When you look at the word create and some of the synonyms for it, it means to make something (happen). That describes the efforts of young children, who can be happily absorbed in making something that embeds their thoughts, even if the end-product does not, to an adult eye, look like the intention.

“Look mummy, I’ve made a …” Smiles and pride…Response? Who can fail to be moved by the child seeing themselves as a creative being?

The incomplete nature of the product may be due to a lack of experiences and ideas, hand control, choice or availability of materials, but is, to the child, a work of immense pleasure. The making gives pleasure.

You don’t have to be an expert to achieve that level.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. Albert Camus
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While the first incarnation of the National Curriculum brought Design Technology centre stage in thinking, moving Primary “making” to another level, largely by articulating stages in development in a subject that could be something of a Cinderella subject, subsequent revisions brought into play the idea of resource tasks. These could be seen as basic underpinning elements that would require direct teaching. A simple example might be showing children how to safely cut a piece of 1cm spar, using a saw and bench hook, ensuring wood held secure with one hand and a good cutting style with the saw. In the early experiences, a focus on cutting to a line might require simple practice. This activity would then be linked to measuring, cutting specific lengths of wood.

Eventually, after a period of practice, and being able to cut with some precision, a challenge might be set. One that fitted well with a Greek topic was creating a marble maze, based on a design developed on an A4 sheet of 1cm squared paper. The first step was designing the maze by shading out the “walls”, which would then be covered by carefully cut pieces of spar. Eventually, the maze would be tested with a marble run through the “passages”. While some children could undertake the bulk of the task independently, some would need support and regular guidance, especially with quality control, a clear focus on refinement.

Consider the following; design and make a paper aeroplane that will fly at least five metres. This is a very simple example which could be given to a child of 6 years. Where would the child start? Paper is the specified medium, so perhaps collecting a selection of papers would help. Exploring the papers to discover and describe (orally or in writing) the features of each would provide familiarity with the material. The need to create an aeroplane shape would require research, orally, by asking an “expert”, using library sources, or looking this up on the internet. Copying a previously made example provides the task to be practiced. To achieve the flight of five metres might require trial and error methodology, with adaptations and adjustments explored. Watching and collaborating with others, discussing refinements and persevering are all essential skills for life and work.

As children passed through the school, tasks were created that provided progressive challenges, incorporating the broader range of skills that had been learned, for example, make hats, working buggies, windmills/turbines, systems (crazy golf hole), musical instrument, puppets, storage items. The challenge would be to design and make a … to… On occasion, this would be explicitly topic linked, levers, castle gate, moving puppets.

Sometimes, it would link science and making.
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?

Problem solving, project management, collaboration and cooperation, persistence, evaluation are all side products. Working in this way can also support PSHE, as learners begin to see strengths in each other.

An example from my teaching career springs to mind. The topic for a period of time was sports. 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. 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 measurable 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.

Problem solving defines the purpose for learning. The clarity with which the learner can define for themselves the point of learning provides the driving force for achievement. How much learning is lost because the learner can’t see the point?

The TES on 19.09.2017, reported the outcomes of a report commissioned by the Wellcome Trust which argued that the subject was not being given enough priority or time by most of the nation's primaries.

They found that on average, across all primary year groups, more than half of classes (58%) did not get two hours of science a week. Figures based on two surveys of teachers. Wellcome also identified a fear among teachers that children would ask a question they would not know the answer to, and a belief that science is messy, expensive, time-consuming. The study was published to mark the launch of Explorify, a new free digital resource for school science.

The history of science for children before the age of 11 has been a chequered one. Being old enough to have started at school in the 1950s, I don’t remember science apart from the occasional nature table. However, it was the age of chemistry sets and, receiving one for my 6th birthday, my bedroom was soon infiltrated by test-tube filled solutions of different colours. The brown stain from spilling some potassium permanganate on the mantelpiece was the end of that and I was banished to the shed. I did write an illustrated story of doing chemistry at home which was published in the school magazine.

