To agree with this article re. curriculum whilst home schooling maths and english

[fabulousspider]

www.theguardian.com/education/2021/feb/20/im-a-maths-lecturer-and-i-had-to-get-my-children-to-teach-me

Just read this, and have to say I agree with the maths and english sentiments from the experts.

Having been teaching my kid (age 8) english which involves "fronted adverbials" and all that malarkey whilst trying to encourage their creative writing seems backwards to me. Overcomplicating what should be an enjoyable experiment in creativity. Making the kids stressed out! Kids will learn appropriate language usage by default as they write. They don't need to know what a fronted adverbial is whilst they are trying to grapple with the creative side of writing. I believe that they will pick up the appropriate language by a process of osmosis whilst carrying out the creative writing.

And the number of times I've noticed that frequently the maths work set and the answers seem plain wrong! Like the maths teacher says, you teach them one thing when younger and then change this as they get older. I see that some concepts need altering for younger kids but I am honestly suprised at some of the ways the methods are put across. They don't always seem intuitive.

Do others feel the same?

@Level32

Also, there aren't enough people in the wider world to model correct language for children to just 'pick it up'. Even well educated, English as a 1st language, functioning adults don't use correct tenses/spelling/punctuation etc. correctly. Popular children's authors like David Walliams aren't setting good examples either, so if we want children to learn correct GPS, we have to teach it.

IF it's not being used in the wider world, even by well educated, English as a 1st language adults, why are our children spending so much time learning it?

I would love to be able to "follow it up" rather than teach it from scratch, believe me

Yet they all seem to do well on their SPAG test?

Even though the 'pass' mark (sorry, the mark to reach the expected standard) isn't that high (36/70)

I think I'm one of the few who agrees that 'technical English' with emphasis on linguistic learning over/along side creativity is better in the longterm. I find most who disagree with it are more interested in literature discourse than understanding the basic building blocks of language (which can actually be interesting if given a chance, and gives ample opportunity for early Shakespeare introduction). Other European countries have a far better grasp of languages because they give greater focus on the science of words.

I'm too thick with maths to make much of a comment, Numberblocks have taught mine all they need to know before starting school .

@SarahAndQuack Agree absolutely.

I wonder to what extent being told, eg "there are no numbers between 0 and 1", when quite a young child can see for themselves that half a cake is more than no cake and less than one cake, contributes to the feeling that so many apparently have that maths has nothing to do with the real world?

IF it's not being used in the wider world, even by well educated, English as a 1st language adults, why are our children spending so much time learning it?

Yes, you’re right, we should just do away with spelling and syntax because not everyone understands or can use them confidently ‘by osmosis’. Stuff like how to structure a sentence or longer piece of writing so that it’s comprehensible and engaging is so unimportant.

People like me have to make up for the poor writing skills of significant numbers of well-educated (and in some cases highly-educated) people. I’d love being able to spend more time focusing on my job and less time fixing the work of someone who never learned how to use commas or apostrophes accurately or with confidence.

I’m not hired to be a copy editor. It would be lovely to leave it. But others have to read that writing, and if it’s not clear, accurate and engaging it reflects on our organisation and ultimately may make it harder to persuade people to do the things we want them to do.

I did a degree in modern languages and once I got to A-level our teachers had to teach us English grammar before they could teach French/German/ Spanish grammar because the teaching of grammar was so poor in schools. My friends from European countries were taught grammar extensively from primary school and found it much easier to learn other languages. If this has been improved I don't see how it is a bad thing.

This is something I feel strongly about - YANBU. Essentially what the English curriculum is teaching my dc is that the subject is dry, boring and full of complexity that he has to remember. As an English graduate/writer I am counter teaching him that books are fabulous and don't worry too much about the technical descriptions of words - if you write well you will use the concepts they are looking to teach. The primary curriculum for English makes me both sad and angry. Literally sucking the joy out of amazing words and writing. I would like to see a more balanced curriculum that teaches basic grammatical concepts (a doing word etc) that allows understanding to be built on through time. It's badly broken, and I fear putting off a generation of students off English, especially boys. Which is a shame as reading is a gateway to knowledge, critical thinking skills and analysis that last a life time. Not the teachers fault at all, from what I see doing an amazing job making this as I interesting as they can in impossible circumstances. Thank goodness there are still poets and amazing writers out there still inspiring with their words.

