​It’s interesting to discuss ideas with like-minded people.
Dialogue is at the heart of human development.
While it is an opportunity to display your personal thoughts,
Occasionally this can lead to a divergence of views.
The dilemma is occasionally the diverse experience behind the discourse.

Sadly, some to see dispute in dialogue,
Causing to a display of dissent,
That can, in and of itself, become disabling and disruptive of a potential display of unity,
Leading to a complete division.
People are diverse, in their background experiences, which have been instrumental in developing their thinking.
At any point, their thinking is a distillation of these formal and informal experiences.

Some enjoy the thrill of disruption in dialogue,
Disowning their own thoughts to disarm someone they see as potentially more discerning and challenging.
It’s hard to discard beliefs, but learning involves occasionally disposing of even long-held ideas, as these are challenged by new information.

Expressing disdain, disgust and dismay are used to disrupt and disturb; all are potentially destructive.
Dialogue requires discernment and allowance of nuanced divergence,
Occasionally agreeing that A.N.Other may have a point.

If dialogue falls into disuse, discord can quickly follow.
​
A divided profession is easily diverted from its main purpose.
Discuss, disagree, diverge, but keep dialogue open to learn from each other.
Dis-interest disrupts personal and organisational progress.

For the past three months, probably the majority of children have been effectively doing homework, having been required to stay at home during the lockdown. There have been exceptions, for key worker and different groups of vulnerable children.

Homework, at the best of times, is a strange beast in the education system, in that it is mandated, but can result in very mixed outcomes. Activities that are set by the school are required to be accommodated during the child’s time at home.

For some, this might mean a clash between homework and chosen interests. For others the challenge of the work or possibly the challenge of working in the home, competition for space and available technology might impact. Certainly, the recent few months have highlighted the significant difference between the haves and the have-nots. Many schools have possibly discovered aspects of their children’s home lives of which they were previously unaware. It has meant, for many, that schools have had to duplicate on-line work with paper-based alternatives.

Has anyone ever really trained children into homework or home learning? Clear tasks and expectations might be set, but what about “how to”? And if a child was to say that they couldn’t, for some reason, what’s the response?

It may be the case that previous assumptions have been very much challenged. Do all children have the time, space and resources to be able to concentrate on a series of challenging tasks that replicate a school day? This also questions the independent learning level of each child; some will be more capable than others of working on their own, especially if they have been dependent on a level of additional adult help in classroom learning.

Home adult engagement levels may vary, too, from the completely focused and hands-on to those possibly unable to offer help within the learning challenge, and potentially the disengaged.

In many ways, the adult engagement has been the potential casualty of pandemic education, the equivalent of the class teacher scanning the class to see those who are in need of extra support, teacher standards 6&5, or Dylan Wiliam’s reflective, reactive teaching.

While the past twelve weeks may have been a kind of holding operation, the outcomes will be very mixed, because it's been a novel situation in everyone's lives, perhaps because everyone has been trying the find the right balance, but also seeking appropriate forms of communication that help children and their parents to accommodate set challenges.

I wonder how the lockdown experience has altered school views on setting homework, which will become a significant factor in any form of recovery dynamic when schools return? Equally, if the pandemic continues and home-learning has to continue into the autumn, how schools will alter any remote approach?

One thing is certain, it can’t be assumed to be “business as usual”, “back to normal”.

​Planning for learning will need to be significantly underpinned by clarity in assessment. It will need to be longer term, with clear purpose and goals and make better use of class time. Setting home activity might need to incorporate that time for children to have a topic to talk about at home, to write draft notes or first draft writing that can be used as the basis for editing and improvement under teacher guidance in class time. Tasks need to be something that the child can do independently.
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Using time differently will affect the overall dynamics of learning, with home adding greater value to class activities. It’s in teacher planning that this dynamic will start.    

​This phrase will dominate the educational discourse for the foreseeable future. It’s in danger of becoming a new political mantra, with any fallout, or negative consequences inevitably then falling onto schools. I’m sorry, that’s cynical, but it’s hard not to be at the moment.

We are in “unprecedented” times, another political catch phrase, coupled with “gaps in education”.

The unprecedented element is that schools are now hybrid versions of previous organisations, some in face to face, for varied amounts of time, some totally remote learning and some a hybrid of the two. This may well continue into the 20-21 academic year. The remote element has highlighted disparities in access to technology, hardware and data, or family challenges in having multiple need of available resources; parents working from home at the same time as children trying to do schoolwork. Now that this is known, schools might be in a better position to address individual needs should the situation arise.

There is obvious concern for “vulnerable learners”, children who are identified daily in a lesson with needs addressed during the lesson. In a remote situation, this lack of access is likely to be a significant missing element. It might have been addressed by identification and a request to come to school to receive misconception coaching and guidance, coupled with expectations of how to use personal time when working remotely, if this continues, or simply absorption into a learning “bubble”. Whatever happens, these children will be in classrooms in the future.

How much “teacher time” and I mean time with a teacher, do vulnerable learners get in a lesson anyway? I’ll just park that question for now, but it may become an issue in the future. Catch up will require, for some, very highly focused teaching, not just time with another adult.
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We’re now four months into an alternative reality, of which nearly a month would have been school holidays, so three months of lessons have been accessed through remote means, online or on paper. Some children will have gaps. Some through not working, some having accessed the work, but may not comprehend, some will have made progress, perhaps in different ways. Each will be “where they are”, so there will be a need for personalised assessment, within restructured planning.

Which bits of teaching are missing?

In an earlier blog, I looked at different “teacher” models, the presenter, the structuralist (becoming organised) and the holistic, each one a stage in personal development. In many ways, the current remote situation puts most teachers into the structuralist mode, simply because the opportunity to reflect and react in lessons is not possible. So learning is ordered and organised and presented appropriately to children but may not be subject to intervention that would include personal guidance and coaching.

By September, there is every possibility that some children will have been out of school for six months. It will be near impossible to try to “fill the gap”, perhaps the best that can be attempted is to “bridge the gap”.
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• Identify those elements of planned learning that are less secure, but are essential, and must be covered to enable future use of this learning.
• Put plans together for the whole of the next academic year, to give an overview of coverage and to be able to assess any continuous gaps. If possible, start to look at the subsequent year of learning, too, in outline.
• Assess time need for topics. Avoid the natural wish to fill the half term with one topic.
• Consider the use of lesson time and the potential for home tasking to include writing up of notes, or first draft writing, enabling lesson time to be more interactive and focused on learning dialogue.
• Primary schools; consider the amount of extended writing across different subject areas and synthesise the foundation with the core, to create quality, rather than quantity of writing. Maybe even all such writing in one exercise book; see link blog.

​Talk learning; let’s consider the power of dialogue to work through this situation. Everyone talking together to make the best possible framework that can hold everything together for the next few years, not just knee-jerk reactive plans that run out of steam in a few months. Let’s include parents in that dialogue, to help them to help their children, both with the necessary learning, but also the social and emotional upheaval that many will have faced and continue to face.
 