Secondary, grammar school, meant an introduction to “real” science, with separate chemistry, physics and biology throughout. My early interest in all things scientific inevitably led to a spell as a lab assistant for a year before starting teacher training; again with science, but later changing to environmental education.

Primary science, by the early 1970s, had become a practical part of school life, and in the context of the integrated day, was facilitated as a group activity, with perhaps eight children working in this way, seeking solutions to challenges. The Nuffield Science 5-13 books provided both the hooks and the challenges, but also the necessary scientific background that was easily available to teachers. Local teacher centres also put on extended courses to support developing teachers. There was significant collective sharing of ideas and challenges.

This way of working continued, in my experiences in Hampshire, through to around 1997, when various strategies appeared, these included QCA guidance on teaching science. While I can accept that, in some authorities, science may not have been a strength, these QCA schemes were a form of recipe science, or science by numbers. As a headteacher, I was determined that we would never use the QCA schemes, as they would downgrade what we were offering.

​Working with successive science coordinators and an inspector visit every two years to upskill the coordinator, we developed topic specifications as the basis for each area. Some now call such documents knowledge organisers, but ours were extended documents, with expectations beyond just the knowledge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why has science been somewhat sidelined in primary schools, when it offers so much in the way of stimulus for talk, reading and writing?

The TES today 19.09.2017, reported the outcomes of a report commissioned by the Wellcome Trust which argues that the subject is not being given enough priority or time by most of the nation's primaries. 

They found that on average, across all primary school year groups, more than half of classes (58%) did not get two hours of science a week. The figures are based on two surveys of teachers, including one of staff who led on the subject for their school.

Wellcome also identified a fear among teachers that children would ask a question they would not know the answer to, and a belief that science is messy, expensive, time-consuming. The study was published to mark the launch of Explorify, a new free digital resource for school science.

The downgrading of science could be tracked back to around 1997, when that incarnation of the curriculum coincided with the National Strategies for Literacy and Numeracy (not English and Maths) and the delivery of QCA packs of “foolproof” science recipe booklets. Science teaching by numbers… Teachers learned not to think as scientists, but to follow the instructions. In other words, they forgot to think for themselves.

I trained as a primary science teacher, extended through Environmental Science and spent a period seconded to the Assessment of Performance Unit looking at how primary children learn in science situations.

Like many practical areas of the curriculum, such as art, organising for a class of thirty is challenging, as it takes a significant resource base, space can be at a premium and time can be a limiting factor. Space, time and resources have been perennial issues and probably always will be.

In the beginning of my career, the integrated day, based on groups undertaking challenges, were the norm. This meant perhaps a group of up to 8 working on a challenge; one table devoted to science (or other topic area), another to art, perhaps one to writing, one to maths and one to reading. Yes, that is five groups of 8, the size of my classes from 1974-1979 and no TA…

When I became a head and LMS enabled the hiring of TAs to support learning, I was lucky enough to find someone with science and technology as interests, so we could create quality learning opportunities in both subjects, based on small groups supported by the expert TA. In between supported science, teachers would set up science challenges for small groups to undertake with some independence. It’s the practice in decision making, developing rational lines of investigation, that, to me, have always underpinned primary science.

Unless schools begin to address what might actually be a systemic issue, science and other foundation subjects will continue to suffer, yet they offer significant opportunities for use and application of knowledge and skills learned in maths and English.

Some extracts from mid-1980s ASE publications.

And some other blogs that look at different aspects of primary science. It doesn’t have to be difficult!
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Creating Primary Scientists ​
Primary Science is a practical subject
In search of the Triantiwontigongolope
Rafting
Messing About on the River
Exploring scientifically
​November is a rotten month
​Observation; get them to look
Creating Nature Detectives
The world is not wallpaper
Exploring Science From shiny Things

With original words by Tony Hatch, Messing about on the River was a song on weekend children’s radio in the early 1960s.

