THE FIFIETH REPUBLIC!

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

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Year after year after year, their average cultural and social capital has declined. We notice it every single year. And our cohorts are supposedly more able on paper every year for the last five.

There's a massive gap between the haves and have nots in term of this stuff. And the have nots are at least 80%. And it's not connected to parental income or household structure.

just be prepped for a WWYD Q at interview!
I had to physically restrain myself in an interview once when the response to the "what would you do if a child told you that your hod had touched them inappropriately" was "I'd tell them not to lie and warn the hod".

I don't do snowballing quite like that. No group work in my classes, so every child has their onw and throws. It honestly is good for getting students to keep developing points and thinking of new points or counterarguments since , generally, they are rubbish at building on each other's ideas.

I can see no use for it whatsoever in maths

But it is a bit like break out rooms or jamboards etc with younger, sillier classes : teachers do them and then spend an hour being stressed and half an hour afterwards moaning about silly behaviour!

@MrsHamlet

just be prepped for a WWYD Q at interview! I had to physically restrain myself in an interview once when the response to the "what would you do if a child told you that your hod had touched them inappropriately" was "I'd tell them not to lie and warn the hod".

I used to work in the arts and one positive of cultural capital is that if you wanted to offer it to schools it opened up a world of funding to offer it for free. Good for the arts, good for the kids. It felt so good to call up a teacher on my radar and be like "would you like to bring your kids for a day and do xyz for free sometime next term?" The only downside was really that it's hard to fit it into their timetable. If "cultural capital" wasn't one of those trendy buzzwords at the moment, the funding for that would never have been made available and the only activities we could have offered would have been normal programming, which was pretty expensive.

Don't get me started on Artsmark and Arts Award though, I wasn't a fan. It's just more of the tick box culture that permeates every area of life in the UK. That's not what the arts are about.

I do think in a two hour long lesson with bottom set year 9/10 last thing on a Friday there might be a time and a place for some restful colouring. We'd never have the time to waste though. Stupidly long lessons when attention spans are short

I agree beach.

Unfortunately arts award and arts Mark are just there to give some sort of quantifiable ^^ to do anything creative or arts related. Really annoys me as the forms drive me nuts.

Re colouring in etc, there's loads of research around how drawing helps memory. So spending time drawing diagrams or symbols and, yes, colouring them in. I don't know why it's not valued.

Also, apparently new medical students lack the dexterity needed for surgical stitching as they've never sewn.

If you can’t answer the question ‘what did they learn while doing the colouring in?’ with anything other than ‘it made their work look pretty’ then there probably isn’t value to it. Colouring in in primary (or an art lesson!) is obviously a different kettle of fish.

Maths has lots of times where visual representations help understanding (e.g. graphical representations of algebraic relationships) and I’m a big fan of using different coloured pens in board-work (not you, yellow pen).

and I’m a big fan of using different coloured pens in board-work (not you, yellow pen)

I miss writing on a board. 😢

DH HAS BEEN JABBED!

The real question is bullet tip or chisel tip pen?

Agree re colouring in art, primary etc. At times it is fine in maths and different coloured pens for board/visualisers are used daily. There are some truly beautiful constrictions that can be illustrated and would be very mindful to produce. I always think there should be an art module on mathematical art and constructions in art lessons. It would be good for those that can't draw as no drawing required but creativity skills are still there.

Hooraaaaay piggy

@piggywaspushed brilliant!

So pleased piggy!!!

Not that up to speed regarding colouring as I don’t do that in my subject but my DH the science teacher would just like pupils to know how to plot a graph properly.

Even the A Level future medics still aren’t great at it and this happens every year, despite many teachers and subjects showing how to do graphs repeatedly since Year 7!

It’s his personal nemesis.

Great news Piggy 😊

Tell me about it.

Kids can apparently do graphs on maths but as soon as it's outside a maths classroom.....nope. no can do. And climate graphs are just 🤯 two types of graphs on ONE? What is this wizardry?!!

Good news Piggy.

Waving at all, I've missed loads as been off here for a few days. I'll catch up!

I got my class blank doodle books. After lunch every day we have "calm" time and they doodle or colour or write. I stick on abit of classical on you tube and we have 15 minutes of SILENCE. They quite often produce wonderful creative doodles.

Initially head was dubious but she saw what a difference it made to afternoon behaviour. Mine cannot just get on with it after lunch! Plus I usually need 15 mins to sort out lunchtime behaviour and fill in the myriad forms.

[quote WarriorN]Cultural capital came from a sociologist.

It's taken a while to get my head around what it actually is, but it's come in for good reasons.

And they're not saying it's "go to all the main art galleries," it's about local cultural capital or that which is relevant to your school communities. So the importance of the local football team or local weird traditions or any significant festivals or traditions.

The tories devastated the arts as their own kids go to private schools and get all this from home. So I do think it's important.

culturallearningalliance.org.uk/what-is-cultural-capital/[/quote]
I suspect the big problem with cultural capital is that that and the Hirsch stuff got jumped upon by the classical liberal education types. And the ‘greatest that has been thought and said in western civilisation’ types. Which ended up narrowing the curriculum rather than broadening it.

@GuyFawkesDay

Tell me about it.

Kids can apparently do graphs on maths but as soon as it's outside a maths classroom.....nope. no can do. And climate graphs are just 🤯 two types of graphs on ONE? What is this wizardry?!!

Oh god graphs

I genuinely can’t understand why kids find graphs so hard. I’m science, if it’s KS3 and the lesson involves a graph it takes literally the whole lesson.

I’m hoping they will be amazing when they get to KS4.

Great news Piggy!

I am always shocked at the number of children who seemingly cannot operate a ruler. There seems to be a whole raft of simple skills which are no longer practised outside the classroom.

@piggywaspushed

DH HAS BEEN JABBED!

Hooray!

I’m hoping they will be amazing when they get to KS4.

But that’s a whole different key stage. You can’t expect them to transfer that sort of stuff across subjects and key stages

Good news, piggy!

Wonder if the science teachers realise most of the time in maths we provide them with pre-printed axes where they don’t need to decide the scale.

Year 7 science was full of graphs and a bloody nightmare. I got quite good at teaching them in the end and modelling on the board and deciding scale together etc etc I'd still be shocked when walking round the room seeing the results.