It may well take the whole of the 20-21 academic year to really make sense of where we are in education, especially as the coronavirus pandemic is not yet ended. It can’t just be “business as usual”.

The whole system needs to come together, not beaver away in personal spaces, sharing ideas, resources, and support for each other.

​It’s time for inclusive approaches, not isolationism. The latter way will be devastating for what is, at heart, a collegiate profession. 

In December 2014, my blog was two months old.

For the Christmas break, I created a sort of reflective challenge to anyone who wished to take on an idea, to look back over their career and to distil what they had learned over that time, in three main categories; on you as a person, on children and on management, which I broadened to simply working with others.

The original blog had a number of very thoughtful contributions, so they can be explored at the base of the blog;
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/1000-years-of-experience
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However, even with a large number of very kind donations, the total came to approximately 700 years, so didn’t quite get to the 1000 years that I had hoped. So, as a last call approach, I hope that lockdown has given time for reflection on what is important in education, maybe lessons about yourself. Perhaps time away from front line teaching has offered food for thought about children as learners, maybe about working with others. There are some creative ideas for interpretation, but any reflections can be shared in the comment box at the bottom of this blog.

Some of the original collection were developed a little further into a downloadable "non-book", which can be accessed through https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/pdfs.html 

Reprise… background/initial blog.
Thank you to anyone who reads my blog. It’s been two months as of today and the visitor count has been high, which has been a source of much pleasure.

The site is a series of reflective posts, which occasionally seek to put current issues into a historical perspective, at least a career perspective. It has long worried me that large numbers of people leave education, after a long and successful career and that’s that. The wealth of expertise and their insights are lost to the system.

Schools are organic and go through phases of development. A settled staff, working together, develops an internal (historical) narrative that is enhanced and becomes more nuanced each year. When significant members, or large numbers, change, there can be a loss of history, with new members who may fail to understand the story to date and their own interpretations may be a shadow of what went before. Of course, it can be the case that the “group think” created by a settled staff can embed practices that a new pair of eyes sees more objectively. Either way, the organic nature of the organisation is to “heal” within the new body, to assume, hopefully, a new equilibrium.

Whether good, bad or indifferent, a school career offers insights into oneself, as a person and a practitioner, into children, as people and learners, parenting habits and management, either as a promoted post or having to deal with management decisions.

Having contributed to Rachel Jones “Don’t Change the Light Bulbs” book, it struck me that crowdsourcing could be a means of collating a wealth of information.
So I extend an invitation, to any reader of my blog, to share their distilled thoughts as succinctly as possible. If we can get to 1000 years, with a corporate effort, I’ll do my best to distil the thoughts further to come up with a collegiate précis.
Below is a contribution from @GazNeedle, who is normally sketching, doodling and cartooning ideas. As it wouldn't copy into the comment thread, I thought it would fit here.
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Please Read Gaz's written comment plus those of many other kind contributors below. (Ed; via the original blog)

My own effort is below. You can use that format, or any that suits your style.

40 year career, Secondary science, Primary, Junior, Primary, Junior, Infant (DH), Primary (HT) ITT tutor, assessor for a range of national schemes, Consultant (isn’t everyone, these days?)

On you, as a person.

• Keep things simple; they are then easy to understand and communicate.
• Be yourself, be strong and continue to be a learner and thinker. Have a hobby/life!
• Be a team player and a leader when necessary. Schools are stronger together.
• Organise a class space that supports learning, as well as your teaching.
• Resource effectively, for easy retrieval and return.
• Be ordered and organised, be strategic in your thinking and communicate effectively with everyone.

On children

• Know your children well.
• Plan for their learning, over different timescales, make sure the “story” is good and makes them think. There’s a big world out there; open eyes, ears, hearts and minds.
• Think with them, talk with them and make adjustments when you see they are not “getting it”.
• As you get to know them better, fine tune challenges to their needs.
• Parents are essential partners. Harness their energy appropriately. Make home activity count.

On management (working with people)

• Humanity should be a byword for everyone. Create a climate of respect. Model it.
• You work with and through your team. You are responsible for their welfare. Value them.
• Make sure the work environment supports their efforts, with appropriate space, resources and time.
• Goodwill works two ways; a “give and take” approach buys extra effort.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate; don’t assume.
• Strategy is only as good as the explanation and the understanding. You can have all the plans in the world, but, if no-one understands them, they will fail.
• Take time to say thank you.

Thanks to Craig Parkinson @cparkie, for the Wordle below, highlighting the key words from eight early contributors. Interesting what are the highlights; could be a useful discussion piece. Would your staff room agree the priorities? 
​

 
Field geometry?

Looking for simple challenges for children to use outdoors that have links to wider learning, straight lines and circles come to mind.

Challenges:

Lines
Using only three poles and either chalk or cones, can you create a straight line between two points on the playground or field?

Lines can be extended to drawing other geometric shapes. How about exploring Pythagoras theorem? It’s possible with year six. Linking squares with triangles and maybe extending to right angles and building with such simple geometry; builders 3,4,5 triangle?

Can you devise a method for drawing a vertical line? Crib note plumb line, a weight on a string.

Circles
You have a piece of string and a piece of chalk. Devise a way to draw a circle on the playground; for older children, that has a radius of 50cm.

What happens if you have drawn a circle, then “walked” the chalk radius around the circumference and marked points? What shape would it make? How else can a circle be divided?
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What happens if you draw a straight line, then draw circles at 20cm points along the line? Play with shapes?  
All these challenges could be replicated on a smaller scale with a compass, a ruler and pencils, exploring shapes within circles.

Make windmills?
This exercise was a part of a topic that I did around 1984, with a year six class, looking at energy, so it has some current resonance. Wind and water energies were exemplified and explored through a visit to a local windmill and watermill. Within the DT curriculum, attempts were made to create working models.

Alongside that, exploring circles allowed a homework project to create wind “turbines” that became the focus for a fair test to find the most efficient. The testing was relatively simple, with each turbine mounted on a compass, on a pencil embedded in the ground.
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Of course, just making our own windmill, coloured in, could be an interesting task in itself.
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With schools looking carefully at ways to accommodate children back into school, then with the advice/guidance to do as much working outside as possible, I thought I would put together a collection of ideas that might offer some start points, together with links to other blogs on my site that could add further.

The external environment can enable some high-quality opportunities for underpinning and understanding the use and application of the knowledge that is learned in the classroom.

Sensory experience is the beginning of exploration. Seeing, listening, touching, smelling and tasting, appropriately, are all essential basics. https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/five-senses-starter

In English, for example, exploration of the site for micro-settings can be the starter for perhaps putting figures into the environment, creating an adventure in the micro world. If children are able to lie down and see that micro world from the point of view of the character, they can place themselves into the adventure. Really adventurous opportunities could be taken to fully storyboard and script the adventure, it could be created as an animated film.

Descriptive opportunities are all around; everything is capable of description, orally or in writing.

Report writing is also supported by outside activity, maybe in the form of a daily diary, a summative description of a specific event or activity. Rules or instructions for games being played?