As a child growing up in Brisbane, Qld, and Torbay, boats were a regular feature of life. Being in or on the water was a particular pleasure of growing up, with one darker incident, when a friend and I were the last people to see a boat loaded with six men and several sacks of cockles, with so little draught that while we were still out rowing, the police launch drew alongside and asked us if we’d seen them, as they hadn’t got back as planned. They had shipped water and all six had drowned when their boots, filled with water, had acted as anchors. It led to my first and only appearance in a Coroner’s court.

A tweet today talking of the oral tradition and nursery rhymes, reminded me of an earlier blog, but also made me think a little further about examples from my teaching.

As a teacher of a year 3 class around 1984, the topic choice was water, which provided the science, with exploration of floating and sinking, density exploration, evaporation and the water cycle, especially on showery days, siphons and pumps. Rafts enabled exploration of area and volume, linking science and maths. Rivers underpinned the geography, a visit to the Victory for some history and, for a short period, the song was the basis for dictionary and reference book research.

In the days before mass internet availability, the use of non-fiction books, using the contents and index to seek out information that could then become a general class resource, eg within displays was a common feature. Any parent who was associated with the navy, Royal or merchant, or a sailor or boater might be asked to visit to provide a personal talk.

Occasionally, this developed into an “alphabet of…” whatever was the current topic, creating a glossary of useful terms.

The song gave the focus, with specific words being identified as worthy of exploration. Ultimately, the activity also developed in-class thesaurus-style collections of associated words. By becoming the active explorers, children then often went home and found out more for themselves. The song became the vehicle for broader language development, but also, by being learned by heart for a performance in their assembly, helped with memory.

Oracy is a current buzz word. Like many others, it seems to mean different things to different people. To me, it means giving children something of quality to talk about, in small or larger groups, with the purpose of finding a solution to a problem, or working out how they will tackle a challenge. It’s rarely as formal as a debate, but might become such in specific circumstances. The confidence to interact with peers, to me, is more important than performance to a wider audience, as that’s how we live. Few of us have a soap box upon which to stand or a lectern to hide behind.

Learning to interact verbally is a life skill. A language rich environment encourages that.
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For those of you who don’t know the song, here’s a link. I'm hoping to resurrect my interest in the water and water activities when retirement beckons... who knows, I may even be tempted to accompany this with singing! 

It ain’t what you know, but the way that you use it…

It’s been a bit of a week, probably a good one to go out and buy a hard hat, if you spend any time on Twitter. It wasn’t just raining, it was, on occasion, literally pouring. Bile ducts were seemingly emptied on the heads of a few writers willing to proffer views with were opposite to others; as if people can’t see things in a different light. If it wasn’t knowledge, which it largely was, it’s overtaken by some element of English teaching, but that invariably comes back to children’s lack of knowledge that can be utilised within their oral or written efforts or in their ability to decode the written word.

The two “camps” could be described as those who think they can impart knowledge by sharing a specific body of knowledge, within their classroom teaching and those who seek to develop this knowledge through a variety of linking experiences, including the spoken word.
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This can sometimes appear to be the divide between (some) Primary and Secondary practitioners, with the extended argument that Primary learning is all discovery and play. That the approach is sometimes different, I wouldn’t want to argue, it can become a moot point, but, in reality, it’s likely that there is more convergence than divergence. Whereas young children “play with ideas” through active engagement and sometimes concrete examples, older children, hopefully, are more able to “play with ideas”, so have greater insights from their developed vocabularies.
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Recently, we went for a walk in Winchester, parked by the water meadows, then walked the footpaths, passing opposite Winchester College, into the Cathedral Yard, then onto some of the smaller streets where we find our favourite coffee house. During that mile of walking, we passed over nine hundred years of history.

It made me think that just going for a walk around your neighbourhood tells many stories, if you know how to read them.

Orientation
In the first place, there is the organisation of the area itself, a series of interlocking paths that offer alternative routes and different scenery; we took a completely different route back to the car, to avoid the mud of the water meadows.

Knowing your way around is a fundamental organisational skill, which can apply to navigating your house (try moving around your house in the dark during a blackout, a different place) through to the journey to school or other important place. Within the school, orientation is an important aspect of being in the right place at the right time. So having mental maps is an important aspect of living in the world, in order to function independently.

