The Sixty-Sixth Republic - Who will be the medal winners on Results Day? Grade inflation predicted again

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You'll be glad to know, herc, that the plan for the inset is pretty much that: here are the things we're working on as a school.... now bugger off and work out how that works for your subject. Then nominate someone to tell me.
I'm trying to move it away from literacy = spelling and essay writing to literacy = codebreaking your subject.

Yeah, Herc I've done lots of literacy work for our maths department, because it is actually important that kids know how to answer questions like 'compare these two distributions' or 'Jeff says toilet roll A is better value. He is wrong, explain why.'
They also have a lot of what's now called Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary to learn and we generally don't have any proper strategies for teaching this.

So it's not like we couldn't use a literacy slot.

Ah noble - this is one of my things. I am trying to give people strategies for the vocabulary teaching but there's generally a lot of resistance to taking the time to do it because they've got to teach whatever. Which I get.
I'm also fairly sure most people don't read them.

I like rows. It works for me although I quite like horse shoes too. I don’t like groups as they talk when they should be working - I know some people are better at cracking the whip though.

How do people teach without modelling? Genuine question! Do they just lecture the children?

How do people teach without modelling? Genuine question! Do they just lecture the children?
Yes. I get to see loads of brilliant teaching.... but this also turns up regularly. And not in the teachers you might expect

How do you teach, MrsH if you don't use the board and don't like them looking at you?

We do a lot of discussion - so we'll read a bit of the text and then I give them some things to look for in the text in groups and then we discuss what they've found.
Essays are modelled from the text analysis stage, so we usually have a passage to analyse which I do on the document camera, and then model turning notes into a plan into a paragraph that hits the criteria. They look at the board rather than at me! If they're looking at me, they're not looking at the text.
I used to teach from around the room - often near Bob - before the magic tape.
Key vocab or quotations go on the board, and my starters are usually on the board.
I find PPT inflexible for English - if someone has a great idea, I want to run with it, not be stuck to whatever slide comes next.
A Level Lang is all on PPT though, because there's so much theory to cover.

I am trying to give people strategies for the vocabulary teaching

We've paid a lot of money for PIXL and they have all this literacy stuff where you have to write the word in the middle, then define it, then use it in a sentence, then draw a picture of the word, then look at it's roots.

And it does seem like a waste of time tbh. Like circle vocabulary, I need them to learn v quickly words like arc/sector/segment/tangent because we're going to be using them all the time in circle theorems, and I don't have time to do elaborate worksheets for each word. Science must have the same issue.

which I do on the document camera

Ah, I think that explains the lack of PPT! I don't think my English dept has these.

We looked at Pixl a while ago and decided it was too expensive, but I think it's on the agenda again.
I can't remember off the top of my head how many times it is, but they need to see and use the words in context multiple times for them to stick. So whilst a worksheet is great, it's not real. You're far better off modelling them a labelled diagram and then coming back to the terms frequently. Which is not going to sell any worksheets but is going to work more efficiently and effectively.

noble That pixl stuff is used at our place too. I get it for some words but for others it's just not worth it. We heavily bought into pixl a couple of years ago but subsequently found a lot of the stuff was what we already did.

You're far better off modelling them a labelled diagram and then coming back to the terms frequently.

That's what I do! I give them a blank one the next lesson and get them to see how many they can remember (retrieval practice yadayada) and then have to say 'Stop looking back in your books at yesterday's diagram, the point is to try to remember them!'.

We also have issues with kids who, despite having done a week of lessons on factorising, with the title being 'Factorising' and the questions saying 'factorise this' get to the algebra topic test, get to the factorising question leave it out and go 'I didn't know what factorise meant'. I guess they focus on the maths all week and pay no attention to the word so simply using it regularly isn't enough.

I guess they focus on the maths all week and pay no attention to the word so simply using it regularly isn't enough.
Probably - because maths is numbers and words are English and never the twain shall meet!
And also we did this last week and I've slept since then, miss.
All of our questions have "how" in them. Every time we do one, we remind ourselves that "how" means "which language devices does the writer use?" so we know that we have to write about the methods. We annotate the questions every time.
And still some of them don't do it.

I also agree assemblies are vital so I don’t have to plan anything for that day.

All our English classrooms are set in rows anyway, I’ve never liked grouped tables. Kids can work in groups by just turning round! Rest of the time face me!

Our assemblies are pointless-whole school, often run by unprepared (not due to being crap) teaching staff rather than SLT and other teaching staff have to stay in to supervise. I’d rather just do something meaningful with my own class in my own room.

I don't mind supervising a boring and pointless whole school assembly if it means I don't have to click through the same boring and pointless assembly as a narrated powerpoint in my tutor room.

We actually have someone in charge of assemblies. It used to be an SLT job but it got farmed out to someone else.

Yes, we do too, our chaplain. Not that that means they’re all religious, they’re not.

I would love someone to be in charge of assemblies. As long as it’s not me, obviously!

I think it went something like this:
Them: so what would you like to do in your new job as x?
Him: I'd like to do an assembly to all years please
Them: great. You can be in charge of all assemblies

Assemblies are a vital 15-20 minutes of small group or individual teaching, or pastoral work, or meeting time with 1:1 TAs for children in the class....and downtime for children who have had every minute of the time they have had in school last year being Taught and Caught Up and Progress Accelerated at a whirlwind pace!

Yep, never express an interest in anything unless you want to find yourself either in charge of it or running an INSET on it.

@noblegiraffe

Yep, never express an interest in anything unless you want to find yourself either in charge of it or running an INSET on it.

When I did my NASENCo award-the trainer said, the only reason any of you are here on this course today, is that you didn’t say, ‘no!’ quickly enough!

(However, assemblies also a daily super spreader event waiting to happen, of course)

That’s why they’re to be encouraged, cant, wouldn’t want to deny any child the chance to catch covid (per Dingwall).