​I recognise that much thinking has been done in the area of assessment, by a wide variety of experts in the field. My interest, working with developing teachers, is to instil some working methods that will enhance their ability to make appropriate judgements about children, their achievements and their learning needs. This, to me, has underpinned my thinking about assessment for the whole of my career. 
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​Assessment is thinking; about children and progress in learning and, if they’re not progressing, or progressing more rapidly than expected, doing something about the needs.

Think engaging and appropriate activity, think learning, think progress and outcomes, think on your feet and adapt for evident need, Think before, during and after the event. That is assessment; thinking, about each and every child’s response to the learning situation. Spotting those whose behaviours show lack of understanding or effort and those who may be finding the task easy.

High awareness, high surveillance and rapid and purposeful intervention; or in Dylan Wiliam's words "the reflective, reactive teacher".

​Make quality visible, so it can be discussed and evaluated openly and regularly.
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To me, assessment is just another way of saying “Know your children, well, and get to know them even better”; to define and constantly refine where they are academically, socially and personally, so that they can be challenged or supported through carefully planned activities and interventions. Assessment in one sense is about data, but, more importantly, it is about individual children and their life chances, developed through the best available teaching and learning opportunities.

To be effective, assessment has to be seen as informed, rational judgement, leading to specific adaptation of intention, through a variety of means. Most assessment is situational, being at one level a sense that something is not going as it should and seeking to make whole again. It can also mean that under-expectation means that the level of challenge (perhaps for a few) has to be recalibrated.

Looking for inspiration in the thesaurus, the following revealed itself. These are some of the synonyms for assessment. It is possible to argue that all assessment if formative, even a test, as it informs subsequent decisions about the direction and speed of learning.

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On my main blog, I have a number of posts on marking, looking to make it a realistic aspect of a teacher life, while ensuring that children can participate fully and utilise advice and feedback effectively.

Marking; keep it simple
Marking
Is marking moderation step 1
Back to marking

In “Marking; keep it simple”, the main premise is that the child targets should be on a fold out sheet that can be seen within a lesson, to guide teacher-child conversation, but also be a guide for marking later. It can incorporate non-negotiables, as they appear in earlier scripts.

In “Marking”, there is a discussion of marking as a dialogue between the teacher and the learner. I also question the place of homework where that generates marking load.

Homework can create additional marking need, but, if the activity is considered within the learning dynamics of the topic, does not necessarily need to do so.

Consider as home activity:-

• Draft from notes taken in a lesson, to be brought back as first draft, for editing in class.
• Summarise what has been learned into three key pieces of information. Boxed, it becomes a form of revision note.
• “Drawing and colouring” to save class time for discussion.
• Personal research which adds to the lesson.
• Reading a piece of text before the lesson.

None of the above needs detailed marking, as they are part of continuous effort.

As children mature as learners, they can begin to direct the teacher to areas for marking. If, say, adjectives have been the subject of learning, then the child can be asked to highlight the adjectives used, so they are easy to see.

In “is marking moderation step 1”, the teacher is acting as quality control, feeding back to the child where their work is ok and where there are areas for improvement. Teacher judgement is key to these stages.

Moderation stage 1; teacher child conversation.

Moderation stage 2; teacher-teacher conversation.

Moderation stage 3; school-area conversation.

Moderation stage 4; school-national outcomes conversation.

In “Back to Marking”, in addition to the above, I also suggest a number of key steps to consider.

• As an organisation, schools should set marking expectations that are clear, concise and achievable and have impact on learning.
• Plan mark loads over a known timescale, so that books are marked appropriately in timescales that enable feedback to be useful. If a whole week of devoted to “assessment activity” it is not surprising if workloads are heavy, especially as they usually back onto school holidays.

Learners should see themselves as active partners in work review. It should be done with and through, not always done to. Marking in a lesson is a very supportive strategy, especially for struggling learners, where immediacy of response is needed.

There are no easy solutions, as this area is often unique to the teacher and their interpretation of expectations. But it is worth significant consideration.
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Assessment is normally based on clearly articulated or published criteria, with a judgement of whether the outcome demonstrates certain abilities, so that the assessor can say with some definition that “x can do…”. Some assessment situations also require a judgement of pass or not, with a pass at merit or distinction. These are bottom line capabilities, seen, for example in driving tests, music exams and Initial Teacher Education, each of which requires a level of competence in order to progress, with further guidance available.

Critique is what I think I do when I go to an art gallery or listen to music, usually starting from appreciation of what I like, through areas which make me less comfortable, to aspects that I don’t like. This is coupled with a rationale, so my critique is a descriptor, linked to personal insights. There has to be a “because”. As a reflective person, sometimes this is an insular activity, but, when in company, a shared reaction can become the stuff of dialogue, comparative and nuanced, and that’s the part that interests me in terms of classroom practice.

I think children and their teachers should engage in discussion of quality in work, in all subjects. With visualisers becoming a part of classroom practice, it is very easy to share outcomes and explore and diagnose aspects of the work, together, with children being enabled to explore the language and parameters of critique. Description, followed by speculation, enables the questioner to raise issues in the mind of the producer, to enable answers which might, in themselves, highlight the specific areas for improvement. I’d also expect classroom spaces to be awash with examples of quality work, on display, or in portfolios, which set the benchmark for expectation and reflection within the class. It is a holistic approach.

I am now beginning to view success criteria as surrogate mark schemes for a specific context. If they embed statements which clarify the steps that need to be taken in order to produce a piece of work of quality, they can be checked at the end to see if they have been followed.

However, on top of that, there needs to be the capacity to advise individuals about the quality within the finished work. These personalised targets, attached to the edge of the book, can summarise the qualities being sought from that learner adding to the potential for both critique and assessment. Assessment, in this scenario, becomes a “signing off” activity, with the critique proving a qualitative set of statements.

Learners can engage with success criteria and I have visited a number of schools that embed systems where learners have to highlight areas of their work which, in their opinion, demonstrate a specific success criterion or personal target, which focuses marking. Self-diagnosis of outcomes is an essential skill of editing, drafting and redrafting activities.

​If you were to believe EduTwitter, everything in the past, especially for Primary children, was based on play and skills, with nary a mention of knowledge stuff. Everyone was too busy having fun.

Today, I went into the loft and found a couple of files, from way back in the dark ages of education and another life for me. I found some work that I did back in 1986/7, in preparation for the soon-to-be National Curriculum. As a recently appointed Deputy Head, with my curriculum responsibility being science, I had the task of taking stock of what was already in existence and then what needed to be added, removed, or adjusted, to fit with the new requirements. In the event, this was actually a very small series of tweaks, to the knowledge base and to the methodologies.

With a strong earlier science background and many significant publications available, close working with the LA inspectorate soon drew out considerable strengths. What needed to be done was to record for every member of current staff and, with potential for change, future appointments, the baseline expectations of the curriculum and the approach to developing practical science approaches.

The original NC science documentation had 16 attainment targets, one described practical exploration approaches, the other fourteen covered the knowledge areas. To make them manageable, I ordered them into themes, such as “Ourselves and other living things”; “Our environment”; “Make it move; how does it move?”; then we had the others, electricity and magnetism, sound and music, light, microelectronics… There was a lot to be fitted in, but, as themes over a timescale, it was possible to work out how to fit it all together.

The Level Descriptors of AT15, light, make interesting reading;

L1) Light comes from different sources. Discriminate between and match colours. Colour in the environment.
L2) Light passes through materials in different ways. Shadows.
L3) Light can change direction and shiny surfaces reflect images.
L4) We see objects because of light. Light travels in straight lines; shape and size of shadows.

I also found a set of enquiries that I had created, to provide some guidance; this was in relation to exploring light, through mirrors. With pre-school children often entranced by light and its properties, mirrors and reflections can be a great way into science investigations.

With a flat mirror; look in the mirror, what can you see? Draw a picture of what you think you look like in a mirror.
If it’s a plastic mirror, bend it and try to describe what you can see happening.

Other shiny surfaces are important, such as spoons. What do you look like on the front or the back of a spoon? Is it the same on both sides?

Hinge two mirrors with sticky tape. What happens if you start with them in a straight line, then gradually move them towards each other? Older children can start to record angles and images.

If you put a picture underneath the mirrors and do the same, what happens to the image as the mirrors get closer together? Kaleidoscope-art potential? Rangoli or other patterns?

Put two mirrors facing each other and an object in between. What can you see?

How does a periscope work? Make a working model and try it out. Link with DT
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Hinge three mirrors, open to explore images, then closed into a triangle. Describe what you can see.

Giving an account of the activities, with developing scientific detail on an investigation was seen as a Level 3 challenge, but would depend on quality of expression, vocabulary and writing style.

​Shadows were a great source of potential, with silhouette potential, sun dials and eclipses, temperature gradients, especially on frosty days, shadow puppetry... exploring dark could be supported by a heavy curtain draped over a desk, to make a large light box that children could get under.

The discussion that this approach engendered enabled further detailed knowledge to be shared at the point of need, as well as during introductions and summaries within the lesson or at the end.

It was certainly not play, as perceived by some, but purposeful investigative activity, always with the outcome of being able to share the outcomes of the investigation in some form, oral sharing, written or drawn recording, whichever was most appropriate to the needs of the learners.

Primary science is purposeful, focused thinking around a problem or a challenge, to seek patterns, stimulate further questions and develop a coherent train of thought.

​All of which can be enjoyable, or in child speak, fun…  

Top image by Gaz Needle, as part of an earlier project, seeking to collect 1000 years of reflected experience. It got to around 700 years, so if you’d like to add something, on a cold autumn evening…
NB. Everyone mentioned is on Twitter.
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Teaching and Learning Takeover, at Southampton University, organised by Jenn Ludd and David Fawcett, is always an opportunity to catch up with friends and Twitter links. This, 5th birthday event, was no exception. Over cups of coffee and pastries, the day started with the inevitable melee of hello’s and how are things; a chance to put faces to names or sometimes unknown avatars.

I could have entitled this blog “a tale of two Moys”, as, after Chris Moyse’ excellent introduction and reflections on the learning process, especially considering issues deriving from sporting excellence, passing through the experiences of Gaz Needle, Kev Bartle, Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby, concluding with Daniel Muijs; I’m sure he pronounced this as “Moys”. Apologies if not, but it spoils the introduction if not…

To some extent, it was Professor Daniel Muijs session that enabled my thinking throughout the day to become crystallised, in that his theme was directly metacognition, with reference to work that he is doing for the Education Endowment Foundation in this area. Daniel made us think of what we mean by metacognition; a definition is often a useful start point, especially when engaging with an unknown, mixed audience. His interest, to some extent appears to be in the area of the effectiveness of interventions in the learning process. Self-regulation is a component, with learner awareness of personal achievements and further needs underpinning learner engagement. Daniel unpicked cognition as information gathering, memory, understanding and use/application in practice, with metacognition being the self-knowledge, of need to seek additional information from valid sources, skills of ordering and organisation, in-task checking behaviour and post-task evaluation. It is somehow embedded firmly in the process, with the known used and applied.

