Posts tagged Curriculum

Set Your Compass: Share Your Direction

3
1 week ago
by tombarrett in , ,

All too often we don’t co-construct our curriculum with the children in our class. What occurs is a complete lack of clarity about where, as a group of learners, we are heading. In fact the direction we are going in is all too often very much laid out for the learner – the route is set by the teacher and the outcomes are already known.

Curriculum planning in this vein doesn’t cater for the tangent or the divergent thinker- well it might entertain it briefly but will eventually settle back on the steady path to where we were always going.

Curricular of this ilk are not setup for serendipity. If I knew exactly the music that was going to be played on the radio all of the time, well in advance and had no control over it, I would miss out on those beautiful moments when you hear a wonderful track that hasn’t been played for ages and there you are in that completely unexpected moment savouring every note.

Much of this is to do with teacher control and the lack of willingness to let go of the reins and venture from the path a little. But it is also to do with a lack of ambition about what we plan, many models of curriculum, as well as units of work, are legacy systems:

A legacy system is an old method, technology, computer system, or application program that continues to be used, typically because it still functions for the users’ needs, even though newer technology or more efficient methods of performing a task are now available.

If the direction of a unit is already laid out, involving the learner in the direction is fruitless, for the learner at least, for no alteration can be made anyway.

In his book How Children Fail, John Holt reflected in 1958:

It has become clear over the year that these children see school almost entirely in terms of the day-to-day and hour-to-hour tasks that we impose on them. This is not at all the way the teacher thinks of it. The conscientious teacher thinks of himself as taking his students (at least part way) on a journey to some glorious destination, well worth the pains of the trip.

He continues to explain that he recognises a disconnect with what we as teachers perceive as a learning journey and how children truly see this. How many schools do you think could still be described in these terms?

At one of our partner schools in South London the pupils of Rosendale Primary School negotiate their learning. They have a clear direction and input into the course that is going to be set – not only that they have the ability to define how they get there. The pupil’s prior knowledge, skills, interests and passions are the starting point for much of the project learning that takes place.

With a vested interest the pupils at Rosendale have a much clearer understanding of the learning as a journey – they know what needs to be done and have made choices that help to define this and make it real and meaningful to them. It is not simply a set of tasks imposed on them by a legacy system.

Most of the time with these more open models we have to set our course into the unknown a little, we have to be willing to take the path less trodden.

When the teachers and Year 3 and 4 pupils of Thorney Close Primary School took on the challenge of running their own TEDx we didn’t know if we would be successful, there were a great deal of unknowns. At one point we didn’t have a venue because Take That were playing at the Stadium of Light!

With uncertainty often comes failure and we felt that for real and so did the children, but would they learn from it – absolutely!

Here are some reflections on the process by one of the teachers involved:

I learnt to trust the children and to let them go in the direction they want, trust that they’re going to make the right decisions with a little bit of guidance but not as much structure as we normally would give. So to sit back more and to listen more, and just ask the odd few questions – without waiting for that answer that the teacher wants to hear.

One of my favourite ways to describe this sense of a general direction, unclear and yet thoughtfully open, is the idea of a “fuzzy goal”. Taken from the opening to the wonderful book Gamestorming by Sunni Brown, David Gray and James Macanufo – a fuzzy goal can both describe our philosophical approach to change as well as the direction of a student led unit.

Like Columbus, in order to move toward an uncertain future, you need to set a course. But how do you set a course when the destination is unknown? This is where it becomes necessary to imagine a world; a future world that is diferent from our own. Somehow we need to imagine a world that we can’t really fully conceive yet—a world that we can see only dimly, as if through a fog.

Pic navigation (cc) by marfis75

Khan Academy Is Not The Progressive Model You Are Looking For

34
2 months ago
by tombarrett in , , ,

There has been a great deal written about Khan Academy just recently and the concept of personalised instruction and how this is somehow revolutionary or some sort of game changer. But why is it engaging at all? Where does this type of instruction lead us?

In my opinion the instructional maths videos posted on the Khan Academy are “resources” and the structure surrounding it suggests some sort of recipe for how to best use it. We might call this the “pedagogy” as this term refers to strategies or styles of instruction – and the full-fat version of Khan Academy use has it’s own style, heavily tilted towards personalised instruction and feedback.

Looking at the videos as stand alone resources or items that could be used to support teaching and learning in the classroom – how do you rate them? In my opinion they are not particularly engaging – just a close up version of what you see on a board. In my teaching of maths at primary level I wouldn’t use them directly to support my teaching – I might at a push use them as additional materials for children to access – but I may as well do it myself. So if the videos don’t have anything engaging in them, it must be somewhere else, right?

