“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.
​

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.

This week, I have been able to have a number of conversations that have drawn on my teaching career and life experience in general. One of these was in the context of special educational needs and “inclusion”. The term inclusion rightly became a significant part of political and social life within the past twenty years, but I have always wondered if the label itself, defined as a state of being included, implies an “outsider” who has to be incorporated into a group, which in turn has to adapt to the new person; “Please can I be included?” It reminds me of playground games; who’s chosen first and who’s left until last?

That people are different is easily understood.

The differences can, at times, be exaggerated at the expense of similarities, to the point where accommodation is deemed impossible. This, in education terms, can amount to a form of exclusion; you don’t fit us, we can’t cope with difficulties like those.

However, finding the right educational setting for defined needs is key to success.

 My career has shown me that capacity creates capacity, in that schools which find themselves able to accommodate individual needs find the capacity to adapt to the needs of all children, so making themselves desirable and valued by parents and children. Schools operating in challenging areas, taking every child who comes through the door, often because they simply have space, with a positive adult workforce, can transform children’s lives. For the first time, some have space to grow, even if, from time to time, they rail against the system. Children are little humans and have, at their age, perhaps less self-control than adults are supposed to have. They make errors of judgement.

For eight of the past ten years, until two years ago, I did substantial work with Inclusion Quality Mark. This came up in conversation this week, as a Twitter acquaintance proudly told me that her school had recently received confirmation of the award. As I had been instrumental in developing the audit in use from 2015, I was aware of the qualities that the school would have displayed, as there were significant common themes that ran through each, although there were contextual adaptations to evident need.

It made me have a look at bits that I wrote during that time, after visits to schools. The following is an extract from one summary, anonymised.

To move from Special Measures to Outstanding in three years suggests that something special happens in London Primary School. Whilst working with the same staff, the school has seen a rapid turn-around. The principle can be easily stated, as Personalisation in everything, holding to the Every Child Matters ethos, although the practical aspects are more complex to describe. London encounters virtually every identifiable barrier to learning, seeks to identify root causes and then to find solutions which allows each child to feel valued and to develop self-esteem, from which learning needs can be addressed, as children have the skills to cope when errors are made. 

Passionate, articulate, hard-working, engaged, analytical, purposeful, creative, inspirational and visionary are all adjectives that can be attributed to the London staff. It was a pleasure to spend quality time in their company.

Equally, if I could nominate a school where Inclusion is lived and breathed, it would be London. It permeates every aspect of school life, perhaps, as the Head of School commented, “With so much need, we have no choice but to use inclusive approaches”. But inclusion at London is more than that statement; it is the raison d’etre, like a stick of rock, sliced anywhere, the word Inclusive would be seen, hearts, minds, bodies and souls are dedicated to the same aims. Although the end of term was in sight, there was still and energy and vibrancy to the school which belied its Victorian building, although even that had been imaginatively used to enhance all aspects of teaching and learning, from Nursery to eleven.

I came away from this visit to London Primary with two thoughts that summarise its outlook:-

 The staff give above and beyond what one can reasonably expect of them.
 Nobody is left out, child or adult. All are valued for their unique gifts and talents.
Two quotes from a parent and a teacher add to the summary:-
“Like a big family.”
“We offer a glimmer of hope in their lives. We are here to make a difference.”
While an external view was that:-
“The school makes excellent links with the community and other schools to deliver a high quality of service to families”.

The school aims for every child to have a happy and active primary education in an environment that is caring and supporting. It provides a stimulating and structured environment in which every child will be encouraged to reach their full potential.”

Teachers, at all levels of experience, take their responsibilities very seriously, working hard to improve themselves through personal reading and regular networking, where this is easily available. Some are prepared to spend part of a weekend at conferences. They want to offer the best of themselves, so that every child receives the best that they can offer. The best teaching context is collegiate, with expertise willingly shared.

External judgements on the system, schools or individual teachers often creates a negative image; for seemingly thirty years it has often been found wanting and “in need of improvement”, to use an Ofsted judgement, while children may be judged to “not be at national standard” at SATs. Some of these children may well be told this throughout their schooling. And yet, we are, as a profession, acutely aware that labels hurt children (people), this being one of the arguments for removing levels, but we’re in a cultural period where no-one quite knows exactly what to expect of children’s outcomes, as there isn’t, as yet, a common expectation that can be articulated and demonstrated. Teacher insecurity can lead to insecure advice and guidance. We are also at a point where long serving teachers are retiring, to be replaced by younger, less experienced staff. A recent post looked at different stages of teacher development, where less experiences professionals may be more likely to be concerned with getting structures right than the details of specific needs.