My childhood, in Exeter, Torbay, Brisbane, Adelaide, and other cities en route to and from Australia and, living in a time where parents were less concerned about stranger-danger, the act of exploring created mental maps of localities, supporting active, confident and safe movement within the local environment. I was unconcernedly walking the mile and a half to school at five.

Today’s children may not have the same possibilities. One grandson is now being allowed to go out with friends, as long as he has a fully charged mobile and credit and makes regular contact, within a very clear time limit.
How is this change impacting on the mental imagery of children?

Are they creating useful personal maps within their heads from which to determine routes?

Do they have an exploratory (survival) mentality? Do they actively engage with their local area, with their parents?

Children drawing their routes to school vary greatly in detail. Some come by car, so may not pay close attention to the journey, while others walk and may possibly have a greater insight into their locality, although many do not, as they engage in activities other than looking around themselves. It can be a salutary experience to ask children to explain how they get from the classroom to specific areas of the school. Linking geography, oral and drawn and mental organisation akin to coding (giving directions), a child’s awareness, ordering and organisational abilities can be explored.
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Orientation is an essential life skill. I have heard it referred to as psycho-geography; developing maps in your head.

Or why SPAG may not be the be all and end all of writing

Last term, I watched a PGCE student on final practice take a class of year four students through an exemplary English lesson, with a major focus on grammar. The learning objective was on creating a setting.

The children demonstrated very good understanding of a range of grammatical elements, significantly more than I knew at their age. The lesson had several parts with imagery and excellent opportunities to talk and capture ideas. The writing and the supporting images were focused on the class book, so there were textual links as well as imported images and a short DVD.

The focus of The Railway Children was interesting and the children came up with similes and metaphors, adjectives and adverbial starters, strong choice of verbs and embedded noun clauses.

At the end of the lesson, the children had produced and shared a wide range of examples of sentences and constituent parts that showed that they could write appropriately.

But, throughout I had a nagging feeling. Did the children really have a good understanding of the setting about which they were writing? Despite the local station being a five or ten minute walk from the school, there was no guarantee that any of them had ever taken the train, or stood on a platform and watched trains arriving or departing. In addition, the setting was the early part of the 20th century, with steam trains, so several removes from their experiences. None wrote about the real sensory experiences, such as the noises, the feelings and the smells. They had the visual, so they wrote what they saw on the video.

In the summary session, the children were asked to share, on a post-it, what they knew about writing settings. Without exception, they wrote down the grammatical constructs. While they are essentials, the sensory aspects need to be available to provide the depth, to create writing that fully brings the reader into the narrative.

Children today, more and more are living vicariously, through television and computer imagery. While they give a flavour, as David Attenborough did, for me, as a young child, it was the fact that my best friend’s dad was the zoo superintendent at Paignton Zoo, so was able to get close to the animals, that they really became real.

Don’t assume that children have experiences from which to draw mental images. That may be a significant limiting factor in a child’s education.
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Ps. The conversation after the observation was very positive and reflective; the student is an excellent prospect.

Buildings

People need somewhere to live. Some live in houses, terraced, semi-detached or detached, while others might live in a flat, or possibly an apartment. On two occasions in my life, I lived with my family in a caravan.

Working on locality based topics allowed for an orientation project, using the landscape and features to orientate the children.

Another topic, based around settlements explored the need for temporary shelter, finding ways to cover and protect someone from the weather, then using the available materials to build slightly more permanent dwellings, within which families might be able to live all year round, which enabled them to develop small farmsteads. Within 20 miles of all the schools where I worked, were two excellent “living” museums, Butser Ancient Farm and the Weald and Downland Open air Museum, as well as Portsmouth Museum rooms from history, or the Gosport Search Museum 1930s experience. These provided excellent stimuli for exploration.

The basis of the topic was discussion of life essentials, food, water, shelter and the better places to build a house and to find out where the first settlement might have been. Exploring maps over an extended time frame gave the impression of the area growth.

