Primaries do an amazing job
In some, but not all parts of the sector, primary and secondary phases might as well be on different planets. While there is much excellent work going on, it's not the default. I think there are a number of aspects to transition that need further attention.
Some thoughts on transition, prompted by Scott Pughsley, head of geography in a secondary school, who posted this:
In some, but not all parts of the sector, primary and secondary phases might as well be on different planets. While there is much excellent work going on, it's not the default. I think there are a number of aspects to transition that need further attention:
First to acknowledge the good work: there's much strong practice on the pastoral aspects of pupils moving schools. Most secondary schools make pupils feel welcome and pay attention to the emotional and social aspects of pupils' experience.
However, I believe more attention needs to be paid to the distinction between 'induction' and 'transition'. Most schools have good systems in place for 'induction'. These include pupils in Year 6 visiting the secondary schools, visits to primaries by secondary leaders with responsibility for transition, information about timetables, uniform, tutor groups, expectations etc.
If we are serious about closing gaps, then I believe we need to pay as much attention to and put our efforts into 'transition'. And a great deal of this relates to the curriculum. Ofsted's Key Stage 3: The Wasted Years? identified poor transition as one of the reasons why the performance of secondary schools had stalled:
And while paying attention to the pastoral needs is essential, the academic needs to go further up the agenda:
And we really need to nail this:
It's not rocket science
And finally, we need to stop talking about 'feeder' schools! Why? Well it implies that pupils are going to be gobbled up. Now, of course they aren't literally going to be consumed by their secondary schools, but language matters and I believe there are a number of problems with the phrase 'feeder primaries'. For one thing, it implies there is a hierarchy, there is a flavour of the secondary phase being more important than earlier phases in a child's education. This is not the case. Every point in a child's journey matters. What then would be a better term? Well, I suggest 'partner' schools. I am sure there are others that reflect the joint work that the sector is, or should be, doing as pupils move from one setting to the next.
Curriculum products
There is a joke about two men in a bar. One says to his friend, ‘I’ve taught my dog to speak French.’ ‘Really?’ says his mate, ‘let’s hear him then.’ ‘I said I taught him, I didn’t say he’d learnt it’ comes the response.
‘I might have taught it, but have they got it?’
- Mary Myatt
There is a joke about two men in a bar. One says to his friend, ‘I’ve taught my dog to speak French.’ ‘Really?’ says his mate, ‘let’s hear him then.’ ‘I said I taught him, I didn’t say he’d learnt it’ comes the response. There is something important in this anecdote and it is this: the fact that I have taught something does not mean that my pupils have ‘got’ it. And they are unlikely to have really learnt something unless they produce something worthwhile with the material they are studying.
In the video explaining the rationale for the National Curriculum, Tim Oates talks about curriculum ‘products’.[1] When he talks about products he means the things which pupils write, say or draw, the low stakes tests they complete or the things they make. All these provide insights for the teacher into the extent to which pupils know, understand and can do something on their own terms.
First, let’s consider writing. In many parts of the sector, there is a temptation to get through the writing as fast as possible. A written piece of work requires considerable background knowledge, discussion of that knowledge and rehearsal in order for it to come together. Too often, pupils are set off on a writing task without sufficient ‘food’. By food, I mean the stimulus, exposure to and discussion of vocabulary, use of spelling, punctuation and grammar to support meaning and modelling by the teacher. English teacher Matthew Pinkett has quite rightly said, ‘Showing kids a pre-prepared model answer and asking them to write a paragraph off the back of it is no different from showing them a picture of duck a l’orange and sending ‘em to the kitchen to knock one up. Teachers must get in the habit of live modelling whenever it is required.’ [2]
Writing is slow and it is difficult. But when pupils are supported and guided through the writing process carefully, the product of writing is likely to reflect what they really understand.
So we need to move away from the temptation for children to complete work which might not be original to them, such as completing closed questions on a worksheet, for example, and to conclude that they have understood, just because they have completed it. Completion of a task and understanding are not the same thing, but they are often confused. So a child is praised for having finished, before it has been checked whether they have understood it or not.
Next, let’s move on to what children say. It is the responses pupils give which provide insight into whether they have understood something. If we are going to find this out, we have to spend time during the lessons asking children questions and listening carefully to their answers. This needs to happen more. Under the pressure of time, it is tempting to either take the first correct answer from one or two children and assume that everyone has ‘got’ it; or to complete some of the answers if they are struggling; or to take incomplete or partial answers and assume that they know the rest. What quite often happens is that children are praised for an incomplete answer and then the lesson moves on. This is not good, on several counts. First, the teacher’s information is incomplete - in the rush to move on to the next part of the lesson, the brief incomplete response is taken to have more significance than it does; it is nothing more than an incomplete response and there is not enough information to judge whether to move on or not. The second reason it is not good enough is because we often need to rehearse and say our thoughts out loud before committing them to paper. As James Britton argued, ‘writing floats on a sea of talk.’[3] So by shortcutting the responses we not only have incomplete information about the security of children’s learning, we are also denying them the chance to practise articulating their thoughts. And the third reason why it is not good enough is because pupils have the right to have their ideas heard by others. By moving on too swiftly, we are cutting down their ability to refine their language and to deepen their understanding.
The importance of speaking is emphasised in the National Curriculum for English. We are doing our children a disservice if we do not both provide them with opportunities and also expect them to articulate their ideas. Many children come from backgrounds which are language poor. If we either expect partial answers, or don't ask them to speak out loud in full sentences, using subject specific vocabulary, then we are denying them the opportunity both to engage deeply with the material and also to perform well in the subject when it comes to exams.
In some, but not all, areas it is possible to gain an insight into children’s thinking through their artwork or artefacts. If they have made a representation of a key idea from literature, or history, or science through sketching or through creating something and are able to talk about what they have produced and how it relates to the subject matter, then it follows that we can gain information about what they understand and where the gaps might be.