This took me back to classroom teaching and approaches, where task challenges that embedded all these elements were the norm, both at infants and junior level and I would hazard a guess that the loss of quality use and application of the known in appropriately challenging situations might be a contributory factor in concerns for a lack of metacognitive awareness. If everything is recipe based or teacher-led, children have limited space and time to think for themselves.

Taken from an earlier blog on task design this describes one activity that took place at that time.

One day the teacher challenged the children to design and make a crazy golf hole, as part of a geography topic. They could use whatever they wished, as long as they wrote on their plan what they wanted, so that it could be checked before they started. Julie and Jim were in the same group.

During their discussion time, Julie tried to tell the others what they should do, Jim was quieter, thinking about the problem, while some of the others started to argue with Julie. The teacher noticed the argument and the fact that Jim had been quiet, so joined the group and asked him what he was thinking about. At this point, Jim articulated clearly and thoughtfully what he thought that the group should do, while the rest of the group listened respectfully. They had not heard Jim speak as much before. When he had finished, the group decided to use Jim’s ideas and drew careful plans based on them.

By the end of the short topic, not only had the group designed and made an effective golf hole, but they had measured it, drawn it to scale, tallied and collated a list to show the number of hits each member of their class had taken on the hole, from least to most, created a bar chart to show the frequency of the hits, as well as writing a report on what they had done and how they had done it.

My own contribution to the discussion with Daniel Muijs was on the topic of task challenge and the experiences that flow from engaging with the process. This was emphasised by Candida (Gould), from her experiences with Primary learners.  

Honesty and humanity were the themes that flowed through the talks by both Kev Bartle and Gaz Needle. Keven talked of trust underpinning high quality relationships, based on interpersonal skills that will be the product of self-awareness; self-regulation to accommodate others, or real-life team skills. Gaz took us through the somewhat tortuous journey to his becoming almost an accidental headteacher. To some extent, there may well be similarities for Keven, as an internal candidate for a role that had been part of day to day life. Retaining the team ethic can sometimes be challenging as a head, in that there is a degree of separation that can be bridged, but sometimes becomes a separation. I’ve always articulated my belief that all leaders achieve through the efforts of others, in any form of life. If leaders assume special status, they are ripe for criticism when things go wrong. Politicians take note…

Time to think can be at a premium as a head. Gaz gave the example of the knock on the door and the request for “five minutes”. We all know that this is likely to be much more than that. As a head, I felt that I had cracked things when the “five-minute” requests diminished in quantity and in significant need. Thinking time, as a teacher can also be a premium commodity. Busyness is often the order of the day and making time to order time more effectively can be rare, ensuring that busyness remains the status quo. This was why, as a head, I incorporated thinking time into training days, by perhaps having a concentrated morning session, with time to talk and reflect with colleagues after lunch. On one occasion, the day started with a long walk to an area of interest to discuss the potential of such an activity for classroom learning across the curriculum. This significantly enhanced the use of the locality by every year group.

Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby spoke of their journey to “Make Every Lesson Count”, now a series of books covering a wider remit. They brought the word autonomy into my frame of reference, which linked with Kev’s earlier trust. Autonomy is the hallmark of trust in a working environment; people knowing what they had to do and the parameters within which they were able to make significant decisions, or perhaps make decisions for themselves. In each classroom, the class teacher should reign supreme, as long as they are making rational decisions that progress learning and the aims of the school.

Shaun and Andy have a diagram that describes the parameters clearly, to both teacher and learners; note the "so that", which is the area for having a rationale.

Chris Moyse, as the start keynote, had us engaging with sporting analogies, including the New Zealand rugby team success over such a long time-scale, the successes of Sergei Bubka as a pole-vaulter, seeking to “raise the bar” by a cm or two each time. Practice or rehearsal were key elements of but areas of success. The ability to visualise, to put oneself into a “game situation” mentally may well be a significant part of these successes. I reflected on such a situation from my own earlier sport activities, as a cricketer, playing imaginary strokes, or practicing bowling. It’s akin to anticipation or expectation, preferably with the guidance of an aware coach, to reflect back to you what you are demonstrating. This can be now enhanced with video. Both coaching and video for self-reflection are now available in many schools, so the ability to facilitate self-reflection and self-development are more easily accessible.

Lisa Jane Ashes closed the event with a significant challenge “Why are you still here?”. She may well have been gasping for a cuppa at this stage, although the image of beer did perhaps give the after-show game away!

In many ways, the answer to why are you still here is simple. The hall was filled with thinkers, prepared to give up a Saturday to hear high quality speakers enthuse about a current area of interest. That many will have gone away, like me, with nuggets that have rattled around for the best part of twenty-four hours, is testament to the quality of the event.

Teaching is a thinker’s game. 
Teachers are the lead thinkers 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 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 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 any 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.

 Much current time is spent seeking to understand the latest edict from a politician, interpreted through a MAT or LA, cascaded through senior leaders to classrooms. This can lead to assimilation of simplistic methodologies rather that consideration of change within a holistic approach. Anyone connected with teaching will be aware of the myriad needs in every lesson. This needs agile thinkers, aware of, and adaptable to, evident need.

That, to me, is where “evidence-based”, metcognitive teaching sits; the teacher ability to rationalise the what and why of their teaching. It’s down to (inter)relationships and, inevitably, a level of trust.

The past few years have seen a gradual increase in my work with mentors, through a variety of routes. There are common themes and some contextual nuances, but, at the centre is the significant importance of the mentor, whether for a trainee in initial teacher education, an NQT, RQT or perhaps coaching someone through a short term need.

​This area of interest, therefore, was one that I was happy to share during Pedagoo Hampshire 2017, albeit as a stand-in speaker as a favour to Martyn Reah.

​While there are some simple and straightforward expectations, the need to develop the professional thinking skills, as well as subject pedagogy, requires skills from the teacher that can eventually lead to significant self-development. 

One year ago, September 2016, the government published a new document, in which it set out standards for mentors for Initial Teacher Training. many of these I would describe as "grandma sucking eggs", but, as experience has taught me, working with teachers, they come in all shapes sizes and experiences, from those who have actively volunteered for the role, purposefully to enhance their careers, to some who have suddenly found themselves as a mentor at the last minute.

​To some extent, the standards are self explanatory, so I have copied a version that we use at Winchester University, to set the scene for expectations. The quality of the professional relationship is key to a successful period in any class. How well the mentor can unpick aspects of practice, in order to share both the overview and the detail, without overloading the trainee, is an important element. 

​It is also worth mentioning that schools which choose to take on trainees of any description become de facto teaching schools, with every member of staff potentially being asked for help or advice at some stage. Therefore, the best prepared schools are those where everyone knows that a trainee is starting, and expectations of each staff member, as well as an understanding of the phases of development.

​The responsibilities for the trainee can be shared, with classroom mentors being supported by colleagues who may have recent study skills that might be useful to the trainee as they prepare written submissions for their PGCE or QTS status. Equally, using the available collective expertise can be useful in general discussion. Perhaps a colleague has completed a diploma, masters or some other qualification and can help with academic phrasing or referencing, perhaps offering to read the piece ahead of submission.  

There are two distinct areas where there are likely to be different needs for support. The first is in the personal capacity of the trainee. The four standards, 8, 3, 7 and 1 are likely to be the essence of the starter; professionalism, subject knowledge, behaviour expectations and general expectations of how the classroom should be running.

​Professional relationships, between the mentor and the trainee, trainee and teaching assistants, wider staff involvement, parents and children, will become self-evident, from the very outgoing to the excessively shy; I've met both extremes and every shade in between. The green boxes in the diagram below seek to summarise what might be seen in a potentially successful trainee. While they are self-explanatory, any suggestion of concern, in any of these areas, is likely to raise questions in a mentor's mind. These questions might, in themselves, become limiting factors. In this regard, the mentor has to unpick their own personal biases, in order to interact professionally. However, concerns are concerns and may eventually have to be addressed. We are talking basic teacher capabilities. 

The second layer of teacher standards are likely to be more challenging, in that these are the practical aspects of teaching and learning; standards 2, 4, 6&5, leading back to 2. Progress and outcomes, leading to detail in planning of teaching and learning expectations, with in-lesson and post-lesson judgements (assessments) and adaptations to initial planning, leading to good outcomes that demonstrate progress across a period of time, eg week, fortnight, month.

​This is a significantly important area. A trainee will have had very little experience longitudinally. They may have had anything from a few weeks' experience to HLTA over time, but they may still need to get to grips with what "good outcomes" look like and the right decisions to make in order to promote further progress. Even an experienced teacher changing year groups or changing school settings may find this challenging. Moderation activity, aka talking about what the children are doing, between the trainee and the teacher is essential, to enable the mentor to guide decision making and develop baseline expectations. Visiting the year above and the year below is also a useful guide, to see where children have come from and what they are expected to be able to do the following year.

​The baselines will, in effect, guide in-lesson decisions. A clear idea of the journey of the lesson and the outcome expectations enable appropriate decisions to be made, including the use of sharing time, working alongside an individual or group to support their working approach.

​reflection within and outside the lesson guides decisions about subsequent learning.
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Planning for development over time is essential to avoid elements being missed. Trainees, on whatever route, have a mountain of paperwork to keep, to be able to show their development against the teacher standards. this can be aided by forward thinking and ensuring that structural elements of the programme are embedded in the timetable, so that they can be achieved, hopefully in timely fashion. In many ways the elements are articulated in the two slides.

Using this proforma as a checklist might ensure that each partner knows exactly what should be done each week, so nothing is left to chance and gets missed, leading to a backlog of activity later in the experience. Variation due to the vagaries of school life should be expected and addressed within a revised timetable.

Trainees have to understand issues of learning over time. Working closely with medium term plans, over one or two weeks, it is possible to timetable periods where the trainee leads, is an observer or participant observer working with a group, feeding lesson outcome reflections to the teacher if passing on the next lesson or receiving such detail when taking over. This professional dialogue acts as prompts to dynamic thinking. Selecting work to annotate and investigate through the week allows more detailed discussion at the end of each week in preparation for the following week.

​Within lessons, it is fine of a mentor feels the need to act as a "parrot on the shoulder"; having a quiet word in the trainee's ear to prompt timely action. If the school has a system of microphone and earpiece, this could be an alternative means.

​Videoing the lesson can provide the basis for post-lesson analysis and discussion between mentor and trainee.

The "busyness" of a classroom, especially with younger children can sometimes prove daunting to early career trainees. The mentor has the role of unpicking what is going on within the complexity, so that the trainee can start to focus on specific areas, based on their mentor model and also from feedback on their own practice.

​Something as seemingly simple as in-lesson transitions can be the point where a trainee finds limitations in their practice. 

​The difficulty for an inexperienced trainee is that a good teacher can make teaching look easy. They may need guided observations to be able to tease out the key themes, then begin to delve into the nuances. A mentor "talking their thinking", making their actions overt, might seem an odd thing to propose, but it can be sufficient to guide the trainee within the dynamics of the classroom.

