Educational fads of the moment

[FuckYouDailyMail]

Ex-teacher here and the changes to assessment and streaming at DD's school 'to ensure the school is following the latest research' have brought back memories of the numerous new initiatives I had to adapt to using over the years.

AIBU to ask you to tell me about your favourite and least favourite teaching fads? Which ones were a waste of time and which have proved their worth.

Proper phonic teaching instead of this mixed method rubbish was a very welcome change. 20% of children being left to flounder due to incorrect teaching methods was a national disgrace. Except it doesn't work for all children. My GC struggled for 4 years making no progress, I sat on my hands till I could watch no longer. Asked his parents if I could do the old "look say" method and school have said his progress is "miraculous." They have no idea it wasn't a miracle it was just finding a method that worked for the child.

A lot of this is hardly surprising given the political leanings of most teachers. Softly softly “we’re all fucking special” bullshit.

As a massive lefty, I disagree, sharklovers.

The whole growth mindset thing doesn’t work in a system based on scores, rewards, sticker charts and tests.

I like it as a theory for ones self and to understand from a pedagogical POV, but it’s not a thing that children really need to know a huge amount about, especially as they can’t really always put it into practise in the current school system. It works if you understand it as a teacher and take approaches that allow children to know that learning is constant. But shit, that’s what happened in the past and it was too woolly so Gove fucked that right up.

The entire numeracy curriculum. The previous one was better. There was some really top notch cpds from maths advisors to teachers which I know I benefited from. I see newer teachers not really understanding what they’re teaching as it’s gone.

Column calculation methods whey they don’t really understand it.

This article from the TES at the weekend will hopefully kill Growth Mindset for good.

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/weekend-read-growth-mindset-new-learning-styles

“Growth mindset is about embodying it in all the everyday practices that educators do”

“What I find ironic is that, in many schools where they push growth mindset for students, the teachers themselves don’t have growth mindset.”

But that’s what I’m saying. If you really understand growth mind set (and it took me a while, outside and unrelated to teaching) it’s more about how you approach teaching as a whole pedagogy, not bleating on at kids about it. And our system does not allow it as it’s all outcome, judgement driven.

No one has been able to replicate Carol Dweck's work. That's the real problem. It's bobbins before it's even out of the bag.

Strauss, my point, which perhaps I didn't make very clearly, is that in my opinion it's not the best idea for children to have to do things just because it's on the curriculum for their year group if they are not at the appropriate 'level' for that work. Whether it be work that's too easy or too hard. And yes, I know it's not normal for a 9 year old to not always write sentences with no missing words, full stops or capital letters. But I think if he was given more practice at writing simple sentences rather than working out whether or not a clause is subordinate, or identifying fronted adverbials, he'd be a better writer than he is. Just my opinion though.

Not just me then a bit fed up with all the fads

I did like phonics when we started using that fully not sure there are many others I could name though.

'Everyone clapping when someone makes a mistake to celebrate our mistakes'

What rampant fuckery is this [puts head in hands]

I don't know if it's just my experience with DS, but I'm finding handwriting is a hideous clash of print/ cursive. Either teach cursive from the start, or master printing first, but don't introduce a second writing style before a child has competently formed letters in one style. (I remember learning in y3, not y1) So for instance he's completely confused as to do an "a" clockwise or anti-clockwise then he plonks tails on and isn't learning how to form letters with flow and instead writes inefficiently because it's all over the place. Because the government standards are so prescriptive, he's met the age expectation despite the fact he struggles to form his name properly. He can tell you it's a noun and has a split diagraph though!

From my recent teaching experience, too much "reflection" and "response time" to massage the levels and demonstrate "progress". A unit of 12 lessons will in reality see 3 spent on the assessment cycle plus something lost to INSET/ off timetable at some point, so a massive proportion of teaching time is lost (plus a massive marking load which is what has driven me out for now). I find in my subject that we never actually cover a broad base of general knowledge as a foundation for the deeper learning as these more descriptive skills were more KS2, except they never got taught as there was too much focus on SATS. Therefore I find myself teaching GCSE to students who don't know basics like what a continent is

Yep, we were told last year that he couldn’t go past a certain book band last year then I spoke to teacher again this year and said he can’t go past same book band this year.
Maths is the same. Looks like he may also be in top group for literacy, with year above already, and since he only needs limited repetitions (3-5 to learn most skills in maths and with reading) that could be interesting too this year and next.

