 1987 and the National Writing Project, which coincided with the National Curriculum descriptors of progress. Moderation discussion was supported by a common language. Given that schools may have different articulations of judgements, this may well be a layer of difficulty in discussion.

Assessment, as a central feature of teacher thinking, drives every classroom decision, including the teacher expectations of what will happen in lessons. My own blog on Assessment; with Children in Mind explores more of this, as does 24652.

Expectation mind-set supports the mental rehearsal of a lesson, where a teacher anticipates the points in the lesson where learners could exhibit misunderstanding or simply encounter a block. This allows preparations which ensure that issues are addressed appropriately and in a timely way.

​The teacher/expectation mind-set: - analyse-plan-do-review-record

• expects something specific to change as a result of the carefully matched learning opportunities being offered, (analysis)
• supports the teacher in looking at the resulting activities and discerning the nuances of behaviour that suggest ease or difficulty being encountered. (planning)
• drives conversations seeking to unpick areas of concern or to understand the fact that they’ve taken five minutes to complete a task you’d planned for twenty-five. (doing)
• creates the start point from which adjustments to the expectations are made, within or between lessons (review and adapt)

ensures that the learner(s) make(s) progress and provides food for thought at the end of the lesson about next steps. (record keeping)

In many ways, getting trainees to think in an investigatory way is key to assessment. Meeting situations that were not expected are points where interaction and learning decisions are needed. 
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 Reflective and reactive teachers anyone?
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