The Khan Academy is a dressed up YouTube channel and purportedly the statistical tracking and indication of “progress” is what is driving any sense of engagement. So are students engaged in the maths or the pointification? Well if the instructional clips aren’t edge of the seat stuff it must be the notional suggestion of a game that drives clicks and engagement.

My son is just learning to read and he is also learning some spellings, he is 5 years old. He gets about 6 spellings to learn at a time – I have always found spelling strategies and policies that are “learn this word” to be utterly pointless and frustrating. This is similar to learning basic maths too – if George sounds out a word whilst he is reading or trying to write and is using that word in context, he is making a much deeper connection with that concept than if he attempts to learn it on it’s own.

Another off shoot of this list / drill approach is that parents cling on to the score, the outcome, the stats (that are everywhere in the Khan Academy) and as a result begin to build this mentality about what achievement is in school. It is a grade – a score out of 10. No context. We have a cultural fascination with grades and I don’t think Khan Academy does anything but strengthen this fervent point of view.

Seth Godin suggests that it is long overdue to actually create something with these tools – “Knowing about a tool is one thing. Having the guts to use it in a way that brings art to the world is another. Perhaps we need to spend less time learning new tools and more time using them.”

During the last 7 months I have been exploring design thinking as a style of instruction and as a structure to plan curricula that is meaningful and relevant to children. We have had the opportunity to work with a wide range of schools and teachers at all age levels in rethinking their approach to the curriculum. As Ewan puts it:

“it’s not about instruction-giving, the very basis of traditional teaching or “instruction”. It’s about providing structures within which people can operate, structures that use different constraints, not fewer constraints, to achieve more choice and therefore breadth of learning, collaboration and depth of learning.”

This approach has a huge emphasis on the role of the student in their curriculum, they play a vital role in what gets planned and how this plays out in their experience of school. Dan Meyer, a former maths teacher, touches on this approach to curriculum content in his TEDxNYED talk.

What Salman Khan is missing is the connection with the real life around us, that which Dan explores, the context that we need to fully engage in difficult conceptual knowledge. A child using Khan Academy will be able to get a personalised set of exercises, tailored just for them, but not the meaningful choice driven application of those ideas.

Dan Meyer explains that providing students with a real life example of a mathematical challenge levels the playing field for all students as it is more about intuitive problem discovery than spoon feeding text book style. Gever Tulley, the creator of the Tinkering School, explains this succinctly by suggesting that:

“The opportunities for engaged learning are inversely proportional to the knowability of the outcome.”

When we know the outcome of our work, if we have too rigid an outcome in our mind for the topic we are working on, our students are likely to be less engaged. (From the video above you can see Dan restructuring a problem with this in mind.)

To me this refers to the “guess the answer in the teacher’s head” syndrome, which when expanded can (sadly) apply to the whole curriculum topic for weeks an weeks of school. We are all making a musical instrument as that is what we have always done.

I don’t see how Khan Academy can have a place in a creative curriculum model, at least not the model of instruction used, the resources themselves may have some value. But it all seems to be propping up a model that should be vanishing from our schools, not resurfacing.

Resources such as these will just make teachers think that they are taking innovative approaches to their teaching and learning. It will stall the changes that are needed in many schools across the world to make maths and other curriculum subjects more meaningful and engaging – we need more “problem finders“, critical thinkers and indeed children developing the capacity to become “patient problem solvers”. We don’t need games and points to bring rote, de-contextualised, meaningless styles of learning back from the abyss where they should rest – we should be kicking them back over the edge!

Dave Gibbs, a teacher and consultant from the UK summed this up really well: “To me it (Khan Academy) seems like a new way of teaching the old way. Not fit for today’s learners, or indeed teachers.”

What are the biggest challenges to formative assessment?

6
6 months ago
by tombarrett in , , ,

In the hope of widening my understanding of the perception of formative assessment, or assessment for learning as some like to call it, and also the broad nature of the challenges we face in the classroom, I have started this collaborative document.

People from all over the world have outlined what they believe are the biggest challenges to implementing and sustaining systems or habits of formative assessment. I will be looking for trends within the issues raised and hope to write a post soon about some of the common themes identified within it.

Please consider adding your own contribution to the document by editing it here and leave a comment of anything you are beginning to notice once you have read through the ideas so far.

New Early Years Foundation Stage Framework Viewed as a Wordle

5
7 months ago
by tombarrett in

Thanks to Steve Philp for sharing this interpretation of the draft Early Years Foundation Stage Framework which will be implemented from September 2012 and until the end of this September is under public consultation.