Knowing the children well is a key aspect of success. I would advise mentors to regularly ask their trainee to identify a couple of children and to give a short verbal summary of what they know, as if they were talking to a parent or perhaps writing a short report with a parent in mind. 

Knowing the individual needs of some children will be significant. Any child on the special needs register should be highlighted to the trainee, but they should also have the skill to spot developing needs in children who may not yet have been recognised as having a need. They need a framework, based on the 2014 SEN changes and I would offer the diagram below as a useful aide memoire, to be able to guide their thinking and provide the framework for a professional discussion with their mentor and the SENCo.

Reflection should become part and parcel of everything a trainee does, within the classroom and outside. Everything may be new, subject to internal chaos, needing sorting into internal "folders", to be used as appropriate when there is a need. 

​Reflection, supported by opportunities to discuss their thinking, will ensure that the trainee, over time, becomes a thinking professional colleague. Some have one year to achieve this. It is incumbent on the school, through the mentoring and colleague support, to ensure that they are led along this path. It should not be left to chance.

​At then end of the day, schools and mentors are creating the next generation of teachers, perhaps for themselves, but certainly on behalf of the education system. It is a responsibility, but it is also a privilege to see any trainee develop into an independent colleague.

​For this reason, I'd like to see some kind of accreditation available to mentors, to be able to transition to becoming in-house tutors, on a par with university colleagues, responsible for in-practice pedagogy.

​No-one reading my blogs will be surprised that I like this book by Paul Dix! It's a book written with humour, humility and humanity, deriving from experience.

In any school, the climate is set by the adults in charge. How they choose to set up rules and regulations, sometimes generic, often quite prescriptive. Some choose to take this to an extreme and employ “no excuses” policies, while others work through the children taking responsibility for their own self-regulation.

Schools are based on countless interactions each and every day. The quality of these interactions enables a child to have a sense of belonging or to feel alienated and distant from the organisation, with the latter potentially demonstrating as dissociated behaviours leading to further alienation.

Consistency is a central feature of a successful behaviour management system. Everyone knows what is expected, because it is talked about and publicised effectively. The teachers have a clear understanding which allows them to interact easily and speedily. This knowing enables mutual regard and levels of trust, which in turn are enabling. Children like to feel that they are liked for themselves and will acknowledge when they are in the wrong, if the systems allow for this. This approach enables rapid restorative actions.

A sense of belonging is instilled if you are noticed and acknowledged. This might be formally, as a personal greeting on entry to the classroom, handshakes, or simply a friendly smile and noticing, as children enter the classroom. If you have a place that is yours, either a tray and hook for your things in a Primary school or a locker and a set place in a classroom in Secondary, it confers you as a school/class member.

Behaviour management can sometimes feel like “keeping on keeping on”, posters, messages in class or assemblies, or selected gatherings, eg simply having the boys of their toilets are messy. It is about clarity of expectations, well articulate, a collegiate staff approach and appropriate “follow through” that is supported by everyone.

Parents are a key group in this regard. Excellent communication is a hallmark of schools that enjoy better behaviour relations, as the parents support the school approaches.

Spotting children being good can be a very positive way to define what is expected. In a Primary classroom, this can be as simple as a thank you to a child for sitting well on a carpet. It could be a special recognition in an assembly, or a star of the day in class. Marbles in a jar can become a motivation, if there’s a tangible reason for their collection. It’s also a collaborative effort, embedding a team culture into a classroom. However, as Paul Dix points out the “token economy” can be counter-productive, as merits, or similar, are showered on some children, alienating others. Unintended consequences?

Calmness is tested by poor behaviour. But keeping calm through difficulty can be a significant factor in rapid resolution. Children recognising where they are at fault enables fair solutions to be sought. Paul uses the term “botheredness”. This takes time, patience and a drip feed of positive reinforcement; the teacher being bothered models botheredness to the children.

Passing on praise from another teacher, a parent or someone from the wider community is an important aspect. Someone has spotted something good, bothered enough to mention it and this needs to be fed back to the children. A “well done” goes a very long way, equivalent to a “thank you”.

Security and certainty are a necessary part of being an adult in school. The opposite can lead to insecurity and uncertainty in children, which results in getting into trouble, sometimes inadvertently.

This is an excellent book, that will challenge many experienced teachers, but, with newbies, will give insights into good and less useful practices, as they come to terms within their new role. Hopefully, it’ll enable them to “smile before Christmas” and to run classroom that turn into places where high quality learning takes place at all times.

As a headteacher, I’d often tell children that I was the highest paid nag in the school, that their parents expected that of me and that the teachers were paid to do that too, but that we’d prefer not to be doing that all the time. Even as young as four, they seemed to understand that…

Paul’s conclusion is that “a focus on adult behaviour is the only responsible approach”. Staying calm and in control of yourself, is a start point for controlling others.
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Or to quote Vic Goddard, of Passmores School, “We make the weather” …

“The teacher’s job is not to transmit knowledge, nor to facilitate learning. It is to engineer effective learning environments for the students. The key features of effective learning environments are that they create student engagement and allow teachers, learners, and their peers to ensure that the learning is proceeding in the intended direction. The only way we can do this is through assessment. That is why assessment is, indeed, the bridge between teaching and learning.”
― Dylan Wiliam, Embedded Formative Assessment

The term plenary has crossed my path this week. It’s an interesting word, which seemed to derive from the three-part lesson that was seen as good practice when the National Strategies came about. It was the final part, the drawing together of what had occurred during the lesson and deriving significant learning points to take forward into subsequent lessons.

Or that was the supposed intention.  

For some, the plenary became a last activity to fill the final five minutes of a lesson, which may or may not, have a bearing on any learning during the lesson. It stood as a finale, in the same way as “starter” activities could also be separate activities, argued as a means to get children thinking in a particular subject at the transitional stage of a lesson.

This week, plenaries have been discussed as in-lesson interactions, where teachers spot a need and engage with a proportion of, or the whole class, to address a misconception. The problem with in-lesson “plenaries”, in the hands of an inexperienced practitioner, is that they can be done for the sake of being seen to be done.

Interventions, of any description, need to have a rational purpose.

“I’m stopping this child, group, class lesson, because I need to check x, in order to reassess, or reset where the learning is going.” It can even be articulated in that way to the children. It might be an occasion to use different resources or models, scaffolding ideas to ensure some additional information is embedded, to be incorporated into a task, allowing a greater degree of success in the outcome. It is the point where the teacher assumes the role of coach or mentor, unpicking the fine details of, sometimes individual need, fine tuning teaching and learning demands appropriately.

It is, to all intents and purposes, the point where teacher standards 6&5 impact on standard 2; spotting a need, addressing it and ensuring some positive achievements. In Dylan Wiliam’s terms, it is the point where the reflective teacher becomes reactive, based on the evidence of the child, group or class needs.

In other words, just good teaching.
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“feedback should cause thinking. It should be focused; it should relate to the learning goals that have been shared with the students; and it should be more work for the recipient than the donor. Indeed, the whole purpose of feedback should be to increase the extent to which students are owners of their own learning,”
― Dylan Wiliam, Embedded Formative Assessment
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It’s the end of term; hooray say all the tired teachers I meet and my grandchildren. The tiredness is not just from the past year, ending with the usual flurry of activity days; sports, parent evenings, discos, leaver’s assemblies, but also thoughts turning towards next year. Planning classroom or year group moves, possibly even moving schools and changing jobs altogether.

Changing class or year group can cause a few headaches, especially now, with a year-based curriculum. A move requires a complete learning of requirements of the year, in some significant detail. As for assessment systems; each school may have a variation on several themes, for the new member of staff to get to know.

Change is hard enough for experienced teachers, but will cause considerable concern for a newbie, fresh from their university experience, suddenly having to make all the decisions for themselves. Hopefully, they will be in a situation where they have an experienced mentor, with the time and professional space to really mentor and be working in a school where they have some background planning available for the newbie to consider against the specific needs of their class.

It would help transitional decisions if a piece of work from the recent few weeks was chosen by each child, as an example of their best current work that they’d like their new teacher to see, perhaps even to have in their new book as they write their first pieces in September, to be able to compare with the earlier benchmark. It tells the new teacher what “good” is for each child, to calibrate and refine their expectations for the near future.

As a HT, the last exercise book of a year transferred to the next year, together with personal targets, to provide simple continuity and progression information to the receiving colleague.

Adults need reference points against which to make decisions. Children can see from one piece of work to another whether it’s a better effort or not. We need to use the available evidence to ensure that transition (and transfer) doesn’t mean that progress stalls because the children reset the expectation through a blank page approach.
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There is a need for some (few) to have a fresh start, but all start from a known point, or they can regress through their own (lack of) effort. Teachers need to remain in charge of the learning agenda.

If you type the word quality into the search box on my blog site, you’ll come up with ten pages of blog references where the word has appeared. Quality is the hallmark of (high quality) education. It is, in my opinion, the essence of what teachers try to do each and every day; raising the quality of what children achieve.

This means, of course, that each and every day, teachers are making qualitative judgements about what their children achieve. With experience, teachers begin to calibrate their judgements more finely, as they have seen a greater number of outcomes. This fine judgement enables more refined responses to the individual concerned. In many ways, it is the qualitative judgement that informs formative assessment; aka thinking about what the children have achieved and deciding what that means for the next course of action.

Therefore, to me, improving the quality of teacher judgement has always seemed to be central to CPD, or PPD, as it often affects individuals.

We have a relatively young teacher force. Primary NQTs entering the profession in September, will have had between 100 and 150 days of direct in-school experience. This will have been across two key stages, with a gradual build-up of experience in each, in a school context supportive of trainees and with a direct mentor available. As a trainer, I always emphasise moderation activities, to promote professional dialogue about processes and the output.

Whether we like it or not, stratification of children happens; teachers and peers know who is the “best” reader, writer, mathematician, gymnast… They also probably know the opposite. The difficulties can occur when fine-tuned judgements are needed, especially where direct teacher intervention may be needed. And, in many ways this is what concerns me, especially where so much attention is placed on summative judgements and the ensuing data crunching.

There are simple questions that aid calibration of judgement; is this “good enough” for a year x child? Is it better than “good”? If it isn’t good enough, what needs to be addressed? What are the implications for the next teaching session, with a range of outcomes from this one?

Unless the activity devised by the teacher is a “copyist” one, where every child will produce an almost carbon copy of a teacher model, there will be a range of outcomes. Even if every child in a class is “above average”, as can occasionally occur, there will still be a range. Moderating discussion of outcomes is comparative, with embedded criteria being identified as evident or not.

