20 years of educational fads

[Piggywaspushed]

This article on Teacher Toolkit is actually two years old so I am sure we could update it! (SLANT anyone??) but it appeared on my Twitter feed and I thought MN might find it diverting:

www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2016/07/10/education-fads/

loving that triple marking is declared a fad.

Send to all your SLTs! I dare you!!

Wot no Growth Mindset? Big omission!

I also want to put the words ‘knowledge organiser’ in there. It’s a bloody revision guide.

And then I just head over to Twitter to find this That’ll be on the next list.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-43451583

“A Scottish council says it has become the first local authority in the UK to invest in virtual reality headsets for every school in its area.

East Renfrewshire Council has invested £250,000 in more than 900 ClassVR devices.

It said the headsets designed by Avantis would provide a virtual and augmented reality set designed specifically for teaching.

The technology has been provided to all of the council's 30 schools.”

Growth mindset. We do a lot of that - our Head is nuts about it. Do you reckon it’s a fad?

Growth Mindset is absolutely a fad!! See also: Mindfulness.

Other fads - kids using a purple pen to responds to marking, using highlighters to mark, and do I dare say ‘mastery’???

noble yours aren't there because the article is 2016 and those are too recently faddish!!

I went on a course and everyone was wittering on about their KOs. I had not one clue what they meant. I think I upset them when I said 'do you mean spoon feeders?'

Ah yes, the purple pen of progress. Someone used that in a job application I read, without one trace of irony.

VR headsets!!? Good God. checks it isn't April 1st

I read a blog from a bright young trad on Twitter who was saying how he had dumped his starter in favour of a quick test because retrieval practice. That has pretty much been my staple starter for the last 20 odd years. Even before starters were a thing (that is how old I am...).

I like using highlighters. The rest is bollocks though.

VR headsets? Sweet Jesus.

Actually laughing at VR headsets. Surely the schools are fuming about that do don't decision. Or at Scottish schools not feeling the pinch in the same way?

That funding decision...

Cannot get over VR headsets. What benefits can they offer over .... actual reality?! The mind boggles.

Madonna that's like flipped learning which I have always called homework

Water. It missed water. Every child needs to be drinking water every minute of the lesson - we even handed out special 'water bottles' at one point so that no child was forced to go for a whole hour lesson without taking in water to improve their brain. Cos, y'know...we're about 80% water and you've got to keep it topped up.

Which means that every lesson had half a dozen hands up of pupils needing the toilet, even though they weren't supposed to go in lessons. Cos of all that water...

I don't actually hate growth mindset or mindfulness but only because between the two I am realising that it's time for me to leave teaching :o

And yes to the water madness. I've seen toilet training toddlers with better bladder control than my water guzzling GCSE lumps.

Brain Gym!
It was all the rage and now... thank god it’s gone.

I teach I. England. My kids go to school in Wales. Every thing jumped on enthusiastically by their head teacher has been done in English secondary....and ditched. It's doubly depressing.

Just let me teach the way that works: what they need to know? How do I need to get them to know it? How do I kn I w they know it?

TEEP, nothing more to add.

Brain Gym, PLTS, Seal- me and colleagues used to make seal noises when that was mentioned.

Also all the hats, red, blue, yellow etc.

I knew it was time for me to leave when I sat in an INSET thinking 'I wonder how long this one will last'

Ooh and learning styles. All the year 7s used to have to take a test that printed out the spider web thing showing them their learning style.

Years of kids saying "I'm a kinaesthetic learner, I can't write" grrrrrrr

Not seem the list yet but ..

Pink and green marking
Brain gym
Learning styles and having to assess everyone
Current obsession with knowledge organisers and constant testing.
Current fad for obsessions over (fake) grammar.
Record of achievement

What on earth is TEEP elephant ??

I quite like growth mindset because it's cut out the whining of "But this is too haaarrdd!" or "I can't do this" and it's now seen as "cool" to actually have a go at their work (for the most part).

Everything else on the list, and that everyone else has listed, can take a running jump though.

I had a private Ed Psych recommend Brain Gym in a report about a child not too long ago (I think I posted about it here, or maybe on TES) and I knew then that the rest of the report would not be worth reading. Utter tosh.

Ah well if I let you into the secret then you might be all as wonderful teachers as my colleagues and me.