Art. In the same way everything can be drawn, or painted or photographed, for use as the basis for a larger piece of work, which might be collage. How about incorporating natural materials? Don’t forget to encourage the exploration of colour naming, too. How about giving out a colour chart and getting children to find an object of each colour?

Looking at maths, counting opportunities are everywhere. How many… bricks in a metre square? How many bricks high is the school? How many paving stones in a patio? Ow broad are tree canopies? What is the circumference of a tree? Work out the diameter?

How many… petals on a daisy? This is interesting. Do all daisies have the same number of petals? Each child to pick ten, to organise and count each one. Results collated in a group, as a bar chart.

Measures. How long is… this can lead to measuring all aspects of the school, put onto a sketch map, with older children then transposing the measurements into a scale drawing of the school.
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Angles, yr 6, could be incorporated into the measures activity, as a form of triangulation activity, perhaps using a 360 degree protractor with a pointer fixed to the centre. Heights of things, buildings or trees, could be calculated from an activity using a clinometer, an angle metre. Don’t forget to remind the children about their own height, to their eyes…
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Activity data, link with PE; one minute data, see this blog… https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/quick-one-minute-data

Having explored mapping the site, as a Geography activity, looking at the micro sites for ecology is a very useful activity. Go out onto the/a “grass” area. How many different plants actually make up the “grass” area? With a tray, childnre to look for and collect examples of different leaves of plants, to then seek to identify. Are there areas where plants are left uncut? How does this affect the growing paterns of the same plants? How high do they grow, uncut? How low can daisies flower?

 Animal tracks and signs can be surprising. What lives in the school grounds and what evidence is there that they are round? Blog, with pictures. https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/creating-nature-detectives

Minibeasts. How about hunting the Triantiwontigongolope? Poem, song and ideas for minibeast hunting… https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/triantiwontigongolope

Creating observers of the world is a key starting point for further exploration, in that it enables questions, from either the child or the teacher. All questions can be followed up. https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/observation-get-them-to-look
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The deepening of exploration can be calibrated through a structured questining scaffold, as per the diagram below.

The material world of the school can be explored, looking at the building architectural features; what holds it up, what different materials have been used, for what purposes? Materials outside? What’s the soil made from? Anything looked at can be enhanced through a magnifier, or possibly under a visualiser on the IWB.

Are there shadows in the school grounds? How about making a sundial to check on the movement and maybe make a clock? How do shadows change in length at different times of the day? Why?

If it rains on a day when the sun may come out. How about drawing around a puddle and seeing how it alters during the day?

Using the sun to explore the drying action on different materials? Which material dries the fastest, or slowest?

Primary science is about children
Asking questions
About their real world
And
Finding answers by some kind of first-hand experience.
It is about children being scientific,
A process involving the skills of

Observing; starting with direct and short term observations,
Employing all their senses
And later,
Using tools to aid the senses to find the less obvious
And increase their ability to select from those observations
Those things that are meaningful,
Later ordering those observations to derive pattern and structure

Classifying; beginning by sorting things
According to attributes selected by the children,
Recognising similarities and differences,
Gradually accepting and using official ways of classifying.

Measuring; using non-standard units of volume, time, length, mass,
Later moving to standard measures, with increasing accuracy
And more sophisticated instruments.
Using measures to determine patterns of events, such as growth and change.

Predicting; speculating about possible outcomes of events or experiments,
At first intuitively,
Later making use of prior experience and logical argument,
To develop predictions that can be tested by experiment,
Eventually being able to formulate general hypotheses
Rather than single predictions.

Experimenting; early attempts to make tests fair
And record results,
Takin increasing care over control of variables,
Later selecting specialised equipment to tackle practical problems
That are abstract from familiar environments.

Communicating; Oral and drawn descriptions of first hand experiences,
Late developing a more precise use of language of planning, reporting and explaining,
Events or experiments,
Increasingly more accurate in recording,
Developing diagrams, graphs and working with data,
Making general statements, conclusions, from the results.

Explaining; exploring the links between cause and effect,
When I did this…that happened,
With increasing use of reference material
Supporting their thinking and reflections,
Later developing explanations that derive from their reflections
Rather than relying on first-hand experience.

Evaluating; reflecting on the whole process,
Suggesting ways in which they would change their approach,
Next time.

Making sense of their experiences, through refining and honing central skills,
Using developing knowledge to help address new situations…

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On my blog, in the contents section, scroll down towards the bottom to find more subject ideas.  https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/contents.html
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Pandemic pensées. Feeling kinda blue…

It’s proving to be a very strange time, this lockdown stuff. We can do some things, but not others. In many ways, it’s the restrictions on life in general that begin to wear thin at times. Stoicism enables some resilience and we’re lucky to have a garden and countryside within a few minutes’ walk, so we can occasionally “escape” to wander and see and hear the wider world.

Occasionally, the desire for some normality, like stopping for a coffee can weigh a little, but then thought of the front line NHS workers put that into perspective. We all have to be grateful for everything that they have done, often in near impossible situations.

Passing total strangers, with them either wishing to have some contact, at a reasonable distance of course (walking poles are an excellent guide) or, as we encountered recently, an elderly lady totally turning her back as we passed, because she was afraid. There are reasons to be fearful, especially as the Government has spoken often about asymptomatic cases of Covid19. You look healthy, not showing any signs, but do you have it or have you had it (mildly)?

It’s the not knowing all the details, despite reading as much as possible and preferring to listen to the “experts” that leaves residual concerns.

Politicians have a different agenda. They have to show that they are in charge, because that’s their job. Being in charge means telling others what to do, which is probably easier in a totalitarian state. It can appear as if today we are moving further towards that, rather than the more liberal state that we have known.

Lockdown, to a large extent, shows how people will comply. It also showed the fear, in panic buying, although it is arguable that this was simply sensible, given the potential that, at any point, a family could be required to be in a two week quarantine, reliant on neighbours if family members weren’t close.

So we have endured six weeks of lockdown, at a prescribed distance from others, seeing the best of neighbourliness and friendship; watching out for signs of distress, checking on food supplies, or, in our case, also acting as a mobile library for a housebound elderly friend. It’s proving beneficial to have kept books that have been read; they can be lent. As she is an artist, they are also giving food for thought as she seeks inspiration in isolation.

So what’s life for most of us reduced to?

Basic essentials; food, drink, sleep, gardens/exercise, reading, TV, texts and calls to keep in touch. For some, these have been in short supply, so neighbourliness has also included checking on those essentials; schools have become ad hoc food banks, free school meals interpreted as food hampers by some, bypassing the Government vouchers. Handing over food is a means of also checking how things are. Vouchers can be remote and they didn’t work properly, at all, for a few weeks.

Schools have worked exceptionally hard to accommodate the learning challenges of remote teaching and learning; setting up platforms and communication systems, checking and seeking to address home internet and hardware needs (the latter probably easier than the former), phone checks on children’s well-being and how they are managing with set tasks. It’s been very time consuming, in a different way to normal planning and classroom activity. Much of this will prove beneficial in what will inevitably become the “new normal”.