I have a pretty close understanding of the EYFS after spending some time in that age group and getting through a county profile moderation. It is interesting to see the intention to slim the framework down. From the Department for Education

A new, slimmed down early years curriculum for 0-5-year-olds, more focused on making sure children start school ready and able to learn, will be introduced next year under changes set out today by Children’s Minister Sarah Teather.

Responding to the Tickell Review of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), the new framework radically reduces the number of early learning goals from 69 to 17. It focuses on three prime areas of learning critical to making sure children develop healthily and happily. These areas form the foundations on which children can then master the basic literacy skills they need for school.

Steve’s Wordle interpretation cuts through the gloss and acts as a good simple look at the language used which does help for us to see the overall theme or language trend. At my previous school the headteacher got into the habit of running policies and other planning documents through a Wordle to quickly look at the main focus on the piece.

As Steve Philp points out with regard to the below image - Interesting that ‘children’ and ‘must’ are the two biggest words…

I am not so surprised “children” appears so large, but the word “must” feels a bit odd in this context, and seems largely out of place. I’d be really interested in your reactions and those of current early years teachers to the proposed changes and to the Wordle itself and what it implies about the language and phrasing contained within it – why not leave a comment.

Your Advice Needed On Mixed Age Classes

9
1 year ago
by tombarrett in , ,

In September I will be teaching a mixed age class of Year 5/6 children. This will be first time that I have had the unique challenge of working with a year group comprised of two different ages. Your advice and expertise about some of the questions I have would be most welcome.

Much of my concern relates to the content of the curriculum and how best to plan to suit the needs of such a broad range of children. No doubt this is just the same as any classes we have, however a Y5/6 class has the added dimension of (possibly) doing SATs in 2011.

My class will be made up of children from 3 separate classes: a Year 4/5 class (who followed the Y5 curriculum), a straight Year 4 class and a straight Year 5 class. This mixture means that they have had a mixture of curriculum content too. Some have had the usual Year 5 curriculum whereas others have not.

We will be able to provide the older children with TA support to booster them nearer the time for SATs and also ensure that the coverage is in place for Literacy and Numeracy. Another challenge with such a class.

We’ll need to consider any impact on the Year 6 curriculum as there will be children moving into Year 6 next year.

It has been established that we will be using the Year 5 curriculum as a platform to build from and I will be working closely with the other Year 5 teacher (not the Year 6 teacher). Much of the content of the curriculum (especially topic based work) will have to be brand new, as there is the possibility of patchy repetition from the other classes.

Importantly we need to continue to engage and inspire this group of learners, no matter how old they are and I want to provide them a time that they will remember.

Faced with such an intricate challenge in terms of curriculum design I would greatly appreciate your help, advice and expertise.

__

Pic: Sabotage #4: Mixing noodles with rice by Stéfan

What Is The Purpose of Your School’s Curriculum?

5
1 year ago
by tombarrett in

I have enjoyed reading Bill Boyd’s blog recently, indeed my last post about curriculum films began from his own about Charles Leadbeater.

Another piece I came across was his post about the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, titled “Having the Courage in Our Convictions“. He includes a really useful graphic detailing the 4 capacities, or as Bill states the 4 purposes, which underpin the Curriculum for Excellence.

To enable all young people to become:

  • Successful learners
  • Confident individuals
  • Effective contributors
  • Responsible citizens

Much of the detail around these curriculum foundations is applicable to our own school development. We are at the stage of exploring what should underpin the curriculum design, this is very relevant to us. Here is the diagram.

Following Bill’s original post he refers to the commentary from Dave Cockburn who reflects that these 4 purposes

…will help us see the curriculum in a new light, as long as we remember that we are striving not to create a system which produces a plumber at one end and a surgeon at the other, but produces intelligent, well-informed, inquisitive people who understand the ideas of leadership and teamwork, and the vital role of intellectual enquiry and endeavour.

I certainly agree with him, this is a valuable starting point. Once you throw in the local requirements for a curriculum and wider stake holder perspectives we will be some way to establishing the foundation we need.

3 Provoking Films About Curriculum Change

14
1 year ago
by tombarrett in

One of my responsibilities in my new role as Deputy Headteacher is to take a fresh look at our primary curriculum. Ever since I began I have had numerous conversations about the process we are going to go through over the course of the next year.

We are seeking to build upon the successes of what we already do and make our curriculum more relevant and connected to the community it serves.

When the Rose Review was dashed on the rocks of the parliamentary washup, and then the UK coalition government put a large red line through the proposed changes, many primary teachers were disappointed. Much of what it outlined made a great deal of sense. Despite that we are continuing with our own curriculum redevelopment.