Collegiality, quality mentoring and high quality communication are key to safeguarding educational opportunities for each child.

Inclusion is a personal and school wide ethos. It cannot thrive in isolated pockets, without frustration creeping in. Poor communication and inaccessibility engender parent and teacher annoyance with each other. Frustration, on either side can lead to rapidly diminishing relationships, which then have to be tackled before the needs of the children can be addressed.
​

I’ve included again, the general outcomes from multiple visits to schools to look at Inclusion (above) and also a link to a post that looks at the underlying principles of inclusive practice.
 
 
It can be a salutary experience to really take a look at yourself first.
 

Much of my working life is spent working alongside developing teachers, at different stages in their careers. In 2012, the Teacher Standards changed, from 33 statements to 8 headings. It still surprises me that, after nearly four and a half years, many teachers still cannot identify all eight standards, even though they are supposedly working within them each day.

However, in my developmental roles, they can be very interesting, as it is possible to play with permutations of the standards that exemplify what it means to become a complete teacher, especially during university or School Direct (short) experiences. There is much to be learned and this often has to be learned and adapted in the context of the school experience, which can cause tensions, with performance needs as well as personal developmental needs.

For information, the eight standards are
1)      Expectations
2)      Progress and Outcomes
3)      Subject Knowledge
4)      Planning
5)      Adaptation
6)      Assessment
7)      Behaviour management
8)      Professionalism

Plus there’s a part 2, which describes further the professional standing of a teacher within the broader community.

Behind these headings are many lines of exemplary materials. Click to link to pdf download, with a shortened version.

However, the headings are quite useful, in themselves, as supports for a narrative that seeks to describe teachers in development.

Presenter

34 – Not necessarily the ultimate age for a teacher, but this could describe, say, a wildlife expert, or similar, who knows their stuff and can put it across in a clear narrative to an audience, using age appropriate vocabulary and language structures. The chances are that children in the audience are with parents taking control of behaviours. To some extent, it also describes some television presenter approaches, as they can take for granted that their core audience is watching. If they are also looking at a mobile phone, making a cup of tea, or are in any other way distracted, it’s not their problem.

873 – A person of professional standing, who has the skills to control an allocated group, for a period of time, who can be trusted to get across some subject knowledge in an ordered manner. This could be used to describe a teaching assistant, or other adult whom a head deems appropriate to lead an activity.
They can work within any prescribed approach to behaviour, dealing with issues that arise appropriately.

Structuralist approach; a trainee still making sense of the organisational needs.

8731 – Having appropriate expectations of behaviour and learning (TS1) raises the expectations of the adult, as the conduit through which some level of progress in a subject area might be accomplished.
It is often the case that these standards are the first and easiest to be evidenced for a trainee teacher, as, by and large, they describe the personal, professional persona of the adult, who knows their subject and can organise a classroom to get information across in a coherent form over time.

It is also likely to describe a teacher confident in their professionalism and ability to get what they know across to a range of school audiences, within an overall planning approach. See the diagram above.

​The limiting factor from this point is embedded in standard 2, progress and outcomes; in other words, how well are the children known and how well does the adult understand the learning outcomes appropriate to different year groups?

Holistic approach

432-65-2 - You’d want the person described above to have a wider range of skills, to include 432, being able to organise their subject over different timescales, so that the subject requirements were built up appropriately and checked on the way, with the intention that children should embark on a journey towards an expected point, with the teacher aware of the whole journey and the significant checkpoints on the way, as well as the final destination.

It can depend on how you define children making progress (TS2) and how you determine whether they have. If the definition is coverage leading to a test for memory, it might, in inexperienced hands, preclude analysis of the needs of specific individuals (TS6), leading to further engagement with them, undertaking adapted approaches (TS5).
 
Interaction with learners, engaging with the ongoing learning and making subtle or more significant alterations to the expectations of some, responding to evidence within the classroom, TS6&5, are probably the key to ultimate teacher success, in that it is the sum total of progress of each child (TS2) in a class or cohort, that ultimately is the signal that the school is doing well be every child, whatever their needs.

