Thoughts on the draft of the new primary curriculum?

[hockeyforjockeys]

The draft documents for the new primary curriculum are now here.

Had a quick look at them (mainly the year 6 stuff as that's what I teach) and it doesn't look too bad in terms of what we wold actually be expected to teach. Bit more challenging than what is currently expected for level 4, but not a massive jump (all my 4a children and above would cope fine with it). Major question is what happens for those who aren't ready (for whatever reason) for the programme for their year?

Don't particularly like being dictated too, but it saves me having devise spelling lists and science unit plans at least I suppose!

What are others thoughts?

Ok, sounds like I'm wrong. I stand corrected :)

But RWI relies totally on teachers/TAs following ready made lesson plans. And although I know some teachers have serous reservations about it because of this - equally many,many teachers and schools love it. And it does get fairly good results......

Maybe my understanding of what's in a lesson plan is also wrong?. I thought it was stuff like 'teach symmetry by cutting shapes out of newspaper. LA to do squares, MA to do triangles and circles, HA to do......'

Is it schemes of work that could be reused, rather than lesson plans?

I'm really concerned about the changes to maths. I can't remember the details, but I think he wants column addition and subtraction in year 2 (reminds self to check facts before ranting in future). The way we teach at the moment waits until children understand what they are doing when adding/subtracting htu and THEN using the column method. But gove actually said that you don't need to understand maths, you just need to be able to do the method. Which is like saying you don't need to understand what you read, you just need to be able to decode. SO wrong :(

And maybe this explains why he wants all schools to be above average, which is a mathematical impossibility.

I'm very worried by these proposals, rejected by a panel of experts, and in the hands of someone who clearly has an agenda to privatise schools and imo has no understanding of the current education system :(

I particularly agree with your final paragraph, globalmouse.

Well, I'm hoping the next step is a whole book of outstanding lesson plans for every week in every subject with resources, so that we can all follow the format and get outstanding results from everyone all the time.
And I can stop making up my own plans and resources and get back days of my life.
If none of us know what or how to teach, I want a Master Plan so I can blame someone else when it all goes wrong.
'I taught 10 outstanding lessons on column addition and subtraction, following the script to the letter, and 5 still don't get it, so it must be their fault'
Teaching, guilt-free at last.

Feenie
do you think we need some kind of.....ooh, I don't know.....um......spelling reform

Not if u enjoy having endless debates about how best to teach children to read and write, and governments regularly changing their guidelines to teachers for doing so, without making the slightest difference. And particularly not if u are quite happy to consign roughly 1 in 5 children to the educational scrap heap, where have been ending up in all English-speaking countries for more than a century.

Illiteracy costs money. It also makes it very hard to learn anything else. Hence all the recurring initiatives for raising standards. But because learning to read and write English remains exceptionally difficult and time-consuming, even the vast increases in educational expenditure under Labour had little effect.

...scrap heap, where 1in 5 have been ending up in all English-speaking countries for more than a century.

And particularly not if u are quite happy to consign roughly 1 in 5 children to the educational scrap heap

I'm not - it doesn't happen in my school, and many others, Masha, and - guess what? - we do this without reforming English spelling. Radical, or what?

I can't even handle it when you 'u' me in your posts, Masha, it makes me wince, tbh - as someone not only refuses to use abbreviations in texts, but who even puts apostrophes/semi-colons in without fail.

Globalmouse did he really say that? Kids don't need to understand maths, just use the formulae? Ohgodohgodohgod

Masha - are you not aware by now that 'the 1 in 5 children consigned to the educational scrap heap' was a consequence of Whole Language, Whole Reading, multi-cueing, mixed strategies, balanced literacy? Synthetic Phonics has cut through this fog.

Globalmouse, I couldn't have put it better!! You are right, he is proposing column method in year 2. I am all for column method but not before the child has learnt enough mental strategies and agility to understand WHY it works. I am numeracy co-ordinator and have just written our new calculations policy. Our rule of thumb is, when the child can add and subtract 2 digit numbers in their head with reasonable confidence, then they are ready for column method, which is basically a calculator on a bit of paper! Would he really be happy if we just taught children to use a calculator?

Hehe. When we have FallenCaryatid's book of outstanding lesson plans my job will be prefect. I can stay inside teaching outstandingly all day long and all the kids will be rioting on the field or the roof.

We don't even group our lot by chronological age (profile of needs instead) so hell knows how that is going to work. Not sure the KS2 class of P-scalers is going to get much out of any amout of outstanding teaching of content points 200-300.

Maths[310] Ensure pupils understand and use the notation of probability and fractions; for example, the probability of rolling a 3 on a six-sided die is P(3) = 1/6, with the numerator showing the number of given outcomes and the denominator the number of possible outcomes.

