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?

Well, let's hope that whoever is devising the outstanding lesson plans knows 10001 things to do with the 3x table!

This is an interesting thread, particularly because I am old enough to have been given the type of primary education which Gove is presumed to be favouring (except that we didn't cover anything like the extent of some subjects which primary children now are expected to).

We did all the table chanting, column addition and subtraction, long division and multiplication. Not only did we deal with number in base 10 but we also did addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of £, s & d (pounds, shillings and pence) which involved number in base 12 and base 20, in the same calculation!

Personally, it did me fine; I left primary literate and numerate, but I really couldn't say what it did for the children in the B stream (yes, 2 classes, 40+ children in each, streamed by ability). Certainly only 15% of us went on to Grammar school.

Possibly methods which focus on understanding rather than rote memory may reach a larger percentage of children in a year group, but at the secondary school I work in we still have a very large number of children who have neither any understanding of maths nor any instant recall of rote memorised figures. It's like having the worst of both worlds....

(Our maths teachers, young ones included, were all cheering at the possible prospect of children coming into Y7 all knowing their tables )

The draft curriculum states pretty clearly regards phonics that you teach them at the right level for them. There is a diffence between suggesting that your goal should be to get all children to a certain level at the end of a certain year and suggesting you ignore the actual ability of the kids in front of you. If the draft curriculum is really suggesting the latter it would be Barmy. As it states the former regards phonics I think it likely that it expects the same in other areas. You teach them from where they are in ability but aim through allowing extra time in core subjects to get them to the expected level by the end of the year. Thisis what happens in many other countries. My German au pair find the whole ability emphasis here really bizzare. As I said previously there was nothing innately 2c about my dds ability in maths she just needed more practice. I can see things get much messierin practice but it's a much sounder starting point I think.
Re off the peg lessons I do think it is getting a bit pious to suggest one needs to plan every single lesson each year from scratch. I am a pretty conscientious secondary school teacher regards planning. Sure Classes can be widely different in character and I certainly look over last years plans and I may tweak them or even overhaul them but often it is a matter of checking what I did last year, a quick 5 mins. Seeing as part time I teach 20 lessons a week you can do the math- much more is impractical. Often I do invest hours planning something new from scratch and wonder after if I could have as well quickly adjusted a resource I already had. it's as if I feel a better teacher because I have expended the effort but is my personal resource done from scratch really any better than something off the peg And just tweaked? I agree that off the peg lessons rarely suit exactly but it is often as much to do with the lesson not suiting my style of teaching as much as not suiting the kids. I cant see how they can learn using a certain source a colleague swears by - and he gets good results with it. There is a huge amount of year on year tweaking that goes on in lesson planning but it is dressin it up rather grandly at secondary level to claim this tweaking means lessons need to be planned for each individual class.

Just read a word list for year 3/4.
How apt that this government wants kids to spell champagne, chauffeur and chalet by age 9!

It s actually a really different discussion talking about an off the peg curriculum and off the peg lessons. I don't think government should be choosing how material should be transmitted to kids. However a clear curriculum makes lots of sense. when I started helping dd1 with her maths I bought a fabulous series of books to use that really carefully built up her understanding and my dh who is clever at maths was really impressed by its overall coherence. Yet schools often dont use an off the peg maths curriculum or just dip into one and are unlikely to invent one as good as those designed by people who's whole job is to write something coherent. The curriculum I have when teaching dd1 and 2 in KS1 and 2 clearly has an eye on how they will need to understand at secondary level.

I'm afraid I don't like basic lesson plans either ... I'm a control freak when it comes to teaching.

Masha nothing wrong with knowing formulae and getting right answers, but understanding the concepts behind them is crucial, IMO

'I'm afraid I don't like basic lesson plans either ... I'm a control freak when it comes to teaching.'

I get sick of continuously being told we are doing it wrong.
I want an easy time where we follow DA RULZ to the letter, so the constant battering will stop. I will teach a certified and approved Outstanding lesson every time.
So, a proper recipe for every lesson with everything laid out and a script to follow. That'll make good little sausages emerge from the machine, surely?

'a script to follow' - that's RWI direct instruction, isn't it?

And it does get good results.

School is a sausage factory. I do want all of my kids leaving primary school knowing the same stuff

If I didn't want that I'd HE them.

I would rather stick pins in my eyes I'm afraid FallenCaryatid. If I have to teach to a script I'll have to find another career.

I thought one of the issues that you had with school was that your child didn't fit the sausage machine though Indigo? Was failing because the method of teaching didn't fit them or help?
So how would my desire help your child?

Me too! That would be me done, definitely.

I jumped through that hoop with Literacy hour mrz, even got myself an oven timer so it would ping when it was time to move from text level to word level.
Paceandvigour paceandvigour. Keep up at the back Jones minor.

and I couldn't work in a school that turned out "sausages"
I want all the pupils I teach to be able to read, write and calculate but not to be knowledge/skills clones

So, the idea is, if you are in a school with children who on average started reception unable to recognise what letters were and unable to count, you will go through the core curriculum at the pace of the slowest, ad nauseam, until they all get it, even if you, personally, arrived at the school able to read and write and do mental arithmetic and hoping for a wider range of things to spark your interest. I can see all the middle class parents being even more desperate than ever to get their kids out of the schools that don't have a universally middle class intake.

No the idea is that schools put in extra resources to help the stragglers catch up while teaching to the pace of the best.

My idea won't work then will it, really?
Perhaps cloning is the answer to the sausage question, reproduce batches of identical children and teach the cohort. Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons.
Bother, I think someone else had that idea already.

I let the Literacy Hour pass by un -mourned and largely ignored except by our then Literacy coordinator.

My head at the time was obsessed with it and used to pop in and check you were doing it to the book.

Not book, file.

We had some teachers visit a few weeks ago (sharing ideas) and I had to chuckle when they asked our brilliant DH how she fit our way of teaching into the unit plans. The look on their faces when she said "I've never taught a unit plan in my life"

Fallen - my Y6 DS doesn't know his times tables off by heart, nor can he read words he's never seen before. His handwriting is virtually illegible.

What's gone wrong? I don't know - but I presume not enough time on phonics, times tables and handwriting.

He is however expected a full set of level 5s, possibly a level 6 in maths.

He has not been taught the basics properly. Something's gone wrong somewhere.

DD has very bad dyslexia. It is not a problem with the method of teaching. It's a problem with her. I don't believe any method of teaching would help her. Certainly nothing has helped her yet and she's had 5 different teachers try.

I don't believe all 5 teachers, 5 TAs and 3 SENCOs she has had were all terrible.

If it was a teaching problem I'd have been able to resolve it at home or with a tutor.

Sometimes I get upset when I hear teachers like mrz and feenie claiming they teach every child to read, and think that maybe a better teacher would have been able to teach her - but really there is no evidence to back up that.

We don't have a sausage factory at the moment. And the results, at the end of Y6, are very inconsistent.

Is it, mrz? That quote of Gove's about not allowing the 'group' to move on until all have grasped the core concepts - am having trouble marrying that will teaching to the pace of the best.

I did quite fancy a "don't talk to me I'm busy" tiara

Can you imagine the vilification of children with a SEN by parents whose children are being held back? It's bad enough now in some schools.