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Is SOLO a waste of time?

Stop blaming your lack of experimentation, risk and innovation on your lack of time. Hywel Roberts - Oops! Helping Children Learn Accidentally It was pointed out to me recently that I can afford to expend my energies on such fripperies as the SOLO taxonomy and group work because I teach a subject which is rich in curriculum time. If, the logic goes, you only have 1 or 2 hours per week you need to spend it delivering content. Anything else is a waste of time. Clearly there's some truth in this: English does get more time than, say, French or RE. [...]

2012-06-04T00:09:07+01:00June 4th, 2012|learning, SOLO|

Teaching creatively vs teaching creativity

What is creativity? Can it be taught? Can it be aped or emulated? Or is copying something that someone else is doing, by its very nature, a lack of creativity? Oft quoted creativity guru Sir Ken Robinson calls creativity 'the process of having original ideas that have value'. Creativity "comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things". Maybe. Creativity is also defined as the ability to think divergently, or to put ideas together in new and surprising ways. I'm sure, given sufficient time and inclination you could come up with hundreds of divergent ideas on what creativity [...]

2013-11-02T20:36:49+00:00May 20th, 2012|learning|

Slow Writing: how slowing down can improve your writing

NB - my latest thinking on Slow Writing can be found here. Exam season is nearly upon us and English departments across the land will be gearing up to the Herculean labour of training students to churn out essays which, they hope, will earn them the much coveted A*-C grade in English Language. The AQA paper gives candidates just a meagre hour to write a short descriptive, explanatory piece and then a longer piece which asks them to persuade and argue. This isn't much time and most students default position is to race into it, cram in as much verbiage as [...]

2014-06-28T14:50:08+01:00May 12th, 2012|English, learning, literacy|

The evils of Powerpoint

For some time now I've found myself becoming increasingly convinced of the evils of PowerPoint. What's that you say? It's just a tool? Isn't there some old cliché about bad workmen blaming their tools? Fair point, and perhaps you're right. There's no doubt that the advent of data projectors in classrooms has resulted in teachers being able to do things unimaginable in the days of the OHP. Maybe teachers moaning about Powerpoint presentations is like farmers moaning about combine harvesters? But I can't shake the nagging feeling that planning and delivering every lesson via Powerpoint (as many teachers do) is akin to [...]

2013-07-20T17:47:28+01:00May 7th, 2012|learning|

Building resilience: Sir, I'm stuck

Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. I have this quote from Samuel Becket's play Worstwood Ho! up in my classroom and regularly refer to it. It's there as much for me as my students and there's been plenty of times when (after another cunningly wrought lesson has nose dived into a flaming ball of shame) I've been grateful for the sentiment. Never mind, I tell myself, it'll be better next time. I hear about the need to make students independent learners all the time but I think that might be missing the point. It's not really about independence. Although there [...]

2012-05-05T23:15:17+01:00May 5th, 2012|learning|

Deliberating about practice

Should learning be fun? A few years ago I remember saying that was all learning should be. If you weren't enjoying it, why on earth would you do it? But now I'm not so sure. One of the most frequently used (and abused) buzz words in education over recent years is 'engagement'. Now, I'm not suggesting that students shouldn't be engaged in their lessons but I would urge you to check the definition of the word. To engage means either "to occupy the attention or efforts of a person" or, "to attract and hold fast". For a dissenting view on engagement [...]

2013-08-22T12:54:21+01:00April 22nd, 2012|learning|

How not to improve a school

Everyone agrees that 'lasting and sustaining improvement in student outcomes' is a good thing and there's little doubt that we should also seek to narrow the gap in achievement between different groups of students. Nuff said. But how should we go about it? Ben Levin, writer of How To Improve 5,000 Schools is pretty clear on what we shouldn't do. We should avoid the following assumptions: a single change can lead to rapid improvement strong leaders can force schools to improve incentives will motivate schools to improve change must driven from above through policies new standards and curriculum models will lead [...]

2012-04-21T13:35:26+01:00April 21st, 2012|leadership|

Stress. How much is too much?

One possible solution? Like most teachers, I'll be back at school on Monday and already I've got the heeby jeebies. Apart from all the usual planning and preparation, controlled assessment folders for the new GCSE specification need final moderation. Every English department is in the same position; this is our first run through with new marking criteria and so much is riding on us getting these marks right. There can be no mistakes. I know I'm not the only one to be feeling the pressure at the moment. The new watchword in education is 'accountability'. If students don't make [...]

2012-04-13T10:35:46+01:00April 13th, 2012|English, leadership|

What to know: the importance of cultural capital

Let's face it, we need to know to stuff if we're going to have anything resembling a successful life. But what is it we need to know? As an English teacher I have a fair bit of fairly arcane knowledge that few others outside my profession and subject specialism would see as useful. Doctors know all kinds of stuff, and they save lives. Surely everything they know is vitally important? Well, if it is I've muddled along without knowing the vast majority of it. The same goes for anyone from green grocers to figure skaters to lion tamers: the knowledge we [...]

2012-04-04T22:02:48+01:00April 4th, 2012|reading|

Are worksheets a waste of time?

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off? Philip Larkin - Toads Many people (and many students) seem to expend considerable energy in attempting to use their wits to drive off the need to work. This provokes the ire of others (often teachers) who consider it character forming and good for them and I-had-to-do-it so-why-shouldn't-you? The ability to work hard and get on with difficult and onerous tasks is a terribly important life skill and I expend a fair bit of my energy in convincing [...]

2012-04-04T01:00:35+01:00April 4th, 2012|learning|

Say what? Reflecting on spoken language

The plus side to turning 40 http://xkcd.com/166/ Over the past few weeks I've been getting my Year 11s to analyse their idiolect for a Spoken Language controlled assessment as part of the specification for GCSE English Language . The task was to "Reflect on the way you speak including criticism made of it by adults". The Daily Mail (always an excellent source of vitriol and biased reportage) says in a typically pious piece headlined Innits and aints drive me insane! that "plummy" actress Emma Thompson is heartily sick of teenagers' sloppy use of English. In it she urges young people: [...]

2012-04-03T21:31:13+01:00April 3rd, 2012|English|

Myths: what Ofsted want

With galling hypocrisy and seemingly no sense of irony, Ofsted have released their latest subject report for English snappily titled, Moving English Forward. The report is a step by step guide on how to suck eggs. Apparently, teachers should concentrate on engendering a passion for learning instead of worrying about all the waggle of passing exams! Who knew? Apart from its obvious interest to English specialists, there's stuff in here that all teachers will benefit from knowing. Moving English forward View more documents from Ofsted Possibly the most immediately pertinent information for all teachers is contained in the section Some common myths [...]

2012-03-17T16:14:40+00:00March 17th, 2012|English, myths|
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