Next week we have our second staff meeting about curriculum development and I am keen to share one of three films with the staff to provoke some discussion about education change. I am unsure about which to use and I would appreciate your thoughts on which might be most effective. I will, no doubt, share all of them in time but for now I am looking for one which resonates the most with teachers about how we should better connect our curriculum with our pupils.

An entertaining talk from Sir Ken Robinson, the follow up to his “Killing Creativity” piece. I liked the way that he described the system of education conforming, as he says:

…we have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education. And it’s impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.

We should build learning establishments that are more like Michelin starred restaurants than fast food chains – providing children with a locally grown curriculum that meets the needs of those it serves and not and all for one menu.

I enjoyed listening to this from Charles Leadbeater and appreciated how he outlined the need for more learning that starts with questions and not just going through the motions of filling children with knowledge. We feel that this will be central to how our curriculum may be designed. This has led me to explore Project and Challenge Based Learning and would appreciate any thoughts from those that have experienced this approach in the classroom.

Interestingly he touches upon the food outlet idea that Robinson also used. Leadbeater perhaps refines the idea somewhat in the sense that there are thousands of schools and yes they are all have the same purpose but they should be locally unique.

A small remark that was important to me was that schools,

…often hit the target but miss the point.

Crucially we need to reposition the primary curriculum so that it has a clear and unfettered purpose and that the children understand that more than anyone else.

Dan was (very recently) a classroom teacher like me. That very fact is important. His perspective was from within the classroom and not from the outside looking in. Although Dan speaks about the changes he sees vital for the maths curriculum, what he says is relevant to the whole curriculum.

He takes apart the mundane questions presented in maths textbooks and cuts to the chase. His approach is about developing patient problem solvers in our pupils. This could be applied to how we approach topics within a curriculum. We can extract a much more general theory from what Dan puts forward and once again it boils down to children being faced with problems, challenges or questions.

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In a way the three different perspectives are clear. Meyer speaks from within the classroom, Leadbeater after seeing learning in different circumstances and Robinson from a wider more systematic stance. Arguably they are at different distances from the point of learning.

Each has their strengths, but which do you think would be the most relevant to busy teachers at this early stage of primary curriculum development?

What Am I Good At?

3
1 year ago
by tombarrett in ,

On a Friday our school has a celebration assembly that allows us to share the great things going on in school. It occured to me this week how important our role is in helping children find their specialism, the one thing in life that they are great at, that they enjoy and even have a passion for.

During these weekly assemblies we share children’s achievements in and out of the classroom. We see children who have received martial arts belts, horse trial trophies, football tournament medals and swimming badges. As well as a weekly award for two children from the classteacher, for different things  - for example, making a good start to the term or kindness to others.

This week the children in Year 5 had been taking a course in First Aid training, they received a certificate and it was pointed out that some children had truly excelled, way beyond expectations. Perhaps they had found that one thing.

Later in the day we were lucky enough to listen to a small concert from some of the children taking violin, cello, piano and flute lessons. It may not be all of them, but some will have found that music is something they love, something they can excel at and be great at.

I believe this is all about providing children with opportunities. There will be those children who know their mind, who have a strong sense of what they enjoy and what they are good at. However we need to help all children develop this, by providing a curriculum that offers a breadth of life experiences (that some may never get at home).

I have enjoyed recognising particular strengths in the very youngest of our pupils in primary school and it is hugely important we nurture the fun and passion they connect with in life so that everyone knows, “What am I good at?”

–

Pic: Turn, Turn, Turn! from bichxa

4 Crowd Sourced Topic Ideas

0
1 year ago
by tombarrett in ,

So far The Curriculum Catalyst has explored 4 different topics, it is all about crowd-sourcing curriculum ideas (recorded in a simple way) that can be developed further into curriculum planning.

Here are the 4 topics so far and a selection of highlights. Make sure you follow the links to the actual documents to see the full extent of the ideas.

Endangered

Tag >> #endangeredcurr

  • IT checking sources, can you believe what you read online: Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
  • Discursive writing - role of zoos in helping save endangered species – is this a good thing?
  • Literacy/IT – what does endangered mean? children brain storm what they think is endangered in the world – not just animals – what about languages? e.g local languages in this country.
  • Non Native Species – do these endanger native species ? Are they useful to control endangered species ? Animals such as Beaver and Boar were originally native to the UK, should they be re-introduced ? Can the current eco-system sustain them?

