Prescriptive Schemes of Work

[BareBum]

What are people’s opinions of these? I have to work from pre-planned (by hod) lessons, which have every minute accounted for and we are not allowed to deviate from these or choose our own HW to set. I hate teaching to someone else’s style and not being allowed to use my own ideas. I don’t think the pupils get the best of me - you can’t go off on tangents etc.

Has anyone ever rebelled and successfully persuaded their HOD to go back to a traditional SoW with topics to be covered, assessment points and suggestions for resources?

This is Drive be me crackers.

Ah, yes the feedback loop. I get so bored with working on the same task for weeks and continually making the pupils improve it. I’m sure the kids are bored out of their minds.

Urghh, triple marking.... AKA the death of teaching as a rewarding job.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - how many times do you hear a child say "I'm so glad I've got Ms X for Biology, her formative comments really help me to move my learning forward"?

Oh well, I suppose Bic are enjoying the increase in sales of purple pens.

Funny, because other schools are going down the route of binning marking to free up time for having a life planning!

Have you seen the 'no marking' though noble ? It sues so much IT and colour coding it would reduce little old Luddite / IT phobic me to tears.

I'd rather just mark normally and plan effectively

DH teaches maths in a private school. he does have to mark quite a lot of test but his marking is basically red ticks with a few worked examples where students have struggled and the a comment like 'good'

Michaela ‘no marking’ is whole class feedback, so you make notes for yourself as you read the essays about common mistakes but don’t actually write in their books. Then you talk to the whole class about what went well and badly. I do this in maths a lot anyway, if they’ve all bodged Q3 there’s no point writing it out in everyone’s books.

I do that at A level and give them my notes. I do think it works - but I also think my old school method of marking their work with sp, p and g in the margin and a helpful comment at the bottom works for my subject.

I think the 'whole class feedback ' could pose issues for younger groups, groups with low attention spans (that time when you try to go through the mock and they couldn't care less) and for differentiation. It's worth a try , though.

What happens in maths if there are one or two children who are still struggling with a concept and the others are OK with it? Would this just be glossed over in a whole class feedback approach?

I've said it before and I'll say it again - how many times do you hear a child say "I'm so glad I've got Ms X for Biology, her formative comments really help me to move my learning forward"?

So true.

There are times when I find it annoying piggy, especially when whoever has planned the scheme of work has done a royally shite job of it but still expect us to follow it.

I would love total freedom to do what I like but have a bank of texts for each year so you don't get repetition across years and then some guidance.
E.g. across y7/8 all students must have covered:
At least extracts of 19th c fiction / whole novel
At least one 20th century novel
At least 1 shakespeare play in full
A poetry module covering a mix of literary heritage and contemproary poems
Writing skills
Non fiction
A play of the teacher's choice

I would love that so much.

I picked up a GCSE group this year and they should have done one of the set texts last year. The teacher showed them the film and then they looked at a couple of key scenes!! That's it. Even with a great scheme available.

Someone mentioned trainees. We have a trainee and i have to tell him to plan aroujs the scheme. Use the scheme as a structure but not to follow it rigidly because we don't.