Many schools are now experimenting with thinking about real audiences for children’s work. Much of what is asked of children in schools requires isolated knowledge and skills. While there is nothing wrong with this per se, the purpose of learning takes on a new dimension when we ask ourselves, where could this go, who else needs to know about this, are there links we could make with this knowledge with the wider community and who might be an external audience for what we have done?
These are some of the things they are doing: creating a class blog, preparing an exhibition with detailed notes for visitors, preparing samples of their work for governors, taking part in local and national competitions, linking with the local community on arts and environmental projects, younger children sharing their work with older pupils, and vice versa, asking family to come into school to see their work. Children are only able to engage with these wider audiences if they have something authentic to share, based on solid foundations of deep knowledge.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q5vrBXFpm0
[2] https://twitter.com/Positivteacha/status/950265654564806656
[3] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Learning-J-Britton/dp/0870241869/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Some principles for planning
Planning is critical and it is fundamental in providing the structure and architecture for pupils’ learning. Results are better when teachers are given time to plan together on a scheme.
‘A good plan is like a road map: it shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there.’
- H. Stanley Judd
Planning is critical and it is fundamental in providing the structure and architecture for pupils’ learning. Results are better when teachers are given time to plan together on a scheme. This should identify the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of the content to be taught. Best practice in planning starts with an overarching question, ideas for opening up the content and the things to be taught over the medium term. These constitute the big picture and framework for what is to be taught. They are the roadmap. This is a useful metaphor for thinking about the curriculum to be taught. A roadmap shows the destination, but provides a number of routes to get there. This allows for teachers’ autonomy in the delivery of the scheme as it unfolds, lesson by lesson. When good-quality schemes of work are in place, they should reduce teacher workload.
The Department for Education’s workload review group on planning and resources [1] identified planning a sequence of lessons as more important than writing individual lesson plans. So what leaders can do to support this aspect of the workload challenge is to stop asking for detailed daily lesson plans, if that is current practice. It is essential for leaders to have conversations with colleagues about the difference between ‘lesson planning’ and ‘lesson plans’. The only situation where daily lesson plans might be an expectation is when senior leaders are supporting a colleague via coaching. Here, precise planning might be needed to improve practice, in which case the plans should be prepared jointly with the senior leader as coach, as part of the larger scheme of work.
The most compelling reason for moving away from compulsory daily lesson plans is that not only are they not necessary, but they can get in the way of the bigger ‘flow’ of the sequence of learning. As leaders, this might appear risky. So, let’s be clear about why it might not be risky to do away with daily lesson plans. First of all, what do lesson plans tell senior leaders that they don’t already know? If they have an overview and indeed have had some input into some of the longer-term plans, they do not need a detailed lesson plan to tell them this. If they are honest, how many leaders read the individual lesson plans from every teacher? In a school with ten teachers and five lessons a day, that would be about 250 plans to check; with 100 teachers, 2,500 to check. Each week. Are any senior leaders doing this, seriously? And if they are, wouldn’t the time be better spent going in to the actual lessons to see how things are going? Not as lesson observations, or learning walks, but simply by walking about. And offering support if needed and affirmation for work well done. How much more powerful than reading all those plans, which often bear little relation to what is happening in the classroom.
Second, senior leaders might deem it too risky to do away with lesson plans because they believe that they might be needed for an inspection. However, Ofsted has been made clear in the clarification for schools section in the 2019 School Inspection Handbook where it says that the clarification is ‘to dispel myths about inspection that can result in unnecessary workload in schools. It is intended to highlight specific practices that we do not require: how planning (including curriculum and lesson planning) should be set out, the length of time it should take or the amount of detail it should contain’.
Apart from anything else, time is so tight on an inspection that there wouldn’t be time to read files of lesson plans. The only thing which inspections comment on is impact - the impact of the delivery of curriculum plans on children’s learning. It would be technically possible to have perfect plans, which do not translate into meaningful practice for children in the classroom. And the danger of this is that it is possible to be seduced into thinking that the piece of paper is the work, when in fact it is the action in the classroom.
Third, senior leaders might believe it is risky to stop insisting on lesson plans as they will have less control and view of quality assurance. But this is like a restaurant checking that all the orders have been placed so that dishes can be prepared. It suggests that the paperwork is more important than the meals that eventually end up in the restaurant. Any decent restaurant will check on the final product and tweak it to make it better, rather than thinking that the process stops at the ordering. So, for those leaders reluctant to let go of the safety net of lesson plans, they might want to trial it for half a term, then check what difference it makes not having them. Those schools which have done this have found that the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom goes up, not down. It is a case of fewer things done in greater depth.
Given the above, one of the recommendations in the ‘Report of the Independent Teacher Workload Review’ is that ‘senior leaders should consider the cost benefit of creating larger blocks of time for this practice to make the planning activity as productive as possible and reduce the amount of time spent by individual teachers on individual planning.’ As John Hattie says, ‘planning can be done in many ways, but the most powerful is when teachers work together to develop plans, develop common understandings of what is worth teaching, collaborate on understanding their beliefs of challenge and progress, and work together to evaluate the impact of their planning on student outcome.’[2]
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/teacher-workload-planning-and-resources-review-group
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reducing-teacher-workload-planning-and-resources-group-report
Photocopying
The money that is wasted on photocopying. And that’s before we get to pritt sticks to stick the photocopies into books. We need to stop and have a word with ourselves. Why are we putting paper onto paper?