Once this was established, consideration of the available materials for building gave rise to speculations, which could be checked through our local museums; for example, where locally there was evidence of Neolithic habitation, if they used trees to build, how did they cut and shape the trees with axes? Equally, with the museum showing deer antlers used for “digging” preparing for planting, finding a similar shaped piece of wood offered an opportunity to try in the school grounds.

Creating a building museum in the classroom and asking children to bring in labelled offerings, we received a wide variety of building materials that were surplus to projects, as well as a significant range of tools. Every item gave food for research and reflection.

Bricks, made from local clay, enabled the challenge to dig some from various gardens, then to make small dwellings from mini-bricks. Other (purchased) clay was also used. Various waterproof materials were explored to find the best for a damp-proof course, while sand, gravel and cement were mixed with water to make various concretes, which were then tested for strength.

Vocabulary was probably the most significant winner, providing the language through which the topic could be discussed, researched, explored and expressed.

All of the above was with Infant and lower junior classes, while an extension would be provided by exploring building details, windows, doors, brick sizes, all giving clues to the ages of houses, with local census materials giving the evidence of habitation over time.
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The essence of good topic activity is opening children’s eyes to what is around them, but also giving them the knowledge language with which to interrogate what they are seeing. The alternative is to leave them “blind” to their surroundings.

People

As a species, we tend to live in communities, starting with families, extended or otherwise, living in our street, among others with similarities and differences, within villages or towns which have different forms of collective structures.
Each of us experiences our personal narrative as a result of birth, most of us, fortunately, being brought up and kept safe by our parents, grandparents, wider family and friends. We are born in our particular time, which has implications for the articles that surround us and possibly the finances available to parents to support our upbringing.

Our story, my story, her story, his story = first steps in history.

I used to use the idea that each of us has a story when I worked with Infants and Lower Juniors, to make a link between different ages of “lived lives”. Working with their own memories, supported by photographs, we were able to consider time before they were born, with exploration of parent and grandparent narratives, again with photographic storyboards. In this way, children could develop the idea of time having passed. The oral tradition of sharing stories was kept alive and the shared experience was often quoted as bringing children closer to older family members, as links were established.

Stories of playing, or eating and how they dressed were shared. The highlights and difficulties of significant events. Each could be recorded, physically on tape, but also as transcripts.

People around us

The local police officer was a regular visitor to schools, especially when there was dedicated school link officer, to talk with the children about growing up issues and responsibilities. Other regular visitors would include the fire-service, ambulance, school nurse, area librarians, local sports coaches and local representatives of several different churches. In so doing, this extended the school community, by invitation.

Local organisations often asked for children to participate in local events, sometimes singing, carols or summer fair fun songs, sometimes country dance, including maypole dancing on 1st May on the village green.

Taking advantage of local expertise supported some aspects of the wider curriculum, as they became known to the school.

All of these events served to show the breadth of people locally and the specific skills that each had to offer to the community.

Life is largely lived in some form of group, home, school and work. Each of us has to find our place within this matrix. Some find it easier than others. An aware group will keep an eye on each member, to ensure that each has a place and is valued for themselves.
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Children need to learn to live within and value the group for all that it offers them and others.

Things.

The first twenty years of my life were somewhat nomadic. By that point, I had been around the world twice, both times as emigrants to Australia, first as £10 Poms, then at 17 with residual family after parent’s messy divorce. It was seen as the land of milk and honey by my dad. We came back reasonably quickly, as 1) he discovered that bringing up teenagers alone was not going to be easy and 2) he was worried that I’d be called up for the Vietnam war.

As a result, I got into the habit of travelling relatively light. The things of childhood were spirited away, but not into someone’s loft to be rediscovered in a sense of lost joy. A few special pieces remain from that period; my County cricket cap, having been awarded that the year before the second Oz trip and a small wooden model of a man that “lived” in my grandmother’s display cabinet and came out when I visited. The legs moved and that was magical to a three year old, “walking” the man down the arm of the chairs or across the table. That this belonged to my grandmother means that it is now over 120 years old.