Mastery isn't restricting kids to a certain book band!

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/masteryfail-common-misconceptions-about-maths-mastery

"“We don’t do differentiation now, we do mastery instead”

This one breaks my heart. Somehow the message has reached schools that differentiation is bad. Particularly, that the brightest kids should not be accelerated. This is showing itself in some schools as really bright kids being asked to work on mundane crap for months because the whole class hasn’t yet caught up. This is not what mastery is about at all. If anything, in a mastery model, the very brightest kids have the most stretching experience. Every single concept in mathematics is infinitely extensible. In a mastery model, the brightest kids go way beyond the demands of the national curriculum and work on incredibly deep maths. Also, because human beings grip things in different ways, one of the great things about a mastery approach is that everyone has a turn at being the one who grips something early and therefore gets to work on the deep material."

Re "British values".

I attended a state primary and a CofE secondary in England in the 70s and 80s. There was values teaching, which was broadly Christian and we sang hymns in assembly.

I understand that's gone now, but if that's the case, well you've got to replace it with some kind of values teaching, don't you?

Happily, my DCs' education in NZ seems quite fad-free, but I sometimes wonder if they're not being moved along as they would be in an English school, so perhaps the faddism has some benefit.

Placing the children on ability tables for literacy/numeracy etc but giving the tables cute names so the children aren't aware that they are top middle or bottom.

Indeed - even my just turned 4 YO was able to figure out that 'Tiger' reading group may be a bit more advanced than the 'Bears'!

I had great success using the old Look Say method with a few children (shh!) who just could not grasp Phonics, but this was seriously frowned upon in my teaching days.

DS1 had so much Grammar crammed into him last year that his new Y7 teacher has had to ask him nicely if he would perhaps not write quite as much for his English homework . He obviously isn't fancying a whole year of wading through ten pages of work with about ten adjectives in every sentence...

Flipped learning works well for my DDs. By my introducing them to topics early they can take it in better when the teacher teaches it.

I also think that no one says that British Values are exclusively British. But with people coming to Britain from all over it seems to be a necessary thing to instil in children who may not be getting the same messages from home (especially with respect to religious freedom, respecting women, democracy)

The one I dislike is learning science in primary via experimentation and then not actually teaching the right science if the experiment has errors and gets the 'wrong' answer. Don't know if that still happens, but DD1 now 18 suffered from that.

I have to admit that I am ‘that parent’ but for him and the children that are equally unchallenged after him I have to be.

I find it really interesting reading about children stagnating and not allowed to move on. The total opposite happens where I teach where we discuss, what seems like weekly, differentiation and how to extend higher ability pupils.

Phonics has a place but I teach profoundly deaf children, one of who has no sound access at all so doesn't use phonics but total sight vocabulary to learn. It's amazing see their progress.

I think it is easier with a group of higher ability rather than an outlier though.

Growth mindset, visible learning, learning pit.

Such a relief to see everyone thinks so much of it is bollocks too! So many old timers have left that sometimes I look at the sea of fresh nqt faces, who believe all of it, and wonder if it's just that I am an old curmudgeon which I am, in fairness. I'm leaving at Christmas anyway, so can contain my ire to watching what fuckwittery is inflicted on the dc.

Anyone else have to waste epic amounts of time doing DIRT (dedicated improvement and reflection time) after every test? I've been teaching nearly 20 years, been doing DIRT/triple marking and similar bollocks for about 4yrs. It has almost no impact on the students but massively increases my workload.
Bring back the trusty red pen!!

Oh, PINK for think annoys me too.

Learning conversations.

We are supposed to have these with every child after every piece of work.