Acclaimed filmmaker Dr Welby Ings who believes thinking outside the box is the key to success releases his new book ‘Disobedient Teaching’.
Source: Watch: Dr Welby Ings talks about ‘Disobedient Teaching’ – NZ Herald Video
Category: Archived
All the old posts from years gone by.
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Watch: Dr Welby Ings talks about ‘Disobedient Teaching’ – NZ Herald Video
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Mouldy cheese and minibeasts: tips for teaching science in primary schools
Research from the Wellcome Trust shows that science is losing out to other subjects at primary level. So what can teachers do to bring it into the classroom?
Scientific investigation develops flexible thinking and problem-solving abilities, alongside more obvious science-specific skills and knowledge. Yet science is taught relatively little in UK primary schools (typically for one hour and 24 minutes a week compared with an international average of two hours a week for OECD countries).
It also receives much less attention than English and maths. According to new research from the Wellcome Trust, part of the reason is that its perceived importance is comparatively low: more than eight in 10 teachers say that maths (84%) and English (83%) are “very important” to the senior leadership team of their school, compared to just three in ten (30%) when it comes to science. In addition, it may have something to do with the fact that schools are not held to account for science provision in the same way as they are for English and maths.
Classroom teachers have a lot of freedom to teach investigative science frequently and creatively, and some do so beautifully. However, in general, there is not enough help for teachers in this area, with just under a third of primary school teachers saying they had no support for science in the past year, and a quarter saying they were concerned they might not be able to answer pupils’ science questions. So what can teachers do to increase the focus on science at primary level?
Don’t get hung up on what you don’t know
Science is often seen as content-heavy, and reliant on the understanding of complex ideas. It’s not surprising, then, that some teachers lack confidence in teaching some aspects of science, including enquiry.
But you don’t need a science degree to be a brilliant primary science teacher– it’s about finding ways to engage pupils with the heart of the subject: curiosity, observation and discovery. At the Wellcome Trust, one of the ways we want to help teachers to do this is through our Explorify platform, which offers activities to spark pupils’ curiosity and develop their thinking skills.
In general, teachers should look for activities that are inclusive and discursive, using conversation starters to spark curiosity. Crucially, it’s not about anyone (including the teacher) knowing the “right answers”.
Ask your class questions
Simple “What if?” activities are a brilliant way to inject creative thinking into lessons with minimal preparation. We spoke to a teacher who asked her class what would happen if plants could talk and was amazed that one child wondered whether plants would have their own language or pick it up from their surroundings – meaning forest trees might talk like a bird and playground trees might talk like children. The exercise brought out some fantastic imaginative ideas.
Not being frightened to ask big questions – such as “Does colour affect how we taste food?” – is important and helps to prompt interesting discussions. This type of approach is also a great way to develop literacy; think of all the fantastic vocabulary around taste and colour.
Ask yourself what your pupils already know, and how the class could approach the question. Could you work together to create a plan of action, and then decide how to share it with the rest of the school?
Get stuck in
Hands-on science might be viewed as messy, expensive and time-consuming, and teachers may be worried about things going wrong. But we must make sure that pupils learn about science by doing it themselves rather than by watching demonstrations. Without this element, pupils are likely to be less engaged and think that science is something for learning rather than doing. Our answer is to get out and make your own science.
Use the world around you to inspire scientific discovery. Simple observations could be spotting the odd one out in a group of objects in a playground – perhaps learning about different materials – or peering into a pond to see the mini beasts congregating there, and taking a closer look at organisms and ecosystems.
And if you are being more experimentally ambitious, don’t get frustrated if things don’t go as planned. Science is famous for significant events linked to mistakes or the unexpected, from mouldy cheese producing penicillin to how an attempt at inventing super-strong glue actually ended up creating the first sticky post-it notes, now used in offices.
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How my school takes the stress off teachers
My school has found ways to reduce the workload burden on teachers – while also helping us become more effective in the classroom.
We all know that stress is a problem in teaching, with workloads and other pressures affecting the health of many across the UK. But I’ve experienced a variety of different approaches to teaching during my career, and I’ve seen that working long hours doesn’t necessarily equal better performance in the classroom.