Survival

Tag >> #survivalcurr

  • Survival Exercises – A variety of tasks based around choices in a survival scenario. I’ve personally used the NASA and the ‘lost at sea’ one with year 7, and the ‘who would you save’ with year 12 -http://wilderdom.com/games/descriptions/SurvivalScenarios.html
  • Rescue Services – find out about the variety of different emergency services that often work in collaboration in any given situation – there are some excellent first hand images here http://globalrescueservices.org.uk/index.htm
  • Making animals – Design an animal which would survive in e.g. Desert link directly to work on adaptation in science. Could take theme down fantasy route, linking with Imaginary Creatures Curriculum Catalyst http://bit.ly/bDKP30
  • Saltwater - Water, water, everywhere but not a drop to drink! You are surrounded by saltwater on your island. Your challenge is to find a way of making drinking water. Provide children with a range of items they could use to invent a contraption. Model the science involved. Science SC1 (i.e. create a contraption to gather steam when the salt water is boiled).

Sealife

Tag >> #sealifecurr

  • Choose your most amazing Ocean Road Adventure. There are many famous Ocean Road journey  around the world – for example, The Great Ocean Road in SE Australia or the roads along the coasts of California and Norway.  Choose some of these famous routes to investigate, compare features, find-out what people think about them.  Try typing `Ocena Road Journey’ into your favourite search engine.  Vote on your favourite – the one you’d most like to experience (say why).
  • `Little fishes swim along’ Steve Grocott has produced a fantastic set of action rhymes on a CD.  My grandson loves this one (we sing it while watching a slideshow on Flickr or Picasa) – we took the song to India with us when we went on an educational visit and the children their loved it too.  http://bit.ly/aweCmu
  • Make your own ‘Aquarium’ from boxes, write labels for the fish you put in, a map for visitors, a leaflet to get people to visit, a quiz for people to do as they go round, a cafe and a gift shop…
  • Comparison – whale sharks are the largest of all sharks but live off of a diet of small fish and plankton.  To help students appreciate the largeness of this shark and the smallness of its food, on blacktop draw a 12 meter line with chalk.  Have students sit on the line and draw a whale shark outline around them.  Finish with small “fish” and “plankton” around the outline.

Imaginary Creatures

Tag >> #imagcreaturescurr

  • Spore 2D http://www.spore2d.com/ (Based on a Nintendo DS game, lets you create creatures online)
  • Fantasy Stories in Y1 – explore imaginary creatures and monsters using The Gruffalo,  Where the Wild Things Are and Moshi Monsters (adopt a monster online).  These stimuli can also be used to compare fanstasy settings for imaginary creatures.  Children then create their own “monster” (paint and add different textured materials such as leather, fur, etc.).  They describe their monster and then finally write a story about meeting their monster using Where the Wild Things Are as a model.
  • Monsters Inc. – A combined Art/ICT project. The idea of animation is discussed with reference to Pixars ‘Monsters Inc.’ Children design a character and storyboard their short (silent or scripted) story, they then use plasticine to create their own monster and props. A visualizer/web cam/digital camera is then used along with stop motion software (I Can Animate or Monkey Jam) to capture the animation.
  • Build Your Wild Self – Get students to use this site to create a human mix animal creature, you could also draw them. Print them out and get your students to write character descriptions of their Wild Self.

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I am sure that you will find some great ideas from the work of all the great educators who have contributed an idea or two. It seems to me that the need for grass roots, crowd sourced resources for curriculum design has never been greater – and which will only become even more heightened.

I hope that the documents prove useful, if you feel like contributing the documents are all open to edit. Make sure you look out for the next topic soon to be catalysed, if we all make a small contribution we can produce great things.

I Hope…

10
1 year ago
by tombarrett in , , ,

My son will soon be pitched headlong into full time education. As a father and a teacher I have certain hopes for the kind of experiences he will have in the next 15 years or so.

I hope he will be in classrooms that are bright and engaging.

I hope that he will think school is exciting, where ever it is.

I hope there will be people that will find out what makes him happy.

I hope all of his successes are celebrated.

I hope he gets outside to see the world at every opportunity.

I hope his class sizes are smaller.

I hope that there will be teachers that understand what engages him.

I hope that technology is part of how he learns, but not the only part.

I hope teachers will really understand learning and not just teaching.

I hope that when he is learning he will be able to choose the technology and tools that he needs.

I hope that his teachers help him with this choice and stand back to let it happen.

I hope his achievements in one sector are not disregarded in the next.

I hope someone inspires him.

I hope he is encouraged to learn about the things that interest him.

I hope he begins to understand the world beyond his school and his home.

I hope that someone will help him understand what future contribution he might be able to make.

I hope that learning happens in a whole myriad of places.

I hope the teachers he encounters understand what technology means to him outside of school.

I hope his teachers feel free to innovate.

I hope he is happy.

I hope he is safe.

What do you hope for?

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