‘The need for a quick, satisfactory copying machine that could be used right in the office seemed very apparent to me. So I set out to think of how one could be made.’ [1]
- Chester Carlson
The money that is wasted on photocopying. And that’s before we get to glue sticks to stick the photocopies into books. We need to stop and have a word with ourselves. Why are we putting paper onto paper? There are some real problems with this beyond the high costs. For example, here are thousands of eco schools across the country and eco school status is proudly presented on school websites which is great. However, we can easily become seduced by the high profile efforts to save the world from rubbish, cut our emissions, clear litter, recycle and so on. But photocopying is low profile. And I think far more attention needs to be paid to it. Whether we are an eco school or not. But it’s no use having a badge for something just for the sake of it. We need to get to a place where, to quote Contender Charlie. our values are lives, not just laminated.
Why does so much photocopying go on in schools? One response might be: it saves time, to which the further question might be ‘It saves time to do what?’ Another answer might be ‘I need these sheets as resources to use in class.’ Again, it is reasonable to ask why? It’s as though producing photocopied resources has become a crutch. As though a lesson can’t happen unless we have a pile of papers under our arms to present to a class.
Essentialism asks us to go back and ask these awkward questions. It’s not as though teaching and learning didn’t happen before the advent of photocopying. Decades ago, there were Banda machines - inky, oily and messy, so teachers had to be really clear about the benefits of copying off if they were prepared to go through this rigmarole. Funnily enough, learning still took place even before the Banda machine was invented.
But it’s not just the expense that we need to be mindful of. It is highly likely that the reliance on photocopies can lead to some lazy thinking and planning. Along the lines of ‘I’ve just found this great resource online, I could use that tomorrow, let’s print if off.’ I think we are better than that. It is possible that the resource we have just stumbled across is just the ticket and will fulfil a proper learning purpose. But let’s be honest, mostly this isn’t the case. Usually, photocopying resources is a short cut for proper professional thinking about the purpose of the lesson. I’m not talking about every case of course, but there’s enough of it going on for us to question it.
The argument here, is not the complete banning of photocopying, but a far more intentional approach to why we are doing so. Who really needs it? Are we sure that it isn’t just a prop? A further problem is that much photocopied stuff for pupils to complete becomes a proxy for learning. We look busy, they look busy, their books are stuffed with completed worksheets, so they must have learnt something, right? Well it doesn’t automatically follow. The completion of the worksheet does not mean that anything has necessarily been learnt. In fact the photocopying and completion of worksheets does no such thing. Too often they place very little cognitive load onto pupils and yet this lack of thinking is masked by the fact that they have stuff in their books.
Is this an argument for the banning of photocopying? Of course not. But it is important that we stop and think: why am I photocopying this? What will pupils learn as a result of this resource? Could there be a better way of them doing this work. If they do it in a different way will there be a greater likelihood of their unique ideas and voices coming through? Probably yes. This is because one of the consequences of over reliance on photocopying resources is that they often put limits on pupils’ responses, their work all looks pretty much the same. And most importantly when you talk to them a bit later about what they have learnt they aren’t usually able to tell you very much. So, this is a significant investment for very little impact.
How then might things be done differently? Instead of photocopying could we show an image through a visualiser? Some text through a visualiser? A powerful image on the classroom wall? Agree the learning objectives and pupils where appropriate writing them down? Use post its rather than printing out WWW and EBI - these are likely to be more purposeful than random tick lists? Pupils actually doing work directly in their exercise books and folders?
So, what are the examples of things that might be considered for photocopying? These might be Information booklets which can’t be sourced in any other way; some knowledge organisers - but we could also think about whether some knowledge organisers could be constructed with the pupils and students in class, across the unit? This would also have the benefit of greater, appropriate cognitive load as the key words, concepts and important information would mean that pupils would have to think hard about what is being included, rather than just being given it by the teacher.
The case here is that only those things where the information can’t be gathered from elsewhere. Furthermore, whatever is photocopied should have material and information that goes beyond one lesson. It’s about extracting value from anything that we produce either through our own efforts or those carefully selected from elsewhere.
A judicious, hardnosed look at what we photocopy in schools actually turns out to be something deeper: namely the extent to which we are offering our pupils top quality information and resources or a fast food type of diet which might satisfy our appetite in the short term but is likely to be missing some key nutrients in the long term.
[1] Owen, David (2004). Copies in Seconds: Chester Carlson and the birth of the Xerox machine. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 70. ISBN 0-7432-5118-0
Text as the beating heart of the lesson
In our efforts to make things accessible to pupils we have sometimes made things too easy. This effort to make things accessible has led to the atomisation of materials offered to pupils.
‘A room without books is like a body without a soul.’
- Sir John Lubbock
In our efforts to make things accessible to pupils we have sometimes made things too easy. This effort to make things accessible has led to the atomisation of materials offered to pupils. A worksheet here, a gobbet of a text there, a random activity supposedly to engage them, too often delivered without thinking about challenge or coherence. There is a pushback to this, and this is a good thing. If we are serious about an ambitious curriculum for all our pupils, we need to think hard about the resources we provide to make sure that they are really stretching them.
And so we need to turn to texts. This applies to most, if not all subjects - to paraphrase Andy Tharby,[1] research lead at the Durrington School, we need to consider texts as the beating heart of the lesson. What do we mean by texts? It might sound obvious, but it is worth spelling out - whatever we are teaching within a topic, whether in primary or secondary, should have, as its main driver and resource, a text which opens up the territory for pupils.
Why should we use a text? There are a number of reasons for using a text as the basis for a unit or topic.
• It is an efficient way of conveying a lot of information and information is important because we cannot reason or problem solve without foundational knowledge. A text is the most effective way of doing this
• A carefully chosen text will provide the hinterland and background context for what is being studied
• The written word is denser than everyday talk. It takes effort, in a good way, to unpack this. A text puts appropriate cognitive load onto pupils.
• Texts contain tier two and tier three vocabulary. These are the words of the academic disciplines and subject specific domains. They are the keys to scholarship. If we aren’t using them in classroom talk, our pupils will not have access to them. The paradox is that using a text will up level classroom talk when the big words and concepts are highlighted and discussed in advance of the text, or discussed during the reading of the text or unpacked later. The text provides the vehicle for increasing the demand and level of challenge within classrooms.