At my current school, Torquay Academy, I’ve noticed that staff are far more positive about the impact they’re having on their students than those in previous schools. While it’s difficult to measure staff wellbeing in a statistical sense, staff absence levels are at a record low, which suggests that stress levels are manageable. Our recent Ofsted inspection [pdf] noted that staff take pride in being part of the school and “overwhelmingly” support the principal’s leadership. Meanwhile, our results have improved for the third year running.
A common approach to lessons gives teachers control
Our teachers are allowed to talk, and our students are expected to listen. Influenced by Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion strategies, there is a strong focus on teachers embedding structured routines into their lessons so students are clear about what is expected of them. Teachers are almost universally given their subject specialism to teach. Within the structure of the lesson, teachers are encouraged to allow their passion for the subject to drive the narrative of the lesson, instead of spending hours planning bite-sized activities.
There is a strong correlation between the introduction of these methods in 2014 and the improved results. As teachers have gained increased confidence in their use, results have increased year-on-year, with significantly more students leaving school with five A*-C in 2017 (75%) than in 2014 (28%). Of course, there have been other factors, but placing what happens within the classroom at the centre of all we do has certainly been the most significant.
We have an efficient whole-school behaviour policy
We believe the most effective behaviour management tool in any teacher’s repertoire is praise. Success by students at our school is celebrated at every possible opportunity, and those who get it right are noticed and acknowledged.
When a student’s behaviour impacts on others, the issue is dealt with swiftly. Crucially, it’s not down to individual teachers to set or follow up detentions; this is managed centrally by an assistant principal dedicated to behaviour. Teachers simply need to speak to the child after school, and make a phone call home to inform parents.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2017/sep/22/how-my-school-takes-the-stress-off-teachers
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School funding not always linked to results
Investing in education is one of the most promising ways for countries to secure their future.
And yet, there is a surprisingly tenuous relationship between the amount of money spent per student and the results of international Pisa tests, at least when comparing relatively wealthy nations.
South Korea is one of the highest-performing OECD countries, but spends well below the average per-student expenditure.
Students in Poland, which spends around $68,000 (£52,000) per student between the age of six and 15, perform at the same level at age 15 as the United States which spends over $115,000 (£89,000) per student.
That means despite spending much more money the US does not gain any advantage in results.
More broadly, the world is no longer divided between rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly educated ones and success is no longer just about how much money is spent, but about how that money is spent.
The teacher-pupil ratio in China and the United States is almost identical. But the Chinese chose much larger class sizes than are seen in the United States, up to twice the size. That enables the Chinese to give teachers much more preparation time, lesson-development time, time to collaborate with other teachers, time to work with parents and time to tutor students who are behind in class.
It is the same cost, but very different approaches. Chinese policymakers traded larger class size for more professional collaboration and more favourable working conditions for teachers, while American policy-makers opted for smaller classes, lower salaries and less time to plan and collaborate.
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Kids arriving at school in nappies
Primary and early childhood teachers have asked the Government to let them divert money away from expert teachers to provide extra support for needy kids.
Teachers’ union, the NZ Educational Institute, has asked the Ministry of Education to let schools and early childhood centres use some of the extra $359 million tagged for “communities of learning” to create “roles supporting children with learning challenges”.
The communities, usually groups of six to a dozen schools, have money to pay up to 900 “expert teachers” to help other teachers in the group to meet “achievement challenges”, which have been mainly focused on literacy and numeracy, and pass rates in the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA).
The institute opposed the initiative when the Government proposed it in 2014 because it was seen as a step towards performance pay – paying expert teachers more than others.
But it eventually agreed to participate when the extra pay was limited to $8000 a year for expert teachers working within their own schools and $16,000 for those working across all the schools in their group, but with an agreement to review the scheme with the ministry this year.
Institute executive member Virginia Oakly has told the conference in Rotorua that the ministry has agreed to give the communities some extra flexibility.
But a review report, which the institute and the ministry had hoped to sign off last week before the conference, has not yet been agreed on because the ministry has not been willing to “stretch” the model as far as the institute wants.
A main theme at the conference has been that teachers want more support for growing numbers of children who are violent and disruptive because of unsettled home lives, and many schools are reporting children starting school not yet toilet-trained and still in nappies.
Former institute president Louise Green said the institute wanted to use the extra funding for communities of learning “more directly to support children’s needs rather than on allowances for a few rigidly prescribed roles”.
But the institute “made no progress with the ministry on this issue”.
President Lynda Stuart said teachers needed hands-on help from specialists who could work with needy children and their families, freeing the teachers to teach other children in their classes.