Teacher standard 2 also covers the full range of needs likely to be encountered. If, for example, a teacher has experience limited to one year group, as can happen in some organisations, knowledge of achievement in years above or below enhance and extend the outcome knowledge base, enabling the teacher to make more nuanced decisions about challenge and intervention needs. Mentoring and moderation are key elements in this area, to allow the less experienced teacher to benefit from the wisdom of more experienced colleagues.

Teacher standard 2 is also the area that is currently causing concern, in looking at assessment and tracking needs for teachers. It’s the one area where experience provides the basis for personal development, in making accurate judgements about children as learners, leading to better planning, interaction and adaptation; TS 465. The bottom line question; “How well, breadth and depth, can you show that you know your children?”

It takes time, and is a stage in a progressive development, based on analytical reflection, from reading and first-hand experiences on behalf of the developing teacher. Self-development is a constituent of teacher standard 8; developing yourself into the best possible professional, as a team player and a team leader, is key to long term success in teaching.

Teaching, in many ways, is an investigative role, based on an original hypothesis that the planning is pitched at the right level, with in-lesson evidence showing the need to alter course, or to provide additional scaffolds to support individuals.

Thinking takes time and that can be a rare commodity in a busy school room. So it is incumbent on each teacher, especially trainees, to make best use of available time to think and talk about the role. It is a job where it can be difficult to switch off, too.

Many will use holidays as time to catch up on thinking. As a head, I often thought of the job as 24/7/365. Perhaps that contributes to both success and burn-out?

That’s something else to think about… Be well.
 

There’s a regular “discussion” or “debate” about how to get children learning in school. I would like to offer a thought into the discussion, as a relatively simple premise.

What are “they” being given to “do”, after the teacher has shared essential information and when they are charged with follow up tasks? Is it “do an activity”, “follow the instructions” or “think and solve a problem”?

It is, in reality down to how the learners have been tasked, how engaging and challenging it is, the thinking that is generated, the energy they expend in undertaking the task and their involvement in seeking to make it the best possible outcome, so that their pride in their achievements spills over into the next piece of work.

One local inspector once started a day of CPD with staff by introducing the idea that if you give a level 1b child a 1b task, at the end of it, the child will still be 1b. This was a prompted by the fact that the photocopier had taken hold of some staff, who were reflecting less on the challenge in a task, just seeking interesting activities, from colleagues, books or the internet and making 30 copies. Fortunately, there were other colleagues who could articulate a more tailored view of challenge to their learners.

Differentiation used to be seen as match and challenge, much more useful than “differentiation” for reflection on the task and expectation within the task, which should be based on and match current needs, but also articulate specific challenge, within which children can extend themselves as learners. “Differentiation” at worst, can mean several layers of unchallenging activity, at best embedding appropriate challenge.

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

There is much talk of Learning Objectives, Success Criteria, sometimes of WALT and WILF, and how successful, or otherwise, the approach is in supporting learning.
There is a danger that all words used in education become stale through usage. The terms above can become the stereotype of a good start to a lesson. In reality, the Learning Objective, or the WALT, is the statement of what the lesson is about, whereas the Success Criteria or WILF is a series of statements which define successful task outcomes. Beyond these, there will be personalised challenges, known to the child and the teacher. They should be use to state the theme, the challenge and what constitutes an expected outcome.

Task Setting (What’s the challenge?)

Limitations can be embedded in the activities that are given to children. Task setting is, in my mind, the determinant of progress. Real learning, at least to me, requires embedding what is known into overcoming a challenge and solving problems. Much school learning is based on activities, doing, following a set of instructions, rather than applying knowledge and skills to appropriately challenging scenarios. This “recipe” approach to teaching can be effective in the right hands, as can all approaches. However in the wrong hands it embeds a limitation, created by the task. A level x task, given to a level x learner, will produce level x learning.
Creating challenge is therefore an essential teacher skill.

Unpicking the level of challenge, the need for learners to think, to plan, to organise, to select, to determine routes and ideas rather than just follow instructions, is an important aspect.
The process of learning has to be a dynamic interplay between the learner and the context, making active links between what is already known and what is being laid before them. To that end the interplay of the formal lessons, homework and time between lessons would also appear, to me, to be critical.
How much of current homework is an unrelated activity, just because homework has to be given? What if the challenge was continuous, so that homework became pre-thinking, preparation for the lesson, or a reflection on the learning outcomes of the current one, perhaps even developing a note form that supports future revision?