Not that long ago there was a system of levels as a national judgement, used by every school to describe the stratification of outcomes. That these levels were used to give feedback on children’s developing work was inevitable, but over time, from the start in 1987, the move from using the descriptors to the numerical forms distorted their use and utility. We still have a form of descriptors within the year-based approach to the current National Curriculum, with a number of tracking systems ticking off coverage (at least what they’ve planned) and hoping that summative evidence will enable sufficient numbers of children to be described as “at (or above) standard”. In some case, you can’t be “above standard” until term three of the year, as you haven’t covered everything.
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And then you end up with this: the set of descriptors that are used to stratify children at the end of the key stage. How helpful is this to further progress, or to identify what needs to be tackled next? It is no use to child, teacher or parent. Ten ways to say you’re not “at standard”. In other words, a waste of teacher (and system) time.
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I look at this slide through the eyes of one who was a class-teacher in 1987 when levels were introduced as part of the National Curriculum. They were developed through the work of the Task Group on Assessment and Testing; TGAT, using the available expertise. (blogged about that here) In the context of broad, balanced and very relevant curriculum developments, they were only ever seen as guidance descriptors, to help with teacher judgement, highlighted through moderation activities, a novelty for some. They did move teacher expectations at the end of year 2 to 80% plus achieving a generalised level 2 or better and, in year 6 to level 4 or better. The descriptors described general capability. They enabled standards to rise over a relatively short period.

Today, we have yearness instead of levelness, and in the context of year-based outcomes, I would argue that the statements in James’ slide hold as much for the present as for the recent past, but with the added disadvantage that no-one knows what any of the statements really means. Outcomes are still largely best fit, and gaps can still occur and they certainly don’t tell us the detail that will help future teachers to build on prior learning in detail. If you set a pass mark at 75, with a range of outcomes, there’s not really much difference between 73 and 77, probably decided by qualitative teacher judgement, but is between 60, 75 and 90. It’s the same set of problems. We just think we’re cleverer in having a novel way of describing difference. Numbers don’t describe what a child can and cannot do.
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This is one of the reasons why, with my school, we developed an approach to writing that allowed individualised progress and feeding forward of needs, so that they could not be forgotten by either the child or the teacher in the busyness of learning.

Workload issues have been there throughout my working career in teaching, from 1971, and, from tales told at that time, was ever thus. My earlier thoughts were captured in this blog.

It has always struck me that workload becomes an issue when the status quo is shifted, by an initiative that can be presented by any layer of responsibility, but when it’s from Government, it is then interpreted by leaders at LA or Academy level, before dissemination and further adaptation within each school. At this point, teachers, who are “delivering” what has been required, are then expected to get their heads around the new approach, continue with the old before implementing the new, the implication being that up until then they had been doing something inefficiently.

Having been party to every incarnation of the National Curriculum, from 1987, the 2014 approach was, by far the most radical, requiring significant alteration to approaches, while also embedding changes in wider approaches, such as SEND legislation, GCSE and A level exam systems. It is not surprising that teachers are complaining about workload, especially if systems are in constant flux. Education requires a significant level of consistency, so that everyone knows what they are doing.

One area that will never be removed from a teacher workload is thinking about learning. In many ways, the key issue with teaching is that it can be very hard to switch off, and, with teachers being their own personal critics, sometimes the thinking needs to be identified by others, in order for the teacher to talk through their concerns. There will be variability of need from early career novices through to experienced colleagues taking on extended responsibilities. That experienced colleagues need to support, guide and mentor younger teachers is to the common good. If a novice quickly becomes effective, it reduces the team demand.

After one Ofsted, I sat with my staff and talked in detail about workload, in order to strip out unnecessary duplication and to refine the need to write things down, particularly in the short term, where reflective and responsive teaching was particularly needed. It took a little while to come to overall, effective decisions, but, in the end, it had an impact on every element of the teachers’ lives, and built in a form of PPA time well before it was a requirement.

I can’t help being someone who prefers order and organisation and overall planning. It has always seemed to me that good overview plans allow for appropriate or necessary diversions along the way, which are in response to evident needs. Running an effective school requires an organisation that is well known and a common thread for every teacher, but, I am a firm believer in seeking to release the talents of each individual teacher for the benefit of the whole team.

We drew up a holistic framework that sought to describe the detail of what the school was about in terms of organising for learning. This was an overview that could be easily understood by a wide range of people. As a Head, it was important, for me, to know that we had approaches that ensured that what we had to cover was actually planned to be covered, in the available time.

Two diagrams articulate the general thrust of thinking, at different points.

Every subject area had developed a range of support materials that we called topic specifications. Some people are today calling them knowledge organisers. They were designed as start points for thinking, especially to support non-specialists and to ensure that every child received a broad, balanced, relevant and engaging curriculum. Each articulated the available school resources and suggested challenges that were appropriate to the appropriate year groups. They were revisited every two years with County inspector support, so that they were up to date and each subject manager had personal CPD from their subject lead.
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We organised what we called an annual plan, for each year group, to be worked on during a July closure day, in preparation for the coming September. This meant that 1) teachers knew what they were going to do in the first few weeks and 2) I knew what was intended across each year in July. It also saved teachers some valuable holiday time.
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In addition, we also built in a two week, return to school, topic, completely down to teacher choice, in order to get to know their new children and to embed expectations. On the Friday of the second week back, we held a closure, where, in addition to early year needs, a proportion of the day was given to planning in detail the next few weeks of learning. Again, this allowed teachers to, perhaps, think about their plans during the holiday, but removed the need for them to write everything down in detail for me.

I asked for two layers of planning, the annual plan and the term overview. This was to support supply cover, should it be necessary.

Short term plans were seen as aides memoire for the teachers. We provided hard back, A4, note books, within which teachers would keep whatever notes that they needed, available to need if queries were raised about teaching, but the format was not prescribed, so that teachers could note whatever they didn’t want to forget!
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However, we did create a format that could be used by student teachers within the school, which was available to any staff who wished to record their lessons formally, or, on one occasion, where significant questions were raised about capability.
Many teachers created a form of medium term, weekly or fortnightly planning, to emphasise the dynamics of learning.
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Planning articulated the expectations of, say, writing forms, and the specifics that would be embedded in a good outcome, eg, a letter, where to put the address(es) and date, the start formalities and the appropriate endings. The contents would be the subject of discussion and modelling, with writing frames developed to support some needs and emphasise personal organisational challenges. The two page approach to writing development provided further support.
The specific needs of individual children, in writing, were articulated on flip sheets. These were available to children and any adults engaging with their learning support. So, if, for example, a child needed to select adjectives or adverbs more carefully, this would become a topic for discussion when engaging with the developing outcomes. The flip sheets also became de facto records of challenge and achievement across the year, summarised in reports/data. They certainly focused teachers' minds on their marking, which became much clearer.

Recording evidence, as we did, also provided evidence for the specific needs of individual children, especially where they were greater than that of their peers. The following crib sheet was not in use, as it was developed in line with 2014 legislation, but the framework certainly was evident in practice, supported by a very active SENCo. 
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Teaching’s like that, in that we have a journey on which to take a cohort of children. They will be known, to some extent, ahead of time, although the receiving teacher might have to recalibrate their prior expectations to tailor their responses to the new group. This applies to every teacher taking on a new class each September. It is especially important for a NQT, whose experience may yet be limited. However, in both cases, there are collegiate co-pilots, those who had the class before, whose insights are invaluable, but can also be subject to their own biases towards specific children, often on personality grounds.

The children come with a learning and achievement past. Records are shared, but, in the absence of descriptive information, data can mask both achievement and personal needs to cover “missing” bits from prior learning. I have to say that this has always been an issue. Specific personal needs have rarely been shared as effectively as they could, especially at transfer and transition, leaving receiving teachers to spend time reordering their thinking. Taking previous books into the new year, or at least copying a latter piece of good achievement, can provide an essential baseline for both the teacher and the child. To also have specific, personal needs highlighted as prompts for teacher and child focus ensures that “gaps” are at least identified and then capable of being addressed.

Learning is a continuous process. Why do we allow time breaks to become potential points for learning loss, which can be magnified in a change of school? There are many years of evidence of loss at years three and seven.

Where we had a system of levelness from 1987-2014, we now have the notion of yearness, described in terms of age related expectation, or ARE. Although some regularly argue that new assessment systems should not recreate levels systems, in many ways it could be an inevitability. Teachers are required to make judgements; there’s even a new kid on the block calling itself comparative judgement, which implies a level of judgement that allows comparison of two bits of work, taking me back to teaching before 1987.

Ordering classes according to whether they are coping with specific aspects of work, or who’s seemingly achieved and who needs additional help, has been a standard part of practice throughout my career. It’s how teachers think, at an organisational level. Dylan Wiliam now wishes that he’d called Assessment for Learning (AfL) reflective, responsive teaching. I just see it as essential teacher decision-making, as per this diagram.
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It’s when we get to the level of personal needs that teachers cannot be expected to remember every child’s needs.
To address this, in my Primary school, we developed exercise books as personal organisers, with flip sheets that allowed teachers to create prompts for themselves and the children to ensure focus on specific potential gaps. The interaction of the teacher with the journeys of each child, is the key to progress for each. Keeping an eye on specifics within interesting contexts allows for regular use and application, allowing children to maintain themselves within the class, with personal targets within the context targets.

Engagement and feedback are essential.

The teacher acts as sub-editor on written outcomes, giving feedback on technicalities, but when faced with a finished piece of work becomes a reader, offering a critique to the writer, in an effort to improve structural quality. As a teacher, they also make quality assurance decisions that then impact on their subsequent actions. Teachers will always interact with children at the level of “experts”, whatever their level of subject expertise. Their feedback, whether verbal in-lesson or written, post-lesson is a part of the child and class learning process; a form of guided reflection.
How much self-evaluative thinking are children really involved in?  

An earlier blog looked at process and product evaluation as an essential aspect of progress. I’ve extracted a short piece.

We talk in terms of a thought process, not a thought product, but there can be a product of thought. So the act of thinking is a process, not an end in itself. The challenge to think around a problem, to analyse and make a judgement about how to proceed, to order and organise a coherent plan of action, to carry out the action with record keeping embedded, then to review and evaluate the process and the outcome, suggesting areas for re-assessment, are higher order thinking skills leading to potentially different outcomes . To give a group of children a “recipe” to be followed is a lower order set of skills, following instructions, leading to thirty exact copies. The former approach leads to questions such as “How do I….?” rather than “I can’t…..” These two responses suggest, in the first example, the need for a skill as identified by the independent learner, while the second can suggest a block and dependence.

Within these areas, are teachers and supporting adults the barriers to learning? It is very arguable that they may become so, often inadvertently, by designing inappropriate tasks that cover all the children, in so doing potentially limiting a number of learners and over-challenging others. The implications for classroom practice can be great, particularly in resource terms, cost, access and use. The first can be limited by the use of recycled materials, or no cost collections, such as newspapers, boxes and so on. Storage and access need to be overcome. Thirty children all needing the same materials at the same time will cause chaos, unless there is clear organisation for use and return. Resources across the curriculum need to be in the classroom, easily accessible and available to be selected by children in their need to solve a problem.

Support staff, often concerned that the children for whom they are responsible have to fulfil the task as set by the teacher can become actively involved, in the more extreme cases actually taking over from the child to finish the activity. This can be the case in an art activity, especially activities such as cards for a special occasion. Why can’t Teaching Assistants be deployed with groups to allow independent tasks to be undertaken with an overseer as observer?

