Teachers - your thoughts on this? (Essay help!)

[badgermonkey]

I'm planning an essay for my Master's course, and I want to write about the barrage of new initiatives that teachers face and how we have to adapt every time. I'll be looking at the last 20 years or so, since the start of the National Curriculum, I think, and I want particularly to comment on ideas that have been brought in with great fanfare and dropped later on, especially if they've been disproven or shown not to work (ahem, Brain Gym...). I'll also be writing about new schemes that are coming into play at the moment, like APP and topic-based learning.

I've been teaching 7 years and I can think of quite a few things myself, like the Lit + Num Strategies, learning styles, peer assessment, and, obviously, SATs, but I would really welcome examples from other people. I'm a secondary English teacher so often 'experimented' on with new ideas but I don't really get to see what goes on at Primary level. Any examples or opinions gratefully accepted!

Ours is Kaleidos and it's so slow and badly-designed it's virtually unuseable. I'm very computer literate, run a website and all the rest of it, so if I can't figure it out, the software sucks.

I have to have my learning objective and my differentiated success criteria (not learning outcomes though, they're quite different...) on my board at all times. Which means I can't actually have anything else on my board. Or I have to have them so small they can't be seem at the back of the room.

Why?

Hope you are not still using WILF. It's WALT now you know.

Ha to pink gel pens. I said I hated peer assessment in a meeting and everyone was shocked, shocked and talked about how it's great "if it's done well". No! they just all put "i like ur story its really good!!! " on the bottom of the page. Crappity crap.

where i work kids have to write out

the title
the aims and the levels
this is pointless and a waste of time
the kids hate it
they dont even read it

i do the " to do really well you need to explain why the chicken crossed the road, not just tell me about its funky moves, that is a description and is level 3"

writing it down is stupid

totally agree re crappity crap.
i aint got time for it all
too long around the block

Ah yes - the game show.

Blockbusters.
Who wants to be a millionaire.

I have a great blankety blank template - with music and everything...

The 3 part lesson.
The 5 part lesson.
The n part lesson, where n is whatever random number your SLT deem most OFSTED-friendly...

i thought its walt and wilf?
never used it
came in and went out while i was breeding

GOD I LOVE THIS THREAD

i did who wnats to be a millionaire with buddhas life
its just not right.

oh my god
MARKING IN GREEN
i dont
i stick to red
as in spread the red

Healthy Schools (jobs for the boys...)

Sustainable Schools

Eco Schools

Investors in People

Specialist Schools

2 hours of PE a week

Citizenship

Creative Partnerships

(Our VLE is Moodle, bm - you can only upload one photo at a time - and each photo takes about a minute.... Tere's also a 100Mb cap for videos, and you can imagine how long they take to upload, if they manage it at all!!)

You're right, Susylv - this is VERY cathartic!!!!

SO agree with this
Healthy Schools (jobs for the boys...)

Sustainable Schools

Eco Schools

Investors in People

Specialist Schools

all becomes a competition to get a stupid plaque

Ooooh! Interactive whiteboards

Computers in some amazing ratio to children

Health and Safety audits

Performance management

Transition planning

Enquiry Based Learning

Philosophy for Children

Drama for Learning

Mantle of the Expert

Forest Schools

lol at mantle
i missed that

Great thread.

Anyone mentioned Student Voice yet? That seems to be this year's thing.

The poor darlings didn't have 'a voice' until a new initiative was launched to give them one.

Oooh... and Learning to Learn. WTF?

One hour a week teaching kids how they learn!

It's been scrapped now in our school thank Christ.

Scotland has Determined to Succeed, an enterprise initiative

you must have some such down south

oh yeah, learning to learn, metacognition really big

lol at student voice

Home school agreements

EXTENDED SCHOOLS!!! HOW COULD I FORGET??!! (More jobs for the boys)

Signposting

HLTAs

PPA (Hurray!)

Rime and analogy

The qualification that head teachers had to do - NVQH??

Optional SATs

Creative Curriculum (please don't let it go!!)

Use of TAs in the classroom

The 24 tasks and the workload agreement

Threshold / those mega files to start with! - now UPS

agree to all of those

i wonder if david cameron or gordond b ( or indeed claggy) have seen this thread

disa bility thing - that audit - sheesh that drove me nUts
and soneoen made a packet out of auditing the schools " you need to paint your steps yellow"

How Science Works

All very well, knowing how it works. Shame they've taken out actually knowing what it is from the curriculum.

I miss out on a lot of the other stuff, teaching in the independent sector. Some of it trickles down to us eventually.

The textbook woman who came round recently was telling us how her books would help with "APP" and she was shocked when I asked her what it was.