“We want to see specialist frontline support that can go in and support teachers and schools – frontline ministry people, psychologists, speech/language therapists, occupational therapists, behaviour specialists,” she said.
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11929058
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How can teachers support vulnerable children at school?
In almost every class, there will also be those who find learning a challenge – the children who perhaps cause teachers to wake in the night, or to feel that they are having to manage certain behaviours beyond their usual areas of expertise.
In my role working to improve the educational outcomes of vulnerable children and young people – specifically those in care and looked-after by the local authority – I have become aware that many will not be in a good place, emotionally, socially or developmentally, to learn. Although the children I work with represent the tip of the “vulnerable” iceberg, there are numerous other children who are on protection plans or identified as children in need. There will be those, too, who are not known to any service but come to school every day having faced significant hardships.
Teachers I work with often report that schools’ more general behaviour policies don’t seem to work for these particular students – so what can we do to best support these children? Here are some pointers.
Focus on why
Behaviour is always a communication, even though we may not always realise it. Imagine a really bad day – you go home and within minutes you find yourself arguing with someone in your family. You probably didn’t plan to take out your frustration on those closest to you, but that’s effectively what happened.
Many vulnerable students are likely to have had times when they haven’t felt safe – and end up reacting to all sorts of triggers in order to keep themselves safe or feel safe (which of course may be very different things). Similarly, they’ve often experienced multiple rejections.
Many will have accompanying attachment issues and sometimes will “reject” before they can be rejected. They may push you away because this may be less painful than allowing you to reject them. Or it may be that certain behaviours give them access to a person they are developing an attachment to, so their message is “I need that person”. By acknowledging this, and recognising that what a student needs more than anything is to build relationships that help them feel safe, we may be able to adjust our reactions appropriately.
Consider their age and stage
Social and emotional levels of development and maturity in vulnerable children often won’t match their chronological age. In schools, we’re usually good at supporting children when they have gaps in their academic learning – and many of the vulnerable students will have these – but they will almost all have some gaps in their social and emotional development.
They may not have developed the skills their peers have, and also by virtue of their experiences have developed certain “street-wise” skills that can lead a teacher to think they are much more mature than they are.
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How to improve the school results: not extra maths but music, loads of it
Abiha Nasir, aged nine, walks quietly into the small classroom, takes a seat, adjusts her hijab and picks up the drumsticks. A shy smile spreads across her face as she begins to play.
She was just five when she turned up at Feversham primary academy’s after-school clubs, leaving teachers astounded by her musical ability and how her confidence grew with an instrument in hand. Last year, Abiha successfully auditioned for Bradford’s gifted and talented music programme for primary school children, the first Muslim girl to do so. The assessor recorded only one word in her notes: “Wow!”
Abiha’s teachers say her talent might have gone unspotted in many schools, where subjects such as music and art are being squeezed out by pressure to reach Sats targets and climb league tables.
But at Feversham, the headteacher, Naveed Idrees, has embedded music, drama and art into every part of the school day, with up to six hours of music a week for every child, and with remarkable results. Seven years ago Feversham was in special measures and making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Today it is rated “good” by Ofsted and is in the top 10% nationally for pupil progress in reading, writing and maths, according to the most recent data. In 2011, the school was 3.2 percentage points behind the national average in English. This year 74% of its pupils achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, against a national average of 53%. It is 7.1 points above the average for reading and 3.4 above for writing. In maths, the school was 2.4 points behind the national average in 2011 and is now 6.5 above it. Its results for disadvantaged pupils are well above average.
The turnaround is even more notable given the makeup of the school: 99% of its 510 children speak English as an additional language, and half arrive at school unable to speak a word of English. The area outside the school gates, BradfordMoor, is one of the city’s most deprived and densely populated neighbourhoods. Nearly three-quarters of the surrounding population are of Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Indian heritage, compared with just over a quarter in the city as a whole, according to the 2011 census. A recent influx of refugees and a longer-term increase in the number of eastern Europeans has added to community tensions in an area where the city council has noted that different ethnic groups “don’t necessarily get on well or treat each other with respect”.