• A carefully chosen text is a reflection of the domain from which it comes. It is likely to have expert knowledge underpinning it - and this can be critiqued and debated. This quality of source material cannot be underestimated. It overcomes one of the main problems with downloading resources from the internet - many of which are superficial, often incorrect and have gobbetised and bastardised the original knowledge as to be downright dishonest. So this is a call to honesty and integrity.
So, what’s stopping us? One of the things that is stopping us is time - or apparent lack of it, in order to find appropriate texts. However, if we are going back to the principles of essentialism and have stopped doing the things that make no difference to learning, we will have created some time. Furthermore, if we were to add up all the bits of time which we have spent searching for the ‘perfect’ resource or activity, we would find that we have gained plenty of time. Time which can be used to find a decent text.
A further barrier to using a text is that once we have sourced an appropriate, high quality text, our main work is done. But because we are addicted to the curse of busyness, we might feel guilty that we are not up until midnight crafting power point, creating or sourcing resources. We need to overcome this urge. The paradox is that the sourcing, reading and using a high quality text will improve our subject knowledge. The work itself develops us in a way that looking for trite superficial materials on the internet can never do. This way of working requires a different mindset.
What are the pupils doing? Again, the temptation to be seduced by ‘busyness’ means that we have concerns about what our pupils are actually ‘doing’ when we shift to basing our work on texts. This is a legitimate concern, particularly if we have been encouraged to have lots of activities. The problem is that many of these have been proxies for learning. We need to remind ourselves that learning involves a change in the long term memory. Offering pupils texts is one of the most efficient ways of doing this. The paradox is that learning is not visible, so how can we get a handle on this? First pupils need to be ‘fed’ intellectually. Then we help them to make sense of it, primarily through talk. Then they can do something with what they have learnt.
So how to use a text? Either the teacher reading aloud by way of introduction. Or, pupils having their own copy, if appropriate and if funds allow, or they could follow an extract on the white board (making sure that the font is large enough for all pupils to see). This is what might follow from using a text: in books - these are the words we found really interesting and this is why. Pupils talk together about the words that intrigued them, that they don’t know what they mean and start compiling the key vocabulary and ideas.
What might follow from this is: so, this is what we have learnt - a brief summary, modelled through a visualiser by the teacher to begin with. And then pupils might copy this example into their books. Why would we ask pupils to copy something from the board? Well if done well, namely the teacher summarising what pupils’ ideas are, then this is really their work. The act of copying supports learning.
Curriculum design for religious education in a post-commission world
The Commission on RE (CORE)’s report made the case for religious education to have a national entitlement, along the same lines as the national curriculum subjects.
The Commission on RE (CORE)’s report made the case for religious education to have a national entitlement, along the same lines as the national curriculum subjects. The reason for religious education being part of the basic curriculum, and having its content determined locally via locally agreed syllabuses, is a complex one rooted in history. But suffice it to say that the variability and confusion (in aims, content and quality) through having so many different locally agreed syllabuses across the country, has led to a confluence of energy to have a national entitlement, while still maintaining a role for the local input. This proposal has been contested and often for good reasons: what might be lost from a move from local to national determination? Would a national entitlement reflect the localities faith and world views; would opportunities be lost for faith groups and educators to work together? There is much to be considered here, but my own view is that the subsidiarity of RE provision has not led, in every part of the country, to the provision high quality structures, resources, training and high-quality materials for classroom use.
As things stand, the legal and policy recommendations in the CORE report are not likely to be implemented soon, but they remain in the forefront of national discussions about the future of our subject. And so, in the absence of a national entitlement, the work I am doing with schools is guided by the following principles:
· RE planning for religions and world views is underpinned by concepts
· RE planning is powered through stories
· RE planning is supported by high quality materials including artefacts
These principles might change in the future, but these are where I am staking my current thinking until I find a more refined way of going about the business of curriculum planning. I give myself this permission, because I don’t want to fall into the trap of believing that curricular thinking is a one-off process; I want to be open to critique and criticism and open to better ways in the future. For the time being, this work is provisional.
Why concepts?
Concepts and big ideas are like ‘holding baskets’ – they are the cradle for a lot of information; they help to make sense of disparate knowledge and potentially unconnected facts. Through anchoring the subject’s planning in concepts, we provide a route through for pupils to get to grips with the foundations of key beliefs and practices in religions and world views. The insight into the foundational importance of concepts is supported by cognitive science, for example Willingham’s conclusion: ‘Students can’t learn everything, so what should they know? Cognitive science leads to the rather obvious conclusion that students must learn the concepts that come up again and again – the unifying ideas of each discipline.’ [1]
What follows from this is that if I am planning a unit in Christianity about the birth of Jesus, this will be underpinned by the concept of incarnation. Incarnation is a fundamental element of Christian theology, namely that the divine became human in the form of a baby. Very young children can grasp this, if it is taught explicitly. It then means that the gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus, the nativity plays and the festivities that take place in primary schools, are underpinned by the idea that this is important for Christians because they believe that god became human through the birth of baby Jesus. Unless that conceptual understanding is in place, it is just a random list of things that children experience without making the deeper connections.
Similarly, if I am planning to teach about the langar in Sikhism, this needs to be understood in terms of the concept of sewa. Without the building of the concept, then it is just understood as a free meal provided at a gurdwara.
Why stories?