Since their inception, schools have been based on the class or year group of children, with various organisations over that time, from the large groups with monitor teachers that are now organised as a class of about 30 with a main teacher and a full or part time assistant.

Will we see whole class teaching in the near future? As a school Governor and as a grandparent, I am as concerned as anyone to consider this.

Classrooms, since the 60/70s have been based on a notional 55sq m as the basis size. This has been interpreted over time in different ways. The larger part of my teaching life was in a scola build, a mid-1970s incarnation that included the walk-through spaces as a part of the 55sq m. The class bit was about 35 sq m, so corridors were part of the teaching space. I use this as an example that not all schools have the same accommodation. This will include corridors that will vary in width.

Entrance doors vary from those with handles to automatic entry points. Some need handling, others don’t. This has an implication for hand and surface hygiene before entry and then at all points of the day.

Playtime is a social gathering time. This is when mingling might occur. Breaks are also the time when most schools ask children to go to the toilet, again a mingling, messing about, time. Maybe children will need to be allowed to go to the toilet singly during “lessons” instead?

We are now in May and there’s speculation that schools will be asked to open in June, so timescales are relatively short, to take account of the broad range of needs to be accommodated.

There are many permutations of how things can be organised and every school will, no doubt, be trying very hard to work out what is best for everyone. Pressure will grow to open fully, to enable parents to go back to work, but that might not be safe in the short term and safety, of everyone involved has to be paramount. There’s no benefit in exposing everyone to a rapid, second spike in the virus.

There are a number of options that immediately spring to mind.

1. Maintain the status quo. Keep teaching remotely for as long as is needed, bearing in mind that a number (different in each school) will not be fully accessing or participating in learning.
2. A full return. This would prove virtually impossible in the majority of organisations. Maintaining social distancing, whether defined as 2m, 1.5m or 1m, unless every child was expected to wear a face covering and teachers offered some kind of PPE; maybe wearing a face visor would be mandatory? Guaranteeing hand hygiene would be impossible and all tables would need to be wiped down assiduously. Would children move between lessons, causing corridor mixing, or teachers move to classrooms? There will be a difference between Primary and Secondary. Many will see this as near impossible in the short term.

Taking 1 and 2 into account, it’s more likely that children will return to school in groups. To ease family issues, if children are in the same school, attending on the same day would seem sensible. I would be considering a half day experience, probably 9-12, with no breaks and going home for lunch to avoid playtime mixing in the short term.

1. One year-group back as a whole, which seems to be the politician articulation of what will be expected? Take the example of a one form entry school, of seven age groups and an example class of 30/32 children. Classroom space of 55sq m is likely to allow 6-8 children to be accommodated in one space, so this will take four classrooms and require four adults. There wouldn’t be space for any other year group as a whole to attend, so attendance patterns would be a seven-day rotation. There would be a continuous need for every year group to do remote teaching for the days where children were not attending.
2. One group of eight children per year group? Morning only. Afternoons then available to teachers to plan and catch up with remote learning. I have tweeted that this reminds me of my 1974 integrated day planning, in that large classes of 40 children required organisation into groups for needs, so there was an element of remote or independent activity between formal teaching and catch up.

What if:

The key teaching day for essential information was on Friday, giving the weekend as a distillation period, with Monday to Thursday attendance in groups for teachers to do essential overlearning for some and guidance/additional challenge for others? Groups would attend on the same day each week, except for essential worker children, who will require a continuous provision of oversight on set learning, plus additional social activities, for however long this situation has to last.

Which groups come in on which days? Vulnerable learners on Monday, to secure learning that they can then do independently, maybe with a check in/reprise on Thursday?

The main focus for the three hours attendance was Maths, English and Topic (30 minutes each) with time then given to a social activity like art, for some as therapy and a chance to chat?

Schools are between the inevitable “rock and hard place”. Whatever organisation is put in place, there will be inevitable complaints. There needs to be a political acceptance that every school will be doing its best. It will do no-one any good to know that “the school down the road does x”. That school’s facilities may differ greatly. Locality communication will be essential, to seek to minimise that pressure.

At some point in the near future, as a Governor, I will be involved in discussions about plans to restore some element of face to face direct contact with children, ensuring that safety is paramount. Teaching is a people job, it’s also a social role. Getting close to children and their needs is the essence of good teaching and learning. We have to safeguard all adults in schools and monitor carefully any potential adverse consequences of these initial decisions.

We could try to hope that, for a week or so in July, some element of normality might be possible, maybe whole days and a chance to ensure transitions are managed for September. No-one should be over-confident that this will happen. It will be a case of envisaging and planning for all eventualities.

One of the simple pleasures of the recent need to stay at home for extended periods has been the opportunity to watch the bird feeders and the bird bath, both of which get regular visitors, getting up to various acrobatic tricks and having no shame in their bathing techniques.

Having some shrubs and small trees around does help the birds confidence, as they can make a quick getaway if necessary to avoid local cats or occasionally, us. However, by being a quiet presence in the garden, many birds are now coming to within a metre of us, and not just the robins.
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Both the feeders and the bath are very simple; something to hold seed or more open to hold the suet balls. Our local pet shops and certainly our local Wilko or B&M are open.
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The bath is nothing more than a tray to stand a pot in. It holds water and fits the space. It doesn’t need to be special; an upturned dustbin lid will work, too, with stones to make an “island” for birds to stand safely.
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A few weeks’ ago, we had a dozen varieties of birds coming in an hour. This week, April 14th, the birds are more active in the garden picking up bits of nesting material, so we have cut some of the dry grasses to help and also put out hair that was caught in hair-brushes.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will expect to see the parent birds coming regularly to the feeders to collect particularly the suet, if last year is anything to go by, to feed themselves, as a quick snack while out looking for insects, but also their young, eventually coming back in family groups for a few weeks before they disperse.

It’s very simple, but good fun.

​Online identification is possible, if you’re not confident in naming the birds that come., We’ve had blue tits, great tits, long tailed tits and an occasional coal tit, sparrows and starlings, robins, blackbirds, nuthatches, greenfinches and goldfinches. The wren makes an occasional appearance, as do the thrushes and jays. Fortunately, the magpies have been quieter this year, although they are impressive birds.

More blogs on using the natural world.
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Observation; get them to look
Creating Nature Detectives
50 things to Do; Thinking Locality
​A Sense of Place; naming things

The Wildlife Trusts have a junior section; Watch.
https://www.wildlifewatch.org.uk/
Or there’s the RSPB
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/identify-a-bird/

As someone with a couple of lifetimes in education, from time to time I look back on my career and wonder how I managed to maintain myself through the inevitable ups and downs that life offers; making time for opportunities, or coping with life events.

The newly married probationer had time to play a lot of sport, sometimes mid-week and twice at weekends, plus fit in home life, which entailed DIY on the house. There was time for a local amateur dramatic group, too.

