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Yearly Archives: 2012

How to get students to value writing

2013-11-07T09:10:11+00:00December 31st, 2012|literacy, writing|

Sir, do we have to write in sentences? Yes, you bloody well do! Students do a lot of writing at school but, bless me, most of it's turgid stuff. In practically every lesson they're required to scribble stuff down in their excise books, even if it's only a learning objective and the date. Having spent a good deal of the past two terms observing lessons across the curriculum, I can safely say that most of the writing students do is an exercise in missed opportunities. And almost none of this writing is valued in any way other than for the content it contains. [...]

Developing oracy: it’s talkin’ time!

2022-04-28T10:05:30+01:00December 29th, 2012|learning, literacy|

Talk is the sea upon which all else floats ~ James Britton, Language and Learning, 1970 Students spend a lot of talking, don't they? Everyone can speak, so why would we want to waste valuable time teaching them to do it? Well, while all this is undoubtedly true, many students don't speak well. This is, I hasten to add, not the same as being well spoken. As teachers we're pretty leary of the idea of talking in lessons. Teacher talk has got itself a very bad name. But in the best examples of talk lead lessons, teacher talk is generously interspersed with questions (both to [...]

A review of 2012 on The Learning Spy

2012-12-17T20:59:34+00:00December 17th, 2012|Featured|

It wasn't THAT bad! Well, it's the end of another year and as the past month has seen me too drained to write anything even vaguely coherent, I've decided in true cheap TV style to round up the year's most popular posts. I've written 59 of the buggers in 2012 (not including this one) and obviously some of them have chimed with an audience much more than others. This isn't a list of my personal favourites or of the posts I think are the most powerful or best written, they're merely the most read.   So, in reverse order [...]

Is teaching cheating?

2012-11-26T22:52:59+00:00November 26th, 2012|assessment, English|

The Teachmobile Today I was sent this: It purports to be a briefing sheet used by an AQA advisor to justify the movement of controlled assessment grade boundaries in this summer's GCSE English exam (otherwise referred to as the GCSE fiasco.) I can't vouch for its provenance beyond saying that it was emailed to me from a Head of English at another school who I have no reason to believe would have sent her time inventing fake documents. But you never know. Now, the arguments about grade boundaries have been rehashed endlessly over the past few months [...]

Is there a right way to teach?

2012-11-24T12:49:47+00:00November 24th, 2012|learning, planning|

It’s become a trite and hackneyed truism that if they’re not learning you’re just talking. We’re all clear that teaching only happens when the little tinkers manage to make some sort of progress – preferably that of the rapid and sustained variety. But this simple truth, like so many others, seems to have been systematically and catastrophically misunderstood by many school leaders and inspectors. Until recently it was universally accepted that the key to a good lesson observation was showing that pupils are making progress in the 25 minutes available to us, and that the only way we could demonstrate this [...]

Go with the flow: the 2 minute lesson plan

2015-07-08T16:19:55+01:00November 17th, 2012|learning, planning|

NB: This post does no longer represents my latest thinking. I’ve updated my approach to planning here. Like all teachers, my main aim in life is to run, whooping, out of the school gates by 3 o’clock. My time is therefore precious and I can’t be wasting it mucking about planning lessons. Fortunately for us skiving scoundrels,  SMW recently told us that as far as Ofsted are concerned there is no need for lesson plans. As long as lessons are planned. These are my two guiding principles for lesson planning: Marking is planning Focus on learning not activities So, how’s this for [...]

Of cabbages, round tables and kings

2012-11-03T13:16:40+00:00November 3rd, 2012|leadership|

Back in the day King Arthur had a problem. Bickering barons made a great deal of fuss  about who was the biggest cheese. When they sat down together for a friendly chat things soon came to head because on your traditional rectangular table everyone would vie to sit nearest the king - the further away you sat the less important you were. The solution? A round table! The table has no head and everyone gets to feel valued and special. Ah, if only all life's predicaments could be fixed with furniture: IKEA would have a seat at the United Nations. [...]

The mathematics of writing

2013-09-18T12:59:04+01:00October 30th, 2012|English, literacy, writing|

A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns… The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test. GH Hardy How are most children taught writing? Badly. Eight weeks ago I took over an AS English Language class in which none of the students had a clear understanding of the difference between a noun and a verb. How is that they have got so far through formal education with absolutely no explicit understanding of [...]

Knowledge is power

2013-09-25T21:14:34+01:00October 21st, 2012|learning, myths, SOLO|

I've been having a bit of think this week. Firstly I read Daisy Christodoulou's post on Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum. She points out that Hirsch, oft-condemned for being the darling of ideologues like Mickey Gove is, in his own words 'a quasi socialist' and big mates with Diane Ravitch (who is nobody's fool.) Then I listened to the hugely entertaining Jonathan Lear give an excellent presentation at Independent Thinking's Big Day Out in Bristol on Friday and like any speaker worth their salt he got me thinking. His point, if I may make so bold as to attempt a precis, is that [...]

Outstanding teaching & learning: missed opportunities and marginal gains

2012-10-14T11:52:32+01:00October 14th, 2012|learning, myths, training|

I work at an 'outstanding' school where the teaching and learning is 'good'. As such we are squarely in Wilshaw's sights and almost certainly due an inspection at some point this year. We were last inspected in November 2011 but a lot of goal post moving has gone on in the intervening months. The new inspection framework is widely seen as a ravening beast out to devour schools that are not delivering to the lofty standards of our hero, the saviour of Mossbourne Academy. In essence, what this means is that if we want to retain the right to put 'outstanding' [...]

A Room Of One's Own – the thin end of the staff room wedge

2012-10-08T21:14:59+01:00October 8th, 2012|Featured|

On the rare occasions I ever had cause to knock on the staff room door as the timid little chap I was back in the early 80s, a disgruntled teacher would throw it open, grumble about being disturbed, and demand what it was I had the temerity to be asking. It was a place of place mystery and unguessable wonder: what went on in there was essentially unknowable and dreadful. Even in the furtive fleeting snatches I had through the thick, yellow clouds of billowing smoke, you could see the place was packed: a humming sanctuary where teachers went to plot and laugh and moan. [...]

The Matthew Effect – why literacy is so important

2013-09-24T19:58:38+01:00September 30th, 2012|learning, literacy, reading, training, writing|

Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. Matthew 13:12 In the world of the 2012 Ofsted framework very few schools are going to quibble with the prominence being given to the teaching of literacy but I'm far from concerned that we're clear on precisely why teaching literacy is so important beyond the fact that Big Brother is watching you: running scared of Wilshaw is not enough. I saw the fantastic Geoff Barton deliver a presentation called Don't Call it Literacy at the Wellington [...]

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