That I lived a somewhat itinerant lifestyle and had little when I got married meant that this period was the most settled period in my life to that date. Seeking out and renovating furniture became a hobby. To be able to look at a finished piece and feel that it was pleasing to look at and the product of personal effort imbued the object with special meaning. It was something of mine. It belonged to me, and, in a sense, created a sense of belonging.

A few pieces remain from that period. After my first wife died, it was a period of sorting and readjustment, with special emphasis a couple of years later, as I remarried and moved house. Some special bits remain, this time some in the loft, but, in order to rebuild a life, it required an adjustment and a selection of specific special things. You cannot live in the past, only the present and with plans for the future.

A new “nest” had to be created.

The “things” that remain, when all is said and done, are the memories that go with and surround any physical pieces. You may pick up something and remember. I remember holidays in South Wales when I smell coal dust; the smell of the slag heaps. Meeting people jogs memories of shared experience.

The things matter, but so do the ephemeral aspects of life, the stuff of memories. The pictures and the words often outlast the physical closeness of “things”.
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I just need to know that I belong, which is also what I wanted for any child in my classes.

People, Places and Things

​There's always a time when whatever activity you have devised for a class comes to a close before the time you had planned. There's a need for some kind of "filler" activity.

​Early in my career, a colleague suggested that I should make three sets of cards, based on a set of people, places and things or objects. The idea was very simple. a child would select a card from each group, then link the elements together in a short spoken story. This became a very popular filler, but had the potential to be developed further, into extended pieces of imaginary writing.

​Where experiences might be limited, and based on the teacher's good knowledge of their class, each of the groups can be tailored to their locality. Of course, this also relies on the teacher having a good understanding of the area where their class lives!

Go outside; there’s such potential out there.
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With the arrival of autumn, you can’t help but notice the changes of the colours of the leaves, and that they are beginning to fall in profusion, together with their fruits, conkers, acorns and various nuts, providing food for a variety of animals.

Knowing something of what you are looking for is really important, if children’s attention is to be drawn to specifics that might lead to an interest that lasts a lifetime. I was lucky as a child, that an uncle in Wales took us for walks over the mountains, sometimes after a nightshift in the mines, to clear his head, but also to introduce us to the world around us.
Uncle Don won’t ever have known that he instilled a love of nature in me, as a messy parental divorce led to estrangement from Wales that existed until one of my own children was eight. Deciding to make contact with my mother, I arrived on the doorstep on the morning that Uncle Don had died in his chair. Life can have a strange symmetry.

However, in my turn, as a teacher who loved the outdoors, from the early 70s and well before the “Forest Schools” theme came into existence, I was developing conservation areas, to enable outdoor study and making links with the local wildlife trust, eventually becoming a Watch (junior naturalists) leader, and voluntarily taking on the role of County Organiser for Hampshire. It was a measure of the success of this that, when I stepped down, it was advertised as a paid post!

You may wonder what there is to look for when outside. It’s worth having some sort of guide if you are unsure. One constant since it was published in 1972 has been the Collins Guide to Animal Tracks and Signs, by Preben Bang and Preben Dahlstrom. This series was very useful as an introduction to many areas. Other guides are published by the Field Studies Council and one still exists from my Watch days.

Conservation starts with observation and asking questions, then following up with some research, which might include asking an “expert”. It involves learning the names of animals and plants and identifying them easily.
It is about attention and awareness, without which it’s easy to miss that there have been fewer butterflies this year, or that ash trees are suffering and may well die out in large numbers in the next few years. When creatures die out, as a result of our apparent disinterest, we are partly to blame.
Go out and look; be an active discoverer of the world and, do you know the best bit? It’s good for your well-being! Go outside, breathe fresh air and look…

​And maybe you have the next David Attenborough in your class.