Time stretched, but time was our own for a few years and then along came children, so time altered, to cater for the new life. Sport went on one of the weekend days and midweek got more difficult, to be replaced by crawling around the floor and immersion in parenting. Carrying children in backpacks became de facto weight training. Camping replaced hotels and B&Bs, but it still allowed holidaying.
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Learning to play the guitar and local wildlife combined some elements of parenting, singing silly songs with the children and taking groups to different places to discover wild areas. A link with a local building society helped to create poetry and art competitions. Busyness continued apace. Somehow, post grad studies, waking at 5am to do a couple of hours before children woke, fitted in.
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As children grew a little older and a bit more independent, time became available to participate in a local folk dance group as percussionist/bodhran player, with weekend camping trips for festivals, so family had some fun as well and met some new friends.

Headship was a bit more challenging to find time, especially at the start, but summer camping then included trips to France to visit friends who had emigrated, so gave a couple or three weeks of head space. It also meant a continuing music link, playing in the Radio France final of the Truffe de Perigueux.

Three years later, a diagnosis of breast cancer caused a radical rethink, and, to everyone’s surprise, resulted in buying a French hovel; a continuous life project. It was buying “headspace” a rebalancing, time out of normal life, which continues, even after bereavement. The escape to the country made real. The simplicity of practical DIY projects, of coppicing, pollarding and haymaking, of collecting hedgerow fruits, or eating a meal outdoors are underrated pastimes.
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Looking back over this, the notion of “headspace” is a common factor. We all live busy lives, with the busyness occasionally as a result of an inability to say “no” to anyone. The inevitable juggling and time stretching is often fine until an unexpected event tilts the balance, to a point where we feel that we are not coping.
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Some situations allow for stepping back, letting others to take some of the weight, using the collegiality of family or a work team to allow a period of rebalancing. Knowing yourself is key; knowing when to step away might be a necessary action; hopefully short term.
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Pandemic pensées
We’re living in very strange times. The world’s closed down. People are at home, some working, some furloughed, some looking after themselves or others, whose lives may be risked by catching the current virus.
Teachers are working really hard to maintain some elements of normality among the altered reality and, in different households, the capacity to support children with any areas of learning might be strained. Teacher capacity to identify and support individuals with specific help will also be constrained.
Children have been put into a situation where they are distance learning. Even as an adult, this can be a challenge, in motivation, resourcefulness and perseverance. Frustrations that might be expressed in normal times about “not understanding” what is expected may be exaggerated further by the expectations of a number of hours each day devoted to “schoolwork”.
This tweet, posted by an Aussie teacher made me stop and think.
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Teachers may well be sending home work that challenges the child’s ability to conceptualise what is being expected. If we look at maths as a separate area, in this case, a teacher or other adult might seek to unpick the problem and exemplify what is being asked by the use of supportive diagrams or with reference to physical materials.
But… home is not school, so the resources may not be available.
That, in itself, set off a train of thought and took me back to my first classroom, which I inherited with resources that were either twenty years old, or non-existent. There was a need to create, devise or collect resources that would support counting, matching and grouping. So visits to the beach might mean picking up shells to bring home, boil and clean to take into school. Autumn meant collecting conkers. I did try marbles, at one time, but, for some reason, they kept going missing… It soon became clear that anything could become a counting aid, so newsletter requests to parents helped with a variety of materials and the local sweet shop was a source of large, clear jars.
I thought it might be an idea to consider how to make resources from very simple materials that might be available in homes, provide useful activities in their development, then be useful in specific maths activities.
Let’s start with counting.
It’s possible that families are getting through quite a lot of cereal, or other boxed foods. The cardboard can be used as free base materials. A ruler, marker pen, pencil and scissors are needed.

Open out the boxes and cut the larger pieces. Keep bits, in case you want to make more at some stage.
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Measure and rule a 1cm grid, or larger, 2cm, if you are worried for a child’s dexterity, using as much of the card as possible. Identify a couple of 10*10 grids, as 100 squares, where you can cut 10 squares into “rods”, leaving the remainder to become “ones”, “singles” or “units”.

Drawing a 3cm by 4cm grid can create a series of rectangles that become number cards. If you have enough, numbering to 100 is very useful to challenge later learning.
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Cut out the various pieces.
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Combining the counting numbers with the cut out counters can begin to develop thinking mathematically, matching numbers, showing these in physical form.

Challenges can then develop, linking physical, diagrammatic and abstract.
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A very simple activity that can be very effective in supporting rapid calculation could be called race to or from the flat. This can be an extension from making the resources above, with the addition of one or more dice.
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As long as you have made the materials above and have some dice, this can be developed to cater for a variety of needs.

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


Altering the number of dice alters the challenge.

Like many people, I have a collection of “things” around the house. Found, picked up, purchased or inherited, they, in themselves hold a part of my back story, which can be triggered by a look or picking them up. They are reminders of a former self, another’s life, or a place. They are my “memory things”.

In addition, around the house are other things, more purposeful things, that make life easier. These are functional things.

The thing that all these things have in common is that they have names, words that might describe their function; chair, table, knife, forks.

There are similarities between things; there are several different chairs and tables around the house, each having a different function. On some chairs, we sit and eat at the dining table, on others resting in the lounge, the deckchair allows rest in the garden. But they are all chairs, objects that allow sitting.

Naming things is a function of a growing awareness of the world.

Exploring similarity and difference between things is an important step into classification and differentiation. This requires differential words; some simple, such as hard, soft, large, small, quick, slow. These develop into synonyms, or, in other words, an extended vocabulary.

Things therefore create the need for words, naming and descriptive.

Things can create a short journey of “discovery”, giving things their attributes, possibly leading to questions that can be answered by scaffolded exploration; Is it… Can you see/feel/hear/smell/taste as appropriate… The adult role is extending the oral awareness of the “things” that are the current focus. It’s a bit like playing “I spy” on a car journey, the spotting can lead to extended talk. "What's a...?"

The world is full of things.

They can be called artefacts and used to develop historical, geographical or scientific routes into exploration. The imagery of the artefact can be the start point for imagination and speculation, which, if developed carefully, can become hypothesis, a narrative that can be checked through ever more careful measuring or observation.

Things are the bread and butter of counting and arithmetic, being replaced by concrete representations that fulfil a different narrative journey; Dienes blocks, starting with one to one correspondence, leading to set and group theory and place value.

Things underpin learning. Without a mindful of named things, the ability to think can be limited. I am personally aware of that in a different language.

Give children “things” to think about, to talk about, then share in the discovery and description of those things. What are the similarities and differences in the objects in the header photo?

A spine of experiences, seeking to deepen exploration through scaffolding. This can, of course, be extended into the home through "Talking homework", something positive to explore at home with parents; guided parenting rather than paperwork homework.