I think issues arise with teacher tracking of children’s outcomes. I’d argue that the system above for Primary writing is, in itself a form of personalised tracking, of need, outcomes and feedback. Reading records, at Primary, are often based on an adult making contemporary notes from hearing readers, but can also be as simple as a personal bookmark, with books read being recorded (by children). Maths books could benefit from flip sheets of reminder prompts.

Extrapolating the tracking of essential information into data points, is the area that has caused the greatest concern, as multiple pieces of information are expected to be collated into a simplified decision, formerly something like level 4b, now it’s +/- ARE. That’s also where the issues are then often hidden, especially at year end transition, with receiving teachers making assumptions based on the available evidence.

As a teacher and as a driver, you cannot take your eye off the road, keeping a check on those around you, to avoid accidents. Occasionally a stop is needed, to take stock, relook at the map, possibly rejig the route, especially for some, or to refuel and replenish supplies.

Journeys are rarely as simple as A to B. Actually, a detour can provide unexpected highlights that add colour to the journey.

Motorway driving can be very boring; I’m taking what used to be called Route Nationale (RN), but which now is renamed Route Departmentale (RD). As long as my journey of forward, I’ll get there eventually, making decisions as I go.

(as discussed on Twitter)
During a long day in London, yesterday, where I was enjoying some sightseeing before meeting my daughter to see my grandson take part in a Chance to Dance, the Royal Opera House charity opportunity for children in some London boroughs to receive some high quality dance tuition and experience.

As it was hot, I took advantage of occasional shade and, inevitably, wandered into Twitter. A regular feature is assessment. It has been so for several years, and, surprise, no-one’s cracked the definitive approach.

I think everyone agrees that it has something to do with interacting with learners and their different parts of their learning journey, although that is sometimes differently expressed, occasionally with polarised views; you could occasionally sell the ice…

SATs and testing generally, are seen by some as an essential good, while others see them as blunt instruments of child torture that make an overall judgement based on narrow areas and, if Twitter is to be believed, subject to significant moderator error across a major subject component, writing.

In discussing assessment, the demise of previous use of levels is welcomed by many (on Twitter), with possibly equal numbers (not on Twitter) wishing they were still available, at least as a form of descriptor guidelines. It is certainly frustrating that, in the thirty years since levels appeared in the 1987 National Curriculum, that the descriptive aspects became lost in the data scramble that characterised the latter 1990s.

Levels, to some, are almost described anti-knowledge. As a practitioner when they were introduced, they were a useful addition to the knowledge areas, to describe the child’s ability to use and apply their knowledge in more challenging tasks, with a degree of independence.

Yesterday’s conversation was with Clare Sealy @ClareSealy, Tim Roach @MrTRoach, Kate Aspin @etaknipsa and Juliet Green @s0f0nisba, with occasional interjections from others, including Daisy Christodoulou @daisychristo. It would be impossible and impractical to utilise all the tweets. Suffice to say that there was a level of disagreement and an occasional meeting of minds; probably as there would be if we were face to face.

Some of the discussion also reflects the different roles and sectors of the participants, which inevitably adds a particular slant to points raised. Current classroom teachers spend a great deal of time interacting with learners and their outcomes, as has always been the case. There will be variation between Primary and Secondary due to frequency of contact and closeness of relationships; it’s easier to get to know 30 children with 25 hours a week contact than 200+ only seen a few times a week. Kate Aspin and I are both involved in ITE, so see the need of developing teachers, whose training involves at least two school placements, where each school may have radically different systems to guide interaction with learning.

Anyone reading my blog over the past few years, will know of my view that assessment is essentially what drives all teacher thinking, helping them with analysing the needs of the children in their class, planning effectively, delivering high quality lessons, with informed interactions, reflecting during and after the lesson, recording any necessary details to support their thinking. Assessment can be summarised as how well you know your children, from ongoing and summative activities.
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A long conversation was generated by my tweet that proposed locality dialogue to agree standards, through guided moderation activity, which I think should be seen as staff development activity.

My thoughts, tweets, on what teaching was like in 1986/7 is bullet pointed.

·         1987 reminisces. 85-87 National Writing Project improved process and outcomes. NC provided descriptors that enhanced collective dialogue.
·         1986 NC gave a language of notional progression that enhanced colleague dialogue. Previously was much less specific.
·         The National Writing Project instituted the idea of dialogue between children and teachers, to establish quality and tentative next steps.
·         Expectations rose, with greater clarity, so transition with l4 more than "good 3". Government exemplars also helped understanding.
·         Local Advisors and inspectors worked to common agenda, so widespread sharing in local networks. Sharing outcomes included process discussion
·         Strategies and APP distracted and distorted dialogue to minimalist progression; assuming learners would draw elements together. Skill loss.
·         Holistic processes, well modelled, together with informed interaction and intervention is needed, then you have quality outcomes to judge
·         Loss of common language reduces understanding and confidence in decisions; TS 2 drives 6&5, fine tuning to evident need.
·         So teachers revert to activities, rather than developing learning journeys. APP style tracking makes this worse.
 
There were a number of organisational differences in 1987.

Class sizes were bigger, TAs didn’t exist and technology was very simple. Timetables, apart from PE and music (timetabled in the hall), were very much in the teacher’s hands, which meant that flexibility could be built into challenges, with writing tasks taking whole mornings, practical science investigations being developed over a week, or in the case of a need for an extra ten minutes to complete a task, children “bridging” playtimes and carrying on for a while, with transition to the next lesson delayed. “Quality First” meant quality outcomes ahead of time-limited activities, which can be more of a feature in a rigidly timetabled system. Activities are then designed to fit the available time; what can you really expect in the 20-30 minutes available?

Staff talking together and moderating outcomes began to use the common language, which enhanced their expectations and so outcome quality rose. Process enhancement from planning, through drafting, to evaluation of outcomes, led to further raising achievement.

Creating real audiences for outcomes, through open area displays and class books, created motivation and pride in presentation. So it became a case of create quality, share quality, unpick quality (enhance qualities of the writing), publish quality, so that children wanted to do more.

With the current situation with assessment being somewhat fluid, it can be very difficult for trainees and providers to give a clear overall picture of what they might encounter in schools. This year, School Direct trainees have encountered a different system in each of their placement schools, which adds to their performance concerns.
 
·         Consider the need of developing teachers. Insecurity can lead to added workload, checking and double-checking. Mentoring essential.

·         In a group of nine mentors, had seven different systems. New school experience, new system...

·         Think the need to spend a bit of quality time talking together in locality could be seen as de facto CPD. Guided self-help groups?
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I would like to see exemplar portfolios, locality and national, discussed with expert guidance, to share the thinking of an experienced colleague as they unpick the positive elements and learning needs being shown. This was a part of the original National Curriculum. Exemplar booklets, drawn from a wider area than our locality, showed what was being achieved elsewhere. This knowledge added to our local challenges.

Mentors need the confidence to be able to demonstrate what an acceptable standard of outcome is and what would be an aspirational outcome, so that the trainee had insights that supported learner journeys. In some ways, despite the availability of easy linking, through the internet, many schools are, like in 1987, little islands, which would be fine if they achieve highly, but could be disastrous for the children and their teachers if they do not have an idea of how high they could aspire; consider the needs of geographically disadvantaged schools.

The journey;
·         the thinking processes in response to challenges; the development of a toolkit of ideas and words, within a knowledge rich environment; the ability and time to draft and alter ideas, forever seeking self-improvement through guidance and coaching dialogue; making the learner at least part-owner of their journey,
·         takes time, reflection, high quality interaction and guidance, occasional detours for enhancement, but is always under the watchful eye of the teacher, who acts as overseer, quality control, guide and counsellor,
·         building up progressive baselines of quality against which the next outcome can be compared.  
In the “old days”, it was common practice, before levels, just to flick back in a child’s book to compare their current work with a previous piece. This was a simple mechanism to show them their own progress or that their output had declined.

From 1987, level descriptors and the National Writing Project approaches came together in a simple use of an exercise book, as many of you will have seen, but which might be of interest to new readers (see links below). It also gave rise to the use of one book for all writing, in whatever subject, to maintain a focus on the writing, for example, writing a science report, a trip account, how to play a sport, how a piece of art/DT was created, were all seen as report writing, so became the main focus for that week. Storyboarding and scaffolding aided first drafts, with interaction between drafts. Writing went across all subjects. Flip out sheets became prompts for in-lesson dialogue and evaluation. they were also a focus for detailed marking.

It wasn’t at all a bad approach. The outcomes in the last SATs of my headship gave us 90% level 4 and above writing scores. In a class of thirty, one child (3.3%) had come from Zimbabwe with limited English in year 6, but got a level 3a, with the other two achieving the same.

For children at that time, 2005, transition to Secondary was positive, as they enjoyed their learning and had some credit for their achievement, so did not have the stigma that can be attached to the current nomenclature “not at Age Related Expectation”. Implied failure, at any age, will be demotivating. On a long journey, you need encouragement to keep going, not a message to say that you’re not doing well enough.  

Children need a language that allows them to clearly understand where they are in their journey, what they need to do next, and, more importantly, how they can achieve this; a stepped explanation and exemplification that is easy to access and use.

Teaching today can sometimes appear too full of jargon, to the detriment of learner progress. We need assessment language in child terms. If there’s a need to interpret this to data speak, that is a teacher level role.
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After all, it’s all based on assessment; refined/agreed judgements, leading to quality challenge in tasks, not small scale busy work...

Remember 24652=refinement.

​I was surprised, this week, when a post that I wrote last year passed by my Twitter timeline. In this, I looked at the impact of successive education secretaries over my career and how during the past forty years, education has become a central theme in politics. This could be because successive Governments have hived off other direct responsibilities leaving the rump of public service roles.

It is a truism that children are largely born into the world in the same ways as they always have, apart from medical interventions that are now available where they weren’t previously. They grow through whatever experiences their families offer then they enter school. They show variability at that stage, which might be an indicator of learning issues or perhaps of limited pre-school experience and interactions.

From entry, the teacher and other adults, through interacting with the children, begin to make judgements and fine tune their interactions to elicit detailed information. This may require a form of interpretation, unpicking the concept being experienced and tracking back in language forms, supported by manipulable resources or modelling, to a point where the child is able to engage at their personal level of understanding.

Where a child is in EYFS, the detail in records kept during that phase can be used to interrogate the possibility of the child having Special Educational Needs.

Tracking back and tracking forwards is a descriptor of a teacher life, in language and conceptual terms. We are continually told that “learning is not linear”, yet planning for teaching and learning is, with the examined implication of linear accommodation of each new element of learning. The year cohort approach to the National Curriculum assumes that each cohort should move as one, in a linear fashion, apart from the judgements that a child is, or isn’t at Age Related Expectation. If they aren’t, they will take forward a deficit, which has to be bridged, if they are to have any hope of keeping up with peers over time.

Therefore, in any classroom, at any one time, there will be a range of capabilities and understandings, even in a set or stream.