I recently asked my Y7 DD2 what she'd been doing in history, and she talked about how she learned how to answer a yes/no question by discussing both sides and other types of exam questions. It took some pulling to get her to discuss any actual historical. Though from the other point of view, whenever I've seen people challenged on "what use is a History degree?" the answer has always been in terms of teaching you to evaluate evidence and to be able to answer a question presenting evidence from both sides. .

Though from the other point of view, whenever I've seen people challenged on "what use is a History degree?" the answer has always been in terms of teaching you to evaluate evidence and to be able to answer a question presenting evidence from both sides.

Yes I was impressed when I read that - properly teaching the idea that history isn’t just fixed facts but the ability to look at and evaluate sources effectively and determine whether they can support a particular position.

Learning by osmosis only works with able students. It completely fails lower ability learners.
I agree that the primary English curriculum is pretty formulaic and all the children's writing ends up the same but it's also difficult to teach sentence structure if no-one knows what the parts of the sentence are called.

@Noranorav

This is something I feel strongly about - YANBU. Essentially what the English curriculum is teaching my dc is that the subject is dry, boring and full of complexity that he has to remember. As an English graduate/writer I am counter teaching him that books are fabulous and don't worry too much about the technical descriptions of words - if you write well you will use the concepts they are looking to teach. The primary curriculum for English makes me both sad and angry. Literally sucking the joy out of amazing words and writing. I would like to see a more balanced curriculum that teaches basic grammatical concepts (a doing word etc) that allows understanding to be built on through time. It's badly broken, and I fear putting off a generation of students off English, especially boys. Which is a shame as reading is a gateway to knowledge, critical thinking skills and analysis that last a life time. Not the teachers fault at all, from what I see doing an amazing job making this as I interesting as they can in impossible circumstances. Thank goodness there are still poets and amazing writers out there still inspiring with their words.

Ds seems to have written really incredible creative pieces. Imaginative, good pace and expression.

I don’t feel put out by the fact that he can run rings around me with grammatical knowledge - which seems to be a hole in my learning. Even though the rest of education was very good.

I also agree with Lazy re languages point too

It's a horrible article and it's factually incorrect.

I don't know why it says this: "The curriculum is forcing teachers to deliberately teach children lies, he says, which then have to be unpicked later. For example, after years of being taught there are no numbers between zero and one, his seven-year-old is suddenly expected to understand that there are such things as fractions."

Children are taught fractions formally from Year 1 (age 5), moving onto adding fractions and equivalents in Year 2 when the children are still only 6 years old. They will also have talked about halves and quarters in Reception and probably Nursery too.

If the author of the article wanted to accuse teachers of lying about numbers, she could at least have researched the curriculum first.

I agree with the article and am very pleased that people are finally talking about this. What I want to know is how can we change it? Who do we write to? What can we do? I think pressure needs to be put on the government to improve the primary curriculum as soon as possible. After all, what is the point of "catch up lessons" if what the children are catching up on seems wholly unnecessary and detrimental to children's joy of learning.

Which part of the curriculum do you want to change? The author of the article is suggesting that fractions are not on the curriculum but they are. There are many other little inaccuracies.

Increasingly it seems we are required to teach children a meta-analysis of a subject rather than the subject. Education is rapidly disappearing up its own backside.
I’m retired secondary currently teaching English and Maths in FE. A great deal of my time is spent undoing the harms done in school, and lot of the remainder is spent diagnosing hitherto undetected learning difficulties and referring people for the help they should have got years ago.

Sadly there probably are teachers who use that phrase, ‘there are no numbers between 1 and 2’, without adding in the key word ‘whole’. Maths knowledge among primary teachers is minimal. It is actually improving right now following the mastery approach -look up White Rose maths - but there needs to be much more of it. I think the culture in schools currently works against the kind of people who would enjoy maths. For English there’s a lot of cynicism: they appear to be teaching absolute rules to allow kids to produce the kind of off-the-rollers crap commercial writing that sells and gets read. Not sure I can explain that perception any more clearly either .