Well, we could just about roll the dice (although due to the OT needs we might then have to spend several minutes looking for it) and count the dots. I will then break up the fights about who rolled the highest number.

Hahahahhahhahhahhhahh

FourCats - but if you don't let kids move on till they've mastered X, how do you stop the gap between them and their peers widening?

DD (Y4) isn't very reliable with column addition because she keeps carrying the ones instead of the tens. Not because she doesnt understand how to do it, or because she doesn't know the difference between tens and units. But purely because she randomly writes 14 or 41 and therefore randomly carries the 1 or the 4.

I can't see how preventing her from doing (lots and lots of) column addition is helpful to her.

but if you move children on when they don't understand, chances are they won't understand what you have moved on to. Particularly in certain areas of maths where it builds on prior understanding (note to Gove: that is understanding, not just being able to do the method).
So I think of my current Y2 cohort. I could have taught them all column addition, and many would not have got it. I would have had to go back to place value and consolidated that, then making sure they understand the difference between addition and subtraction, then made sure they could estimate if the answer was likely (such as with indigos dd's reversals, is 54 + 41 likely to be 68, if not, why not?).
I can imagine a certain child who has difficulty counting beyond 20, and certainly difficulty counting on in 1s from a number. wtf is the point of doing column addition with him? surely he should get the basics first.
For example, a girl who joined my class in october knowing nothing about maths - couldn't recognise numerals accurately or count on or anything. I put her in the lap group, worked on the basics, getting an understanding of the number system, building on what she was learning, moving her up groups as her knowledge and understanding increased. She took her SAT last half term and achieved a 2b (Immense pride for her!). If I had put her in with the maps, learning the Y2 maths curriculum, I don't think she would have done that. One size does not fit all.

wish I could find where Gove said that, it's bugging me. I was watching something where he was speaking, and I can clearly remember my jaw dropping when he said it. But now I can't find it anywhere!

global I agree. (and well done to the little girl who got the 2B!)
I know there are some here who will disagree, but I think number lines in Y1 and 2 are an excellent precursor to column addition and subtraction. They are an ideal way of consolidating counting on from any number, counting in tens, adding and subtracting units, +/- near tens, multiplication, division, etc.
Some of my Y2s are doing column addition, but have only been introduced to this after doing number lines to death, which is allowing them to have a really clear understanding of what is happening on the exchange of tens.

Elibean
did he really say that? Kids don't need to understand maths, just use the formulae?

Remembering the formulae will help them to get some right answers.

This is no different from memorising totally illogical spellings like 'said, head, friend' to produce the 'correct' spellings. The correct logical spellings would be 'sed, hed, frend' (cf bed, led, lend).

Children have no trouble at all producing those. Teachers give themselves a lot of trouble and make children waste an awful lot of precious learning time by supporting the conventional view that English spelling must remain as illogical as it has been for the past 250 years. There isn't a single good reason why it should. All it does is help to ensure that pupils leave school at 16 far more ignorant than they could be.

ACR
'the 1 in 5 children consigned to the educational scrap heap' was a consequence of Whole Language, Whole Reading, multi-cueing, mixed strategies, balanced literacy

So why were standards even worse before teachers began to experiment with those different approaches in their efforts to raise standards? When everybody used phonics, the results were no better.

IndigoBell : I don't try and stop the gap widening. In my Y3/4 class I already have children working at Levels 1c up to 4c, it's about teaching to the child not the year group they are in..... And it is important to not move on until they have mastered the previous learning. As maths is cummulative it doesn't help them in the long run.

Of course you have evidence that standards were worse Masha?

Surveys of literacy attainment have been going on in the UK since 1948.
The main finding is that literacy standards have changed very little in that time.
Trends in standards of literacy in the United Kingdom, 1948-1996
By Greg Brooks, National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER)

When everybody used phonics, the results were no better.

And when did everyone use phonics, masha?

Daniels and Diack, writing in the mid 1950s noted 'the dominance of whole word methods of teaching reading', from which I infer that whole word/look and say was pretty well established by then in Britain (I have read that it was gaining dominance in the US from the 1920s).

I very much suspect that the era when 'everyone used phonics' is rapidly slipping beyond the reach of living memory.

Does anyone know what you do with the children who have grasped a concept while you consolidate with the others? Eg if 5 children know all their x tables but 25 are still learning 3x3? Do you have to bind and gag them till the others catch up, so the gap doesn't get any bigger?

going back a bit, yes, Indigo...basic lesson plans are helpful and provide a framework but they must be adapted and differentiated for each class taught

at ks3 science, anyway.

talking the recommendation in the original report was that children who had grasped a particular skill would be expected to then use them in different contexts and problems rather than moving onto a higher level skill. Not seen that stated anywhere in the curriculum document, but it could be in there somewhere.