Inclusion was an item on the radio this morning, in the context of SEND. When the word was introduced, I was keen that the term should not just be used in this regard, but in a broader definition, which I framed as; an inclusive school is one that does it’s best, within the school capacity, to offer a quality education to each child, ensuring that any difficulty is identified, addressed and tracked, with clear evaluation underpinning decisions, including the use of external expertise. Where a school has utilised every available course of action, consideration should be given to alternative placement, where additional expertise or resources are available.

Labels and levels regularly flit by, as an addendum. If a child has a need, is that a label, or a descriptor? Levels, in the original National Curriculum, were clearly available as descriptors, and, where they were adopted as such, offered a language for discussion children’s learning. I blame the data bods for usurping the numbers of levels to supposedly predict progress, where, in reality, progress is effected in each classroom, a bit at a time, by a well-informed teacher with the skills and abilities to interact with the learning needs of each child, where this is evident. 

Progress is an interaction between the process of learning, including the quality of the teacher input of information into the lesson, and the outcomes from the child assimilating this information and being able to utilise it to fulfil a challenge, at whatever level is appropriate to the child. A post-activity evaluation can determine the next appropriate steps and the focus for the child.

This week, I have been making my last visit to School Direct trainees, and, in a couple of weeks’ time will host an interim meeting for Winchester University Post Grad mentors to review their progress to date. The essence of all the discussions can be refined to a few of the Teacher Standards; 2, 6&5, progress and outcomes, assessment and adaptation.

These, particularly standard 2, are critical to all decisions that affect learning in classrooms. If a teacher doesn’t know what “quality” outcomes look like for their year group, their underlying decisions may be faulty. This has implication for context expectation, so inter-school moderation is a key factor. With a young teaching force, breadth of experience may become a self-limiting factor. We are approaching the latter part of one year and schools are looking to the next, with decisions being made about teacher placement. PG and SD trainees may well be teaching year groups other than those in which they trained, and many will be in different school contexts, with structural differences to accommodate, as well as the different needs of children.

Quality awareness is a precursor to any form of quality control. This has to be a school-level discussion, so that every teacher is made regularly aware of potential expectations. Is it any wonder that many begin to struggle in their first years? It was a problem with sub-levels; what was the difference between a 4b and 4a?

Progress and outcomes are still subjects for debate among experienced teachers. Is it any wonder that trainees find this area fraught with possible issues? But, essentially, it is the single area that has the greatest impact across every decision, as per this diagram.

As the picture at the top of the blog says, we need these young teacher and their colleagues, to be the lead thinkers in their classrooms, to be capable of interpreting the needs of learners and to have the ability to adapt to these needs. They need to be aware; spotting and dealing with need at different levels, recording and tracking their concerns and their discussions with experienced peers, helping to make decisions about where a child’s learning journey will develop.

Interpretation takes time. Many of us, in using another language, make elementary errors, but, with practice, this becomes more refined and appropriate to need. Developing teachers need to be able to speak fluent “child-speak”, modelling and making appropriate links to “adult-speak” for those who struggle
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So, if I was a Primary head today, what would I want to be doing?

• Create an inspiring range of challenging topic and project areas that would embed the necessary knowledge to be used in other scenarios. These would have time allocations, not necessarily to fill a half term, so that Science, History, Geography and Technology all had a secure place.
• Ensuring that each element was appropriately resourced so that it could happen and be of quality.
• Link the English and Maths curriculum in such a way that each could make use of the current and recent past topics, so that one fed the other, with opportunities to use and apply earlier skills and knowledge.
• Ensure that art, drama and music were deployed as interpretative subjects of worth and each capable of supporting the English and Maths curriculum.
• MFL, music and aspects of PE can be used to support the PPA needs of the school, by judicious use of specialists.
• Ask for teacher medium term plans, to see the direction of travel. Short term plans are for the teacher in the classroom, so can take any form that suits.
• I’d want children to know the focus for their personal efforts at any particular time.
• Create portfolios of moderated in-house examples that could support decision making in the school, be used to moderate against other school outcomes to validate judgements.
• I would have some kind of measure of capability, to support and focus decision making ability, especially of early career teachers. Every area of life is governed by a measure of capability in some form, from the kick around in the playground to academic and work achievement. “Can do” statements are a guide.

It is a consequence of the fact that there is no one size fits all approach to education that, at the tail end of a forty-plus year career, no-one has created a system that completely “works” for children from 4-18. The variables will always be the children and life itself. The shifts in the world impact on the learners, but the needs are the same; to understand the world we live in and have the skills to interrogate and explore it and communicate effectively.

Learners need interested adults to help them to interpret what they are experiencing, to give them the conceptual vocabulary that enables them to more fully participate in ongoing discussions which can allow further progress.
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Linked blogs
When Blunkett trumped education. http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/when-blunkett-trumped-education
Are you an inclusive school? (pdf download; checklists) http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/pdfs.html
Levelness and yearness. http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/revisiting-if-level-ness-became-year-ness
Quality= a work in progress (and outcomes). http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/quality-a-work-in-progress

It is probably true that there is a difference between teaching four year olds, or younger, in Early Years settings and catering for the needs of year 11 or 13.

At the early stage, experiences that embed the notion of the colour blue, or the number 6 might include activities that are exploratory, or perhaps expressive; match the shapes in the picture and count them, put all the blue objects in this circle. An observing adult will be looking for the security of understanding of these relatively simple concepts, to be able to move to the next challenge; green or 7-ness.
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For a year 11 or 13, the colour choices of a Marc Chagall or Van Gogh painting might be the subject of a more philosophical discussion, linking different elements of their lives through their choice of colour.
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Young children are at such an early stage in learning that they have to learn how to learn; to focus, to become organised, to share with others, to listen to a speaker. These skills are not necessarily easy or natural for some. They do not all hear the same, nor have the internalise experiences that allow each to fully participate in the process(ing) of the ideas being shared. Differences in processing could be seen as a determining factor in school success; those children who seem to learn quickly and easily, become “fluent” learners; their journey through learning is unhindered. Physical difference, such as hearing and sight can have a significant detrimental impact before it really comes to the attention of adults. The resultant delay might then be addressed.

Reflecting on my Primary classroom career, there was a mix of sharing necessary information, followed by tailored tasks that enabled children to bring to the fore those things that had been learned and to revise those things that could be identified as less secure. The tasking, in itself, was a form of test, in that knowledge had to be used and applied, or identified, by the adult or learners as in need of revisiting. The practical situation enabled links to be made that demonstrated the point of the earlier, formal learning.
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As children get older and, hopefully, more mature in their approach to learning, it is easy to assume that they can concentrate for longer, can retain more information and are processing the information to be able to retain it. That testing can then show a lack of security might be down to a lack of linking activities, to enable the child(ren) to process the new against what they already know. Guided reflection, at any age, can scaffold information appropriately, with models developed that highlight those links. I do like sketch notes in this regard, with children developing their own personal methodologies, rather than just secretarial note taking. “Showing your thinking” is a very useful stage in securing learning, especially if it is then the subject of reflection and revision.
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I know I came upstairs for some reason. I can at least now claim “senior moments”.

My problem, at the moment, is that there are usually several things competing in my head for the available space, which is the lot of the freelance. For that reason, I have lists and post-its to try to keep track of the different strands. Even then, something can be missed, especially if something grabs the attention and takes over the time available. Occasionally, it’s a product of reading something on or through Twitter. These items can be tangential, but sometimes then coalesce within a variety of experiences. This time it was Nancy Gedge's article in the TES on working memory.

Life requires us to remember things. Orientating ourselves, organising our personal spaces to be able to sort, find and return items, ensuring that those necessary things are done. Many of these are held as memories, such as how to get from the house to somewhere else, while others might need a list, especially when specific items are needed from shopping. There’s little worse than getting home and finding something really important has been overlooked. Yes there is. It’s when the shopping is for someone else, especially when preparing for a special event!

As much of my working life is visiting schools to supervise trainee teachers, I have to have an ordered diary, ensure that the trainees and schools are aware of my visit and then make sure I read my diary to be in the right place at the right time. Constant rejigging of times to suit unexpected situations can put pressure on even the most organised of systems, but adaptability is essential, in life and in work.

Watching and discussing with trainee teachers is a privilege. With this being the whole of their development year, to see them move from insecure to very able is more than encouraging. From time to time they forget to do something that is written on their plan. This can be a conscious decision, based on their understanding of the learners’ needs, but it can also be an oversight. A simple piece of advice to highlight those bits of their plan that they must not forget to do or say can often be enough. Some carry a post-it in the palm of their hand. Others will develop a series of PowerPoint slides with key questions to open up like a book.

Overt modelling, where diagrams are developed from manipulatives, that then are available throughout the lesson as memory reference points can be key to supporting children with memory issues.

Success criteria for that specific activity, based on the idea of “What a Good One Looks Like”, or WAGOLL, can become a scaffold for self-checking; have you done these things? This is a task level set of expectations that provides the context for personal needs.

The need of the teacher and the children to hold onto their development needs, in Primary across a range of subjects, can be challenging. Thirty children and ten plus subjects can mean several hundred development needs or “targets”. It’s the same for Secondary. It was to support this need, to enable teacher and learners to be prompted to a specific focus, that the “exercise books as personal organisers” approach was developed in my school. Essentially these are flaps to note the continuing need. Opened out when working, the supporting adults can interact with individuals to a fine-focus need, which they might otherwise ignore in the broader need. Neither the teacher, nor the child has to hold the information in their heads.

If all Primary writing is done in a single book, a clear writing focus is maintained throughout. The process can be supported by note making, lists, recipes, etc, which can become the basis for a first draft piece of writing. Exploring the process of writing holistically enables thought processes to be developed.

For reading, an “advisory bookmark” can be created, to remind the children and any adult engaging with their reading of areas to consider while or after reading.

Providing prompts is an important part of development. Intervention in-lesson to ensure a child remains on track can enable a quality benchmark to be achieved, against which future outcomes can be compared.

Showing progress can be challenging. “Progressive benchmarking” can be a very simple means of doing this. As a class teacher, pre-NC, I would ask children, every couple of weeks to look back to their previous work and to seek to do “better” in some specific way. The NC level descriptors, appended to the edge of their books and working within the National Writing Project approaches, meant that “progressive marking” through conversation allowed me to agree that they had demonstrated an area and to append their next development goal. It showed tracking of development, the advice given and the progress made.

Personally, I’d far rather develop schema that support memory, short and longer term, than to continually feel harassed that I had forgotten something.

Teachers are under considerable pressure to show that their children are achieving at the highest possible level. Looking at the underpinning schema can be the route to stripping out unnecessary elements.

Organisation is in school and teacher hands.

I wonder how you try to keep track of these needs.

