"Knowledge Curriculum"

[WindDoesNotBreakTheBendyTree]

Hi DD has just started secondary (not transitioning well but that is another thread).

They are starting a new "knowledge curriculum approach" which involves homework from every lesson learning facts/information and then they are tested next lesson. She brings home photocopied sheets with for eg the list of characters in Midsummer Night's Dream or naming the parts of a sewing machine to learn. Sometimes 4 subjects worth per day.

It sounds like Michael Gove's wet dream set in a chapter of Hard Times ... am I right to be worried? Anyone else got experience of this?

FWIW its a very mixed catchment/cohort with a high proportion of kids with SEN, strong on nurture, but heavily criticised in last inspection for not getting the best results from the more able by Ofsted.

Schools have always taught knowledge, this is the latest fad for packaging it up as something special.

It won’t do her any harm to learn stuff. Obviously she’ll need to be able to apply that knowledge but I assume they’ll be doing that too.

hmm I think its more distinct than that
is it a common thing? DS is at a different school and it's a very different, much more holistic approach and it's a much better school
sounds distinctly retrogressive to me
no other homework, no books sent home, just a list of facts to learn per half term for each subject. tests every lesson.
a quick google suggests its a Nick Gibb initiative and also applied in the Michaela schools etc.

Why do you think it is wrong to learn facts about a subject/topic they have been studying in class?

It’s not a Nick Gibb initiative as such, it’s a trad/prog knowledge/skills debate and he’s very much in favour of emphasis on teaching knowledge.

It’s the antithesis of ‘why do I need to learn stuff when I can look it up on the internet’. Ken Robinson probably hates it.

Knowledge organisers are very fashionable at the moment, and it makes for easy homework setting, reducing workload. So long as they are not just sitting around reciting facts and not writing essays!

"Sewing machine parts" sounds a bit obscure, but perhaps the terms they were memorizing were "broadly applicable" terms, like the kind of gizmos found in most electrical devices.

It's hard to get much traction on a topic unless you memorize some core content (like trying to become a ballet dance without spending time doing drill and barre work etc.). They will no doubt move on to "do things" with the content they have learned as well.

Just be glad she is not coming home with "build a castle out of marshmallows" or "conduct your own research on a topic which the school has taught the kids nothing about" type homework assignments.

@noblegiraffe "So long as they are not just sitting around reciting facts and not writing essays!" This is exactly what I am worried about. Cognitive load learning without application. Sounds shit to me, esp for higher ability pupils.

@walkinggirldeadfan - well she's been sent home to memorise facts by rote - also some stuff not covered in class on several occasions, ergo meaningless. Knowledge is useless without understanding surely?

do either of you have any experience of teaching using this method or having a child who is at a school using it?

@kokeshi - nope it was memorise the names of sewing machine parts for DT/textiles. Seemingly unrelated to their project for the term

Apparently this is the approach up to GCSE.

I fucking love Ken Robinson so this is probably not going to work out. Its brand new for this term, and I wouldn't have contemplated the school had I known this would be their approach.

Memorizing the parts of a sewing machine seems relevant if someone is studying Textiles.

But yeah, if you are a Ken Robinson fan you are probably not going to like the school's approach much...

bump for anyone with some experience as parent or teacher?

ideally some good experiences?

It’s being driven by a small but influential group of right wing, self serving heads led by Inspiration Trust (who have very strong relationships with Theodore Agnew, Nick Gibb and previously Gove and James Pryor).
It is pandering to grammar schools have better results brigade (which they don’t) and a return to more stringent exams supporters.
All schools are knowledge based and most have always been thus.

It is Tory idealism at it’s worse and strongly disadvantages the most vulnerable and those living challenged lives. Most children from the Great Yarmouth estates can’t begin to imagine what use learning the Kings and Queens of England might be but can understand the impact of universal suffrage on their lives.

It means many schools who want to be seen as very good and high achieving encourage lower ability children out by a number of means - discussion with parents about whether it’s the right school, expensive uniforms and stringent haircut rules, limiting subject choices to ‘academic’ subjects rather than offering vocational qualifications that allow more children to access higher education.
Might be fine for individuals (as Michaela is ) but not very good for society as a whole.