So, what to do?
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1)      Visit a DIY store and find colour charts with autumn colours. Get children to bring in egg boxes. Put one autumn colour in each egg space and go out to find something that matches the colours in the box. This can be a home activity.
2)      Go out and look for the signs that mammals have been eating nearby, especially where nuts or pine cones have fallen. Unpick a pine cone to find the pine nuts that are being sought. Show children something that is not obvious. Look at the nuts, especially hazelnuts, to find holes, or if they have been split in half.
3)      Look for droppings, of different sorts, even in towns, where rabbits and foxes may be most obvious.
4)      Make a sand area or find a mud area where animal tracks may be more visible. Make plaster casts; a circle of cardboard to secure the plaster, add the plaster to an appropriate amount of water (a small mound should appear above the water to make it the right consistency), pour into the mould and wait. Clean off when dry. Nb you can practice making plaster casts in the classroom, with handprints in plasticine.
5)      Look for bark scratched or gnawed off trees.
6)      Look, listen, film, photograph. Make an Attenborough style documentary.
7)      Speculate; where do the animals live? Make a map of the area, record where the evidence has been found and then look for any holes, or other signs, that might show where the animals are.

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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We know that we have knowledge, or not, at the point where it becomes useful. It is the same for children. They know what they know and hopefully, their teacher understands what they do not yet know. They learn to function in the world that is created by their own knowledge. Hopefully, their curiosity is piqued by ideas and experiences, so that they glean from each experience a few new nuggets of knowledge to store away, squirrel like, until they are called upon to use it.

It is in the using and application of our knowledge that we may come upon a point where the detail and security of our knowledge is challenged. This could be a practical situation, when making something, that an unexpected problem means that we have to stop, to think, and perhaps to adapt our approach, to suit the tools available or the material. Learning in a classroom can often throw up the evidence where a child or a group become “stuck”. This is the point where the aware teacher intervenes to identify the reason and, by a variety of approaches, including instruction, enables the child or the group to continue with the task to completion. Education and training are rarely smooth processes, as the complex range of needs in the “audience” ensures that the language, vocabulary and register, of the trainer will be understandable to some, but may cause difficulty for others.

Use and application of knowledge are, in my mind, akin to testing, in that the learner is asked to perform, within a set challenge, to demonstrate their knowledge. The challenge is to identify the areas of need, to address them and to unstick the issues, so that learning can be continuous. Learning within a task can be very valuable, as it is seen in context, so has a clear purpose.

On being a higher achiever

The news this morning, 10.6.16,  highlighted the concerns of the Chief Inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, about the “plight” of higher achieving children. Since the newest incarnation of the National Curriculum, I have been concerned about this group too, as they can be less well challenged in tasks, even where there are progressively harder task to work through. To spend time on the lower challenges might be wasting valuable learning time.

Reflect on this week’s lessons and answer the following questions.

1. What was the point of being bright in the class?
2. Would an observer see a difference in expectation, in challenge or in outcome for those children?
3. Did they have to sit through the same inputs as the others, every day?
4. Did they actually need to do so?

I am talking about the more able quarter or third of the children in the class. If the answers to the questions were 1) none 2) no 3) yes and 4) no then there may be a problem in the room.

The teacher, or the system within which they are required to work, may be a barrier to learning.

Hackles rise. Of course teachers can’t be barriers to learning!

But surely, if you look at your class and know that a proportion already understand, from your assessment, what you are about to share, why waste twenty valuable minutes?

Why not give them a separate independent task to validate your judgements?

Perhaps they could be given a reflective task to simplify and remember information and teach the rest of the class at the end of the general input?

If “they all look just the same” within the process and the output is identical, where was the challenge and the embedded thinking, leading to children making decisions? Just following a recipe does not make for innovation and we should be looking to our brightest children to provide that level of spark, showing the best and the range of what can be achieved.

If you had as an example, Picasso and Cezanne within your class, how would they be accommodated? Picasso was demonstrating his abilities very early, a prodigy, whereas Cezanne was a late bloomer. Would they both have had the same experiences in art? A liberated Picasso was able to paint prodigiously and create world famous masterpieces early in his career, whereas, arguably, Cezanne’s best work was done in his sixties. The difference? Picasso was a better draftsman early and had the capacity to pull together a range of ideas in novel forms, possibly pure genius. Cezanne worked hard at the craft and got better. He did produce wonderful work. Would Picasso have received all the accolades and Cezanne been told not to bother? See Malcolm Gladwell’s book, What the Dog Saw, the chapter on late bloomers, for a deeper insight.