Linked blogs (click to read)
Nancy Gedge TES article
Exercise books as personal organisers
Primary writing in a single book
Advisory bookmark
National Writing Project
Organisation
1)      Planning for learning over time
2)      School organisation of time

People are ingenious when it comes to overcoming the need to get across the barriers that a water course creates. It is rare that someone wanting to get across would want to spend an inordinate amount of time throwing rocks and debris into the water in order to step across. In fact, this might be inefficient, as the water would keep rising on one side of the barrier.
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Paleolithic peoples would make stepping stones, by depositing stones large enough to poke through the water and allow steps to be taken in some safety. In some places, these stepping stones also had a flat top stone, to make a simple bridge. The bridge allowed regular and easy access from one side to another, supported on the simple pillars.
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There is a current education mantra, “Bridging the Gap”, which appears to have morphed into “Diminishing the Difference”. I think some highly paid whizz-kid sits somewhere and comes up with these statements, without thinking through the impact on learners, or having to implement the outcomes.

Some children run faster, jump higher, sing better, find maths easier, read and write better than others. That is one of life’s realities with which even young children can engage. At the end of each school year, children achieve across a spectrum of achievement, in different area of the curriculum. Where an artificial barrier is erected, let’s call it Age Related Expectation, or ARE for short, this will mean that a proportion of the children will fall below the level and some will achieve above another artificial level that says they are higher than expected.

The problem is that those who don’t achieve will be seen as having a residual gap in their learning from that year, which suggests a need to fill in the missing elements. This could either be done by throwing everything again into the gap, to try to fill the space, but, as with water, tensions might rise and the good intentions might actually exacerbate the problem. Bridging the gap might start with establishing the security of the foundations and then seeking a means to bridge without having to put in too many interstitial pillars to give temporary support. Regular check questions or conversations are necessary.

It is a situation where the ability to analyse or assess minute by minute outcomes and to reflect and react to the evident need is a key aspect. However, this is often a role given to a classroom assistant. Unless this person is well trained and well-versed in this role, there is no guarantee that the vulnerable child will make the necessary progress, yet the reality is that these children have to run to catch up, to stay near their peers.

Where a significant proportion of the education dialogue can veer towards the traditional whole class approach across Primary as well as Secondary, a narrow lesson focus can have the impact of leaving a proportion adrift, unless rapid in-lesson intervention occurs.

That some argue against mixed ability groups, or grouping per se, can appear perverse, as any group of children is mixed ability. Children, especially younger learners, can share ideas within a task, with the aim of finding a mutual solution. That one child might contribute slightly more than another in a group is akin to some achieving higher in any other lesson. It all becomes a moot point after a while.

 The single most important factor in my experience is the quality of the challenge, requiring thought that proceeds towards finding a solution to the initial problem. Poorly designed tasks can become self-limiting.

In my last blog, I looked specifically at SEND issues. If issues are not addressed, vulnerable children might be left to flounder each year with the inevitable consequence of being labelled, not at ARE; shorthand “fail”. Unless the teacher can demonstrate that this is despite their best, recorded efforts, with quality teaching and intervention to need, it is possible to argue that the child may have been let down by the system.

An art exhibition is not something that suits everyone’s taste. Bobbie Bale is not a photo-representative kind of artist. She is immersive, interpretative, inventive and in touch with her inner feelings; this past few years she has been dealing with bereavement and working out her feelings in her art. It is technically of exceptional quality, her work is in a number of national collections, but can be challenging. Seeing her being challenged by someone with more traditional tastes, reminded me of Twitter spats, between “progs and trads”. That is made uncomfortable viewing for a number of other visitors, including the man’s wife, showed that the method of presenting the argument was critical, especially when the visitor chose some remarks that could be seen as personal. During the course of the day, the majority of visitors were somewhat awestruck by the works, even if they wouldn’t have the pictures on their walls. They could relate to the underlying feelings that had been captured in the images. Bobbie had found a way to communicate to them. For this one visitor, she may have needed a little more time to talk the process and the emergent outcome.
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The SEND Built-in not bolt-on conference was a chance to engage with some of the leading minds in SEND; not all, but it was a privilege to be party to a wide range of presentations and discussions. It was developed to share the thinking that had emerged from the earlier Government discussion groups about the need for SEND to be a greater part of Initial Teacher Education.

We had the “Every teacher is a teacher of SEND” statement, from Stephen Munday. I am waiting for a revision that says, “Every teacher is a teacher of children, some of whom have known difficulties, for which plans can be made initially, some of whom have issues, as yet to be identified, which may show short or long term needs, but which need to be identified and addressed within the capacity of, first, the teacher, and second within the school capacity, eventually, and in more difficult cases, involving external expertise.”

Equally, from Anita Devi, presenting on behalf of NASBTT, The National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers SEND toolkit, we had the SEND approach of assess, plan, do, review. Now, in seeking to take this for SEND, the process can ignore the fact that this approach underpins all teaching and learning, and, if it is seen as embedded in overall T&L, can be restated as refining assessment from interrogation, discussion and trying different approaches, which can be seen as the graduated approach. That a child has an observable need obliges the teacher to spot and deal with the need within their current skill base, referring to experienced colleagues as needed.
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Inclusion by Nancy Gedge

I read this book with great interest, as a large part of my life over ten of the past twelve years has been spent working with schools seeking to improve their approach to ensuring they had a secure inclusive ethos, starting with supported self-assessment.

There is a truism in education that you will always think that you will never know enough, and as a result, the relentless searching for self-development becomes the hallmark of a very good teacher. A good teacher is a life-long learner, prepared to look at themselves to determine where they need to address professional or personal needs.

Nancy’s book is written with the 2014 SEND changes in mind. The book is a very good resume of the need for a teacher to see themselves as responsible for the progress of each child in their class, making best use of the available resources, to the best of their ability. It offers much food for thought in this regard, with regular points that suggest specific elements to ponder. It would certainly support a teacher seeking to develop their practice.

The first chapter looks at the inclusive teacher and this is probably the most significant element, as, especially in mainstream Primary, the class teacher is the adult who will have the greatest impact on a child’s life for ten months. Being a teacher is a complex activity, ranging across a wide range of knowledge domains and skills.

The mind-set of this person determines every learning aspect of the year. If the child is not sufficiently challenged, they may not make an appropriate level of progress. The experience level of this person will determine their capacity to understand the child’s need and to be able to set expectations appropriately. Mentoring by an experienced colleague will be needed.

Where I work with ITE trainees, this can be summed up with the teacher standards 2,4,6,5,2 (see blog); an understanding of what progress means, leading to effective planning, engagement and interaction with learners in-lesson and adjustment to evident need, establishing a new baseline for subsequent challenge.

Other chapters look at the specifics of the 2014 SEND Code of Practice and what it means in detail for a class teacher, the removal of barriers to specific needs, behaviour management and the specifics of certain special needs, relationships including with parents and teaching assistants, concluding with a jargon buster.

This is a wide ranging book, covering areas of teaching and learning alongside the needs of children with Special Educational Needs. It will be if use to early career trainees and NQTs, but would also provide a basis for self-reflecting within a school.

As well as encouraging people reading this book, I’d offer my own thoughts, looking at some broader aspects of an inclusive approach in detail, from visits to some 100 schools, which can be downloaded as a pdf, but also a pdf on SEN(D) which includes a crib sheet of areas (see below) that might be worthy of note and record when a child is causing some concern.

I have to say that, over the past twelve years, the Inclusion agenda moved from integrating SEND children into school to become a more holistic ethos that sought to ensure all children were included appropriately. This move was to counter earlier philosophies that could be captured in the question “Does your school have the capacity to take this child?” which was effectively asked within a SEN Statement development before a school was named. It was up to the school to say yes or no; a form of initial exclusion. Professional capacity in specific areas may still be a determining issue, and combined with the diminishing of Local Authority staffing may well run counter to the needs of individual children. That this is often the case is regularly documented in social media.

That you haven’t an easy answer to a child’s needs can be the case where a special need is suspected. Before the term SEN(D) was coined, teachers spoke of Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD), describing needs in as much detail as possible, in order to support dialogue with external expert staff. The principle hasn’t changed, even if the title has.

As a rule of thumb, I’d encourage teachers to spot, record, think and talk about a child displaying anomalous behaviours or responses in a learning situation. Not all children come with a ready-made SEN(D) label identifying their needs. It will certainly make you think and can often be very challenging.

​Clarity is essential to good decision-making.

​Inclusion, at heart, is just doing your job, well.
 

Taking earlier time away meant that we were home for the school holiday. It took a few days to be aware of what appeared to be a campaign of blogging that daily sought to polarise and caricature one supposed extreme of the education spectrum, as a general free for all, while the other extreme was caricatured as exceedingly ordered. This extended on one day to the place of play in the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum.

Sledgehammers to crack nuts?

It got a little tedious, as the methodology being deployed copied one that was visible during my training between 71 and 74, through the pamphleteer group, “The Black Papers Group”.
(Click for LINK)

The technique is simple. One member writes and publishes a pamphlet, or blog, others then write in agreement, following this up with their own pamphlets (blogs) which cite the original pamphlet. Despite this, often being nothing more than a recycling of opinion, by appearing regularly and then being quoted in the newspapers or in political speeches, it becomes something of a “truth”. In many ways the Brexit campaign on 2016 was a mirror image of distorted half-truths being repeated endlessly and is already visible in the first days after an election has been called.

That it sways opinion is evident.

It is sad that it devalues discussion, especially when one side seeks to state what the other side stands for in ways that are nothing more than caricatures.

For the 32 years of my school based career, I worked across a wide spectrum of schools, starting in secondary, then a succession of through primaries, or separate junior and first/infant schools, covering the 4-16 age range. Looking back, 24 years were spent in open-plan or semi-open plan schools; eight as a class teacher, 16 as a head (teaching). These were very successful years, both as a teacher and as a head.

​Underpinning success was considerable organisation, impacting on the classroom and the whole school. This was supported by good communication, across all categories of staff. There was a singular ethos, well understood by staff, children and parents. Success could be argued from SATs results, but also from continuous reports from receiving schools and parents of children’s pursuance of further success.

By mentioning open-plan organisation, some readers will have immediately surmised that it had something of the Summerhill or William Tyndale about it. Visitors were very surprised at how quiet the school was, even with children actively engaged on tasks. 240 children can make little noise. The order and organisation was remarked upon and disseminated across the local area.

Teachers, and I include myself in this, did a lot of DI, direct instruction, or “invited” celebrity voices to do so, through the IWB. For example if David Attenborough had an appropriate series on the TV, this might be used to offer image insights and specialist vocabulary. Other subjects had similar supportive resources, selected by the school subject managers, in conjunction with the County inspectorate. Images and artefacts were regular features of teaching, as were visits to special places, such as museums and galleries, or off-site environments.

Talk was valued highly. This may the point where a purist might wish to part company, but I’d be surprised, as dialogue, reportage, questioning at different levels, feedback and guidance have always been a part of a good teaching repertoire.

Teaching is, at heart, getting ideas across to an audience that we organise into a class. The narrative has to be ordered, organised and presented in an appropriate vocabulary/register, making links with earlier experience to strengthen understanding. It may require a variety of models to be drawn, or exemplified through concrete apparatus, to ensure deeper understanding. We have a habit, in this country, of withdrawing concrete apparatus too early, when it should be kept available to support deeper conceptualisation, eg Dienes blocks to show decimal values.