Inside the school gates, however, it’s a different story. Thirty different languages are spoken but the youngsters all learn happily alongside one another. The children practise Shakespeare and the Beatles as well as Muslim worship songs called Nasheeds. They learn Hi Low Chickalow, the playground clapping game, as well as studying the second world war and the songs of Ahmad Hussain, a Sheffield-born YouTube star who performs for the school every year.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/oct/03/school-results-music-bradford
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Reform ‘high stakes’ primary tests, MPs urge
As we look to the future of education in this country, why is it that we are following the trend and examples from the UK? Yet our Education Minister(s) head over there to see their awesome examples of how to destroy public education…
Children’s education in England is being skewed by the use of high-stakes tests taken by 11-year-olds as a school league table measure, say MPs.
Annual test results should be replaced in the tables by a three-year rolling average to “lower the stakes”, says the Commons Education Select Committee.
The current system has led to a narrow curriculum and “unnecessary stress” on pupils and teachers, argues the report.
Last year, new tougher tests for 11-year-olds saw passes drop sharply.
Ministers maintain that parents have a right to expect testing in schools to show whether their children are gaining the right skills in maths and literacy.
But the committee says the close link between the tests at 11 and school accountability can “lead to a narrowing of the curriculum and ‘teaching to the test’, as well as affecting teacher and pupil well-being”.
It wants the current system scrapped, with three-year rolling averages for schools published instead of the results of individual year groups.
‘Held to account’
The report also calls for greater emphasis in Ofsted inspections on a broad and balanced curriculum.
Committee chairman Neil Carmichael said too much emphasis on test results had led to too much “focus on English and maths at the expense of other subjects like science, humanities and the arts”.
“It is right that schools are held to account for their performance but the government should act to lower the stakes and help teachers to deliver a broad, balanced and fulfilling curriculum for primary school children.”
The report says poor implementation of the new system last year, with “guidance delayed and test papers leaked online”, caused significant disruption in schools.
The MPs want ministers to reconsider the new writing assessment which emphasises “technical aspects like grammar and spelling, over creativity and composition”.
“The balance of evidence we received did not support the proposition that focusing on specific grammatical techniques improved the overall quality of writing.”
They also want spelling, punctuation and grammar tests for 11-year-olds to become non-statutory.
Ministers recently announced proposals to scrap tests for seven-year-olds, following years of pressure from teachers, parents and educationalists.
The Department for Education is consulting on a new assessment for pupils when they first start school – but the report urges caution when introducing a “baseline” measure.
“It should be designed as a diagnostic tool to help teachers identify pupils’ needs and must avoid shifting negative consequences of high-stakes accountability to early years,” they warn.
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The right to read: My dyslexic daughter got the help she needed. All kids should.
Original article here: Washington Post
Before I was a dyslexia advocate, I was a mom sitting at the pool and complaining to a woman I will call Barbara about my daughter’s school. Barbara had four children — the youngest still in college, the others launched into different adulthoods — and was one of those moms who got her kids, who deftly described the job of being four different moms to four different children.
I was speculating, I think, about how my daughter Phoebe, who has dyslexia, was being affected by attending her public middle school, and I asked for Barbara’s advice. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t know. My kids with no issues, I sent to public school. My kids with issues, I sent to private school. I thought that’s what you did.” She smiled at me as if it was a candid piece of guidance. Life hack! We don’t send kids with issues to the public schools.
First, I felt poor (how do people survive sending multiple children to private school and then four children to college?), then I felt dumb (was the obvious solution right under my nose?). And then I felt angry. I said to Barbara, “Oh, and it’s all right with us if the public schools just don’t serve kids with learning problems?” After all, about one in five children has learning and attention problems, and don’t we need our public schools to help them become productive adults? Barbara gave me another smile, a kind one that seemed to say, “Of course you’re right, my dear.” Then she put on her goggles to do her laps.
Conversations such as this one, as well as my experience with Phoebe, sparked an interest in dyslexia and advocacy, and I ended up serving two years on a task forceestablished by Maryland’s governor and General Assembly to make recommendations about dyslexia education. (Much of what follows was influenced by the experts I met while on the task force, but the opinions expressed are my own.)
Through this experience, I’ve come to understand that reading is critical to a safe and productive adulthood, and a prerequisite to participation in civic life. A lawsuit filed this year against the state of Michigan contends that the opportunity to learn to read should be seen as a constitutional right — and a right that is being violated in Detroit, where only 6 percent of fourth-graders and 7 percent of eighth-graders read proficiently, according to National Assessment of Educational Progress scores. Whether this argument moves you or not (yes, the opportunity to learn to read is not spelled out by the Constitution), we should all become more aware of dyslexia and the policy changes needed to improve millions of lives.
