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.

evildoctor we do some work with him at home and did last year too. Think we will for a while too.

Singapore Maths is about solving problems, not rote learning.

'No such thing as a one to one child'? Hahahaha

Children do ... make better notes from them.

OK - I'm going to set the cat among the pigeons here...

Anecdote (it's true, though):

DS2. IGCSE (some time ago). 3 science teachers.
Biology teacher spent every lesson dictating notes
Chemistry teacher actually taught the class and gave out printed notes
Physics teacher taught the class and didn't give notes at all.

One very windy day, folder blown out of DS2's hand. All the notes are blown away and lost. He didn't bother to replace them.

He passed all 3, but his best grade was in physics.

How on earth can notes be better than a textbook, with an index?

I'm actually serious about this. I never took notes at school if I could help it, either. It reminds me of that quote (can't recall the source) about the lecture as a teaching method. Something along the lines of a method to

"transfer the notes of the lecturer to the notes of the student, without passing through the mind of either".

So the "thinking skills" initiative amused me. Good teachers have been encouraging their pupils to think since the beginning of time. And thinking about something (at a deep level) is the only way to really understand it. And once you understand it, you don't need to learn it.

I like group work. Lots of benefits imo, although any assessment has to be organised fairly to reflect each individual's contribution.

Cursive writing here. It's now being used in our school from day 1.
So my 5 yr old thinks there are "capital letters, normal letters and school letters".

What sort of a letter s is this to be teaching anyone to write? Load of nonsense.

Oh god, I hate cursive too. Not taught to ds yet but might have fun when it is

My DS does his s like that, tea, they look bloody stupid in the middle of a word.

A child who needs one to one attention for a particular academic or social reason. There's no such thing as that child, apparently

Anyone had flight paths yet 🤔

Tomorrow I emailed DD's teacher, who also happens to be the maths lead, he replied waffling a lot about mastery, which I think means "keeping her at the same level until the others catch up", then he told me about a course run by a prep school, they take a y5 boy and girl from each school to do either maths or science. They have to be "gifted". The course lasts 5 weeks. Of course, DD and I bit his hand off! She's done a couple of weeks now, and she's really engaged. It's lovely to see.

I hope your DS is feeling more challenged now.

VCOP

Www/EBI

Triple marking/opening a dialogue

Levelled outcomes. At one point, there were three different sets per lesson (as in, 3 different all/most/some sets in one go).

I'm grateful for flight plans, having spent an entire year in limbo with nothing (English teacher).

And... vertical forms. And SEAL. And learning cogs (5 Rs).

Calling homework home learning.

SO. BLOODY. MANY.

I have given up hoop jumping and just do it my way.

WWW and EBI. Not new either, just recycled.

He is more challenged at home but he is only ks1 so got years of issues to come.

Oh God! All of these yes!! Have hated the time wasted on all of them!

Spent a pointless two hour meeting after school today, trying to find ways to embed BAME into every lesson as SLT want us to come up with posters etc. . I mean, how patronising to the students!

Ooh you reminded me Zeppo Calling students 'Learners' and referring to 'Learning and Teaching' instead of 'Teaching and Learning.

Definitely fecking British Values.

Software for homework that resets every year and has to be restarted with new accounts/passwords/watching the blimmin' multiple introductory video again instead of just carrying on from the year before. (I'm going to call this a fad because I better not have to put up with this for the next ten years!)

Oh yes noble, I'd forgotten that gem.

The earnest look from SLT makes it worse- as though THIS is the holy grail that will save education. For half a term at least 😡

When I taught in England, we were meant to teach cursive writing from the start. I hadn't a clue how to do it myself. In my area of Scotland, we teach proper letter formation first, then in P3 they start joining letters. In my own natural writing style, I still don't join letters as I was never taught that in the 60s.

Although we have a scheme of work that we're meant to cover at each year, if we have able pupils we are supposed to challenge them.. Our HT is always muttering, "pace and challenge, pace and challenge" and schools have been slated by inspectors for not doing this.

I have been teaching for so long that I've seen hundreds of fads come and go and just think, "Oh this is the latest gimmicky shite that our LA has wasted thousands on....." North Lanarkshire Writing, Peter Patilla (sp?) maths, Critical Skills etc etc

And if I hear "Teacher Pupil Dialogue" one more f*cking time....

I'm really surprised that there are parents on here who have children coasting along without being challenged. The teacher will get a kicking at his/her next observation and the school will be heavily criticised when it's next inspected.

For us it seems to be a school policy issue so don’t have any ill will to teachers/ta.

"Nobody learns to read via lea [r] ning whole words."

I have news for you BowlingShoes. I and my son (we are now 56 and 28 respectively) both learned by reading whole words, long before we went to school. And yes, we do have very good memories and wide vocabularies.

So you didn't learn c-a-t is cat, you just learnt the shape of the word?

How did you read words you'd never read before?

Well, I am an ex yr 5 and 6 teacher and my yr 5 grand-daughter brought her homework last week. Fronted adverbial, what the heck are they teaching them these days? Never heard of it! Nine and ten yr olds do not need this.