Boxing everything embeds potential limitations, in inexperienced hands, but sometimes in more experienced hands, as a result of internal system. From that point of view, the diagram at the header is limited as can imply boxes rather than a dynamic. The problem of models.

Knowledge and Skills

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

The knowledge area provides the context for the learning, sometimes in discrete subject areas, sometimes in less discrete manner; the real world does not exist in subject boxes, especially for younger children. The discrete area allows specific concepts, (current) knowledge and subject specific skills to be explored and developed to hone the skills over time to provide capacity to explore for oneself, at different levels, each of which, I would argue has validity.
One does not have to reach a specific level of expertise before using what is known to explore. As a teenager, I was interested in entomology, not as an expert, but as a way to explore the natural world. It was a specific interest, but linked with GCE and A level studies, allowed deeper insights in a very specific area.

The skills of the subject provide the essential process skills, and it is this area that needs careful consideration. Evaluation of outcomes allows the reflective teacher and learner to unpick the application of knowledge within process skills to determine where any gaps occur.

Active Processing- Making Sense of Things

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

• The teacher language style, and the vocabulary being used might preclude a learner from picking up the essential information that they need to make progress. Not all learners are active listeners and even those who are can miss parts of information as they reflect on an earlier snippet of knowledge.
• Even if the message does get across there is no guarantee that the learner will have the capacity to process the knowledge, in some cases because they do not have prior experiences which allow them to link the new information to a known position. They already have a deficit, which, if undetected, embeds and deepens the deficit, by adding another layer of deficit.
• And, even if they have the capacity to take the information in and to process it, there are some learners who have difficulty in expressing what they know in ways that are acceptable as outcomes.

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

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

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

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

Is the outcome good enough?

That is for the teacher and the learner to determine. If outcomes are discussed with the learner, the learner joins the evaluative journey, with an agreed descriptor of next steps shared.
If there is a “bottom line” expectation, as there is in current Age Related Expectations, this can be explored with learners to establish the personalised route necessary to achieve it.

Plotting and monitoring are key teacher skills.

Showing progress can be challenging for an individual child. Specific support and guidance may be needed. For specific individuals the journey descriptor becomes more of a case study, with greater note made of specific interventions that put outcomes in a clearer light.

Target setting.

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

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

An alternative approach is to

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

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


Tasks (should) embed a wide range of challenges for learners, including:-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How much stretch does an elastic band have?

Using squared paper, always the same size, fold a series of rafts with different area bases and different height sides. Which design holds the greater mass?
Other ideas are embedded in subject related blogs.

We are all, or should be, life-long learners, more often without a teacher. Life offers challenges. We need to create solution finders.

Continuing my thinking about improving teaching through moderation and mentoring.

Teaching is all about people not just data. Maybe we need a system where everyone in education becomes a mentor and everyone benefits from the understandings of others?

The education system has become hooked on data. It’s seemed to grow exponentially since the mid-90s, getting supposedly more and more refined, telling whatever story the interpreter wishes to tell; “x% of children can’t…” rather than”100-x% of children can…”

​"It's the way you tell 'em." Frank Carson-comedian...

In many ways the ubiquity of data has supported politicians who wish to argue for more structural change, to be able to be seen to be doing something. In an “evidence-informed” world, the ability to interpret data from “evidence” to satisfy a particular end begins to validate the “post-truth” and “alternative facts” phenomena that have recently taken hold of political narratives. Since education is completely controlled by the state of politics, the rise of alternative facts is concerning. The demise of UTCs and the rise in calls for Grammar Schools would fall under the “busy politician” mantra.

On 10th February, in Schools Week, Dr Becky Allen asked “How can we know which schools are good if inspectors are inconsistent and biased and the data is wrong?” She talks of a range of biases to which we are all, as humans fallible. It is an excellent article, which raises many questions. She also shows how Ofsted can be flawed. as this is probably the single greatest current fear for any head and teachers, it's worth considering how the system could be improved to everyone's benefit.

