It’s interesting having a perspective on working in education and learning that now spans 48 years from walking into Training College. There have been many changes and challenges along the way, but, in essence, there is much more in common across the ages than difference.

Let’s start at the very beginning
A very good place to start.
When you read you begin with ABC
Let's see if I can make it easier

As a parent of three, step-parent to three and a grandparent to eight, I have had a lot of opportunities to view children growing up; the current span is from 15 months to almost 15 years. Each of the family settings varies, in place, parental jobs and therefore available time and in disposable incomes. These variables inevitably play some part in the opportunities that are available to each family and therefore on the cultural potential made available to each child.

The children grow and flourish through their parental love, diet and their spoken language, with appropriate encouragement to make marks and to enjoy books.

The environment that surrounds young children today is different from that which I enjoyed. Not in terms of the natural world, where there are still plants, animals and natural features; in some cases just… but perhaps their opportunity to engage with it, with an interested adult able to point out the different elements and to provide the names of things. There are also the distractions of the digital world. Whereas as a child, I was more au fait with string and a penknife and den making, today’s young have early access to screen distractions and can very soon work their way into desired apps.

I have long worried that a school cannot rely on a child’s ability to identify easily with the elements of their locality to support their speaking, their reading and their writing attempts. Having spent time as a volunteer, leading wildlife groups, it was clear in the 1980s that it was a minority interest. Education does still rely, to some extent on a child’s experience beyond the school gates.

How does a child describe the feeling of walking on sand in bare feet, paddling in the sea or lake, getting caught in a rain storm, walking through long grass, the sound of leaves being walked on or kicked, and so many other things, if they haven’t had the opportunity?

Can we build a strong curriculum and strong education on missing experiences? Is experience the beginning of “knowledge rich” education, in that it provides a base for things to “stick” to?

What’s school? People, places and things

Organise rooms, which used to be defined as 55 sq m for a group of 30 children, or a currently defined infant classful.
Supply desks and chairs; this has varied over time, with discussions about the amount of table space needed.

There’s also been wide variation on whether to supply personal storage space for books; should children be responsible for their own exercise books or should they be centralised? Either decision can cause logistical issues when books are needed for a lesson; either movement of each child to find their one book, or teacher/monitors to give out books. This can be pre-empted between lessons, getting out books on entry to the classroom, or someone must give them out before the lesson; assuming places are known…

Classroom resources need a retrieval and return system that can facilitate whole class lessons as well as intermittent needs; variation between age groups, from picture clues to written headings.

Space, resources and time have always been the variables within a school and teacher’s organisational control.

Space…

How much space is available to support the learners, and how is it orientated to support the teaching that is likely to happen?

How desks are arranged, to allow sight lines, ease of movement around the classroom, for children and adults, but also to facilitate different areas of the curriculum. Alteration to the needs of different subjects and teaching may need to be easily accomplished; I have seen whole classroom reorganisation within a couple of minutes, accompanied by a piece of music. “I can’t do x because of the way tables are arranged.” does not seem to me to be a reasonable response. Where there’s a will…

Resources…

Throughout my teaching career, there have been shelves of resources that have been bought at some stage, because they seemed a good idea at the time or because the sales patter was irresistible. They gathered dust through lack of use, often because newer staff were unaware of the potential of the resource. There’s a significant need to keep on top of learning resources, to ensure that they are up to date and do the job that’s required of them. Collated and identified, they are more likely to be used than if they are just in a pile somewhere.

There’s probably a similar kit of resources in every classroom, centred around the stationery, which also needs some organisation. Painted tins and glass jam jars were a feature of my first classroom. Today there’s a variety of plastic tool boxes (scissors, erasers rulers), cutlery drawers (paint brushes) or cutlery holders for pens and pencils. Classroom desks can also sometimes be awash with SPaG reminders, or similar prompts.

Maths, reading, writing, art corners might be created, as resource bases, with topic resources brought in to need, from a central collection.

Time…

It’s sometimes easy to forget that time in school is under teacher and school control, but, some organisational elements can exert control over the available time that puts pressure on lesson dynamics, especially for some vulnerable learners who can’t quite get things finished. If it’s clear that a child has worked hard, for them, and needs a bit of finishing time, does this mean part of a playtime lost, or can the teacher allow a few extra minutes in order for the child to finish?