Stories are the oldest means of conveying important ideas. Again, their use is supported by cognitive science: ‘Our brains privilege story’ [2]: Willingham and Pinker’s observation reminds us that ‘Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist.’ [3] Religious education as a subject domain is rich in stories, including high quality non-fiction commentary, and it is on these that I believe we should draw. There are further rich pickings from the use of story as a driver for the curriculum: they contain the concepts and big ideas; they are very efficient at providing the background knowledge or ‘hinterland’ that we know is essential for pupils remembering things in the long term; they contain sophisticated vocabulary, often tier two and tier three not normally encountered in everyday discourse; and finally, they are inclusive. Everyone can access a great story. It follows from this that a unit I am preparing on the first account of creation in Genesis 1 will be driven by the text, and indeed different versions of the text. It also follows from this that if I am planning to teach about Sadaqat in a unit on Islam I will draw on a story such as ‘The Apple Tree’ by Miriam Al-Kalby [4].
Why high quality sources materials?
Pupils’ experience and their understanding will be degraded if we give them a diminished diet of low quality materials. Many of the worksheets given to pupils do not place sufficient demands on them either cognitively or affectively. How does the colouring-in of a mosque add to their learning? What do pupils learn from labelling the inside of a synagogue? We have an obligation to draw our material from the original artefacts and original sources. And with materials from museums, art galleries and faith communities, we have a cornucopia of material from which to garner high quality ingredients.
I believe that high quality resources, supporting the teaching of stories held together by rich concepts, are absolutely key to implementing the national entitlement.
[1] Willingham, D (2010) Why Don't Students Like School? Jossey-Bass
[2] ibid
[3] Pinker, S (1995) The Language Instinct How the Mind Creates Language: The New Science of Language and Mind Penguin
[4] AL-Kalby, M (2013) The Apple Tree: The Prophet Says Series Prolance
Concepts
‘Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.’ Immanuel Kant
‘Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.’
- Immanuel Kant
If we are looking to refine our thinking and planning in the curriculum, it is important to pay special attention to the big ideas. There are two main reasons why the identification and exploration of concepts are important: the first is that they bring coherence to our curricular thinking and planning. And the second is that that they make learning more efficient for our pupils.
We need our curriculum plans to be coherent, they need to have a rationale, otherwise they are just random things we expect pupils to learn. One of the most efficient ways to secure coherence is to identify the concepts. This is because they provide the threads of a journey through the content matter. They signpost the underlying structures. They are laden with meaning. They are very efficient. And yet they are also able to expand. Concepts act as holding baskets for lots of information. If I understand a concept then new material relating to that concept becomes much stickier and is easier to make sense of.
Concepts provide the schema through which meaning is made and connections are formed. They reach back into the past - where have we met this idea before? And they stretch to the future as we consider how new information links to our previous understanding. Paying attention to concepts means that we are developing the intellectual architecture for meaning and for strengthening memory over time.
The second reason why concepts are important is the effect that they have on learning. Identifying the big ideas helps pupils to make sense of what they are being taught. Instead of random lists of stuff to be learnt, the concept acts as an expandable portmanteau which enables a child both to draw on prior knowledge and to include new knowledge. The identification and explicit teaching of concepts will help pupils to make rich connections and will support them in identifying new concepts over time. As we identify concepts, and then start building new information relating to those concepts we are providing a rich picture for pupils. Concepts need to be the driver for learning. Given that we cannot teach everything, Daniel Willingham argues that pupils should learn the concepts that come up again and again - ‘the unifying ideas of each discipline.’
So where might we find the concepts and the big ideas? A starting point in England are the national curriculum documents. There is a tendency to go straight to the detail of what needs to be taught. However, each of the subjects within the national curriculum has an importance statement - namely the reason why this subject has a place within the curriculum and why pupils should be taught the subject. It is here that we find big ideas such as democracy and civilisation in history, for example. We need to know what these are and consider how they might be included in our planning. There is no need to use them all, but they should all be considered, so that we are very intentional about the ones that we wish to develop. We are in the process of curricular decision making when we do this work.
The second place we might go is to the texts we have selected. Texts with a narrative element are a very efficient way of conveying information to our pupils. The written word in a high quality text is more formal and contains more complex vocabulary than in everyday talk. And using high quality texts is how we power up our pupils’ learning. And there are often big ideas within the texts and so we identify these and make sure that they thread through the lessons. This becomes deeply satisfying work both for the teacher and pupils. We are a pattern seeking species, we search for meaning and connections and the teaching of concepts plays into these deep intellectual and psychological needs.
One of the potential barriers to the teaching of concepts, is that they are largely tier three words and often have roots in other languages, for example Latin and Greek. While on the surface these might appear difficult, when we pay careful attention to the unpacking of these words both we and our pupils find it deeply satisfying. Spending time on the origins or the etymology of a big word pays dividends. It taps into our desire to make sense of the world and when we go back to the beginnings of the word it helps us to make links and connections. So, the very unpacking of a word, in itself helps to deepen the understanding of the concept. To take an example from maths - the word isosceles comes from two Greek words. Now we are generally pretty good at teaching pupils definitions, so if we were to ask a pupil what an isosceles triangle is, they would generally be able to tell us. But if they knew that the word isosceles comes from isos, meaning equal in Greek and sceles meaning legs, they will have a bigger mental picture of what the term isosceles means. It also means that when they meet isos in other parts of the curriculum for example isobar and isometric, they have a clue that it has something to do with equal. When we do this work, we are supporting pupils up to go deeper in their understanding.
Or we might take the word hubris - the idea that sometimes human beings, through vanity and ambition overreach themselves and come tumbling down. This is a recognisable human trait - boastful words and behaviour often come back to bite us. And when we go into the root of the word hubris and find out that within Greek tragedy it means excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis, then our learning is deeper. Now hubris, is an important thread in literature and we might decide that we want to use this as a ‘thread’ throughout the curriculum. Other big ideas in English are logos, ethos and pathos and through unpacking these, we provide real resonance for both current and later learning. We are setting up the subliminal signposts for these characteristics and big ideas to be spotted and dwelt upon in future work.
