Archive

Why using the curriculum as your progression model is incompatible with 'measuring progress'

Sep 11, 2021 | Category: assessment

Our capacity to misunderstand complex ideas leads, inexorably, to the lethal mutation of those ides. In my last post I set out why the apparently simple and obvious notion of 'using the curriculum as...

#Becky Allen #2 sigma problem #Benjamin Bloom #Curriculum as progression model

Why 'using the curriculum as a progression model' is harder than you think

Sep 08, 2021 | Category: assessment

Since first hearing the idea that the curriculum should be the model of progression on Michael Fordham's blog, I immediately and instinctively felt that this was right. Of course, I said to myself, we...

#curriculum related expectations

Specifying a concept-led KS3 English curriculum

Oct 23, 2021 | Category: assessment

If we accept that we are using the curriculum as a progression model - if making progress means that children know more, remember more and can do more of the curriculum they've been taught - then that...

Curating a reading curriculum

Jul 21, 2021 | Category: reading

One of the roles of a school is to curate a sequences of encounters which students have a entitlement to experience before they leave. For many students, school may be the only time in their lives whe...

Do young adult novels have a place in the English curriculum?

Jul 10, 2021 | Category: English

When I got my first teaching job I visited the school at the end of July to find out what I'd be teaching the following September. The Head of Department talked me through which GCSE texts I might wan...

#Arthur Applebee #YA

School rules

Jul 04, 2021 | Category: behaviour

Should schools have rules? Obviously, yes. No one - I think - disputes the necessity of having rules that keep people safe and make life easier and more pleasant for everyone involved. So, a rule sett...

#rules

Specify, teach, assess: using the English curriculum as a progression model

Jun 25, 2021 | Category: Featured

One of the biggest barriers to the successful implementation of an English curriculum is that all too often students are assessed on their ability to do things they haven't actually been taught. This...

Echo reading: Building a bridge between text and meaning

Jun 22, 2021 | Category: reading

As a student I was one of those kids who was desperate to be picked to read. When we studied Romeo and Juliet I got to read Mercutio, a part, I felt, I was born for. I threw myself into it and felt I...

#reading aloud #Maryanne Wolf #print literacy #split attention effect

Schools and the Tyranny of Merit

May 27, 2021 | Category: leadership

One of the books I read last year that has most stayed with me is Michael Sandel's The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? In it, Sandel argues that meritocracy is inherently harmful t...

#intelligent accountability #meritocracy

The problem with 'it makes the reader want to read on'

May 23, 2021 | Category: English

One of the most common and irritating of responses to be found strewn through students' literary or linguistic analysis is that a writer will have a made of particular choice in order to 'make the rea...