We have been in a period where maths and English have seemed to dominate the curriculum. Some organisation of this, sets for example, impose a timetable need. This can mean that some children might not be able to access the learning in the available time, but, in a classroom setting, perhaps the teacher can make an executive decision to add a few necessary minutes to a lesson, to bridge a playtime and allow children some “finishing off time” rather than rushing and not completing or not being able to show their best efforts.

It’s also possible to find many examples where tasks/activities are chosen to fill the set time, rather than being able to challenge all children, limiting some.

School time is often extended through “homework”. At Primary, if homework is to be seen as a useful adjunct to school work, I would prefer to see talking homework, eg a question or an image to discuss, with the outcomes of discussion feeding back into lessons. Click on the blue title to open a linked blog.

 Primary Curriculum; a child’s world?

There have been great similarities across my career in the curriculum offerings of every school. For a start, there was always mathematics, more often than not supported by a bought scheme. The strictness of adherence to the scheme varied from school to school, but, in all cases, we were required to use the Teacher’s Guide as our methodological “bible”, to ensure consistency of approach.

English varied more from school to school, with the majority drawing heavily on the topic curriculum for stimuli for talk and writing. Reading, from around 1975 was supported by the Cliff Moon colour coded system, with different layers of books available to the children; one at teacher level, where there might be a small number of errors, and one at more fluent levels, to read in free time or at home, with or without a parent. Most of the schools in which I worked in the 70/80s also had a Home-School reading diary, with parents encouraged to record their thoughts from hearing their children read. It was very much individualised and we were encouraged to hear children read regularly. Writing was collated into excellent practice during the National Writing Project 1985-8. It mirrored what good schools were already doing, but also gave the basis for conversation between schools about what constituted good writing experiences.

Topic work enabled science, history and geography to lead investigation, with music, PE (dance), DT and art to be used to interpret the outcomes of the investigation. This element of the curriculum provided the opportunities for report writing, letters, note taking and a range of genres with imaginative narratives. The school library was a source of investigation through reading non-fiction texts, using the index and contents list to find out facts for themselves and to share with their classmates, often producing a glossary display; an alphabet of…topic.

It is interesting to me that the 1987 National Curriculum was a 95% correspondence with that which my and other local schools were doing. It meant small tweaks rather than big alterations.

I am finding the current discussion on the broader curriculum a little stilted at times. There will be significant similarities across time and there will already be a lot of good practice that can be retained.

Topic titles allocated to year groups.

Planning is essential.

Topic details; essential knowledge to be shared; key questions to be explored; resources available within the school or locally. When I was a head, we developed “topic specs” in around 1993.

Link opportunities between the topic and spoken, read and written English, or mathematics; using and applying knowledge from each to benefit the other, making appropriate links.

Timescales allocated and the order of study, to enable learning from earlier topics to impact on subsequent learning.  

Organised into an annual plan, it’s possible to ensure coverage and also sufficient opportunity to explore specifics in depth, knowing that the year was planned.
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It’s useful to have an end point for each topic area, maybe a small museum, a display, a performance, piece of art, music or drama/movement, with the potential for an audience to provide the spur for higher quality outcomes.
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​In many ways, it is sad that we have reached a point in our education history where we are having to reinstate that which was already there in many cases. The 2014 curriculum changes were such that elevating maths and English to such heights distorted teacher efforts, in schools and across training providers who have to follow Government expectations. It takes time and effort to develop curriculum, to articulate a school approach, to embed this into daily practice and then to evaluate and refine, with a constant need to revisit when there are new staff who will need support and mentoring.

For interest, here’s my school KS2 science overview from 2004; based on 7.5 hours per week, blocked time to need.
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In the meantime, while this development is actioned, five years on from the changes, another generation of children passes through the school, potentially fed a diet limited by the school interpretation of it’s needs at that point in time. Data in maths and English define external judgement. If a school feels vulnerable, concentrating on what is measured can seem an appropriate course of action, but is can also lead to a diminished learning opportunity, which, if coupled with a diminished home opportunity can doubly exclude children from wider life opportunities.

There’s much talk of cultural capital. We need to look at life experiences, too…
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Is showing children pictures the same as being there?

An open book? How do you tell your story?

Do you offer children something to think, talk, read and write about?

It’s been a quiet Christmas break, which is how it is when you get a bit older. It’s usually making sure that younger generations have a good time; that they are fed and clothed and have presents to open. It has been interesting to drop in and out of Twitter to see what’s being discussed. It can be an eye opener, or occasionally a tablet shutter, as views pass that might elicit a type-delete response.