Making sense of experience…
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I had been a headteacher for 18 months, when our local arts centre sent out a flyer advertising a forthcoming exhibition by an artist then unknown to me, Saleem Arif. Saleem was born in Hyderabad, studied at Birmingham College of Art and the Royal College of Art before his first solo exhibition in 1982.
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In addition to the exhibition, the arts centre offered to local schools the opportunity to work with Saleem, who would provide workshops for all Primary age groups, at a modest cost. I very quickly showed an interest, but no-one else apparently did; we were offered Saleem for ten days at very modest cost, if we could also offer some accommodation. One of my staff was prepared to do that, which was very generous.
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The exhibition, in the September of 1991, was based on a most recent series of work, deriving from earlier works, but with a very much more muted palette. Year six went on a visit on the first day of the exhibition, showed around by Saleem, who explained something of his techniques, together with ideas that he would be using in school. The children therefore approached the coming experience with insights.

Sharing a broad range of techniques as a starter, older children explored the creation of textures in paint, using sand, sawdust and earth. They used scrapers, spatulas, other broad bladed objects as well as paint brushes to apply the paint to different prepared surfaces.
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Year six decided that they would like to recreate one of Saleem’s recent pictures, so working large, approximately 5m by 3m, they drew the shapes, then started using the learned techniques to fill them in, sometimes working through their lunchtimes to complete the task while Saleem was in the school.
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Other year groups did a variety of experiences based on textures, with the Reception class creating a huge printed necklace, which led to some storytelling from Saleem, bringing cultural background and imagery together.
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Saleem came to dinner with my family, entrancing the children, in part because he simply integrated with the family, rather than being an aloof guest. Leaving a signed catalogue of his 1986-1991 works inspired our eldest, then aged eleven to explore for herself. It was this piece of paper dropping from the catalogue that brought back the memories.
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The experience of bringing specific expertise into the school as an inspiration for learning was sufficiently significant that it became a feature of school life. Especially where the expert was able to engage with processes of thinking and learning, they left the school enhanced by their presence; children met and could aspire to become real life artists, sportspeople or musicians. That on the whole bringing these experiences into school was often much more reasonable cost than an external trip, meant that they could be accommodated in the budget.

It was then a case of finding the right people… Many thanks to Saleem for making our first experiences so positive.

Saleem's website adds much greater biographical detail and an extended gallery.
   http://www.saleem-arif-quadri.co.uk/

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hree days ago, I typed and sent this tweet. I felt very strange about doing so but was soon overwhelmed by a string of lovely comments from close and more distant contacts.

Because of the freelance nature of my employment since stepping away from headship following the death of my first wife from cancer, I have had several “farewells”, each of which has offered commentaries that have been a surprise. I have always had the mantra of “just doing my job”. I could have added, “as well as possible” and, in many ways, I have worked with colleagues who have had the same approach, so it didn’t seem in any way special. Others have suggested otherwise. Perhaps I should have kept going…

In 1970-1971, after a return from Australia, I was working as a Lab Assistant for ICI at their biological research establishment in Brixham, exploring the impact of outfalls from ICI establishments. This meant visits to site, hours spent on trawlers following drogues to establish sea movements, or possibly walking shorelines to discover where certain vegetables and fruits had been washed up, after mixed sacks had been put into the outflow pipes. Bottom sampling meant further trawler days, largely in the North Sea, taking bottom samples, which then were brought back to Brixham, each one tipped into a white tray under a microscope and then the constituent fauna identified and counted. Hours of backbreaking, eye straining activity. Such was the stuff of “front line” science. With the career opportunity of becoming an Experimental Officer, and working with the incumbents, it was clear that the job wouldn’t alter very much.

In the June of ‘71 walked into St Luke’s Teacher Training College in Exeter, simply to enquire how to become a teacher. The head of the science department, Tony Staden, happened to be available for a conversation. Half an hour later, he sent me to the admin department to register, to start the following September on the Primary course. I know it wouldn’t happen now. After a year of straight science, I transferred to the small Environmental Studies department, providing the background to every subject area in some depth; the philosophy of the department.

Forty-eight year later, I am stopping paid work.

There’s a certain regret involved. I have thoroughly enjoyed my career, which makes me very lucky. I know that won’t necessarily be the same for everyone. I may have been lucky with timing; it was a period when teachers were lead thinkers in their classrooms, organising curricula and making do with relatively few resources.

Stopping being paid doesn’t stop the thinking about education. As a school Governor and grandparent, I have a continuing stake in the system, so I will continue to think, offer ideas and share in the collaborative discussions generated via Twitter.

If you’re interested, I have explored the detail of my career in Thinking Teacher-from black to grey; another non-book of reflections. Download from https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/pdfs.html

As it says below, "Be true to yourself and grow yourself; you are a work in progress".
I'm looking forward to continuing my development, with a little help from my friends. 

It was always intriguing when walking around school, whether as a class teacher or management, to come across a piece of work, on display or in a book that made you go “Wow, how did you do that?”

The answers were inevitably illuminating, as the colleague or child recounted the stages that they had gone through to end up with a finished outcome, in whatever subject. They describe the process. In education, we can become obsessed with outcomes, to the detriment of the process, or the process is laid out in such a way that it becomes more a copy exercise than requiring the learner to make decisions and refine their own outcomes.

After four years of teaching, I went to a school that used the Dienes multibase approach for all its maths teaching. Despite being pretty reasonable at maths, and having used the base 10 materials as modelling aids, I was unaware of the background to the thinking and the multiple purposes that could be demonstrated using the materials. The school DH, Joe, as maths lead spent several hours taking me through the details of varied function machines and exemplification of equations. He also gave me a copy of the “bible”, from the Masters course that he and the head had completed. Tutoring through the processes strengthened my teaching for the rest of my classroom and school career. Worked examples enabled me to explore my own and possibly children’s misconceptions.

Therefore to improve the outcome, in any area of learning, there’s a need to refine aspects of the process. Just a few possible examples.

A writing outcome is hard to read, so it’s reasonable to look at improving the handwriting. But, in reality, it may be multi-layered, with a need to look at grip and basic letter formation, with alterations in both being practised outside the redraft exercise.

In maths, just having the correct answers in a book might hide the face that a child has copied from another. Asking the child to articulate (talk) their thinking through the process is more illuminating. This can become “show your thinking/working out”.

In art or DT, different elements can require a focus on the fine skills of material selection, colour, cutting, joining.
“How did you do that?” can become the basis for oral description, for written instructions to another or a report on what was done, with an evaluation of the outcome supporting subsequent attempts. If the process had been captured as images during development, the images can support the ordering and organisation of the talk or writing.

Virtually every area of school activity involves process in some form. Time for active processing (thinking) is often at a premium, as teachers move from one activity to another.

“How did you do that?” is also the essence of CPD. Listening to and learning from a colleague explaining the processing in their subject responsibility can enable insights for less experienced or confident colleagues. In a teaching force that can appear ever younger, it’s essential that the experience is passed on, otherwise it’s lost to the system, then requires a process of discovery. The art of explanation is based on clarity and ordering of thinking. The coach has to consider detail as well as an overview description.