@SarahAndQuack

So if anything that you've seen through home schooling has confused you or you've struggled to see the reasoning for, I empathise. You've not had training or years of experience of pedagogy (the science of teaching). But that doesn't mean it's wrong. Most teachers know exactly what they're doing.

Wow, you're patronising.

Did you not take on board that the article was written by people who are experts? They might well have considerably more expertise than you!

To be fair to the poster you quote, the experts in the article aren't experts in pedagogy from what I can see. There are university school of education research departments and global research projects which aim to further our understanding of teaching and learning and inform practice. Regardless of the curriculum (which teachers can't control), teachers will use what they consider (after considerable training) the best pedagogical methods to support children in learning the curriculum.

I do empathise with parents who are wondering why maths has 'changed'. I'm a secondary maths specialist and relatively recently came across the bar methods. I think they're wonderful! They can make quite complex and abstract ratio and algebra problems intuitive. It's one part of maths that parents won't recognise from their own education and a sign that the teaching of maths has improved. Unless you had some training or experience in maths pedagogy, you wouldn't necessarily get why they're so useful.

@kolo, sure, but nor are most teachers experts in pedagogy.

I'm a secondary maths specialist and relatively recently came across the bar methods

That makes me a bit sad - as there have always been children who have struggled with maths and who need different ways of learning and seeing problems.

I worry that in the past - there has always been a philosophy that formal written methods are the way to go and those are the ones that get the marks - yet there are some pupils who can 'get' maths but need different methods to formal written methods.

@bananamonster

It's a horrible article and it's factually incorrect.

I don't know why it says this: "The curriculum is forcing teachers to deliberately teach children lies, he says, which then have to be unpicked later. For example, after years of being taught there are no numbers between zero and one, his seven-year-old is suddenly expected to understand that there are such things as fractions."

Children are taught fractions formally from Year 1 (age 5), moving onto adding fractions and equivalents in Year 2 when the children are still only 6 years old. They will also have talked about halves and quarters in Reception and probably Nursery too.

If the author of the article wanted to accuse teachers of lying about numbers, she could at least have researched the curriculum first.

All of this

@goatrebecca197 Joy of learning can still be achieved with the current curriculum. Those of us educated 85-early 2000s were shafted in terms of learning actual grammar. Instead we were expected to learn by osmosis from reading. My grammar knowledge is crap and I know my written English isn't great because of it.

The new maths curriculum is brilliant. The only problem with it is that teachers weren't given time to train and implement it properly.

You need some level of knowledge before you can truly see the joy in a subject. This curriculum opens up that base knowledge to far more students, this can only be a good thing.

I teach A level English Language. It’s hilarious that we are now ‘re-learning’ concepts (like passive and active voice) which they haven’t touched upon since Year 6! Amazingly a couple of the girls remember a lot and remind each other of their primary learning.
They have done a few Twinkl worksheets designed for Y6
All the PPS claiming that children learn English skills by osmosis have given me a good laugh. As if. Anybody who has read ‘stories’ written by children with no explicit teaching/structuring/vocabulary building will know that it is drivel. Utter drivel with the odd exception of one bright spark who has a gift, same as some children who have a gift for numbers or ball skills or singing. These gifts are very rare: most of us have to be taught skills. Explicit teaching, modelling and editing are crucial.
However, I agree that the teaching could happen without the onslaught of technical terms. Children could quite easily incorporate non defining relative clauses without knowing the label for them.

I did a degree in modern languages and once I got to A-level our teachers had to teach us English grammar before they could teach French/German/ Spanish grammar because the teaching of grammar was so poor in schools.

Exactly. I've spent 20 odd years teaching French and German grammar and having to explain how it works in English as well. So many times kids have said things like "Why does French have all those irregular verbs, miss? We don't have those in English!" Ummm.... actually....

Most adults under 45 weren't taught grammar in school. So hopefully now we are teaching grammar explicitly, future generations won't have that problem.

Unfortunately it's not hugely effective, because it's all crammed in just before the SATs, then dropped again. I sometimes think they should bring back sentence parsing . My adult learners absolutely love it!

Oh, and just to say to all parents struggling with the ‘new methods’ of Maths - check out Math Antics on YouTube. He’s amazing and has really rescued me and DS on occasion during some uphill homeschooling sessions. Neither of us are natural mathematicians but he explains so clearly.