However, recent tweets about the curriculum suggest that Curriculum is the current hot topic, as Ofsted are putting it at the centre of their next round of thinking, and some commentators seemingly jumping on the opportunity to propound their “knowledge rich” agenda, as if it’s a new phenomenon.

My career in teaching started with training at St Luke’s College, Exeter, from 1971-74. Although Plowden was a high-profile element that was the new core of pedagogic reflection, the sharing of knowledge was central to the science course that I started and the Environmental Education course to which I transferred in year 2, providing a broad subject base for Primary, which became my passion.

It was based on knowledge, the interpretation of which into classroom narratives was left to us. We explored “programmed learning”, which was exemplified by exploring the stages of making a cup of tea or a piece of toast. This showed us the essence of embedded knowledge that is assumed in giving instruction or developing a narrative. It made us better “storytellers”; a mixture of substance and exploration. If you think of sharing a book/(his)story with children, their background knowledge inevitably impacts on their understanding of the whole; that’s Hirsch in a sentence.

We talked of challenge in tasking, with the challenge depending on our understanding of the knowledge that the children had already encountered; it was effectively tested through use and application. Within the task, when children encountered difficulty, it highlighted areas that had ether been missed or had not been assimilated effectively, so in-task teaching would occur. There were tremendous similarities to my own education experiences in the 1950/60s. It was also writ large in the available resource materials, such as Nuffield Science 5-13.
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Knowledge and challenge were intertwined.
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And, in my school experience as a teacher, it remained so throughout.

I still have a copy of the textbook that underscored my initial training; Environmental Studies, by George Martin and Edward (Ted) Turner, who was the course leader. For those who would wish to claim that knowledge-rich is a new phenomenon, I’d offer them this book, from 1972 as both a starter knowledge across subjects that sought to give an introduction to thinking practically about the world, supplemented in each chapter with an extensive bibliography for extended reading.

The premise of the course was to provide teachers with the background to introduce children into their world through three layers, Investigation and interpretation, communication, inspiration. Over time, this gave rise to my personal mantra of learning challenge as something to think, talk, and write about, leading to presentation, preferably to a known audience.

The course explored the living and non-living world; essentially chemistry, physics and biology with added geology; the past world around us, architectural features, local archaeological sites and using artefacts; rural and urban living, settlement studies, including use of materials for dwellings and other buildings; conservation, especially within an urban settlement; histories, especially from a locality perspective, but also within a national and international perspective. (Ted Turner took as his inspiration the notion of the Renaissance, especially Leonardo da Vinci. That allowed the summer field trip to be to Florence, at a time when it was possible to wander into galleries freely. However we also had to write about the other aspects too; planning how we would use the available resources to offer the broader curriculum.

Mathematics, of measures, counting and data, language, art and music were significant features.
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It was a good basic starter, to which I later added two part-time Diplomas, one in Environmental Sciences and the second in Language and Reading Development.
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Every school within which I worked, from 1974 onwards, had curriculum organisation, to differing degrees. Some had simply headings, of topics that had to be covered within each year, others had broad resource materials from which to develop the topic narrative, which was left to the classteacher to develop based on knowledge of their classes.

The 1987 National Curriculum was a 95% match with our existing curriculum; I was a deputy in a First School.
The subsequent Dearing Review gave a 95% correspondence.

When I became a HT in 1990, there was a need to create a firmer base for the curriculum, which could have been described as a little ad-hoc.

We had a mix of planning layers, starting with whole school and year group. This was premised on allocating topics appropriately.

Every topic had a “topic spec”, which was designed by the subject lead, ensuring that the NC expectations were clear, articulating essential knowledge, skills, challenges, available school and locality resources, plus reminders of quality outcome expectations (Level descriptors rewritten as descriptors of child capability).
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Every teacher received their planning file in July, before a half day of a closure that allowed them to organise their planning thoughts before the summer holiday. A copy came to me as HT, so I knew in July what the next year “learning map” looked like.

The first two weeks were always designated as “getting to know and settling” weeks, with a teacher designed topic. The second Friday was always a closure, half a day given to planning the detail of the next (few) topic(s), including resourcing from school stock. Topics ranged from a week to several weeks, depending on the needs. The interplay of topics with English and maths allowed for topic generated information to be used in writing or to create mathematical opportunity that offered measures, counting leading to data, or shape and space exploration.

Because the year was based around revisiting areas, especially in maths and English, revision of ideas, aka interleaving, was embedded.

In so doing, we had a curriculum with meat, two veg and a good helping of dessert.