A cardboard curriculum
There are three things I would like to contribute to the debate on knowledge in religious education: the first is that knowledge facts need to be underpinned by concepts and that these need to be taught explicitly; the second is that knowledge should be taught primarily through sacred texts, iconography, art and music and the third is that knowledge needs to reside in and be protected within the discipline, otherwise we end up with a ‘cardboard’ curriculum.
‘We’ve been learning about the Jewish people.’
‘Can you tell me more?’
‘Well we’ve learnt about the synagogue. In fact we’ve made one.’
‘What can you tell me about the synagogue?’
‘Well, it’s made out of cardboard.’
There are three things I would like to contribute to the debate on knowledge in religious education: the first is that knowledge facts need to be underpinned by concepts and that these need to be taught explicitly; the second is that knowledge should be taught primarily through sacred texts, iconography, art and music and the third is that knowledge needs to reside in and be protected within the discipline, otherwise we end up with a ‘cardboard’ curriculum.
To take concepts first. My argument is that concepts are ‘holding baskets’ for facts. They help to make sense of multiple pieces of information and this makes them efficient. Concepts are largely, but not exclusively expressions of important ideas within an academic discipline. Our pupils are entitled to know them and to use them. Concepts enable connections to be made across a disparate range of facts; they reside in the long-term memory and can be called on to make sense of new information. Concepts provide the intellectual architecture on to which new knowledge and insights can be pinned.
Two examples: in Christianity, a fundamental belief is that God became human in the form of Jesus, namely incarnation. It is possible to argue that much Christian belief flows from this concept. I make the case that incarnation should be taught explicitly; that pupils should be expected to use it when talking and writing about Christmas, for example. The most efficient way to do this is to unpack the etymology of incarnation: ‘in’ meaning ‘in’ and ‘carn’ from the Latin for flesh (and from which we get carnation, carnival, chilli con carne). Exploring the etymological routes provides an extra layer of meaning for pupils and in so doing, makes the concept more concrete. And in terms of incarnation being the ‘holding basket’, it means that the nativity accounts, the celebrations at Christmas, for example, are understood in terms of the Christian belief that God became human in the form of baby Jesus at Christmas. This means that all the twinkly stuff, some of it naff, is underpinned by this key understanding of the meaning for Christians. I am arguing that pupils are entitled to know this. There are some who say that etymological work is too demanding for young children and yet there are four year olds who are fluent in dinosaurs and furthermore many of them know that the word dinosaur comes from the Greek for scary lizard. Getting to the roots of words makes children feel clever. A second example from Judaism is the covenant. This, if properly understood, revisited and learnt thoroughly then the obligations on the Jewish community to keep the mitzvoth, for example, are understood in terms of meeting this sacred obligation.
My second argument is that our primary sources of knowledge in the classroom should be sacred texts, artefacts, music and art. Knowledge needs to be located within the realm of the subject, not gobbetised and sanitised via a second rate worksheet. My experience is that pupils rise to the occasion, that they can cope with demanding stuff and are crying out for authentic knowledge. It makes them feel clever.
The final strand of my argument is that it is important to maintain a clear distinction between inter-disciplinary RE and cross-curricular RE. Inter-disciplinary keeps the integrity of subject specific knowledge in tact. Thus, for example, a unit on Christian pilgrimage might draw on the Canterbury Tales in English and Thomas a Becket in history, and a visit to Canterbury Cathedral in order to enlarge on pilgrimage, not be subsumed by the other subjects. Cross-curricular work, by contrast, mostly ends in a muddle. When a theme such as water, is agreed across a number of subjects it can degrade the knowledge within an individual discipline. By the time it ends up in the RE classroom it becomes Jesus walking on water. Or a piece of cardboard.
If we don’t hold steady on the knowledge and the integrity of the discipline, then we end up in a muddle. And so do our pupils.
I think we can do better than that.
Should it stay or should it go?
However, we cannot just keep adding more and more to our work schedules, otherwise we will go under. But it takes bravery and discipline to ask ourselves, do we really need this? What would happen if we got rid of it? And yet if we want to create the time and space to focus on the important work, we need to roll up our sleeves and do some metaphorical cleaning out of the attics.
We find it hard to throw things away: to trim, to prune back to the essential. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes we just don’t notice how things have piled up, we just get used to there being more and more; sometimes we hang on to stuff in case it comes in useful and sometimes it can all feel too much to try and sort out what’s still needed from what can be thrown away.
However, we cannot just keep adding more and more to our work schedules, otherwise we will go under. But it takes bravery and discipline to ask ourselves, do we really need this? What would happen if we got rid of it? And yet if we want to create the time and space to focus on the important work, we need to roll up our sleeves and do some metaphorical cleaning out of the attics.
Our guiding principle for this work might be William Morris, who said that we should have nothing in our homes unless we know it to be useful or believe to be beautiful: when we place this idea within our work context we might ask ourselves whether the systems and the resources and the materials we are working with, really are useful? And as for beauty: this does not mean that we decorate our worksheets with sparkly butterflies, but instead ask ourselves whether they are fit for purpose: whether they are really clear and carefully designed to make sure that pupils can really learn from them.
The idea of making the case for less has a long pedigree in academic and management literature. Vilfredo Pareto, Professor of Political Economy at Lausanne discovered and described the '80:20' effect, now known as the Pareto Principle. Pareto’s work was in analysing wealth and income distribution trends in nineteenth-century England and he discovered that broadly 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent of the wealth. This insight was developed later by others, such as Joseph Juran, the quality improvement expert who developed ‘Total Quality Management’. Juran refined and developed Pareto's theories to make them applicable in business and management. Juran realised that organisations and people tend to expand activities, materials, and stuff of all sorts, over time, and all of this 'stuff' becomes expensive and cumbersome to keep. He took the Pareto Principle – the top 20% of any country’s population accounts for 80% of its economy – and translated it into business. He developed the Juran Trilogy that addressed the planning, control and improvement of quality in products. While Juran’s focus was on wasteful processes in manufacturing, the principles provide insights into how we go about our work in education. We might ask ourselves a question such as: ‘What is the 20% of our work which has 80% of the impact?’ Or ‘What is the impact of the work we do outside the classroom? Does all of it have real impact? How do we know?’
