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

@noblegiraffe

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?

I think, in part, because the expectations are still ridiculous. With the smaller teams at primary, they can also get away with a lot more variance from the official handbook in their demands.

Just before coronavirus started, I spoke with one inspector who said that his conclusions as to the quality of the curriculum are drawn from randomly-fired memory questions. For example, the continents and oceans are in the KS1 geography curriculum so he'll ask a Y3 child, at a random point, to name them all. If the child can't, for whatever reason, that means the geography curriculum isn't adequate. It's just not a realistic expectation.

@Iamnotthe1 I think we had that Ofsted Inspector, or at least his close relation, as something very similar happened at my school in our inspection before last. I was training then rather than being a full teacher.

I've no idea what a modern ofsted inspection looks like. The last time I went through one they came in and observed a whole lesson of me teaching. I remember a bizarre comment that 'the content was too challenging however all students met the objectives' Like, doesn't the latter disprove the former?

Interesting reading everyone, thank you. Glad you all agree that LO and SC are a waste of time and Pritt Stick!
I've seen the HT asked about them twice, by brave teachers trying to reduce workload. Both times told that if we are structuring our lessons properly then we are teaching to the LO.
Pupils are meant to self assess at the end of each lesson and tick the criteria they've achieved. Of course they all tick each one, regardless of output!
LO then had to be highlighted when marking, one colour for 'achieved', another for not. Then each SC ticked or crossed.
At least we don't (yet) do what I've seen in other schools - differentiated LOs/SC.
The planning doc was implemented so that Senco can see how we are differentiating for our SEN children (a conversation would be out of the question apparently!)
So glad I'm leaving. I wonder if anywhere else will be any better.

What's an SC?

Success criteria I reckon

Success Criteria - so 'I can find the highest common factor' for LO of simplifying fractions. We need 3 per lesson.

Mine would include "didn't drive MrsHamlet into a rage"

I’m currently teaching trigonometry. Lesson one was ‘Trigonometry’. Lesson two was ‘More Trig’. We discussed lesson four’s title and decided on ‘Trig IV, a New Hope’.

The kids came out of the lesson better at trig than they were, despite this lack of meaningful title.

Do you not have to do LO/SC at secondary at all, then?

They are a total waste of time-particularly with EYFS! It would be far better to have titles to the lesson in primary eg writing a letter. Then you would naturally talk about what letters would need and what a good one would look like (WAGOLL ).

@Piggywaspushed

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!

DS did have to be collected from his Yr5 residential due to being sick in the night but he was totally fine when I’d got him - he’d got overheated I think. Still had 100% attendance thanks to the register being completed before they went!

FE is full of redundant T&L practices that bit the dust years ago in secondary, which I’ve been happily ignoring for years. The adults I taught would have rebelled en masse if required to write down learning objectives.
It may interest people to know that only about 50% of my learners turned up with some form of writing implement, 10% with something to write on and 5% having done some prep beforehand. (And some had only been told the week beforehand that they had a Maths course and exam the next week.)

It's a complicated thing though.

My most successful (for me and for the children) year in teaching was 2014. We were 'trialling' the new curriculum and I was in year 6. I only had 24 children in the class, but lots were 'tricky' boys. Officially.

My school at that time used topic books - everything was cross curricular, and apart from maths, it all went in the same book. We did success criteria for every lesson - by the end of the teaching input, the children knew what success would look like, they'd tell me what to write in the sc and I'd print it out there and then. I was still putting kids on the carpet with whiteboards so I could see what they were up to (right up to the end of year 6), and they sat in rows of tables with 2 children - girl next to boy. They lined up girl/boy too. They LOVED knowing what success looked like, they worked really hard to targets. I had a target stamp, they had a personalised flip out thing in their books with their own targets on and coloured in stars when they got them. If a target was 'use commas in xx', and they did it 5 times in one piece of writing, they'd get 5 stamps in their books. I used whole class marking for general errors, but there weren't many because they knew what 'success' looked like, and had personal targets so knew what I was looking for from the class as a whole, and them personally.

I got 100% 3 levels of progress, 100% level 4s/5s as appropriate, had over half the class get level 5 in maths and so on.

But all of that is completely uncool now.

We do have Lo on the PowerPoint and may say ok so today we’re going to... writing them down seems pointless especially if the title suffices eg How successful was Elizabeth’s Religious Settlement?

I also hate any kind of copying down as it involves some sitting around waiting for others to get it down according to writing speeds/being awake and realising that yes you are meant to be writing this down Bob.

I only teach big 'uns so my success criteria are whatever the mark scheme says.
I amuse myself with titles. I had "Round like a record player" for a lesson about how Richard III manipulates his audience. Those were the days.

I know this is really petty of me but I've found a bit of peace of mind by thinking god it must be so annoying for them that they can't find anything concrete to have a go at me about and that there are no problems with my teaching or behaviour management or following of procedures etc.

I'm feeling determined that the more shittily I'm treated the better I'm going to do my job.

Apparently it’s national school strike day about not having masks in class. I’m sure the number of children not in school will be noticeably bigger today. Or not.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

Apparently it’s national school strike day about not having masks in class. I’m sure the number of children not in school will be noticeably bigger today. Or not.

100% attendance in my classes so far today. I don't believe any of them have heard of it, and they are all happily wearing masks as well (I suspect I'll need to remind my next class how to wear their masks, but they don't make a fuss about it at all)

No strikers at my school.

Managed to keep a low profile and not get told off by anyone today. This is my new definition of success.

Plus you don’t mention yr ankle, so presumably you’re not now in agony / it didn’t buckle at any point?!

Taking kids out of school to protest masks would kind of ruin their argument that kids need to be in school. Didn’t think that one through.

They had an argument for that last time when they initiated a more local strike. It’s an important enough issue to be taken out of school for.

Even better, I think that one might have been about school closures or isolation and not masks.

Question... your internal assessments. How are you marking them?
I mean the red pen bit... what are you actually physically doing?

No feedback. Just a mark at the end.

Thanks piggy
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