A high quality teacher will be scanning the class for tell-tale signs that there may be some confusion, as the learning bit may not be visible apart from externalisation in some form. That Dylan Wiliam now calls this reflective-reactive teaching, not just AfL, to me, is important, as the reflective part might include clarification questions to individuals, with some requiring additional in-lesson intervention or adaptation.

Learning may be more difficult to define, as it is invisible as a process and reliant on outward signs, such as verbal or physical outcomes. Some now call these "proxies".

Tasking, beyond the information sharing, should be appropriately challenging, across all abilities. Different challenges for different needs have been staples of my thinking since 1971. Children can be solution finders from an early age using “learned” skills and knowledge; they respond to challenge, can learn to order and organise themselves, with different levels of independence, as long as classrooms are ordered and organised with appropriate resources. They can also articulate when they are “stuck” and need support or guidance.

By providing challenge, then unpicking the various processes that led to success provides insights to all learners about how to think through to solutions. That, to me, is the means to “challenging up”, not just having a mantra of “high standards”. It’s a case of know-how with show-how.

The idea of thinking about thinking has been a part of my practice since the 70s. Now given the name metacognition, it has always been important, to me, that children should be active processers, not just passive receivers of information. That can only really be achieved with children as active participants in their learning journeys. That you can’t see learning is another truism, but you can see the outward displays that indicate that activity is being pursued, which might require closer scrutiny to see the detail. This is one reason why I think in-lesson interactions are so important, to provide the basis for ongoing teacher reflection about next steps.

My slightly tongue in cheek assessment guide, “get it, got it, good”, explored the need for interaction and decision making. If a group “got it” and others didn’t, then the next lesson might start with different demands for the two groups, with a checking task for some, while review teaching might be appropriate for the others.

I want teachers to have the right to choose the best approach for any particular situation, based on their (rapid) rationalisation of the needs. That, to me, should be the basis of every decision in every classroom.

As a head, if a teacher could tell me the reason why a particular approach was happening, that was fine. Why be dogmatic? It’s very illuminating when the rationale is weak, such as, “It won’t hurt them to go over this again…”

A quick anecdote.

The topic for a period of time was sports, as it was an Olympic year.

During one week, I decided to use the long, wide corridor near my classroom to set a challenge. On day one, the group of eight seven year olds whom I thought had the greatest independence were challenged to create (design and make) a crazy golf hole, using materials available within the classroom. They had the morning as their working time. TAs had not yet been invented; this was an independent task.

In the first fifteen minutes, they collected a range of items which might be useful. This was followed with a group discussion around a large piece of sugar paper, with ideas drawn and discussed. The build process started from the agreed plan, but soon adjustments were made, deigned to be improvements. After an hour, they had their golf hole.
A period of measuring and drawing secured the design for posterity and allowed later consideration of scale, as drawings were tidied onto squared paper. Photographs were taken for reference.

The main task was the use of the hole to see how many shots and how long it took for different class members to complete. This tally and timing data was later collated into charts. The group explained before starting what needed to happen to each class member, so everything was “fair”.

Before lunchtime, the group sat together to reflect on what had been achieved, both in terms of measureable outcomes, but also in terms of their personal development. The maturity levels of all were enhanced, as they saw the purposes of the different aspects of learning and set the tone for subsequent groups to follow.

Follow up included instruction writing, developed into reports, scale drawings for the more able, but sketch maps with measurements for all. The quality of discussion was very high, as children had had a shared experience.

During day three of this experience, the school was visited by the chief County Inspector and the new school Attached Inspector, as “they were passing”. The golf course was in full spate and prompted discussion. I was able to point out the wide range of skills and learning embedded in the activity, which was part of a longer term project. This was accepted.

I’d go back to my earlier point. All good teaching is based on order and organisation.

The use of flexibilities within each lesson is likely to be down to teacher awareness, experience and expertise in any particular subject. If all the children can only go at the pace of the teacher, the teacher can be the cause of many not learning, slowing the whole. Letting go can allow some children to make learning steps that can be used as exemplars for others; the whole becomes greater than the parts.
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And this is likely to be the significant point of difference.

It can appear, almost daily, that experienced teachers, on social media, bemoan some aspect of Initial Teacher Training. This can be behaviour management, planning, subject knowledge, working with parents, progress and outcomes or assessment.

Recently there has been some discussion on SEND; special educational needs and disabilities. It is almost as if a trainee teacher has to emerge from their period of training fully equipped for every eventuality that they will encounter, at least in their early career. It is important to view ITE as just that, an initial period of training. This has to be continued through a teacher’s career, with independent self-developing behaviours supported by schools.

From the list above, apart from certain elements of working with parents and generic national Curriculum directed subject knowledge, there is every likelihood that other aspects will be different in systematic terms in every school. The variability of the training context is likely to result in very different experiences for trainees.

It is the fact that every school is subtly, or sometimes significantly, different that has caused me to reflect on the role of the school and the professional mentor as a major factor in a trainee’s success or otherwise.

Today’s mentor is more likely to be an in-house tutor than just an experienced teacher with the skills to model good practice to an observer, but selected by the head as “their turn” to have a student. Most ITE providers offer training to mentors, including to Masters’ level. They need to be able to coach the trainee in every aspect of development as a professional teacher, ensuring that every one of the teacher standards is embedded into the teacher-to-be in a form that enables them to reflect and refine their practice in ways that benefit the children.

Where trainees struggle, it is usually because the mentor, often a member of SLT, or with specific responsibilities in a school, is pulled to other roles during a school experience, so that the trainee receives too little modelling of practice, support and guidance as well as challenge and reflective dialogue. While it is a truism, regularly expressed by trainees, that they valued the time when the mentor left the room, the need for in-lesson and post-lesson coaching discussions cannot be over-stressed.

There is also the question of the general context. Schools volunteer to take trainees and, as long as they have no significant weaknesses, universities often then place a trainee. From time to time, this does not work, so a trainee is moved. 

The school SENCo may, or may not, not be experienced, and have undergone SENCo training, so that the internal systems may not always be sufficiently mature to allow the trainee to anticipate significant support.

From the training provider, the ITE trainee receives a variation on the following thinking toolkit as a starting point.

1)      An understanding of child development across the subject range and abilities within the school setting; Primary age 4-11. This is the bedrock of all decisions, impacting on all classroom practices. This is summarised in two blogs.
24652 revisited
Build a Teacher; Structuralist to holistic

Teacher standard 2; progress and outcomes. Standard 4; planning. Standard 6; assessment. Standard 5; adaptation to evident need. The developmental continuum 24652 may well show up anomalies from specific children. These are the points for analysis and further refinement of challenge supporting investigation.

It is an area where significant collaborative work would be beneficial to teachers at every stage in their development. A very good understanding of the potential range of capabilities and an ability to frame expectations of the children in a specific year group or class is central to offering challenge and the potential for progress.

2)      An understanding of approaches to behaviour management and an ability to accommodate to the contextual demands of that school’s specific approach.
Behaviour management and ITE

3)      Understanding the SEND regulations, as per the 2014 framework.
The 2014 SEN framework

4)      An understanding that some children in any classroom will display individual needs that are outside the general range of class needs, or perhaps specific to a subject or context.
Individual needs
Individual needs; fine tuning

5)      They need to understand the need to keep careful records that may ultimately build into a case study that will add value to an application for additional support.
SEN Radio?
SEND Building an individual case study.

6)      And all this within a team ethic that starts with teacher, parent and child, extends to the broader school expertise, then supplemented with external expertise. Understanding a graduated approach.
SEND Tic-Tac-Toe

7)      Having a set of descriptors of learning and social behaviours and outcomes that might, over time suggest a pattern of need that can ultimately be categorised by an external expert, following the creation of a case study.
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The school offers the real life opportunity to put this background thinking into practice. Trainee inexperience can mean an extended period of getting to know the nuances of the school system, which can be compromised by lack of shared time with an experienced mentor, or SENCo. The structural elements have to be considered within the whole. Systems understanding is an essential precursor to more holistic elements.

As an experienced Link Tutor, I am always concerned, after a couple of weeks of the school experience to unpick how well the trainee knows the children, as a class and as individuals. A level of security suggests that the practice will progress positively, as the trainee is beginning to show holistic thinking. Those still seeking to put the structures together cause more concern.

Colleagues at Winchester University have developed a ten week module for SEND that is a significant part of year 3 of the undergraduate course. This covers the above and also specifics of different identified needs. This module occurs directly before the final school experience, during which the trainee has to create a case study of one child chose with the support of the mentor and SENCo.

Learning needs are explored and described using a variety of criteria; social backgrounds unpicked with staff (teacher, SENCo, ELSA-emotional literacy support assistant) and parents through interview; discussions with children, where appropriate, underpin descriptors. Trainees have to seek to understand the needs of one child in detail. At the same time, they need to be acutely aware of the range of other needs in the class. This is particularly the case when trainees choose to do their final school experience in a special school environment.

Issues will always arise and can happen to anyone: -

Teacher standards 8, 7&1

Poor understanding of systems; schools are rapidly becoming single entities. Transfer between schools or changing year group within a school can cause concern. Dialogue and mentoring may be needed in self-organisation based on school systems, or sharing of information between colleagues, to enable deeper understanding of a child’s personal needs.
Class behaviour; understanding the school system, interpreting it into the practice of the class, ensuring that it is followed efficiently, and followed through where this is necessary. Involving senior colleagues as needed. Running a good classroom is key to every aspect of learner success.
Professional Relationships; getting on with colleagues, at all levels, is sometimes taken for granted. It’s easy to take this to an extreme and cause a tension, which can easily become exaggerated. Sometimes needs a quiet word, or, in severe situations, SLT intervention. Parent relations is a skill that is refined through experience, but there can occasionally be parents whose approach can be more challenging. Understanding is a key element of professionalism.  

Teacher standards 3 & 4

Being ordered and organised would seem to be needed as second nature in teachers, but cannot be taken for granted. Planning over different time-scales, resourcing appropriately, deploying available staff to predetermined need, are fundamental.
Subject knowledge appropriate to the needs of age and ability range of the children can be a variable, especially in Primary education, where the individual interest and expertise may vary considerably, but needs to be addressed.

Teacher standard 6&5

Responsive, analytical skill and the ability to adapt to evident need can be some of the last skills to be refined. It may well be evident between lessons, based on the relatively simple view of “They got it, or not; what’s next?” It is the in-lesson interactions, coaching, guidance and timely feedback, with, for some children a tweak down or up in the challenge to enable them to underscore some or additional progress.

Teacher standard 2
Progress and outcomes may be the last on this list, but it is the spine of every decision that a teacher makes. Going back to the 24652 dynamic, standard 2 is likely to encompass the teacher expectations, which, in turn, drives challenge, interaction and then expected outcome.

Getting teaching and learning right is a multi-layered and multifaceted reflective process. It is dynamic and ever-changing, permanently challenging.
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Trainees need to start this process in training, then keep reflecting, with colleague dialogue and support, to refine their thinking, organisation and professional decision-making.