The arc of Phoebe’s treatment, I later realized, was typical of many students with dyslexia who need significant one-on-one help to obtain a good outcome. When she struggled with reading in kindergarten and first grade a decade ago, we tried not to fret too much, because her teachers told us that late bloomers often “take off” and read fluently by third grade. In second grade, we found her a private, after-school tutor. Yet even after two years of one-on-one instruction, the information wasn’t “sticking” from one session to the next. “I know this is hard to hear,” one of her tutors told me, looking at my face and recognizing my skepticism. But the tutor understood that Phoebe fit the best definition we have for a dyslexic: She couldn’t read even after having been provided with very adequate instruction.
It was now time to pay for outstanding instruction — and word in my neighborhood was that I could find it at the Speech-Language Department of the Lab School of Washington. Phoebe did an intensive summer program before fourth grade, then was tutored twice a week there during the school years from fourth through sixth grades, and more sporadically elsewhere for a couple of years thereafter. Conservatively, we spent more than $35,000 on tutoring; the going rate for speech and language pathologists is more than $100 an hour. Every six months or so, I would eagerly ask her tutor, “How’s it going?” and hope to hear, “We’ve turned the corner.” Instead, I would be told that Phoebe was making steady progress at holding on to more letter combinations and sounds, and that her speed was not as slow as it used to be. This went on for years.
While not thrilled about the tutoring, Phoebe recognized that the sessions at the Lab School were “better” than the help she was getting at public school, even from reading specialists and special educators. Why was this? I believe it was because her tutor was using an Orton-Gillingham-based approach to help her remember phonics — the word sounds that “normal” readers can’t recall learning to recognize in print because their brains held on to that information like flypaper in first grade. Developed in the early 20th century, Orton-Gillingham emphasized explicit, sequential, multisensory instruction (hearing, saying, tracing and writing). For example, Phoebe and her tutor might spend a session on the letter combination “ow” and the different sounds it makes, then review letter combinations Phoebe had mastered earlier. The training and materials for programs based on Orton-Gillingham tend to be expensive and work best one-on-one or in small groups, which may explain why this particular intervention wasn’t available at her school.
During the summer before eighth grade, Phoebe’s tutor reported that her grasp of phonics was now in the average range, which meant she could decode nonsense words (like a line from “Jabberwocky”) about as well as her peers. But her fluency, the speed at which she read, was too slow for good comprehension or enjoyment. The fix for fluency was not more expensive tutoring in phonics (hallelujah!) but simply more time spent reading. Unsurprisingly, Phoebe thought books were “boring.” “If only she could find something that captured her interest,” her tutor said. During the school year, Phoebe came across that something: a smartphone app called Wattpad, where she read self-published stories, many of them by teen authors. She sweet-talked her teachers into accepting Wattpad as her free-reading book.
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Welsh schoolchildren to receive early help with mental health problems
Children with emotional and mental health problems are to receive early help at school from teams of experts as part of a “unique” initiative being set up by the Welsh government. Pupils at more than 200 schools in Wales will be able to access on-site help as part of the £1.4m pilot scheme.
The Welsh government’s announcement comes as concern grows about the ability of schools to look after children with mental health problems. Research published last week found that more than half of primary school teachers in England do not feel adequately trained to support pupils with mental health problems.
NHS data for England gathered by the Guardian showed girls and young women are experiencing a “gathering crisis” in their mental health linked to conflict with friends, fears about their body image and pressures created by social media.
The Welsh government said on Monday that its scheme was unique in the UK. It will cover 28 secondary schools, six middle schools and 190 primary schools in three pilot areas in north-east, south-east and west Wales.
Dedicated child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) practitioners will be recruited to work with pilot schools.
The practitioners will provide teachers with on-site help and advice to try to ensure pupils experiencing difficulties such as anxiety, low mood and compulsive self-harm or conduct disorders receive early help in schools from trained staff. It is not known yet how many staff will be recruited.
The Welsh health secretary, Vaughan Gething, said: “One in four people in Wales will experience mental health problems at some point in their lives. Getting the right treatment at an early stage can in many cases prevent long-term adverse impacts.
Imagine if the NZ Government had the same sort of commitment?
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/sep/25/wales-schoolchildren-receive-early-help-mental-health-problems