The final organisational guru for this section is Marie Kondo. This might be surprising as she is known for her advice on decluttering our homes. However, as with Pareto and Juran, there are some insights that might be applied to our work. Kondo says ‘My criterion for deciding to keep an item is that we should feel a thrill of joy when we touch it.’ Now ‘joy’ might not be the first thing that comes to mind when we are thinking about our work and the things we use to get that work done. However, if we unpick it, we might ask ourselves questions such as: ‘Is this the most professional way to go about this? Do I feel a deep sense of satisfaction with these power points and resources that I am offering my pupils? Are they the best and how do I know?’ And when we are able to answer yes to these, then we tap into a professional pride, which on Kondo’s terms might be called joy.
She has some interesting things to say about why so many of us allow ourselves to be surrounded by disorder. She argues that visible mess helps distract us from the true source of the disorder - in other words, we might have so much paperwork to complete that we forget to ask ourselves why we are doing this and who it is for. She goes on to say that there are usually two reason why we are reluctant to let something go: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future. And translated into a school context, this might be ‘Well we have always done it this way’ or ‘What will happen if we change our policy from marking every piece of work to whole class marking?’ The prospect facing up to the fact that we might need to do things differently and this can take many of us out of our comfort zones.
We need a radical approach to ‘spring cleaning’ many of the things we do in education. This covers taking a close look at the number of meetings we have, to the resources we source and develop and to the way we go about teaching. We cannot afford to hang on to things that no longer serve our purpose. As Kondo says about our homes: ‘Can you truthfully say that you treasure something buried so deeply in a closet or drawer that you have forgotten its existence? If things had feelings, they would certainly not be happy. Free them from the prison to which you have relegated them. Help them leave that deserted isle to which you have exiled them.’
When we release ourselves from some of the things that are getting in the way of cracking on with our best work, work which has impact, it is liberating.
Using stories in the curriculum
We need to take stories more seriously. Because stories are enjoyable, we have a tendency to underestimate their power. Great stories are important for their own sake. However, great stories can do some heavy lifting for us.
We need to take stories more seriously. Because stories are enjoyable, we have a tendency to underestimate their power. Great stories are important for their own sake. However, great stories can do some heavy lifting for us.
Stories have the power to open up the imagination, to create the background for a new unit, to supply tier two and tier three vocabulary and to provide a context for the big ideas and concepts. They are one of the most efficient ways of providing a hinterland. Then stories contain sophisticated language of greater lexical depth and complexity than we would encounter in everyday classroom talk. And it is as a result of this insight that Doug Lemov makes the case that reading aloud is critical for developing vocabulary for all pupils, including secondary.
The importance of stories is backed up by findings from cognitive science. If we agree with Daniel Willingham’s argument that our ‘brains privilege story’ then it follows that learning is likely to be deeper if we incorporate stories, conflicts and dilemmas into our schemes.
And as it happens the Education inspection framework (EIF) has an increased focus on reading: a rigorous approach to the teaching of reading develops learners’ confidence and enjoyment in reading. And in the handbook ‘reading is prioritised to allow pupils to access the full curriculum offer.’ This makes it a great opportunity to consider some of the most efficient ways of tapping into the power of stories in order to develop reading.
Three suggestions:
First: When we are developing a new unit, whether in primary or secondary, we might think about how a story (and this includes fiction and non-fiction) can be the starting point, or used for reading at home. To take an example in maths in primary, when we are teaching the Fibonacci sequence, we could tell the story of Fibonacci’s three wishes. In secondary science, some schools are extending their reading through using extracts from Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Second: Some schools are taking reading to the next level. Ashley Booth sets out how his school goes about whole class reading while Fran Haynes makes the case that reading aloud is not just for primary pupils and discusses the reading programme at the Durrington School.
Third: Checking out the findings from the faster reading research: 'Simply reading challenging, complex novels aloud and at a fast pace in each lesson repositioned ‘poorer readers’ as ‘good’ readers, giving them a more engaged uninterrupted reading experience over a sustained period. Average reading ages improved by 8.5 months for the groups overall and by 16 months for the ‘poorer’ readers.' So, we might ask what are the implications for subjects beyond English and for provision in primary?
What might we take away from this? That stories, in all their forms, are a very good thing.
The curriculum: what to cut?
The curriculum: it’s top of everyone’s agenda right now. And that’s a good thing because the quality of what is offered to pupils is worth thinking about, reading about and talking about
The curriculum: it’s top of everyone’s agenda right now. And that’s a good thing because the quality of what is offered to pupils is worth thinking about, reading about and talking about.
However, in order to do this work well, we need to think hard about how we are going to make the space and the time for it to happen properly. And that means taking a hard look at anything which is not adding value to learning and being prepared to cut it. There are three main areas which need to be addressed: school feedback and marking policies, the use of data and performance appraisal.
First, feedback and marking. Feedback needs to be as close as possible to the action, in other words, in the lesson. Carting truckloads of books home doesn’t provide timely and helpful feedback. So we need to stop doing it and use whole class feedback forms – these are better because they provide more precise feedback and secondly, they save teachers’ time which can then be used to work on the curriculum. Adam Boxer has summarised the research on why feedback works and marking every page of every book doesn’t and Andrew Percival has written about how his school has developed whole class feedback.