Knowledge is useless without understanding, but you can’t have the understanding without the knowledge.

The test each lesson is usually just a few short questions based on the principle of spaced retrieval, which has a good evidence base behind it. It’s not really new either. In theory it should reduce the amount of revision needed just before GCSE but no idea if that works in practice

Of all the issues with Michaela/GY/WLFS, I’m not sure the way they teach the curriculum is one of them.

Consider it excellent memory training, it does help and it won’t hurt her to know facts. I assume it’s not all they do. If you find it too narrow, you can always encourage her to study the wider context behind the facts on top, but there is nothing wrong with learning facts, and research does suggest that this results in better academic outcomes.

Er again, I'd like to hear from people who have experience of it enhancing teaching or learning or the experience of children.

It is an entirely new approach to this school.

WindDoesNotBreakTheBendyTree, what do you mean by "er again"? Do you really want to learn something by asking a question here, or do you just want people to agree with you that knowledge curriculum is terrible? If you want experience, I have a MSc in cognitive psychology and all the scientific evidence and research supports knowledge curriculum initiatives. If you don't want to hear about it, fine. Why not just read research about it rather than looking for other mumsnet posters to confirm your biases?

@sanam, sorry I should have said thanks for replying - I'm just particularly interested in how in practice this works for children and young people in schools.

I get what it is and the gist of the research. Not much to be found anywhere in terms of reflecting teaching or learning in this model.

reflecting on teaching or learning in this model

To be honest, it sounds like you've pretty much made up your mind already (shrug).

Well I am not at all keen on it in theory @Kokeshi - but hoping to hear that its been brilliant for children's confidence etc. After all my daughter is at a school now implementing it, so whether my mind is made up or not may be a moot point.

Although I'm a teacher, I manage to miss most of the training for these "initiatives" as it's always on my day off (when I work elsewhere) so I'm not completely up to speed on this.

However, my main school is trying to get us into the habit of frequent low-stakes testing of knowledge which helps to teach the kids resilience as well as hopefully reinforcing their learning. As an example, we have around 250 key words in my subject at GCSE. My line manager has decided to introduce 2 or 3 of these every week from year 7. So if I am teaching a lesson about woodwind instruments, I might include clarinet, reed and embouchure as my 3 words. By the time we start the GCSE, they have already encountered most of the more generic terms. At the start of each lesson, I give them a definition of some of last week's or even previous week's words, up to 5 in total for them to write down and I then mark them. It's not the focus of the lesson, it takes a couple of minutes and helps reinforce their learning.

My DD is taught a lot of vocabulary and definitions, across all subjects. She is tested regularly. I think this is great, though it is certainly not all the homework she has to do.

You need to learn the facts of a topic before you can understand what those facts mean. You need to learn what a needle in a sewing machine is before you can understand what it does.

Would you prefer a teacher explains that the thingy in a thingy machine goes up and down.... please go and learn what a thingy is and what a thingy machine is.

Just sounds like you dont like homework or teachers asking your children to actually learn anything.

What is the "Knowledge curriculum approach"? Is it another teaching fad? Learning lists seems an ineffective way of learning. Only in MFL is dd given a list of words to learn. With only a list of words without context dd hates the tedium and does not do well in the tests. I have told her not to worry and just to do more on things where she is using the language.
I love Midsummer Nights Dream. I doubt I would have liked it quite so much had I opened the first page, found the list of characters and been told I had to learn them. I could probably name most of the characters now. IME people learn by doing, not by being told and being given facts to learn is another way of being told.
I can also use a sewing machine. My mum just showed me how to use it to sew.

I think that if there are terms you have to know, then drip feeding them for 5 years is preferable to cramming in y11.
DD2 is in y9 (not done options yet) and has started to get some definitions hw. We are focussing on the subjects she is going to continue as she doesn't really have the bandwidth for everything.

Learning vocabulary lists in MFL is a pretty ineffective way of learning MFL. However, learning definitions/vocabulary relevant to school subjects is very effective indeed. You need to be fluent in a language in order to acquire and appropriate new vocabulary from lists.