It was planned longer term, so that it had substance. It was broad, balanced and relevant, drawing from the locality as much as possible, to fully immerse the children into their community, as well as drawing from wider opportunities; we did take the children on local trips, but also to London, to the British Museum for Greek, Roman or Egyptian exhibitions. However, time was always against us for day trips, with at least two hours each way on a coach and costs getting ever higher. The IWB did allow us to bring a level of experience into classrooms, taking over from the video or CD player.

While “bright ideas” might be imported, these were always evaluated against what was already offered. If they added something, they were incorporated.

It was a cycle of constant improvement, supported by every subject lead having at least a half day with a County inspector to review the school offering as a whole.

The 1997 National Curriculum with the accompanying strategies, did put some of this under strain, especially when we needed to replace experienced staff. It was noticeable that some applicants were used to a narrower diet. However, personalised CPD opportunities, eg shadowing colleagues, allowed insights into expectations. Staffing stability helped with this; we held onto the “tribal memories”… see blog…

The breadth paid off in national testing, too, where English, maths and science scored highly. Every subject was valued, with quality outcomes celebrated throughout the school, with displays or presentations opening learning to others.

The 2014 Primary National Curriculum was always a worry to me, even though I was not school based, but working in ITE and with parents and inclusion. It articulated English and Maths extensively, while others were diminished. Listening to Tim Oates, early in the process, saying that it was designed to be easier to test highlighted an underlying political agenda.

As we are now a couple of days into 2019. Perhaps a chance for reflection and refinement?

I have no problem with a conversation about what children should be exposed to through their school experience. There must be a clear narrative to learning; it is after all, the school’s internal book.

Every subject can be explored by a 2-year old, a 12-year old or a 22-year old. Their ability to interact with the experience will vary widely, from an initial exploratory phase, which I would see as “play”, through to accommodating, reflecting on and reacting to, ever more sophisticated information. We are on a constant journey, carrying with us, at any point, the accumulated wisdom of earlier experiences. So a “knowledge organiser” as our “topic specs” can be seen today, will vary considerably for each age group, and should do so. It should support a developing narrative approach, not become a knowledge dump which an inexperienced practitioner might simply regurgitate.

Order and organisation are key to teaching and learning success, over different timescales.

I would argue that annual plans allowed teachers to ensure coverage while also developing each topic at depth. Colleagues also benefited from collegiate sharing, either one to one or within practical workshops.

At classroom level, each teacher planned in ways that suited them. They were personal diaries, only considered if there were question marks over children’s progress. Classroom teachers are paid to think. They need to think clearly, on multiple layers, always with children and their progress in mind. That’s why it can be tough at times.

When teaching becomes top-down, teachers start to look at what is expected, to second guess what “those above” are looking for. That this has, on occasion been subject to the management or Ofsted rumour mill, can’t be denied; one local school or colleague passing on their tips from their own inspection, so others copy.

To hold to your own course can be challenging, but it is your own school’s journey that’s important.

It’s your narrative, your history, your present.

More important, it’s your children’s narrative, their history and their present.

That’s your data; what you do for them and what they get out of it. It’s a mix of the obvious, the displays and the books, but also their attitudes in school, their capacity to engage in talk with others. It’s a story, based on words, not numbers, so that children can engage with their own developing narratives.

Children’s pleasure in overcoming challenges and learning…led by teachers who enjoy teaching.
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Curriculum 1971-2014; broad, balanced and relevant.
Curriculum 2018; knowledge rich (or learning rich)?

Put simply, classroom learning is children, context, engagement, guidance and adaptation, evaluation of outcomes. The whole captured within communication.

Remembering always the maxim that education( life) is a journey not a destination. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century.)

It’s strangely fascinating occasionally just to be a bystander to conversations on social media. There’s a current penchant for everything curriculum, as if it’s the next new thing that no-one has ever thought of before You can almost hear the sound of cash tills ringing with the book potential.

The recent Ofsted commentaries on curriculum are strangely reminiscent of earlier HMI statements, one series of which was dubbed the “raspberry ripple” books because of their covers. The September 2018 commentary suggested that there was a lack of curriculum development expertise. In some ways this is not surprising, as for twenty years curriculum and pedagogy has been engaged through ever tighter dictat, seemingly removing teacher and school discretion, whereas autonomy is the life-blood of a thinking organisation.

