The Fifty-Sixth Republic - Who is up for a game of TAG?

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement. Baiters, haters, goaders, and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

Do not give the staffroom password to non-staff as it attracts the wrong sort of crowd.

Other requirements for staff room entry include the ability to find the staff room, the ability to find a clean mug in the staff room, knowledge of the photocopier codes, and the ability to sniff out where the booze is stashed - Thirsty Tuesdays, Fizz Fridays now in operation. Do not sit on the chairs and do wear a mask

We plan directly onto Smart notebooks. But we currently have 4 classes who use the same planning, so while that means I don't have to plan everything from scratch (we share it out), I have to plan my bits 'properly' so they can be followed by anyone. I found this really annoying when I started working there, but now it's just normal. When I look at my old 'planning', it's usually just a couple of photos or a list of calcs to work through on a normal whiteboard. I mostly use a visualiser to go through tasks.

We do have to produce learning journeys for each subject, but no one has given us an idea of what they should look like, they just take them in and then call us in to explain stuff... usually about formatting or detail level of the learning journey, when we're all guessing about what they want. Bit stupid really.

In my old school we had to produce an outline weekly timetable on one side of A4, with the lesson objective, or activity or task or whatever on for each day. Meant that if head or I wanted to see a particular lesson or particular child, we knew when to appear at the door.

I have to plan, in full, for every lesson that I am responsible for, because parallel teachers use my planning, as I use theirs. Overall objective, teaching sequence and key questions in full, and tasks written in enough detail for someone else to understand. I suspect that our 'planning' looks like a secondary 'scheme of work', though we write our own and often revise it annually.

A day of Maths or English planning is c. 150 - 200 words; a lesson of core subject planning (remember this is for a non-specialist to pick up and teach from, being primary) around 250 - 300. Then Powerpoint or similar + pupil resources such as worksheets.

We use no 'schemes' for anything. The closest is in Maths, but even that was only ever a long term plan and has now been customised because of Covid catch-up and what was not taught in school last year.

Thank you, Master Carrie is bearing up but it’s weird giving him painkillers, I think we still have the original bottle of calpol bought when he was a baby and barely used!

He was sat on by a large prop during their first rugby match in two seasons so he’s a bit gutted really but young bones so should heal quickly, and we don’t have to juggle training for a while which is a win for me!

We don't use a scheme, as such, for anything.

We have access to WR Maths because our maths lead purchased it to help with remote learning, but I don't like the slides and worksheets so I don't use them very often. I make my own slides to cover the LO and then devise differentiated activities (sometimes adapting from the WR freebie resources) to suit. WR doesn't differentiate, but in my class there is such an ability range it would be pointless to proceed without doing so.

Everything else is made by us. It's a lot of work, and this year I haven't been able to recycle much without making heavy adaptations. I always seem to find myself changing stuff anyway.

Carrie do you mean to say you have survived on one bottle of Calpol for 14 yrs?? (Well, presumably not literally cos of Use By dates....)

I sat down to do my planning for this week's science. Did not do planning.

But I now have a new red midi dress from John Lewis, a pair of leggings and a top from Sea Salt, and a short red dress from Fat Face.

Pay day.

Really interesting to compare processes with other schools. Thank you.
Do you all print out objectives and criteria to stick in for each lesson across all year groups (primary)?

Printing out and sticking in objectives for every lesson and year group.... WHY? Is this a thing?

Secondary and have never done this. Was forced to make kids write the LO for a bit, now they're lucky if there's a title. Difference in learning =none.

@BigBobBoots

Really interesting to compare processes with other schools. Thank you. Do you all print out objectives and criteria to stick in for each lesson across all year groups (primary)?

Yes, we do. Not sure about EYFS as I've never worked down there but certainly all the other year groups do.

@JanFebAnyMonth

Carrie do you mean to say you have survived on one bottle of Calpol for 14 yrs?? (Well, presumably not literally cos of Use By dates....)

Pretty much - I’ve bought more but not used it. The kids really don’t get ill, DD hasn’t been to the GP since she was maybe yr2 (she’s yr6 now) because she had an ear infection, might have needed a couple of spoons of calpol then, DS hasn’t been to GP since he was at primary and I can’t remember why he went then. They don’t really seem to get colds or coughs, they have both had chicken pox (at half term though so no time off school!) and that’s about it. They nearly always have 100% attendance, no d&v either. Just luck, I know. I’m rarely ill, DH has the odd day of manflu (and he gets little sympathy from me!).

Primary seems mad. Why do you submit your planning for checking, you are not PGCE students. What are they looking for? Do they even look? Don’t they have better things to do with their time?

