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!!

We used to have a very relaxed marking policy and we were never expected to triple mark or use specific colours, or do that stars and wish shite. Trouble is, we now have a new Head who is mad for Bloom's Taxonomy, green/pink pens etc and I want to scream. I've seen it all in my 30 years teaching and just want to be left in peace with my red pen..

not being ateacher but being the ‘guide at the side’.

Yes we had "don't be a sage on the stage, be a guide by the side"

I hate that one. I am the fucking sage; that's because I have many many more years learning this stuff in order to teach it! My a level.kids like to be told stuff; it makes them feel secure. My yr 9 can't learn stuff themselves because it's nowhere near as interesting as what Scarlett said to Bianca about Albie at break and who's going to get banged (hit) after school. They need guidance. Heavy guidance.

I’m a bloody sage, too. I like to picture myself as Gandalf with a torch in my hand leading my thick little hobbits to Mordor their GCSEs.

I can't believe no one has mentioned Talk for Writing yet! It's going to be awful when this fad dies and everyone realises we've been teaching the kids to regurgitate and none of them can write a sentence independently!

We are all about the knowledge organisers this year after HOD fell down a rabbit hole of michaela blog bullshit over the summer.

To be fair I'm all for it, as that's my homework (learn a bit), starter (test a bit) & a big chunk of peer marking done all sorted.

We are also suddenly big on learning poetry off by heart. Wanted to be a terrible cynic about it, but rather heartwarmingly the kids love it. You get little scared rabbit year 7s suddenly standing on chairs & barnstorming their way through Invictus. Very Dead Poets' Society.

Anyone remember data seating plans?

I love it when anyone says anyone remember? : my school is invariably still doing it!!

Colleagues in other schools put KOs online to share. I gave one to a GCSE class recently and they were bemused by it so won't be doing that again. I can't be doing with these fads that take ages for the teacher to prepare to be honest.

Yeah but KOs are pretty painless! I can now knock one up in an hour & that's half my homework set for the term.

Parents love the bloody things because they can get their heads round 'I have to learn these 6 literary terms & their definitions'.

The helicopters can get stuck in & help by practising them with the kid, & the hands offs can leave 'em to get on with it.

Not totally convinced much significant learning is taking place, but, well, all homework is bollocks so you might as well dish out a reasonably palatable & nicely presented placebo...

To me an hour knocking something up (I cannot type or use IT effectively , so it would take me far longer!) is an hour too long and -sorry - but I think it's spoonfeeding...

Maybe yours look different form the ones I have seen as mine are basically revision sheet aka ' everything you need to know so might as well not bother coming to lessons or think for yourself'.

Old cynic, me!

What is a KO?

A Knowledge Oragniser : mentioned them upthread. they are an evolution from Advanced Organisers.

I shall reveal my bias here but they basically tell students all the things they should know in advance so limit any self discovery..

Example: I teach Macbeth and present them with A KO with definitions on it of tragedy, a plot outline, key terms and important quotations. None of these do they therefore need to find or judge for themselves. Yawn.

I don't mind them so much afterwards, but they are meant to be given out before (and are a Michaela thing : seemingly justified mainly on the grounds that the headteacher and parents will know instantly the details of what is being taught, as if a head generally cares..)

All part of the Knowledge Based Curriculum and definitely a Fad.

I am always jobhunting and would run a mile from a school that insisted on them.

Ours are basically an a4 sheet with sections for key terms, characters, themes, key quotes, a plot overview etc relating to that term's text.

I generally crib most of it from Shmoop .

Agree it's spoon feeding! But kids quite like them. & I have noticed that they get rather good at knowing their analepsis from their anaphora etc.

The proof will be if any of it sticks - if my current y7s rock up to y8 in September still able to recall, & apply, the difference.

My main criterion for a good homework remains 1) I only have to think about it once for an hour in the hols & I'm set for the half term & 2) it doesn't generate batshit quantities of multicoloured marking

My main quibble over it is that I want THEM to decide what the most important quotations are and I want to teach them anaphora at the appropriate moment , not in advance of the context.

My homework is also still old school : make a mindmap; draw quotations, write a diary etc ... v light on marking! We have Show My Homework so I bung it all on there as and when it occurs to me (but I think I am the only one in the department who even sets homework...)

I have never seen a KO with homework on it?

Also, am trying to imagine a KO for any of the texts I teach with a plot summary (I teach film too) I would be hacked to pieces for spoilers! But I guess spoilers are the Michaela Way.

It does rather remove the need from the children for making their own notes though. How will that pan out at A-level?

I have seen some A Level examples.

I think my preferred way would be to get them to make them for revision(that's next week planned!). But I wouldn't enforce a structure.

I can't see how they work for maths at all.

not a teacher, but DD loved her A level Psychology teacher's "this is all the stuff you need to know for the course" hand out at the beginning of each topic, which meant they could spend the lessons discussing round the topics. I suspect it only works well for very particular classes though.

Also agree that sometimes quite often what the students need is for the teacher to stand at the front and teach them stuff. Particularly exam years - DD3 is Y11 and gettgin Very Cross Indeed with those teachers who are still setting "make a poster" homeworks.

Loving seeing some of these fads I've observed over the years as a parent (and those we've missed out on due to age gaps/changing schools etc). Can't say as any of them have made any particular difference to any of the DDs .

I think my IB lot would love them, to be fair. They're forever moaning about me expecting them to think for themselves. Mine are Standard Level & mostly maths & ict geeks who would vastly prefer not to be wrestling with Miss Julie or Medea at all...

With ks4, I'm experimenting with getting the kids to design the KOs - so it's created over the course of the unit rather than me drawing them up & dishing out at the start. Then the best one gets distributed for revision.

I've had the odd kid accuse me of getting them to do my job for them. Grrrr. But mostly they're quite up for it.

I guess for maths it would be a list of formulae and rules, like ‘area of a triangle = 1/2 base x height’, or ‘alternate angles are equal’.

But you can’t learn maths just by reading it. I’d want to discourage kids from the notion that learning those facts is how they’d prepare for exams.

Knowledge used to be organised in Mind Maps. Are they not a thing any more?

We still have mind maps.

Double bubbles have just re-emerged too!

Can't see how KOs would work in maths either tbh. It's definitely for 'knowledge' not 'skills'.

For disclosure I teach in an international private school. Our parents like the notion that Ahmed was given a sheet of stuff to learn, he dutifully learned it, & then he did a test & got 90%.

They tend not to be very on board with the idea that he should be finding stuff out for himself. They are paying handsomely for someone to jolly well impart it!

Not saying that's ideal, but we get better results by working with the prevailing cultural expectations, to an extent.

All my classes have knowledge organisers. They are commonly known as exercise books.

My school are into 3 colour highlighter marking. I am putting off adopting it. So much faff for little benefit.

My university is very big on discovery based learning, and never just telling students something. And VAK learning styles.

Our local school is all about the knowledge organisers. All their homework is literally learning a page of whatever subject is set
Every night. And tests every week.

Very much teaching to the test and not the subject. I suspect lessons are scripted/powerpointed. I suspect it's "easier" as no marking really and lessons are easy
But it's a bit robotic...

exercise books