So, my advice to all teachers is to acknowledge the expertise of colleagues and to seek to emulate them. If everyone was enabled to become as good as the “best”, the system as a whole would improve. So, over an end of the day cuppa, sit together and chat. Learn through dialogue and demonstration.

“Show and tell” works for children, too. “How did you do that?”
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A great deal is currently being written about curriculum, books, blogs, whole or part magazines; there’s a huge amount to read. I hope I can be forgiven for adding to that. Bold type links to associated blogs.

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

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

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

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

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

What influenced decisions in this period were background teacher guides such as Nuffield Science 5-13, which explained the purpose, resourcing and running of science investigations, and, as such, I would hope that a future spate of publications will look at each subject and put learning in order, from the beginning. Resources today are lightyears ahead of anything that we had then. “Jam jar” science was a thing.
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In the 1990s, Hampshire inspectorate published “Guidelines to Art Education”, KS1-5, which shared the developmental processes.

Learning, whether formal or informal, school or home, is always episodic, because it is time-ordered. In a formal setting, there is at least one formal adult lead, with a prepared diet of learning that constitutes a year, term, week or lesson. Where each lesson builds on previous learning, the whole becomes the sum of the parts. There was a mantra early in my career, whole-part-whole, which was linked particularly to PE teaching. This meant try and show current ability, focus teaching on the “next step” and have a chance to practice. This does have applications across all learning, as it enables some fine tuning to evident needs.

Having been a deputy when the 1987 National Curriculum was introduced, after a detailed audit of what the school was offering compared to the NC, the 95% correspondence led to a few tweaks. For interest, I have appended a cut and paste piece that I created to support a staff discussion. The discussion was more detailed and better informed as a result of having a common document to consider, having each read the subject documentation. There are statements in this document from 32 years ago that can be heard today. Some principles are central.
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You have to remember, in reading these extracts, that in 1987 there was no such thing as a teaching assistant. All preparation, resourcing, organising and oversight was done by the teacher. As a full time teaching deputy, I had the same class commitments as every other member of staff.
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We created the notion of an annual plan, to ensure that learning was allocated a space in the year; it was evident that the previous approach allowed some parts to be missed off.
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An annual plan example.
 
·         The first two weeks of the school year were “given” to the teachers to plan their own starter topic to get to know their new classes. On the second Friday, we held a closure dedicated to planning the detail of the coming term, tailored to the known needs of the class.  
·         We created further time during closure days to enable staff discussions and planning, across the one form entry school, to make the best use of the expertise and experience available.
·         Subject managers were responsible for ensuring that each topic was effectively resourced; initially with a pump-priming fund, but then, following LMS, with an annual audit that had to specify replacement needs and consideration of resources to enhance learning.
·         Time was bought from the inspectorate to enable one half day every two years for subject managers to review and update the topic specifications.
·         Books transferred with children to their receiving classes, to ensure continuity of expectation.
·         We developed the “flip sheet” of feedback and expectation that articulated to the child and the teacher what they should be concentrating on to improve their work. (Exercise books as personal organisers)
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It is clear from this that curriculum development, to be successful, is something that can take (quality) time, for reflection, for research, for discussion, for dissemination, for oversight and evaluation. Time is a precious commodity on schools and, sadly, there is a cost element, too.

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

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

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

Can we not enter a phase of evolution rather than regular tinkering at the edges, which only leads to distortion, or, being charitable, unintended consequences and a disproportionate amount of time in revising previous incarnations, largely to end up at the same place...?
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It’s Mayday, 1st of May, the day for joy, merriment, dancing and singing. Our local Morris teams have been out since dawn and will spend the day travelling around to celebrate the day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being able to join in with song turns you from an onlooker to a participant. Knowing the words is important. We talk of “Cultural Capital”. Songs often embed this in spades. And it you think you “can’t sing”, interpret and learn the words as poetry, “borrow” someone else’s voice for the tune and go back to how I started, with a disembodied voice leading singing through audio media.
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Just don’t lose the music… Every topic can have a tune…
 
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One thousand people holding their breath in a theatre, knowing what was going to happen, but unable to move because of the incredible tension that had been built. Around me, I could hear others trying to stifle sniffles, just as I was, as the conclusion to Shadowlands drew closer.

Shadowlands, a 1985 TV drama, developed into a play, written by William Nicholson, shared the period of C S Lewis’ life when he encountered Joy Gresham, in 1952.

The programme outline written by A N Wilson, Lewis’ biographer, shared the earlier life experience of CS and his brother Warnie (Warren). Their mother dying of cancer when CS was nine, meant that he and Warnie were sent to an English boarding school, away from their Irish home. The undercurrent of that earlier, unaddressed issue, became a thread through the story; the small boys who spent their adult lives as bachelors, limited in their ability to relate to women.

Joy Gresham, an American with whom CS Lewis corresponded as a dedicated fan of his writing, arrived in the UK on an unexpected visit, with one of her children, Douglas. Their capacity to discuss and challenge each other led to a deep friendship and CS Lewis, having secured British citizenship for Joy by a marriage of convenience, eventually realising the capacity to love another. This was precipitated by Joy, having developed bone cancer, collapsing and CS realising that he might lose her in the same way as he lost his mother.

After hospital, Joy moved into CS Lewis home, with Douglas, supported by Warnie, so a form of normality was supported for a while.

Remission was followed by terminal decline, CS facing his loss, becoming aware of the impact on Douglas, having been in the same place. CS also facing the greatest challenge to his life-long faith and beliefs.

The inevitable happened, with a very powerful display of personal grief. Hugh Bonneville and Liz White sustained their characters through every possible emotion.

It is an exceptional play, on many levels; well written, well directed and acted, in a simple set that adds to the whole without distraction. It also holds many unstated truths, as it records the real lives of so many people. Love and loss are not uncommon situations.

I recalled my mother leaving the family home when I was 12 and the death of my first wife from cancer, both events creating their own distinct grieving. Many people carry their personal griefs without any outward sign to alert others, who are busy getting on with their own lives. We “get on with life”. Sometimes it takes an external event to enable us to externalise our feelings, but, when the lights go up, we revert to our “holding it together for others” demeanour; we can’t impose on others.
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Twelve hours later, the sensations of the evening are still vivid. Shadowlands, running at Chichester Festival Theatre as a part of the summer season, is a “must see”, but take your hankies…

Tennis, table-tennis, ping pong or whiff whaff, squash, badminton all games where two or more players take turns to hit a ball or shuttlecock, with scoring systems to see who ultimately wins. Just an example of the binary nature of sport, or possibly more generally in life?
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Apparently it's my 7th anniversary on Twitter. Sometimes education can appear to be a giant form of whiff waff. I hadn’t heard of this name for a simple game before the 2012 Olympics when one Boris Johnson sought to claim that whiff waff predated table tennis, to be corrected by the sport historians. In doing so, standing by the claim in the face of evidence, he showed the capacity of humans to box themselves into a specific way of thinking.