Teaching is, and always has been, a very human activity. It is occasionally flawed, because people forget or focus on specific details. Teachers develop through self-reflection and occasionally beat themselves up when things don’t go as they anticipated. It takes time, discussion and much thought, to grow into a fully-fledged teacher. There are no short cuts, which is what education seems to be constantly seeking. Broad principles are distilled to single words. An example might be Growth Mindset, where Carol Dweck’s ideas are often reduced to the single word “yet”, instead of being seen as a constituent of a process.
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Each school exists in it’s community setting, with variability in inherent wealth or poverty, which impacts on the children, in a wide variety of ways, such as expectation, aspiration and participation in broader life experiences, visits to galleries, or museums or other cultural events. Children, therefore, arrive at school with a wide range of start points. Locally, we are lucky enough that the County has maintained Sure Start facilities and supported in-school nurseries. Children arriving in these start environments are assessed and supported to make up some of the ground needed before formal schooling starts.

Progress through school may be variable, from the differing start points, even if they are in well-appointed schools, with excellent teachers and outstanding resources, so that data at test points still show variability in outcomes. The data would be capable of sharing information about the value the school has added to the children as they pass through their education. Schools are organic, they grow and change over time. If they can attract and retain staff, they have the capacity to embed change, moving the school forward. The opposite is also true. Constant change requires a constant return to beginnings, with a year of hard work sometimes repaid by a teacher moving.

That is it possible to overcome deprivation is evidenced by a number of schools that I have visited for audit purposes. Unpicking the approaches that led to the high outcomes showed that personalisation of expectation, challenge, intervention and support, within a quality teaching environment was having significant impact; joined up thinking and processes. These approaches were put in place by analytical heads developing “forensic processes” that guided teachers to make clear decisions.

The audit was an opportunity for the school to take a look at an aspect of practice, with an external eye opening up areas for dialogue and continued internal reflection. Revisits showed the impact of the changed practices and the improvements in teaching and learning. For this reason, I have always seen Ofsted as an expensive audit tool. If it became less about deciding on four layers of judgement and instead was able to focus on a qualitative decision and allow for deeper exploration of the areas that needed development or that seemed to be having impact, the system, as a whole could be seen as mutually developmental.

I wrote an earlier blog on moderation and this has been a feature of the past couple of years as I have been training the mentors for a Teaching Schools Alliance. It is also possible to see monitoring and moderation as constituent of mentoring.

I’d quite like to see the ideas of monitoring and moderation leading to a mentoring dialogue, widely used across all aspects of school life, not just when each might be required by a specific process.

To some, the term moderation implies a greyness, somewhere between the polarised views of extremes. However, as a moderate person, I reserve the right to draw from the extremes and occasionally to do something to excess if that serve the purposes of the moment. Moderate does not necessarily mean grey, even if the hair has long changed colour.

Moderation implies to me a search for common understanding. Applied to different aspects of the teacher role, it has huge potential to be a development tool.

Whatever the school’s development framework, it is likely to have aspects akin to levels, even if these are “yearness” based.

Let’s say that two teachers work side by side with the same age group. If they bring together work outcomes, talk about them and agree a common view on the merits of the work, they will be sure that the two class expectations are common to both, at the same time deepening their understanding of their children and their needs. If this is extended through year groups, the process can also support consideration of the needs of lower and higher achievers. I'd almost see this as an informal, in-house form of "comparative judgement", which seems to be a term gaining traction.

• If mentoring occurs across a school, there is common assent to decisions regarding achievement and progress expectations.
• If mentoring occurs across schools, an area wide understanding occurs.
• If outcomes of National testing were seen as an aspect of moderation, the outcomes could provide exemplar material to support internal mentoring needs.
• If mentoring became a common tool across all schools, supported by external expertise as necessary, there could be an improvement in teacher judgement and a reduced need for formal testing, so we could save money on SATs testing.
• If in-house teachers became trained mentors, for internal and external use, the use of such people would provide opportunities for mass CPD and lead to higher expectations, based on a common understanding.
• If lesson observations became a mentoring exercise, based on the common agenda of the teaching standards, then feedback would be developmental. Nobody is perfect all the time.
• If Ofsted and other assessment/inspection visits were mentoring visits, to validate the judgements of the internal moderation team, we could establish expectations common to every school in the country.
• If Ofsted inspectors and HMI mentored each other, the judgements across every establishment would be more consistent.
• If Ofsted and HMI regularly produced reflective pamphlets about their distilled experiences, across all subjects, the system could benefit from such collated reflection. (Remember the "raspberry ripple" series?
  

If judgements across every classroom in every school in the country were improved, as a national educational establishment we would make progress. It is a case of giving teachers space to think and something of worth to think about.

It is a case of all things in moderation. I’ll drink to that- in moderation, of course.