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!!

Starters and plenaries didn't exist as a "thing" when I started.

Differentiation 3 ways/5ways/challenge.

Stars and a wish. On every single piece of work. Whether or not they read it.

I liked ticks. I liked purple/pink pen when everyone else used red. I liked being differe t silly coloured pen fads.

Obsessions over sats and levelling everythi ng..

Target driven culture over free exploring learning.

Forest school.

Here it is. It's kind of like teaching but costs a school a lot of money with presenters repeatedly saying 'It's not really anything new'.

Wow I've not seen that before! (Out of teaching a few years!).

Why is it called TEEP??

stick your user name makes me think of my year 10 girls who spend whole lessons faffing about with sheets and my Pritt Sticks going stickstickstickstick ...

other makes are available but they're all shit

Others really are shit aren't thwy. I've tried asda/tesco/other brands. Really has to be print stick but woe before people who leave lids off or lose them....

Ooh another one - boot camp/super strict academy schools. Isolation rooms/silemce/detentions for every infraction.

Sorry :( maybe ti me for a name change!

If it helps I have "pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows" in mine.

I started just as brain gym and learning styles were The Thing too. Then overnight they disappeared didn't they. The "that's not my learning style..."

Loving this thread. 17 years in and getting cynical now. TEEP I can't take to - seems like a huge waste of our PP budget if you ask me. I'm hoping the fad dies out.

Personalised targets were the worst.
We used to have to display them in front of each child on their desk on a triangular prism so that you had space for their reading, writing and maths target. We referred to them as "Target Toblerones".

Forgot about WWW and EBI. Such a pain in the arse getting the kids to do them because:
WWW - the ones I got right
EBI - I got more right

Do a PLTS audit of your subject's SoW for KS3 and 4. An SMSC audit. A British Values audit.

My scheme of work used to be an a4 She r or 3. My lesson plans a note in my planner...

I forgot about learning styles and every lesson had to incorporate all the different learning styles in it! As a student I had to write on my plans what I was doing for each one!

Anyone else's school obsessed with timers?
I kinda like the green/pink/purple pens although before they were compulsory at our school I used orange because I liked the way it looked next to the blue handwriting pens .

The endless card sorts I laminated and cut out on my PGCE to cater for kinaesthetic learners. Such a waste of time!

No one ever learned to ride a bike by watching a video, no matter how much of a visual learner they were.

I quite like using highlighter to mark. Especially for incorrect spellings. I just highlight the letter/s that are wrong, and they then find it easier to find it in dictionary / correct themselves.

Miaow I like sparkly pens. It's stricly regimented at my kids infant school though pink for corrections and green for good or something. Every piece of work marked in detail....

I've said this before, but I used to have to have 19 posters on my classroom wall (none subject related). One included the line "I am am a visual learner because...I prefer to read left to right"

Stickstick
We have it the other way round, green for 'growth' and pink for good...how confusing ha!

Learning objectives and success criteria. When I did my PGCE they didn’t seem to exist. Yet kids still learnt !

The current fad in primary of writing notes from every lesson in marker pen on giant sheets of paper and then blue-tacking them around the classroom so it looks like a laundry room and they all flap when the door opens is bizarre as well.

How about ‘getting kids up to do things on the interactive whiteboard’? = one kid doing stuff on the IWB while the class either collapsed into chaos or lost their shit because they were desperate for a turn.

Actually, I think IWBs were a fad. Never used interactively. We ripped ours out a few years ago and replaced them with proper ones you can write on.

I loathe acronyms - which SLT usually love. (Bugger...just used an acronym). WAGOLL - what a good one looks like. FFS.

School here still doing WWW and EBI - and some nutters add on IWN (I will now...)

I'm sure our Maths dept do SWAN - but I've no idea what it stands for - although I think the 'N' might be 'next step'. The idea of writing 4 flaming feedback parts...shudder...

My little department never got interactive whiteboards - just projector ones.... may be I've escaped that one!