And for whose benefit is all this cutting and sticking? They don’t take their books home so it’s not for parents and the teachers know what they taught. The kids don’t give a shit. So why?

I also think all this cutting and sticking objectives is madness. I assume it's all done because SLT think Ofsted want to see stuff like that? Because nobles absolutely correct that nobody else cares about this stuff. And is it the teachers who are doing all this cutting and sticking? There's nothing you could be doing that would actually impact on learning? (That's a question for the heads who write the policies rather than individual teachers who have to follow the policies btw)

Because SLT told us to noble. I’m not sure what purpose submitting the whole of next week’s planning on a Friday was either.

My guess about the cutting and sticking in LOs is Ofsted. Not that I think Ofsted are actually bothered.

@noblegiraffe

Primary seems mad. Why do you submit your planning for checking, you are not PGCE students. What are they looking for? Do they even look? Don’t they have better things to do with their time?

And for whose benefit is all this cutting and sticking? They don’t take their books home so it’s not for parents and the teachers know what they taught. The kids don’t give a shit. So why?

These are good points, Noble. Primary is mad. I have no idea why we do this stuff. I tend to do it on autopilot because I always have, and because I've been told to. I suspect it all has its roots in some sort of ancient Ofsted history. I'm not sure there's much benefit to the children (although my current lot love ticking off the success criteria when they think they've achieved them and I remember to ask them to self/peer assess.)

It’s a bit like verbal feedback given stamps.

Night all

I don't write learning intentions or long dates. School policy is to do that, but why?

Learning journey stuff for us is because new curriculum i think. Not sure. I'm in on Thursday about mine and am ready for a fight.

We have something about learning journeys on next week's agenda. I have no idea what they are, but suspect it is the latest incarnation of the knowledge organisers I was asked to create last year. I still don't know who they were for or how I am supposed to use them. See also: skills progression document and cultural capital.

@noblegiraffe

Primary seems mad. Why do you submit your planning for checking, you are not PGCE students. What are they looking for? Do they even look? Don’t they have better things to do with their time?

And for whose benefit is all this cutting and sticking? They don’t take their books home so it’s not for parents and the teachers know what they taught. The kids don’t give a shit. So why?

The learning intention stuff is from back when Ofsted used to want to walk into the lesson, ask the question: "What are you learning today?" and expect a 7 year old to give a clear statement as to what that lesson was specifically teaching them. If gave the child something to check before replying.

It also helped in triangulation book scrutinies where SLT would take books, planning and assessment (then APPs) and make sure it all matched up perfectly.

The level of scrutiny in primary is ridiculous in some. My current school is good but that's because the SLT actually trust their staff.

We had that in secondary where Ofsted might walk in and ask a kid what their target grade was. We had their target grades to two decimal places on the front of their exercise book.

That was binned long ago. Why hasn't this Ofsted junk been binned in primary?

The trainee kept getting them to write down the lo, we also have short and medium term recall qs on a slide and a starter task and she’d make them do all 3: lo, recall qs and starter.

It was painful to watch. I suspect in some cases whenever a new initiative has come out another slide has been bunged in. If I remember and they’re not wildly unrelated to what has been learnt I’ll sometimes do the recall qs or if it’s useful I’ll have the starter up for them to think about whilst I do the register and get my brain in gear.

Just remembered learning walks are coming up again. I hate them possibly even more than full observations because there’s no real context for the ten minutes they see and eg they may have missed the discussion and scaffolding etc to the task they’re doing and assume it hasn’t been done.

Bad example but you see what I mean.

Morning. Awake since 4. Ankle less painful than it was.

@BigBobBoots Yes kind of like that - topics, curriculum statements, objectives to cover per year group, per term would be a start.

Instead, small schools up and down the country had teachers with multiple subject responsibilities working weekends to create some form of whole school overview for their subjects when it became apparent that the curriculum review wasn’t going to provide any guidance at all. And then we’ve had to revise them a gazillion times since then for a variety of reasons.

Don’t get me started on this, I could go on for hours!

Wow, reading this back I just assumed there was the same level of bullshit in secondaries too. Every time I bump into ex Year 6s at the village rec they tell me about this stuff but I never believed them!

carrie ,mine are like yours and my house is full of old medicine too. Apart from a few missed afternoons for orthodontist , DS2 has had 100% attendance since Reception. He is year 12 now!

We don't have a policy about writing down objectives but many of our "younger" teachers do it. Apparently it's so the students know what they're learning.
But if it's not clear to a student from what I'm teaching, then we have a problem.
Today we're learning about the nit busting properties of the nitty gritty comb 🤢