Forgive me for being old(er). I started as a classroom teacher in 1974 after three years at training college; my first Primary class will now be coming up to 55 years old. In that extended career, I never worked in a school without a curriculum in some form. Some were stronger than others. They might have been based on a scheme for maths and English, with Topics (now called the foundation subjects) being the area that was apportioned to specific year groups. Once you knew the topics, there was the search for the available school resources, or perhaps an investigation in the locality to seek out appropriate places to visit or people with local interests. We were, to all intents and purposes, organising the knowledge, supplemented by the County Library Service and, from time to time, museums and costume services. It was relatively easy to put together a package of essential knowledge that would be shared, sometimes with teachers making some kind of information book that was derived from the various sources.

In looking through my notebooks from my career, I came across a diagrammatic version that was the top layer of an early curriculum map. It’s not detailed, but an overview that enabled themes to be allocated to year groups, then further developed through locality resources and resource boxes.
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In many ways variations on this have been a feature of my career. Start at the top layer, then work ever deeper, providing greater detail at different points to support teacher thinking in their classroom. This last layer might include agreed details that have to be structured into the theme narrative and retained for future use.

​These early thoughts were supplemented further with a very active inspection and advisory service and teachers centres that provided both courses and in-house support to school development.

From an earlier blog:

Curricula are usually written by experts, from the expert perspective, ensuring that information is delivered, whether or not it is appropriate for the learner’s current needs. 
As teachers, unconstrained by predetermined curricular expectations, we were able to assume the mantle of experts, reflecting on what the four year olds brought with them in the way of life experiences which would be the start points for school based experiences and exploration.

So history started as My story, based on storyboards created with a series of photos, then developed into His or Her story, with reference to parents and grandparents. Local walks to look at houses of interest started a link between History and Geography, with sketch mapping, drawing in situ or photos being taken (development time, much easier now?). Parents and grandparents came to tell their own stories, recorded onto c45, 60 or 90 tapes to be replayed and reflected upon. For homework, children were asked to telephone grandparents to ask a series of questions. Timelines were created throughout, so historical perspectives were constantly being revisited, as knowledge was added. And we got back to the Victorians with photograph based family trees, together with the accompanying narrative.

Building materials became the stuff of science, complemented by Lego or other construction material, as well as clay models of houses, made out of very small bricks, fired in the kiln. Trials with garden clay compared to the bought variety. One child brought in a tile found in their garden, which we took to the local museum to be told it was Roman. Visiting the local church we discovered even more tiles, being used as wall bricks and on the way back a local aunt offered the chance to have a look inside a house originally dating to 1580. I know, risk assessments, CRB etc. The Tudor context allowed exploration of timber as a building material. One idea often led to another, with settlements, including the Anglo-Saxon beginnings of the village being explored, with the support of the local history society.

In reality, what is a curriculum? It is a series of related contexts within which learners will enhance their understanding of the world in which they live, allowing opportunities for language acquisition, broadening communication, real contexts for writing and other recording.  The mathematics of measures and data creation supported the core learning at every age. So the basics were the backbone of topic work. The contexts provided the creative structures into which the relevant subjects could be fitted.

Asking questions and seeking answers were the basis for both library research and experiential science activity, which might be based on the notion of finding out interesting ideas to share with the rest. Every subject had value for what it brought to the child as thinking and learning opportunities. The art table was a permanent fixture within the classroom, with half a dozen children regularly interpreting information in picture form.

When the National Curriculum was brought in in 1987, I was a deputy in a First School. Our audit of the school curriculum against the NC showed a 95% correspondence, with a couple of tweaks to be effected.

This became a feature of revisions; small tweaks were needed to accommodate the update.

I came across my notes from 1987, when I had responsibility for science. I had grouped the sixteen attainment targets, yes 16, into three main areas; scientific processes, our environment, make it move/forces, and three supplementary areas; electricity/magnetism, sound and music and light. These might have been organised as larger, three-week projects, or perhaps a week of experiences.

It was not long before a reorganisation led to the sixteen ATs becoming four main areas; virtually the same content, but a reduction in areas for assessment, essentially materials, physical world, living world and scientific exploration.
When I became a HT in 1990, we worked hard on the curriculum, because, although the school had taken on elements of the NC, there were gaps which needed to be addressed.

The approach was refined over time and can ne read about in a blog on planning. There is a clear focus on layering.
In addition, as a school, we also looked at quality versus quantity in writing.

It was clear that children were being asked to undertake a considerable amount of writing, but that, for the most part, any writing in subjects other than English were of poorer quality.

We moved from this to identify the main writing approach for the week, which would be developed through different stages; modelled, organised and drafted, with occasional redrafting for display quality, for an audience.