The second area that needs to be cut right back is the gathering and inputting of data. It’s worth noting that Ofsted will not be considering this during inspection. The issue with internally generated school data is that it is neither valid, nor reliable. Most tracking systems in primary are still linked to levels or points rather than whether pupils have been taught something and whether they have learnt it or not. And most tracking systems in secondary are based on GCSE numbers. How can pupils be given these numbers if they aren’t being taught GCSE material at key stage 3? Instead, we need a much more nuanced and accurate way of gathering evidence about standards – the paradox is that we know what good work looks like, but somehow think that we need to add a number to justify it. This is not the case, as the work on comparative judgement shows. We need teachers talking together about the features of high quality work and how to support all pupils to get there. As opposed to dodgy level descriptors which don’t tell us anything meaningful about standards.
Finally, to performance appraisal. The biggest professional development need in the sector right now is the development of subject knowledge. Surely, making time for teachers to read up on a topic, summarise their thoughts and use this to plan units is the best way to fill the subject knowledge gap. And in order for this to happen, reading and planning should be part of performance management. And for this to happen, we need to take out performance targets. Because these are mostly based on the dodgy systems mentioned above. And it’s good to see that ASCL have arrived at the conclusion that performance related pay does not result in improved outcomes and has a number of negative side effects, including teacher workload. ‘What we find six years on is no evidence that performance-related pay (PRP) improves pupil outcomes, whilst there is growing evidence that it has other negative effects.’
So, let’s do fewer things in greater depth and chop anything that does not add value to pupils’ learning.
Intellectual architecture
If the purpose of the new curriculum is that pupils show know things in depth then this is hard to do if they are presented with lots of information without an organising structure.
‘It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.’
- David Allan Coe
Content overload
If the purpose of the new curriculum is that pupils show know things in depth then this is hard to do if they are presented with lots of information without an organising structure. If we pay attention to developing a conceptual structure, then new information from different contexts will become ‘stuck’ to the concept and children are able to make better sense of it. The danger with rushing through content without developing a structure is that it is possible for information to float around, unconnected. Humans seek pattern and connections and we are depriving our children of crucial intellectual development if we do not show them how information fits into a bigger whole.
The temptation to go through a lot of content gives the impression that we have covered a great deal. When in fact, all that has happened is that children have completed some exercises, a lot of them shallow, which give a superficial impression of learning. What happens when we do this is that they are not able to say, in their own words, what they have learnt and how it relates to a bigger picture. An example of this: when checking in a faith school the extent to which pupils know about religions other than their own, they were able to say very little. Although they had plenty of time for religious education, they had only the odd lesson on Islam or Judaism which just dealt with a superficial knowledge of these, in very little time. When asking leaders about the fact that they appeared to know very little, they were exasperated and said that they had been taught. They showed the planning as evidence of this. The planning showed that what the children were taught was fragmentary and ‘tacked on’ as an afterthought. It might have been taught, but because links had not been made with the deep concepts of religion, pupils were unable to say anything meaningful about what they had learnt about other faiths and beliefs. If, for example they had been taught about the Muslim belief in one God, they might have been able to make the connections between Christianity and Judaism and the links in the early history between these faiths. Instead, they thought that Islam consisted of five pillars and could say nothing about them.
Work done or understood
When talking to children who had spent a lesson on partition in maths, they were asked what partition is and how they went about their work. Sadly, those spoken to were not able to say. They looked up at the board to read the learning objectives, stumbled over what it said and were not able to explain it in their own words. So it was an hour wasted because they hadn’t got a clue about what they were supposed to be learning. The previous lesson they had done negative numbers and when asked about these, again they were not able to say. This was because the moving through the curriculum content was valued more highly than checking whether pupils understood what they were doing, why it is important and how it might fit into other things they had learnt or were going to learn.
Making links
This is a waste of time and it doesn't secure children’s entitlement to the curriculum. When it is seen as something to be covered rather than understood then we have to go back to basics. And the first basic is to ask ourselves what is the overarching idea here? What do I want my children to be able to do with this new knowledge and how will I know if they have got it? This places greater emphasis on planning and it demands responsive teaching in the lesson. Responsive teaching means fine tuning what has been offered to pupils in light of their engagement with it. If they do not understand it is pointless ploughing on. We need to pause and rewind. It seems longer at the time, but it is shorter in the longer term. That is because in securing children’s understanding of the basic ideas, they will move faster over time.
Let’s take the concept of ‘civilisation’ which appears in the history curriculum for primary children. Across the primary years they are expected to learn about a range of civilisations and it is one of the expectations that pupils ‘gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as civilisation’. They will not gain an understanding of this concept if it is not taught explicitly. They will not make sense of it if the term is not used regularly as they learn about the Roman or Mayan empires for example. All that will happen is that children will have a fragmented range of facts which do not knit together under the concept of civilisation. Their learning and potential for new learning is limited.
So it is important to spend some time unpacking what is meant by civilisation and for the purposes of the national curriculum in history this is about knowing about the defining characteristics of large empires. The term civilisation comes from the Latin for town. The OED definition is the process by which a society or place reaches an advanced stage of social development and organisation. The underlying conditions are usually in place for a civilisation to emerge: a large settlement; the existence of food surpluses, to free a section of society from the need to feed itself so that they are able to produce art, administer the laws and secure order; literacy as a vehicle for myths, history, drama and philosophy. When these are in place there is capacity for cities to grow into centres of authority, exchange and culture. In most cases civilisation also gives rise to literate culture. By this definition, civilisation first appeared in Mesopotamia and Egypt by c. 3000 BC, India by 2. 2800 BC, China by about c. 1500 BC; and Central and South America sometime in the first millennium BC. From these core centres it then spread outwards, taking in most of the world by 1900 AD. Pupils are entitled to have purchase on the scope and range of the concept of civilisation as they learn about specific eras in detail. And the same applies to covenant and incarnation for example, in religious education. Concepts are present in each of the national curriculum subjects.
When time is taken to unpack these, to scope the landscape, to provide the bigger picture, pupils will be developing the intellectual architecture which provides the structure for the detail.