It is conceivable that the child looking out of the window and daydreaming may just be coming up with a tremendous idea.

Giving children time to be reflective is an important constituent of lessons. If children are allowed to think, discuss then articulate to an audience, their thinking is likely to be significantly deeper than an answer given as a response. The teacher determines this aspect of a lesson, by setting the challenges in the tasking.
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Differentiation by task challenge embeds a series of expectations, called variously success criteria or WILF (what I am looking for). The latter construction is useful, as the full explanation is likely to be; I am looking to see if you can.... with specific criteria stated depending on the subject and context.

Task differentiation is by far the more difficult of all differential approaches, but, let’s take an example of a class with a range of attainment in science. The high achieving children will need to be able to demonstrate independent actions within a fair test, whereas some children may need to have the process scaffolded for them, step by step.

Lower achievement
They make observations and measurements to compare living things, objects and events, using equipment provided for them. They record findings using prepared tables and communicate observations using scientific vocabulary. They say whether what happened was what they expected and, when prompted, suggest different ways they could have done things.  

Higher achievement
Pupils decide appropriate approaches to a range of tasks, including selecting sources of information and apparatus. They select and use methods to obtain data systematically. They recognise hazard symbols and make, and act on, simple suggestions to control obvious risks to themselves and others. They use line graphs to present data, interpret numerical data and draw conclusions from them. They analyse findings to draw scientific conclusions that are consistent with the evidence. They communicate these using scientific and mathematical conventions and terminology. They evaluate their working methods to make practical suggestions for improvements.

Talking to higher achieving children is also likely to show different approaches, in language forms as well as specific vocabulary. A very cursory skim over the descriptors above indicate a greater depth of knowledge required by higher achievers, so one would expect to hear a difference in group conversation and teacher or peer to peer didactic language.

It is possible that such a level of discussion would demand an extended reply as the teacher responds to the cues being given by the children.

There is a need to,
Look at planning and verify the challenge and extended nature of the tasks being set.
Allocate time for reflection and reflective articulation of thinking.
Allow a level of autonomy in decision making and selection of materials and resources.
Reduce prescription and enhance independence.
Give the time, space and resources and see what they can achieve.
Engage, but be conscious of your own role and the danger of becoming directive.
Be self aware, emotionally literate and model the reflective behaviours that you are seeking from these children.

Tasks should be challenging and, by extension, be testing. They should enable children to create ideas, to seek to use their current knowledge to find solutions. They can reprise and embed learned facts and allow extension through need.

If, after the challenge, the child, or children share their reasoning, the process, their choices and decisions, working methodology, outcomes and evaluation, peers can gain an insight into ways of thinking from the success or otherwise of their peers.

Everyone benefits, with the insights informing teacher decisions, as high quality assessment for learning.
A final question.

​Would you, as a (demonstrably) able person, currently want to be a child in your class?
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​The high achiever’s lament

What’s the point in being an achiever in this class?
We all do the same, same question, same activity, same organisation, same time.
Some get help to get it finished.
I took my time, lots of time. No point in finishing early,
Just to be told to check and check again.
Quiet, not to be noticed, because doing just enough is good enough.
We move at the speed of the slowest.
It could be different.
My group could have our own question, be allowed to think for ourselves.
To generate ideas, possibilities, choose our organisation, select our resources, check out our working.
Talk together, not too noisily, maybe talk with the teacher to confirm some things, be responsible for ourselves and what we produce.
Share our ideas with the rest of the class, encouraging them to try the same as us.
Instead, we all do the same, same question, same activity, same organisation, same time.
Same as always. It doesn’t get “better”.

​Note
The picture at the top of the blog is from FSC, The Field Studies Council, among others, but should be available from local Wildlife Trust outlets.

​The science pictures came from Association for Science Education publications in 1984 and 1988. Practical Primary science!