When there are simplicities in education, they can be framed in such a way that they can appeal to a narrow form of teaching. Having taught since 1971 there have been some simplicities, which can be expressed as:-
·         If children need to know something the simplest way might be to tell them.
·         The order, organisation and articulacy of the teacher will impact on the potential for learning.
·         Any teaching can fail if the children don’t have the means to visualise what the teacher is saying.
·         If children need to overlearn something, they may need to repeat an exercise, or receive some detailed, dedicated teaching or coaching.
·         If teachers want to know if the children have learned something, it may need checking out in some form, a combination of recall tests and use and application challenges.

Having looked at various descriptor models of teaching and learning over the recent past, I think the diagrammatic interpretation of Barak Rosenshine by Oliver Caviglioli describes that approach, to which I would add the earlier CPA (Concrete, pictorial, abstract) thinking of Jerome Bruner and “Dual Coding” thinking.
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CPA is an essential technique within the Singapore method of teaching maths for mastery. Concrete, pictorial, abstract (CPA) is considered to be a highly effective approach to teaching that develops a deep and sustainable understanding of maths in pupils. It is sometimes referred to as the concrete, representational, abstract (CRA) framework.
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However, when I started teaching, with classes of 39 children, no TA, occasional parent help and one chalkboard, there was a need to provide for the range and needs of the children. This was done in smaller groups, run on an integrated day approach.

It was, to some extent, a form of survival, but more importantly, the structures within which we could teach our mixed ability classes providing the broadest possible curricular opportunities. It did mean well ordered plans and resources, to underpin the needs of independent actions by children in-task. It was a lot of plate spinning, but that was what we knew and had been trained for. During a pedagogic discussion during my post grad Dip Ed in Environmental Sciences, the discussion focused on the amount of “teaching” that we did in a lesson, with a follow up activity during the subsequent week to track reality. In both “traditional” and “progressive” settings, each of us was doing in excess of 50% of the lesson time as direct teaching, as whole classes or smaller group focused teaching. The remaining 50% was responsive teaching to needs as the arose. Group dynamics meant that there was a varied demand for marking; editing, coaching advice or critiquing/responding.

Task challenge was, from the beginning, central to the approach, differentiated (small tweaks) to the varied needs of the groups and support available to need. Reading was individualised, supported by a colour coded reading scheme and home-school reading records.

It would have been seen now as “progressive”, but children made good progress, as measured by standardised tests.
A great deal of curricular water has flowed under education’s bridges since, not least several iterations of a National Curriculum; each seemingly adding layers of detail to the preceding incarnation. Teachers have often felt the need to run to stand still. Regular readers of the blog will know that I am not enamoured of the 2014 version.
 
This week, as a school Governor, I attended the morning session of a training day, where the staff were looking to develop the broader curriculum. The subject leads had spent time with LA subject inspectors, creating the overviews of the curriculum. The staff role, collaboratively on this day was to put the detail into the outline, structuring the broader curriculum for the term.

As a fly on the wall, it was interesting to listen to discussions that could have taken place in 1986. It struck me that, after thirty years, the constant changes have rarely been evolutionary, too often disjointed and distracting.

Education benefits from reflective development, is supported by long career teachers able to reflect on change over time coupled with newer colleagues bringing their enthusiasm and newer understandings to the discussion. Firm decisions can impact on resourcing, which is then, on an annual cycle, considered for utility, quality and, where necessary, replacement or updating. Teachers and children are entitled to the best quality resources available. However, these can also be supplemented by found items, eg buttons, conkers, stones for counting.

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 within themes in such a way that each could make use of the current and recent past topics, so that each 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 oral 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.
·         Utilise one closure day in June or July to enable staff to consider overview planning for the coming year.
·         Then only 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 discussion and decision making in the school or be used to moderate against other school outcomes to validate judgements.
·         Mentoring, especially of early career teachers, needs to be secure.
·         Every area of life is governed by a measure of capability in some form. “Can do” statements are a guide.

So, to summarise
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·         Plan long, medium and short with different emphases on what’s recorded and share with supporting adults. Organise the “knowledge journey” developmentally.
·         Order and organise space, resources and consider the available time.
·         Pitch and pace each lesson to known needs of the curriculum and the learners.
·         Set learning tasks that provide some challenge.
·         Share outcomes as learner models of expectation within and between lessons.
·         Evaluate throughout, ensuring continuity of expectation.
·         Checks en route, memory, use and application in challenge.
·         Simple personal record systems of developing vocabulary and presentation needs.
·         Books to become personal learning records.
·         Know your children as fully as possible, recognising that you can’t see exactly what they are thinking.

Children are children, as they always have been. They deserve the best that can be offered.
Schools need to secure their curriculum, so that it can provide the essential core of experience, enhanced by incoming expertise.
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Something that I wrote a few years ago continues to resonate with me. Teachers are the lead thinkers in their classrooms. They must have every opportunity to be autonomous decision makers, in the moment.
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Picture; 14 July, Fete Nationale, our local town. Annual commemoration

On 15th April 2019, a new date was recorded for posterity, with the devastating fire in the Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris. Events, of every hue, in every life, create anniversaries; some that must not be forgotten, others that might disappear into, or be distorted by, the mists of time, simply because there’s no-one left to remember.

Our histories are marked by events, some small and insignificant, others world shattering. It's likely to be the latter that make the greatest mark on our continuing lives.

Recently, my eldest celebrated her  40th birthday. With birthdays, decades matter, so she took her family on a trip to remember. I still recall the day of her birth, a long day of waiting, followed by such a feeling of elation, of happiness that all had gone smoothly and all was well.

Marrying my first wife while I was in my final year of teacher training was the start of a 32-year journey until her death in 2005. In a quirk of fate, on our 20th wedding anniversary, a surgeon, using his kindest manner, told us that D had breast cancer. Our wedding anniversary, from that moment, became an anniversary of survival. Five and ten years were celebrated with a ceilidh for friends and family. D’s death created another date to commemorate.

 On June 1st, it’s the 25th anniversary of buying a small house in France as a “life project”, trying to thumb a nose at life in general and offering a different kind of stability during holidays.

The house in France is in the Limousin region. One town nearby will be remembering a devastating event that occurred 75 years ago. While many areas of France, starting on the north coast, will be remembering their liberation after D-day, on a rolling timetable from early June, Oradour sur Glane will commemorate the destructive nature of a defeated force taking revenge while withdrawing. A Nazi battalion encircled the town and herded people to the centre, before shooting the men, grenading the church with women and children inside and setting fire to buildings.

Meeting with my sister recently, we reminisced about our childhood, which was marked by our mother announcing that she would be leaving the family home on 11th October (1965) after her summer season job in a local hotel finished on the 8th. Leaving home for school on 11th October, seeing a travel bag packed by the door and being asked if we wanted to go with her created an indelible mark.

So, dates keep piling up. I have another anniversary and additional birthdays to remember now, having been lucky and found M, extending the family further. Mind, you, it’s just as well that we keep a diary with the information copied from one year to the next, as an aide memoire. I’m beginning to experience senior moments…
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I wonder what anniversaries you mark?

Picture; the view from our French cottage
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