The two-page approach to writing that we developed is shared as writing process, tweak your books which morphed through all writing in one exercise book, to using the exercise book as a personal organiser. This highlighted that writing is writing in every subject. It allowed for each week, or fortnight to be devoted to a particular project, perhaps a report from a practical experience, to letter writing, or imaginary story. As a head, I encouraged teachers to consider the use of time available for quality writing. This could be an hour by hour for essential teaching and modelling, note making or early organisation activities. It might be a morning to enable a range of drafting and evaluation/critique activities. Timetable flexibility allows quality to emerge, rather than unfinished work. Over time, the time frames reduced to emphasise fluency.

Topic areas, essentially the foundation subjects, were organised in different layers, as articulated in the planning blog. Topics lasted as long as was needed, but all allocated topics had to be shared. Topic themes were resourced by subject coordinators, with a topic specification and a collation of the resources available within the school. Book resources were sourced through the County Library Service.

Within these areas, we reflected on the commonality of learning themes and came up with the “Making Sense of Experience” model; a means of looking at deepening experience, at any age. The “Experience, explore, explain” mantra was central to the thinking; simple enough to remember, but embedding many different elements.

In 2014, the current NC was enacted. Having listened to Tim Oates, when we shared a panel, telling the assembled staff that the 2014 version was created to be easier to test, I started to worry. With it being maths and English heavy with testing in these areas, the next few years have shown that the wider curriculum has diminished, in some cases significantly. However, there is a strong argument for the curriculum retaining its breadth and depth.
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So why are we where we are?

My simple answer would be estate-wide small thinking, more from the point of view of ever closer attention on the minutiae of teaching and learning, especially by some individuals who have made national and international names, and a lot of money from publishing, by a focus on small bits. The words that we use, such as differentiation, assessment, planning, writing, reading, phonics along with others, have been packaged and repackaged into formulae, then interpreted into book form, to be sold into the education spending market, which itself has grown significantly over the past 25 years.

A couple of the latest high-profile areas are “growth mindset” and research. Each has the potential to become formulaic, distracting and ultimately to be devalued. The former, to me is what teaching and learning are all about, otherwise what’s the point and the latter, as an investigative mind-set, is what I’d want from all teachers, seeking to refine their practice.

The issue with buying a scheme for doing the thinking for you is that you can stop thinking about the whole and how things fit together, and that’s what I’d say some have done. These schemes can dictate timetables, as children are packaged up into appropriate sized groups to undertake the specified activities, often led by the less well-informed members of staff, so that, although “coverage” might be assured, the depth of understanding might be suspect for many. These groups are, by default, mini sets or streams, so can become self-limiting systems. Time is also lost, as children move between areas of the school to be part of their small groups.

There has been successive reorganisation of priorities, with literacy and numeracy taking over from English and Maths, with a subsequent downgrade of other subjects, all of which provide the background information against which English and Maths operate in the real world. There is talk of the knowledge curriculum, but the knowledge areas of the curriculum, in some places and for some children are under some threat.

The small thinking arises out of a sound-bite need for politicians, to show that they are doing something to improve the situation. The Literacy Hour was not the be-all and end-all of the Literacy Strategy, yet it became the simplistic message given on the radio and TV every morning. For the past four years, we have heard phonics equals reading as the mantra.

The problem with both messages is that it can distort practice to the point where other aspects of each subject, which are equally or more vital, are diminished, so teachers and children lose sight of the bigger messages.

Levels became the bête noire of the system because they became distorted into data points, rather than remaining as the progress descriptors that they were in the beginning. From misuse, they lost their purpose and became distorting, as they became high stakes in showing progress. The number and the data point lost the accompanying words, but, at least in some of the foundation subjects, the words could still be a useful starting point for reflection on progression.

Like all things, I’d argue that a focus on detail is essential, but that at every stage any change in one aspect needs to be reflected upon across the whole learning system, otherwise it can be distorting.

It’s a little bit like an exercise regime where concentration on one part of the body can create a distorting effect.
It's got to start with the whole, consider the parts and then put the whole back together. 

And when it comes down to simplicities, the whole relies on effective communication in all forms, pitched to the audience, using words that they can understand, sharing images to supplement the words and to enhance the capacity to make links with earlier experiences.

It takes an aware teacher to be able to do that with facility. Teachers need subject and pedagogic knowledge. Thinking teachers sharing a thoughtful curriculum and supporting each other with their own knowledge and sharing successful pedagogy can significantly alter the curricular diet for every child.
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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.
​

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!